Chapter 24
August
Ohh, what do you do to this grass to make it feel so wonderful?
I was in my hedgehog form, in grass that wrapped around me and brushed between my prickles, cool, soft and still smelling of the dew that had burned off earlier. A lazy day in shifted form was just what this hedgehog needed.
Brown eyes appeared in front of me as my mate poked his snout through the grass to peer at me with the tall, green blades framing his face.
You mean besides occasionally remember to cut it and turn the sprinkler on when it gets too hot? he thought back as he crept around me on his belly, bushy rear end sticking up from time to time. That’s about it, unlike my Pops, who actually puts lawn conditioner on his.
They make conditioner for lawns?
See, that was my point exactly, what the fuck, right? But apparently, they do.
It’s not much different from hair, I guess, so I can see where some lawns might need it if they’re all patchy and scorched in places, or covered with crabgrass, but this is like high-end luxury grass right here.
Luxury grass?
Sighing, I eased myself onto my side, rolled onto my back, and let my tiny little feet fall to the sides so my belly could feel the warmth of the sun shining down on it.
Yup, I thought, content and happy to watch the clouds drifting overhead. Luxury grass.
Well, my pampered little hedgehog, how shall we enjoy our luxury grass today? Would you care for a romp down the trail to the beach or shall we lie here, watch the clouds and dream the rest of the morning away?
Is that how you spent your time as a kid, daydreaming and watching the clouds float past?
Nah, not with all the older siblings I had, someone always had practice for something or was taking a lesson, and the fish market always needed runners to bring things in from the outdoor booths, so even when I wasn’t being dragged along to something one of them was doing, one of my aunts, uncles, or older cousins who worked on the docks would bring a few of us there to ferry things around when they needed us to.
So not much down time to be found.
Nope, but I never minded. Getting dragged along and told to sit quietly meant I could sketch without any interruptions, and going to the docks meant that Old Mr. Pilsbury let me sit with him and his wife at his booth when I wasn’t needed. He made all kinds of wooden bowls, platters and cutlery, while his wife sold some of the best soup I’ve ever tasted, every kind of chowder, bisque and creamy seafood soup you could imagine, including she-crab soup, which I absolutely love. She taught me how to make it and her garlic and Old Bay biscuits, which complement it beautifully.
Was Mr. Pilsbury the one who taught you how to carve?
One of several who took the time to show me different techniques and the proper way to hold a tool for a desired effect, as well as which tools were best for the type of carving I wanted to do.
It sounds like how things were back home. Just about everyone in the community was willing to share their skills when someone asked them. It was the best way to learn. It just sucks that as the elders pass on, the new elders have less interest in sharing. Too many skills are being forgotten that way.
Or hoarded.
Yeah, that part sucks the worst, especially when the people who gather a bunch of skills decide that the only way they’ll part with even a shred of that knowledge is if you pay them for it when we all know good and damned well they acquired it for free. Talk about spitting in the faces of those who took the time to teach them without asking for anything in return, the point should always be to pay those kinds of opportunities forward when the opportunity arises, not try and take advantage of someone.
If the goddess is kind, karma will teach them the lessons they failed to grasp growing up.
It just shocks me how many people treat life like a competition and won’t lift a finger unless there is something in it for them.
Fortunately, that sort never lasts long around here, Gregor assured me. Most times, they piss someone off within the first year and once that happens, the town sort of turns their backs on them and makes it known without saying that they’ve worn out their welcome here.
Has that happened often? I couldn’t help but think about Ever’s shop and the way business remained so poor that he was only open three days a week now.
Only a handful since I was a kid. Most people figure out right away if this is someplace they want to put down roots and be a part of, or if they need to press on to somewhere that would fit them better. The town leaders don’t take rowdy, disruptive, or destructive behaviors lightly, so they tend to levy fines some folks see as a little outrageous, but only because they are the assholes and idiots having to pay them. Hitting someone in the wallet seems to be the best way to make them see the light and either change their ways or kick rocks.
I wanted to point out that there were other ways of hitting people in the wallet without having to fine them because they’d screwed up, but Ever’s struggles at the shop and with Olly’s mom had already cast enough of a pall over our time together that I decided not to bring up the way the steady decline in business had made it so that Ever couldn’t even afford to advertise anymore and now relied entirely on social media to try and get people to drop in.
And still it wasn’t working.
Dammit. So not going to dwell on that today. Everything that could be done to get people in there Ever had already tried, with very little success. Antgate was still being talked about, especially by Mrs. Zebrowski, who vehemently denied having anything to do with those ants and could frequently be heard complaining to anyone who’d listen, that the shop was trying to blame her when she was the one who’d been given tainted food. I still didn’t believe for one minute that those ants had come from Ever’s shop, but without proof, it and the glaring photo evidence of the ants that had been shared all over social media, there was little we could do to convince the people of this town otherwise.
The place I did the most cloud watching growing up was the pond behind my family’s house. Gregor said, breaking up the thoughts that were threatening to derail our peaceful afternoon.
What did you do, float around on it and daydream?
Nah, if it was wet I had a fishing line in it, but when it was frozen, I liked to lie out on the ice and watch the sky get dark before a storm.
How did you not freeze your ass off?
Snowpants or fur, depending on the mood. Definitely snowpants if I was waiting for enough people to show up for a hockey game.
Still, how was that not cold?
I guess because I wasn’t thinking about it, I was more interested in the silent hush of being outside and watching the way the clouds clumped together and grew thicker right before it snowed. You know how it is, being in a house with so many people you couldn’t turn around without tripping over someone. Every bedroom had a different song coming from it, sometimes more than one, if a radio battle was going on. Pops flat out forbid televisions in the bedroom after my oldest three brothers got into a wrestling match over a remote and a bunkbed and a window got broken.
Okay, I can see the window, I said. Hard plastic against glass never has a very good outcome for the glass, but what happened to the bunk bed?
Have you ever watched professional wrestling?
With the costumes and the crazy characters and shit?
Yeah.
I like to watch from time to time. I don’t really follow it, or know who most of the wrestlers are outside of the few favorites I had as a kid, but yeah, I’ve seen enough of it to start picturing what happened to that bunkbed. Which move wrecked it?
A powerbomb off a dresser through the top bunk which wasn’t in the best of shape anyway, with the way they were always climbing it and jumping off it. I got to see that mess firsthand, from the doorway, right before Pops came in and bellowed the roof off the place.
So a window a roof and a bed had to be repaired I take it.
Laughter sang through our mind link, my giggles mixing with his chuckles as he pressed his snout to my head and nuzzled me. His damned nose was bigger than my head in these forms, and there was nothing I could to stop him from licking me.
Seriously?
Just wanted to see if you tasted like candy in this form, too.
And do I?
Yup, he replied before licking me again.
Do you mind? I had a shower this morning.
But you taste so good.
How could I do anything but squirm at that point since sunning my round belly also meant I was stuck on my back. He knew it, too, and licked me one more time before resting his head on the ground beside me. A head that was pretty much the size of me, with jaws he might have tried to pick me up in if I wasn’t pregnant. He looked like a miniature bear, staring at me that way, cuddly and fierce, and I squirmed until he took pity on me and gently nuzzled me until I rolled onto my side, my back to him.
Well, that hadn’t been part of the plan.
I squeaked, high pitched and irritated at being unable to see my mate anymore, and I kept on squeaking, too, right up until he ambled around so I could see him again, his lips peeled back in a winkle-nosed grin that left one upper and one lower fang exposed. My heart melted a little at seeing my wolverine smile with his claws extended, wicked sharp blades on the end of each toe that looked like he should have been using them to carve his sculptures, instead of tools.
So, what did you think about, when you were lying out on the ice, besides when the next hockey game was going to start?
Just, you know, stuff.
No, I don’t know, which is why I’m hoping you’ll tell me.
Well, sometimes I thought about what it would be like to live on a houseboat when I grew up, so I could sail all over the world and never have to think about leaving home because it went with me wherever I went. But then I’d start thinking about how much I’d miss Perriwinkle Cove and my family and, I don’t know, once I started going out on the boat regularly, I started to realize that spending all my time on one wasn’t really for me. There were too many things to consider, maps, tides, wind strength, the height of the waves, the weather coming in. I just like to be out there, the rest of that stuff, I just don’t have a head for. I’d have capsized my boat and gotten myself marooned somewhere the first time I got caught in a big storm and added another patch of gray to both my old man’s and my uncles’ heads by the time they found me.
Is your dad a captain, too?
Sort of, he’s my Uncle Wayne’s relief captain the same way my Uncle Curtis has his younger brother on board his vessel to be the relief captain for him.
But he has a captain’s license and everything, right?
Oh yeah.
So he is a captain.
Yeah, he is. He’s never wanted his own boat, but I think that’s just because he was always talking about retiring and opening a garage to restore muscle cars. Owning a boat would have meant a whole lot of responsibilities that would keep him out of the garage and away from that dream, not that he’s ever restored more than the ’73 Challenger he drives around in, but he keeps swearing ‘one day’ and we keep nodding and saying ‘yeah, Pops, one day’ knowing he’ll never leave my uncle to run that boat alone.
Are they brothers or is your uncle your uncle through marriage.
Uncle Wayne is my father’s fraternal twin. As far as I know, he’s never had any desire to do anything that doesn’t involve being on a boat and far from shore. He and Pops run a long line crew and primarily fish crab, while Uncle Curtis runs ten-pot strings of lobster traps off his boat. We run a four-person deck crew with my cousin Storm as our deck boss and man, does she run as tight of a deck as my Uncle Curtis does the wheelhouse.
Sounds like that boat is her legacy.
Because it is. She’s the only one of Uncle Curtis’ kids with seawater in her veins. Her siblings all work on shore, either at the fish market or at the cannery helping with offloading. They’ve got no desire to be out there on the water, while she’s the one with a houseboat she lives on at the marina, so she’s never far from the boat, or a chance to fish if the mood hits her, and it does, often.
Do you fish, too, I mean, for fun?
I do.
Really? Could you take me sometime? I haven’t been since I was small.
Of course. Fall is when I do the most fishing, and our whelplets will be here by then. We could take them to Mom and Pops’ place and let them enjoy some grandparent time while we’re fishing. If we catch enough, Pops and I will fry them up and serve them for supper or toss them on the grill with one of his marinades and some vegetables.
I’d like that.
And I know they’d love to have us visit, especially when they can spoil the little ones.
Will your Nana be there, too? She’s a riot.
Of course she will, Grandpa, too, they live at the bend of the pond about a half-mile from my folks’ place.
Oh, that’s right, you did say that your family owned every house around that pond.
And much of the shoreline up that way, too.
Next you’ll tell me they helped found Perriwinkle Cove.
Because they did. Both sides. And we’ve been here ever since.
Did you ever think about leaving, outside of sailing away on a houseboat?
Naaah. I like it here, even now that people have started taking my lack of a resting bitch face for an excuse to strike up a conversation.
I wouldn’t say it’s gone-gone, but I have noticed more smiles than scowls over the past few weeks.
How can I not smile, when I have you?
Be still my fluttering little hedgehog heart, what was it Aunty Clara kept saying about him being a keeper? He really was, every last fanged, furred inch of that wolverine was who I wanted to wake up to every day for the rest of my existence, and I fully intended to savor every moment fate gave me with him.