Phantom Island

Chapter 2
 
A Stranger Arrives

    “You’re getting quite pink, Sweet Stuff,” I said to Lucy. “If you keep crisping up like that you’ll make an excellent prune by the time you’re out of the difficult teen years.” I paused. Then, as if the thought had just occurred to me, I said, “You’d better let me slather you with that lotion.”
    She sighed. “Oh, okay,” she said, “but only the parts of me that are currently exposed, and don’t try any ‘accidental’ feelies.”
    Taking great care to hide my glee and eagerness, I got to my knees, grabbed the suntan lotion, and asked with what I meant to be a scoffing tone, “Where did you pick up a vulgar word like feelies?”
    “There’s an article in this month’s issue of Teen Sibling.”
    “An article that offers a lexicon of the latest pubescent palaver?” I asked, squeezing a generous blob of lotion into my hand and bending to my task.
    “Actually, more in the nature of a list of warnings.”
    “Against stooping to the linguistic level of one’s pimpled peers?”
    Where, I asked myself, should I begin applying the lotion? I knew from previous experience that she was likely to tell me to ‘quit it’ before the job was complete, detecting in my touch the pleasure that I was getting from the work, so it might be best to aim high.
    “The article was called ‘Your Teen Brother: Beware His Baser Instincts.’”
    “Sounds like a vicious slander,” I asserted.
    Perhaps it would be best to begin somewhere where I would, or at least could, seem to be acting in her best interests. Her legs. I advanced my hand toward her right leg, the nearer one, in the area behind the knee, still hesitating, deciding whether to begin in the safe area below the knee or head right for the thigh.
    An explosion rent the air.
    “What was that?” cried Lucy.
    “There’s been some kind of explosion aboard a clam boat out there on the bay, just offshore,” I said.
    I began to rub the lotion, along the back of her upper leg, with lengthening strokes, my fingers curving toward her inner thigh.
    “‘Some kind?’ What kind?”
    “Probably the kind that is caused by an accumulation of fumes in the engine room, if clam boats have engine rooms.”
    I began moving upward, but she twisted around suddenly, shaded her eyes, and peered out over the bay.
    “They must have engine rooms,” she said. “They have engines, don’t they?”
    “Yes, assuredly, they do. Say, you don’t think I ought to try swimming out to that boat to see whether I can lend any assistance, do you?”
    “I’m not sure that you could swim all that way, Larry.”
    “You’re probably right, though I do think that I’m a stronger swimmer than most boys my age.”
    “Oh, I’m sure you are.”
    “Here’s a development,” I said, squinting into the glare of sunlight on the bay. “Someone has dived into the water from the burning boat, and he—I’m assuming it’s a he—is swimming this way.”
    “Oh, yes. I see,” she said. “Wow, he does have a strong stroke, doesn’t he?”
    “Probably builds up quite a bit of muscle wrestling those clams from the bottom of the bay,” I ventured.
    “I suppose he’ll be here in a while.”
    “Yes. It won’t be long. Hmmm.”
    “Did you say ‘Hmmm’?”
    “Yes, I did.”
    “Why?”
    “Well, it just occurred to me that we really ought not to let the fellow come ashore here, what with father’s very thorough effort to keep unauthorized personnel off the island.”
    “I see what you mean.”
    “He might be a spy for a rival knickknack maker.”
    She burst out laughing and swatted at me. “Oh, Larry,” she said, “you say the most hilarious things sometimes. That sounded just like Daddy.”
    We watched in silence for a while. The swimmer pulled steadily and powerfully through the water, rapidly closing the distance between the boat, which was now burning merrily down to the waterline, and the shore. In what seemed like no more than a few minutes, he was standing on the shore, and then he was striding toward us. He was naked to the waist, displaying a physique that made Lucy gasp.
    “Golly,” she said, I think, though what escaped from her may have been a gurgle or gulp rather than a word.
    He waved as he approached. He smiled.
    “You must be Larry and Lucy,” he said when he was standing in front of us.
    “Would you mind giving me a good coat of this lotion?” she breathed, snatching the tube from my hand and extending it toward him.
    “I’m afraid I don’t have time for that, Short Stuff,” he said with a chuckle. “I’ve got to report to your father.”
    He strode off.
    “He knows our names,” I said. “I find that surprising and puzzling, don’t you?”
    “He called me Short Stuff,” she said with a pout, “not Sweet Stuff.”