Lanny showed up early — turned out Fred gave him the whole damn day off — but Jake hadn't gotten his sorry ass over to the hacienda until nearly four.
And the tides waited for no man. No Keasling. This whole idea was hopeless. The sea snake in her head was already squeezing. This was Sandy Keasling now: a middle-aged woman whose sharpest feeling was pain. Who drove a pathetic whale-watching bucket, who despaired of ever driving a real ship again. Who’d lived in fear for five years that The Shitstorm would blow back in. Who needed to get back in control.
All she needed now was one quick visit to the past.
She watched Jake drain his beer and toss the can and then stretch his arms high over his head. Still wiry but nursing a beer belly that edged over the waistband of his flowered green board shorts. Lanny wore shorts just like Jake’s, only in blue. But Lanny kept his T-shirt on, the one with the Sea Spray logo — he was so damn proud of working that bucket. She watched her little brother on his knees, trenching the bulwark line like his life depended on it.
There was a time, thought Sandy Keasling, when the Sea Urchins thought they ran the sea.
“Sea Urchins!” she bellowed. “Let’s get this thing built!”
Jake belched.
She leveled a glare at him.
He turned and strolled up the beach.
She panicked, then, because there was nothing at that end of this beach but the cliff that held the cave.
Jake never went there anymore because he was too cool for caves. Lanny never went there anymore because she’d told him it was now her place. But back when the three of them were the Sea Urchins who ruled the beach along with the sea, they had their headquarters in the cave. Now, it was her jail. Not that she physically forced Joao Silva to stay there but she’d sure played mind games on him. By moonrise last night the diver was rooted like a crab in its crevice. Nothing was going to pry him out. She fed and watered him, she loaned him her Kindle and her iPod, she even emptied the goddamn porta-potty. She plied him with tales of cops and illegal immigrants. She learned a few more words of Portuguese but he still went stupid when she questioned him, asking what that red thing was he’d had in his dive bag, that thing that was missing — that thing Lanny stole. Silva just shrugged. Nao compreendo. Before bed last night she’d brought him the vinho he’d begged for — cheap rotgut — and it made him weepy instead of confiding. She’d come back this morning to start again but he was sound asleep: in her down sleeping bag, on her air mattress, goddamn drooling onto her down pillow. Water bottles and half-drunk wine and foam food containers scattered about. She’d said his name. Joao, wake up. He snored. Suddenly she'd had enough of him. Ready to strangle him.
Ready to strangle Lanny too, because this was all Lanny’s fault and like always—always—she was the one who had to clean up his mess. So now she had a Lanny problem, and a Joao-nao-compreendo-Silva problem lodged in her cave.
And then, staring at the snoring stranger in her cave, she'd had a brainstorm. Let Silva snore and stew all day and she bet he'd be more talkative when she brought him dinner. Meanwhile, she would tackle the Lanny problem. She knew just how to get Lanny to talk.
Raise the Sea Urchins from the past.
Only now, watching Jake heading up the beach toward the cliff, she saw what a mistake she’d made. Yanking Jake into the past, where going into the cave was as regular as the tides.
She bellowed, “Jake!”
Jake looked back and gave her the Sea Urchin high sign: raised hand, fingers splayed, shake of the wrist.
She didn’t buy it. He might as well have flipped her off. “Get your ass back here!”
Now Lanny was off, running to his big brother, grabbing his arm, yammering, and Jake just stood there laughing.
Sandy wanted to cry.
But then suddenly the two of them were working together, digging through a pile of kelp, coming back with ropes of thick-knobbed bull kelp. They dumped it at her feet.
Lanny said, panting, “For the moat.”
She smiled, weak with relief. “Better than perfect, Lanny.” She turned to Jake. “What did he offer you?”
“Ten bucks,” Jake said.
She met her brother’s greedy eyes. “I’ll pay half on that new tandem kayak you want. But I want to see the bill. Deal’s off if you take Lanny’s ten.”
Jake stroked his chin. “Ooookay, let’s see what we’ve got on the table. Ten bucks, payable soon as Lanny gets his butt up to the house and finds his wallet. Versus half the cost of a tandem, payable only if Sandy approves the bill. What if I choose the pricey Necky model? She gonna haggle? History says, yes she will. Trot out the spreadsheet, bitch about the debit side, moan about the cost of living. Course that’s why the elder Keaslings — may God rest their dear parental souls — made Sandy executor of the estate. Left Lanny and me beggars. Left us to suckle at the teat of big sis.”
Lanny went red.
Sandy hissed, “Knock it off, Jake.”
“Okay.” Jake smiled. “I’ll take your offer.”
She wanted to kill him. She really did.
Jake turned to Lanny. “Go back to trenching, little bro, gotta hold back the tide. And I’ll get my ass in gear and shovel us up a big pile of sand so we can build ourselves a fucking fine castle. And Sandy will start with the corner towers. Just the way we used to do it. All for one and one for all, three for three. Sea Urchins rule.”
Lanny raised his hand and gave the Urchin high sign.
They set to work.
Within fifteen minutes the sand was knee high and the trench was calf deep.
Within half an hour Sandy’s migraine had vanished.
Sun warmed their backs and sand coated their legs and when they licked their lips they tasted the sea. Sandy built the four corner towers, forming first with the bucket and then cutting with the bread knife, carving the tower tops into chiseled battlements. Jake was the excavator, digging the moat over which Sandy built the bridge, packing sand onto a length of bull kelp. Lanny followed, squeezing out handfuls of wet sand so that it dripped onto the towers, onto the bridge, growing drip by drip into fantastical spires.
There was a time, Sandy thought, when this was all that was needed.
Back when Dad ran the fishing boat and Mom kept the books and tracked the market price, and Sandy and Jake and Lanny in their primitive Sea Urchin souls pledged their lives to the sea.
Jake finished the moat and began to sculpt the gargoyle, to guard the castle.
Sandy carved the best staircase of her life, angling down the south tower to meet the interior courtyard.
Lanny ran out of drip sand and Jake left off sculpting to take Lanny’s bucket into the surf, refilling it with sloshy sand.
“Want me to do drips on your gargoyle?” Lanny said.
Jake said, “Want me to do drips on your head, doofus?”
Lanny grinned.
Sandy hadn’t seen Lanny so sunny since before they’d rescued the diver. Just look at him now. She decided to let him build the whirligig tower. She'd planned to build it herself, as she always did — she carried the ball in her pocket to roll down the whirligig ramp — but this time she would entrust it to Lanny. He'd be beside-himself-thrilled. And then, after they finished here, after a reward of grilled cheese sandwiches — what else? — Jake would get bored and go home and she and Lanny would come back and sit on the sand and watch the tide come all the way in. Just like old times — before The Shitstorm, before Lanny took to stealing and lying. Old times, when trust was unbreakable. They’d sit here content and she’d be the sun in Lanny’s sky again. And truths would be told.