A noise like a stick drawn along a picket fence disturbed the soft buzzing and the river’s murmur. Twelve-year-old Dylan whirled, along with his friend Billy Bergin. Ryan Daggert arced over the crest of the slope beside Mr. Thompson’s house, pumping his ten speed in low gear. The playing card clipped to the frame of the Schwinn Continental thrummed like a hummingbird on strong coffee. Ryan brushed close around the trunk of the massive oak that shaded half an acre of the backyard in the afternoon sun.
Buster, startled from his lazy recline, leapt up woofing. Near the bottom of the hill, Ryan leaned the bike in a slow, sideways slide, his uphill Chuck Taylor All-Star tennis shoe scuffing a long rut in the trimmed lawn. In a grind of torn grass, Ryan lay the bike down at Billy’s feet and stepped out over the frame. He punched his glasses up the bridge of his nose and smoothed his hair back in a single sweep Dylan always admired, though he’d sooner give up his Frank Howard card than admit it looked cool. It was Ryan’s trademark bike dismount and hair rake, doubtless practiced for hours on some quiet back lane.
“You’re gonna land in the middle of the river one of these times,” Billy whooped. Laughing, he pushed at Dylan, who snorted, “Idiot! You scare all the fish with that god-awful racket!”
Billy looked down at his hands, and mimed flipping over a judging card. “Russian judge says four point five, outuff a possible ten,” he said with a guttural accent.
Ryan ignored Billy, and addressed the meandering river.
“My partner’s Bill Gannon. My name’s Friday,” Ryan deadpanned. “We were working bunko out of Nash Street one steamy afternoon, when a call came in, claiming one Dylan Paxton and one Billy Bergin couldn’t steal a fish from the whole Wicomico, even with the aid of dynamite.”
“You know, Ryan, that thing on the bottom of your bike frame? It’s called a kickstand. It’s so you don’t have to be laying it down like that everywhere you go.” Billy checked his bloodworm bait, and flicked it back out into the sluggish current.
“For the ninety-fourth time, if I lay it down, I don’t have to worry about some yokel bumping it over and scratching the paint.”
Dylan rolled his eyes. Ryan’s bike was caked with dried mud. Clods of earth sporting brown grass clung to the axles on the “lay-down” side. Lisa Haggerty called the bike The Hobbitmobile, because she said it looked like produce from Frodo’s garden.
Billy and Dylan both rode three-speed stingrays, the bike of choice for most of the sixth-grade class at Crane Ridge Elementary. But Ryan loved his ten speed. It was fast, though not much good for the bike-jumps down by the quarry.
Ryan had tried “catching air” exactly twice over the bridge culvert and out into the woods behind the school. Both times Ryan had spent the afternoon in the infirmary. Mrs. Vactor warned him if he tried to jump the culvert again, she would confiscate the bike. Dylan suspected Ryan was glad of the excuse not to break his neck.
“Seriously, kids. Are you using those minnows on that string as bait?” Ryan chewed a piece of grass. “I mean, you got a knife small enough to clean those infants?”
“Funny yuck yuck,” Dylan grinned.
“You going over to the school later, play some catch or Five Hundred or something?” Billy flicked his rod, glancing at Dylan.
“I guess. I’ll see if James wants to come over too.”
“Ask him if you can bring his glove, if he doesn’t come with you.” Ryan and James were both left-handed, and James had the only lefthander’s glove. Ryan dug a stone from the caked bank and side-armed it skipping across the water.
“Hey! You just scared the last damn fish away!” Billy glared at Ryan. A bell tolled richly in the afternoon haze.
“Suppertime already?” Billy turned to Dylan.
“Too early,” Dylan answered, puzzled.
The bell tinged again. “Uh oh. Nana rang twice,” Ryan said, smiling. “What’s that mean?”
Dylan’s brow furrowed, and he slipped the limp worm off his hook and flicked it in the water. He clipped his hook onto his reel bar, and hefted his small tackle box.
“Two bell peals means come quick,” Dylan answered curtly. “See you guys up at school. Come on, Buster.” Dylan started up across Mr. Thompson’s yard toward Nash Street.
His brother James was sitting astride the top step of the porch, his arm resting on one bent knee. A lemonade glass dangled from his fingers. Buster loped up the steps, paced off a circle, and flopped down.
“Come set a spell, Dylan.” Nana patted the glider at her side.
Dylan set his fishing rod against the railing and his tackle box on the gray porch deck. He sat on the glider next to his grandmother, and smiled at the pitcher of lemonade sweating on the upturned milk crate. She poured him a glass. Buster lifted his head from his paws for a fraction before returning to dreams of bounding rabbits.
“Fishing good today?” Nana handed a glass to him, and he sipped, nodding yes.
“You let Billy take them all home again?”
“You know I hate to clean those things.” Billy was the third of seven children. Mr. Bergin drove trucks when Eastern Shore produce was moving, and drank when it wasn’t, so the fish would be welcome at the Bergin table. And Dylan really hated cleaning them. But he liked fishing with Billy.
Nana smiled briefly, looking from one boy to the other. James and Dylan might both be called serious boys. James was lean, despite his round face. Dylan was stockier with wide, swimmer’s shoulders. Most people, if they saw Dylan and James together, would see the resemblance. They both had crew cuts over high, intelligent foreheads, and the ruddy rounded cheeks of their Gaelic Northwest Ireland ancestors. There was a trace of those fierce, fragile island people in their deep-set, dark brown eyes. They were both good students, and avid readers, though James had not adjusted well to high school. They shared a devotion to boy’s mystery and detective stories. One or the other was likely to receive a Hardy Boys mystery, or Tom Swift, or Encyclopedia Brown book for their birthday, and it was not long before both had read it. The books often came in the mail a day or two before their birthdays, from their mom.
They liked to argue about the stories they read. “Anyone would know she was the murderer,” James might say, or point out a twist in the story as being too farfetched. “Tom Swift wouldn’t be all that great without his father’s money.” Dylan liked heroes, and James liked attacking them. Dylan liked the way James challenged him, Nana could tell, and the brothers were close, despite the difference in their ages. But sometimes James could be harsh.
“Nobody’s all good,” he would say to Dylan. “The sooner you get that straight,” he’d continue, tapping the side of his head lightly, “the easier it’ll be on you.”
Nana sighed. James and Dylan were sipping their drinks, watching her.
“Boys, I have some hard news.” Nana set down her glass with care. “I don’t know how to tell you in pieces, so I am just gonna tell you. Your mother—I guess she was real sick.” She placed a hand on Dylan’s arm. “I didn’t know. Even your father-” she glanced at James, pausing to catch her breath. “”Your father didn’t know until just a little bit-”
Nana gulped at her lemonade, her look a cross between anger and frustration. “She was real sick, and now…she is in a better place. Your momma has passed.”
A sound like an owl screech escaped James, and he turned his back on them, rigid on the top step, facing down the sidewalk.
Nana turned to Dylan. He looked dumbly at his glass. He had an idea he was supposed to be sad. He guessed he might be a little. He nodded, as if he understood. But he didn’t.
Nana was funny about pictures. She kept photos of her family in the front room–ancient black and whites of smiling young people, most dead now. Dylan’s