by Spain, Laura
“Holy cow,” Will said, pulling up. They’d come far enough out that the ocean rose to Will’s waist and above Harlow’s bellybutton. The cold saltwater surged high against them, causing the boys to bend their knees and dig in their heels. The dark spot floated away, as if hesitating, then rushed forward on the next crashing tide, growing large and solid before their eyes, a writhing mass of tentacles.
Harlow and Will screamed in unison as the creature rushed past them and landed up on the beach. The tide receded, but the creature remained where it was, quivering and exposed in the bright sunlight.
“Shit,” Will swore. “Shit fuck shit.”
Harlow shuddered, suddenly cold all over. The thing on the beach was a dark, dark red, like a bloody scab after it’d dried for a few days. Will turned to look at Harlow, wide-eyed and pale, his lips purple from the cold water.
“You see that?”
Harlow nodded slowly, eyeing the thing. Will smiled.
“First one there gets to keep it.”
Harlow blinked, stunned by the suggestion. The idea of anybody owning something like that.
“Go!” Will shouted and started running toward the shore. Harlow paused a moment, still alarmed, before following after, his shorter legs pumping furiously against the surging water around him, the loose sand sinking beneath his sandals. The incoming tide rushed in and knocked him off his feet. Harlow let it take him, paddling as he kept his eyes locked on his brother’s back. The day seemed brighter now, the sun stronger. Saltwater filled his mouth, itched inside his nostrils, and roared through his ears.
By the time he’d regained his feet, Harlow saw Will pulling up as he neared the creature, forgetting about their race. Harlow ran to his brother’s side. He set his hands on his hips, breathing hard.
“Quiet,” Will murmured. “You’ll scare it.”
Harlow slowed his breathing, trying to make it quiet. The sea creature was watching them from its spot on the shore, a tidal pool its round body filled almost perfectly. Approximately the size and shape of a small boulder, the creature had a face that took up most of it body: two red, cloudy eyes set beneath hooded lids, no nose, and a small slit for a mouth. Beneath its face, sprouting beneath it body like vines, were about a dozen wriggling tentacles.
“Must be some kind of squid,” Will said, bending over to get a closer look. “Might be from Japan.”
Harlow coughed up some saltwater and pounded on his chest.
“Doesn’t look like any squid I ever seen.”
“Yeah, well. You haven’t seen Japan, have you? You don’t know what kinds of things they’ve got over there.”
The creature tilted its round head, watching them with mild interest. Harlow noticed deep gouges on its round body that oozed pinkish water.
“You see those cuts? I think it’s hurt.”
“Duh. That’s why it’s not trying to get away. It wants us to help it.”
Will stepped back and started walking along the base of the cliff, looking for something while Harlow stayed put, eyeing the creature and making sure it didn’t make any sudden, freaky gestures. Its cloudy red eyes reminded him of the time they’d driven across the desert in Nevada, all that red and purple dirt.
Will returned from his search with a stick of driftwood about three feet long.
“I figured out what it is,” Harlow announced. “It’s a plentaple.”
“Plentaple?”
“Yeah. It has plenty of tentacles.”
Will snorted and knelt over the creature, offering it the driftwood.
“Alright, plentaple dude. Would you like this stick?”
The sea creature didn’t move. It was hard to tell if it was looking at them, the driftwood, or at nothing at all. It smelled like salt and fish and rotten seaweed, like everything else that came out of the ocean.
“Hey,” Harlow said, bending over to look into the creature’s eyes. “Do you want us to help you?”
It blinked, slowly, for the first time. Its eyelids looked tough and thick, like lizard scales. Harlow looked back at his brother.
“Do squids have eyelids?”
Will shrugged and waved the driftwood in front of the plentaple as if he were teasing their cat. A seagull swooped near them, gave the creature on shore the once-over, and rose screeching into the air. Harlow shivered and noticed how cold he’d gotten standing in the brisk wind in wet clothes. He took the stick from his brother and set it on the ground in front of the creature.
“Okay. If you want us to help you, grab this stick. If you don’t want any help, don’t do anything and we’ll leave you alone. After the tide comes in, you’ll be able to rise up and float back into the ocean.”
“Har—”
“Shhh. Let it think.”
More seagulls noticed the beached sea creature, swooped to investigate, and rose again screeching in alarm. Waves crashed out on the breakers at the mouth of the cove, one after another. Harlow felt the hairs on his neck and forearms turning prickly. This was unlike any other day at Breakneck Cove, he realized. This would be a day he’d remember until he died.
“I don’t think he’s—”
One of the sea creature’s ropy tentacles rose from beneath it and reached toward the stick of driftwood. The tentacle looped around it gently, coiling, and held it fast while the creature slowly blinked its cloudy red eyes. “No way,” Will whispered, dropping to his knees. Harlow looked from the stick of driftwood to the plentaple to his older brother, the world and all it contained spinning beneath him. He would not have been surprised to look up at that moment and see the sky full of blazing comets, all falling to the earth like drops of rain.
2
Harlow stayed with the sea creature while Will returned to the house to fetch something to carry the plentaple with. The sun had risen far into the sky, swinging around from behind the cliffs and warming the entire cove. The tide had also risen but the creature remained rooted to its little pool, simply bobbing upward with each incoming wave, as if it were nothing but a piece of giant kelp with eyes. Harlow could feel his skin burning beneath his summer tan, but he didn’t care—he was focused on the bobbing creature and cliff top, where his brother would soon reappear.
The plentaple closed its eyes. Harlow wanted to pat it on top of its baldhead and reassure it that everything would be fine, but he held off. The watery pink stuff was still oozing from its wounds, though the flow had slowed to a trickle. Harlow wondered if that was the sea creature’s blood or what and how much it could possibly have left inside it. He also wondered if it was lunchtime yet and if his brother was screwing around back home, eating sandwiches and chips without him. He tried to keep his mind from running away from him, like his mother always said happened when he got too excited, and closed his own eyes. He could feel the tide rushing in across the backs of his legs, pausing, then dragging back out again, sucking the sand from between his toes. He could hear the seagulls squawking and the wind droning like a thousand mosquitoes.
“Harlow.”
Harlow rubbed his eyes and pried them open to the light. The blurred and distorted image of his brother pulled together on the beach. Will was holding their mother’s tin washtub by his side, looking serious.
“We better hurry up and get back for lunch,” Will said, tipping the bathtub onto its side and using it to scoop up seawater. “It was, like, eleven when I left the house.”
“Sure,” Harlow said, remembering their mission. “We’re going to carry it in Mom’s washtub?”
“Yeah, but not too far.”
“Up the stairs?”
“Heck no. That’d take us, like, ten hours. We just need to get in a safe place where it can heal without, you know, predators and stuff.”
“Like sharks.”
“Yeah. Sharks.”
Harlow looked back toward shore and scanned the cliffs.
“The secret cave?”
“Bingo bango. You win a million dollars.”
Harlow smiled and grabbed one end of t
he tub, helping his brother scoop more water and seaweed. Once they’d filled the tub about a third full, they carried it toward the sea creature and tipped it toward the plentaple in what they hoped was a welcoming angle. Harlow grabbed the free end of the driftwood and gave the stick a shake.
“Okay, buddy. We’re ready to help you now.”
Will snorted.
“You think it can understand English? It’s an ancient squid, dork.”
“I don’t know. Maybe it can.”
Harlow gave the stick another shake, causing the creature’s tentacle to shake along with it.
“C’mon, man. Hop into the tub and we’ll take you somewhere safe.”
“Yeah,” Will said, lifting his end of the tub a little higher. “And then we’ll all drink black cherry sodas and play poker.”
The sea creature’s eyes slowly rolled from the boys, to the stick, and to the washtub tilted in its direction. The tide rushed in and the creature floated higher, churning sand beneath its body. The boys steadied the tub, digging their feet into the ground, and watched in astonishment as the sea creature floated without further coaxing into their mother’s washtub, its tentacles unfolding beneath it like strips of cloth as it settled in and closed its eyes.
Will’s jaw fell open as he looked across the tub at his younger brother.
“It worked.”
Harlow nodded and puffed his cheeks out, using both hands to hold up his end of the tub as they started marching toward the cave. An overlapping of rock in the cliff hid the secret cave from direct view, giving the appearance of an uninterrupted cliff wall. Behind the shielded opening ran a gap roughly ten feet deep and five feet across and then came the cave itself, a dark, circular opening too small for a grownup to easily fit through.
Will took the lead when they reached the cave, walking backward into the cave’s opening while Harlow struggled to hold up his end of the tub, his arms and wrists burning from the effort. The sea creature, well-braced above its nest of tentacles, remained motionless as water sloshed about it and spilled over the tub’s sides. During their trip across the beach the plentaple had turned around in the tub three times, muddy red eyes searching, before facing Will and settling in.
It wanted to see where they were going.
“Harlow, hold it up higher.”
“I am.”
“Higher. Hold it higher.”
Harlow gritted his teeth and lifted his end of the tub a little more, but you could tell it was tipping in his direction. The tunnel was narrow at the opening, like the neck of a bottle, but the walls pulled back about twenty feet in and led to a small room. When they got to the room, they set the tub down and stepped back, sighing in relief. “Man,” Harlow said, flexing his fingers. The sea creature bobbed inside the tub, red eyes shimmering in the dark like a cat’s. Harlow peered back down the tunnel toward the light outside, noticing how the cave smelled like dirt and water.
“So we leave him here?”
“I guess,” Will said, chewing on his bottom lip. “We can’t bring him back to the house. Mom and Dad will just make us throw him back into the ocean.”
Harlow knelt beside the tub. He wanted to touch the creature, but it didn’t really look liked it wanted to be touched.
“Or maybe they’ll call a scientist.”
“Yeah,” Will scoffed, “to dissect him. They’ll slice him up like a turkey and figure out all his glands and stuff.”
Harlow winced—he hadn’t thought of that.
“But what do we feed it?”
“We can bring some stuff down from the house. I think we’ve got shrimp in the freezer. Anyhow, the important thing is we brought it inside, where it can rest without worrying about sharks. Once those wounds heal, we’ll drop it back into the ocean and watch it swim away.”
“Promise?”
Will nodded. “Sure, dude. I promise.”
* * * * *
The boys passed the rest of the day in a haze. They felt sluggish and dreamy, as if the household world around them was no longer exactly real. They did their chores, played Risk, and decided to wait until the next morning to return to the secret cave and feed the sea creature, which both agreed hadn’t really seemed that hungry at all. They went to bed early, so worn out they could hardly brush their teeth.
When Harlow woke the next morning, his father was standing over his bed, watching him. Bright sunlight filled the room—it was well past dawn and the house felt empty and quiet.
They were going into town for breakfast, his father announced.
Harlow could go down and play in the cove later.
3
Harlow and his father left the house as soon as Harlow was dressed. They took the pickup into town, which was five miles down a winding stretch of blacktop that cut through a robust forest of evergreen and pine before joining up with Highway 101. Along the way, they passed the farm that sold sweet cherries and the other farm that sold sweet cherries. Three trucks and one van passed them, heading in the other direction, and Harlow’s father waved to the driver of each one. Harlow, still half-asleep, felt too groggy to wave at anybody.
The boy rolled down his window and leaned his head out the door, hoping the wind would wake him up. His father whistled along to the radio, which was playing so quietly you had to try hard to hear the words. Looking up, Harlow noticed that the passing green treetops framed a bright blue sky, as if there was a strip of water floating above the highway itself. A deep river.
Harlow pulled his head back into the cab and sat up straight.
“Did Will go to the cove this morning?”
“Nope,” his father said, eyeing the rearview mirror. “Your mother took him into Eugene with her.”
“Eugene?”
His father nodded and continued whistling. They stopped at an intersection, looked both ways, and turned north onto Highway 101. Harlow considered asking for more details about his brother’s trip, but realized none of the answers would really matter—whatever was going on, he and Will wouldn’t be going down to the cove until later that afternoon, if then.
Somehow, though, the idea of the plentaple sitting in the dark cave, alone and unfed, didn’t bother Harlow much. It was tougher than it looked, he bet. Much tougher.
“You hungry?”
They’d started passing the strip-malls that lined the outskirts of town.
“Yeah, I’m hungry.”
“Linda’s?”
“Yeah. That’s cool.”
“Well,” his father said, “as long as it’s cool.”
They passed a drive-thru coffee stand, a tobacco shop, the grocery store, and the real estate office where his parents both worked. Most of the local businesses sat either on the highway or right off it, with houses further back. There was no school in town—Will and Harlow had to ride the bus thirty minutes each way to get to school during the year. Linda’s Diner was on the highway, too, and when they pulled into the parking lot they took the last spot.
“Busy, busy,” his father said, shifting the truck into park and turning off the engine. “The tourists like their breakfast.”
Harlow popped open his door and dropped out of the cab onto the pavement.
“They like everything.”
* * * * *
The diner was crammed. They had to stand awkwardly in the entryway for ten minutes, waiting for somebody to finish their breakfast and leave. Harlow had never seen so many people in the diner, or so many people eating so slowly. He felt as if everyone in the room was watching them, the two jerks without anywhere to sit. Finally an old married couple stood up from a corner booth, the man smacking his gums while the woman wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. Harlow and his father watched the couple approach the entryway and stepped aside to let them pass. A minute later they were seated in the old folks’ booth with two laminated menus on the table between them.
“What are you going to get, Harley?”
“Don’t know.”
His father looked up from his menu,
frowning. William Kells had brown hair and brown eyes, just like Harlow and Will. It was their mom, Janet, who looked like the odd duck out with her blond hair and blue eyes.
“You feeling okay, Harley?”
“I guess.”
Their waitress returned, handing out ice waters and pouring his father a cup of coffee. Looking past the waitress, Harlow noticed a man sitting up at the front counter dressed in a long, dark blue coat. He was reading the paper and drinking tea, with the tea kettle sitting by his elbow.
Harlow pointed at the man.
“Hey, Dad. What kind of coat is that?”
His father turned in the booth and looked over his shoulder. “That’s a pea coat. They used to wear them in the Navy.”
“Looks really warm.”
“It probably is. It’s made of wool.”
The waitress, who’d turned to look as well, tapped her ordering pad with her pencil. “That guy’s been sitting at the counter all morning. I don’t know how he stands it in here. I’ve been sweating like a cow.”
Harlow’s father laughed and smiled at the waitress, who was young and sort of pretty, with purple makeup on her eyelids.
“Must be an old timer, huh?”
“I guess. I’ve never seen him in here before, though, and he doesn’t look that old. Maybe forty.”
The smile on his father’s face faded and his eyes dropped to the table. He ordered the biscuits and gravy and Harlow ordered bacon, flapjacks, and a chocolate milk. The waitress left and they sat in the booth without speaking, his father slurping his coffee. The pea coat man at the counter turned on his stool and looked over the room. He had curly red hair and a neatly trimmed beard and mustache, also red. His gaze fell on the corner booth where Harlow was sitting. Harlow didn’t blink or look away. He just kept on looking back at the pea coat man, stuck like he’d been pinned down.
After what felt like forever, the man turned back around to his tea and newspaper.
“How’s your summer going, Harlow? You having fun?”
Harlow studied his father—his father never asked him how anything was going. Around their house things just went.
