The Troop

Afterward, Kent had stepped into the ocean to clean his hands and face. The cold water pinkened his fingers. Even at that hour, the mainland was a flurry of light and motion. He cupped water in his hands and walked back to the cooler, wiping his chocolaty fingerprints off the handles.

On the way back to the fire, he’d found Shelley lingering beneath the leaves of a weeping willow. Kent curled a fist and settled it under Shelley’s chin.

“Say anything and I’ll kick the shit out of you,” he whispered.

“If you say so.”

Kent took a step back. Something in Shelley’s placid expression nearly made his knees buckle.

“You know what, Kent?” Shelley said. “Your breath stinks like shit. Like cotton candy that someone took a big piss on. Can’t you smell it?”

Kent could smell it. The treacly-sweet stink with its ammoniac undertone nearly made him gag.

“I mean it, Shel. Keep your lip zipped.”

Kent plodded back to the fire and struggled into his sleeping bag. But by morning, despite his devouring the cooler’s entire contents, the hunger pangs had already returned.

NEWTON GLANCED at his Timex again: 9:02.

Stanley Watters’s skiff should have puttered up to the wharf a half hour ago. It was not like Mr. Watters to be late. Before his retirement, he’d been the logistics coordinator at the local FedEx depot; the time of day was practically imprinted in his blood. Watters’s favorite parlor trick was to look at his bare wrist when you asked what time it was—Watters never wore a watch—and give it to you to the very minute. Freaky. He might be a minute or two off nowadays but still, for him to be a half hour late? That was a rare occurrence indeed.

“You think something happened?” Newton said. “Mr. Watters is what, seventy?”

“Do you think we could swim back?” Ephraim said.

Newton scoffed. “Are you nuts? With these currents? They run the Atlantic Ironman Triathlon off Baker Beach.” He pointed in the general direction of North Point. “I went with my mom once to watch it. Guys were staggering out of the ocean. Their teeth were bashing together so hard I could hear it. Most of them puked, they were so exhausted. And those were athletes. Grown-ups. And it was only a thousand meters. From here to shore is three miles.”

“There are sharks, too,” said Shelley.

Their heads swiveled. Shelley’s vulpine face was pointed toward the slate-gray water, his expression unreadable.

“Oh, bullshit,” said Ephraim.

Shelley’s scarecrow shoulders joggled up and down. “Whatever. My uncle’s seen plenty of sharks. He said one time a couple of oystermen caught a great white down around Campbellton. It swum into Cascumpec Bay after a storm. He says when the oystermen slit its belly open, two full wine bottles slid out onto the dock.”

Shelley’s uncle was a lobsterman, so it could be true.

Ephraim made a fist and slugged his thigh. “Could we make a raft or something?” He pointed at Oliver McCanty’s boat. “Or try to get the motor working on that? What do you think, Max?”

“Why wouldn’t we just chill out?” Max said. “He’s only a half hour late—”

“Almost forty-five minutes, now,” Newton said.

“It’s probably nothing,” said Max. “Maybe he’s constipated.”

This earned a laugh from the others. Ephraim said: “Old man Watters is a total tight-ass.”

Thunderheads advanced. The boys watched the sky, enrapt. Thunder rolled across the water and echoed back on itself: a sound that was somehow feathery and alive. The clouds shaded purple to jet-black and then whitely incandescent, creased with lightning, billowing up like huge lungs inflating themselves. They spread across the water like a determined battalion. Rain washed down from the leaden clouds to tint the air beneath them a misty gray.

“Maybe old man Watters knew a storm was coming,” said Max. “Maybe that’s why he hasn’t shown up.”

Newton said: “Why not just come early then? He knew what time to come. Why leave us out here with a big storm coming through?”

“We don’t know it’s a big storm…” Max said uncertainly.

Soon they spotted the silvery shroud rolling across the water—which itself had taken on a brooding hue. It stretched over the ocean in a menacing canopy, pushing back the blue sky and blotting out the sun. The water bloomed deep red.

“Shit, it’s bad,” Kent said thickly. “We have to take cover.”

They picked their way up the beach toward the cabin. Newton cast a panicky glance over his shoulder. The silvery pall was advancing at a terrific pace. Its contours had settled into a definite shape. A diaphanous funnel connected the water’s surface to the corpulent black thunderclouds above; it rocked side to side like a hula dancer’s hips.

A cyclone.

Newton recalled that one of those had touched down in Abbotsford a few years ago. It tore through the saltbox shacks lining the shorefront cliffs, smashing them to matchsticks. It picked up million-dollar yachts owned by rich American cottagers and flung them about like a child tossing his toys during a playroom tantrum.