Читать книгу The Finders Keepers Rule - Jacqueline Greene - Страница 5

MARYELLEN HELD HER arms out in mid-air, pretending she was dancing with a partner. To the right, to the left, step back, step front, she urged her clumsy feet. Right, left, back, front. “You’re such a cool dancer,” she said aloud to her imaginary date. “You haven’t stepped on my toes more than ten times!”

Maryellen’s older sister Carolyn let out a giggle. Then she stopped smiling and turned stern again. “That’s enough clowning around,” she said. “You must listen to the beat of the music, and do all the steps without stopping to think about each one. Otherwise, you’ll never be ready to Rock Around the Clock with me.”

That was exactly what Maryellen was worried about. Winter vacation from school was half over, and the annual dance near the famous Daytona Beach clock tower was just four days away. When she was younger, Maryellen had been content to watch from the sidelines as her older sisters danced with their dates, skirts swirling as they moved in time to the music. Maryellen had loved just being on the plaza amid all the hubbub: the holiday lights twinkling, the band’s music blaring from the stage, the people on the dance floor rocking and rolling. This year, though, she wanted to be part of the excitement. She wanted to dance—and that was turning out to be a whole lot harder than it looked. Carolyn had been patiently trying to help Maryellen learn the rock ’n’ roll steps, but somehow Maryellen’s feet kept getting tangled up.

I can do it, she told herself. She took a deep breath and stood taller. Carolyn turned her transistor radio up a bit louder. Maryellen speeded up her movements to match the song’s fast beat. No sooner did she step to the right than she missed the cue to step back.

“Okay, Ellie,” Carolyn said, snapping off the radio. “Try it with me.” Carolyn rested her right hand on Maryellen’s waist, and Maryellen placed her left hand on Carolyn’s shoulder. Then the girls clasped their free hands and held them out to the side. Carolyn walked Maryellen slowly through the steps.

When she danced with the music on again, Maryellen thought she was finally matching the steps to the beat. “Much better!” Carolyn told her. “Now you need to make those steps smoother. Let your body move with the beat, too. You’ll need to practice that on your own. I’ve got to get over to the band shell to pick up some posters. I volunteered to hang them up around town.”

Carolyn disappeared into the kitchen and returned a moment later with a roll of tape. She slipped it into her bag and strode to the door. “See you later, Ellie.” As the screen door slammed behind her, Carolyn called back over her shoulder. “Practice!”

Of course I will, Maryellen thought. She waited for a slow song on the radio to end and stood ready to try the swing dance again as soon as the disc jockey played a rock ’n’ roll song. In a moment, she heard him introduce a fun song with a fast, heavy beat: “Later Alligator” by Bobby Charles. Maryellen had barely managed a few steps when her younger sister, Beverly, interrupted.

“I’ll dance with you,” she offered. “After all, I do take dancing lessons.”

“No, thanks,” Maryellen said, trying not to sound annoyed. Beverly never missed a chance to show how good she was at dancing. “First of all, you take ballet. That’s nothing like rock ’n’ roll. Second of all, I need a partner who can lead. I’m the one who has to follow.”

“I could learn it faster than you,” Beverly taunted her.

Maryellen knew her little sister was probably right. By now, she had lost her rhythm. She felt relieved when the radio station took a break for commercials.

“Hey, all you cool cats out there,” an announcer said. “Be sure to head to the band shell next Saturday night at seven sharp. It’s the annual Daytona Beach Dance. Time to Rock Around the Clock! Be there or be square!”

“I wanna dance, too,” said Maryellen’s little brother Tom. He was just five, but he was what Maryellen’s father called “a bundle of perpetual motion.” Tom wiggled and waved his arms, singing the jingle from a toothpaste commercial. Their old dachshund, Scooter, woke up from one of his many naps and started howling along. In the kitchen, Maryellen’s three-year-old brother, Mikey, was having a temper tantrum because Mom wouldn’t let him have a cookie. Mikey didn’t like to hear the word “no” unless he was saying it.

“That’s it,” Maryellen complained. “I can’t practice around here.” She stepped into the kitchen and announced, “I’m heading to the beach.”

“Check in with Joan when you get there,” Maryellen’s mother said, trying to talk above Mikey’s fussing. “And let her know when you leave.”

Maryellen’s sister Joan, who was now Mrs. Jerry Ross, was working at a food stand on the beach. This was another reason Maryellen liked being at the beach. It was neat to hang around with Joan and Jerry and hear about what they were doing. They were so busy that Maryellen didn’t get to see them much.

She rolled her bike from the garage and pedaled off. The ocean was several blocks from her house, but it was an easy ride. Maryellen cruised along Ocean Avenue, passing by the wide walled plaza on her left. Over its high walls, she could see the top of the open band shell and one face of the tall clock tower that rose above everything. She breathed in the familiar scent of salty air and caught a few quick glimpses of blue waves rolling in to shore.

Just past the plaza, she turned left and coasted down Main Street, which led directly to the beach. Maryellen thought the best part of school vacation was getting to spend time here. Gliding down Main Street, she could see the length of the wooden pier that jutted out into the ocean, high above the water on tall wooden pilings. Men cast fishing lines over the railing. Couples walked hand in hand toward the restaurant at the end of the pier, the men wearing loose-fitting tropical shirts and the women in pastel-colored cotton dresses that billowed in the breeze.

Maryellen kept to the side of the road as cars cruised slowly past her, their windows open to the air. She looked with longing at a shiny green convertible filled with laughing teenagers. The top was down, and the girls protected their hairdos with bright scarves. Music blared from the car’s radio.

Maryellen glided under the stone arches of a stairway that led from the pier to the sandy beach. As soon as her bike wobbled onto the hard-packed sand, she hopped off and walked it along the beach, leaving Main Street and the pier behind her. The green convertible had pulled into a row of cars parked right on the sand, and the teens were climbing out of the car. Nearby, people stretched out on beach blankets or sat on webbed chairs. The winter holidays brought lots of tourists from colder states up north, and the beach was crowded. Children splashed in the water until they scurried, shivering, to their parents, who bundled them in giant towels. Out on the water, a flock of pelicans bobbed on the waves, their long bills protruding over the pouches full of fish that bulged at their throats. Seagulls circled overhead, their shrill cries piercing the air. To Maryellen, the scene felt like a giant party. Even the birds seemed to be in on the fun.

It was a short walk to Sandy’s Beach Hut, the food stand on the beach where Joan worked. As she approached, Maryellen could hear a radio on the counter playing “Shake, Rattle and Roll.” In the shadow of the shack’s blue awning, Maryellen saw her sister dancing with her husband, Jerry. Just as the song was ending, Joan leaned back against Jerry’s arm. On the final beat, he flipped her over expertly. Joan landed on her feet in the soft sand, her arms outstretched. Her boss, Sandy, applauded.

“Wow!” Maryellen exclaimed, leaning her bike against the side of the shack. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do anything that fancy.”

“Sure you will, Ellie, if you keep practicing,” Jerry said. He reached for Maryellen’s hand, held it up high, and gave her a dizzying twirl. She giggled with delight.

Maryellen still couldn’t quite believe that Jerry was her brother-in-law. He and Joan had begun dating when Joan was in high school, and they had gotten married only a few months ago. Jerry was the most handsome man Maryellen knew, and possibly the bravest. He had trained as a diver and served in the Navy during the Korean War. He once confided to Maryellen that he had gone on secret underwater missions. That seemed scary, and even more exciting than the television shows and movies Maryellen loved to watch—because it was real.

A couple draped in beach towels stepped up to the shack. Joan went behind the counter, pulled two icy bottles of Coca-Cola out of the cooler, and popped off the caps on a bottle opener attached to the side of the stand.

“Keep dancing,” Sandy said after the couple left. “Maybe you’ll attract a few customers who’ll order something besides a nickel soda.” He lifted a conch shell from a bucket, revealing the pink underside of its spiky white shell. “I don’t know why people aren’t lined up to order this delicacy.”

Maryellen felt her lips puckering at the thought of eating the rubbery shellfish Sandy pried from the shells. She couldn’t understand why anyone liked conch—even fried. She looked up at a chalkboard sign that hung under a plastic Christmas wreath next to Sandy’s counter. The sign read, “Daytona’s Best Fried Conch.”

“Most people want a hot dog,” Maryellen said. “Maybe you should have that on the menu.”

“Hot dogs?” Sandy frowned, his thin gray hair flopping down over his bushy eyebrows. “Why, you can get those anyplace. But fresh conch—that’s a Daytona Beach specialty. Jerry and his pal Skip deliver them right from the ocean to my stand.” Sandy emptied the conch shells from the bucket. “I think Skip’s glad to have you working with him. I just wish I could use more of these.”

Jerry smiled. “Skip wishes you could use more, too,” he said. “He keeps complaining that he’s barely making enough money to put gas in his boat tank.”

Joan turned up the volume on the radio and held out her hands to Jerry. Just as they were about to start dancing again, a muscular young man in a T-shirt and shorts came jogging up the beach, his blond hair bleached nearly white by the sun.

“Jerry!” he called out.

“Hey, Skipper,” Jerry said. “What’s up?”

Maryellen had heard about Jerry’s diving partner but hadn’t met him before. She was about to greet him, when Skip tapped Jerry’s arm. “Let’s get a move on,” he said. “Tank wants to talk about the next dive. And he’s in a hurry. We’d better get back to the dinghy before he blows his top.”

Maryellen looked in the direction from which Skip had come. She could just make out a figure standing next to a small rowboat beached on the sand. Out in the water, past the end of the pier, a larger boat with a covered cabin bobbed next to a red-and-white buoy. Maryellen knew that bigger boats would scrape bottom in the shallow water if they came in too close to the beach. Jerry and Skip used the smaller dinghy to bring the conch to shore for the beachside shacks and restaurants.

“So who’s Tank, and what’s he hired you for?” Sandy asked.

“We’re counting fish,” Skip answered after a brief pause. “Tank’s a professor at the university. He needed a couple of divers to figure out how many kinds of fish are just offshore. He’s a tough boss, and the pay’s lousy. The sooner I’m done with it, the better.” He chuckled and added, “I’m glad I’m not in school, or I’d have to take orders from guys like him all the time.”

Jerry’s shoulders stiffened, and Maryellen could see that he didn’t appreciate his friend’s attitude about school. She knew how hard it was for Jerry and Joan to hold down jobs and go to classes at the university, and how important finishing their education was to each of them. But Jerry was easygoing and didn’t like to argue.

“Let’s get going then,” was all he said. He and Skip set off toward the dinghy.

“Jerry didn’t even say good-bye,” Joan complained. “Skip’s right about one thing: Tank really is demanding, and the work has kept Jerry awfully busy.”

Maryellen nodded sympathetically. “Does he really have to dive for conch and work for Tank?”

“Jerry doesn’t like me to brag about it,” Joan said, lowering her voice a bit, “but what he’s doing for Tank is more than just a job. Tank teaches courses in oceanography—that’s studying the ocean, and everything in it. Jerry is the best student in the class, and an experienced diver, so when the professor needed a crew for his research project, he asked Jerry first. Then Jerry told Tank about Skip and his boat, and they both got a job.”

Sandy held out the dented bucket that had held the conch. “Your big brother ran off so fast, he forgot the pail,” he said. “How ’bout returning it for me?”

“Sure!” Maryellen said, taking the bucket. She liked the idea of having a big brother—which, in a way, Jerry was, now that he had married Joan—and she liked being able to help him out. She trotted off toward the boat, swinging the pail at her side.

As Maryellen neared the pier, a strange clicking noise coming from farther up the beach caught her attention. She turned toward the sound and saw two men walking slowly along the sand, their heads bent over some sort of machine. One man was dressed in plaid Bermuda shorts, a neatly tucked pink polo shirt, and leather dress shoes with thin socks. He looked odd, dressed like that on the beach, and the machine he held looked even odder. It reminded Maryellen of her mother’s new Hoover vacuum, but instead of a brush, it had a large, flat disc at its bottom end. Instead of the vacuum’s hum, this machine was giving off buzzing clicks. At first, the sounds came slowly, spaced far apart. Then the clicks came rapid-fire: clickety, clickety, clickety, clickety!

The second man walked alongside the machine, holding a pitchfork with bent tines. He was dressed in work pants, work boots, and a dark green shirt. Maryellen thought he looked about Jerry’s age, but unlike Jerry, he was short, and built like a barrel.

Curious, Maryellen walked over to get a closer look. The older man looked up and gave her a friendly smile. “I’ll bet you’ve never seen one of these before,” he said.

“You’re right about that,” Maryellen answered. “What is that thing?”

The man tapped his knuckles against the machine’s handle. “What you are looking at here, little miss, is a scientific breakthrough. You hear those clicks?”

Maryellen nodded vigorously.

“The faster they go, the closer the Buckley Metal Detector is to some metal object buried under the sand,” the man said. “This device is going to be a huge success, which is why I’ve bought the company and named it after myself.”

“Wow!” Maryellen exclaimed. “Then you must be Mr. Buckley.”

“Indeed I am,” the man said. “I’m Atherton Buckley, and this is my assistant, Pete Jones.”

Maryellen introduced herself and then asked, “Have you found anything yet?”

“I have,” Mr. Buckley responded. “When the detector is crackling, Pete uses his clam digger to scoop under the sand and see what’s buried there. So far this week, I’ve found some coins, a silver ID bracelet, and a wedding ring.”

Maryellen leaned forward to see the dial on the machine.

“Of course,” Mr. Buckley went on, “I’ve turned in the items that people might be looking for—especially the wedding ring. So I’m embarrassed to say I’ve only earned thirty-seven cents this week!” After a moment, he leaned in and lowered his voice. “But just between us, I’m hoping to find far more interesting things. Who knows what treasures lie buried beneath the sand?”

At the word “treasure,” Maryellen felt a little flush of excitement. “Ooh,” she said. “Buried treasure, like in the movies!” When the movie Treasure Island came to their town a few months earlier, she and her friend Davy, who lived next door, had gone to see it three times. Then they’d borrowed the book from the school library and read it to each other, acting out their favorite parts. Just thinking about buried treasure brought back the magical way she’d felt sitting in the darkened theater, nibbling on popcorn, completely lost in the adventures of a young boy, Jim Hawkins, as he battled pirates on his search for hidden treasure. What Maryellen had loved best was that Jim had been no older than Maryellen or Davy, but he was the hero of the story, and everyone listened to his ideas. That was just how Maryellen wanted to be: a hero with ideas that everyone agreed were good. For a long time after the movie left town, she and Davy had talked about it, and Maryellen couldn’t stop imagining herself in the scenes.

“Well, almost,” Mr. Buckley said, smiling.

Maryellen wished she could follow the men and their machine to see what else they might discover, but the weight of the bucket in her hand reminded her of why she’d walked toward the pier. “Thanks for showing me your metal detector,” she said. “But I really need to get this bucket over to my brother-in-law.” She lifted the pail and gestured toward the dinghy where Jerry and the two other men were standing.

Buckley and Pete looked at the dinghy with interest. “I noticed there’s been a dive boat trolling out there for a few weeks,” Mr. Buckley said. “What ever are they doing?”

Maryellen stood up straighter, glad that she knew the answer. “They’re studying fish for the university.”

“Fascinating,” Mr. Buckley said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. Then he let out a laugh. “I just hope they aren’t studying sharks! There are plenty of those out there.”

“I sure hope they don’t see any,” Maryellen said. “Even more, I hope no sharks see them! Well, I’d better go. Good luck with your treasure hunting.”