Marie rushed from the kitchen at the back of her shotgun house through the bedroom. She gave the travel crib a quick glance as she raced into the living room to get the door. Whoever was banging on it, however rhythmically, was an enemy of the peace.
She threw the door wide and even before registering who stood there she stage-whispered, “Be quiet!”
Then she saw who it was.
“Leon.”
It rained all day on the Gulf Coast of Arkansas. It was a steady, drizzling acid rain that kept 14-year-old Jaci from going down to the shore to see if anything interesting from the Gulf’s past had washed up.
A huge underwater net prevented most things from reaching the massive seawall, but once in a while something interesting from sunken Louisiana would get through a big hole or over the top and through the seawall’s little channels. The Coast Guard’s hazmat beachcombers notwithstanding, it was usually a local child who found it first and then ended up in the hospital for treatment of a wound or decontamination or both.
Jaci didn’t complain to her parents about not being able to go to the beach. She’d been told often enough not to go there anyway; she’d just get another lecture and no sympathy.