The Big Snapper Read Free Page B

thinks it’s dark and spooky and smells musty. Eddie has grown up with the odor of damp cedar and hemlock in his nose and it makes him feel at home.
    Jake spots a tiny sitka deer standing in a bedof ferns. He points it out to Becky, but she is busy complaining about the steepness of the hill and by the time she has turned, it is gone.
    She shrugs and returns to the path. “So, what do you guys do for excitement around here?”
    Eddie thinks about this. “Mostly fishing and crabbing. My granddad and I are building a fifteen foot—”
    â€œNot those kinds of things,” interrupts Becky. “I mean like stuff that you do for fun. Don’t you have any shopping malls or movie theaters? It just seems so dead around here.”
    â€œYeah, we wrestle grizzly bears,” snorts Jake. “And when we’re not doing that, we pull on wet suits and swim after hammerhead sharks.”
    Becky stops, opens her mouth a little, looks between Jake and Eddie and closes it again.
    Eddie really wishes he was fishing with Granddad as they walk the final stretch to Spirit Lake. When they arrive, Becky is again not at all impressed.
    â€œIt’s full of old logs and just spooky,” she says, “and all that moss hanging from the trees looks like something gross and ugly sneezed.”
    Eddie tries to keep in mind that she’s a girl, but even considering that disadvantage, he doesn’tunderstand her distaste. He and Jake have spent hours, probably weeks if they added it up, building rafts and just hanging around Spirit Lake.
    Becky finds a log just off the path overlooking the lake. She inspects it for bugs and sits down. Eddie swings the backpack off his shoulder and pulls out the sandwiches Grandma has made: smoked salmon for him and Jake, and, because she doesn’t like fish, peanut butter for Becky. Jake wanders along the shore while Becky chews gingerly.
    She drops the sandwich to her lap. “Man, what I wouldn’t give for a Big Mac right now.”
    Eddie knows what a Big Mac is—he’s seen it on TV. But he has never eaten one because there are no fast food restaurants where he lives.
    Eddie’s attention wanders from Becky to an eagle that is watching them from its nest in the tallest cedar across the lake. Like Eddie, it’s probably trying to make sense of this chatty animal that has invaded its world. Eddie would really prefer to be down at the edge of the lake with Jake, launching the raft they’d made earlier in the year. But Becky is a guest, and he knows he’ll never hear the end of it if he isn’t polite.

    When Eddie was younger, and Granddad was able to walk properly, the two of them would make the hike up to the lake almost every week.
    â€œHave I ever told you how this lake was formed?” Eddie remembers Granddad asking him many years earlier. They had hiked about halfway up the path to the lake. Feeling particularly lazy that day, Eddie had been complaining about the climb and how far they still had to go.
    Eddie didn’t know how the lake was formed, but he guessed it might have been left behind by an ice mass, like he’d learned about in school. Many of North America’s lakes had been created this way.
    â€œWell, that’s true. But not this one,” Granddad had said. “It came to be during my great-great-grandfather’s time. A tidal wave swept over the island. When the water receded, it took many things with it, but it also left some behind. Great-great Grandfather lost his home and his canoe, although fortunately, everyone in his family was safe.
    â€œThe morning after the flood, he set out in search of wood to build a new home. He waswalking up this very same hill with his own grandson—my grandfather—who was about your age at the time. They felt the earth move. At first they thought they were in for another tidal wave, or perhaps an earthquake. But then it moved again, although this time it was