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turns away from the light, rolls off the roof, and lands with a crash among the two buckets of looted eels he’s forgotten he left outside the shack the other night.
    â€œUrth!” he curses.
    Landed right on his bad ankle too.
    â€œTuck?”
    Ah, now Ma’s up. And the buckets are spilled, the eels splattering onto the deck.
    â€œSodden
Urth
.”
    â€œTuck!”
    There’s a weary creak of wood as Ma struggles out of her bunk. She fiddles with the broken window latch, the one she’s been asking him to fix for many a moon, and pushes the shutters open.
    â€œWhassall the racket?” she croaks, rubbing bleary eyes. She spies Tuck among the spilled eels. “In the name of The Man! You’d better catch those eels, Tuck, before I grab you by the neck and—”
    Tuck doesn’t wait to hear what she’ll do. He runs a string of curses through his teeth as he limps along the deck of the barge, crashing into neighboring shacks, tripping over fishing gear, seaweed stacks, potted plants, and all kinds of junk, trying to catch the tail end of an eel.
    He’s just about to close his fingers on one when next-door’s cat darts between his feet and trips him up. Now he’s flat on his face, his bad ankle on fire, and it’s too late.
    The eels slick down a drain. Tuck hears the slither and
plop
as they escape back into the sea.
    No eels, a few crumbs of salt in his pocket, a bum ankle, and there’s no one to blame but himself.
    The cat knows she’s in for it and tries to slink into the eel bucket. Tuck kicks the bucket and grabs the cat’s tail, yanking it hard in revenge. The cat gives an outraged yowl.
    â€œ
Tuck
.”
    â€œOy, cut the racket out there!” yells Arthus, the old grump from the next shack. A window shutter rattles open and Arthus’s walrussy head looms out. “What a dubya. That’s what you are, boy, a true dubya.” Arthus surveys the mess Tuck has made and pulls the shutter closed again with a whack.
    Tuck gets to his feet. From his own shack there’s an outburst of wheezy coughs. No wonder he goes out looting. It’s better than staying in this dump, getting yelled atand listening to Ma’s snores and wheezes, night after night.
    Tuck limps back to his own shack. The dawn light glints in his ma’s eye. With her beaky nose, pale face, and nest of graying hair, she has the look of an orange-eyed gull. A gull with its nest on its head.
    â€œSorry, Ma.”
    â€œA sorry excuse for a son, thass what you are, Tuck Culpy.
Phut—wheez
. All that creaking on the roof—you been up there all night again?”
    Tuck shrugs.
    Ma gives him a glinty glare. “You can just set off early and find yourself some work ’cause there’s no dinner now, is there? You just kicked it back into the sea. I never know how we’ll live from one day till the—
phut wheez
—next.”
    A fit of cough-wheezies halts her.
    â€œRubbish, Ma,” says Tuck. “We’re doing all right. Had a good glug of sea grape last night, didn’t you, eh? And a nice basket of smoked oysters? Keeping you in luxury, I am.”
    But she’s decided, as the neighbors are no doubt listening in now he’s woken them up, to pretend to be a proper ma.
    â€œD’you think I sailed across the ocean in a bottle? Think I—
phut-phut-wheez
—fell out of the sky? I know what you get up to. You wuzzn’t on that roof all night, Tuck Culpy—
wheeez
… Hanging out with a no-good lot of curfew breakers, thass where you were. Be a good lad now and knuckle down to some steady work, eh?”
    Ah, he’s sick of her. Sick of looking after her and getting no thanks. Sick of her gorging on whatever he brings home then moaning about how he got it. And most of allhe’s sick of the strange guilt she somehow drums up in him, just because he’s alive and the others died.
    Last year’s summer