Freddie and Tiny were out doing their time, chopping a forest full of wood for the third day in a row, when a periwinkle shell flew out of the clouds and pelted Freddie in the head.
“Muthahfeckah,” Freddie muttered and slammed his axe down on a piece of wood.
Another shell came hurling toward him. He swung at the clouds with his axe and yelled, “Come down here, you bitches! You want a piece of me? I’ll show you a piece of me, ya shit-eating birds.”
The sky filled with cackles, like God was slapping his thigh at the sight of Freddie blowing his top.
A gull dive-bombed his head and tore at his hair. A shrieking Freddie covered his head with his one free hand and continued swinging his axe overhead. More gulls flew at him. Tiny started throwing pieces of wood into the sky.
We hated those giant, hungry clouds of birds, but we hated Freddie and Tiny more for getting us all in trouble.
Except for Bobby, who was in the outhouse, we were all inside supposedly doing homework and chores. But we got up to watch the big show out the kitchen window. Freddie was swinging his axe around like some murderous fuck. “I’m wicked pissa sick o’ bein’ out here with all these birds shitting on me all the goddamned time!”
“It’s not the birds that’re causing the problem,” Cunningham said. He stood on the porch, the picture of calm. His voice sounded out low and deep, like a horn through the fog.
Tiny could always tell when Cunningham was about to deliver one of his living-like-a-homesteader-is-good-for-you lectures. “Astern, astern! Eye-roller coming on!” he would shout, like a rogue wave that only he could see was moving through Cunningham. But for now, Tiny was still throwing pieces of wood in the air at the gulls. Da Cunha came busting out the back door and beelined straight for Tiny, throwing him down in a hammerlock.
“It’s you, Freddie,” Cunningham said. “The birds are just birds. You’re the one choosing to see it as an attack. Life is full of people and things, situations that are going to dump shit on you. You can’t control that. You can only control your reaction to it. You have to learn your Pukwudgies.”
“Feck you and your fekwudgees!” Freddie shouted. “I’m sick of getting it in the ass from you pricks.” The gulls shrieked and laughed as they followed Freddie, who stormed off toward the water with that axe.
Da Cunha still had a grip on Tiny, who turned limp as he watched Freddie disappear. “It’s not fair!” Tiny sobbed. “It’s not fair. It wasn’t my idea to steal the boat. I didn’t want to take it. It’s all Freddie’s fault.”
It was true. It had been Freddie’s idea, but Bobby had tried to paint it like it was Tiny’s doing. Cunningham said it didn’t matter whose idea it was. They had stolen Second Chance together.
Da Cunha released Tiny, who rolled on the ground. Stubby appeared. He and Da Cunha went out toward the water, after Freddie.
“What’s a Pukwudgie?” DeShawn asked.
“Come on,” Cunningham said. “Time for a little island history lesson.” Cunningham gave Tiny a hand, helping him up. He wrapped his arm around Tiny, and led the rest of us up the hill. As we rounded the graveyard we could hear Freddie’s shouts of “Feck you, you feckin’ narc, Tiny!” go by on the wind.
The stone ruins of the leper colony looked like the bones of a giant that had been buried there and gradually unearthed. As soon as we passed them for the windward side of the island, the seagulls that had been trailing us dropped off. The wind started to howl and whine.
Ryan and Kevin went back cause they were on the evening’s cook shift. DeShawn gave me a look like he didn’t want to walk back with Ryan, who was nothing but a snot-nosed pain in the ass, or Kevin, who was bound to do something stupid like walk us off a cliff. Maybe he was also scared that Freddie was still running around with that axe. No matter. I could tell by the way Cunningham had his arm around Tiny that he wasn’t going to let him go anywhere. This walk was for Tiny. Maybe I knew it was also for me.
I put up my hands as we crashed into that girl’s car, but I could still see her face. Her body jackknifing. Her head and chest flying over the steering wheel, toward the windshield.
They call it safety glass because when your head hits the windshield it shatters but stays in place so that it catches you, like a net. If that fails, and you’re airborne, it crumbles like a cookie so you don’t get cut. But chunks of metal went flying. That girl didn’t stand a chance.
Sometimes I feel as if I’m made of safety glass, as if everything inside me has shattered yet somehow stays intact. But Chad was all cut up inside, like that broken beer bottle, which sliced up his face.
Everything would’ve been okay if I hadn’t handed Chad that beer.
Cunningham took us to a crumbling stone courtyard that gave us a little protection from the wind. Me, Tiny, and DeShawn sat down on some old stone benches where we could see the water and some lights from New Bedford, on the other side of the bay. Cunningham cleared his throat, like he had been practicing some speech he’d prepared.
“After the leper colony closed, a caretaker lived out here with his wife and two sons. They were the only people on the island. Then one of the kids killed the other. They said it was a freak accident, but anyone who knew this place and that family knew the truth. It was because of the Pukwudgies.
“The Pukwudgies were these little demons, no bigger than your hand, that made the Wampanoags’ lives miserable. They broke their arrows, bored holes in their canoes, and ruined their crops. It would not be inaccurate to say they were the Wampanoag equivalent to having a seagull defecate on your head, but as tiny as they were, they had great power over the Wampanoag giant Moshup and his sons.” When he said “giant,” Cunningham shot Tiny a meaningful look.
“One day, Moshup declared war against the Pukwudgies. He gathered his sons and set out across the Cape to hunt them down. At night, while Moshup and his boys were sleeping, the Pukwudgies snuck up on Moshup’s sons, blinded them, and stabbed them to death. Moshup buried his sons along the shoreline. He was so aggrieved he covered their gravesites with rocks and soil to create enormous funerary mounds. In time the ocean rose, carrying the mounds—and the boys’ remains—to here. All the islands here in Buzzards Bay—Naushon, Pasque, Nashawena, Cuttyhunk, and Penikese—are what remains of the great giant’s sons.”
The wind was threading its way through the holes in the stonework, curling itself around us, sliding across the backs of our necks.
“You mean we’re sitting on some Indian grave?” DeShawn asked.
Cunningham nodded. DeShawn shuddered.
In the silence, you could hear the ocean churning underneath the wind. That was when I heard what sounded like a small mewling thing. I looked around. DeShawn caught my eye and nudged his head over toward Tiny who started bubbling up like a hot two-liter that had just been cracked open. “She-she-she—”
DeShawn scratched at the ground with a rock. It smelled like fresh dirt.
“I didn’t mean to hurt her,” Tiny gurgled. “I loved her.”
Tiny was now going like a geyser. I just kept watching the water, the blackness moving out there, flashing like silver in the moonlight.
“I liked her so much.”
DeShawn looked like he wanted to dig his way to China with that rock, anything to get out of there. Then he suddenly stopped, like he remembered he was digging on someone’s grave. He sat on his hands and glanced away.
Tiny curled up in a ball and put his hands over his head, as if he was scared he was gonna get hit. Cunningham scooped him up like Santa Claus picking up some big fat kid who was crying because he wanted a new fire truck, only it wasn’t a truck Tiny wanted. It was a new life. That was all Tiny wanted. At age seventeen.