approached slowly, watching the men, watching over his shoulder. The woman with the platter saw him and spun around once. Her long dress billowed out like a blooming flower. She leaned in and held the platter low.
"Five cents to fill your stomach, little boy."
The platter was arrayed with a circular pattern of boiled shrimp. Heads on, tails on, still in their dented shells, salted, glistening in the open air.
Minnow licked his lips and looked up at the woman.
"Five cents?" he asked.
She nodded.
He felt the billfold in his pocket and she watched him do it. His mother gave him the money for the medicine, and already half of it was gone with nothing to show. But he wouldn't need it now, if he completed his quest. Dr. Crow said to use it on the journey, and now it had begun. He had to start with something.
"Yes," he said, and took the quarter from the billfold. The lady held her hand out and he placed the quarter in her palm. She closed her palm and held the platter lower. He put out both hands to grab at the shrimp and she waved a finger.
"One hand. As much as you can hold, five cents."
He filled his dirty hand with shrimp: eight fat orange creatures damp and warm in his fingers. The lady flicked her wrist and two dimes appeared where the quarter had been. She gave them to him and went on her way, calling out her sale.
Minnow went to the water's edge and sat with the steaming shrimp in his lap. He picked the biggest one and shelled it, tossing the tail and head away. He ate the body whole, buttery and warm, dusted with red spice. He ate another, and another, and the dog returned.
It crept up behind him, close to the water, and sniffed the discarded shells. It plucked up a head and ate it whole, eyes and brain and long red whiskers. It leaned down again and ate a tail. The dog was not much more than a puppy: small, brown, covered in dirty curls from toes to tail. Two little black eyes showed through the thick mat of ringlets on its head. It had stunted puppy ears, floppy and short.
Minnow ate another shrimp and had four left. He shelled the next one and watched the dog lick the pebbles where the shrimp shells had been.
"Hello."
It stood alert: paws spread, legs straight, tail stiff. It sniffed the air. Minnow held out the shelled shrimp between two fingers and the dog stayed still.
"Come on."
It did not respond to his voice, but it moved when it was ready, stepping carefully across the sand to ease the shrimp from Minnow's fingers with the tips of its teeth. It gobbled it down, and Minnow threw the shells out for it too.
"I get the rest."
He ate the last three shrimp and tossed the shells and heads to the dog. He licked his fingers and wiped them on his stained pants.
"Good, huh?"
The dog perked up.
"Where you from?"
A raucous cheer came from some building in town. Men cheered and hollered, and a woman moaned and then screamed. Minnow's skin tightened on his arms, and the dog left, turning and trotting away toward the fish shacks.
Minnow stood up quick and brushed off his pants. There was plenty of day left, but he'd taken too long with his lunch. He checked his billfold and Dr. Crow's potion and looked up the beach toward the docks. A ferry or a barge would be leaving for the Island. He just had to find it.
He left his lunch spot and passed the fish shacks. No dog, and no boys either. He craned his neck as he approached the tangle of wooden docks along the river's edge, looking for someone about to leave.
All was work and activity. Men loaded boats. The sailors were big, muscled, burned brown. Most wore no shirts, and many were crossed with scars or places where fresh cuts had healed pink. A few were in departure, casting their bowlines off and pushing away from the salt-crusted docks. He watched some of them begin their course across the water. He tapped his thigh with his hand. He'd never been to the Island alone. He'd never crossed the river alone.
A bell rang out at the end of the longest dock. He passed several shorter piers, walking over their ramps as he went by. Most of the boats out on the water were small, but the biggest were the shrimp boats. Maybe a ferry would come down from Charleston or up from Savannah and dwarf them, but now the kings of the port were the long shrimping skiffs arrayed with many nets. Their captains would be hard men, men who worked under the sun for days as their nets trawled deep waters.
The smell of salty, muddy barnacles hit the back of his throat. Minnow licked his lips and tasted the shrimp again. He crossed another dock and looked down its length. It wasn't quite as crowded, and it moored no shrimp boats. Instead he saw smaller bateaux meant to carry people to and from larger boats anchored out in the bay. A few barges were there, and one at the end appeared to be empty.
He looked up and down the shore again, checked over his shoulder, and stepped onto the ramp. It stayed low to the sand, and then low to the water until it went upward to avoid the cycling tide. The water was midway and dropping now, the shore showing more mud and muddy oysters and mud-slick flotsam. Clumps of barnacles growing on the pilings perfumed the salty air.
He walked carefully. The dock was not for rich couples on Bay Street or for vacationers down from the north. This was a work dock, with thin bowing planks laid just close enough to walk on. Big gaps showed gray-green water below. Garfish the size of hogs surfaced in the shadows and sucked at the surface for algae and brine.
He passed the first small craft, and then another. A sailor sat in one, hat slung low, napping. The next few were empty, but one dinghy had a negro in it repairing a sail. Minnow went on, and then stopped to look back at the shore, feet split between two different boards. The dock shivered under him in the wind and the current, just enough to feel. The port behind bustled with people and animals and carts. Dr. Crow's shack stood like a dark monolith down on the oyster rake, and at the end of the dock stood the three men he'd run across when he had arrived at the port. They saw him, and they were coming, and they knew he was trying to leave.
Minnow turned quick and looked down the length of the dock. Only a few more boats, all of them empty, and then a barge tied all the way out at the head. A negro sat in it with a long pole laid over his lap. Minnow sped up, stepping fast over gapped boards, then skipping one, two. He glanced over his shoulder, and the men were coming down the dock, single file, cigar smoker in lead.
He was almost there. He threw up a hand in a half wave, half salute. The negro in the barge was old, older than Dr. Crow, wearing a floppy straw hat. He looked up and the hat tilted back.
"Will you take me to the Island?" Minnow asked, chest heaving, almost going straight into the barge. He stopped himself short on the edge of the dock and caught his balance.
"The Island? I'm waiting on a load. I'll take you then."
"I'm in a hurry, and I can pay."
"How much you paying?"
"I have twenty cents," he lied.
"I don't need twenty cents to row you to the Island. Your daddy know you got that money?"
Minnow looked over his shoulder. The men were coming faster. One of them had a hand up and cigar man was yelling something.
"Yessir. I just need a ride really fast."
The negro took the pole off his lap and stood up.
"They coming with you?"
"No sir."
The old negro laughed and plunged the pole into the river and pushed off.
"Then untie that rope fast before I pull the dock down."
Minnow knelt down and unwound the thick, frayed bowline. He tossed it in, jumped, cleared the watery gap, and rolled flat onto his back. The three men were passing the last boat on the dock now, waving their hands. Yelling. Cursing. The negro raised his hand high and called out.
"I'll