by Bobbie Pyron
Nate threw himself into the trailer and sprinted down the hallway as lightning lit the sky and rain came down in sheets. Chum came in behind him, shaking water off like a wet dog.
“Whoowee! That’s a real gully washer, ain’t it?”
Nate was nowhere in sight. “Nate?” Chum called.
In the back of the trailer, Chum heard a tiny, muffled moan.
“Nate?” Chum whispered as he followed the sound to the back bedroom. The lumpy covers on the bed shook with fright. Thunder boomed. The covers moaned.
Chum sat down on the bed and patted the trembling mound. “It’s okay, Nate. It’s okay.”
When Nate woke the next morning, he heard his grandpa cussing up a storm in the kitchen.
He slipped the lucky rabbit’s foot into his pocket, said good morning to his parents, and glanced at the box full of single-shoe photographs.
He followed the scent of burnt toast from his bedroom to the kitchen and watched as his grandpa banged his fist on the toaster. “You useless hunk of junk, you sorry excuse for an appliance!” He jerked the plug out of the wall. “I should just toss you in the bay and be rid of you.”
“Grandpa,” he said, “why are you here? I thought you had a full day of charters.” Nate couldn’t remember a Saturday morning, or any morning for that matter, since everything had turned lucky that his grandpa had been home. He had to admit it was kind of nice.
All the bluster went out of his grandpa’s sails. He slumped onto the couch. “Boat’s not running,” he mumbled.
Nate eased over to the toaster, plugged it back in, and set two slices of bread to toast.
“Why not?” he asked. Grandpa always said the Sweet Jodie was as steady as a July day.
Through clenched teeth, Grandpa replied, “Someone sabotaged it.”
Ding! Two perfect pieces of toast popped out of the toaster and landed side by side on the plate. The toaster sighed with happy contentment.
Nate smeared the toast with butter and jam and took them over to his grandpa. “Why in the world would somebody hurt the Sweet Jodie?”
Grandpa looked at the toast — truly wondrous in its perfection — then at the toaster, and shook his head. “They’re trying to hurt me. The other captains have been grumbling for the last few weeks that I’m getting all the business and taking money away from them. I reckon someone figured the best way to fix that was to kill my boat.”
Nate’s mouth went dry. “I’m sorry, Grandpa. It’s all my fault.”
Grandpa patted the miserable boy’s shoulder. “Now, Nate, it’s not your fault. It’s … well, it’s just too much of a good thing, I reckon. When folks think you’re taking something away that belongs to them, it brings out the worst in them.”
Nate chewed the side of his thumb as he pondered this point. Seemed to him his good luck was bringing out just about the worst in everybody.
“I bet I can fix it, Grandpa,” he said, brightening. “I think I might’ve fixed Mr. Bailey’s boat during the race, and it was just about dead as a doornail.”
Grandpa sighed. “They took parts out. That’s not something anybody can fix. I’m going to have to ride all the way over to Panama City to buy new ones. And who’s to say, even once I do that, they won’t steal them again?”
Nate was thunderstruck. He never in a million trillion years would have thought someone in Paradise Beach would steal! Not in his little town. Fishing folks always helped each other. The idea of it made him sick through and through. This had to stop, and he was the only one who could make things the way they used to be.
Grandpa pushed himself off the couch. “Well, there’s nothing for it but to spunk up and do it. Want to go over to Panama City with me?”
“Yes sir,” he said. “And while we’re there, could I buy a kite?”
Late that afternoon, Chum Bailey held the kite aloft, the sun shining through the orange-and-black paper wings. He let out a low whistle. “This is one fine kite,” he said. “It sure enough looks like a monarch butterfly, don’t it?”
Nate thought about the hundreds and hundreds of monarchs they’d see in the fall, all flying along their zigzaggity, invisible trail to Mexico for the winter. When Gen told him butterflies could fly that far, he said he’d never heard of anything so miraculous. “It’s not a miracle,” Gen had said. “It’s science.” But even she didn’t sound too convinced of that fact.
“We still need a key, though,” Nate pointed out. “A big one.”
“I bet my daddy’s got one in that old shed of his back behind our house. He’s got practically everything in there and then some,” Chum said with pride. Then he frowned. “But Nate, how in the world are you going to do this? We can get all the kites and keys in the world, but if you can’t stand to be out in a storm, it’s not going to work.”
“I got to. It’s not just about me anymore. Let’s go find a key,” Nate said. “And then I need a favor from you.”
“What’s that?”
“Our TV’s broke and Grandpa left the radio on his boat,” he said, as if this was a new occurrence, which it surely was not. “I need you to watch the news to see when the next storm is. We’ll meet down on the beach by the old pier.”
Two days later at school, Chum tapped Nate on the shoulder during Mr. Peck’s explanation about the difference between a metaphor and a simile.
“The weatherman says there’s a big thunderstorm coming in tonight,” Chum whispered too loudly.
“Mr. Bailey, is there something you care to share with the class?” Mr. Peck asked in a withering voice.
Chum shrugged. “Sure.” He stood and looked around at the room full of smirking, eye-rolling faces. “There’s a storm coming in tonight. The weatherman over in Panama City says so.”
The tiny blue vein in Mr. Peck’s temple bulged and throbbed. He looked up at the ceiling and muttered, “Only twenty-two more days, Peck, only twenty-two more days …”
Nate buried his nose in his grammar book, trying not to laugh.
As storms go on the Gulf of Mexico, it was a puny one. Lightning sputtered lethargically across the sky, thunder muttered disinterestedly, and the wind could hardly be bothered to gust above twenty-five miles an hour.
Chum scanned the dunes for Nate. He was beginning to wonder if his friend had chickened out. He sighed. He couldn’t blame him after what he’d been through.
A small figure crept and crabbed its way over the dunes and down toward the beach, the kite clutched to his chest. Every time lightning flashed, a long, low moan issued forth from the figure.
Chum waved his arm. “Over here, Nate!” He ran across the beach to the pathetic figure cowering in a clump of dollarweed. “I’m sorry,” he said as he reached down for his friend. “It’s the only way back to how it used to be.”
Nate stood on quivering knees and eyed the sky. “I know.”
Chum pried the kite away from Nate’s chest. “Just hold on to it like this while I tie the key and stuff on the string.” He tied the rusty metal key they’d found in his daddy’s shed onto the kite string along with a bunch of old silverware they’d found in a moldy box.
Nate looked doubtfully at all the metal hanging from the kite’s tail. “I don’t think it’s going to fly with all that weight, Chum.”
“Sure it will,” he said. “Just try.”
Nate took a deep breath to swallow down the bile rising in his throat. He set off running along the shore, the wet sand sucking at his bare feet and needles of rain stinging his eyes. His head pounded and his lightning scars burned like fire.
A particularly frisky gust of wind took notice of the boy. It slipped under the belly of the kite and pushed it skyward. Nate ran faster and faster, letting out string as he went.
“Run, Nate, run!” Chum called. He looked to the skies and prayed, “Please, just strike him a little bit. Just enough for his own good.”
The kite rose higher and higher. Lightning lit the spoons and forks and the old metal key. It crackled above Nate’s head an
d then danced off to the side.
His stomach heaved. His legs seemed to have a mind of their own. “Please, please,” he prayed. “Please don’t kill me.”
Wind is a fickle thing. It is not something you can set store by. This particular wind playing with kite and boy was easily distracted, even for wind. It soon tired. With one final push, it slipped from beneath the kite and set out across the dunes, like a hound dog on a fresh scent, for Mr. Wood’s wind chimes.
The kite plummeted to the ground. Nate dropped to his knees and heaved his supper into the sand.
“I’m sorry, Nate,” Chum said. “I don’t think Mr. Franklin’s experiment is going to work. I guess it was a dumb idea.”
“That’s okay,” Nate said. He looked up at the egg-shaped moon peeking out from behind the clouds. “Looks like the storm has passed anyway.”
At the word storm, a shudder ran through his body.
“Let’s head back to my house,” Chum said, helping his friend to his feet. “My daddy will make you a cup of his special seasick tea, okay?”
Gen watched the two boys trudge up and over the rain-swept dunes from her rooftop perch. Slowly, she lowered her binoculars. She shook her head in wonder and disbelief. “Holy Einstein. I can’t believe they tried it. They actually tried it.”
Genesis Beam made herself a liverwurst on rye sandwich, wrapped it carefully in wax paper (so the sandwich would not get any pickle juice on it from her dill pickle spear), and tucked it into her Albert Einstein backpack.
“Where you off to, sugar?” Mrs. Beam asked.
“Down to the beach to look for turtle tracks and nests. There’s something strange going on with the turtles this year, and I need to figure it out.” She’d wrestled with this puzzle all day at school, causing her, for the first time in her life, to miss a question on a quiz.
Mrs. Beam listened to the wind rattle the windows. “I have to take the boys to their swimming lessons, so you’ll need to take the girls with you.”
Gen frowned. “This is serious business. The turtles are not only not laying eggs, they’ve stopped digging nests.”
Mrs. Beam slapped two peanut butter and banana sandwiches together and stuffed towels in a bag. “Well then, your sisters can help you figure it out.”
“But Mama —”
“You know Ruthie loves a challenge, and Rebecca never misses the tiniest detail,” Mrs. Beam continued.
Gen’s bottom lip stuck out like the high dive at the public swimming pool. “I’ll take them next time.”
Mrs. Beam froze. Slowly she turned around and faced her daughter. “I do not believe I asked you to take them with you, did I?”
“But Mama …”
Mrs. Beam was not one to yell or holler when she was angry. No, her voice got lower, quieter, and calm as ice. “Genesis Magnolia Beam, I ask precious little of you.”
Gen gulped and looked down at her shoes. When her mama used her middle name along with the rest of her name, she knew she was in a boatload of trouble.
“All I’m asking of you is to take your little sisters, who, in case you hadn’t noticed, purely worship the ground you walk on, over to the beach with you to look for turtle nests. I’m not asking you not to go to the beach; I’m not asking you to play little girl games with them. Right?”
“Yes ma’am,” Gen whispered, not looking up.
Gently Mrs. Beam took her daughter’s chin in her hand and tipped her face up. She looked into her firstborn’s unfathomable eyes. “You need to bring your head out of that shell of yours and take a look at the world around you, the people around you,” she said. “You just might be surprised by what you see.”
Gen swallowed down the lump lodged in her throat. “Yes, Mama,” she said.
“Now,” Gen said, pointing her pencil at the two grinning, hopping-foot-to-foot, pulling-off-their-shoes-as-quick-as-they-could twin girls. “This is a serious job you’re here to help me with. It takes a keen eye for detail and —”
“Look out there!” Ruthie cried, hopping up and down, pointing out to sea. “Porpoises! A whole bunch of them!”
Gen sighed. “Yes, Ruth, I saw them. But we’re not here to look for porpoises, we’re here to look for —”
Rebecca gasped as a flight of cormorants sliced through the wind, throwing sharp shadows on the shore. “Oh my!” And being Rebecca, she threw her head back and burst into a spasm of poetry: “I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as cormorants at sea.”
The two girls followed after their big sister like happy little ducklings, exclaiming over all wonders, great and small.
“Lookit! I found a whole sand dollar!”
“Did you see that pelican dive in headfirst?”
“Oh, I just love sandpipers, don’t you?”
“Look, Gen, I found a devil’s purse.” Ruth held the black pouch up by one of its four curved horns for her big sister to see. “Why would the devil have a purse if he’s a boy, huh, Gen?”
Gen didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She shook her head and said, “It’s just the egg sack of a skate, Ruth. It’s not really the devil’s purse. That’s just a made-up name.” Both girls frowned up at their big sister. “Made up for fun,” Gen explained. “A skate is kind of like a stingray, only smaller, although technically it’s a relative of the shark.”
“That’s weird,” Ruth said, turning the small, hard pouch over in her hands.
“I think it’s amazing,” Rebecca announced.
Gen thought it really was somewhere in between the two. “Weirdly amazing,” she summed up. “Now, let’s look for turtle signs.”
All three girls studied the sand as they walked along the beach. Gen had to admit, once the twins put their minds to it, they were pretty darned good at spotting loggerhead tracks. By the time they reached her and Nate’s dune, they had counted eight sets of tracks. But no nests.
“Holy moly, look at that!” both girls cried at once. “It’s the biggest sand dune in the whole world!”
A prickle of pride plucked at the corners of Gen’s mouth. “Well, probably not in the whole world, but it is the biggest — as far as I know — on Paradise Beach. You can see a long ways from up there.”
The girls looked up at their big sister with awe. “You’ve been up to the top?” Rebecca asked, eyes wide.
Gen shrugged and did her best to suppress a grin. “Sure, all the time.” She and Nate, that is.
Before you could say The Church of the One True Redeemer and Everlasting Light, the twins tossed their shoes and beach-found treasures onto the sand and did their level best to race each other to the top.
“Wait!” Gen cried. “Wait for me!”
And before she realized what she was about to do, she yanked her shoes off, dug her toes into the cool, sugar-white sand, and made her way up the flank of the dune. “I must admit,” she said as she arrived panting at the top, “it’s a lot easier to climb the dune with one’s shoes off.” She smiled at her little sisters. “Now, let me orient you to our surroundings by —”
Ruthie could have given a flip about orienting. She flung herself onto her side and commenced to roll down the dune at an alarming speed. “Wheeeeeeeeeeee!” Which was promptly followed by an equally enthusiastic, identical roll and “Wheeeeeeeeeeee!”
Up the dune, down the dune, up the dune, down the dune the girls went with boundless energy, until they looked like laughing, stumbling, giggling, sugar-coated gingerbread cookies.
“Are you done now?” Gen asked, wiggling her bare toes in the salty air.
“Yes,” Ruth said.
“No,” Rebecca said.
“Just one more roll,” Gen said. Rebecca flung herself one last time down the dune while Gen did her best to brush sand from every square inch of Ruth. “Mama’s going to skin us alive when she sees what a mess you are.”
“Hey, Gen,” Rebecca called. “Come see what I found.”
She rolled her eyes. “What now?”
She and Rebecca plunge-stepped their wa
y down the dune to where Ruthie crouched over something.
“Rebecca, we really need to go. Mama’s going to be —”
The little girl moved aside and pointed. “It’s a turtle nest, isn’t it?”
Gen gasped and dropped to her knees. Before her was a telltale sand mound with tracks leading to and from. Gently, oh-so-gently, she scraped away the sand heap. There, nestled like a bunch of left-behind Ping-Pong balls, was a clutch of eggs.
Praise the Lord and pass the peas! The first nest of the season, and her sister had found it! Gen did a very un-Gen-like thing: She let out a whoop, picked Rebecca up, and twirled her around. “You found it, Rebecca! You found a nest! Wait until I tell Nathaniel!”
But would he even care?
“I just don’t get it,” Gen said as she and Chum patrolled the beach, looking for nests. “The tides are right and so are the currents and water temperature. And according to my notes, by this time last year, Nate and I had found eleven nests with a total of ninety-six eggs.”
She flipped back through her ever-present notebook. “Not to mention, we had a full moon last month. I thought for sure when my sisters and I found that one nest yesterday, we’d find more.”
She looked out over the glittering Gulf with a frown. “Where are they? Why have we only found just one nest so far?”
Chum knocked over a sand castle and smoothed the sand. “Probably because of the blue moon.”
Gen stopped dead in her tracks and gaped up at the big boy. “You mean there’s a second full moon this month?”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
She tapped her pencil on her notebook. “A blue moon,” she muttered, “only happens once every two-point-seven years. That means it’ll be a blue moon in four more nights.” She frowned. “How could I have missed that? Could that have thrown off the turtles?”
“Don’t feel bad, Genesis,” he said. “You can’t know everything. My daddy says when there is a blue moon, it makes the fish act strange, so why not turtles?”
The two walked along the shore, watching for turtle tracks. Gen’s mind was still mulling over the unlikely proposition that she didn’t know everything — especially when it came to turtles and astronomical phenomena — when Chum squatted down and studied something in the sand.