“My first Great Lake,” I declared, drinking in the view. “Talk about spectacular.”
Every now and again I’d turn up a bit of trash, but Rebel had brought along a plastic bag for just that reason, shrugging when I raised an eyebrow at him.
“It’s the least we can do,” he said. “I wish folks would do more cleaning up on the beaches back home. They’re impossible to enjoy now, which is a shame, with all our beautiful coastline.”
“People suck, sometimes.”
“Unfortunately.”
He plucked something dripping from the water and turned it towards the sun, the coin catching a glint of light and shimmeringwhen the sun hit it. “Hey, check this out. It’s not American.”
He turned it over, studying it from a different angle. “It’s not Canadian either; I think it’s British! Sweet!”
He plonked it into my bucket among the other treasures we’d found.
“Are you sure you don’t want to keep it?” I asked.
“Naa, I want you to add it to your treasures,” Rebel said. “Maybe make something out of it that we can display on the bus.”
“A shadowbox,” I said, already envisioning it. “With the coin at the center and shells and sea glass around it. Let’s see what else we find. We can sort through it all when we have the rest of the supplies and put it together.”
“We?”
“Hey, it was your idea,” I said. “I know it’s not as exciting as rebuilding an engine…”
“No, I’d love to help,” he admitted. “It just surprised me to be included.”
“Why wouldn’t you be?”
“I dunno,” he muttered. “It’s your thing, ya know.”
“So? Doesn’t mean I have to do it alone.”
“True. It’s always more fun to work on a car with someone else,” he admitted. “There’s plenty of coastline out where I built and a T-top Camero in the garage just waiting for us to cruise in. Unlike the Impala, it's road ready and raring for a long drive. Can you tell I like muscle cars?”
“Really? I never would have guess,” he said, dryly. “Why’d you choose Newport Beach instead of something a little closer to New Bedford?”
“It’s close enough,” he explained. “I always loved it out there. When my old man was growing up, the amusement park was still open. He was always nostalgic about that place, so he’d take me out there, just to walk along the coast and tell me stories about the bands he and his friends saw at the Palladium and the time they got the Free Fall record for riding it sixty-four times in a row. He said they’d cut school and spend the day on the rides, since it was never crowded, and stick around for a concert later. Old school shit, no seats, just mosh pits everywhere.”
“Damn. Did you get your love of music from him?”
“Hell yeah, his CD collection is a thingof beauty,” he explained. “He’d come in from work, grab something at random from one of the racks, and fill the house with music for the first hour before you could even talk to him. That was his de-stressor. Everything else could wait. He didn’t sign school forms, answer questions, or even pass out our allowances until after the first CD.”
“I can appreciate that.”
“Same. Now. As a kid, not so much sometimes, especially if I was trying to duck out and he insisted I take my kid sister along so she wouldn’t pester the hell out of him for something.”
“That’s called getting thrown under the bus.”
“Tell me about it. Especially when that kid loved to rat me out.”
“So, you were always a troublemaker.”
“I prefer the term adventurous,” he replied. “I’ll even accept precocious and overly curious. The trouble part was always accidental.”
“Uh-huh, why don’t I believe that?”
“Okay, so mischievous might be an option too.”