Odd Hours

while, from childhood, I had been moving toward Magic Beach and toward a moment when, with full free will, I would either take upon myself a tremendous burden—or turn away from it. I did not know what the burden might prove to be, but I could feel the weight of it descending, and my moment of decision drawing near.
    All things in their time.
    Birdie Hopkins pulled the Cadillac to the curb and stopped once more.
    Pointing, she said, “Harbor’s one block that way. Maybe you’d rather walk the last part to…whatever it is.”
    “I’ll use the gun only to defend myself.”
    “Thought different, I wouldn’t give it.”
    “Or an innocent life.”
    “Hush now. It’s like you said.”
    “What did I say?”
    “This is more than trust.”
    The fog, the night, the future pressed at the windows.
    “One more thing I might need.”
    “Just say.”
    “Do you have a cell phone?”
    She took it from the purse, and I accepted it.
    “When you’re safe,” she said, “will you let me know?”
    “Yes, ma’am. Thank you for everything.”
    I started to open the door, then hesitated.
    Unshed tears stood in Birdie’s eyes.
    “Ma’am, I shined you on about something earlier. What you feel coming isn’t from watching the news too much.”
    She bit her lower lip.
    I said, “Something big is coming. I sense it, too. I think I’ve sensed it all my life.”
    “What? Child, what is it?”
    “I don’t know. So big the world changes—but like you said, some kind of change nobody would ever expect.”
    “Sometimes I’m so afraid, mostly in the night, and Fred not here to talk me through to a quiet heart.”
    “You don’t ever need to be afraid, Birdie Hopkins. Not a woman like you.”
    She reached out to me. I held her hand.
    “Keep safe,” she said.
    When she was ready to let go of my hand, I got out of the sedan and closed the door. I slid her cell phone into a pocket of my jeans, and I tucked the pistol in the waistband so that the sweatshirt would cover it.
    As I walked to the corner, crossed the intersection, and headed toward the harbor, the big engine of the Cadillac idled in the night until I went too far to hear it anymore.

 
    THIRTY-THREE
    ALONG THE SOUTHERN HORN OF THE NARROW-MOUTHED bay, toward the seaward end, the vessels in the small commercial-fishing fleet tied up where they could come and go with the least disturbance to the bayside residents and to the noncommercial boat traffic.
    Where I stood on the quay, along the crescent shore of the northern horn, I could not see those distant trawlers, seiners, and clippers through the thousand white veils of the night. From their direction, however, once every thirty seconds, came the low mournful bleat of the foghorn out on the southern arm of the harbor-entrance breakwater.
    Here in the north, the marina offered protection from the storm surges that, in bad weather, muscled in through the entrance channel. Four hundred slips were occupied by a variety of pleasure craft: small electric-motor bay cruisers, sportfishers with metal lookout towers rising above their bridges, sailing yachts with canvas furled, motor yachts, and racing boats. The largest of these craft were sixty feet, and most were smaller.
    As I descended a short flight of stairs from the sea wall to the wharf, I could see only a few of the closest craft through the soup. Even those appeared to be ghost vessels, moored in a dream.
    Regularly spaced dock lamps receded into the mist, a necklace of radiant pearls, and under them the wet planks glistened darkly.
    I remained alert for the sound of voices, for footsteps, but no one seemed to be out and about in the chilly mist.
    Some of the sailing yachts were full-time residences. Their lighted portholes were as golden as scattered coins, faux doubloons that shimmered and, as I walked, paled away into the murk.
    Avoiding the dock lamps was easy enough, for the feathered air constrained their reach. I made my way through shadows, my sneakers squishing so faintly on the wet planks that even I could barely hear the noise I made.
    The sea beyond the bay had been flatline all day; and the currents in the harbor were so gentle that the boats wallowed only slightly in their berths. They creaked and sometimes softly groaned, but the motion was not strong enough to clink halyards against metal masts.
    As I walked, I took slow deep breaths of the briny air, and relying on psychic magnetism to pull me toward the conspirators, I concentrated on the