Bad Stacks Story Collection Box Set by Scott Nicholson Read Free Book Online Page B

I had agreed to take an assignment to such a desolate place.
    Not for the first time, I silently cursed the carelessness of editorial assistants. “The forecasts are for clear weather,” I said, not letting the boatman know that I cared one way or another.
    “You should be all right,” he said. “Least as far as the weather's concerned. Still, they blow up quick sometimes.”
    I looked around at the great blue sea. The horizon was empty on all sides, a far cry from the past glories of this area's navigational history. In my research, I had learned that this inlet was one of the first great shipping routes in the south. Decades before the Revolutionary War, ships would come to the shallow neck and offload their goods to smaller boats. Those boats then distributed the cargo to towns across the mainland shore. Spurred by this industry, Portsmouth had grown up from the bleak gray-white sands.
    “A lot of shipwrecks below?” I asked, more to keep the old man talking than to fill any gaps in my background knowledge.
    “Hells of them,” he said. “Got everything from old three-mast schooners to a few iron freighters. Some of them hippie divers from Wood's Hole said they saw a German U-boat down there, but they was probably just smoking something funny.”
    “So the bottom's not too deep here?”
    “Depends. The way the sand shifts here from one year to the next, could be fifteen feet, could be a hundred. That's why the big boys don't come through here no more.”
    And that's why Portsmouth had died. As the inlet became shallower, ships no longer wanted to risk getting stranded or else breaking up on the barrier reefs. The town had tried to adapt to its misfortune, and was once an outpost for ship rescue teams near the end of the 19th century. More than a few of the town's oarsmen were lost in futile rescue or salvage attempts.
    Then ships began avoiding the area entirely, and the town residents left, family by family. The population dwindled from its height of 700 to a few dozen in the 1950s. The stubborn Portsmouth natives continued to cling to their home soil despite the lack of electricity, no steady food supply, irregular mail service, and a dearth of doctors and teachers. But even the hardiest finally relented and moved across the sound to a safer and less harsh existence, leaving behind a ghost town, the buildings virtually intact.
    “There she is,” the boatman said, and I squinted against the sparkling water. The thin strand came slowly into view. The beach was beautiful but bleak, a scattering of gulls the only movement besides the softly swaying seagrass. Low dunes rolled away from the flat white sands.
    “Used to be a lot of wrecks right along this stretch,” the boatman said.
    “I read that they'd go out in hurricanes to rescue shipwrecked crews,” I said.
    “Brave folks, they was,” he said, nodding. “'Course, you'd have to be brave to set down roots in that soil, or else crazy. My people came from here, but they left around the First World War, when the getting was good. They's still lots of them on the island, though.”
    I was confused. “I thought the town was abandoned, except for the rangers.”
    He gave his dolphin-squeak of laughter. “Them that's under the sand, I mean. In the cemeteries. Got left where they was buried.”
    He guided the boat toward a crippled dock that was barely more than black posts jutting from the shallow water. The engine dropped to a groaning whine as he eased back the throttle. When we came broadside to the dock, he tied off with his crablike hands. I climbed out onto the slick, rotted planks.
    “You ever go back?” I asked. “To have a look around, to walk through the houses that your folks used to live in?”
    He studied the swirling foam and shook his head. “Nope. The past is best left dead and buried. You'd be wise to remember that.”
    I took my baggage from him, and I thought he might at least help me carry it to dry land. But he didn't move from the