When they arrived in Portland very late that evening, Craig introduced Zach to his parents, and they introduced themselves to the youngster as Grandmom and Granddad. Granddad then went on to explain, to Grandmom's chagrin, how Zach needed to keep a safe distance from the little creek out back during the night, lest the giant lobster that lived in it attack him in the dark. After hiking all day, Zach, though he had not slept a wink in the car, was so nearly unconscious that he accepted everything Granddad told him without question. They got the youngster into bed right away, and he fell straight to sleep.
Craig and Kara sat up with Craig's parents late into the night discussing Zach, puzzling over how, despite their initial suspicion that he must be Elliott's son, the DNA test results meant that he had been adopted out as an embryo, only to be sent to them ten years later. It was a bewildering story all the way around.
"So you still don't know where he came from?" Craig's mom asked.
"We didn't find any leads at the clinic," Kara replied. "And we've been too busy being a family since then to search anymore…if we knew where to look."
"How did he get the name Zechariah?" Craig's dad wondered. "And Fleming, no less?"
Craig and Kara had no answers.
The next day, Granddad took Zach under his wing. He led the youngster out to the back yard, and Craig trailed them across the grass and down a gentle slope to the stream that cut between their property and the neighbors'.
"All right, young man, are you prepared to meet the giant lobster?" Granddad asked dramatically.
Zach had slept well last night and was fully awake today. "Don't lobsters live in the ocean?" he asked, suspicious.
"Most of them," Granddad admitted. "Not this one, though. She's adapted to fresh water." Feet clad in rubber boots, he trod into the creek. With a grave look, he turned to Zach. "Watch my back."
"Your back?"
"Guard me, son," Granddad explained. "This old girl's sneaky. Huge, too. If you see her coming behind me, yell—and then get yourself to safety."
Zach narrowed his eyes, but scanned the water for danger upstream from Granddad all the same. Granddad bent over and hunted through the creek bed, lifting rocks and checking beneath them. Craig observed as his dad searched here and there and Zach kept watch from the bank. For a full minute Granddad worked, and then—
"Zechariah!" From the water he lifted a small creature, gray and brown, four inches long, and held it up for Zach to see. Zach ran the thirty feet to Granddad's side, eyes locked onto the animal. "This," Granddad announced, "has got to be one of the giant lobster's children." He paused for effect. "She must have laid eggs!" He was holding a crayfish, Craig saw, grasping it behind its pincers; the crayfish flailed mightily and in vain.
"Awesome!" Zach exclaimed, delighted.
"Newly hatched, I'd say. Highly dangerous. Want to hold it?"
The youngster didn't hesitate. "Yeah!"
"Okay, watch the claws there," Granddad instructed. He guided Zach's fingers to grip the crayfish safely around its abdomen and released it to him. Zach turned it upside-down, studying it, and tapped its tail with a finger.
Granddad chuckled. "Now imagine that little guy ten times bigger and faster, and it finds out you've got its baby…"
Zach glanced at Granddad for a moment, considering, and then turned his eyes back to the crayfish.
Granddad stepped back into the creek. "I'm going to turn over one of these big rocks and see if I can find the mother." Zach, however, paid no attention; he was immersed in examination of his crayfish. Craig watched his dad maneuver along the creek bed, peeking under stones, pretending to hunt the menacing, giant freshwater lobster.
"Argh!" Zach screamed suddenly. "My nose!" Craig spun to see the youngster hunched over, both hands on the crayfish before his face. Zach yelled in agony.
Granddad lunged desperately out of the creek. "Zach! Hold still, let me get it!"
Craig raced to Zach, too, but his dad reached the youngster first, just as Zach spun back toward him, straightening and holding the crayfish safely at arm's length. It doesn't have him at all, Craig realized. Why—?
"I got you, Granddad!" Zach laughed, holding the crayfish high above his head victoriously. His nose was entirely unscathed.
Granddad stared at him for a moment, looked at the crayfish, and burst out laughing. "Why, sure enough, you did! You got me good!"
Zach examined the creature again. "What is this thing really?"
Granddad grinned with pride at the wit of his newly-discovered grandson. "That, young man, is a crayfish, a crawdad—a freshwater lobster, more or less. Truth be told, it's a good-sized one. And that was the best prank anyone's pulled on me in a year! No doubt about it—you're part of the family."
Zach glowed at the compliment and held the crayfish in front of himself again, looking it in the eye. "Can we keep it?"
"Absolutely," Granddad said. He gestured toward the house. "Let's put it in that tub by the back porch." He and Zach started in that direction.
Craig stayed behind and watched the water flow down the creek. Had Zach recognized his granddad's ploy all along? He shook his head. The youngster was undoubtedly his granddad's grandson.
*****
The Boy Who Appeared from the Rain Page 54