Read Online Sea Creatures by Susanna Daniel - Free Book Online Page B

coming, what exactly I’d be doing, and how much I’d be paid—but the way he avoided my eyes discouraged me from asking. I signed to Frankie: Let’s go .
    Charlie followed us downstairs and lifted Frankie into the boat, then dropped the garbage bag into the well. I stuck out my hand and Charlie shook it. “Friday?” I said.
    â€œBefore noon, please.”
    I turned to get into the boat, but he put a hand on my elbow. He spoke in a low, rough voice. “One more thing. The boy’s vest—it’s too big. He’ll need one that fits. Don’t bring him back otherwise.” He put up his hands to indicate the obvious: we were in the middle of open water. The current carried on beneath our feet. The porch and the stairs were nominally railed, the dock not at all. One could step off and be swallowed. In addition to a new vest, he would need more swim lessons.
    â€œGot it,” I said.
    Charlie handled the boat lines, then stood on the dock with his hands in his pockets while I started the engine. At the mouth of the channel, I looked back, and he was out of sight. The water was smooth and the sun high. In the distance, the Miami skyline was a low cluster of sun-washed buildings, insubstantial as watercolors. As we neared, the shoreline parted, revealing our path. I throttled down and peered into the dark hollows of the mangrove roots, searching for an ibis or heron or turtle to show Frankie. A footprint-shaped swirl rose in the water off the port side.
    Look , I signed to Frankie, pointing with my index and middle fingers from my eyes toward the water.
    He jumped down from the bench and I put the boat into neutral. Together we watched the manatee’s dome break the surface. Its molded-clay face appeared for a long moment, then it sloughed past, tail waving in slow motion.
    Â 
    BEFORE GRAHAM GOT HOME THAT night, Frankie and I sat at the kitchen table with the American Sign Language Dictionary . I’d gotten pretty good at understanding the ASL’s descriptions of signs, and the jellyfish one was a breeze. Frankie and I did it together: one palm out flat, the other open above it, then all fingertips brought together, then open again, in imitation of the creature’s movement in the water. For pineapple , we made a P at the corners of our mouths and jiggled a little, which Frankie found hilarious. His mouth opened wide and out came quick gusts of breath, a silent guffaw.
    Graham struggled through the sliding glass door and dropped his panniers. He frowned at the dictionary on the table; he’d lost patience with the speech problem. He opened his arms to Frankie, who scrambled up the trunk of his father like a monkey, then sat complacently in his arms without holding on, as if perched on a throne.
    Over dinner on the Lullaby ’s back deck, we exchanged details of the day. Graham had been assigned to a team that was developing a new kind of weather buoy, and he was in charge of improving the software that collected and transmitted the buoy’s data. I described our trip to Stiltsville. When I mentioned lunch, Graham cocked his head at me, his fork paused in the air above his plate.
    â€œWhat kind of job is this?”
    â€œI really don’t know.”
    â€œSo what’s he like, this hermit?”
    I thought about how to answer. “He’s intense, quiet. Kind of formal.”
    â€œIs he strange?”
    â€œNot particularly. Not that I could tell.”
    â€œSeems as if he’d be strange, living like that.”
    When he was done eating—Frankie relished snacks but at mealtimes became suddenly disinterested in food—he emptied the contents of his pockets onto the table, item by item. This was a habit he’d developed: he stashed things in his pockets during the day, and at night he presented them to us like treasures: stickers backed with lint, a tiny elephant from the toy box, a sugar packet from Lidia’s kitchen. Tonight, the