Frost Hollow Publishers | Books for Boys

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BREAKIN' STONES

I enjoyed the way the book blended baseball and fishing into the suspensful mystery on Martha's Vineyard. Having characters in their mid to late teens made it more interesting because there is so much more they can do.

--Matt Miller, age 13

I've read all the Robert Holland books and this one had the most action and excitement. I kept it by the side of my pillow so I could read it when I first woke up in the morning. I just wish I could pitch like Rob.

--Matt Hundhammer, age 11

Chapter One

Don't Ask

Rob English sat on the dry sand above where the seaweed marked the rise of last night's tide, watching the silvery water swirling round the bearded rocks the tide would soon cover again. Nothing, he thought, could rebalance things the way the tide did. By the clock it came and went and it could be relied upon as few events beyond the rise and set of the sun.

The fish, of course, were less predictable. Sometimes they came in on the tide at just the spot you'd chosen. Other times they turned up off another beach, following schools of bait fish or perhaps nothing more than a sudden whim, nosing up some likely current. What he found odd, because he had fished so many places on the Island at different times of day and different times of the year, was that he knew, as often as not, which beach to try. Still that did not ensure catching fish. Today was a good example. He had chosen, on this Saturday morning in early March, to fish this particular Chilmark beach because he was certain no one else would fish here. After the nastiness of the past week, he just needed to be alone for awhile. Oh, there might be a walker or two, members of the Association that owned the beach, if only because the weather was so warm for early March with the temperature in the high fifties and the wind surprisingly still, but for the most part he would be alone.

They might even stop to chat, and he wouldn't mind that, though he never seemed to have much to say to adults. How could you? How could you talk to anyone who kept asking, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" He'd been hearing that his whole life, and he had never found an answer.

Lately, it had gotten a lot more desperate. After all, he was a senior and in three months he was supposed to set out on a path that led somewhere. His folks assumed he'd join the family business as a carpenter, and eventually he and his older brother Carl would be partners in what was, by any measure, one of the best-run contracting businesses on the Vineyard. Only a fool would turn down such an offer.

Except that he wasn't interested in driving nails and cutting boards, and he wasn't at all like his brother. Not that Carl wasn't a good guy, because he was, and nobody could have wanted a better big brother, especially when it came to providing protection. He was four years older and he'd always been one of those guys that no one wanted to tangle with. Rob, until last fall, when he had begun to grow, had been a skinny dwarf. He was still skinny but he certainly wasn't short anymore. In fact, he'd grown ten inches since last fall, and suddenly, at six-two, he was taller than all but a few basketball players.

Which was why his waders were eight inches too short. They were supposed to come up to his chest, but now they reached barely above his waist. And the feet were too small by a full size. He'd been leaving hints around, pages torn from Bean's and Cabela's, but so far his folks hadn't come through.

He stretched his legs out in front of him. It was certainly a lot to have grown in so short a time. He was now the second tallest in the family on either side. Only Grandpa Whitmore was taller, at six-four. But I'm still pretty skinny, Rob thought.

What it came down to was simply that he wasn't like other kids. And there were a lot of contradictions. He was skinny, but he wasn't weak. He was smart, but he wasn't a very good student. He was well-coordinated, but he played no sports. He wasn't the least bit shy, but could never think of what to say. He was also left- handed, and he had not even a glimmer about what he was going to do when he graduated from high school in June.

And worse, nobody let him forget about it. Tom was going to UMass, Charlie was headed for Colby up in Maine ... the list went on and on until it got to him. There was nothing after his name. It was old news. Five-foot-four-inch tall guys who carry pocket rocks in a high wind don't get much attention.

It would have helped to have had something at school that set him apart from other guys, but the two things he was good at didn't cut it. As far as he knew, he was the only kid on the island who fished with a fly rod, and he was the only guy he'd ever heard of who could knock one stone out of the air with another. These were clearly not the things girls noticed. He didn't even think they'd noticed how much he'd grown. Time after time he'd be talking to somebody and a girl ahead of them, recognizing his voice, would turn and look directly into his chest. And then she'd look up, puzzled and perplexed.

He looked down at his fly rod. An Orvis Trident, nine foot for eight-weight line, with an Odyssey reel. Six weeks of his last summer's pay driving nails for Dad. Carl thought he was nuts, even after he took him out for bass and he'd hooked into a thirty-five incher and let Carl play it in. Carl's view was that you went out to catch fish for meat. And on this island with a fisherman behind nearly every mailbox, that was the normal view.

Usually he kept some fish to eat and some to smoke, and let the rest go. What he liked most was hooking them. He liked to prove that he could look out at a patch of water and know where a fish might lie, even when the gulls and terns gave no indication that fish were feeding. It was one mystery he could solve, and since his whole life seemed to be a mystery that defied solution, it was nice to have one he could master.

Rob stood up and looked out over the water. It was a good day for fishing. The sky was gray, the water running silver and gray, and the fish would not be so shy and ... what was that?

His eyes followed a plank drifting on the tide. It looked like plank from a boat hull, and on the end where it had been broken, the splintered wood was light in color, meaning it had not been in the water very long. He watched it float slowly by, appearing and disappearing among the rocks as it drifted along the beach and off toward the next point.

He set his rod on a large flat rock and walked down to where the sand was hard underfoot, bent and picked up several stones the right size for throwing. It would be a half hour before the water would have come in far enough to fish, so it wasn't like he'd risk scaring anything off. It was a way to pass time, something he'd done since he could remember. Throwing stones.

He looked at the plank floating past some sixty or seventy feet away, wound up like a big league pitcher and fired the stone. It hit the plank dead center and then he threw another four stones, hitting the plank each time. But he didn't just hit the plank, he hit it so hard with the last stone that he split it in half.

The force of it surprised him. He knew he could hit it, but he had not known that he could throw so hard. He grinned. Whoa. Was this the result of growing taller? Must be. What else could explain it?

Next trick. His best. He threw one stone high into the air, and then he fired the second stone to intercept the first as it fell earthward. No contest. He'd been doing this for years.

He tossed the first stone in a long, steep arc and then fired the second stone. They intercepted perfectly but the collision shattered both stones. It looked like a clay bird when you got the shotgun on it just right. It was awesome! Totally awesome! He picked up two more stones, fired the first one out over the water and then, timing it carefully, he threw the second stone. The result was the same. Just wait till the summer kids showed up with their money this year. For years he and Carl had been hustling the summer crowd, sometimes making forty or fifty bucks a night. But now, after they got them the first time, they could double the bet on whether he could break the first stone.

He tried it again, and again he shattered the dropping stone. Then he cut down the speed and just knocked the first stone from the air.

The voice took him by surprise.

"That is one hell of a trick," the man said.

Rob turned.

"If I hadn't seen you do that, I wouldn't believe it could be done. And yet I've just seen you do that four times in a row. How on earth did you learn how to do that?"

Rob grinned, looking at the man carefully. He was in his sixties, he thought, wearing chinos, a blue windbreaker, and a baseball cap with a logo he'd never seen before. "I just tried it and then I kept doing it."

The man stepped closer and stuck out his hand. "I'm Hal Farrow," he said.

Rob shook hands. "Hi, Rob English." Now, as he looked more carefully, he could see that the man was probably younger than he had looked at first because now he could see that the lines in his face had come from being outside and not from age. He was a shade under six feet tall and he looked trim and fit. Moreover, he had a hand like a clam basket, it was so big.

"Could you do that again?"

"Sure." Rob picked up two stones and repeated the trick.

"How come it breaks sometimes?"

"I throw the second stone harder," Rob said.

"That's even more incredible." He shook his head in disbelief. "Do you live here in the Association?"

"No," Rob said. "On Middle Road."

"Oh," the man grinned. "A real Islander."

Rob nodded.

"And a fly fisherman."

Again Rob nodded.

"Pretty darn good equipment too."

"I was at the Orvis contest last June and one of the men from the company let me try out a Trident."

"Did you win?"

Rob shook his head. "Came in third."

"Pretty respectable finish with a whole beach full of experts." One surprise after another, first the stones, and then his handshake with a grip like a bolt cutter, and then, of course his ability with a fly rod.

"A school came through but I wasn't strong enough to get my line out to them. I was kind of short then." He grinned. "This year it'll be different."

Hal nodded. "Somehow I expect it will." He gestured toward the water. "Do you fish here often?"

"Once, maybe twice a year."

"I don't think I've ever seen anyone fishing here."

"Are you here year-round?"

"As of today," he said. "I retired on Monday and we packed up everything and left. Now we're here for good."

Rob grinned. "I can't imagine a better place to live."

Harold's eyebrows arched upward. "You're a senior?"

"Yes, sir."

"No. Call me Hal. You're close enough to being a man to start calling men by their first names, I should think." He took off his cap, smoothed his gray hair, and reset the cap. "You must be a pretty good ballplayer."

"I've never played since Little League."

"Really? Now how is it a young man who can throw like that isn't playing baseball?"

"I'm going through a big growth spurt," Rob said. "I've grown ten inches since last fall. When I was five-four, I couldn't do much in the way of sports."

"Not even soccer?"

"Too slow."

"Wait a minute. Your last name is English? You live on Middle Road?"

Rob nodded.

"Your dad and brother built our house for us."

"I worked on it this past week. We went 'til ten every night to get it ready. It's a very nice house."

"And your dad and brother are the best builders I've ever seen. Are you going to join them when you graduate?"

"I don't think so," Rob said.

"You're going to college then?"

"No. I'm not much of a student. I read a lot, but I just don't apply myself, or at least that's what I keep hearing from my teachers. School's kind of boring."

Hal looked out at the water. "Tide's almost right, I'd say."

Rob looked around at the water which was now about halfway up the rocks, figuring that if Hal knew that, then he had to be a fisherman.

"Well, I'm going for a walk. Good luck," he said, and then turned away toward the east.

"Thanks," Rob said, "It was nice talking to you."

"Pleasure was all mine, Rob."

He watched Hal walk off down the beach and then walked up and got his rod, irritated by Hal's assumption that he must be going to college. Heck, not everybody went to college, especially not here. So what was the big deal with not going to college? On the other hand, it was pretty clear that he had to do something. What had irritated him, he thought, was having the subject rear its nasty, ugly head again.

He waded out into the chill water, unhooking the fly from the keeper just above the grip on the rod, then working the rod back and forth to get some line out. He was almost waist deep when he stopped and began to cast. And now that was different too. Now when he shot his arm forward in the forecast the line exploded through the guides, reaching out and out and dropping the fly farther than he had ever cast before.

He was tempted to haul in and cast again, just because he could do it, but he controlled the urge. The water was too still for that, and any extra thrashing would only spook the fish... if there were any fish there. No. It would spook them because there were fish here. He could feel them in a way that he had never been able to explain. He just knew when fish were near.

But they were deep now, working around the rocks in search of the bait fish that came in on the tide, so he let the line sink, guessing the distance to the bottom before beginning his retrieve, making the fly dart about like a shiner being chased.

Cast after cast he concentrated on trying to get the fly to drift toward the base of one enormous rock, but the current was running strong, and the fly swept through too quickly. He changed his angle, walking to the right nearly twenty feet. Last year he could not have made this cast. It was at least ninety feet.

He stripped out line and began working the rod. It was incredibly powerful, but it was still a long, long reach. And it was more difficult because he was standing deep in the water, meaning his backcast was much more likely to hit something behind him. The trick was to carry seventy feet of line in the air and then have enough free line in the stripping basket belted around his waist, so on his final cast forward the weight of the line and the combined thrust of the rod and his arm would pick up the loose line and shoot it out through the guides on the rod to pick up all the slack line and lay it out on the water.

It was, like anything athletic, a matter of power and timing, because no matter how strong you are, if you don't make the final push at the right instant, there is no power available. He could feel the line in the air, sensing how it swept out behind him in a nice tight curl, and then he put it together and the line hammered out through the guides right down to the reel. Damn, he was good!

The line sank quickly and this time it was in the right place, the fly working deep, right along the base of the rock to where the current eddied. It was a place a fish might wait and ... the force of the strike pulled the rod downward, the tip flexing fully before the butt section of the rod began to bend. The reel screamed savagely as the fish ran for deeper water. Rob tightened down the drag, holding the rod up high so the fish had to work against the full flex of the rod and the drag on the reel.

It slowed and turned and he took back some line, getting almost all of the backing in before the fish turned for another run. Rob snubbed that run off as well, and then just as he was ready to relax, the fish wheeled and came at him. Now there was no time to reel and he simply stripped in line as fast as he could, making sure he kept enough tension on the fly so that the fish couldn't shake it loose. A lesser fisherman would have lost the battle there, but Rob had been ready, and the instant the fish hit shallow water it turned, and all he had to do was let out line until the fish slowed as it worked against the weight of the line.

It was a big fish. Maybe thirty pounds, but he could feel the lack of vitality that so often occurred in the bigger fish. Which meant, he thought, that it was probably a spent cow, a female that had already spawned up in a river somewhere and hadn't yet got its strength back.

Slowly the runs grew shorter and shorter, and finally he began to back toward the beach. Now the fish just followed and he led it in. The fight was gone. He reached down, picked the fish up by the gill, and dragged it up onto the beach. It was at least thirty pounds. He slipped out his long fish knife and stuck the fish down through the back of the head, killing it instantly.

This was a money fish and it meant he was going to quit and take it into Menemsha and see how much either Poole's or Larson's would pay. It was early enough in the season, so he knew he'd get a good price. There were very few bass around.

He unhooked the fly, slipped it into the keeper, set the rod on a rock, and walked to the water to wash the slime from his hands. When he looked up, the water was full of planks. They must have been just beyond the point. It was, he thought, a substantial mystery. Somewhere a boat must have blown up, and it hadn't happened very long ago, judging by the freshness of the paint and the light color of the broken ends of the boards.

He watched a big chunk drifting in and he waded out, grabbed hold, and pulled it into shallow water. The white paint had been badly scorched, and it sure did look like a boat had gone up somewhere. But that wasn't uncommon. Every season some idiot started his boat without venting the engine compartment of gas fumes. Yet something was wrong with that idea, he thought as he looked down at the piece of hull in front of him, he just couldn't think what.

He knew he was going to have to figure it out, no matter how long it took. It wasn't even a matter of having to solve the mystery, so much as the need he felt to pry into things. He grinned to himself. It was a good thing he wasn't a cat because if he were, then his mother would have been right, and he'd have been dead. On the other hand, he thought, it wasn't really curiosity that killed the cat. He'd watched a lot of cats. What got them in trouble was that they got so focused on what they were poking their noses into that they could not react to trouble from another direction. When you grow up as the runt of the litter, you learn to watch for that very early. Survival depends on it.

It was why he heard the foot steps in the sand long before the man who was making them had closed to within fifty feet.

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