"I grew up here."
"That's not what I asked."
"Yes sir. I know how to pull a trap."
"Danny has school today. Algebra test." Mr. Tran raised his voice a little, without turning. "Which he will pass, because he will go home and study instead of standing there with his mouth open."
"Ông—"
"Go."
Danny went, pedaling furiously back up the shell road, though not before giving Wade a look over his shoulder that was half suspicion and half something that might, generously, have been called amusement.
They put in. The Yamaha caught on the second pull. They ran out past the channel markers into the gray light with the bayou falling away behind them and the Sound opening ahead, flat and silver and enormous, and Wade sat on the cooler in the bow with the wind in his face and felt, for the first time in eleven weeks, like a person from here.
Mr. Tran's trap line ran along the edge of a marsh island a mile out, forty orange-and-white buoys, each marked with a number and a little green dot of paint. They worked without talking for the first dozen. Mr. Tran ran the boat up alongside each buoy, Wade hooked it with the gaff, hauled the line hand over hand, swung the dripping trap aboard, and shook the blue crabs into the basket while Mr. Tran rebaited with menhaden from a bucket. The crabs came up furious, clacking. Wade got pinched twice and swore once and Mr. Tran laughed, a short surprised bark, and then pretended he had coughed.
At the fourteenth buoy, with a full basket and the sun just clearing the treeline, Mr. Tran cut the motor and let them drift.
"Ten days ago," he said, "somebody broke into my shed."
Wade straightened. "Did you report it?"
Mr. Tran looked at him with gentle pity. "Report to who?"