Away with the Fishes Read Online Free

awakening island magic would have it, Randolph Rouge was just then coming down the mountain in his bread truck, having finished his deliveries to the tiny shops scattered atop the hill. Randolph, Trevor’s son, was as small-statured and as big-natured as his father; he offered to carry the officers up to Thyme, and Jarvis into town. Dodger could stay with the minibus until Jarvis returned with a tow truck, which Randolph would help him fetch after the policemen had been sorted out.
    Randolph’s truck was smaller than the minivan-bus, and he moved it agilely, so it took but a few seconds before he was facing in the right direction, Dodger’s minibus at his back. Jarvis got in next to Randolph, and Arnold and Joshua made do insidethe truck’s empty and seatless back half. When the flour-dusted officers had been safely deposited in Thyme, Jarvis and Randolph went back down the mountain’s other side, a loud calypso marathon blaring from the radio.
    “Who you think we can find to pull out Dodger’s bus at this hour?” Jarvis asked. It was close to ten o’clock by then.
    “My uncle will do it,” Randolph said, bouncing his shoulders up and down in time to the music. “We’ll go back to the bakery and call him from there.”
    So apart from the mystery of the lonely hearts ad, the night’s problems had worked themselves out. Dodger’s passengers were home and mostly dry. The night’s deliveries were made. The rain was slowing down. Randolph’s uncle would rescue Dodger’s minibus before too much longer.
    Randolph liked it when things fell into place, and if they did so to calypso rhythm, why, then all the better. These were his thoughts as he happily tapped the steering wheel and followed the curves down and into Port-St. Luke.
    But Oh was just waking up, remember. Just stretching and twisting and about to jump out of its bed. The wind had stirred, and stirred up the rain in turn. I’m sure that calypso beat only inspired the island’s antics. Suddenly everything stilled and the moon shone bright on Randolph’s and Jarvis’s path. It shone on the asphalt, where there was any, and on the puddles where the road was rough and torn. On the unmoving leaves, the shiny wet trunks of the trees that had withstood the just-finished storm—and on the bent and mangled remains of a bicycle that Randolph slammed on the brakes to avoid.
    The two men looked at each other, then both jumped out of the bread truck and rushed to survey what they assumed to be theremnants of some terrible accident. The bicycle was nearly crushed, but they found no blood or clothing or shoes or any other piece of evidence to indicate that the rider had been thrown or harmed. They checked the ditches and the woods in the general vicinity, even going so far as to knock on doors and to ask if anyone had seen or heard what happened. No one saw or heard anything, no one seemed to be missing, and no one had ever seen a bicycle like the one that lay in the middle of the road.
    This last part is what’s most unusual, for on Oh it’s impossible to own something without your neighbors knowing. Equally impossible is it to avoid loaning out that very same thing to any neighbor who should ask. A bicycle was a commodity that would not have gone overlooked. Randolph decided to put the bike in the truck and to take it back to the bakery, where his father would surely know what to do about it.
    “Looks like a lady’s bike, doesn’t it?” Jarvis observed, as they picked it up from the road. Randolph didn’t answer, and on the way home he kept the radio off.
    And there, at home, at Trevor’s Bakery in Port-St. Luke, the second bit of the story joins the first. Branson and Trevor were still sipping ginger beer (Trevor had replaced the bulb by then) and Raoul was trying not to think about what he had decided not to think about, when the boys arrived and told their tale in all its particulars: Neal and the waiter from Val-de-Trop, the toppled breadfruit, and the