Mean Low Water by Stephanie Alexander

Author:Stephanie Alexander
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Women's Fiction, Speculative, Psychic, Southern, Women's Friendships, Marriage Crisis, Addiction, Smalltown, South Carolina, Lowcountry
Publisher: Red Adept Publishing
Published: 2024-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

BY THE TIME I SIT DOWN beside Peace at Saltwater Cowboys on Shem Creek, Tommy and Rollo are each on their third beer. They have a table on the outside deck overlooking the creek, where spicy barbeque fumes mix with the lingering scent of an afternoon rain shower. The sunset is fixing to be a lovely one, as it always is after a spring rain. The dawdling clouds are cotton balls dragged across an artist’s palette—red, orange, pink, purple.

Rain hasn’t stopped the Wednesday-evening party at Saltwater Cowboys, the most festive restaurant in Mount Pleasant. A few exuberant women answer the DJ’s call as he spins dance tunes beside the crowded deck bar. Hulking wooden shrimp boats rest quietly in their slips, but a navy of smaller vessels jockeys for position in the skinny creek. Shaggy-haired teenage dockhands throw lines and tie boats in lines like fiberglass sardines. People laugh and chatter as they disembark and meander between the restaurants. Charleston has emerged from winter hibernation, and the enthusiasm is contagious.

Peace has a Coke, but I order a Mich Ultra at his insistence. He doesn’t want anyone to think of him as a buzzkill, even if his own buzz is deceased. Neither Peace’s sobriety nor my intrusion into their boys’ night slows Tommy or Rollo. They keep right on reminiscing about one of their many fishing trips to Boot Island.

“That was the year Ro-Ro tried to make popcorn on the fire and the pot exploded. Sounded like a machine gun on D-Day.” Tommy puffs out his cheeks then repeatedly smacks the air out of them.

Rollo peers out from under his YETI baseball cap. White-blond hair sticks out around the hat’s edges. He has a dark tan from year-round fishing. The lines of his older tattoos have smeared like diluted watercolor paintings. “It might not have been popcorn. Maybe it was dynamite.”

“Maybe you’re an idiot,” Tommy says.

“Listen, LeeLee. You gotta hear this.” Rollo turns to me, his new captive audience. “Peace was straight passed out by the fire, snoring, man, chainsawing logs, drooling like Landon’s old hound dog.”

“Point made, Ro,” Peace says as I laugh.

“Then the explosion hit—” Rollo jumps to his feet like a tipsy scarecrow in jeans and flip-flops. He almost knocks over his beer, and he startles the girls at the table behind us.

“Rollo, what the hell? Calm down,” Peace says, but he laughs too. “Sorry, y’all.” He smiles at the disgruntled girls, and their annoyed scowls turn into blushing grins.

Rollo sits. “Peace jumped up and ran into the dark night like the devil with sunrise hot on his heels.”

“I won’t deny it,” Peace says. “Smelled like my mama’s hairdryer blowing a fuse.”

“Are y’all going to Boot this fall?” I ask. “With Peace back, it would be like old times.”

“We haven’t been in a few years,” Tommy says. “Rollo let the cabin fall into disrepair. Such a travesty.”

“I’ll make the repairs eventually,” Rollo says. “But believe me, no one wants to go out there these days. Mother Nature has taken over.

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