The Line Tender

by Kate Allen

  DUTTON CHILDREN’S BOOKS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  Copyright © 2019 by Kate Allen

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  Ebook ISBN 9780735231627

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Jacket and interior art © 2019 by Xingye Jin

  Jacket design by Jessica Jenkins

  Version_1

  For my parents,

  Pat Allen and Cliff Allen

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1. Shark

  2. The Expert

  3. Scuba Diver

  4. Empty House

  5. The Storm

  6. Emergency Contacts

  7. Isopods

  8. Real Women

  9. Moon Snail

  10. Meatballs

  11. Clasperhead!

  12. Circle of Willis

  13. The Quarry

  14. The Golden Hour

  15. In Our Best Clothes

  16. Out the Window

  17. Fred’s Backpack

  18. Postcard

  19. All Biologists Want to Know Why

  20. Vern Devine

  21. Company Lunch

  22. Chinese Shoes

  23. Sookie Steps In

  24. Road Trip

  25. The Presence of a Lady

  26. Interconnected

  27. Dr. Robin Walker

  28. Gin Rummy

  29. Lobster Dinner

  30. Stronger

  31. Invitation

  32. Sharks Can’t Digest Hair

  33. The Field Guide

  34. Darkroom

  35. As Fluid as the Fish

  36. Ping

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.

  —Rachel Carson

  1. Shark

  The morning the great white came to Rockport, my best friend and I were sticking our fingers into the coin returns of every pay phone in town. We averaged about two dollars a day during the summer. Most days we cashed in for candy.

  “Seventy-five, eighty, eighty-five,” I chanted, sliding the nickels around in his palm. “We have a buck forty-five.”

  Fred shrugged and gestured with his head toward the store that sold gummies and penny candy.

  Sometimes I wondered if almost thirteen was too old to be cleaning out pay phones for candy, but no one was watching us and it was hard to turn down free money. We headed over to the Country Store and, like magicians, turned quarters and dimes into gelatin-based sweets.

  I pushed open the door to the shop, walking into an incense-and-candy fog. Fred immediately went for the candy section. He knew what I liked, so I let him pick. I wandered over to the postcard rack. As I spun it around, it squealed like a rusty playground swing. I scanned the column of familiar photos of Rockport, Motif #1 and Twin Lights, winding my red ponytail into a spiral with my finger.

  It was dark and cool in the shop, with the low wood beams and the painted floorboards. An older man dropped a coin into the player piano, which pushed out a quick song like the kind from a carousel.

  Fred dropped a plastic sack of gummies onto the glass countertop beside the register and I walked over to see what he had chosen. He’d gone with a familiar mix, heavy on worms and frogs.

  Mrs. Lloyd weighed the bag. The beaded chain holding her reading glasses glittered like a ruby necklace.

  “Zero point three-three pounds,” Fred guessed.

  The window on the digital scale read 0.34.

  “Not your day,” she said, smiling at Fred.

  As Mrs. Lloyd pulled the bag of candy off the scale, the jangly bell rang over the shop door and stopped abruptly as the door slammed against the inside wall. A boy I’d never seen before came running in.

  “Easy,” said Mrs. Lloyd, tracking the boy with her eyes.

  “Hey!” the boy cried, his flip-flops smacking against the creaky wood floors. He ran to another kid whose arm was elbow deep in a barrel of fruity Tootsie Rolls—a candy neither Fred nor I bothered with. Face-to-face, the boy put his hands on the other boy’s shoulders. I assumed they were brothers, same thick, dark hair and identical molasses-brown eyes.

  “HUGE SHARK!”

  The hard k sound bounced off the ceiling. I watched the boys and waited for the rest of the story.

  “What?” Little Brother’s eyes were as wide as peanut butter cups.

  Fred walked over to the boys. “Where?”

  “At the wharf! A fisherman dragged it in,” said Big Brother.

  The boy was spitting like crazy. He looked like a fifth grader. From his excitement, I would have guessed it was a megalodon. He was wearing a Rockport T-shirt, which meant they weren’t local, and they sounded like they were from the Midwest. I figured any shark was huge to them.

  “Where are you from?” I asked them.

  “Ohio,” said Big Brother.

  “You ever seen a shark before?” I asked.

  “Only at an aquarium.” His eyes were still wide.

  I looked at Fred.

  “Let’s go,” he said, snatching the gummies.

  “Go where?” I asked.

  “Shark. C’mon,” he said, taking off into the bright sunlight.

  He left the door wide-open, and I knew there would be a lecture from Mrs. Lloyd about air-conditioning costs, so I pulled the door shut behind me as I followed him out.

  “Okay, but we’re not staying out there all day,” I yelled ahead. We had plans to watch a movie at Fred’s house.

  Fred looked back over his shoulder for a second, though he never stopped jogging. I kept my eye on him and took my time, passing the Chinese import shop in the row of storefronts on the bottom floors of shingled houses, the ice cream shop covered in ivy, and telephone pole after telephone pole with a tangle of slack wires.

  It was hot. July hot. The last thing I wanted to do was hang around the wharf in zero shade. I didn’t care what the fishermen had dragged up.

  I made the turn onto Dock Square, past the candy store with the taffy pull in the window, and then the asphalt turned to granite slabs as I made my way onto T Wharf. It was the spot in town where fishermen unloaded the catch. A crowd of people at the edge of the harbor blocked my view. I looked for Fred.

  The smell was strong—not Gloucester Harbor strong, but
fishy. It wasn’t just the herring for the traps or the catch itself. There was an earthy smell that came from the algae-green wood and the water that stood still inside the breakwall.

  I spotted Fred and followed him as he wove his way through the people. It made me anxious and reminded me of trying to keep up with my dad at the Fourth of July parade. I struggled to stay close to Fred, following in his path. I heard his voice before I saw the shark for myself.

  “Whoa,” said Fred.

  I moved beside Fred, budging my way into the front row to see the shark’s body being pulled by the hoist from just below the dock. As the mouth came closer, my eyes went straight to the huge, serrated teeth, gnarly and sticking out at different angles. Rows and rows of white barbs poking out of the shredded gums, pink like strawberry taffy. My instinct was to move away, but I couldn’t help walking toward it until we were nearly face-to-face. I imagined that my whole body could fit inside, as if I were sliding into a sleeping bag, the jaws opening around my hips.

  “Is that a great white?” I asked.

  “I’m pretty sure,” said Fred. He pulled out his inhaler and took a puff.

  After his second puff, he said, “Your mom would know.”

  I nodded. My mother would have known.

  2. The Expert

  My mom was a biologist and the resident shark expert for Massachusetts. When I was a kid, though, I mostly thought she smelled like fish. No matter how hard she scrubbed, when I hugged her, the smell was always there. When I was older, I asked Dad how that had been possible. He said the scent came from dissecting sharks and whales, from cutting away layers of blubber and plunging her hands inside the cavities of marine creatures that were twenty times her size. He said that if she wasn’t up to her elbows in the guts of a newly dead animal, she was in the ocean, looking for live ones—salt and microorganisms flowing through her hair. Even if she hadn’t been near the water in days, we could still smell those fish oils in her skin. There was no doubt that she would have been called to the dock for this shark.

  Fred took another puff on the inhaler and looked at me. “Are you okay?” he said. “Your face is red.”

  “Just hot,” I said.

  A few men pulled the shark up higher by ropes and pulleys, and I followed the length of the shark’s white belly from nose to tail. It was probably as long as three fishermen stacked end to end, though it twisted as it was raised above the crowd, tied in three places.

  It was not like one of those great photos from the early 1900s where a crazy-looking guy posed with a good-looking mako hung from tail to nose in a straight line. This shark was so large that it had to hang over the water, away from the dock. Its body bent into a horseshoe. The rope near the mouth bound the shark like a rubber band around a fat wrist, separating the head from the rest of the body. The shark looked a little ridiculous at first, but the menace was inescapable if you kept looking.

  “We’ve seen it,” I said to Fred, staring at the shark. “Can we go?”

  “You know what this means?” he asked. Not that it mattered whether I knew or not, because he was going to tell me anyway.

  “What?” I asked.

  “The field guide!” he said with wide eyes, like a strawberry-shaped, wobbly goldfish.

  The field guide was an extra-credit project for science class that was due in September. Signing up for it was Fred’s idea, and I agreed to help, knowing I’d probably need a little cushion in case I bombed a test during the year. Fred did the writing. All I had to do was provide the illustrations, and I could draw as well as Fred could explain taxonomy.

  There was one rule about the field guide: We had to see the specimen with our own eyes to include it. So far, we’d come across a black-capped chickadee in Pigeon Cove and a spotted salamander in a rainwater pond in the woods. That was about the best we could do on land, until we were staring at the great white shark.

  While Fred’s brain went straight to the field guide, I couldn’t shake my mom. I imagined her on the dock, between us and the shark, sizing it up before figuring out how she was going to lay it out on the ground.

  “What are they gonna do with it?” Fred asked.

  “Good question,” I said.

  Laughing, the fishermen in orange waders emerged onto the wharf from the docks below. I knew one of their laughs right away.

  “It’s Sookie,” I said, taking a deep breath.

  Sookie was a fourth-generation Rockport fisherman and he was a good friend of my parents’, except he hadn’t come by the house in a long time. Still, standing on the dock, he looked like the same man I’d known my whole life. He wore mirrored sunglasses and his brown hair was sun-bleached. Sookie had a reddish tan, not a golden tan like the kind the beachgoers had. He was sweating twice as much as I was.

  Lester, Sookie’s deckhand, was at Sookie’s side in matching orange pants. He was seventeen and hung out with Fred’s older sisters.

  A crowd of other fishermen and spectators circled around them, and I knew from the handshakes and back slapping that Sookie had caught the shark.

  “Why would he want to catch a white shark?” Fred asked.

  “I bet it was an accident,” I said.

  I broke away from the crowd and walked into the mob of people surrounding Sookie.

  “Sookie!” I yelled.

  His head turned toward my direction. He patted someone’s back and moved to the edge of the mob where I stood. Fred was right behind me. Sookie pushed his sunglasses onto the top of his head. His eyes were wild.

  “Lucy! What do you think?” he said, pointing to the shark.

  “It’s enormous,” I said. “What happened?”

  “We were fishing for cod and it got stuck in the net.”

  I winced. “Yikes.”

  “What do you mean, ‘yikes’?” he said. “It’s a huge fish.”

  “Well, it’s kinda useless now, right?” I asked.

  “Yeah, what are you going to do with it?” Fred asked.

  “I thought we’d let it hang for a few days. Keep the tourists off the beach,” said Sookie.

  “You really should think about calling a biologist,” Fred said.

  Sookie hesitated for just a moment. “Lucy’s mom was the only one I knew,” he said. “I would’ve called her from the boat.”

  Sookie looked at Fred first and then at me. He pulled my ponytail gently with his fishy hand. I looked him in the eye. I always liked hearing someone else remember my mom.

  “Sook!” yelled another fisherman, holding up a camera.

  “Gotta go,” he said.

  I looked at Fred. “Are you ready to go now?” I asked.

  “There’s your dad,” he said, pointing.

  He was still in his work clothes. Dad was a detective, so he didn’t wear a normal police uniform. He looked like a regular guy in khakis and button-down shirt. His hairline was wet with sweat. His Minolta SLR hung from a strap around his neck. He’d probably been on his way somewhere else too. I yelled to him three times, but my voice was absorbed into the horde. He settled on a spot in the mob and looked up at the shark, dangling above the crowd, as he raised the camera to his face. I read his lips: “Sweet Jesus,” he said, as he smiled like a kid.

  3. Scuba Diver

  After posing for our picture with the shark, Fred and I rode our bikes slowly in the street beside Dad. We climbed up the big hill in the center of town. The sidewalks were clogged. Everyone was excited about the huge, dead shark hanging at the wharf, but all I wanted was a cool shower and something to drink.

  To my right, we passed the bookstore and art galleries. Gaps between the buildings revealed alleyways that led right to the ocean. The flashes of blue on our walk were subliminal reminders of the sea that circled the shops and houses in town.

  “Dad, what if you saw the great white in the water when you were diving?” I asked. “What would
go through your head?”

  “A great white? Panic.”

  “What was it doing off Rockport?” I asked him.

  “Looking for food, I guess.”

  “Isn’t it too cold for them?”

  “No. Great whites swim as far north as the Gulf of Maine,” he said.

  “Will there be more?” I asked. I knew the answer. I’d heard it from my mom and from Fred.

  Dad shook the loose change in his pockets, the way he did when his brain was elsewhere.

  “Dad?”

  “I’m sorry. What?”

  “Will there be more sharks?” I repeated, slightly annoyed.

  “Sure. Where there are seals, there are whites.” He must have sensed the storm brewing in my stomach because he added, “But they’re still rare up here.”

  I slapped every parking meter with my palm, as we biked past Front Beach.

  “When I was a kid, if you brought a seal’s nose to the police station, the clerk paid you fifty cents. Fifty cents a seal,” Dad said.

  I gasped. “Why?”

  “Because they attracted sharks, and people thought they made a loud mess of the harbor.”

  “That’s terrible,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Did you ever kill a seal?” I asked, knowing the answer was no.

  “What do you think?” he said.

  “I told Sookie he should call a biologist,” Fred said. “I don’t think he’s gonna do it.”

  Dad was quiet for a moment, and he gave the change in his pockets another shake. “Sookie’s a stubborn guy. He only hears what he wants to hear,” Dad said. “I bet somebody’s already on the way.”

  Fred looked sad or angry, I couldn’t decide which.

  “Tom, could you talk to Sookie?” Fred asked.

  “Me?” Dad said. “I don’t think that would have any effect.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?” I asked.

  “A while ago,” he said in a crabby tone that suggested we were done with questions.