My husband and I first encountered Useless Bay on Whidbey Island in the mid-1990s. We were both working in the tech industry and wanted some place we could hang our hammock and not think about the massive list of things we had to do Monday through Friday.
We first started inspecting the property on Useless Bay with a walk on the beach. As it happened, the tide was out, and it looked as if you could walk the twenty nautical miles to the Seattle Space Needle.
At first I was excited. What treasures would be uncovered? I ran around, searching. A sand dollar here, a moon snail there. And then, for some strange reason, I grew terrified. Who would call me back before the bay flooded with water, drowning me? What was the signal to come back? I had a vivid pen-and-ink picture running around my brain of what it would look like when the waters of the bay took me into the icy waters of the Puget Sound.
Then I remembered. It wasn’t a nightmare, it was a picture book: The Five Chinese Brothers, by Clare Huchet Bishop. In it, a family of brothers all look alike, but each has a super power of his own. One can stretch his neck, one is immune to fire, and one, the first brother, can open his mouth and swallow the sea.
It’s this first brother who sparks the story. An active young boy asks the first brother if he can swallow the sea so he can go out and collect treasures. The first brother agrees. But the little boy is naughty and ignores the signs the first brother makes, and he eventually drowns when the first brother can’t hold his breath any longer.
Saturday and Sunday, year after year for five years, first with just my husband and me, and then with our two children, we searched for treasures on the low tide in Useless Bay. But the tide that overcame us was more of a bubble—a tech bubble, to be exact—and we had to let go of our place on Whidbey Island.
Enter my sister, Ann, and her two boys, Will and Cole, giant and teenage and blond, who needed a place to stay and were interested in things like the anatomy of spiny dogfish and always tried to outdo each other in everything—especially sports. I had my setting; I had my five tough brothers and sister.
The mystery is real enough, too. But I’ll leave that to those of you interested enough to Google “dog” and “Ichiro.”
In the meantime, a giant thank-you to Tamar Brazis, for helping me find the real treasure in the story, and to Steven Chudney for helping me secure it. I owe you both a Voodoo doughnut.
Thanks to the cupcake writing crew, Martha Brockenbrough, Jen Longo, and Jet Harrington for keeping me on track with advice, sugar, and caffeine.
Another giant thank you to Peggy King Anderson for being an incredible first reader.
Sofia and Rich Beaufrand were incredible brainstormers.
And Mavis? We love you even though you were half-trained by a murdered man.
Hope you enjoyed Useless Bay by M.J. Beaufrand! Keep reading for a preview of The Rise and Fall of the Gallivanters.
ON THE LAST DAY OF SEVENTH GRADE, our drama teacher, Mr. Piper, decided to make us play Mafia. It was one of those wasted days that happen at the end of every school year. We’d finished our work, our grades had been sent to our parents, and we were all hopped up on cake and vacation.
Normally we liked Mr. Piper, even though he wore Jesus sandals in the middle of winter so the middle school auditorium always smelled like foot fungus. He used to preach about Movement, which meant us bouncing off the walls while he played bongos. “That’s it!” he would tell us. “Be the snowflake!”
But that last day of class, in a weird turnabout, when our brains were already in Johnson Creek, or Cannon Beach, or just Out of Here, Mr. Piper decided to impose classroom structure on us in the form of Mafia.
If you haven’t played before, it may sound cool, but it’s actually kind of stupid. Everyone has to lie down on the floor in a circle and close their eyes. Then the teacher taps someone to be the hit man and someone to be the angel. He says, “Mafia, awake!” Then the hit man sits up and opens his eyes, and points to the person they want to kill. That’s all they do. Sit up and point. And boom! The guy’s dead.
Ah, but there’s redemption. The hit man lies back down, then the teacher says, “Angel, awake! Who do you want to save?” Then they sit up and open their eyes, and if they point to the same person the hit man pointed to, then the victim gets to live. The hit man and angel keep going until everyone is dead. In between hits, when everyone has their eyes closed, Mr. Piper will announce which of us has been “saved” and which of us has been “killed,” so everyone can try to figure out who the angel and the hit man are. Then the real fun begins. Everyone tries to imagine how they died.
None of us had actually watched someone’s life drip away, or be shot away, so it was more about drowning in vats of lemon Jell-O, or being trampled in a herd of stampeding nutrias.
I didn’t realize until later how freaky it was that everyone wanted to die.
Dying was the fun part.