Jake Parson’s mother called it the magic hour: the moment when a day passes into evening, when the earth feels suspended before darkness and slumber. In the gold and reddening light, an easy southwest breeze propelled Jake’s thirty-five-foot sailboat through the Beaufort Inlet for the first time. As he navigated through the channel, he heard the cries of distant seagulls. It was the first land animal he’d heard in days. The last low rays of the sun illuminated the white church steeple and the sails of a windmill on the horizon. Jake used the steeple to site his course though the channel. The current strengthened when the waterway narrowed, but he held fast to the tiller. A few minutes later, a tiny line of houses and stores came into view.
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When they were finished eating, he took a saltwater bath that involved a rag and a bucket. The long night stretched before him. From the cockpit of his Sharpie, he contemplated the boat’s cabin. The small space made him feel like he was trapped inside an animal. In many ways, The Great War had faded for Jake. He’d learned to quiet his haunting memories during the day, but sleep often eluded him. Everything he wanted to forget revisited him at night, and the confined space easily transported him to the muddy trenches of France. Jake wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and settled in on his deck, watching the western sky transition into the deep velvet night. His old infantry habits surfaced as he scanned the waterfront for movement. He knew that Prohibition put coastal towns like Beaufort on the frontline of liquor smuggling.
It was illegal to trade alcohol inside the three-mile boundary that ran along the Eastern coast. Since local watermen were making easy money running booze from offshore ships into the isolated coves and islands, they would be reticent to talk to the Coast Guard. Jake figured people would be even less likely to talk to Glenn’s family. When he left Murphy, he had decided to hide his kinship to his brother by using an alias name. Tomorrow, he would start his new life as Jake Waterson.
As the shouts and cries from the shad crews dimmed, and the stars grew brighter, Jake’s exhaustion crept up on him. He fell asleep as a thin moon rose higher in the night
When they were finished eating, he took a saltwater bath that involved a rag and a bucket. The long night stretched before him. From the cockpit of his Sharpie, he contemplated the boat’s cabin. The small space made him feel like he was trapped inside an animal. In many ways, The Great War had faded for Jake. He’d learned to quiet his haunting memories during the day, but sleep often eluded him. Everything he wanted to forget revisited him at night, and the confined space easily transported him to the muddy trenches of France. Jake wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and settled in on his deck, watching the western sky transition into the deep velvet night. His old infantry habits surfaced as he scanned the waterfront for movement. He knew that Prohibition put coastal towns like Beaufort on the frontline of liquor smuggling.
It was illegal to trade alcohol inside the three-mile boundary that ran along the Eastern coast. Since local watermen were making easy money running booze from offshore ships into the isolated coves and islands, they would be reticent to talk to the Coast Guard. Jake figured people would be even less likely to talk to Glenn’s family. When he left Murphy, he had decided to hide his kinship to his brother by using an alias name. Tomorrow, he would start his new life as Jake Waterson.
As the shouts and cries from the shad crews dimmed, and the stars grew brighter, Jake’s exhaustion crept up on him. He fell asleep as a thin moon rose higher in the night