Fog horns trumpeted along the coast as Steve and Kelly meandered over a worn path on Blackberry Hill;  four knobby knees zig-zagging toward the ocean.

“Hey,  second grade playboy,”  Kelly said,  squeezing her brother’s blond head in a vise grip.  “I saw you flirting at recess.  Who is the little girl with the lump?”

“It’s not a lump!”  Steve shouted.  “That’s Margaret,  she’s new.  Let me go!”

The seacoast shrunk with the fog,  the world compressed to a stone’s throw.  Steve caught a whiff of wild grapes as a dog barked deeply in a low,  slow pattern;  a beat off the rhythm of the surf. 

“She’d be pretty if she didn’t have that lump,”  Kelly said.  “What’s wrong with her?”

“Nothing is wrong with her!”  Steve answered crossly.  “My teacher said she can’t play rough,  that’s all.  It might pop,  I guess.  I wasn’t flirting with her.”

“Yes you were.”

“I was not!”

“Yes you were.”

“I was not!”  Steve yelled,  his voice carrying down the hill into the potato fields to the edge of the spiky beachgrass. 

“Shhh!  You’ll get Mr. Price’s dogs all excited,”  Kelly said.  She straightened herself before stepping onto the old dairy road.

“His dogs don’t bite,”  Steve said.

“I’m not gonna find out,  Romeo.”

Steve was defeated.  The fog numbed him,  his tongue felt fat and his brain failed him for a comeback.

“I never see any boys around YOU,”  he finally said,  raising his voice on purpose. 

“Quiet!  Everyone knows boys are babies.  Hush up or those dogs’ll chase us.”

Tramping silently,  their attention was on Chet Price’s property,  a weathered two-story farmhouse in front of a half-fallen barn.  Two hayed fields fenced by old fieldstone walls separated them from the dogs.  The closest field retained a missed hay swath standing alone;  a yellow Mohican providing further cover.  Getting by without getting chased was work on the return from school.  Sweaty salt mist drops hung on their upper lips.  A black cloud of grackles descended at angles into the bush and Kelly wished for silence. 

A screen door slammed and they stopped.  Chet Price placed a plate of food on the ground.  His left leg bent at the knee while his straight right leg anchored at the side for balance.  With his back to the road,  he swung his right leg forward at the hip and trudged out of sight.

“He’s feeding the tan one,”  Steve whispered.

“Shhh.  Just keep walking.”
 

That night the fog horns warned in threes,  and the mist grew in thick rolls,  billowing off the ocean and saturating everything.  Steve helped his father fill the woodstove with wet green oak that smoked and hissed,  then burned so hot they opened the front door.  The interior wood of their cottage warmed to a bronze glow;  the walls and kitchen cabinets were shades of tan and reddish-brown oak that Dad had crafted.  The pegged maple floors were blanketed by colorful scatter rugs he hooked in the winter when he couldn’t fish.  The galley kitchen was crammed with copper pots and shiny utensils.  And the walls held nautical art:  old steamers,  Clipper ships and working fishing vessels.  Between Mom and Kelly,  the inside was usually gleaming,  reflecting pride of ownership,  but most often shined by scrubbing Dad home safely. 

When they sat for dinner Steve wanted to talk about Chet Price.  He knew his father was going offshore fishing and he wanted to get it in while he could.

“We saw Mr. Price today,”  he said, “and we’re afraid of him.”

“Speak for yourself,”  Kelly said,  “I’m not afraid of him.”

From the kitchen their mother,  always the last to sit,  sensed a skirmish.

“We’ve been fogged in too long,”  Dad said.  “The mind starts to wander.  We get thick in the head.”  

He fed himself hot pea soup and wiped green goo from his moustache with a napkin.  “I wouldn’t worry about old Chet.  It’s the fog making you nutty.  When you can’t see the heavens the Master’s art gets covered up and we all get a little dingy.”

“We’ve got a little dinghy,”  Steve joked.  “How come he walks like that?”

“He hurt his leg way back,”  Dad said.  “He was a friend of your grandfather.  They used to play chess together,  back when the farm was working.  He likes living alone,  always has.  When’s the last time he went to town,  honey?”

Mrs. Blake walked out from the galley.  Used to the hard life,  the quiet,  the waiting,  all the responsibilities of land,  she was always two steps behind. 

“Oh,  I think it was about a month ago,”  she said,  adjusting her white blouse that matched her perfect teeth. 

Mr. Blake laughed.  “Chet stocks up real good,”  he said,  smiling to his wife.  “You got any bread honey?”

She brought over a platter of steaming garlic bread and told Steve to eat.

"Eat up so you’ll grow big and strong,  second grade playboy,”  Kelly said.
 
The fog horns sang high, then low, and a distant note hit in-between.  Steve glared at Kelly.  She turned back her long sandy hair and looked at her father.

“Sixth grade old maid,”  Steve said.
 

Two days later,  the walk over Blackberry Hill was boring.  Dad’s boat was gone,  Kelly was moody,  and Steve was sick of the fog.  The smell of autumn rot mixed with aged seaweed made them feel caged.  They hadn’t seen sun for two weeks.

Steve had been kicking a stone from the schoolyard when it veered off and zinged under a barrier of prickly rose hip bushes.  It was a round white stone,  polished into a ball by the sea,  a treasure taken from the ocean and deposited on the playground.  Having come so far,  he couldn’t give it up now.  A gang of drunken yellow-jackets buzzed casually between the thorny stalks.  Carefully,  he brushed them away and moved the dead lower branches.  There was a rustle and a snap.  He stopped.  Kelly turned. 

“What’s that?”

“Shhh,”  Steve whispered. 

“It’s probably a paper bag,”  Kelly said.

There was another rustle,  then an air sound,  a short gasp.  Kelly grabbed her brother’s arm.  Kelly had decided it was a mama mute swan that had waddled up from the brackish ponds to nest,  a mean snake-brain with a mask that could that could break a kid’s neck with one swipe of its wing. 

“C’mon,”  she pulled.

“No.  Wait.”

Steve crouched and parted the bramble.  Something hissed and gurgled and he sprang back.  An orange cat lay in the brown leaves,  its hind end blackened with dried blood.  Yellow-jackets dove around the wound.  The cat’s almond eyes were almost shut but it tried to pull itself forward like a two-handed rope climber.

“That cat is wild!”  Kelly cried out.  “It might have rabies!”

Steve thought she said babies.  He blew a soothing sound and the animal’s eyes opened.

“Pretty mama,”  Steve whispered,  “are you hurted?”

The cat spit and sunk its needle-teeth into Steve’s left hand.  He jerked back and one sharp tooth ripped the hole into a red half-moon.  Steve froze.  Then he screamed so loudly that his father could have heard him out on the fishing grounds.  Tears dripped down his squinched pink face into his mouth and his gums drained as white as his teeth. 

Chet Price figured death had come to Blackberry Hill.  He came bounding across the fields,  his right leg swiping a path as he lurched it forward at the hip.

Steve saw him first.  The sight of Chet Price choked him silent.  A wild stampede could have been tearing down the road and Steve wouldn’t have budged.  Kelly almost keeled over.

“You alright,  boy?”  Chet asked,  out of breath,  stooping to inspect the outstretched hand.  Steve could see his own face in Chet’s green plastic visor.  He detected Chet’s odor,  kind of like the bunk where his father slept on the boat.  Kelly’s arms dangled as she stared with her mouth open.  The gray sky framed Chet,  making him appear larger.  His beard was white and gray and reddish at the jowls.  His moustache and teeth had turned the tan of tobacco and his visor was pulled down shielding his eyes.  He wore faded green pants held up off black sneakers by red suspenders,  the shirt buttoned under his chin.

“You’re Blake’s kids,  aren’t cha?”  he asked the two blank stares.  “What happened?

Steve’s heart was thumping.  He tried to talk but nothing happened so Kelly took over.

“We found a hurt cat.  It bit my brother.”

“What kind of cat?”  Chet asked,  tipping his visor revealing his pale blue watery eyes.

“It was a wild cat!”  Steve blurted.

“It was an orange cat,”  Kelly said .  “Its leg is hurt.”

“Sounds like Sunshine,”  Chet said.  “He’s been gone for days.”

Steve forgot his wound.  “It was right here,”  he said,  pointing under the rose hips.

“Lick your finger,  boy,  hold on to your cut,”  Chet ordered.  “I’ll fix that.”

If he had told them both to head for the beach and swim straight to England they would have obeyed.  He swung his right leg forward and used it to stomp the prickly stems aside.  Sunshine looked up with relief.  Chet picked him up,  cradling him,  whispering, “C’mon,  Sunshine.  C’mon home.”

“Now,  you kids follow me,”  he said.  “The dogs are tied.”

Steve looked at Kelley.  Kelley looked at Steve.  Chet trudged down the road as the lost sheep shadowed behind,  Steve following the limp outstretched hand.

Chet’s property was a mess of tarp,  rope,  wood,  pots,  traps,  nets,  cans,  cages and half-finished projects.  A few upside-down skiffs lay like beached fish with bloated bellies.  A rusted wagon wheel leaned on a rail fence beside a junk car.  White meat-rabbits peered out from wire cages and a red rooster cockled as a pair of Guinea hens protested,  scampering with a line of keets.  Lounging cats recognized the moan of their injured friend.  The roped dogs sat and wagged,  the tan one smiling at Chet.

The old man stopped at his crooked porch door and Steve grabbed it open with his good hand.  Chet acted as if no on had ever held a door for him.  He stepped forward,  then back,  and after an embarrassing moment proceeded.  The granite slab floor was cracked and gave rise to the threshold.  It was dark inside.  Stained manila shades and old-fashioned frilly curtains covered all but one window -  the one that looked out to the road.  There was a musty smell and the scent of sweet gasoline so strong that Steve sneezed.  Piles of books,  boxes and tools were shoved against walls with newspapers stuffed between the studs.  At the back of the room,  in front of the fireplace,  was a dimly glowing green lampshade over a chess board.  The black and white players were tall,  the size of soda cans.

Chet placed Sunshine in a box.  Kelly’s eyes began to sting and she stepped back toward the entrance.  Her brother,  sensing her departure,  was ready to bolt when Chet produced a blue jar.

“This here’s a quick fix,”  he said.

Steve was convinced it was witch poison.  Chet told him to extend his hand.  He offered the cut as if it were not attached to his body.  Chet dabbed on some of the clear jelly,  his yellow finger patting the ointment.

“Don’t cover that up,”  he said.  “Let the night air get to it.  You kids go on now.  Your cut will heal,  boy.  You come back and see Sunshine.  You go on now.”

They were never so grateful to get ushered out of a house.  They ran down off Blackberry Hill and didn’t stop until they were home.  Steve almost flung the door off its hinges.

“Mom!  Look!  A wild cat bit me!  Mr. Price fixed it!”

“Hold on.  Calm down,”  Mrs. Blake said,  turning down her ship-to-shore radio.

“Oh,  Mother,”  Kelly said,  “his house is so disgusting!  It smells like turpentine in there.”

“What happened?”

“Me and Steve found a hurt cat,”  Kelly said.  “He went to pick it up and it bit him.  It was Mr. Price’s cat.  He calls it Sunshine.”

“Sunshine turned into a wild cat!”  Steve exclaimed.  “Mr. Price put some stuff on my cut.  It doesn’t even hurt.”

Mrs. Blake inspected the cut.  It was a thin gash,  but deep,  like the cut from a fish fin that hurt worse the next day.

“Can we go back?”  Steve asked.  “Mr. Price asked us back to see Sunshine.”

“I’m not going back there,”  Kelly said.

“You wait until your father comes in,”  said Mrs. Blake.

“Okay,”  said Steve,  but he didn’t mean it.
 

At school the next day Steve paid more attention to his cut than anything else.  Overnight it had tightened as if it were stitched and just the tip of the half moon was scab.  He knew it was magic and wanted to tell someone.  At recess he held the door for Margaret who smiled and thanked him by name.  She actually said his name.  He wanted to tell her.  On the playground,  Margaret had a scarf around her neck.  Her long brown hair and eyes made her look like an Indian princess as she stood off to the side.  Steve wanted to wander over,  away from the pack of kids,  but he clammed-up.  Back inside,  he tapped his heels and stole peeks at Margaret and the clock until the final bell.

Over the rise of Blackberry Hill the fog had lifted enough to uncover the Price Farm.  Steve was pleading with Kelly to go back with him,  making many farfetched promises;  one that held particular significance.  He promised never to steal one of her new bras and bring it to the playground.  That was the clincher.  She weighed it out:  the cut had almost healed,  they had been asked back,  she would be spared total embarrassment.  However,  Mom had told them to wait.  She gazed down across the fields to the yard full of junk and rotted buildings -  a place no one but the owner would live.  Everything told her no,  but when she saw the dogs safely tied and thought about her petite bra being run up the flag pole,  she consented.

They crunched down the old road and a woodchuck darted out,  stopped,  looked both ways like a street-wise pedestrian,  then proceeded into the brush.  They leaped over a stonewall and walked along a fallen cattle run,  coercing the dogs to bark and wag at the same time.  Two dogs rose,  yawned,  and lay back down.  Steve walked right up to the screen door and knocked.  They heard a thump,  something smashed,  then a curse.  Chet Price appeared from behind the door without his hat,  the same pants and suspenders,  but the shirt was different,  dark blue.  His long gray-white hair was combed back and he looked clean.

“Mr. Price!  My cut is better,”  Steve said,  offering his hand.

Chet didn’t look surprised.  He opened the door and the house smell rushed out into the fresh air. 

“It’s a quick fix,  boy,”  he said.  “Come in and look at Sunshine.”

Steve entered first and when Kelly stepped into the somber room her eyes moistened from the interior air.

“Look,”  Chet said.

Sunshine rose lazily,  stretched,  strolled to a food dish then sat on her haunches and stared at the humans like nothing had happened.

“He’s all better just like me!”  Steve said.

Chet nodded and broke into a coughing jag.  He limped over to the loaded sink but decided to spit into a garbage pail.

“He’s a she,”  he said.  “Hey,  what’s that behind your ear?”

Kelly thought tick season was over but maybe a fat one had stayed on her brother’s head.  Chet reached toward Steve’s blond hair and plucked a coin from the air.

“Your lucky day,”  he said.  “A genuine Silver Dollar!”

“Wow!”  Steve shouted.  “How did you do that?”

“Put it in your pocket,  boy.  Don’t question the hocus pocus.  I’ve got something you might like,  little girl.”

He pulled a wooden banana crate full of kittens from behind his tattered couch. 

“Take one.  Take two,”  Chet said,  wiping down his beard.

Steve wasn’t interested.  The coin trick had stunned him and he and Sunshine were fixed.  He stared at the blue jar on a cluttered table,  besides,  the kittens looked like wet rats.

Chet swung his leg around and took a sip from a brown coffee mug as Kelly lost herself in the box of fur.  He coughed again from the shoulders,  but forced himself to talk over it.

“Your grandfather and I played a lot of chess on that board over there.  I bought it in Africa.  The white pieces are ivory tusk and the black ones are ebony.  I miss Mr. Blake.  He was a real gentleman.”

Chet lurched from the hip and lowered himself into his old stuffed chair placing the mug on the exposed pine brace of the right arm.  Steve smelled the sweet gasoline coming from the mug and gaped at it for a moment too long.  Chet caught him and placed the whisky on the floor.  He reached for his cigarettes but pulled his hand back. 

“Your grandfather bailed me out one time,  back when we were young men.”

Steve was still gawking and Kelly was busy with the kittens.

“I was working on a boat down in the West Indies for the meanest man north of the Equator.  We’d been to Cuba and got news of a storm,  so we were lucky to make it into Miami.”

A story was coming and he caught their interest.  Buoyed by the swigs and the audience,  Chet captured his youth. 

“Back then Miami was wide open.  We had just tied up,  and sure enough,  the blow started.  The miserable old captain didn’t want to abandon ship,  but I got scared.  I’d heard about hurricanes.  Besides,  I can’t swim.  Never could.  The fear of drownin’ got to me.”

He reached for the mug,  took one long swallow,  produced three short coughs and continued.

“I walked away from the boat with that old captain hollerin’ at me,  yelling louder than the gale.  And it began to whip!  I come upon a church and a little Spanish fella let me in.  I’ll never forget it as long as I live.  He put me in the rectory with some women and children and it howled and moaned from the bottom of Hell.  Then,  quick as nothin’,  she stopped dead.”

The kids were mesmerized.  It was better than television.

“I thought it had passed and went to leave,  but them Spanish women held me back.  Then I heard a powerful sound.  Like it come from another world.  The roof lifted right off that little church,  steeple’n all.”

Steve could see it.  The hand game became real.  Here’s the church,  here’s the steeple,  open the roof and see all the people!

“I went to take a peek and a beam broke loose and pinned my leg.  Those women got me out.  Somehow,  I began to walk.  Couldn’t feel a thing.  I remember a flattened field with a beef steer turned inside out,  still tethered to a post.  And a wood house stuck full of palm fronds like a porkypine had shot its quills.  Last thing I remember was watching them palm trees bend with the wind,  just bendin’ and springin’ right back.”

Chet slowly swayed his knotted hand,  curling it like a snake and hypnotizing the kids.

“Next thing I know is clean white sheets,”  he said.  “Somehow your grandfather heard about me and sent me one hundred dollars.  A lot of money in those days.  That mean old captain and the boat was lost forever.”

Steve’s small hands were stuffed deep in his pockets.  “I didn’t know that,”  he said.

Chet hacked some short bursts that reddened his face.  When he couldn’t stop,  he again swallowed from the mug and spoke louder as if he were addressing a group. 

“Chess is like life,”  he said.  “The King and Queen are the big shots;  the little ones don’t matter.”

“Steve’s attention wandered to the board.  The tall white King and his exquisite white-robed Queen stared at their black duplicates.  He looked at the ivory,  then the ebony,  and couldn’t tell who was good and who was bad.

“The little ones,  the pawns,  are there to protect the big ones.  Should be the other way around.  It’s not bad being a pawn,  but you gotta bend with the wind like them palm trees.”

Chet’s crooked hand became a hula dancer and Kelly saw Steve go into a trance.  She looked through the one window open to the outside.  The panes had warped and the outdoors bent and fattened like a circus mirror.  It made her dizzy.  Quickly,  she put the kittens away.  She grabbed her brother’s arm and whisked him out of there so fast he had to yell goodbye.
 

After that,  Chet Price’s name was hardly mentioned around the Blake house.  The disobeyed orders made it a sore subject.  The winter walked on by like a neighborhood face,  stopping briefly,  then moving on about its business.  Blackberry Hill became a thawing obstacle,  a brown and white mound of stitched paths to cross every day.

One day,  the sun broke through and Blackberry Hill started to steam and bake as if it were going to rise.  Returning from school,  the kids didn’t see any chimney smoke from the Price Farm.  Cats were lined up outside the porch waiting for the door to open.  Food dishes were turned over.  The dogs looked up,  stood up,  then lay back down facing the house.

“Mr. Price musta went to town,”  Kelly said.

“Yeah,”  Steve said,  “he musta went to town.”

By the time Mr. Blake found out it was dark.  He pointed the truck headlights into the crooked porch and told the kids to stay in the cab.  The dogs yelped as he pounded on the door and entered.  Some lights went on,  then he walked out more rigid and stern than his children had ever seen him.

“He died,”  Mr. Blake said.  “I’ve got to open some windows.”  He looked up at the stars.  “We’ve gotta feed these animals,  damn it!”

Steve was excited in a confused way.  His sister sat numb as windows opened and more lights came on.  Mr. Blake came out again with a pail of water and a sack of dog food.

“You kids give me a hand,”  he said.

When nobody was looking Steve slipped inside.  Straight up,  in the sitting chair,  Chet Price’s body was covered with a green blanket.  A fat,  red-blue hand rested on the worn arm and two flat black sneakers looked ready to move.  Steve’s small face burned and his palms got wet but he managed to grab the blue jar and get it outside without being noticed. 

At the short funeral the minister asked that Chet be remembered in life.  It helped Steve.  That summer he talked Margaret into using some of the clear jelly.  The lump was gone by the first day of school.