Bulls Island Read Online Free PDF Page A

who spoke with more emphatic self-assurance. Because he dictated our family’s mission and because his manner was enough to turn your own hair white, I largely agreed with his philosophy. Besides, to disagree was traitorous.
    As a little lad, I was terrified by the whole concept of Satan, devils, and the smoldering brimstone I heard about on Sundays when my father would take me to the small Fundamentalist church we occasionally attended down the road. Like her parents, Mother had little interest in organized religion, so my dad and I went to services together. Big Jim would wet-comb my cowlick and tie my necktie, andMother would yawn, implying that the entire exercise was a complete waste of time. I liked the choir’s music well enough, but the sermons were the cause of some serious night frights. Looking back, I think old Big Jim spent more time reassuring me that the devil wasn’t waiting around the corner to grab me than he did trying to explain how wonderful heaven would be if I lived a righteous life. His enthusiasm to indoctrinate me into old-time religion began to wane when I called him from his sleep night after night to look under my bed for the dark thing that wanted to gobble me up.
    As a result of my childhood psychosis and my father’s boyish desire to fish, our participation in Sunday services dwindled down to Easter and Christmas and a healthy donation for whatever the minister needed—a new roof, organ repair, or rewiring. No Langley seemed to possess the aspects of character required to become zealots about anything except net worth, but we padded the church’s bank account just in case.
    “You never know,” Big Jim said every time he signed a check for them.
    My parents were opposites in many ways, but I had to admit this much: Mother had made a good marriage when she married my father. That’s how they referred to marriages—made well or marrying down. So Mother had married well, but unfortunately her union with Big Jim had only produced one child. Me. The burden of being that one child, that only promise for future generations, was greatly imperiled by my childless union with Valerie.
    There we lived on the opposite side of the family’s property from my parents, under the constant and unforgiving surveillance of my mother, Louisa, and the distanced but benign eye of my father, Big Jim. It was one helluva gilded cage.
    I went back inside to turn out the lights, feeling a little down. I glanced around our Anglophile’s treasure trove of a dining room that was proof of the complete absurdity of my life. All the pricelessGeorgian silver and bucolic eighteenth-century portraits of hunting dogs in the realm could not lessen the disappointment Mother felt toward Valerie, the hysterics that possessed my poor wife, or the aggravation I suffered with both of them. I had a domineering mother and a wife who was fast-tracking toward becoming an imbecile.
    I turned on the dishwasher in the kitchen and took the remaining small bag of garbage outside to the shed. One dependable fact about Lowcountry living—you took out the garbage at night or you had a staggering population of bugs to greet you in the morning. So, after stepping out into the night once more, I stopped to feel the air and to consider my life. I threw the bag in the can, replaced the lid, closed the shed, and flipped the latch. My cell phone rang once and then stopped. Mother had reached her home safely.
    In a sentimental moment, I strolled across the yard toward our dock on the Wappoo River. The lights were still on in Rosie’s cottage. She was probably online, working toward her degree with whatever online university was taking her money. I had to admire her. Although she worked for Mother, Daddy, Valerie, and me, and was a single parent, she was always trying to better herself. I knew she had a little bit of a shine for me and it was flattering in some marginal way.
    It was a good thing she didn’t know the real me, the one who had given