Amagansett by Mark Mills Page B

backed off warily, helping Dan to his feet as they left. For the duration of the scuffle he’d been sitting on his ass, staring perplexedly at the blood sluicing from his nose into his open hands.
    Charlie Walsh gunned the engine of his truck, the tires spitting shards of shell before biting on the packed sand beneath. He didn’t even glance over as he roared out of the lot.
    Rollo watched the taillights disappear into the night. ‘He’s a hard-shell sinner, that one.’
    Conrad laughed, then winced from the pain.
    Despite Rollo’s protestations, Conrad insisted on returning home. He knew he had fractured a rib, possibly two, but it wasn’t as if it was the first time. Doc Meadows—in his inimitable, cranky way—would only strap him up, tell him to take it easy and maybe givehim some aspirin to dull the pain. The first of these Conrad was quite capable of doing himself, the second was out of the question, the third he had no desire for.
    He wanted to feel the stab of pain in his side, he wanted it to endure, to aggravate him as he went about his day, to wake him at night each time he rolled over in bed. It would act both as a nagging reminder of what had occurred and as a call to arms.
    Already he could feel a clarity of thought descending on him, a determination as clean and hard as the steel of a new blade.
    Leaving the parking lot, he found himself swinging the wheel of the truck to the left, heading east on Cranberry Hole Road. Home was to the west.
    The handful of rundown shanties clustered on the western shore of Napeague Harbor where it opened to the bay was dubbed Lazy Point by the locals. There was indeed an air of languor about the residents who scratched a living from the surrounding beaches, bars and flats. But when they sold their services to others—shucking scallops, skinning eels or baiting cod trawls with skimmer clams in winter for the ocean crews—they worked with impressive speed and dexterity.
    When it came to it, Lazy Point was so called because of its appearance. Aside from a few straggly hedgerow weeds there was hardly a flower to be seen in the place. Instead, the front gardens of the houses were cluttered with fishing paraphernalia, most of it well beyond use, or even repair. Ancient lobster pots lay abandoned in heaps, woven through with tall grasses. Small rowboats were propped up on logs, their rotten timbers destined never to be replaced. Out front of one house there was even a rusting horse-drawn hay rake, a relic from the last century when the nearby salt meadows were cropped for winter grazing.
    As for the buildings themselves, not one was painted the white or cream of their counterparts in Amagansett. At best, they received an annual baptism of bunker oil to protect their rough, salt-bleached cladding. They were low, ramshackle structures, some cobbled together from the old sugar boxes once used forshipping fish. Come a hard winter blow, large sections would detach themselves and take wing, only to be located the next day and bolted right back on again. Like an old garment fondly preserved with patches, these humble dwellings were unsightly to all but their owners.
    In amongst the dilapidation, one home stood out like a pink ribbon on a sow’s ear—a neat little weatherboard shack with a shingled roof, set back from the road down a rutted track. And it was in front of this building that Conrad pulled the truck to a halt.
    He hesitated, allowing the engine to idle, suddenly doubting his decision to come here. He would have pulled away again if Sam Ockham hadn’t opened the front door of his home, raising one hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the truck’s headlight. His other hand was clamped around the collar of his dog, restraining it.
    Conrad killed the engine. ‘It’s me, Conrad,’ he called, stepping down from the truck.
    ‘Bed,’ snapped Sam, and his dog scuttled back inside. ‘You near scared hell outta me.’
    ‘I thought you didn’t believe in