Shiver on the Sky

by David Haywood Young

Epilogue

  (Ten Months Later—Hugh)

  Hugh Thibodeaux stood with his wife Jeanie on a Sunday afternoon. Their saltwater rods dangled over the side of the Bob Hall Pier. Every year they came to Corpus for their vacation, and he was getting just a little bit tired of it.

  Usually they fished from the South Jetty or the Horace Caldwell Pier in Port Aransas, but today they’d driven down to the other pier on Padre Island. Looking around, Hugh reckoned it had been a waste of time. The pier and the view were basically the same. And the fish weren’t biting any more than they had yesterday. Well, some of the people using live bait and cut bait had caught things, but Hugh was an angler from way back and he knew what was supposed to work. So he did it his way. He’d catch more in the end.

  The damned sun was scorching him, trying to get through the sunscreen and the flap behind his hat to further ravage the back of his neck. His hands and lower arms were already peeling.

  Hugh missed the Louisiana swamps something fierce. They were just as hot and humid, and you didn’t have the offshore breeze, and maybe there were a lot more mosquitoes. But there was something unnatural about all this sunshine. It exposed the world, without apologies, and he had a feeling that if you let down your guard it might show you more than you really wanted to see.

  For variety, he’d tried taking the family on a deep-sea fishing trip two days before. The boat they’d rented space on had gone out and tied up to an oil rig, and they’d gotten a lot of redfish all right, but it had seemed more like harvesting than fishing. No sport to it. Just lower the line to the bottom, reel it in a few feet, wait a bit, and haul it back up. The weights had been so heavy Hugh hadn’t seen any way to tell if he had a fish or not till he’d pulled the line all the way out of the water. And the bottom had been a long way down.

  The kids hadn’t been strong enough to handle the lines by themselves. The whole family had gotten seasick. And the guide, a young punk with hippie hair, had told his foolish story. The worst part of that? His daughters had believed every word.

  Hugh snorted. The guide had been talking about a trip he and some friends had made to some godforsaken place called Goose Island. No hotels, no nothing. Just sand, Hugh supposed. Dunes, maybe. Anyway, he’d said they’d seen raccoons the size of rottweilers one night. He’d claimed the ‘coons had gotten into one of their coolers and thrown the contents all over creation, too.

  Now that was okay. Maybe there were some big raccoons out there, and Hugh granted that exaggerating a little bit for a story wasn’t exactly lying. And maybe they’d left a cooler where the raccoons could get at it. Hugh supposed that could happen, all right, though he wasn’t sure he would think it was a story worth telling if it had happened to him. Might think it was kind of stupid, even.

  But the guide had kept talking. He’d said they’d left two six-packs of Miller in that cooler, and the raccoons had not only taken them, they’d popped the tops and left all twelve cans lying in a row in the sand, dry as a bone. And he’d said he and his friends had left a fire going when they’d gone to sleep, just a little driftwood fire, and in the morning the fire had not only still been burning, it’d had more wood piled beside it. And he’d said the sand around the fire had been all covered with raccoon tracks, and nothing but.

  Now that was just dumb. One of the guy’s buddies had played a trick on him, that was all. Maybe he’d wiped out his footprints with a towel or something.

  But Hugh had had to listen to his daughters go on about it ever since.

  He put it out of his mind and watched a bunch of teenagers with surfboards congregating on the beach. They all looked related, maybe. Skinny, with black hair. And surfboards. One of them was a few years older than the others. He seemed to be in charge. A silly-looking old fart in a tie-dyed shirt was talking to the older kid, but Hugh wasn’t sure he was actually with them. Probably just a local pervert.

  Hugh figured when they got into the water he’d cast near ‘em a time or two, liven up their day a bit. He was bored anyway.

  His wife, Jeanie, saw where he was looking and sipped from her canteen. She loved that big old green Army canteen. Always took it with her on these trips, which she insisted on making every year. You’d never know it to look at her, though.

  She wore so much sunscreen her face was streaked with white. You could tell she didn’t wear shorts more’n once or twice a year at most, and besides she was dainty. Just not an outdoor person at all. But she loved that canteen, and she loved Corpus. Her daddy gave the canteen to her, she said once. Just like he used to bring her to Corpus every summer.

  She nudged him, pointing at the teenagers. “Do you think that’s safe? I read in the paper back home there was a shark killin’ around here a while ago. They lost a lot of tourist money because of it. It was months ago, but you know, Hugh, those sharks have to be somewhere even when you don’t see ‘em.”

  He sighed. “Sure, I reckon it’s safe enough. ‘Less maybe they get too close to my casting, anyway.”

  “Oh, Hugh.” She patted his arm, then grinned. It lit her face right up. “Might be fun to watch ‘em scurry away, though, huh?”

  He smiled back at her. Jeanie was the best. Maybe coming here was okay, if it made her happy.

  “Look, Daddy! Porpoises!” Peggy, his younger daughter, pointed out to the deeper water.

  Hugh leaned over and squinted along her pudgy six-year-old arm. “Why Peggy, I believe you’re right! It is papooses!”

  “Porpoises, Daddy!” she giggled.

  “You’re a papoose, Peggy!” Lysette squealed. At eight, she often surprised Hugh with her vocabulary. Where would she have learned that one? He hoped it hadn’t been another liberal teacher, tellin’ her damn lies about Indians again. He eyed her fondly, a bit worried about losing control of her education.

  The porpoises were giving a hell of a synchronized-swimming show out there. Hugh watched them jump and cavort, wishing for a moment he was still in good enough shape to swim well. He’d been on the team in high school, thirty years ago.

  “Look, Daddy! Look, Mommy!” Peggy yelled. She pointed closer to shore, toward the kids on surfboards. They were in the water now, just horsing around.

  Hugh watched them all jump off their boards, twisting simultaneously in midair, and blinked. Just for a moment, he’d thought they’d all jumped exactly the same way the porpoises had, and at the same time. But naw, that was dumb.

  “Wow!” Lysette cried, pointing. “Maybe they’re friends with the porpoises!”

  “Yeah!” Peggy joined in, while Jeanie smiled at them both. “And maybe they know the giant raccoons too!”

  Hugh sighed. It was all in fun, he knew. But he felt a little gloomy, standing there and watching his daughters jump so happily. The real world could be a pretty bleak and miserable place sometimes, and there was no magic in it. It was mostly cold and mechanical. Just a big piece of machinery, pretty much like his Ford pickup, only bigger. Those scientist fellows knew just about everything about how it all worked by now—Hugh hadn’t had much education, but he knew that—and Hugh didn’t believe in encouraging nonsense.

  That damn guide had really gone and done it this time. Why did folks have to put fanciful notions into kids’ heads, anyway? It would just leave them disappointed when they found out what life was really like. Hugh was still a little disappointed himself.

  People ought to know better.

  ***

  Thanks for Reading!

  Hi, I’m David Haywood Young. Did you enjoy the book? I sure hope so. The whole point of being a writer is, well, entertaining readers. Like you.

  Listen, there are a couple of things I should tell you about. First, I have a sequel (titled Blood on the Sky) in the works. I don’t know the publication date, but it should be in late 2013.

  Second: I don’t know when you’re reading this, but on July 31, 2013 I challenged myself to post a free story every Wednesday on my blog for a year. They’re not written in advance; this is strictly seat-of-the-pants s
tuff. (Yes, there is indeed some entertaining train-wreck potential here!)

  So...why not come by davidhaywoodyoung.com and check ‘em out?

  My site’s also the best place to look for other titles I have available and generally hang out with me and the crowd. It’s all in fun. (Or you can sign up for a new-release-only mailing list (https://eepurl.com/qxSsP) that includes information about other freebies and special offers as they become available.)

  The third thing? If you’ve got the time for it, a quick review would be very helpful. Even a line or two can do wonders.

  But here’s the most important bit, and the way I’d like to finish the book: Thank you for coming along with me on this adventure. I’m having a lot of fun with my writing. And it doesn’t work without you.

  ***