by Cynthia Lord
The defeat I hear in Mom’s voice makes me worry maybe she’s having second thoughts about all this. I grit my teeth. If Libby were here, I’d be tempted to push her overboard. I’m giving Aaron some space; why can’t she?
“Don’t worry. We’ll swing by the wharf and pick him up,” Dad says.
“He left a few minutes ago,” Mom says. “In fact, he’s probably almost there now.”
Our wake churns a bubbly circle as Dad turns the wheel hard. Ahead on Bethsaida, a tiny truck drives along the shore road. Farther up, Jenna’s mom stands in their doorway, letting their dog out. Laundry’s being pegged on a clothesline at the Moodys’ house as postage stamp–sized white sheets blow in the breeze.
And on the wharf, a red-haired boy waits.
“Hook the gauge in the eye socket like this.” Dad holds the brass measuring gauge in his right hand and the lobster in his left. “Lay it along the carapace — that’s the name for the lobster’s back. See this point on the gauge, Aaron? It has to fall on his back or he’s too small to keep.”
I brace my legs against the rocking of the Tess Libby and open the trap sitting on the boat’s rail in front of me. I haven’t seen Aaron smile once since he stepped on board.
“This lobster’s a keeper, so the first thing we do is band his claws,” Dad continues. “That way he can’t hurt the other lobsters in the tank. They’ll eat each other, given half a chance.”
Aaron steps backward away from the trap. “I’ll just watch.”
“You’re doing fine.” Dad picks up the bander and puts a fat, ring-sized rubber band on the end. “The bander works like pliers — only in reverse. As you squeeze the handles, it spreads the rubber band open. See? When it’s wide enough, you slip it over his claw.” Dad holds the lobster and gives Aaron the bander.
My own catch isn’t bad today, but I was hoping for better. Even though I called “Hi!” to Aaron before he came on board — hoping to undo his unlucky red hair by speaking to him before he spoke to me — Dad has outfished me good today.
I untangle a lobster from the netting of the trap in front of me. A lobster trap looks like a long, rectangular wire box with a brick or two in the bottom to even out the weight and keep it from flipping upside down in the water. There are two “rooms” inside, separated by a netted “head,” with an opening in the middle for the lobster to crawl through and get stuck.
My lobster opens his claws at me, ready for battle.
“Much better,” Dad says to Aaron. “Now you hold the lobster for the second claw. It’s okay. Lobsters can’t reach behind and grab you, the way crabs can. Just keep your hand back here.” When Dad lets go, Aaron jerks his arm out, holding his lobster away from his body. Dad grins. “Gotta bring him a little closer.”
As I squeeze my own bander, my lobster grabs the rubber band in his claw. “Hey, cut that out,” I tell him.
The lobster thrashes, flipping his tail. I pick at the band, but he’s got it clamped so tight it’s a wonder he doesn’t slice it in half. I set him on the deck to tire himself out. The lobster wriggles his spindly legs, but he can’t get going. In water, lobsters scuttle easily along the sea bottom. They’re graceful, dainty even. But on land, their bodies are too heavy and they have to pull themselves along, dragging their bellies.
The lobster opens his claw, and I snatch him up. “Gotcha!” I secure his fat crusher claw. As my lobster struggles to get that first band off, I slip another over his smaller pincher claw, easy as pie. “Gotcha twice!”
“Watch your fingers, Tess,” Dad says.
My smile sags. Aaron may need to learn all these things, but I’ve been doing them right for years.
“We won’t bother to measure this little one,” Dad says, pulling a tiny lobster from the trap. “He’s not even close.”
I drop my own catch through the hole in the top of the tank. The water shudders as all the lobsters inside try to get out of one another’s way.
“Hold out your hand, Aaron. He won’t hurt you.” Dad lays the tiny lobster on Aaron’s palm. “When Tess and I throw the short lobsters in, we always say, ‘Today’s your lucky day, little one.’”
I expect Aaron to make a disgusted face or squirm, but he pauses, holding the tiny lobster on the palm of his rubber glove. Leaning out over the rail, Aaron sets the lobster into a wave as gently as if he were made of glass. “Today’s your lucky day, little one.”
The lobster pauses just below the water’s surface, his tiny claws outstretched. Then, flipping his tail, he spurts off backward, disappearing into the shadows under the boat.
Dad reaches back into the empty trap for the mesh bag of leftover bait. “Next we throw out the old bait, put in some new, and reset the trap. The bait bag hangs here in the first part of the trap — called the kitchen. The lobster comes into the kitchen to eat, and then he’ll crawl up this ramp and through this opening between the two rooms. The back part of the trap is called the parlor, and that’s where he gets stuck.”
“Why doesn’t he just leave the kitchen the same way he came in?” Aaron asks.
“I imagine some do,” Dad says. “But climbing forward into the parlor is easier for him.”
I hear a boat’s engine behind us. I lift my hand to wave, until I see it’s Eben and his dad — and Eben’s driving their boat.
Dad opens the small, mesh bait bag and shakes the leftover fish bits into the sea. From rocks and ledges all around us, seagulls leap into flight. They dive-bomb through the air to pluck the bait bits off the waves, surrounding the boat in a swirl of wings and mournful cries.
Aaron jumps backward.
“They won’t hurt you.” I slide my gaze from Aaron’s borrowed hauling pants to his life jacket and skinny shoulders to the ends of his red hair. When I reach his face, Aaron’s eyebrows are so light-colored they don’t seem to exist at a distance. But I’m close enough to see them go up in surprise. He opens his mouth and closes it twice, like he’s struggling to keep from —
“Over the rail!” I yell, grabbing his arm.
We make it just in time. Which is a relief, because cleaning off our boat every night is bad enough without adding that in.
“Don’t worry,” Dad says, patting his back. “Everyone gets seasick sometimes.”
I nod, though I’ve only ever felt queasy in the fog. When you can’t see the horizon, your body plays tricks on you.
“I see the Tess Libby’s new sternman needs some weathering,” Brett Calder says over the radio.
“Yeah,” Eben adds. “Maybe the Tess Libby should be renamed the Barf Bucket.”
I glance to Aaron. He’s sitting on a crate with his head on his arms.
Dad picks up the mic. “Maybe you should pay more attention to your own boat and less to mine!” The back of Dad’s neck is getting red. He snaps off the VHF. I don’t remember him ever doing that before. He sometimes turns it down when he’s sick of the chatter, but he never turns it off all together.
I make myself busy filling bait bags. Cloudy fish eyes stare up at me from the bait tub. I let my hands take over, grabbing slippery fish from the pile, cramming them into the bags.
Aaron looks so miserable that I peel off my rubber gloves and hunt around in the junk box Dad keeps on the boat. I push aside a little calendar the size of a credit card, a couple pencils, and some screws and nails, until I find what I’m looking for.
“It’s spearmint. It’ll take the taste out of your mouth,” I tell him, laying a wrapped hard candy on his knee.
Aaron lifts his head just enough to look at me.
“It’s gonna be okay,” I promise.
Though I’m not sure either of us believes me.
At the end of two weeks, Aaron’s getting his sea legs on the boat. Though he’s still grabbing the dash or the rail every time Dad guns the engine, at least he’s not throwing up anymore. After that first lobstering trip, I didn’t think Aaron would ever want to leave land again, but I think he likes to be with Dad. Maybe it’s because Dad doesn’t talk as
much as Mom and Libby and me. Or maybe it’s that Aaron’s a boy, and he hasn’t had a dad before. I’m not sure of the exact reason, but Mom’s noticed it, too. She even asked me to switch my seat at the supper table next to Dad, so Aaron can sit there.
I know I’m not the reason Aaron’s coming on the boat. He hardly says a word to me. In the fourteen days he’s been with us, I’ve suggested all kinds of fun things to Aaron. He’s not a reader. He only likes to swim in a lake. He’s not excited to meet the other kids on the island and doesn’t want to play Monopoly with Libby and me. He said, “No, thanks,” when I asked him if he wanted to try jumping off the ferry float into the ocean, and when I ask him what he wants to do, he says, “Nothing.”
Nothing with me, he means.
So it’s a surprise one afternoon to look up from scraping old paint off my skiff and see him walking toward me. I thought he was supposed to be having a meeting in our kitchen with Natalie, but he asks, “Want some help?”
I pause a few seconds in case he says, “Just kidding.” But he looks serious, and anybody’d be a fool to turn down help scraping paint.
“Okay. There’s another scraper in the shed. You’ll see it in a box of stuff on the shelf inside the door.”
The replacement wood Dad and I put on the skiff stands out new and raw-looking beside the ragged white paint of the old boards. Underneath the white’s a layer of red paint and one of gray.
Aaron comes back with another scraper.
Paint flakes fall to my sneakers and onto the grass. “It’s just an old wooden skiff,” I say. “It’s heavy as heck on land, but it won’t feel that way in the water.”
He nods. “Where’d you get it?”
Watching him start scraping, his hair swinging with each stroke, I feel a grin sneaking up on me. “It used to be my cousin Tom’s. He got a new one, so I bought this one with some of my lobstering money from last year. It’s not much to look at right now, but it’s gonna be beautiful when it’s done. I’m gonna paint it white, or maybe light gray like the fog. Dad makes me save most of my lobstering money for college, but I’m also saving up for an outboard motor so I won’t have to row everywhere.”
I’m talking way too much. I bite my bottom lip to keep it from saying anything else.
“Cool.”
I think he really means it. There’s no stopping that grin now. But I keep the “Yay!” to myself. “One of Dad’s rules about kids and boats is Never go on the deep water alone. So maybe we can go together after it’s launched and I can afford a motor for it.”
He doesn’t answer, just keeps scraping.
“I’m lucky Tom never named her, because now I get to. Sometimes I think it’d be good to have a funny name for it: Pier Pressure, Go Fish, or Shore Thing. Other days, I think it’d be fun to give it a pretty name, like Wanderer. I just have to make sure the name doesn’t have thirteen letters, because that’s bad luck for a boat.”
The sound of our scrapers falls into rhythm together. I bite back the urge to keep chattering. The moment feels as fragile as a bubble — one prod too many and it’s likely to break.
“Ouch!” Drawing his hand back, Aaron scratches at a tiny paint needle in his finger. Putting his finger across his mouth, he bites the sliver out.
“You want to hold the scraper like this.” But before I can show him, he turns his head.
“I know how to do it.”
He’s still holding it wrong, but I don’t say so. I wish I could ask him about his life before he came here and what else his mother’s letter says. I want to ask if he likes us yet. Or if not, is there any chance he ever will?
But in “Your First Days at Home with Your Foster Child,” it says, “Keep your questions to easy ones at first, like his favorite sports, TV shows, toys, ice cream, etc.”
I sigh. “What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?”
He scrapes in long strokes, without looking at me. “I’m not hungry.”
“That’s okay. I don’t actually have any ice cream.” I feel completely stupid now, but having started this … “I’m just asking what you like.”
“Oh.” He pauses, and then starts scraping again, a little slower than before. “Cookie dough.”
“My favorite is chocolate chip. Cookie dough would be somewhere in my top ten, though.” I start scraping again.
“Come in now, Aaron,” I hear Mom call. “Natalie is ready to see you.” I look over to see Mom and Natalie on the porch. Why do they have to interrupt us now? I was finally getting somewhere with Aaron.
“Aaron!” Natalie calls. “How are you doing? Are you working on a boat? Wow! That’s awesome.”
He puts down the paint scraper and walks away from me. Almost to the house, he glances back over his shoulder. “Chocolate chip would be around number five for me.”
As the kitchen door closes, I take my lucky things from my usual right-side pocket and put them into my left one. That little wrongness will nag at me, so I won’t forget to write “cookie dough ice cream” on Mom’s shopping list when I go inside.
I scrape extra hard on the spot where he got the splinter so it won’t ever happen again. As I work, I can’t help wondering what he’s telling Natalie. Is he complaining about Eben being mean to him or getting seasick or Libby knocking on his door every night to see if he wants to play Monopoly? Is he telling Natalie how he still isn’t comfortable opening the refrigerator or cupboards when he’s hungry — how he pretends he doesn’t want anything to eat until it’s practically forced on him and then eats it all? Or how embarrassed he’ll be going to school with kindergartners this fall? Or how much he hates the seagulls swooping around him on the boat?
Natalie’s been here a long time — long enough to hear a whole long list of bad things from him.
I feel kind of cheated that Anne of Green Gables liked her island home right from the get-go and Aaron needs to be won over to his. I thought he’d feel more like Anne did, like it was a fun adventure to move here — not a punishment, a too-far-away-from-everything place where he has to give up what he loves best.
After Natalie leaves, I hear trumpet music coming from our house. It’s a slow, sad song, the notes held long as sighs. He makes that trumpet sound both beautiful and hurt.
I put the scrapers back in the shed. I wish Aaron could find his place here, so he’d feel like a real islander and he’d start liking it more.
As I’m closing the shed door, I see Doris Varney bring her knitting basket out to the porch rocker. I notice she does that whenever Aaron starts practicing. “It’s so nice to have a musician in the neighborhood!” she calls to me. “I wish everyone could be enjoying this fine music with us. Don’t you? It’d be the talk of the island!”
And I have an idea.
“Hi, Mrs. Varney.” I brush the paint dust off my clothes as I’m walking. “Isn’t it great how Aaron plays the trumpet?”
“Oh, yes! I feel very lucky to hear such fine music from my front porch,” Mrs. Varney replies, pulling out her knitting needles. “It’s like having my own personal concert.”
I let Mrs. Varney knit several rows on the blue mitten in her lap while Aaron finishes the song.
“It’s a shame the whole island hasn’t had a chance to hear Aaron,” I say. “I bet everyone would really enjoy it. Don’t you think so, Mrs. Varney?”
“Oh, yes. The boy plays like an angel!”
“And the trumpet is especially good for patriotic songs,” I say. “Exciting, marching music, like we might hear at Memorial Day or the Fourth of July picnic.”
I feel a little guilty doing this. I know Aaron said he didn’t like to play for people, but he did once play in a jazz band. So he does play for people sometimes. If Aaron could play his trumpet for everyone, they’d be amazed and tell him how wonderful it sounds and how great it is that he’s here. Then Aaron’d see that he didn’t have to give up being a musician — even if we don’t have a jazz band.
“There’s nothing like a trumpet for patriotic songs,” M
rs. Varney agrees. “And for ‘Taps,’ too! That’s always so moving. That song was played at my father’s funeral. Did you know that? He was in World War II. It’s been a while since I’ve heard that song played, but it always brings tears to my eyes. It reminds us of all those people who’ve sacrificed their lives for our freedoms, and — Where is my cell phone? I’m sure I put it in here.”
As she hunts through her basket, I back away, smiling.
My work is done.
The next day, Dad, Aaron, and I’ve been fishing on the Tess Libby for about three hours when Mrs. Coombs’s voice blasts over the boat’s VHF: “TESS LIBBY! ARE YOU ON, JACOB?”
Mrs. Coombs never seems to understand that the radio’s microphone means people’ll hear her fine. She thinks she has to yell loud enough for people on the far side of the bay to listen in without even turning on their radios.
“JACOB BROOKS! I HAVE A QUESTION FOR YOU!”
The radio fizzles with static and then Uncle Ned’s voice says, “Jacob, for pity’s sake, answer her before we all go deaf.”
“NED BROOKS! YOU KEEP YOUR NOSE OUT OF THIS! I’M TALKING TO YOUR BROTHER!”
“Shirley, this is Jacob.” Dad turns the volume knob down. “What can I do for you?”
“Doris Varney said that boy of yours plays the trumpet. Is that true?”
“Ayuh,” Dad says.
“I’m in charge of the entertainment for the Fourth of July picnic,” Mrs. Coombs says. “The Ladies’ Aid Society wants him to play us some stirring patriotic tunes while Reverend Beal cooks up the chicken barbeque.”
Aaron stares at the VHF, as shocked as if it had burst into flames.
“You may as well say yes,” I tell him, smiling. “Because Mrs. Coombs isn’t really asking. She’s just telling you to be there.”
“‘You’re a Grand Old Flag’ and ‘Rally ’Round the Flag, Boys!’” Mrs. Coombs continued. “That’s what we need, Jacob. None of this modern-day screaming nonsense like we had last year with Donnie Burgess and that electric guitar! It’s a wonder Mrs. Ellis is still with us. It was enough to give someone her age heart failure —”