Chapter 33
THE HARDEST SHELL OF ALL
“You know how to go clamming?” Ronan asks before the front door is even open all the way.
“Yeah, why?”
“I wanna go. Do you have the cage things on a pole that they use?”
“You mean a clam rake? Yeah, we have some out back, I think. And baskets and a gauge. But . . . I have a permit. You need a permit.”
“My father got me one. As a surprise. So I guess he wants me to learn clamming. So I’m asking you.”
I nod once, thinking about how serious he is. Even for him.
“Well?” he asks. “Are you busy?”
“I guess not.”
“Okay. Let’s go, then.”
We head to the cove just as the tide is going out. Holding the rake, Ronan looks like that famous painting of the farmers standing with a pitchfork. All serious.
“So what do we do now?” he asks.
“Follow me,” I tell him.
We wade out into the bay. The surface of the ocean separates the two worlds of hot air and cool water. The tide is moving, so the sand whirls around my feet.
I stop when the water is up to my knees and turn to Ronan. “Okay,” I say, pointing to the wire basket with a floatable noodle around the rim so it sits in the water, tied to me so it won’t drift away. “This is called the peck. When you catch clams, put them in the basket. Being in the water gives the clams a chance to spit out sand and gunk. They’ll be nice and clean by the time they’re ready to eat.”
I hold up the clam rake. “So you just take this and pull it through the sand like a regular rake. You’ll catch all kinds of stuff. Then just dig through to see what you have.” I grab ahold of the metal ring tied to the top of the rake. “This ring will tell you if it’s big enough to keep.”
I draw the long teeth through the sand, pull up a bunch of things, and dig through what I’ve got. I find two clams. “Here,” I say, “put this in the peck basket. It’s a keeper.” I pick up the second. “This looks too small.” It passes through the ring. “Yeah, not legal.” And I toss it out into the water.
“Why do we have to throw back the small ones?”
“They are young. Besides, they aren’t worth keeping anyway.”
A weird expression flashes across his face.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he says, suddenly moving around, digging here and there.
I follow him to the shallow water and help him. “Look for little bubbles; that means there’s a clam underneath. Try to feel for them with your feet, too. Bumps under the sand.”
I stand in a quiet spot and close my eyes. I take a step to the right, stand still, and close my eyes again. And then I feel it. The tiny little bump on the bottom of my feet that most people don’t pay any attention to. A hiding clam. I reach into the sand with my fingertips and pull it out. I can tell by the looks of it that it’s legal.
I walk over and drop it in the peck basket.
But Ronan isn’t having any luck. “I thought this was easy,” he says.
“Looking is half the fun.”
“I’d rather just bring home a bunch of clams.”
“A bushel. You bring home a bushel,” I say. “Not a bunch.”
His mouth is swung to the side. “Whatever. Bushel, then.”
“If you’re that impatient, head over there,” I say, pointing to an area of rocks to the side. “Grab a big rock and bring it back over.”
He drops his rake and runs.
“You can’t just drop things in the water, you know! They kind of float away!” I call as he goes.
Soon he returns with a big rock. “So?”
“Throw it at the wet sand. Then look for the bubbles.”
He throws the rock in the sand just in front of his feet. There are bubbles.
“Quick!” I say. “Dig ’em up before they go deeper.”
Ronan sinks his rake into the sand and pulls wet mounds toward himself. Then he bends over and pulls out two clams. Ronan pulling two clams out of the sand is like a pirate discovering a chest full of gold coins.
He runs around with the rock, darting back and forth, hitting the sand with it. Now I don’t even look for clams. Watching him is far more interesting. But he doesn’t seem like himself. He’s like a clamming machine, and as he catches them, he stuffs them into the pockets of his new black cargo shorts.
“Ronan. You can’t keep the clams in your pockets. They need to be underwater so they can spit the gunk out and clean themselves.”
“Relax. You don’t have to tell me what to do every second.”
Huh? “I’m just trying to help you. The clams are gross if they don’t get a chance to spit.”
“Why don’t you mind your own business?”
I stare for a few moments. “What is wrong with you? Why are you so mad?”
“Just leave me alone,” he snaps.
I head toward shore. “Fine. I will.”
He’s watching me as I scoop up my stuff and splash as I trudge away.
He comes up behind me. “I’m sorry.”
I turn.
“Hey, Delsie. Please don’t go.”
I stand silent.
“I got. A letter. From her. I got a letter from . . . my mother.”
“Wait. What? Ronan . . . how could your mom write a letter? That doesn’t really sound . . . Well, I don’t know . . .”
He sighs. “She didn’t die. I just said that. Because it’s easier than explaining.”
I can’t believe it. He has a mother, and he tells people she died?
Ronan’s voice reminds me of floodwaters. “She’s alive, Delsie. I’ve wanted to tell you. We live—well, lived—in Worcester. And then one day, out of the blue, she just sent me here.”
“Sent you here?”
“Yeah. Sent me here. She said . . .” His voice shakes as he continues. “She said she didn’t want me around any . . . anymore. That I’m too much trouble, and . . . I mean, I do get in trouble. I don’t know why. It’s just like sometimes my body and brain aren’t on the same team. But I never thought she’d . . .” He stuffs his fists into his pockets and drops his chin.
“I’m sorry, Ronan. She really said that? That’s awful.”
“She said it’s because I’m about to become a teenager. She doesn’t want one around. Too much to worry about, and she says I need a father to keep me in line.” He swallows hard. “She thinks I’m bad.”
“Ronan. You’re not bad.”
“Yes, I am. She sent me a letter.” His voice cuts. “Don’t you understand me?” He grows louder. “I was so happy when I saw her handwriting on the envelope. I thought it was a letter to say I could come home, but she said . . .” He kicks at the water. “She said that she hoped I was doing okay but it was all for the best.” He kicks the water again and takes a swing at nothing. Then, crumbling, he falls to his knees. “For the best?” he asks, pressing his arms against his stomach and curling forward. “What’s for the best even mean, anyway?”
Something in the water gets his attention. He sniffs and stares for several seconds. Finally, he asks, “What is that? It looks like an alien helmet.”
I lean over. “That’s a horseshoe crab. Cool to actually see one. We find their shells on Seagull Beach all the time.”
“Their shells?”
“Yeah. They shed their shells the way snakes shed their skin.”
“Huh. It would be cool to just shed something and swim away,” he says, crawling on all fours and then picking up the crab. He examines the horseshoe crab and then turns it over. Ronan watches wide-eyed as the horseshoe crab waves everything wildly. “This one is definitely strong,” he says. Then it bends into an L-shape and points its tail at Ronan.
“They are one of the oldest animals on earth,” I say, touching one of its legs. “They literally swam around with the dinosaurs four hundred fifty million years ago.”
“I love this thing!” Ronan counts the twelve legs with claws. “And what’s this?” he asks, wiggling his finger over a mound of what looks like dead grass in the middle of its many legs.
“That’s its mouth.”
“Sick.”
Ronan bends over and places it back in the water as if it could break. He watches it scurry away.
Just then, two boys swim over to it, and the shorter one catches the horseshoe crab and holds it up. “Cool!”
The taller one, laughing, says, “I wonder if you pull its leg off, will it grow back, like starfish?”
Ronan stands.
The taller boy reaches over and grabs ahold of one of the crab’s legs.
I had no idea Ronan could move that fast. Before I know it, he hits one kid and pushes the other. The horseshoe crab splashes into the water and swims away.
One of the kids pushes Ronan back and there is a bunch of yelling and swinging.
Just as Ronan punches one of the kids, a conservation officer who patrols the beaches arrives. “Hey! Knock that off!” he says as he wades into the water and pulls the kids apart.
The two boys, one of them with a bloody nose, point at Ronan and tell the officer that Ronan started it.
“Did you?” the officer asks him.
“Yes, I did! But they were going to pull one of his legs off just for fun. Who does that?”
“Ha!” says the taller one with a bloody nose. “He says the crab is a his. What a freak!”
The smaller boy yells, “And who hits someone for just picking up a horseshoe crab?”
“You weren’t just picking him up. You were going to hurt him!” Ronan yells back.
The kid points to our clamming rakes. “You’re here clamming. What’s the difference?”
“Actually, there is a difference,” the officer says. “You’re not allowed to harvest horseshoe crabs here. It’s against the law.”
Ronan and the boys look at each other like they’d keep fighting if they could.
The officer gives the bloody-nosed kid some paper towels, telling him he’ll be okay now that the bleeding has stopped. Then he checks our clamming permits. Finally, the officer takes out his phone, saying he’ll have to call the police. That Ronan can’t just hit someone in the face because he doesn’t like what they’re doing.
The Yarmouth police take two minutes to show up. They ask Ronan a bunch of questions and call his dad. Then they put Ronan in the back of the police car.
It makes me feel terrible to see Ronan taken away like that. Especially when the other two boys are watching and laughing.
Ronan shouldn’t have done what he did. But he loves sea animals so much that I can understand how seeing the boys’ cruelty, after getting that letter from his mom, was like lighting the fuse on a firecracker.