Page 41 of The Sailor

Then the boy noticed Marit. “Who’s that?” he asked, in that way kids had. Unabashedly curious and not afraid to say what they were thinking.

“I’m Marit,” she told him.

“You’re short.”

Zach frowned, but Marit simply laughed.

“I realize that.” She tilted her head and looked from the boy to the crates floating on the water, then back at him. “I’ve never seen one of these crate races, but you’re definitely light enough that they don’t sink too far when you step on them. And you’re so quick on your feet! Nimble. I don’t know who you might be going up against, but I have a feeling you’re going to kick everyone’s butts.”

Her words also had a visible effect on Kash. “You think?”

“Oh yeah. I spend my life around these crates . . . well, plastic ones, not wooden like the ones you’re running across, and I know how unstable they can be in the water. Seeing you run across them, and they’re barely moving at all? You’ve totally got this.”

“You work with the crates?” Kash asked, sounding confused.

“Yeah. I’m a lobsterwoman.”

At that, Kash’s eyes widened. “You are? I thought only boys could do that.”

“Well, most people who work on the lobster boats are men, but the job isn’t reserved just for guys. Anyone can do it if they have the strength and stamina, and if they want to.”

“Cool,” Kash breathed.

“You think that’s something you might want to do?” Marit asked.

Kash wrinkled his nose in disgust. “No way!” he said without hesitation. “I’m going to be an astronomer. I wanna discover a new planet and maybe find evidence of intelligent life out there somewhere.”

“That’s pretty neat,” Marit told him.

“Yeah. My granddad doesn’t think so though. He thinks I should be a football player. I’m not big enough for that, but maybe if I win the crate race, he’ll be impressed. At least a little. Running is athletic. He always tells me I should be more athletic. Like he was.”

“Well, I think you should be whatever you want to be. And whether he’s impressed or not with your ability to run across those crates, you should be proud of yourself. I don’t think I could stay up on even three of those things.”

“You want to try?” Kash asked with a smile.

“I don’t think so.”

“Actually, I think that’s a great idea,” Zach said.

“Oh sure, says the crate race winner,” Marit mumbled. But she was smiling, so Zach didn’t think she was all that disgruntled about this change in plans.

“Ms. Evelyn said she’s even participated before,” Kash said. “And she’s old.”

“Well, I wasn’t that old when I did it,” Evelyn protested with a laugh.

As Marit began to strip down to her bathing suit, Zach gave her a little info about the crate race to take his mind off the body she was slowly revealing. It was difficult to keep his own body from reacting to the sight of the woman he’d thoroughly taken the night before, but since he was in the company of his mother, brother, and a kid, he had no choice.

“The participants in the race are given socks to wear, so everyone is on an even footing, so to speak.”

“Let me guess, lobster socks?” Marit asked with a laugh.

“Of course. There are fifty wooden crates strung together across the harbor. Each crate is filled with seaweed to make them more buoyant. If they make it across all fifty, they turn around on the connecting platform and go back. They do that again and again until they fall into the water. The first record ever was a thousand crates. That was in the eighties. The all-time record is sixty-five hundred.”

“Holy crap . . . that’s a lot of running back and forth!” Marit said.

“A hundred and thirty times,” Linc said with a nod. “It was a tie that year, and neither Scarlett nor Harrison ever fell in. They finally just called it because it didn’t look like either kid was going to ever falter.”

“They were like . . . little,” Kash said with a small frown.