Find Wonder in All Things

Part 1

Prologue

James Marshall bent over the tackle box, picking through the various lures from Mr. Pendleton’s collection, a bucket of bait on the dock beside him. He was so engrossed in his task that he nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the harsh hiss from behind.

“Quick! Over here!” Stuart Pendleton urged him in a stage whisper as he raced by the aft end of the Pendleton’s houseboat.

“Wha — ?”

“We’re hiding from Laurel and Dylan and Crosby. You wanna take the runabout up to the tunnel, don’t you? If the little brats find us, then Mr. Elliot will make Virginia mind them — and then she can’t go with us. Hurry!” He waved his hand in a frantic gesture, urging his friend to follow.

James hopped up on the weather-beaten boards of the dock and took off after his buddy. “Where are we going? It’s a dock; there aren’t too many places to hide.”

“Virginia said to wait behind the ice machine up by the gas pumps.”

The boys ran up the dock, their traitorous footsteps thundering in their ears till they reached the marina shop and the safe haven of the gas pumps behind it. Stuart grabbed the metal pipe rail and sailed over it, landing in a crouch, ready to spring at any moment. James followed, but he was too skinny and little to leap over it like Stu. He climbed carefully over, and the two middle-schoolers huddled close together, peering around the corner of the ice machine to watch for enemy six-year-olds and the eleven-year-old tagalong.

“You don’t have to hide, you know,” a voice piped up from behind, making James’s heart leap into his throat.

He and Stu whirled around to see a girl sitting cross-legged between the gas pumps, eating cookies from a bag, a Coca-Cola can beside her. She looked at them, munching as they gaped at her.

“Laurel, how did you — ?”

“You don’t have to hide,” she continued as she brushed crumbs from her lap and wadded up the bag, “because Daddy took the boys fishing this morning. They won’t be back till lunchtime.” She stood up and swept her long, red braids behind her. “So all four of us can go to the tunnel.”

“You’re not going,” Stuart declared. “You’re too little.”

“I’m not too little. I’m eleven, and I can run as fast as you.”

James took a dubious look at the little round frame and short legs. “I don’t know. . . Stuart runs pretty fast, Laurel — faster than me even.”

She turned. Big, blue eyes that seemed to take up half her round, lightly freckled face pleaded with him. “I’ll keep up, I promise. I won’t be any bother.”

James wavered. “Well, I guess it wouldn’t hurt — not really.”

Stuart shook his head. “I don’t want to be babysitting all day while we look for artifacts.”

Laurel looked at him with disdain. “There aren’t any real ‘artifacts.’ Most of the stuff is just old junk you tourists dump off your boats.”

“Then why do you even want to go?”

Laurel opened her mouth to answer, but a soft voice drifted from behind them. “I said she could go, Stu. She was going to be all by herself today.”

The boys turned around, and another girl stepped around the corner of the ice machine. Her hair was red too, but more of strawberry blond, a gentler color that matched her gentle demeanor. She walked over, put her arm around her younger sister’s shoulders, and faced the two boys with a self-assured smile.

James watched in amusement as his friend stammered and stuttered and finally acquiesced. He’d noticed a difference in Stuart that summer where Virginia Elliot was concerned. The previous year, he and Stu spent long days on the runabout, exploring around the lake, talking about Reds baseball, and fishing. But this year, Virginia had been a constant in most of their plans. Granted, she wasn’t a ‘girly girl’ — growing up on the lake had ensured that she could fish, water ski, and hike as well as any boy — so James had to admit it wasn’t a huge pain to have her around. She didn’t care much for baseball though, and there were some things the boys couldn’t discuss when she was there — like her, for instance — and now, she was Stu’s favorite topic.

Stuart looked sheepish, but James just shrugged. “I don’t care if the kid comes with us.”

Laurel beamed at him, and he gave her a grin in return.

“Come on, then.” Stuart’s voice was gruff in an attempt to sound nonchalant. “I want to get going before it gets too hot.”

The four made their way down to the slip where the Pendletons kept Stuart’s runabout. He dug the life jackets from under the seats and passed them out. He inspected one, checking it over and sniffing it for mildew before handing it to Virginia with a magnanimous smile. James fished out one for himself and tossed the last one to Laurel.

“This one stinks” — Laurel wrinkled her nose — “and it’s got moldy spots on it.”

“Sorry, kiddo,” Stu answered. “That’s the only child-sized life jacket I got.”

She sighed and put her arms through the armholes, struggling to fasten it around her plump middle.

“Here.” James reached over to loosen the belt. “You’re bigger around than that,” he muttered, so busy fiddling with the strap that he missed the stricken look on Laurel’s face.

Virginia noticed, however, and she stepped over and took the vest out of his hands. “I’ll do it. It’s got nothing to do with the middle. You have to put the bottom strap between her legs ’cause it’s a child jacket.” She tossed a scathing look at James over her shoulder. “That’s all.”

He held up his hands in surrender and backed up a step. “Sorry — didn’t mean to offend.”

“Never mind all that.” Stu was impatient to get started. “Let’s go.”

James grunted. Girls were so weird about things. No guy would care if he were bigger than some other guy; in fact, he’d be proud of it.

The girls settled in the bottom of the runabout, almost in the center. Virginia’s arms and legs surrounded Laurel in a loose but protective cage. James untied the ropes while Stu submerged the prop and started the engine. “Hop in,” he told James.

James stepped over the girls and sat in the bow. Stu pushed off, hopped in the aft end, and they drifted away from the dock, idling toward the boundary of the no-wake zone. Once in the middle of the lake, Stuart engaged the motor in running gear, and they were off toward their summer morning’s adventure.

James turned and faced into the wind, closing his eyes and letting the warm sunshine wash over him as the cool spray sprinkled his face and hair. A bump in the ride lifted him off the seat and reminded him he had a duty to perform. He opened his eyes, shielding them from the sun with his hand, while he maintained a lookout for logs or other debris just beneath the surface of the lake.

Stuart steered the runabout this way and that, slicing through the blue-green water. It had been a dry summer, and the water level was low, encircling the lake with bare, muddy walls. Tangled trees and brush-covered rocks jutted out above those walls like tall buildings looming over city streets. The children rode about a half mile out and then around a bend, so Elliot’s Marina was now out of sight. The lake was relatively deserted on that weekday morning, and they met only a few die-hard fishermen along the way. James held up a hand to them in greeting as they passed each other, and the men waved back. Most everyone on the lake knew the Elliot girls on sight because of their father’s three-season marina — and their Eastern Kentucky red hair.

Stuart slowed the motor as they approached their destination: an old railroad tunnel carved through the hill many years ago. The boys leapt out right before they hit land, the soft silt of the lake bottom squishing around their boat shoes. After they had the boat situated, the girls climbed out, and the four of them stood looking at the tunnel.

The weathered stone made a perfectly round opening in the hill even after long years of exposure to wind and water. The lake — now the life’s blood of the community — had been man-made in the 1950’s as a source of energy, drowning both the railway tunnel floor and the little town that was once nestled in the valley between the two hills.

“I’ll go first,” Virginia volunteered. “Laurel, you stay right behind me.”

“I’ll bring up the rear,” Stuart answered. He straightened his shoulders and put a little swagger in his voice. “Just to make sure everyone makes it okay.”

Virginia smiled at him, and James rolled his eyes. Stu had developed this icky tendency to want to play hero of late. Did he have to point out that he was the tallest and strongest of the four of them? Wasn’t it pretty obvious to everyone?

The older girl began her ascent up the bank. It was only a couple of feet, but still it was steep enough to require using all four limbs. Virginia grabbed hold of rocks and tree roots, patiently giving directions to her sister just behind her. After a minute or two, they were all standing by the tunnel’s entrance, peering into the darkness.

“Can you really find people’s dishes and furniture and stuff?” James wasn’t convinced that this little trip wasn’t a fool’s errand.

“Yes.” Laurel’s nod was emphatic. “We’ve found all kinds of things — clocks and silverware — and once we found the steering wheel of an old car. What kind did Daddy say it was, Ginny?”

“Model T,” Virginia replied. “But it probably came from the dump. People didn’t leave their cars in town when the Corps of Engineers flooded it. They packed everything up and moved the whole town up to the plateau.”

“There was a graveyard though,” Laurel went on, “and some people say they’ve found old coffins in the lake. Stuff gets caught in this tunnel when the floor is under water.”

James looked at her. “Coffins? Really?”

“Oh, Laurel. That’s just tall tales those men tell when they come up to the cabin to buy . . . supplies.” Virginia cast a quick glance at the boys and turned back around.

“Virginia, we all know your dad sells beer on the sly.” James had heard the Pendletons talk about how Mr. Elliot ran a small bootlegging operation out of his cabin up the hill from the marina. Most counties in that area of the state were dry — had been for as long as anyone could remember — but it didn’t stop people from drinking when they vacationed on the lake, and bootlegging was a profitable practice.

Virginia and Laurel exchanged looks but didn’t reply. The local law enforcement looked the other way regarding their dad’s little operation, but outright admitting that he sold contraband was still not a good idea.

Stu gallantly changed the subject. “What I’d like to find are some Indian arrowheads. Have you ever found any of those, Virginia?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t, but some kids say they found arrowheads around here when they were hiking.”

Stuart retrieved a flashlight from his cargo shorts’ pocket and shone it into the tunnel to light their way. The other two big kids took his lead and brought out their own lights.

“We can’t go in too far,” Virginia called, her voice echoing in the tunnel. “It’s blocked up with rocks and stuff.” In the quiet that settled over them, James could hear the drip, drip of water, like the ticking of the Tell-Tale Heart he read about in seventh-grade English class. He put his hand against the wall, feeling the cool, rough concrete under his fingers. The bottom of the tunnel was still muddy from ground water and rain, and in some places, it was slick with moss. He crept forward, taking care not to slip and fall.

Suddenly, James heard a blood-curdling scream from in front of him. He heard Virginia call in a panicked voice, “Laurel? What is it?”

“It’s bones — lots of bones! They must have fallen out of a coffin!”

“What? Oooh, cool — I wanna see.” Stuart backtracked with his flashlight trained on the ground. James hurried to catch up. Laurel stood, pointing, and he shone his light down where she indicated. Indeed, there were bones there — a pile of skinny bones, about six to ten inches in length.

“These can’t be human,” James scoffed. “They’re too little. It’s just some animal, Laurel. Kids!” He huffed, half in annoyance, half in relief. The idea of finding human bones didn’t appeal to him the same way it did to Stu. “You’ve been listening to too many old fishermen’s stories.”

She lifted her chin in defiance. “Well, how was I supposed to know? I’ve never seen a real human skeleton before.”

“There’s something over here.” Stu’s light disappeared in front of him although the soft glow still showed his silhouette near the wall of the tunnel. James heard him kicking debris around. There was a clatter of metal against stone and the rustle of movement. The light descended almost to the ground. The others came up to stand around him and help him look.

“It’s nothing — just some beer cans, some torn plastic something or other.” His disappointment was obvious.

Virginia laid a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll keep looking.”

Another twenty minutes of searching, however, revealed only more tin cans, a bottle or two, some rusted fishing lures and a bucket.

“I’m going back outside,” James announced. He was tired of the damp darkness, and there was nothing interesting about this tunnel anyway — well, except for the fact that trains used to go through it and now it was under water for part of the year.

“I’m coming too,” Laurel piped up.

“We’ll be out in a minute,” Virginia called. “James, will you watch after Laurel?”

The younger sister snorted and muttered under her breath, “I’m not a baby.”

James smiled to himself; he had said the same thing many times. That’s what you said when you were the baby.

“My big sister is the same way,” he told Laurel.

“You have a sister too?”

“Yeah, she’s 17.”

“How come she never comes with you down here?”

“I come with Stu’s family. There’s no one her age in their family for her to hang out with. She’s too cool now to hang out with middle-schoolers.”

“Oh.”

They walked on in silence, picking their way over the rocks and debris on the tunnel floor. The sunlight from the entrance cast a welcome light on their surroundings.

“What about your mom and dad?”

“Dad can’t get off work, so they can’t come — and . . . ”

“Yes?”

“And my parents can’t afford a boat like the Pendletons’. My dad is a CPA.”

“What’s a CPA?”

“An accountant — he writes up people’s taxes and sends them to the government.” He went on after she didn’t reply. “Stu’s dad is president of a company that makes advertisements.”

Laurel’s face was a complete blank.

“You know, advertisements, commercials, billboards — that kind of thing.”

She nodded, but he still wasn’t sure she grasped the concept. He found that he rather liked the role of ‘older kid,’ explaining all about the world to an eager little girl with big blue eyes. He and Stu were the same age, but Stu had been so many more places and done so many things that he was the one explaining the world to James most of the time.

He turned back around and made his way to the mouth of the tunnel, switched off his light and stood, staring out over the green water and the darker green hills surrounding it. A humid haze blurred and muted the outlines of the trees, and a thick heaviness filled the morning air. The sound of cicadas rose and fell in a lazy rhythm.

“You wanna wait here or climb down?” he asked.

“Wait here, I guess. They won’t find anything in there. Virginia said she told Stuart as much, but he still wanted to come, so she came with him.”

“Hmmph.”

“She likes Stuart a lot, so she’ll go along, even if she knows it’s stupid.”

James said nothing.

“I left with you because I think she wants him to kiss her.”

James turned around to look at Laurel, alarmed. He threw an involuntary glance back at the tunnel. “Nuh-uh.”

“What’s the matter? Doesn’t he want to kiss her?”

“I don’t know,” James replied, annoyed. “He probably does.”

“She says now that she’s thirteen, it’s time for somebody to kiss her, and he’s a good choice.”

James had no idea how to respond to that, so he stayed silent.

“Boys like Virginia. I think it’s because she’s beautiful and tall and thin, but Daddy says it’s because her soul draws people and makes them feel comfortable.”

James decided that girls thought about the strangest things.

“Do you like Virginia?”

He shrugged and looked off in the distance. “She’s okay — for a girl.”

There was another long silence, which Laurel finally broke.

“A bunch us are gonna play Kick the Can up by the cottages later. You wanna play with us?”

“Maybe.”

“I can’t play tomorrow because Daddy’s taking me and the boys to the Appalachian craft fair.”

“Really?”

“I told him I want to be an artist, so we’re going to look at different kinds of arts and crafts. But the boys don’t care about that stuff. They just want to eat funnel cake.”

“Hmm.”

“What do you like to do?” she inquired politely.

He grinned. “I like to eat funnel cake.”

Laurel rolled her eyes. “No, that’s not what I mean.”

“I know. Let’s see — I like to play dodge ball, and I’m a good runner, so I’m going to try out for the track team when school starts. And I like to read comic books and play cards. And I wanna learn to play the guitar.”

“Ooh, playing the guitar — that sounds fun.”

There was another lull in the conversation. Laurel swung her feet over the ledge of the tunnel’s entrance. She turned at the sound of footsteps behind her. James turned too, and his eyes were immediately drawn to Stuart and Virginia’s clasped hands. From the glazed look on Stu’s face and the smug smile on Virginia’s, it appeared that Laurel had the whole situation pegged exactly right. It looked like Stu had just been kissed but good. James shook his head. He liked girls as much as the next almost thirteen-year-old boy did, which meant sometimes he couldn’t help but think about them and sometimes he’d rather not. But that look on Stu’s face was a little scary. He wasn’t sure he was ready for that.

“You guys all set?”

“Did you find anything?” James asked.

“Umm . . . no. Nothing. I guess it was a waste of time after all.”

Virginia just smiled. “Not a complete waste.”

Stu cleared his throat. “Right. Well, let’s shove off then.” He kept hold of Virginia’s hand as they began the trek down to the runabout.

She reached behind her and gestured for Laurel. “Here.”

Laurel took her sister’s hand and then reached for James, but he just gave her grimy little paw a wary look. “No thanks, I need both my hands to keep me from slipping.”

She frowned.

Stu and James pushed the johnboat out in the water before hopping in and starting the motor. Stu brought it around while the others finished putting on lifejackets. He stopped to fasten his, and they took off for the dock as fast as the little boat could move.

As they emerged from the cove, the hot sun beat down, and James felt the top of his head begin to sweat. Damp waves of brown hair were soon blown stiff from the constant wind in his face. A Coke or a glass of lemonade sounded good right then. He hoped Mrs. Pendleton had brought drinks back from the store in town when she’d gone to get some more of that suntanning oil she used. He wondered whether she would bring them back something for lunch, too. Then he wondered how they would spend the rest of the day. During the hot afternoon hours, they’d probably stay in the Pendletons’ houseboat and play poker. Later, they could play Kick the Can with the little kids up at the cottages or take a hike around the campground. Mrs. Pendleton said they were eating dinner at the marina restaurant that night, and then there would be more walking around the dock and maybe some fishing as the sun set. The next day, it would all start again. It seemed as if days on the lake lasted forever and ran one into the other, as the long, lazy days of summer should. James had the sense that he should be savoring these moments. His dad often reminded him, “The best times are when you’re young and have no responsibilities.” School and Ohio, his parents, and all the rest of life seemed so far away. Right then, the only realities were the boats and the water and the hot, summer days without end.