Wade let go of the button. He took the flashlight.
"Starboard side," Mr. Tran said. "Back by the motor, where the spray doesn't reach. Put the light close. Then put your hand under the gunwale. Inside. Feel."
Behind them, a truck door shut. Wade turned his head. Two men had come up from the bait shop with Styrofoam cups, and one of them, a broad old Cajun in a camouflage cap that had faded to the color of oatmeal, had planted himself at the edge of the ramp to watch. Bud Theriot. Wade knew him the way you know the men who were already old when you were a boy: as a voice in the background of everything. Beside Bud, leaning on the rail, a skinny teenager in a Bayou Clement High hoodie had his phone up, the little red dot glowing.
"Danny," Mr. Tran said, without turning around. "Put it away."
"Ông Hieu, he's—"
"Put it away."
The phone went into the hoodie.
Wade crouched by the transom and turned on the old flashlight. The yellow world went white in a circle the size of a dinner plate, and inside that circle the stripe was green. Not navy, not blue, not even close: a deep, glossy bottle green, the green of magnolia leaves after rain, laid on by hand with a brush. He could see the brush strokes where the paint had pooled and leveled. He could see, at the edge of the stripe, a hairline where an older layer showed beneath, the same green, a shade darker with age.
He moved the light. Green all the way forward. He moved it off and the stripe went navy again in the sodium glow, like a magic trick at a county fair.
"Hand," Mr. Tran said.
Wade reached under the lip of the gunwale. The fiberglass inside was rough and cool and slightly damp, and under his fingertips there were grooves cut into it, deliberate and deep, softened by years of hands. He traced them. Letters. An L. An A. An N. A space. Then numbers. One, nine, eight, six.
"Lan," Mr. Tran said. "My wife. Nineteen eighty-six is the year I built the hull. Carolina Skiff did not make that boat. I made that boat, in my yard, plywood and glass and resin. Your paper says twenty nineteen. Look at the gelcoat. Twenty nineteen gelcoat is white like a refrigerator. Mine is white like an old man's teeth." He showed his own, briefly. They were very white. "The motor I bought from Leo Bui after his stroke, four years ago. He has the bill of sale and so do I, also in the truck, if you want. The trailer is not galvanized. It is painted, and I paint it every spring, because galvanized costs money."
The radio said, "Four, you still with me?"
Wade stood up. His knees had gotten wet on the ramp. He keyed the radio and the words he had been about to say were still sitting in his mouth, fully formed, possible on the Vance skiff, public ramp, requesting backup, and he had to swallow them like a mouthful of something too hot.