"Barnabas! Come!"

Deaf as a doorknob, like any dog chasing a squirrel . . .

He huffed to the gate and examined it. Locked. Not to mention rusted. "Barnabas! Come now!"

He wiped the sweat from his eyes and saw his dog disappear into a thicket-no, a kind of loggia to the left of the house, which was barely visible through the trees. The furious barking continued unabated.

He whistled loudly. Dadgummit, his wife was a better whistler than he was. She could shake green apples from the tree.

More barking. More whistling.

What if Barnabas crossed the Love property, went under the fence on the other side, and into the street? He didn't keep his dog on a leash at all times for no good reason. Hadn't Barnabas been stolen by the vilest drug-dealing Creek scum, and kept staked and half starved for weeks on end?

Grasping the top of the wall with his hands, he gained a foothold against the rough surface and managed to heave himself up and over, landing beside the overgrown driveway with a thud.

He stood for a moment, still winded, and looked around.

He had entered another world.

Though he was mere inches beyond the gate, a few feet from the street, and only yards from Dove Cottage-he was no longer in Whitecap.

It was a jungle in here, literally.

The grounds had the density of a rain forest, with trees and vegetation he'd never seen before, save for one enormous live oak, damaged by an old storm. He wouldn't be surprised to hear monkeys and macaws, the trumpet call of an elephant. . . .

He stood still, as if frozen to the spot. Cool in here, and quiet, strangely quiet. He heard his own hard breathing, and remembered his maverick dog.

"Barnabas!"

In reply, there was crashing through the underbrush to his left, and a revived fit of barking.

"Come! Come, old fella!"

Barnabas bolted into the driveway through a vine-entangled hedge, gave him an odd look, then turned and raced toward the house.

He ran, too, pounding along the weed-grown driveway, until the house came fully into view.

Spanish. Stucco. Tile roof. Moss growing in wide, lush patches on the walls of the loggia or portico; vines covering half the house; the smooth, worn roots of a huge tree gnarling up through a stone semicircle at the front door.

He looked at the windows, which returned only a blank and curtainless stare.

"Barnabas!" he hissed.

Dadgummit, there he came around the right side of the house, galloping like a horse after yet another squirrel, which was fleeing for its life through yet another iron gate on some kind of outbuilding that was nearly obscured by undergrowth.

Enough was enough, by heaven. The party was over.

He dashed after his dog as the squirrel ran through the partially open gate, and Barnabas followed, his long hair catching on the rusted iron and slamming the gate behind him.

As it clanged shut, Father Tim stood for a moment, swallowing down his anger.

It was some kind of ancient, stuccoed enclosure, an old dog run, perhaps, grown up with straggling shrubs and weeds. The squirrel was over the rear wall and gone from sight, leaving Barnabas stranded at the end of the run, barking with impotent fury.

Father Tim jiggled the gate, which appeared to have locked. He'd never seen such an odd contrivance to latch a gate; the rust didn't make it work any better, either. Blast! He hit the thing with the palm of his hand, smarting the flesh and drawing blood.

He could fairly throttle his dog, who now turned toward him with a look of sheepish regret. "Come," he said through clenched teeth.

Barnabas, clearly on the downside of his adrenaline rush, walked slowly toward the gate, head down.

His master punched the gate again, repeated the favorite expletive of his school buddy, Tommy Noles, then gave the blasted thing a stiff kick for good measure.

"Out!"

He heard the bellow as if it were projected on a loudspeaker.

"Out!"

His skin prickled. "Mr. Love," he shouted into thin air, "my dog is locked in your run, and I don't have a clue how to get him . . . out."

"You're a fool to let him in," growled Morris Love.

Father Tim looked to an upstairs window where he thought the voice originated, but saw no one.

"I didn't let him in. He ran in on his own, chasing a squirrel!" He was fairly trembling with the frustration of this escapade, and suddenly angry at the man who refused to show himself, much less proffer a grain of human hospitality.

"Take the pin out," Morris Love yelled.

He slid the pin out. Whoever put this thing together ought to have his head examined. . . .

"Turn the latch to the right!"

He cranked it to the right. Nothing. Dead. Not to mention that something was eating his legs alive.

He was furious. He felt as if he could dismantle the gate with his bare hands, like Samson, and pitch it into the weeds. His blood pressure was probably halfway to the moon.

"It doesn't work!" he shouted, slapping at his bitten legs.

"It works, Father, it has always worked. Don't push it when you turn it to the right!"

Morris Love could wake the dead with that huge bellow, as if he were speaking through the pipes of his organ. Father Tim tried again, without pushing. The gate opened as easily as if it had just rolled off the assembly line.

He breathed a sigh of relief and wiped his forehead with the tail of his T-shirt. Blast, what a commotion.

His dog's tail was between his legs as they marched toward the house.

"Thank you!" he shouted to the open upstairs window. "We'll try not to trouble you again."

Silence.

As they swung left into the driveway, he gave one of the gnarled roots an impatient kick.

"Goodbye and good riddance," he muttered under his breath.

Now the duck possessed a portion of its other wing.

He handled it carefully, admiring the lifelike beauty of the emerging creature.

"Do you . . . sell these?" he asked Roger.

"Oh, yes. I haven't kept one for myself in a good while."

"What kind of money do they go for?" Four, maybe five hundred, he thought, and well worth it!

Roger's brown eyes sparkled, as they often did when he spoke of his craft. "I'll probably ask around fifteen hundred for this one."

With what he hoped wasn't obvious haste, he handed it back to Roger.

Ernie thumped into a chair at their table. "Junior's been turned down flat," he said, looking crestfallen.

"How? Who?"

"Ava. She won't go out with 'im, won't even let 'im meet 'er daddy."

"I hate to hear it."

"If you ask me," said Ernie, "it was those pictures that did 'im in. Junior's better lookin' than those pictures."

Roanoke took a cigarette from behind his ear. "His fish done wiggled off th' hook."

Ernie sighed. "We could take 'em again with a better camera. I could get one from th' Whitecap Reader, I think they use Nikes."

"Nikons," said Roger, not looking up from his work.

"He ought to start over an' run another ad," said Roanoke. "Leave out th' Bronco business, leave out th' Scrabble business, keep in th' fishin' part, axe th' stuff about a serious relationship-"

"He don't want to run another ad," said Ernie. "He don't want to start over, he wants to meet Ava."

"What did he say in his letter to her? Maybe that's the key."

"Beats me. I tried to tell him what to say, but who knows?" Ernie shrugged, looking disconsolate.

For a while, the only sound was Roger's knife against the tupelo wood.

He threw his cup in the wastebasket by the Pepsi machine and fished around in his shorts pocket for fifty-cents, which he gave Ernie for the Reader.

Roanoke had pedaled away on his bicycle, Roger was walking Lucas, and Father Tim figured this was as good a chance as he'd get.

"Ernie," he said, "tell me everything you know about Morris Love."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Mighty Waters He was awake ten minutes before the alarm went off, and heard at once the light patter of rain through the open window.

"Timothy?"

"Yes?"

"Is it four o'clock?"

"Ten 'til. Go back to sleep."

"You'll have a great time, I just know you will."

"I'm sure of it. And remember-don't cook dinner. I'm bringing it home."

"Right, darling. I'm excited. . . ."

She was no such thing; she was already snoring again. He kissed her shoulder and crept out of bed.

He was accustomed to rising early, but four o'clock was ridiculous, not to mention he couldn't get pumped up for this jaunt no matter how hard he tried.

He'd entertained every fishing yarn anyone cared to tell, trying to mask his blank stare with a look of genuine interest. Ah, well, surely the whole business would pleasantly surprise him-he'd return home with a cooler full of tuna, tanned and vigorous from a day on the water, whistling a sea chantey.

Chances were-and this was not a perk to be taken lightly-it could even blow a fresh breeze through his preaching, not to mention make him feel more one-in-spirit with his parish. After all, he'd been on their turf for three months and practically the only thing he'd done that he couldn't have done in Mitford was slap a few mosquitoes and pick sandspurs from his dog's paws.

He dressed hurriedly in the bathroom, brushed his teeth, splashed water on his face, and raced to the kitchen to gulp down a cup of coffee he'd set in the refrigerator last night, figuring cold caffeine to be better than no caffeine at all.

He packed the canvas bag with his lunch, having entirely dismissed the notion of fried chicken. Where on earth anybody would find fried chicken at four in the morning was beyond him. He stuffed in plenty of bottled water and a couple of citrus drinks. No time to eat, he'd do that on the boat, he was out of here.

His dog followed him along the hall, thumped down by the front door, and yawned mightily. "Guard the house, old fellow."

Dark as pitch. He turned the lock, shut the door behind him, and patted his jacket pockets for the rolled-up canvas hat and bottle of sunscreen. All there.

He stood on the porch and drew in a deep draught of the cool morning air; it was scented with rain and salt, with something mysteriously beyond his ken. He didn't think he'd ever again take the ocean for granted. He daily sensed the power and presence of it in this new world in which they were living.

All those years ago when he was a young clergyman in a little coastal parish, the water had meant nothing to him; it had hardly entered his mind. He might have lived in the Midwest for all the interest he took in the things of the sea, except for the several bushels of shrimp and clams he'd surely consumed during his curacy. His mind, his heart had been elsewhere, in the clouds, perhaps; but now it was different. Though he wasn't one for swimming in the ocean or broiling on the beach, he was making a connection this time, something he couldn't quite articulate and why bother, anyway?

The light rain cooled his head as he trotted down the front steps, opened the gate, and got into the Mustang parked by the street.

Goin' fishin'! he thought as he buckled the seat belt. The way he'd worried about this excursion had made it seem like a trek to Outer Mongolia, but so far, so good. And just think-there were thousands, probably millions of people out there who'd give anything to be in his shoes.

It was still dark when he found the marina where the charter boats were tied to the dock like horses waiting to be saddled.