The Fires Beneath the Sea ebook - Lydia Millet (primary phonics .txt) 📗

And where there weren’t restaurants there were the friendly neighborhoods where kids played, their wind-worn saltbox houses covered in climbing roses, and behind them, next to the path, the rambling, overgrown green backyards….

The Cape, they taught in school, was just a big sand bar beneath their feet; it was young, in geological terms, only a few thousand years old, made of the silt left behind by glaciers. It would be gone soon, they said, like a pile of dirt in a puddle of rainwater—going, going, gone. …

But she was here now. She wasn’t going anywhere.

And she wished so much she could be sure, the way she used to be, that when she decided to go home again both her parents would be there waiting.

The feeling—which was almost like longing, or like a caught sob that didn’t go away—faded a bit as they went into the general store, stopping to tie up Rufus outside. It was one of their old haunts, being so near their house. She liked its dusty wooden floors, its dimly lit, homey atmosphere. When they were younger, and allowed to walk to the store by themselves for the first time, their dad used to let them pick up the newspaper for him. He would give them a couple of dollars extra to get snacks for themselves, along with the paper for him, two coffees, and a bagel with cream cheese for their mother.

Jax beat her over to the fresh baked-goods section, where they had muffins and donuts if you got there early enough.

“No bear claws,” said Jax glumly.

“Have the raised maple,” she said.

“Maple,” said Jax and made a face. “Who eats that? It’s so weird. Plus it’s the color of vomit.”

Max honked the horn at them in a jaunty rhythm as they were walking home, pulling up alongside. Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh, duh duh. Her dad always sang to that rhythm, some old-time jingle: “Shave-and-a-haircut, two bits.”

“I got it!” Max called out as the passenger window rolled down so that they could hear him.

They stood there for a second with Rufus on the sidewalk, and then Cara bent down to look through the window.

“Got what?” she asked.

“The Whydah! It wasn’t the Whydahlee or Whydah Lee, it was just the Whydah! Get it? The lee side of the Whydah! ”

“What’s the Whydah?”

“A pirate ship!”

Max was exuberant—obviously happy he’d redeemed himself by solving the mystery.

“A pirate ship?”

“It’s sunk right off Marconi! It wrecked there in 1717. I saw stuff about it in P-town, where they have that pirate museum. I was dropping Dad off, you know? And we ended up having to park in the lot near the pier, and then he got on the boat, and I was walking back to the car and I saw the pirate flag and went in. It’s right there on the pier. And inside there was this whole thing on how they’ve dug up artifacts from the Whydah, and where it is, and everything!”

“C’mon, Jax,” said Cara, “let’s just get in.” And she opened the car door for Rufus, who leapt past them.

As they pulled away from the curb Max was still babbling excitedly.

“It’s this pirate’s ship that’s, like, less than a mile off the beach. Totally underwater. It’s not that far out at all. I figure I can get Zee to bring out her dad’s powerboat, you know? She’s great with it, she can totally handle the steering. And we can use their scuba gear, or maybe Cory’s. They have it all, the tanks, everything. Even wet suits. I think there’s even a buoy out where the Whydah is, you know? Because this treasure-hunter guy has, like, an exclusive on it, it’s some kind of finders, keepers deal? He found the wreck back in the eighties and ever since then he’s been pulling stuff out of it, artifacts and things. Swords and pistols and jewelry….”

“A real, actual pirate ship,” said Cara. “I didn’t know there were any of those around.”

“Hardly any,” said Max. “Just the Whydah, as far as I could find out. On the Cape, anyway. And it’s three centuries old. It’s pronounced like widow, by the way. Or widda, or something. That’s what it means, it’s some old-fashioned spelling. And most of it you can’t see even if you’re diving. Most of it’s under the sand. They use this fancy vacuum to suck up all the pieces of the boat. And the treasure.”

“We still don’t know when to go, though,” said Jax. “Even if we can be sure where.”

“Listen, if we really mean it,” said Max, “there’s only one way to do it. We have to patrol. We’ll have to do it in shifts, trade off sleeping. Have someone out there every night, watching for your glow-in-the-dark waterbugs, or whatever they are.”

“They’re not bugs at all,” said Jax. “They’re dinoflagellates.”

Cara was thinking that Max’s newfound enthusiasm was almost funny. Just give a guy a pirate ship…

“I’m thinking we each take a friend, then switch off. Like Cara? You could go with Hayley say from nine to one in the morning, then I could go over with my crew. Jax, though—being only ten and all?—maybe should stay at home.”

“Unfair,” said Jax. “Age discrimination, apartheid, and segregation.”

“You heard what dad said,” said Max. “I’m the boss.”

They were silent for a minute, Jax sulking.

“Whoever saw them, obviously,” put in Cara, “would call the others right away on the cell. ’Cause we all have to be there for the actual dive. Ultimately. So Jax, all you’ll miss is the boring part. Are you kidding? You’re lucky.”

They talked about it as they pulled up to the house and got out, walking up the front steps. Max suggested they reveal only part of the story to their friends—tell them they were looking for the luminous algae, but say they had to do it for Jax, who had been assigned a big science project for a gifted-kids think tank in Washington, DC. (It was true that a school