The waterfront, a two-block section on the town side of the creek, was a jumble of rusted junk, an abandoned shipyard with rotting boats and a dilapidated stable. I don’t know why the town never got around to cleaning it up. Rundown clapboard houses had been slave quarters before the war, and a broken stone wall was all that was left of a fort long gone before most people in town were born.
Sometimes Tommy Dallard stayed in that stable. Tommy’s daddy worked a farm just west of town. Daniel sometimes stayed out there with them when he didn’t want to ride to our place. Or couldn’t. Tommy didn’t take much to hard labor either. He was past forty and still living at home. When his liquor ran low, he’d steer at the piers for the hotel w****s like I’d seen him doing the day the marshal came in.
