When I got home, I cleaned the goat pen, cuddled the babies, scrubbed out their trough, and basically did everything I could to avoid driving practice. This time, Mom went with me and gave some good tips, like checking blind spots and coasting between the gas and the brake to make the ride less lurchy. She put new seat covers in the truck, taped a piece of plywood over the holes in the floor, and put a rag rug on top. It made driving a lot quieter, and I wasn’t distracted by the blurry road whooshing past my feet. She filled the gas tank too.
“Newton. Where did that come from?” I didn’t even have to look to know she was talking about Huxley.
“I found it. I’m looking for the owner,” I said. There hadn’t been any bear claimers yet.
“It’s a bear. Right?” She turned around and looked at it closer. “I saw the flyers in town, but I guess I should have looked at them closer. I don’t understand.”
“It’s just a coincidence.” I told her how we’d found it. “Maybe it’s helping me not be afraid of bears anymore.” I pulled up in front of the hardware store, and she hopped out to cover someone else’s shift.
“If the owner doesn’t show up, get rid of it. I don’t like it,” she said.
“Okay, Mom.” I went back to Echo Beach, half hoping to see Izzy, or a good sunset. I saw both. I walked straight toward her under a pink sky, as if that was the plan all along.
“Hello,” she said and eyed my goat-hair-covered shirt. Hair and dust covered my shorts too. I smelled like a goat. It’s a good smell, like sweet grass, but I understand that other people don’t like it as much as I do. I tried to stand downwind, but she was out of luck.
“I’m haunted by goats,” I said.
“Ghosts?” Izzy’s eyebrows went up.
“No…goats. My mom makes goat cheese and soap. She trades it with neighbors and sells some to a few restaurants. She works at the hardware store too. You’ve probably seen her if you needed lightbulbs. We have nine.”
“Lightbulbs?”
“Goats. Their fur gets all over.” I brushed at my shirt, but only a few strands floated away. Izzy tried to catch one and smiled.
“What are their names?”
“Margie, Liz, Greta, Isadora, Beauregard, Fozzy, Buster, Speckles, and Porridge. Fozzy, Speckles, and Greta are babies. Margie is my favorite. This is hers, probably.” I brushed my shirt again.
“I think goats are pretty cute. Like, way better than sheep.”
“Do you want to visit them?” I asked. “They’re great, but they poop a lot.”
Izzy nodded immediately. “You can’t scare me,” she said.
I laughed and looked away, but the air glowed all around us.
Izzy noticed it too. “Someday they’ll find out that the glowing light that happens on days like this is because of a great microscopic bird migration,” she said.
“What?”
“That’s what makes the air between the dirt and the clouds seem healthy and rosy like baby cheeks,” she said. “The only clue that the birds are there at all is the sun reflecting off their tiny feathered wings.”
I squinted around our heads, as if I could spot one. Microscopic birds were more interesting than misty haze. “Maybe we should follow them when they leave. Wherever they go.”
“We won’t be able to see which way they’re heading, so we’ll just stay in the light,” Izzy said. “Or we can stay here and just appreciate that we’re part of their migratory path.” She faced the sun.
I didn’t want her to see me staring at her, so I counted anemones on the rocks. They look like flowers, but if something touches them, they close up into slimy green donuts.
“We made some noodles with that the other day, and it tasted pretty good.” Izzy pointed at wet green strips floating between the rocks.
I crinkled my nose. “Isn’t that algae?”
“Seaweed is algae. We eat it all the time. There’s sushi, obviously, but they add it to foods for nutrition too. That’s sea lettuce, and it’s tasty.” She looked like she meant it, but it didn’t make me want to try it. Izzy gasped. “Did you see that bird? I’m not kidding. A big one between the trees. It was such a bright green. It looked like a parrot!”
“It could be—a bunch live here, maybe a dozen?” I said. “They were part of an island zoo a long time ago. These are probably their grandbirds. It’s more than one kind. If you see the whole flock, they have different colors and sizes. They steal goat food, and they love the cherries from the tree by my window.”
“Oh yeah. My grandma told me about the aviary,” Izzy said. Murphy Aviary had a ton of birds in the resort days. Lots escaped, and some—mostly turacos, flamingos, and parrots—stayed on the island.
Izzy and I walked along the water toward the marina.
“They come really early to my house,” I said. “It’s usually still dark. And they make a ton of noise.”
“Like ‘Polly-want-a-cracker’?”
“No, screeches. They all screech at once. Each one is a sheet of metal grating over a pipe.”
She laughed.
It’s not funny at five a.m. when I haven’t slept well.
“They freak out the squirrels that live in the attic pretty bad.”
“You have squirrels in your attic?”
“Yeah, they’re nocturnal. Only on Murphy Island. Nobody knows why.”
Some kids would ask what nocturnal meant, or change the subject, but Izzy talked about other night creatures, like aye-ayes and bush rats. We passed the part of the beach where Ethan and I had found Huxley, but except for kelp and sticks, it was empty. I tried not to limp. I staggered a little but played it off like I was looking closer at a bright red brittle star in a tide pool.
“Maybe the parrots would talk if you taught them,” she said. “Pet parrots can learn over a thousand words.”
I asked her how she knew that, but she shrugged. “All right,” I said. “I’ll train them. Next year you won’t be able to cross the island without chatting with a dozen parrots.”
She smiled and buried her feet in the sand. When Leti does that, I try to tip her over, but I left Izzy alone.
“I heard there was a bird act at the festival,” she said. “Maybe somebody trained them.”
“I doubt it. Will you be here for that? It’s different, but it’s usually fun.”
“Maybe. I saw it once when I was little. My grandma told me so many stories about performers on the island.” Izzy put shell bits into her sweatshirt pocket. “Want to meet here on Sunday? We could try to train a parrot. It’s cool that they don’t fly away from the island.”
“I’m sure some do.”
She frowned, and I wanted to make her smile again.
“Want to come over and feed the goats instead?”
“Yes,” she said, and the whole world kept glowing.
The teachers had a meeting, so there was no school. Leti woke me up in the morning right after I dreamed that the bear jumped on me and I screamed. But I still couldn’t sleep in.
“Shhh, Newt. It’s just me.” She patted my leg so gently, I could barely feel it. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, sorry.” I held my hand against my chest like it could calm down my heart.
“I’ve heard you before. Dreaming. I don’t mean to, but it comes through the wall.” Leti took a step closer. “Is it awful?”
“It’s not so bad.” I smiled at her. “Is Mom gone? Do you need something?”
“She’s still here. Dad’s on the phone for you. He wants you to help haul some kayaks to the cove, because Musky Barnes has a dead battery.”
I rolled down the Rooster’s windows so it could fill up with low-tide air and blow away the last of the dream feeling. As I drove to Musky’s, I told Huxley all the gritty dream details. I tried making up some other endings, like Carlos said. I skipped breakfast, so in my newest version, the bramble vines turned to spaghetti and I ate my way out. I parked and Musky spotted the bear when I opened the back doors.
“Hey, I’ve seen that fella before. Whose is it?” He pushed a kayak into the truck. He takes tourists for zero-emission bird- and whale-watching trips around Murphy and nearby islands.
“I found it on the beach,” I said. “Do you remember where you saw it?”
“Seems like someone used to keep it near the water. We passed it in the kayaks. I love bears.” He shrugged, like he owed me an apology. He slid another kayak past the silver cupboards. Musky wasn’t kidding about loving bears. He usually wore a bear suit to pass out candy on Halloween.
“Ethan thinks the bear can grant wishes.” I rolled my eyes. I wanted Musky to laugh, but he squinted at Huxley.
“Because of the wishbone in his hand? Did he wish on it?”
“Yes.” He pushed another kayak in and climbed up to the bear as quick as a rogue wave.
“I wish…I wish that I’d find my ring.” He gave the bear’s shoulders a squeeze and nodded. “Is that it, Newt?”
“I guess so,” I said. He climbed back out of the truck. I moved some of my books and things to make more room for the kayaks. Everybody had a wish ready to blurt out. “You don’t really believe that will help, do you?”
“You never know, right?” he said. “I’ve been looking everywhere for a month. Brenda is gonna kill me. I lost the ring. We had ’em made special for our wedding thirty-two years ago.” Musky held up his bare left hand. He told me how he put it on a chain around his neck so it wouldn’t get messed up while he sanded a chair. The clasp must have broken, because it was gone when he finished sanding.
“I hope you find it,” I said. “But I’m not sure the bear will be any help.”
“Let’s look at the facts….Maybe there’s something funny about that bear. And it never hurts to hope.”
I nodded, but neither of those were facts. Hoping I could live with my grandma wasn’t getting me there. Hoping that I’d get a bike for my birthday hadn’t worked. Neither did hoping that somebody on the island would act normal.
“Newt, before you split…” Musky trailed off. He rubbed his no-ring hands on his jeans. “Listen, your dad told me that you’re still having a hard time from what happened last year. I don’t know much about bear attacks, but I know about bad stuff.” He didn’t say what, but Musky fought in the war.
“I’m all right,” I said.
He smiled and crammed three more kayaks on top of the others.
“No, you’re not. And neither was I. I woke up screaming nearly every night after my third tour. I made some changes. We left San Diego and moved here. Brenda got the boats, and I started paddling. Started talking about it too.”
It felt like there was a thread, like a strand of barely there spiderweb from him to me. It made it both better and worse that we were in the Bad Stuff Club. He’d been watching the trees while he talked, but now he looked right at me with sharp gray eyes.
“If you hold on to the fear, you’ll never make it through. I served with guys who made it out but they’ve gone dark.” I leaned back and the thread broke. My stomach ached.
“It’s not the same,” I said. “They enlisted. I never signed up for…what happened. Thanks, though.” He’s a hero, and I’m the kid with scars.
“I know, but it can be better.”
“People always ask if I’m okay,” I said. “But I don’t think I have the same kind of okay as them anymore. They just want me to say I’m good so they feel better.”
“I know, Newt,” he said. “Just remember—nobody’s okay, and we’re all okay.” I could only take short breaths. He slapped the side of the truck. “Brenda will meet you at Fitz Beach and you can drop the kayaks there.”
I could feel the tears coming, so I started the truck and got out of there as fast as I could.