by Joe Hill
She stopped for another look.
The mist smelt of rotting smelt.
The foghorn did not sound again.
An enormous gray boulder rose out of the shallows here, rising right up onto the sand. Some net was snarled around it. After a moment of hesitation, Gail grabbed the net and climbed to the top.
It was a really large boulder, higher than her head. It was curious she’d never noticed it before, but then things looked different in the mist.
Gail stood on the boulder, which was high but also long, sloping away to her right and curling in a crescent out into the water on her left. It was a low ridge of stone marking the line between land and water.
She peered out into the cool, blowing smoke, looking for the rescue ship that had to be out there somewhere, trolling for survivors of the wreck. Maybe it wasn’t too late for the little boy. She lifted her kaleidoscope to her eye, counting on its special powers to penetrate the mist and show her where the schooner had gone down.
“What are you doing?” said someone behind her.
Gail looked over her shoulder. It was Joel and Ben Quarrel, both of them barefoot. Ben Quarrel looked just like a little version of his older brother. Both of them were dark-haired and dark-eyed and had surly, almost petulant faces. She liked them both, though. Ben would sometimes spontaneously pretend he was on fire and throw himself down and roll around screaming, and someone would have to put him out. He needed to be put out about once an hour. Joel liked dares, but he would never dare anyone to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. He had dared Gail to let a spider crawl on her face, a daddy longlegs, and then, when she wouldn’t, he did it. He stuck his tongue out and let the daddy longlegs crawl right over it. She was afraid he would eat it, but he didn’t. Joel didn’t say much, and he didn’t boast, even when he’d done something amazing, like get five skips on a stone.
She assumed they would be married someday. Gail had asked Joel if he thought he’d like that, and he shrugged and said it suited him fine. That was in June, though, and they hadn’t talked about their engagement since. Sometimes she thought he’d forgotten.
“What happened to your eye?” she asked.
Joel touched his left eye, which was surrounded by a painful-looking red-and-brown mottling. “I was playing Daredevils of the Sky and fell out of my bunk bed.” He nodded toward the lake. “What’s out there?”
“There’s a ship sank. They’re looking for survivors now.”
Joel grabbed the netting tangled on the boulder, climbed to the top, and stood next to her, staring out into the mist.
“What was the name?” he asked.
“The name of what?”
“The ship that sank.”
“The Mary Celeste.”
“How far out?”
“A half a mile,” Gail said, and lifted her kaleidoscope to her eye for another look around.
Through the lens the dim water was shattered, again and again, into a hundred scales of ruby and chrome.
“How do you know?” Joel asked after a bit.
She shrugged. “I found some things that washed up.”
“Can I see?” Ben Quarrel asked. He was having trouble climbing the net to the top of the boulder. He kept getting halfway, then jumping back down.
She turned to face him and took the soft green glass out of her pocket.
“This is an emerald,” she said. She took out the tin cowboy. “This is a tin cowboy. The boy this belonged to probably drowned.”
“That’s my tin cowboy,” Ben said. “I left it yesterday.”
“It isn’t. It just looks like yours.”
Joel glanced over at it. “No. That’s his. He’s always leaving them on the beach. He hardly has any left.”
Gail surrendered the point and tossed the tin cowboy down to Ben, who caught it and lost interest in the sunk schooner. He turned his back to the great boulder and sat in the sand and got his cowboy into a fight with some pebbles. The pebbles kept hitting him and knocking him over. Gail didn’t think it was an even match.
“What else do you have?” Joel asked.
“This spoon,” Gail said. “It might be silver.”
Joel squinted at it, then looked back at the lake.
“Better let me have the telescope,” he said. “If there are people out there, we have as good a chance of spotting them as anyone searching for them on a boat.”
“That’s what I was thinking.” She gave him the kaleidoscope.
Joel turned it this way and that, scanning the murk for survivors, his face tense with concentration.
He lowered it at last and opened his mouth to say something. Before he could, the mournful foghorn sounded again. The water quivered. The foghorn sound went on for a long time before trailing sadly away.
“I wonder what that is,” Gail said.
“They fire cannons to bring dead bodies to the surface of the water,” Joel told her.
“That wasn’t a cannon.”
“It’s loud enough.”
He lifted the kaleidoscope to his eye again and looked for a while more. Then he lowered it and pointed at a floating board.
“Look. Part of the boat.”
“Maybe it has the name of the boat on it.”
Joel sat and rolled his jeans up to his knees. He dropped off the boulder into the water.
“I’ll get it,” he said.
“I’ll help,” Gail said, even though he didn’t need help. She took off her black shoes and put her socks inside them and slid down the cold, rough stone into the water after him.
The water was up over her knees in two steps, and she didn’t go any farther because she was soaking her dress. Joel had the board anyway. He was up to his waist, peering down at it.
“What does it say?” she asked.
“Like you thought. It’s the Mary Celeste,” he said, and held up the board so she could see. There was nothing written on it.
She bit her lip and stared out over the water. “If anyone rescues them, it’s going to have to be us. We should make a fire on the beach, so they know which way to swim. What do you think?”
He didn’t answer.
“I said, ‘What do you think?’” she asked again, but then she saw the look on his face and knew he wasn’t going to answer, wasn’t even listening. “What’s wrong?”
She glanced back over her shoulder to see what he was staring at, his face rigid and his eyes wide.
The boulder they’d been standing on wasn’t a boulder. It was a dead animal. It was long, almost as long as two canoes lined end to end. The tail curled out into the water toward them, bobbing on the surface, thick as a fire hose. The head stretched out on the pebbly beach, even thicker, spade-shaped. Between the head and the tail, its body bulked up, thick around as a hippo. It wasn’t the mist that stank of rotting fish. It was the animal. Now that she was staring right at the thing, she didn’t know how she had ever stood on top of it, imagining it was a rock.
Her chest tingled and crawled, like she had ants under her dress. The ant feeling was in her hair, too. She could see where the animal was torn open, in the place where its throat widened into its torso. Its insides were red and white, like the insides of any fish. There wasn’t a lot of blood for such a big hole.
Joel gripped her hand. They stood up to their thighs in the water, staring at the dinosaur, which was as dead now as all the other dinosaurs that had ever walked the earth.
“It’s the monster,” Joel said, not that it needed to be said.
They had all heard about the monster that lived in the lake. There was always a float in the Fourth of July parade made up to look like a plesiosaur, a papier-mâché creature rising out of papier-mâché waters. In June there’d been an article about the lake creature in the newspaper, and Heather had started to read it aloud at the table, but their father made her stop.
“There isn’t anything in the lake. That’s for tourists,” he’d said then.
“It says a dozen people saw it. It says they hit it with the ferry
.”
“A dozen people saw a log and got themselves all worked up. There’s nothing in this lake but the same fish that are in every other American lake.”
“There could be a dinosaur,” Heather had insisted.
“No. There couldn’t. Do you know how many of them there would have to be for a breeding population? People would be seeing them all the time. Now, hush up. You’ll scare your sisters. I didn’t buy this cottage so the four of you can sit inside and fight all day. If you girls won’t go in the lake because you’re scared of some dumb-ass American Nessie, I’ll throw you in.”
Now Joel said, “Don’t scream.”
It had never crossed Gail’s mind to scream, but she nodded to show she was listening.
“I don’t want to frighten Ben,” Joel told her in a low voice. Joel was shaking so his knees almost knocked. But then the water was very cold.
“What do you think happened to it?” she asked.
“There was that article in the paper about it getting hit by the ferry. Do you remember that article? A while back?”
“Yes. But don’t you think it would’ve washed up weeks ago?”
“I don’t think the ferry killed it. But maybe another ship hit it. Maybe it got chewed up in someone’s propeller. It obviously doesn’t know enough to stay out of the way of boats. It’s like when turtles try and cross the highway to lay eggs.”
Holding hands, they waded closer to it.
“It smells,” Gail said, and lifted the collar of her dress to cover her mouth and nose.
He turned and looked at her, his eyes bright and feverish. “Gail London, we are going to be famous. They will put us in the newspaper. I bet on the front page, with a picture of us sitting on it.”
A shiver of excitement coursed through her, and she squeezed his hand. “Do you think they will let us name it?”
“It already has a name. Everyone will call it Champ.”
“But maybe they will name the species after us. The Gailosaurus.”
“That would be naming it after you.”
“They could call it a DinoGail Joelasaurus. Do you think they’ll ask us questions about our discovery?”
“Everyone will interview us. Come on. Let’s get out of the water.”
They sloshed to the right, toward the tail, bobbing on the surface of the water. Gail had to wade up to her waist again to go around it, then started ashore. When she looked back, she saw Joel standing on the other side of the tail, looking down at it.
“What?” she said.
He reached out gently and put his hand on the tail. He jerked his hand away almost immediately.
“What’s it feel like?” she asked.
Even though she’d climbed the net snarled around it and had stood on top of it, she felt in some way she had not touched it yet.
“It’s cold,” was all he said.
She put her hand on its side. It was as rough as sandpaper and felt like it had just come out of the icebox.
“Poor thing,” she said
“I wonder how old it is,” he said.
“Millions of years. It’s been alone in this lake for millions of years.”
Joel said, “It was safe until people put their damn motorboats on the lake. How can it know about motorboats?”
“I bet it had a good life.”
“Millions of years alone? That doesn’t sound good.”
“It had a lake full of fish to eat and miles to swim in and nothing to be afraid of. It saw the dawning of a great nation,” Gail told him. “It did the backstroke under the moonlight.”
Joel looked at her in surprise. “You’re the smartest little girl on this side of the lake. You talk just like you’re reading from a book.”
“I’m the smartest little girl on either side of the lake.”
He pushed the tail aside and sloshed past it, and they walked dripping onto the shore. They came around the hind end and found Ben playing with his tin cowpoke, same as they’d left him.
“I’ll tell him,” Joel said. He crouched and ruffled his little brother’s hair. “Do you see that rock behind you?”
Ben didn’t look up from his cowboy. “Uh-huh.”
“That rock is a dinosaur. Don’t be afraid of it. It’s dead. It won’t hurt anyone.”
“Uh-huh,” Ben said. He had buried his cowboy up to his tin waist. In a small, shrill voice, he shouted, “Help! Ah’m a-drownin’ in this heah quicksand!”
Joel said, “Ben. I’m not playing pretend. It’s a real dinosaur.”
Ben stopped and looked back at it without much interest. “Okay.”
He wiggled his figure in the sand and returned to his shrill cowboy voice. “Someone throw me a rope before Ah’m buried alive!”
Joel made a face and stood up.
“He’s just useless. The discovery of the century right behind him, and all he wants to do is play with that stupid cowboy.”
Then Joel crouched again and said, “Ben. It’s worth a pile of money. We’re all going to be rich. You and me and Gail.”
Ben hunched his shoulders and put on a pouty face of his own. He could feel he wasn’t going to be allowed to play cowboy anymore. Joel was going to make him think about his dinosaur, whether he liked it or not.
“That’s all right. You can have my share of the money.”
“I won’t hold you to that later,” Joel said. “I’m not greedy.”
“What’s important,” Gail said, “is the advancement of scientific progress. That’s all we care about.”
“All we care about, little guy,” Joel said.
Ben thought of something that might save him and end the discussion. He made a sound in his throat, a great roar to indicate a jolting explosion. “The dynamite went off! I’m burnin’!” He flopped onto his back and began to roll desperately around. “Put me out! Put me out!”
No one put him out. Joel stood. “You need to go get a grown-up and tell them we found a dinosaur. Gail and me will stay here and guard it.”
Ben stopped moving. He let his mouth loll open. He rolled his eyes up in his head. “I can’t. I’m burnt to death.”
“You’re an idiot,” Joel said, tired of trying to sound like an adult. He kicked sand onto Ben’s stomach.
Ben flinched, and his face darkened, and he said, “You’re the one who is stupid. I hate dinosaurs.”
Joel looked like he was getting ready to kick sand in Ben’s face, but Gail intervened. She couldn’t bear to see Joel lose his dignity and had liked his serious, grown-up voice and the way he’d offered Ben a share of the reward money, without hesitation. Gail dropped to her knees next to the little boy and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Ben? Would you like a brand-new box of those cowboys? Joel says you’ve lost most of them.”
Ben sat up, brushing himself off. “I was going to save up for them. I’ve got a dime so far.”
“If you go and get your dad for us, I’ll buy you a whole box of them. Joel and I will buy you a box together.”
Ben said, “They’ve got them for a dollar at Fletcher’s. Do you have a dollar?”
“I will after I get the reward.”
“What if there isn’t no reward?”
“You mean to say what if there isn’t any reward,” Gail told him. “What you just said is a double negative. It means the opposite of what you want things to mean. Now, if there isn’t any reward, I’ll save up until I have a dollar and buy you a box of tin cowboys. I promise.”
“You promise.”
“That’s what I just said. Joel will save with me. Won’t you, Joel?”
“I don’t want to do anything for this idiot.”
“Joel.”
“I guess okay,” Joel said.
Ben tugged his cowpoke out of the sand and jumped to his feet. “I’ll get Dad.”
Joel said, “Wait.” He touched his black eye, then dropped his hand. “Mom and Dad are sleeping. Dad said don’t wake them up until eight-thirty. That’s why we came outside. They were
up late at the party at the Millers’.”
“My parents were, too,” Gail said. “My mother has a beastly headache.”
“At least your mom is awake,” Joel said. “Get Mrs. London, Ben.”
“Okay,” Ben said, and began walking.
“Run,” Joel said.
“Okay,” Ben said, but he didn’t change his pace.
Joel and Gail watched him until he vanished into the streaming mist.
“My dad would just say he found it,” Joel said, and Gail almost flinched at the ugliness in his voice. “If we show it to my dad first, we won’t even get our pictures in the paper.”
“We should let him sleep if he’s asleep,” Gail said.
“That’s what I think,” Joel said, lowering his head, his voice softening and going awkward. He had shown more emotion than he liked and was embarrassed now.
Gail took his hand, impulsively, because it seemed like the right thing to do.
He gazed at their fingers, laced together, and frowned in thought, as if she had asked him a question he felt he should know the answer to. He looked up at her.
“I’m glad I found the creature with you. We’ll probably be doing interviews about this our whole lives. When we’re in our nineties, people will still be asking us about the day we found the monster. I’m sure we’ll still like each other even then.”
She said, “The first thing we’ll say is that it wasn’t a monster. It was just a poor thing that was run down by a boat. It’s not like it ever ate anyone.”
“We don’t know what he eats. Lots of people have drowned in this lake. Maybe some of them who drowned didn’t really. Maybe he picked his teeth with them.”
“We don’t even know it’s a he.”
They let go of each other’s hand and turned to look at it, sprawled on the brown, hard beach. From this angle it looked like a boulder again, with some netting across it. Its hide did not glisten like a whaleskin but was dark and dull, a chunk of granite with lichen on it.
She had a thought, looked back at Joel. “Do you think we should get ready to be interviewed?”
“You mean like comb our hair? You don’t need to comb your hair. Your hair is beautiful.”
His face darkened and he couldn’t hold her gaze.
“No,” she said. “I mean we don’t have anything to say. We don’t know anything about it. I wish we knew how long it is, at least.”