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darkness.
    “I think it’s a… big bird!” Albie might exclaim.
    “Tree frog,” Marie, raised on a ranch in the California coastal zone, would say with great authority. She would hold finger
     and thumb half an inch apart. “About that long.”
    “But it makes a bigger sound than that!”
    Once they heard a dog bark, but Marie said it was a fox—a gray, you didn’t find reds down by the ocean. Next morning, Eddie, up before dawn, saw the animal’s tracks: dainty little
     pawprints hardly larger than those Shenzie might make. Fox.
    Other nights, Albie asleep and the wind sighing in the trees behind the house, they would yawn over the chessboard until finally
     falling into bed themselves. Only to feel fatigue drop magically away for velvet moments in the dark of the night, soft cries
     of completion that never woke their son.
    Perfect vacation days, with Marie’s birthday the most perfect of all. It dawned clear and warm and bright, without a wisp
     of fog, and Eddie bare-legged in front of the open fridge calling out items for the grocery list.
    “I think we should have steak tonight in honor of the occasion. And baked potatoes—”
    “No oven.”
    “Okay, write down aluminum foil for the potatoes so we can stick ‘em in the coals. And corn on the cob if that little grocery
     store is up to it—”
    “And whatever crucifer they have fresh there.”
    Eddie turned to his son, who was waiting for the piggyback bicycle ride to the store. “Eat-your broccoli, dear,” he said.
    “I say it’s spinach and I say to hell with it,” said Marie like the little boy in the old
New Yorker
cartoon. They laughed, and Albie crowed; though he didn’t understand it, he loved that one for some reason, almost as much
     as he disliked crucifers.
    Eddie shouldered him and his outsized crash helmet, almost as big as he was, for the four-mile wobbly ride to the little corner
     store. And told Albie that he had only one year left.
    “Year for what?” the boy asked the top of Eddie’s head.
    “Before you compose your first symphony. That’s what Mozart did when he was four.”
    Albie thought about it. Not knowing what a symphony was, he finally said, “I’ll wait.”
    When Eddie got back, Albie still on his shoulders and the food in saddlebags over the rear wheel, they all went exploringthrough the salt marsh to the beach. The narrow trail led down into a big area of pickleweed, a lanky plant whose woody segments
     held water the way ice plants do.
    A shadow shot across them, making both Marie and Eddie duck. It struck the ground thirty feet away with a thump, extended
     claws first, then flapped up again with a tiny rodent wriggling in its talons. It was a foot-long handsome bird with hooked
     beak and heavily barred tail.
    “Daddy! Look!”
    “We see, Albie. It’s a…” He turned to Marie.
    “Harrier hawk,” she said. “With a harvest mouse.”
    “He gonna kill the mouse?” demanded Albie.
    “I’m afraid that’s what he does for a living,” Marie said regretfully.
    Further in, the pickleweed was replaced by bright orange splotches of parasitic dodder and stiff triangle-leaved salt-bush.
     Marie broke off a stem so they could bite it and taste the salt.
    “Could the hawk kill me?” said Albie suddenly.
    “Not a chance, Tiger, you’re too big for him,” said Eddie. “In fact, there’s nobody around big enough to kill you.”
    “That’s okay, then,” said Albie.
    There had been heavy surf the night before, so out on the beach they found great washed-up strands of kelp, its strange broad
     indented streamers looking as if they had been stamped out of green tin. The thirty-foot stalks, as big as a wrist, had heads
     like bulls’ testicles. All smelling of salt and the sea and not unpleasantly of the deaths of the tiny marine creatures clinging
     to it when the giant seaweed had been washed ashore.
    Looking at the shredded, ragged leaves, Eddie was reminded of one of Marie’s favorite