to make sure everybody knows that for now, you are in my care. You will always be safe here. Do you understand, Dylan?”
“Yes’m. Does that mean he’s not my dad anymore?” He turned on the stoop, breath clutched, knees drawn up and pressed to his chest.
“Come closer. Keep your Nana warm, child. Your daddy will always be your daddy, ’til the day you die. Lots of things change in this world. Some of the change makes no sense if you muddle it a hundred lifetimes. But one thing can’t ever change—Sam Paxton is your daddy. Will be. Always.”
Nana squeezed him tight to her side, kissing him atop his head. “Time for another trim, already,” she mused, tousling his thick brown crew cut hair. He made a face.
“Today was just to make sure everybody knows, for now, I am your guardian.”
“Like an angel?” Dylan slipped under Nana’s arm, and watched a squirrel clamber across a snow-flecked branch in the front elm.
Nana’s mouth formed a happy Oh, her eyes shining.
“Yes, young Master Paxton. Like an angel. Your guardian angel. We will make do. And we sure do hope,” she said, now talking to the top branches of the naked elm, “that someday soon my son will be fit to be a father again. Make him well, if you’re awake up there, would you please?”
Nana and Dylan rose, turning to the door. She kept her eyes aloft for another moment. “Seems like you owe him that much,” she muttered.
“Sorry?”
Nana looked down at her grandson.
“Let’s go get us some cocoa, and maybe a cookie for you. And a biscuit for that silly dog.”
3 / The Hobbitmobile
Crane Ridge, Maryland 1966
The light from the midsummer sun shimmered off a cloud of gnats darting above the sparkling coffee-tinted river. The far bank looked like a living thing, a vivid emerald garden draped in a pulsing silver veil. Here, where the river skirted the north edge of Crane Ridge, it ran wide and slow, gurgling over polished rocks that poked close to the surface. Nana called this time the depths of summer, when butterflies and fireflies enjoyed their brief and spectacular reign, and the rich tang of a trimmed lawn was the sweetest smell under heaven.
A noise like a stick drawn along a picket fence disturbed the soft buzzing and the river’s murmur. Twelve-year-old Dylan whirled, along with his friend Billy Bergin. Ryan Daggert arced over the crest of the slope beside Mr. Thompson’s house, pumping his ten speed in low gear. The playing card clipped to the frame of the Schwinn Continental thrummed like a hummingbird on strong coffee. Ryan brushed close around the trunk of the massive oak that shaded half an acre of the backyard in the afternoon sun.
Buster, startled from his lazy recline, leapt up woofing. Near the bottom of the hill, Ryan leaned the bike in a slow, sideways slide, his uphill Chuck Taylor All-Star tennis shoe scuffing a long rut in the trimmed lawn. In a grind of torn grass, Ryan lay the bike down at Billy’s feet and stepped out over the frame. He punched his glasses up the bridge of his nose and smoothed his hair back in a single sweep Dylan always admired, though he’d sooner give up his Frank Howard card than admit it looked cool. It was Ryan’s trademark bike dismount and hair rake, doubtless practiced for hours on some quiet back lane.
“You’re gonna land in the middle of the river one of these times,” Billy whooped. Laughing, he pushed at Dylan, who snorted, “Idiot! You scare all the fish with that god-awful racket!”
Billy looked down at his hands, and mimed flipping over a judging card. “Russian judge says four point five, outuff a possible ten,” he said with a guttural accent.
Ryan ignored Billy, and addressed the meandering river.
“My partner’s Bill Gannon. My name’s Friday,” Ryan deadpanned. “We were working bunko out of Nash Street one steamy afternoon, when a call came in, claiming one Dylan Paxton and one Billy Bergin couldn’t steal a fish from the whole Wicomico, even with the aid of dynamite.”
“You know, Ryan, that thing on the bottom of your bike frame? It’s called a kickstand. It’s so you don’t have to be laying it down like that everywhere you go.” Billy checked his bloodworm bait, and flicked it back out into the sluggish current.
“For the ninety-fourth time, if I lay it down, I don’t have to worry about some yokel bumping it over and scratching the paint.”
Dylan rolled his eyes. Ryan’s bike was caked with dried mud. Clods of earth sporting brown grass clung to the axles on the “lay-down” side. Lisa Haggerty called the bike The Hobbitmobile, because she said it looked like produce from Frodo’s garden.
Billy and Dylan both rode three-speed stingrays, the bike of choice for most of the sixth-grade class at Crane Ridge Elementary. But Ryan loved his ten speed. It was fast, though not much good for the bike-jumps down by the quarry.
Ryan had tried “catching air” exactly twice over the bridge culvert and out into the woods behind the school. Both times Ryan had spent the afternoon in the infirmary. Mrs. Vactor warned him if he tried to jump the culvert again, she would confiscate the bike. Dylan suspected Ryan was glad of the excuse not to break his neck.
“Seriously, kids. Are you using those minnows on that string as bait?” Ryan chewed a piece of grass. “I mean, you got a knife small enough to clean those infants?”
“Funny yuck yuck,” Dylan grinned.
“You going over to the school later, play some catch or Five Hundred or something?” Billy flicked his rod, glancing at Dylan.
“I guess. I’ll see if James wants to come over too.”
“Ask him if you can bring his glove, if he doesn’t come with you.” Ryan and James were both left-handed, and James had the only lefthander’s glove. Ryan dug a stone from the caked bank and side-armed it skipping across the water.
“Hey! You just scared the last damn fish away!” Billy glared at Ryan. A bell tolled richly in the afternoon haze.
“Suppertime already?” Billy turned to Dylan.
“Too early,” Dylan answered, puzzled.
The bell tinged again. “Uh oh. Nana rang twice,” Ryan said, smiling. “What’s that mean?”
Dylan’s brow furrowed, and he slipped the limp worm off his hook and flicked it in the water. He clipped his hook onto his reel bar, and hefted his small tackle box.
“Two bell peals means come quick,” Dylan answered curtly. “See you guys up at school. Come on, Buster.” Dylan started up across Mr. Thompson’s yard toward Nash Street.
His brother James was sitting astride the top step of the porch, his arm resting on one bent knee. A lemonade glass dangled from his fingers. Buster loped up the steps, paced off a circle, and flopped down.
“Come set a spell, Dylan.” Nana patted the glider at her side.
Dylan set his fishing rod against the railing and his tackle box on the gray porch deck. He sat on the glider next to his grandmother, and smiled at the pitcher of lemonade sweating on the upturned milk crate. She poured him a glass. Buster lifted
