“What do you want with Flounder?” demanded Edgar, his voice weakening.
“Well,” explained Weedy, “you see, Flounder cheap-shotted me, back at the cabin. So now, I’m going to sink him to the bottom of the ocean. I’m gonna make him walk the plank!” He giggled at his clever plan. “See? Edgar? Isn’t it great, Edgar? Nobody knows we’re out here, and I will never get caught actually killing a kid. Man, seafaring is so much fun.”
Weedy then lifted a cinder block from his small boat so that Edgar could see, and on one end was tied a rope, and on the other end, Flounder’s bound hands.
“Oh no,” muttered Edgar. “Don’t do that.”
Weedy cackled as Edgar took a wobbly step toward the front of the raft and fell, paddling himself over.
“No use, redneck,” taunted Weedy. “You’re done. And Flounder’s crab meat now.”
“No!” pleaded Edgar. “Please stop, Weedy! I’ll give you anything you want! You win! What is it you want? What is it you want?”
But Weedy still lifted the cinder block into the air anyway, dangling it threateningly over the side, for Edgar to see.
“There’s nothing I want but this,” he growled, lowering the weight into the sea. “I want to see you beg. I want to see you miserable. That makes me happy.”
“OK,” said Edgar. “Well, you got me. I’m miserable, see? You win. I’m very sorry I crossed you, Weedy.”
Just as Flounder was about to be drowned, Edgar noticed something horrible. There, from the bottom of Weedy’s boat, emerged Shay. She stood, her own wrists bound with cord, and her mouth bound with a tight gag.
She wept profusely and fearfully, staring at Edgar.
“Shay!” he shouted, then reached over into the sea and began paddling with all the fury that remained in him. But, even as he did, Weedy cackled delightedly, touching the gas on the motor, backing easily away from his raft.
“I thought they had oars in Alabama, you hick.” Weedy giggled at this, then turned and commanded Shay, “Get up front with Flounder.”
Edgar watched them helplessly as Weedy took hold of her hair and yanked it violently, urging her along.
“You!” shouted Edgar, pointing at Weedy. “You’re dead!”
“How?” laughed Weedy, yanking Shay’s head side to side again, to demonstrate his power over the situation.
In a fit, Edgar tried to stand on his wobbly legs but his knees gave way and he flopped back to the raft again, which made Weedy howl even louder.
“Ha! Ha!” the bully cried. “What are you going to do, Edgar?” Are you gonna blow me up with some fake dynamite or pretend to fall down a fake hole? You’ve got nothing, Edgar! As usual, nothing!!”
Edgar rested his chin helplessly on the side wall of the raft and watched Weedy lord over his friends.
“What else do you have, Edgar, besides a bunch of little tricks? Besides a bunch of little lies?” Weedy puffed out his chest in victorious triumph. “Lies are all you got, Edgar! You’re like a skunk—all stink, no claw. And man, all that lying won’t help you out here in the sea—in a sea like this? A sea like this brings out the truth in people. It demands the truth.”
“Wait,” said Edgar, shaking his head, holding a hand up at Chris Weedy. “This is just a dream.” Suddenly he realized this, lifting his chin off the raft, staring out to the sea as a profound peace overtook him and then, magnificently, he was lucid. It was all just a byproduct of his being sun-crazed, food-crazed, and thirst-crazed, and nothing more.
“Now you’re using your brain!” said his father, who drifted along behind him. “This is a dream, Edgar. And in your dreams, you can do anything you want.” His father nodded over at Edgar’s hands, who looked down and noticed that they were glowing, like a sort of power was suddenly dancing through his blistered fingertips—like electricity. He smiled at it, because it was really cool, turning them over and watching the electrodes dance. With this newfound power, he rose in the raft and glared across the waters at Chris Weedy.
Weedy, Edgar noticed, immediately saw Edgar’s strangely glowing hands and just as quickly, he stopped smiling.
“Let them go,” Edgar warned him, “because I have the power now.”
“OK! OK!” Chris shouted, surrendering immediately as he lifted his hands in obvious defeat. “You got me, Edgar.”
Then, just as soon as he surrendered, he turned and kicked Flounder overboard, tossing the cinder block behind him into the sea, then cackled like a loon.
“NOOOO!” screamed Edgar, as Flounder flopped overboard like dead weight, sinking helplessly down into the depths, the cinder block yanking him under toward the ocean floor like an anvil. Weedy turned and grinned at Edgar, chuckling evilly, a look of furious triumph in his eyes.
“Now she goes!” he cried, snatching Shay by the shoulders, who, not going easily, fought and clawed at his face. But he soon fought off her resistance and was able to reach around her body, placing her in a headlock. Then, once he’d restrained her, he flung her overboard into the sea, like a cast net. She crashed into the water but, with one hand, she reached up and snagged the side of the boat, refusing to go down. When he saw this, Weedy cursed violently and stepped toward her, kicking at her hand.
“LEAVE HER ALONE!” screamed Edgar, who, even as he screamed it, knew that words would no longer suffice. Weedy’s evil ran marrow deep. He was simply no good, and he was no good to the core.
As some sort of strange, alien knowledge began to stir inside of him, he looked down at his now furiously glowing hands and lifted them up to the sky. From where the power emerged he did not know, but in some strange tongue—maybe Somalian, or maybe the language written on the bricks of the hole back home—he began to speak over his hands that had burst into white-hot mittens of flames.
As the clouds were apparently subservient to his glowing hands, they began to swirl like a whirlpool in the sky: rains and furious winds began churning tempestuously, obeying his direction, ramping higher and higher and higher as Edgar swirled his hands apart and then together, guiding the sea world all around, focusing every bit of pointed energy at the terrible and murderous Chris Weedy.
Then, with a fury, he cast the flames at Weedy’s boat and glared with his own evil, delicious grin, shooting his hands, unleashing on Weedy’s tiny vessel the horrible storm and all its power. In an instant, Weedy was swept from his feet and flung headlong into the air like a tiny piece of litter in a sandstorm.
“HA!” screamed Edgar, a wild grin emerging, as he began to move Chris Weedy around in the air. As he screamed and pled for mercy, Weedy was bolted across the sky, like a ragdoll kite, as Edgar flopped him around, basking in the sound of his misery. In fact, the more Weedy screamed, the more he tossed him about, because that’s what he’d do, wouldn’t he, Weedy, the awful, terrible, merciless punk that he was?
Suddenly, from the depths of his trance, Edgar began to hear other screams.
This time it was his father. And it was Shay. And it was even Flounder’s voice—all of them were yanked up from the sea by his conjured winds and tossed all about, same as Weedy was. Horrified as they streaked across the sky, right alongside the bully, all upheld by his newfound power, he relented. Flounder’s leg was still wrapped in the rope tied to the cinder block and he squealed particularly torturously as it swung him around in the air. Edgar tried to bring Flounder down to the sea with his hands, but suddenly, he couldn’t seem to get the controls right. No matter how hard he tried he just couldn’t slow down Flounder’s erratic sweeping across the sky—nor Shay’s, nor his father’s. They all spun helplessly in the sky now, like erratic birds, somehow hovering on their own and not coming down. Apparently, there was nothing more Edgar could do. He had lost the power. His hands no longer glowed.
He had lost everything.
“Please!” he asked the sky. “Please let them down! Please let them go!” But the skies refused to list
en, as always. Relentlessly, his friends had been flipped and somersaulted in the air, up and down, side to side, and there simply was nothing he could do about it. Apparently he’d created a hurricane now, using only his fury and revenge—a storm even fiercer than any one he’d ever known—one that would doom them all. Soon, he knew, it would even toss him like dead weight into the sea and drown him, and all of them, once and for all.
That’s when he realized he was being lifted into the air alongside his friends, the vicious storm carrying them all over the waters now, like leaflets, as they screamed themselves hoarse, jerking in the wind. Finally, without warning, Edgar was cast down by a vast power above and dumped viciously into the swirling sea, and as he plunged deep down, he could feel the pressure suddenly squeezing his temples, and depleting his lungs.
Drowning and choking violently now, he tried fighting for the surface with everything he had in him. It was all such a fight—everything was—from the hospital room to this very moment: everything resisting him, still, with his last breath, he continued to muster every last bit of strength to put up a fight—to press on. To survive the horrible ocean. Clawing to the surface, just as a merciless gale blew down on him from the sky, he finally opened his eyes and woke up, and saw the cause of the gale.
There, hovering just above his raft, was a helicopter, stilled in midair.
A medical stretcher dangled just above him, too, hanging by a rope and lowered from the helicopter. Edgar turned his head to see a masked diver appearing from one side of the raft. The black-eyed man blinked at Edgar, and Edgar blinked wearily back.
“No,” whispered Edgar, trying to sit up, but unable to. “Get out of the water, man! There’s sharks down there. Sharks.”
“He’s alive!” the man reported on a headset. Then, reaching into a small satchel, he uncapped a small bottle of water and offered it to Edgar, who allowed the man to place it on his blistered lips and pour. Then, as Edgar took a small, painful sip, the water burned his parched throat like acid.
Greedily, Edgar sat up in the raft and strained for another sip, and then grabbed the bottle with his own hands and downed the whole thing.
“Thank you, sir,” he mouthed beneath the thundering helicopter blades. The man nodded back and buckled him into the stretcher.
“You’re welcome,” he shouted over the noise, “but you can thank them!” He pointed up at the large aircraft.
As the diver gave the order, he and Edgar were lifted upward to safety, leaving the raft and its half-empty water bottle floating in the sea. He continued to stare at it between his dangling legs as the helicopter lifted him even higher above the waters. As the raft got tinier and tinier by the second, tears filled his sore and bloodshot eyes, and profound waves of thankfulness and relief spread throughout his entire body, like water to desert sands, stretching to each and every last inch of his being.
Somehow, some way, he survived.
When the two finally arrived at the helicopter doors, he was corralled and yanked inside and there, shrieking, was his wonderful mother’s face.
She’d come to rescue him herself!
“THANK YOU, GOD!” she screamed, grabbing him greedily, snatching him up like he was nothing, smothering his sunburned head with her teary face. Even though it was painful, he didn’t care. He laughed and hugged her back with all his strength, which was not much, as his weak arms grasped for her best they could.
“Are you . . . real?” he asked in her ear.
“Of course I’m real!” she cried, rocking him back and forth, weeping over him. Squeezing tighter, she suddenly seemed to laugh and cry all at once, and when she finally parted from him, she held him at arms’ length so she could study him. He gazed deep into her eyes and his smile faded.
“What about Dad?” he asked. “Did it work? Did I make it rain in Mount Lanier?”
“Oh, Edgar,” she said, her eyes filling up with more tears as she burst into a weepy laugh. “Yes!” she exclaimed, nodding crazily. “You did! You made it rain! You put out the fire, you crazy kid!”
He could feel his insides melting with relief. “And Dad?” he asked cautiously. “Is he . . .?”
“He’s safe and sound, Edgar, in the hospital recovering, waiting for you! He is alive and in one piece—and has you to thank for it!”
With a wild smile, she grabbed him by the back of the head again and pulled him in, cackling joyfully, squeezing him ‘til it hurt—but he didn’t care. He buried his face in her hair, which smelled like home, and closed his eyes. And when he finally opened them again, he noticed Shay Sinclair was sitting in the back seat, beaming with a smile warm as the sun. She waved at him and smiled, and he lifted five blistered fingers to her in return.
“I was just saving your life,” he said to her, “in a dream. I had electric fingers. There was a hurricane.” Shay shrugged questioningly, then tapped a big green headset she wore on her ears. Carefully, Milly placed a headset around Edgar’s blistered ears so she could hear him.
“What did you say?” came Shay’s voice through the headset. It was so good to hear her voice.
“Nothing,” he smiled. “I guess you got my letter. Thanks for coming to get me.”
“You’re welcome,” she nodded back. “And you have terrible handwriting.”
He grinned and looked beyond at a big man who sat beside her.
“Hello Edgar,” he said. “My name is David Sinclair—I’m Shay’s dad. I just wanted you to know, the whole town of Mount Lanier will owe you a great debt of gratitude, son.”
Edgar’s Mom leaned over to him. “Shay’s father is one of the most incredible people I’ve ever met,” she explained. “He really helped save your life, Edgar.”
Edgar nodded respectfully at the man. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “It’s very nice to meet you.”
Mr. Sinclair nodded back, his eyes lowered in respect.
“One more thing,” said his mother, taking him gently by the cheeks. “You are so grounded.”
Edgar surrendered a big, toothy smile, then burst into laughter.
Soon he was sipping on water, wearing an I.V., and wolfing down a ham sandwich. It was the best sandwich he’d ever had in his life. As he ate, he and the crew began their long trip back to America, and as the chopper veered and dipped with the oceanic wind currents, his mom pointed at the skilled co-pilot and asked if Edgar recognized him.
“He’s a friend of yours,” she smiled.
Through the rearview mirror Edgar studied the faces of the pilot and co-pilot, and though he didn’t recognize the pilot, there, staring back at him, was the navigator—the same man he’d saved back on the island, the drowning man, the one from the storm, the one from Somalia.
“Oh, wow,” said Edgar. “Look at you! I guess you made it out of town, huh?” he chewed. The man, far more robust now than the day they’d met on the island, whose blisters had healed and now seemed much clearer and calmer, nodded.
“I lost your gun,” Edgar admitted to him, and the pilot, who looked like a fellow countryman of the navigator, interpreted for Edgar. When he was finished speaking, the navigator nodded at Edgar through the rearview, answering in another tongue.
“My friend say, ‘How it shoot?’” interpreted the pilot.
“Ah! Well! It shot fantastically!” said Edgar, the food hitting his stomach and sending ecstatic waves throughout his body.
That’s when the man said something else to Edgar, never taking his eyes off him.
“My friend say to you,” interpreted the pilot, once more, “‘ye smart to catch tha current East, headed for French Islands, was you doin’ that?”
Edgar nodded at him.
“Well,” marveled the man, “Cali say to me, ye’ near ya’ coordinates you left ya’ ma’, which means you a natural sail-ah.”
Edgar’s mother squeezed his shoulder tight, and smiled down at him with pride.
“Cali also say,” continued the man, a seriousness taking over his voice, “you two now even.”
“Yeah,” said Edgar in mid-chew. “Yes, sir. We’re definitely even.” He nodded a respectful nod at Captain Cali through the rearview.
After that, as everyone watched him, he finally closed his eyes.
Twenty-eight
They flew into Mount Lanier in the dead of night. Edgar was wrapped in his yellow raincoat and rushed through the press corps who camped expectantly outside the hospital. He rode on the wide shoulders of Mr. Sinclair, who was flanked by Milly and Shay, and as the journalists stirred and shouted at him, Mr. Sinclair knew exactly how to deal with it. He used to be mayor, after all.
“Commissioner!” they yelled. “Is that the boy? The boy on your shoulders?”
The Secret Island of Edgar Dewitt Page 25