The Water Is Wide by Pat Conroy Page A

House. Where the President of the United States lives. Where the President of the United States of America leads his people. Wallace wouldn’t have had it. There would have been bodies lyin’ all over the streets if he had gotten in. He’d of used flame throwers and tanks.”
    Stone talked and I listened. It was insane, ludicrous, and frightening. His face curled in hatred. He forgot I was in the room. He smelled blood and his whole personality was transfixed to the thought that the marchers should die en masse on Constitution Avenue. He wanted them dead, he said, “to give America a good name in the free world.” D. P. Conroy said nothing. Stricken with fright, I saw the awesome display of weapons mounted in Stone’s front room and did not wish to give Stone even the slightest reason to identify me with the Washington marchers. When I left, Stone told me to come watch the news with him anytime.
    The next day I was swimming off Stone’s dock after school. The water was growing colder, but its bracing chill seemed to clean out the frustrations for a little while. Stone came down to the dock and started talking. This time he talked of fishing.
    â€œGood fishing off this dock here,” he said. “Catch a whole string of winter trout, right now. Might even catch a sea trout or two. My son caught a ten-foot shark off this dock a year ago.”
    In three strokes I covered about twenty yards of water. In a flash of spray and spume and chilled blood, I stood upon the dock a scant four seconds after Stone delivered the news about the shark.
    â€œAre there lots of sharks out there?” I asked, my voice squeaking and my knees filled with jelly.
    â€œOh, lots of them. They hang around the dock a lot.”
    â€œThat’s great, Mr. Stone. That is really great. You mean I have been swimming in shark-infested waters all this time and you never told me!”
    â€œYou knew sharks lived in salt water.”
    â€œI did not know they had a clubhouse under your dock, or my young ass would never have hit water. Sharks eat people, Mr. Stone.”
    â€œNot around here. I’ve never heard of anyone getting eaten around here.”
    â€œWell, I sure don’t want to become a precedent.” My afternoon swims ended for all time on that day.
    Several friends of mine in Beaufort warned me about forming any kind of relationship with Zeke Skimberry. Skimberry was the maintenance man of the Bluffton district and because of a decree emanating from the high echelons of the educational hierarchy, Zeke was designated as the official guardian of my boat. Skimberry aroused suspicion in many quarters because of his sycophantic allegiance to Ezra Bennington. Zeke had survived many purges of personnel and many tumultuous years in the Bluffton school system by affixing his fate to the more luminous and permanent star of Bennington. He mowed Bennington’s grass, moved cumbersome early American furniture around Mrs. Bennington’s plush antique shop, and acted as Bennington’s chauffeur, valet, and servant when the occasion demanded it. Behind his back, people hissed that Zeke was “Bennington’s nigger” and nothing more. I found a lot more.
    He was, on first meeting, one of the warmest, most genuinely friendly people I had ever met. His large blue eyes danced and flashed expressively, puckishly; a grin constantly played about his mouth. He was lean but muscled by constant exposure to physical labor and his face revealed an intelligence, an alertness, that both surprised and delighted me. Zeke was a California transplant, a divorce who drifted out of an unhappy marriage in the West, wandered from job to job, drank good whiskey under the skies of many states, until he met and fell in love with Ida McKee, a striking young blonde hitting a cash register in a general store near Bluffton, South Carolina. Zeke drove her to Georgia after a madcap courtship, married her with the