Sunkissed Innsmouth
Part Twenty Seven
More faces from farther away were turning then. More determinately angry people were walking away from the main argument over to the fresh sounds of shouting. Felecia didn’t have time to get tangled up in drunkards or men who wanted to abuse her. The lout grabbed her arm, it was an affront, an assault, he was already twisting and yanking. The kick came naturally, aimed at a spot meant to incapacitate the drunken man.
Felecia kicked the angry man in the groin and sprinted away from the scene before the injured party had a chance to shout or call out. As it turned out the embarrassment of being felled by a girl kept the drunkard quiet as he grunted and gritted his teeth through the pain.
The crowd was still massing around Phillip mostly and after a few minutes away from the man she kicked that smaller crowd of angry villagers folded back into the larger scene. The woman Felecia talked to spoke of Mullens’ son being scared and looking for help. She could here the jeers and animalistic howls coming from the covered boat launch out beyond. The locals were having their fun with the unfortunate and nothing would be gained by running into that mess.
Felecia considered joining Phillip, he was becoming a man increasingly overwhelmed and looked nearly in danger of being assaulted as he tried to ask his calm questions over the increasing din.
You keep your eyes and ears open and your hands empty.
Felecia wasn’t in the mood to listen to Phillip’s wise words as they echoed in her head but that was what made the most sense. What could be seen and heard was more important now than anything. The whimpers and human howls that came from the boat launch made it a hard chore but Felecia stashed her bow, arrows, and knife away under a stand of trees. A quick dip of her hands into a pile of soft mud, using it to spread across her clothes, her arms, her face finished the farce. She pulled her cap down and walked back into the din from another angle. She kept to herself and tried to calm her breathing as the howling continued from the launch shack.
Few took notice of her now, and no one tried to stop her or question what she was doing in the village. She tried to tune out the louts yelling and pointing fingers at Phillip, she tried to not focus on the jeers and howls coming from the launch shack. What were the people saying to one another in the crowd? Who, if anyone was off by themselves and talking?
Felecia took a tour of the beach side of the village, walking calmly from hut to hut, boat launch to storage shack. She even picked up a pail and a brush and made to look like someone mucking out crab pots as she got closer to some of the shacks that looked inhabited.
“I don’t care about no damn canned goods. Lucy was in our family for two generations!”
“The boat don’t do us no good when the ice and snow hits. No fish, no food. I got a family now, Jed. I got to think about them this winter.”
“So, you marry some Dunwich conk from down the road and get her with child and I’m to what…die come spring when I can’t fish no more?”
“Think about it, Jed, that old conger spent his whole life making tallow in that shed. He ain’t ever been on a boat longer than a pleasure paddle up the coast to town. He told me he wanted to go over to the mainland with it…”
“Dumb bastard’ll be against current the whole time! You sent our boat off to sink, you dullard!”
Felecia listened to the argument as it continued to heat up and she dared to get close enough to a shack window that showed an interior barely lit by a single candle on a table. A table laden with goods that Felecia knew and remembered well enough from Mullens’ midnight visit to her camp.
“Think about it! Remember when we swamped her as kids? We might have been done for but old Lucy righted herself just fine. We had to swim and swim and swim to get back to her. That old bastard won’t have the strength when he swamps. We’ll find her in a few days, I know we will. Worst case she winds up lodged on some rocks, but you and I can fix that. We still get to eat well through this damned winter.”
Felecia watched as the clearly older sibling rubbed his filthy hands on his dirty pants and looked over at the canned and preserved treasures resting on the table. “And if she don’t right herself this time? Or the old bastard makes it to the coast, what then?”
“She’ll come back; I know it. If she don’t though, we call her sunk by that damn storm from last week and we make a case to the elders. Folk’ll pitch in, they always have. Next one might not be as nice as old Lucy, but we’ll both still be alive and well enough to work it.”
Jed, the older sibling stopped bothering to wipe his hands and gave the goods on the table a harder look. “Half.”
The younger sibling looked suddenly struck and stepped between the table and his older brother. “I got Jennie and the babe now, fairs fair, one third like I already said.”
“One third ain’t half of the boat I own, a boat you sold without saying hide nor hare to me.”
“One third, for a boat that’s coming back to us. You got my word. Otherwise, we’ll play the heart strings and have another come spring.”
Felecia stood frozen, watching from beyond the window as the younger sibling slid between the goods and his older brother, all the while leaning his right hand back to a straight razor waiting in his back pocket. There was no doubting that a moment of consideration was the only thing standing between a threat and another murder added to the nights tally.
“Fine. One third, but if ole’ Lucy don’t wash or wreck up on the coast within the week, you’re the one who gets to wring hands and beg. I’m done dealing with these idgets!”