by Bobbie Pyron
“That’s one down,” the tattooed man cried. He handed Nate the next ball.
“That’s two down.”
And then, “That’s three down.” The tattooed man spit a stream of chewing tobacco into the dirt. He studied Nate through narrowed eyes.
Applause peppered the evening air. “Come on, Nate,” Jinx called.
He glanced her way and smiled. With the fourth ball in his hand, he took aim at the clown with half a hat. If he didn’t know better, he could’ve sworn it tried to hide behind one of the other clowns.
“No you don’t,” he said under his breath.
He let loose the ball. It shot straight as an arrow right smack into the face of that clown. It fell backward, but then, just like before, bounced right back up.
“No way,” the crowd cried. The tattooed man grinned.
But that ball wasn’t done. Oh no. It smacked against the canvas backdrop, ricocheted forward, and hit that clown in the back of the head. This time, when the clown fell, it did not get up.
Bobby Louder and all the little Louders jumped up and down yelling, “Nate won! Nate won!”
Coach Hull grinned. “I taught him all he knows,” he said, and Miss Trundle said over and over, “Such a nice boy.” Jinx Malloy raised her hand for a high five, which Nate happily slapped.
He turned to the tattooed man. “I’d like my prize, please.”
The tattooed man scowled. “Pick one,” he snapped.
He pointed to the sombrero. “That one,” he declared. He couldn’t wait to get home and give his grandpa this hat.
Ricky Sands raised Nate’s arms high in the air and shook them. “You’re the champ, Sparky!”
The sleeves of Nate’s shirt slid down his arms.
The crowd gasped.
“Whoa,” someone behind him said. “Would you look at that.” The crowd stared wide-eyed at the lightning marks twisting and winding their way around and up his arm.
He dropped his arms.
The littlest Louder stepped up and touched Nate’s scarred arm. “I want some of that luck,” he said.
“I don’t think —”
Before he could finish, the rest of the Louders and even some of the bigger kids surrounded him. They shoved their dollar bills into his hands. “Win a prize for me!” they demanded.
And Nate did. Turn after turn, dollar after dollar, he knocked the stuffing out of those clowns. Within fifteen minutes, the tattooed man didn’t have a single prize left.
The bigger kids slapped him on the back, the girls smiled shyly, and the little kids pulled and climbed on his arms and legs. He felt ten feet and eight inches tall.
The tattooed man pushed the crowd away, shoved his face close to Nate’s, and growled, “How did you do that, kid?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Some kind of trick up your sleeve?” He grabbed Nate by the arms and shook him, like he was trying to shake something loose. “Where you hiding it?” The blue sombrero fell to the ground.
Just when he thought the man was going to shake his arms out of their sockets, Miss Trundle smacked the tattooed man in the back of his head with her sizable purse. “Get your hands off him, you hooligan!”
Coach Hull rushed in. “Yes, unhand the boy.”
Miss Trundle shepherded Nate away from the tattooed man, sweeping up the sombrero with her other hand.
But not before he heard the man yell, “You stole from me, kid. You stole! You haven’t seen the last of me!”
Much to Nate’s eternal relief, the carnival had packed up and moved on by the next day. Still, the ice in the tattooed man’s eyes and the cold fury in his words — “You haven’t seen the last of me!” — sent a shiver through Nate’s body.
Nate raced down to the docks on his bike to find his grandpa. Grandpa himself would not be in the shrimp boat race. The Sweet Jodie was, after all, a deep sea fishing boat. But Grandpa’s grandpa had been the one to start the races many years ago, before Paradise Beach had paved roads and electricity. Jonah Harlow, like his father before him, was the unofficial grand marshal of the shrimp boat races. He alone judged the boats’ decorations and called the winner of the race. Grandpa often said, on that one day out of the year, he was a big fish in a very small pond.
Nate spotted his grandpa’s white ponytail and blue straw sombrero. He grinned, remembering the night before when he gave his grandpa the hat.
“Grandpa!” he hollered.
Someone grabbed him by the shoulder. “You.”
Nate’s stomach slid down to his toes. He squirmed and twisted away from the hand.
“You’re Jonah Harlow’s boy.” Nate squinted up at the face in front of him. It was not the face of the tattooed man. It was the sun-weathered face of Big Jim Sands, Ricky Sands’s grandpa. “I hear from my grandson you were just about the luckiest boy there ever was at the carnival last night.”
“Yes sir, I reckon I was lucky.” He looked again for his grandpa.
Big Jim clamped a hand on Nate’s shoulder and pinched it like a crab. He smiled. “How about you ride with me on my boat in the race? I could use a little extra luck. Kind of like all that luck your granddaddy’s been having.” It did not escape his notice that Big Jim’s smile resided only on his lips and around his chewing tobacco–stained teeth and did not rise to the storm-gray eyes.
But before he could answer, another shrimper grabbed his other arm and pulled. “This boy don’t want to ride in your smelly old rust bucket,” he said. “You come on now, Nate, and ride with me.”
“Now just a doggone minute,” Big Jim growled, pulling Nate’s right arm none too gently.
“You listen here, Big Jim, this boy’s riding with me.” The other shrimper tugged on Nate’s left arm. Nate knew exactly how the wishbone from the Thanksgiving turkey felt.
Just as Nate thought he would surely be pulled in two, his grandpa clamped his hands on each man’s wrist, fingers pressing into the flesh. Hard. Hands dropped away from Nate. Grandpa pulled the boy to him.
“I do appreciate y’all being so generous, offering my boy a ride on your shrimp boats,” Grandpa said, in an even voice that could have frozen salt water. “Funny how you’ve never done that before.”
The two men studied their shoes. It was true: Nate’s reputation for being unlucky had kept him from ever being invited to ride with a shrimper during the race like most kids had.
Grandpa steered Nate through the crowds spilling from the docks onto the street. He patted his shoulder. “You okay?”
“Yes sir,” he said. “It was strange, though.”
Grandpa held his blue straw sombrero against a frisky breeze. “People get odd notions in their heads.” Grandpa picked him up and parked him on top of the spreading wings of a huge bronze pelican. “You wait here and keep out of trouble. I need to go check the last entries. Oh, and Gen’s looking for you.”
Nate gazed at the shrimp boats rocking gently in the bay against the docks. Some were outfitted to look like pirate ships, with black flags bearing the skull and crossbones and fake cannons. Others sported colorful streamers from the wide arms of the boats and Christmas lights. One boat was all made up to look like a dragon, another’s nets were strung with hundreds of balloons. Nate smiled. It was nice to see these homely, some would even say downright ugly boats looking fine.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Grandpa’s voice boomed over the loudspeaker from his place up on the judge’s platform. “Welcome to the fifty-third annual Billy Bowlegs Festival and shrimp boat race!”
Everyone clapped and cheered.
Something small and white underneath a bench caught Nate’s eye. A tiny white leather shoe — baby doll size — just like the one he’d taken a picture of last week. What luck! If he could reunite the pair of shoes, wouldn’t that be something? Gen had always said the chances of that happening were … well, he couldn’t remember, but not very likely. “I’ll find her and show her,” he said, scanning the crowd for his friend.
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“Captains,” Nate’s grandpa commanded from his post on high. “Start your engines!” Twelve shrimp boat engines coughed and chugged to life. The crowd whooped and hollered. Off to one side, all by herself, he saw Gen. One hand shaded her eyes from the sun while the other worried an eyebrow. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Gen! Hey, Gen! Over here!”
A hand grasped Nate’s flip-flop. “You,” a voice hissed from below.
He looked down. All the spit in his mouth turned dry as dust. A hand, a hand with long yellow fingernails, a hand attached to an arm covered with tattoos, clutched his foot.
He jerked his foot back like it’d been struck by lightning. He jumped off the giant pelican. The tattooed man grabbed for him.
“Captains!” Grandpa commanded again. “On your mark.”
“You stole from me, boy,” the tattooed man snarled.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Nate cried, ducking between the giant pelican’s spindly legs.
“Nathaniel! Over here!” Gen waved both her hands.
“Get set,” Grandpa bellowed through the loudspeaker.
“You owe me,” the man said, grabbing hold of Nate’s shirtsleeve. He spun away, leaving his shirt and one flip-flop behind.
“Go!” Grandpa cried.
And Nate went. He ran as fast as his one-flip-flopped foot could carry him. He pushed and bumped his way through the crowd, which brought a warning holler from Mr. Billy, the town’s unofficial crowd controller. He glanced back over his shoulder. The tattooed man was gaining fast.
“Lord help me,” Nate whimpered. He fixed his eyes on the very last shrimp boat pulling away from the docks. He took a deep breath and pushed off the dock hard with his legs. He rose, arms flapping in the air, legs pedaling as hard as they could. He landed with a thud and a splat on the wooden deck of the boat.
There he lay, the thrum of the boat engine against his ear and the cheers of the crowd becoming just the tiniest bit faint. He felt the boat shudder and pick up speed.
“Nate? Is that you?”
Slowly, he sat up. Chum Bailey frowned down at him.
He blinked in the sun. “Hey, Chum, how you doing?” he said, as if he dropped onto shrimp boats on a regular basis — which he surely did not.
Chum looked to the left, then to the right, and finally heavenward. “Where the heck did you come from?”
Nate stood unsteadily and looked back toward the docks. The tattooed man grew smaller and smaller. Nate shivered in the sea breeze as the Bay Leaf picked up steam. Long white strips of tattered bed sheets and old T-shirts streamed and fluttered like feathers from the Bay Leaf’s outrigging.
Which is not to say this particular shrimp boat streaked through the water with the grace and speed of a dolphin, nor did it skim the water like a seagull. No, the Bay Leaf was a boat given to lollygagging. It meandered this way and that depending on the whims and curiosities of its captain, Rem Bailey.
Chum touched Nate’s shoulder. “You’re shaking like a leaf. Let’s get you up in the cabin with Daddy.” They picked their way around ropes and pulleys and nets to the squat glass cabin in the front.
“Hey, Daddy,” Chum said, pushing Nate through the doorway. “This here’s my friend, Nate Harlow, from school. I told you about him.”
A surprisingly small man smiled from the captain’s chair. “Welcome aboard, Nate. You’re Jonah Harlow’s boy, right? The one got struck by lightning?”
“Yes sir,” he said.
Chum’s daddy stuck his hand out. “Proud to meet you.”
Nate reached out to take the man’s hand, then stopped. The hand was missing all but its thumb and pinky finger, like the pincers of a crab.
Rem Bailey withdrew his hand. “The perils of a shrimper’s life,” he said, turning his attention back to the bay.
Nate’s ears reddened. “Yes sir,” he mumbled.
“Looks like we’re drawing up to the Barnacle, Daddy,” Chum called. He hung his head out the side window of the cabin like a dog hanging out a car window, a big grin plastered to his face.
The Bay Leaf sallied forth, chugging and stuttering.
“Y’all ever won the race?” Nate asked.
Chum shrugged. “Naw,” he said. “We never finished anything but last. It’s almost always the Dixie Queen, the Sandses’ boat, or the Miss Lori that wins.”
“Then why do y’all enter if you always finish last?”
Chum shrugged. “My daddy says one of these days Lady Luck will smile on us and we’ll win.” Chum picked at a piece of flaking paint. “Sure wish it’d be this year,” he said, mostly to himself. “We could use the money. Mama’s had to work extra shifts over at the Piggly Wiggly in Apalachicola, so she’s hardly ever home.”
A gray-and-white-striped cat appeared out of nowhere and rubbed against Nate’s legs, making him start.
Chum reached down and picked up the cat in his big hands. “This is Mr. Bowditch.” Chum took one of the cat’s white paws in his hand and waved it at Nate. “Say hi to my friend, Nate.”
Nate waved back at the cat.
“Looks like you’re missing a flip-flop,” Chum pointed out.
“Dang!”
All those single shoes and sandals and boots he had given a home to, had taken pictures of, and now here he was with just one shoe. Again. He figured this is what his teacher, Mr. Peck, would call an irony.
He sighed. “Well, I might as well take a picture of the one I got left.” He reached into his pocket for his camera, where it always was, but his pocket was empty. “Cripes!” he cried. “Where’s my camera?”
He dashed to the back of the boat where he had landed. No camera. His eyes searched the boat’s frothy wake. No luck.
“What are you looking for?” Chum asked.
“My camera,” Nate mumbled. “I need to take a picture of my flip-flop because it’s … well …”
“That’s too bad. I never had a camera, but I do have two shoes.”
Just then, the engine of the Bay Leaf coughed and gagged like it had a giant hair ball in its throat. Gack! Gack!
And then, silence.
“Oh lordy,” Rem Bailey said, sprinting to the back of the boat.
Chum and his daddy stood over the engine compartment shaking their heads.
“Looks bad, Daddy,” Chum said, touching the man’s shoulder.
“Yes, Charles, you’re right about that.” He banged the top of the engine with a wrench and wiggled a wire. “I reckon we’re not going to win again this year.”
A pelican landed on top of the captain’s cabin. It spread its brown wings wide and held them aloft in the sun to dry. The cat rubbed against Nate’s legs.
Nate jumped again, stumbled into a coil of ropes, and fell forward, his hand banging against the engine.
The engine hiccupped. The engine sneezed. And then the engine burst to life.
“Whoa, Daddy!” Chum crowed.
Rem Bailey yipped with joy, dashed back to the cabin, and grabbed the wheel. “Hang on to your hats, boys,” he called above the mighty thrum of the engine. “Looks like we’re back in the race!”
And indeed they were. The Bay Leaf fairly flew over the waves. Dolphins raced just ahead of the bow and played in the wide wake of the boat. The pelican squawked from the top of the captain’s cabin.
The Bay Leaf scampered past the Urchin, sashayed around the Fortuna and the LunaSea, Rem Bailey honking his horn and the boys waving to the astonished crews as they passed.
The little shrimp boat dug in and galloped ahead. “Look, Daddy,” Chum called. “There’s the Miss Lori up ahead.”
Rem Bailey stuck his head out the cabin window and grinned into the wind. “Thar she blows!” he said, laughing.
And thar she went. They left the crew of the Miss Lori bobbing and rocking in their wake.
“What boat’s that up ahead?” Nate asked, squinting at the back of the proud, shining boat racing ahead in the distance.
“That,” said Chum in a reverent voice,
“is the Dixie Queen. They win almost every year.”
In no time, the little boat closed the distance. The bow of the Bay Leaf all but nosed the stern of the Dixie Queen, then drew up alongside.
Nate grinned and waved. “Hey, Ricky, hey, Mr. Sands.”
Chum held up the cat’s paw and waved it. “Say hello, Mr. Bowditch.”
Ricky Sands’s mouth dropped open wide as a pelican’s pouch. Mr. Sands shook his fist and yelled something that would have gotten Nate’s mouth washed out with soap.
“Better close your mouth, Ricky,” Nate called across the sound of the engines. “A fish might jump in.”
And with that, the Bay Leaf leapt ahead of the Dixie Queen and raced toward the finish line — a bright ribbon of red stretched between two buoys.
Nate could see his grandpa up in the judge’s stand waving two orange flags. The crowds along the docks clapped and hooted and chanted over and over, louder and louder, “Bay Leaf! Bay Leaf! Bay Leaf!”
He and Chum pounded their fists on the bow of the boat, and Rem Bailey jumped up and down on top of the captain’s cabin. “Go! Go! Go!” they all chanted. The Bay Leaf sailed through the finish line, the broken red ribbon fluttering in the breeze.
Nate and Chum and his daddy jumped up and down and danced until the boat about tipped over. Chum picked up his daddy and hollered, “We won, Daddy, we won!” And then he picked up Nate and swung him back and forth like the clapper of a bell. “We won! We won!”
The Bay Leaf strutted up to the docks, proud as proud could be.
Everyone cheered as Nate’s grandpa cracked a bottle of real champagne over the humble bow of the Bay Leaf. He presented the Baileys with a trophy and a check for one thousand dollars. “Drinks are on me!” Rem Bailey cried, holding up the check. And everyone cheered and clapped again.
Rem Bailey pumped Nate’s hand with a reverence usually reserved for Father Donovan. “You got the Midas touch, boy. The Midas touch.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Nate said, pulling his hunched shoulders back and smiling.
“The heck you didn’t,” Rem Bailey said. Turning to the crowd, he said, “All I know is, that engine was deader than dead until he touched it.”