We passed through security and into the lobby of city hall, a two-story atrium that had marble floors with a bronze inlay of the state seal in the center. Standing on the seal waiting for us was city council member Teddy Mitcham, a roundheaded man with a dense, tweedy mustache that eclipsed his upper lip. An old-school conservative, he knew exactly how much money was in the treasury at all times. He once made an aide of his fill out an expense report for the penny he left in the Take-a-Penny, Leave-a-Penny dish at the gas station just to make a point about fiscal responsibility.
“Robert!” Teddy said, clapping my dad on the shoulder. “It’s good to see you out and about.”
“Well, I wouldn’t dream of missing my son’s big day,” my dad replied with a smile. The man could be affable when he wanted to be.
“Ah, yes,” Teddy said, turning to me. “Congratulations, Bobby. If you’re anything like your dad, I’m sure we’ll get along swimmingly.” I detected a note of sarcasm in this voice. After all, he knew me as the kid who TPed his house in the spring of 1973.
Before I had a chance to answer, my dad cut in. “So, how’s the levee project coming?”
“Still in permit purgatory, I’m afraid. Also, I’m guessing you heard about the public works bill?”
“Landlocked bastards. You know if they moved the capital here, we’d have it funded in less than twenty-four hours.” Before his stroke, Dad had been in talks with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build a levee but was waiting on funding to come through. Little Turtle didn’t have enough in its piggy bank to pay for the construction, so he’d applied for aid from the state of Mississippi. The whole plan was largely dependent on a bill that would allocate more resources to public works projects on the Gulf Coast, the same bill that had just failed in the state senate.
Teddy and my dad continued to grouse about the idiots in Congress as if I wasn’t even there. After five minutes of being completely ignored, I interrupted them. “So, what’s the new plan?”
They looked at me, clearly stunned that I had taken an interest in what they were saying. “What do you mean?” Teddy asked.
“I mean, now that the bill has failed, what’s the plan for the levee?”
Teddy gave my dad a sideways glance. “Well, there’s another bill that’s going to the house. It’s not as comprehensive, but it’s better than nothing.”
“Won’t that take a while?”
“These things always take a while,” he said, chuckling to himself.
“But hurricane season’s already started. Can’t we do something quicker?”
My dad’s face went pink with embarrassment. “That’s not the way government works, son.”
“Don’t worry, Bobby,” Teddy said, his words reeking of condescension. “We’ll take care of it.” In other words, he and the rest of the council would continue to run the town while I pretended to. I should have been relieved. I was getting a decent government salary for effectively doing nothing, but it didn’t feel right. I had always been a little lazy, but never at anyone else’s expense. This felt like cheating, and with a baby on the way, I was trying to be a better man.
Lacey and I had hooked up in the bathroom of Crableg Joe’s while she was on her lunch break. I was there for the all-you-can-eat soup and salad when this gorgeous waitress asked me if I’d like extra Parmesan. I’d never seen anyone look so sexy grating cheese. Three months later, Lacey calls me and tells me I’m gonna be a dad. She said she didn’t want anything from me other than what she was legally entitled to. I agreed and hung up the phone.
Then on the day of my swearing-in, something inside me shifted. As I stood in front of my constituents in the Santa Claus tie I’d pulled out of the lost-and-found bin and my left hand on the Bible, I felt a pang of pride. I decided that I didn’t want my colleagues stabbing jelly doughnut effigies of me behind my back. I wanted to eat that doughnut in a meeting where I said important things and other people nodded in agreement. I didn’t want to just cut ribbons and make appearances in commercials for Not-So-Little Turtle Motor Homes. I wanted to sign documents and know what they said.
I wanted to make my little girl proud.
* * *
I caught up with Lacey before she left for work. Her stomach was now the size of a Thanksgiving turkey, and her work apron was tied beneath her bulge so low it looked like a loincloth. “So, you want a relationship with the baby?” she said, distracted. She was camped out on her couch, watching Mythological Mysteries, one of those documentary-style shows that uses blurry camera footage and canned sound effects to convince people that crap like Bigfoot and aliens really exist.
“Well … yeah,” I said, awkwardly hovering next to the TV. “I can take care of you and the baby.”
“And how are you gonna do that?”
“Because I’m the mayor.”
She finally took her eyes off the TV. “You’re the mayor? Of where?”
“Of … here. I have an office and health insurance. I even have a 401(k). Look.” I handed her the newspaper from the day before. The headline read, BOBBY QUINN JR. ELECTED MAYOR OF LITTLE TURTLE.
Lacey didn’t look as impressed as I’d hoped. “I didn’t know there was an election.”
“Well, there was, and I won,” I said, chuckling nervously.
“Says here you only got twenty-nine votes.”
“I know, but—”
“And you were the only person on the ballot.”
“Because everyone was too scared to run against me?” It was supposed to be a statement, but my insecurity made it sound like a question.
Lacey looked thoughtful for a moment, then handed back the paper. “Okay,” she said. “We can figure something out.”
“Really? That’s awesome. Thanks,” I said, grinning like a moron.
Lacey nodded dispassionately and turned her attention back to the TV. A tornado appeared on-screen, chewing through a small prairie town. “You see that?” Lacey pointed at two small figures moving toward the funnel.
“Yeah. That guy picked the wrong time to walk his dog.”
“It’s not a dog.”
I didn’t bother asking what she meant. I was too engrossed in what was unfolding on-screen. The man and his dog had stopped right in the path of the twister. It looked like they were trying to get themselves killed because they showed no signs of backing down. “Run, you idiot!” Lacey barked, but the man didn’t move. Seconds later, the twister’s rotation slowed to a stop and poof! Like someone popping a balloon-shaped tornado, it was gone.
“Holy shit,” I said. “Did you see that?”
Lacey squinted at me. “You don’t think that shit’s real, do you?”
Normally, I didn’t buy into that kind of stuff, but this was way too realistic to have been faked, not even by the best Hollywood effects house. Against my better judgment, I now had an idea for how I was going to solve Little Turtle’s hurricane problem.
The TV picture dipped to black, and a title card popped up that read:
Do you have a mythological mystery you’d like to share?
Call our hotline at 1-800-BEL-IEVE.
There was one thing I knew for sure. If I was going to do this, I had to make sure my dad never found out.
22
MARY PENLORE
July 13th, 1997, 10:47 CST.
Oxygen readings (see data) indicate hypoxia in water column. Morning tow produced higher Chaoborus (glassworm) density in epilimnion than hypolimnion.
Haven’t eaten breakfast yet. Had doughnut in bag, but escaped through opening in pocket membrane. Assimilated into ecosystem with help from squirrel.
July 13th, 1997, 14:29 CST.
Diet analysis findings worth noting: Calanoids comprise 71 percent of Chaoborus diet. Cyclopoids largely made up remaining 29 percent.
Not hungry anymore. New thesis: studying bugs suppresses appetite.
July 13th, 1997, 22:11 CST.
Eight percent increase in Chaoborus density in epilimnion. Supports theory that they
forage at night when predation risk is low.
Also supports theory that they are lame. What is not lame: wolves. A wolf could eat fifty glassworms and not realize it. New experiment: throw wolf in epilimnion and see how many glassworms he eats by accident. First, going to Taco Bell.
“Do you want me to go on?” Professor Rubin—or Hugo as he liked to be called—looked up from my field notes with an expression of disappointment usually reserved for moms whose daughters got their ears pierced out of the back of a van. I shook my head. I really didn’t want him reading the August 14 entry that may have described my work as a “black hole for research dollars.”
To be fair, I thought these notes were private. The thesis I was working on didn’t describe the work I was doing as “lame,” and there wasn’t one mention of wolves. I had made the mistake of leaving my notes on the boat, and Hugo had no reason to believe their content would be anything other than scientific.
“If it’s a diary you wanted, you should have got one with a lock,” he said as he handed the notebook back to me. I wanted to apologize, but I knew it was too late for that. “Maybe now you can study wolves like you really wanted.”
He was right. I had wanted to study wolves, but the programs were very competitive. Three researchers in the whole country had spots available when I applied, and even though I was a good student, I apparently wasn’t quite good enough. I didn’t have enough practical experience, they said. I should have volunteered at a zoo. I lived with wolves! I wanted to scream. I hunted rabbits and howled at the moon. I watched one of my pack die in front of me. I am a wolf!
My first application essay was a heartfelt retelling of that month I spent with Weylyn and his family, but my undergraduate advisor wouldn’t let me submit it. “Your essay shouldn’t be a work of fiction,” she said. I was mad, but she was right. No one would believe me even if I did tell the truth.
I wasn’t accepted into any of those programs, but apparently I was a hit with all the swamp things and creepy-crawlies: frogs, turtles, mudpuppies, crayfish, and of course glassworms, a particularly boring kind of freshwater larva. Frogs would have been more interesting, but I chose glassworms, probably because I wanted to punish myself for not getting into better programs. I don’t deserve frogs, I thought. If it showed up as a character in an animated movie, it was too good for me. You’d never see a glassworm getting kissed and turning into a prince, that’s for sure.
And Hugo had been so enthusiastic. For whatever reason, he thought these larvae were worth dedicating his life to. I admired his commitment to something that most people wouldn’t consider important. His research would never make him rich or famous, but it would buy him fifteen hundred square feet in the burbs and a trip to Myrtle Beach every other year. And it made him happy. I imagined him as a boy, clawing through clods of mud in the schoolyard, oblivious to the squealing kids chasing each other in circles around him. He liked quiet, so he chose friends that didn’t speak: earthworms, beetles, and centipedes. They’d never make fun of his hair or his clothes. The worms didn’t even have eyes.
I had let him down in the worst way possible. I had suggested that his worms, his life’s work, didn’t matter. I was rotten and thoughtless.
“No, you’re not,” said Quan, my boyfriend. Quan was also a Ph.D. student. We had met eight months earlier at one of those awkward student mixers. I was stuck talking to this guy who wouldn’t shut up about his research. He was a microbiologist and had made some world-changing breakthrough that he was paranoid his professor would steal. “So, I’m applying for a patent,” he said pompously.
At this point in the story, my friends would ask, “Did Quan save you from that guy?”
“No,” I’d say. “That guy is Quan.” That would leave them looking confused and disappointed. I’m not sure why I tell the story that way. It would be easier to just say, “I went to a party and met this interesting guy. He’s applying for a patent, you know!” But I couldn’t. It’s like I didn’t want anyone to have unreasonable expectations of Quan before they met him. I wanted him to grow on them like he had grown on me.
Of course, I would never tell it that way when Quan was around. If an acquaintance asked the both of us how we met, I let him tell it. Apparently, I was the most beautiful, interesting girl in the room.
“Look at it this way. Now you can apply for that fellowship,” Quan said distractedly. He was halfway through a book on patent law. Preparation, he said, in case he ever had to take his professor to court. I’d met Professor Hutchins. He called me darling and sang in the church choir, not the sort of man you would peg as an intellectual property thief.
“Did you know the plaintiff can be awarded compensation for attorney’s fees in federal court?”
“Why would I know that?” I asked.
Quan shrugged and continued to read. I took another sip of my coffee and let the warm liquid steam on my tongue before letting it trickle down my throat.
It was a typical Saturday. On Saturdays, we’d wake up at eight, walk the five blocks to Ubiquity, order cappuccinos, and bury our faces in our books like all the other students that frequented the shop. We lived in Little Turtle, a small college town that also happened to be minutes from the beach, making Brewster College one of the least productive universities in the country. Most students took six years to get their undergrads, if they didn’t drop out to become full-time beach bums.
I had only been to the beach twice in the ten months since I’d moved there. Most of my time was spent in the Okchamali Wetlands twenty miles northeast of town. “Wanna go to the beach today?” I asked Quan.
He looked at me like I was deranged. “The beach? Why?”
“I don’t know. It might be fun.”
“I have to go into the lab today. You can go without me, though.”
“Oh. Yeah, I might.”
“You should work on that essay. I can help you later tonight if you want.”
“It’s not ready for anyone to read yet.” I hadn’t even started it. To get the Canis Fellowship was the dream of every zoologist: spending three years observing gray wolves in Mammoth National Park, Montana. It was given to only one person every year, so I frankly didn’t like my chances.
“You should get a jump on that,” Quan said in that fatherly way that made me momentarily repulsed by him.
I abruptly gathered my things and stood to leave. “I’ll call you later.”
He studied me for a moment before plunging back into his paranoid courtroom fantasy.
* * *
I hadn’t told Quan about Weylyn and the wolves, not only because he wouldn’t believe me—that much was obvious—but also because even if he did, he wouldn’t appreciate it. He would watch me as I spoke in the measured, critical way of a professor judging a thesis defense. When I was finished, he would refute, argue, try to convince me that it never actually happened. Everything would change between us after that. It was better that he didn’t know, better for both of us.
The ocean sparkled like millions of flashbulbs at a red carpet event. Soon, the afternoon sunbathers would show up and pollute the air with top-forty anthems, but for now, the only sound I could hear was the hiss of waves dragging across the sand.
I reached into my bag and pulled out the postcard that had been given to me by Weylyn all those years ago. The beach on the front of the card looked almost exactly like the one in front of me. I pulled my notebook out of my bag and wrote:
Canis Fellowship Admissions Committee,
My name is Mary Penlore, and I lived with wolves.
23
BOBBY QUINN JR.
After some serious digging, a hundred phone calls, and a little flirting with a seventy-year-old county clerk, I found the guy from the tornado video. His name was Weylyn, and he lived four hours north near Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I asked him to meet me at the Kitchen Sink on Route 10 at 11:00 A.M. Normally, I wouldn’t go to the Kitchen Sink sober—the food was only palatable beyond a certain blood alcohol level—but I could
count on not running into anyone I knew that early in the day. My buddies and I would sometimes stumble here on Saturday nights, scarf down three pounds of bacon between us, and flirt with Darla, our favorite waitress, who referred to us as the Duke Boys. “That makes you Daisy!” I’d say playfully.
“You’re only saying that ’cause you’re drunk,” she’d say as she refilled our coffees for the third time that night.
I picked a booth by the window so I would be able to see Weylyn when he arrived. I ordered my usual bacon and hash browns from a waitress who wasn’t Darla and nervously sipped on my coffee while I waited for him to show. Several excruciating minutes later, I began to have second thoughts. This was by far the most harebrained idea I’d ever had. If my dad found out, he’d probably have another stroke. On the other hand, if it worked, I might finally be able to get him to admit that I wasn’t a total screwup. I didn’t even need him to be proud of me, just a simple maybe you’re not hopeless, after all would suffice.
It was almost 11:15 when I saw a man climbing out of the passenger side of a badly dinged Honda CR-V in the parking lot. He must have hitchhiked or something, because he pulled a duffel bag out of the trunk, then walked back around to the front of the car to thank the driver. I guessed it was probably Weylyn by his white T-shirt. No one wore white to the Kitchen Sink because the booths were covered in a shiny, gray film of lard grease.
The man I thought was Weylyn stepped inside the diner and lingered by the entrance, scanning the room. I caught his eye and waved to him. He waved back and headed in my direction. He was con-man handsome with shaggy black-coffee hair and a huge set of carnivorous white teeth. I stood to meet him, and he shook my hand. “Hi. Weylyn Grey. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Bobby Quinn. Mayor.” People usually laughed when I introduced myself that way, probably because most of the time I was wearing a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. That day, I was wearing one of my relatively more respectable flannel shirts with the sleeves rolled up to my elbows. Weylyn sat across from me in the booth as the waitress brought me my plate. She turned to Weylyn. “Can I get you anything, hon?”
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