Chapter seven

By the end of the week, Addy had her second tenant, a retired fisherman, Chauncey Velasquez. He was originally from Mexico, where he had worked as a commercial fisherman for forty years before arriving in Deale two years ago.

A short, slight man, Chauncey wore a very thin mustache and had haunted black eyes. Addy liked him because he was quiet and kept to himself. He had also taken up gardening in his retirement, offering to do what he could, and Addy was thrilled to give him full run of the grounds. In return, she cooked his meals.

At first, Fern wasn’t happy that a strange man would be living in the house. But when she discovered that Chauncey loved to read about gardening, she quickly obtained him a library card, and he spent most mornings improving his knowledge while he sat in the screened-in porch. He said reading helped with his English, and Addy realized Fern liked nothing better than to educate someone. One afternoon, Fern brought Chauncey a book on topiaries, and he embraced the art form immediately, unleashing his artistic aptitude on the shrubbery.

Best of all, Tommy seemed to take the appearance of the new residents in stride. He said only that Fern looked like a seagull, her large mouth squawking all the time and her gullet constantly moving up and down. Chauncey resembled a frog—no chin and bulging eyes.

Fern, recalling Tommy’s outings as a child with her Audubon group, placed birding books in his bucket and sent them up to him, delighting him with the pictures. And when Chauncey pruned dead branches and cleared a path in the tree that obscured his view of the inlet, Tommy was ecstatic. For the first time since Addy could remember, she felt as though things were going right in her life. She kept her fingers crossed.

Tommy perched on the edge of his nest and tried to find stray animals in his territory. Something tan and blue caught his attention, and he stared at the bank across the inlet. The crane who had hidden in the weeds and mud behind the tractor was running along the waterline, his camera flopping around his neck. He headed straight for the water and jumped in, holding his camera up high like he was trying to keep it from getting wet. In a minute, the three men who lived in the house barreled down the hill after him. They dove into the water too, and Tommy fumbled for his binoculars to get his bird’s-eye view of what was going on.

The three men were gaining on the first one, and when the crane stumbled onto the banks of Cooper property, he went down and the pelican caught up. They tumbled to the ground, arms and legs kicking and hitting. Tommy was curious about this commotion, wishing he could circle overhead and see better.

The pines and tall grass were in the way, and he wondered what was going on. But if he was patient, he would know everything.

He would wait until the men went away, then see what had happened.

His grandma believed he never came down from his nest, but Tommy had kept it a secret. He didn’t want anyone to know he flew anywhere he wished, but only when everybody was asleep.

He was a night bird and liked the quiet and freedom of the dark.

During the day, too many people were around—nosy people who poked fun at him. At night, he could be himself.

These men coming into his territory upset him. He had never seen anybody on his grandma’s land except for the people she had known about. Once in a while, a fisherman on the water would pass by, trolling for smaller fish or crabbing. But this was new to him, and he stood as still as he could, waiting for the men to leave. After a while, the three men from the house walked real slow back into the water. The snipe stopped when the water was up to his knees, then turned around in Tommy’s direction. For a minute, Tommy was afraid he was looking right at him, and he held his breath. But pretty soon the man continued on his way, swimming back to the other side of the inlet.

Tommy waited, wondering when the crane would come out of the tall grass. He couldn’t possibly leave the area without Tommy seeing him. Either he would have to swim back across the inlet or come up onto Cooper property. Maybe he was playing down by the banks, like Tommy did at night a lot of times, hunting for signs that other creatures moved about on shore.

The longer Tommy waited, the more curious he became when the man didn’t show up. A car came down the road, and Addy parked in the driveway. She was carrying some brown paper bags, groceries of some kind, and he wondered what she would bring him for his lunch. All this activity had made him hungry.

A short time later, Addy brought a tray out into the yard and placed it on the picnic table.

“I made your favorite, Tommy,” she called up to the tree house. “I got the crunchy peanut butter you like, and grape jelly.”

Tommy drooled. It really was his favorite meal, and he came out of his nest and stood on the platform as she put his lunch in the metal bucket, then quickly pulled it up to the landing.

“I wanted to talk to you about something,” Addy said. “I saw Grandma’s lawyer again today, and everything’s fine. Tomorrow will be two weeks since Grandma’s funeral, and everything seems to be finalized and the house is ours. I’m going to move in and stay for good. I hope that’s okay with you.”

Tommy bit into his sandwich, thinking about what she said.

He missed his grandma something terrible. He felt all alone, with no one to talk to. Now that Addy was back, he wasn’t sure how things were going to be different. She had left him once, and she might do it again. He didn’t know if he could trust her just yet, and he might have to give it some time before he was sure.

“Tommy? Is that okay with you?”

“I guess so.”

“I also wanted you to know that there’s going to be workmen around here for a while, doing some odd jobs but mostly painting the house. You’ve seen them around lately, but you may be seeing more coming and going. But mostly it will be Dale Olson, and his little brother Jeff too. I know you like Jeff. I just didn’t want them to show up without you knowing about it. I didn’t want you to be afraid or anything.”

“Okay,” he said. He didn’t really like the idea of having strangers in his territory, especially after those men down by the water had been here. But having Jeff around would be fun. Maybe Jeff would help him figure out what was going on.

He took a gulp of milk and studied the tall grass and weeds where he had last seen the man in tan and blue, the crane. He still hadn’t come out, and Tommy started to think something might be wrong. It kept bothering him, and he wondered if he should say something to Addy. Only he and the three men who returned to the house across the inlet knew about this secret. Surely if something wasn’t right, they would have told someone.

He ate the last bite of his sandwich and finished his milk, putting the plate and glass back in the bucket and lowering it to the ground. If the man didn’t come out by tonight, Tommy would go down and see what was going on.

The sun had barely sunk before Tommy climbed down the ladder and followed his usual path to the shore, keeping low to the ground. He was scared when he approached the spot where he last saw the man, but when he got there, he was surprised. He didn’t see a thing. He looked real hard at the ground in front of him, with all the footprints and deep grooves in the mud leading up into the brush. Then he followed the trail where the weeds had been trampled down. Finally, he discovered something covered up about halfway by mud, grass, and a big tree limb.