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me about this fight you had.”
    “Bryan came by looking for a little fun at my expense. He’d been drinking I think. Anyway I had some trouble with my traps in Little Shoal Bay a few days ago and the Seawind was out there the day before. We got into an argument.”
    “Well, I can see how that might happen,” Baxter said. “Threatening him with a rifle though Ella, that’s a little extreme isn’t it?”
    “I didn’t do that because of my traps. He tried to come on board my boat. I don’t like people on my boat unless I ask them first.”
    Baxter looked at her, and at the distance between him and the Santorini as if he was committing this information to memory.
    “Come on Chief, you know what he’s like. The Rodericks and
    Howard have this marina thing cooked up between them, and I guess I’m not their favourite person right now. I didn’t like some of the things Bryan was saying. I was just making a point. The gun wasn’t loaded anyway.”
    “What kind of things was he saying?”
    “Just personal things. I don’t need to repeat it word for word do I?” Ella was used to the comments some people made around her, and sometimes about her on the dock. She’d practically grown up with it, and she’d learned a long time ago to let it go over her head. Those that made them wanted her to react, expected her to because she was a woman. She never did, even when they stepped over the line, which only happened occasionally. She’d had to accept that not everybody was crazy about a woman owning her own boat, and some people let their resentment of her show. They were a minority however, and she ignored them because she knew they hated it that they couldn’t get to her. But Bryan was different. He had a way of looking at her. She could read every thought in his mind, and he knew it. His mocking smile made her flesh creep.
    Baxter shook his head. “No, I guess not. So what happened after that?”
    “Nothing. He left.”
    “And you didn’t see him again?”
    “No, not at all.”
    Baxter stood and smiled, then spread his hands. “Okay, we’re all set then, I guess. See you later Ella.”
    “Bye Chief,” she said, and watched him amble back the way he’d come.
    Along the waterfront, Howard leaned against the side of his Cherokee and thoughtfully watched Baxter get in his car. Across the street, on a wall, one of his election posters that bore the same image and slogan as the banner he’d used at the meeting the night before had been ripped down, leaving just a fragment of torn paper. One of Ella’s had been put in its place, and a picture of her smiling wholesomely at him set his teeth on edge. He felt sweat from the heat of the sun running down his neck,
    making his collar wilt. This fucking election was going to be the death of him. He watched Ella as she washed down her deck and entertained a brief fantasy about her and that goddamned boat of hers sinking to the bottom of the frigging ocean. Despite his bad humour, and the ulcer he thought he was developing that was eating away at his insides like battery acid, he saw her bend over and appreciated the curve of her ass in her jeans.
    It was a temporarily pleasant image. The dark blot of the processing plant which he owned out towards the heads drew his eye to remind him of the corner he was in. His father had built it before the war. There were fish in the gulf then, more than you would believe judging by the numbers that existed today, and the plant had made a fortune. Howard had urged his father to expand the business, maybe start a wholesale operation on the mainland but the old fool had believed St. George would one day rival Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard as the summer playground of the wealthy, and so he’d poured his money into buying up as much land as he could until he owned vast tracts of the island. But fish stocks had declined, and the once prosperous island economy had foundered. The island existed now as a beautiful uncut gem, undiscovered