Page 154

“Want to walk instead?” Trying to sound teasing. Trying to sell the concept, as we used to say. “Big boys like you can probably walk, right?”

No! Roll us, roll us!

“Will you be good if I take you on the beach?”

Yes! Roll us, roll us!

Then, chilling me all the way to my core:

Roll us on the beach, Daddy!

“Okay,” I said, thinking Only one boy ever had the right to call me that, you little shits. “Here we go.”

We cut across the courtyard in the hot August sunshine—squeak and squeak and squeak. I was sweating like a pig inside the sweatshirt already. I could feel it rolling down my sides to the waistband of my jeans. I pushed the stroller along the boardwalk, the slats rumbling under the wheels. Easy enough so far. The beach would be harder. I might get bogged down. I’d have to stay near the water, where the sand was packed and wet. That might work. It might not.

I rolled the pram through the gazebo. I picked up the snake pole on the way and placed it horizontally between the stroller’s wide handles.

“Having fun, boys?”

Yes! Yes!

“Sure you don’t want to get out and walk?” Please, no.

Roll us! Roll us!

“Okay, but hold on. Little bump here.”

I eased the stroller down the single slumped step between the gazebo and the line of beach naupaka and seagrass. Then we were on the sand. I had the slope to help me as I pushed the stroller down to the harder pack at the edge of the water. The buckles of the galoshes jingled.

“Wheee!” I said. My face was running with sweat, but my mouth was dry. “Having fun, boys?”

Yes! Roll us!

I was beginning to be able to tell them apart. That was Joe. Jake was silent. I didn’t like that.

“Jake? Having fun, big fella?”

Ye-es…

Didn’t like the edge of doubt, either. Something else not to like—they were separating from me. Getting stronger. More there. Some of it was the stroller, but some of it was me. I had opened myself to them. I had to. There had been no choice.

I turned north and pushed the stroller. Little birds—the ones I called peeps—strutted ahead of us, then flew. The galoshes jingled and splashed. The wheels of the stroller threw up tiny rainbows in the thin water where the Gulf gave way to the land. The sand was firm but still harder to push through than on the planks of the boardwalk. Soon my breath was rasping in and out of my throat. I wasn’t in bad shape, never drank to excess and never smoked at all, but I was in my seventies.

Jake: Where are you taking us?

“Oh, just for a little ride.” I wanted to stop, take a rest, but I was afraid the wheels would get mired if I even slowed down. “You wanted to go for a roll, I’m taking you for a roll.”

Jake: I want to go back.

That was more than doubt. That was suspicion. And Joe caught it from his brother just as I supposed he’d caught his brother’s colds.

Joe: Me too! I’m tired! The sun is too hot! We should have worn our hatties!

“Just a little fur—” I began, and that was when the snakes began to come out of the naupaka and palmetto. Big ones, dozens of them, flooding down to the beach. I hesitated, but only for a second—any longer and the stroller would have been stuck. I pushed them through the snakes and they were gone. Like the ones in the tub.

Jake: Back! Take us back! TAKE US BACK!

Joe: I don’t liiike it here! He started to cry. I don’t like the snakies!