10. Tilly
TEN
Tilly
Raising a House: A New Orleans house lifted off its piers rides on a field of jacks turned a quarter turn at a time, all of them together. Any single jack turned faster than the rest cracks the very thing it was brought in to save.
"Morning," Rhodes says as I walk into the kitchen. It smells like coffee and apples.
"Hey." I drop my backpack on the chair at the kitchen table and pull out my phone, thumb going to the tide chart even though I have it memorized. Friday, low tide at six forty, and the permit window closes at the end of the month.
He's at the counter cutting an apple with a pocketknife, which is a thing he does like a person raised in a barn.
"I need to ask you a favor," I say. "Work thing."
He sets the knife down. "Okay."
I keep my attention on the phone so I don't have to watch his face while I do this. I hate asking for help more than I hate going to the dentist.
"We've got a batch of cured shell bags that have to go in for the living shoreline Jo and I have been working on. We're building a sill along a marsh edge that's washing out."
"Yeah, you told me about that the other day. How can I help?"
"The timing's got us locked in with the low tide and the permit line up on Friday. If we miss it, the next slot's weeks out and the bank keeps eating the whole time."
"Uh, huh."
"Everyone called out on us tomorrow. Jo and I can't do it alone and troll the boat up the line."
"How many bags?"
"Enough." My fingers go tight on the phone case. "They're wet. Each one's over forty pounds. Takes two people to move one and seat it right so it doesn't just slide off into the mud. Jo's borrowing her uncle's center-console for the day, and it has to happen tomorrow."
I make myself say the rest fast, before it grows.
"I'm not waiting on the org to schedule paid crew, and I'm not calling home so somebody can throw money at it." I square my shoulders. "I need one person who can lift and listen and do the work. That's it. So I'm asking you."
There, it's out.
Rhodes doesn't answer right away. He wipes the blade on a paper towel, and the quiet goes on a second too long.
"I've got a group-project meeting Friday morning," he says. "I don't know yet if I can move it. Let me find out whether the other two can push it to the afternoon, and I'll—"
Heat goes up the back of my neck before he finishes, up into my face, and I hate that it moves that fast, that I wanted the yes before my head caught up.
"You know what, actually, forget it." I'm already sliding my phone into my back pocket. "I think we can swing it. I shouldn't have made it your problem."
"Tallulah—"
"No, really." I grab my backpack off the chair and swing it up. Looking busy is suddenly the most important thing in the world. "You've got your thing. I'll figure something else out. Jo probably knows another guy."
She doesn't. There isn't another guy. But saying it makes the ask smaller, makes it something I can set down, and that's all I want right now.
Rhodes stays where he is by the counter, the apple half-cut, watching me the way he watches the Pelicans get their ass handed to them on TV.
"Seriously, I'll handle it," I tell him. "Don't change your meeting."
I'm down the hall before he can say anything else.
The alarm goes off at four fifteen, and I'm already awake, staring at the ceiling in the dark, running the list. I've got to make sure my waders, gloves, the good marsh boots, not the ones with the hole at the pinky toe, are in the back of my Cruiser. I'm meeting Jo there so she can get the boat.
I sit up, swing my legs off the bed, and the floor is cold under my feet. I grab the socks I put on my boots before bed last night and pull them on.
Then there's a knock on my door. I go still with one sock half on.
"Yeah?"
The door opens a few inches. Rhodes stands in the hall with the light behind him, and it takes me a second to sort out what's wrong with the picture.
He's dressed, and not for class but for work.
He's got on faded canvas pants, a long-sleeve shirt gone soft from washing, and his boots already laced.
His hair's wet at the edges, indicating he's been up long enough to shower.
Coffee drifts in behind him, and it isn't yesterday's pot. It's fresh.
"I moved the meeting," he says. "I'm in."
Something drops in my chest before I can catch it and turn it into anything sensible. It's relief and shame in one, and it spreads under my ribs like a rock dropped in still water.
"I told you that you didn't have to move anything." It comes out sharp, and I don't soften it.
"Do you have a third set of hands? Doesn't matter, you can always use an extra hand. It will make the job go faster. Plus, I want to see what you're working on out there."
I don't have anyone else. Jo and I decided we would move inches, drop anchor, set the shells, and then move up a few more inches. It would have taken us all day, but we figured we could do it.
"Are you sure, Rhodes?"
"Group found another time. Two of them had the afternoon open anyway." He says it like it’s nothing. "It's handled."
I keep waiting for the rest. For the part where he tells me he already called the org, or lined up two guys from the docks, or looked at the tide chart himself and decided we should push to Saturday. For the part where the thing I asked for quietly becomes the thing he's running.
It doesn't come. He's standing there dressed to haul shell bags because I told him I needed somebody who could lift.
I don't know what to do with how easy he is making this, or that he won't take the out I'm giving him. We could use his help. He will halve our workload. But it still physically pains me that I have no choice but to accept the help I asked for in the first place.
"Okay," I manage. "Can you be ready to leave in twenty? Low tide's six forty, so we've got no room. And if we finish the sill by ten, we can drop the eastern anchor a foot lower and finally fix the line we laid wrong in the fall.”
"You driving or me?" He looks at my one bare foot, the sock in my hand. "I'm ready. Looks like you might need some extra time."
I throw my sock at him.
"Get out so I can finish getting dressed. I'll be ready in five."
He walks back toward the kitchen, and I stand in my cold room with one sock still half on, and one lying on the floor at the door. I'm completely annoyed all the way down at how much lighter the morning suddenly feels, but a smile breaks out anyway.
The Cruiser turns over on the first try, the engine catching perfectly.
"Would you look at that," I say.
"Don't."
"I didn't say anything."
"You were going to."
"I was going to thank the mechanic." I back out, headlights sweeping the hedge. "Very quietly, in my heart, of course."
He almost smiles. I catch it in the dash glow before it's gone.
The road out is empty and gray, that no-color hour before the sun bothers to show up. The vents push out a weak heat that can't decide if it's on. Both coffees sit side-by-side in the cup holders.
He asks about the sill design, how the bags seat, why we cure the shell first. I answer, and he asks the next real thing. Somewhere around the parish line, I catch both of us just having a conversation like the old days. There's no agenda, no guard on my end, no surveillance on his.
"Four in the morning is a crime," he says.
"Four fifteen."
"Worse. That's a taunt."
"You could've slept in. I offered you the out."
"I know." He looks out at the marsh going by. "In all seriousness, as soon as you asked me, I wanted to come. You never ask for help."
I don't answer that and turn up the radio, instead. "My old truck doesn't have the state-of-the-art radio and touch screen yours does. You have to find music the old fashioned way in here."
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
The launch lights hit the water in orange smears as we roll down. Jo's already backing her uncle's Scout boat off the trailer, brake lights red on the wet ramp.
"You're late," she calls with a smirk.
"We're early." I cut the engine.
Rhodes is out before I've got my door open, already at the trailer, lifting the cooler and the first crate of bags without asking where they go, watching what Jo does and matching it. The rope is wet, the metal cold, the trailer tires ticking as they cool.
"Oh, you brought company," she says, standing up once she realizes it's not just the two of us.
"Morning. I'm Rhodes. Put me to work," he says, reaching his hand out to her.
"Josette. Nice to finally put a face to a name."
With the early hour and the rush to get out, I completely forgot to text her to let her know we were off the hook for doing it by ourselves.
"Hand me that line, Tallulah," he says, reaching across the bow to help slide the boat into the water.
Jo's head comes up. "Tallulah?"
My face goes hot. "For some ungodly reason, he's called me that since the dawn of time."
Rhodes coils the rope as if nothing happened. "It's her name."
"It is not the name anyone uses."
"I use it."
Jo grins at me over the crate, and I hand him the line before she can say another thing.
We load the last of it, boots slipping on the ramp, breath fogging in the launch lights. Then we push off into the gray, the three of us and the water and all that work waiting downriver.
The boat noses into the marsh edge, and I cut the motor before we ground out. Jo lowers the trolling motor so we can ease along the shallow water. The brown churns under us, spartina leaning gold-green off the bank where it's washing back to nothing.
"Here." I point to the raw seam where the marsh is losing ground. "We build the sill parallel, about a boat-length out, so it breaks the wave energy before it hits the grass. First bag anchors the low end. Everything else steps off it."
Rhodes already has a bag. He’s got both arms hooked under it, water sheeting off the mesh onto his pants. "Where?"
"Two feet left. Seat it into the mud, don't drop it. If it slides, you're chasing it."
He lowers it slowly, feeling for the bottom with the weight. Then he wedges it down until it stops rocking. He doesn't ask if that's good with words. Instead, he looks back at me, waiting for my approval.
"Good," I tell him. "Next one keys off that shoulder."
Jo passes me a bag off the bow, and my gloves fill with the cold wet grit of it, shell scraping through the mesh into my palms. Forty pounds fights me the whole way over the gunwale. I get it seated, breath already ragged, and the two of us fall into a rhythm.
Rhodes doesn't make us slow down for him.
He watches one cycle, then he's in it, taking bags off Jo, walking them down the line, setting them where I point.
He never argues the spot and moves the load like he's done this every day, knees under it, back flat, no grunting theater about how heavy it is.
"You're stronger than you look, Stone," Jo says, handing him another.
"You're bossier than you look."
"You have no idea."
Brackish water climbs to my thighs, cold enough to steal the air out of me. The mud grabs my boots every step, so I have to rip each foot loose as I move along.
The sun's up now, warming the back of my neck through my shirt, and the whole flat smells like salt and rot and green things growing. It's the best smell there is.
A double bag comes up, too heavy for one.
Rhodes takes the far end, I take mine, and we lift together.
His shirt pulls tight across his shoulders, forearms corded around the mesh.
We shift grips at the same time to reseat it, and for a brief moment, his eyes come up and hold on mine over the wet shell.
His hand shifts and the heel of it comes down on my wrist, above the glove. He's warm through all that cold water. Everything low in me pulls in. I push the bag down harder.
"Left side, drop it," Jo calls.
We move, not acknowledging anything.
The sill grows bag by bag, a gray-brown line rising out of the water exactly where I drew it. We set the last run just as the tide starts its slow turn. All three of us stop after the last bag, filthy and spent and grinning at the wall we built.
My phone buzzes against the cooler lid where I dropped it, a hard rattle over the wet plastic. I peel a glove off and thumb it open, salt drying tight on my knuckles.
Morning. Was wondering what you're up to this weekend. I'd love to take you to a proper dinner, if you'll have me. -Trey
It goes warm and light in me, and I don't fight it. A normal guy asking me to a normal dinner, nobody leading with are-you-okay.
"What," Jo says, catching my look. "You're grinning."
I turn the screen toward her, and she reads it out loud. Rhodes doesn't turn around to join in, but I can tell he's paying attention.
"Trey, yes sir. Get it, girl."
"Should I go with him?" I'm smiling now, and I know it.
"Um, yeah!" She bumps my arm. "Are you crazy? Have you seen that smile?"
"Stop." But I'm laughing.
Rhodes is three feet away, hauling the last empty crate out of the water. He doesn't say anything. He turns back toward the boat too fast, sets the crate down, and starts recoiling a line that's already perfectly coiled.
I put my glove back on, figuring I'm imagining it.
"You need those bow lines?" Jo asks him.
"Got it."
He doesn't have another joke for her. The bossy one, the easy needling from before, all of it gone like somebody flipped a switch. He just gets quieter, and I figure he's had his fill of manual labor and silly girls.
The tide's turning good now, water sliding back off the new sill in bright sheets. Jo stays with the boat, has to run it back to her uncle's landing, so it's me and Rhodes and my truck for the ride home.
We load the gear in the back. He gets in the passenger seat and pulls the door shut before I close the tailgate. The cab that felt roomy at four fifteen this morning is about half the size now.
I start it up, and neither of us says a word.
The radio's still on from the drive down, low, some song I don't know. I leave it. He doesn't reach for it either. The whole way out this morning we couldn't stop talking, and now the road noise fills the truck, and neither of us puts anything into the quiet.
"Sill looked good," I say.
"It did."
He turns his head toward the window, watching the marsh go by with his salt-dried arm on the door.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, sorry. I'm exhausted. Do you mind if I take a nap?”
"Be my guest."
He tips his head against the window and shuts his eyes, and it's just me now, the quiet, desolate road.
I keep waiting to be relieved that he's stopped asking me things, but the relief never comes. I hate that I care that the good morning is gone.