There's Blood on the Moon Tonight by Bryn Roar Page B

the water a half second before one of those traitorous traps conked him on the head. He awoke to find himself on the floor of the wheelhouse, while Joe Rusty, soaked to the bone, called in the Coast Guard. It turned out the air rescue had been unnecessary. But Joe Rusty, damn his freckled hide, had insisted on it anyway.
    They lifted Ham Huggins up to the helicopter in a body basket and flew him to the Beaufort Hospital. To this day, Ham had no idea how his friend pulled the rescue off.
                                *******
    Ham Huggins dropped the newspaper, The Beaufort Gazette, on top of his empty plate and caught Rusty staring at him. “Somethin’ on your mind, son?”
      “I was just thinking about Mr. O’Hara.”
    Ham’s lined face grew pensive at the mention of his late friend. It had been almost eight years since Joe Rusty had fallen overboard. On that occasion there would be no heroics, even though Ham stayed out for ten straight days looking for him, going in only for gas and oil, the occasional sandwich and coffee. He’d kept his eyes pealed for that ridiculous floppy white hat Rusty always wore when working on deck, but it had disappeared, right along with its intrepid owner. He’d kept at it twice as long as the Coast Guard, and three times as long as common sense dictated (with the cool temps that week, hypothermia would have killed Joe Rusty within hours).
    Unlike those events when he’d fallen over the side, Ham never saw or heard Joe Rusty go overboard. Didn’t even have an inkling. His friend had simply vanished without a trace. It was his daddy all over again, and the guilt nearly killed Ham. That was a dark period in the Huggins’s household. Even worse for the O’Haras’ next door. In one fell swoop, they’d lost a husband, a provider, and a much beloved father.
    Rusty saw his dad rubbing the silver porpoise pendant around his neck. The very same one Joe Rusty had given him for his eighth birthday. He’d bought it special for Ham at a tourist trap called The Gay Dolphin in Myrtle Beach. His daddy always did that whenever he had Joe Rusty on his mind. Rubbed that grinning thing as if it would bring his best friend back…
    Rusty wondered if his dad was even aware of it.
    Ham smiled a bittersweet smile, recalling how damn silly Joe Rusty looked arriving at work each day. The man had this bright, curly red hair. Like doll’s hair, it was. Not to mention the palest skin Ham had ever seen on any fisherman! Rusty would slather on the strongest sun block he could find, painting himself even whiter than he already was. A man with skin like that, freckled from head to toe as he was, had no business making a living out in the cruel southern sun. Joe Rusty was a bit of a prude, too. A peculiarity for a man working in such a rough trade. Joe didn’t like to talk “vulgar”, as he used to put it. Had his own language for such matters. He referred to someone’s ass as a “teasy”, and a fart was a “fuus”. A man’s dick went by “hooey”, and a woman’s pussy was a “dewy”.
    And speaking of language, Joe Rusty had the most charming Irish brogue! A lilting way of talking that instantly put you at ease. He’d come by the accent honestly, from his “dear old mum and da”, as he called them. Passed it on to his daughter, too, before he died. The girl hanging on to her father’s every word back in those days.
    His folks had emigrated from Ireland when they were in their teens, living in Maine for a brief time, before finding their way down to Beaufort, where their son Joe was born in 1962. Like the Huggins’s, they’d only borne the one child. A fisherman by trade, Mr. O’Hara met Jessie Huggins on the Beaufort docks. A fortuitous meeting, that. For it was in that timeframe when Jessie Huggins first started renting property on his island.
    With their wee son, Joe, the same age as his Sam back home, Jessie had just the property in mind for the O’Haras’. Right