I have been thinking so hard lately that it has been days since I noticed the birds. Now I watch a heron on its way from one pond to another, I suppose, and as I follow it an eagle flies by. I used to believe that if I saw an eagle, what I was thinking at that moment must be true. I am endlessly pointing out birds to Ginny, who accuses me of being a birder, but it still gives me a small gasp of pleasure to see one unexpectedly appear. As if all the movement in the universe is visible to us suddenly in the fields of the air.

When Nellie comes back later she says that she has read about channeling and she thinks there might be something to it. A lot of people in Hollywood endorse it. She thinks we must beg for another session. We head next door. As we walk over I notice Nellie's watch and in horror I see the time. I was supposed to deliver the Gourds to their mother on the beach half an hour ago. I tell Nellie we have to go.

"We need clearer directions about these gatherings. I got questions. I want to know if I should take you in and apprentice you in the art of healing if you're going to be part of this great thing," says Nellie, ignoring me.

"I don't see how that would work with school and babysitting and everything else," I say.

"You heard her, we're soul mates. We need to go back and ask about the particulars."

"Nellie, I CAN'T," I shout. "I've got to meet Mrs. Gourd on the beach or she's going to think...I don't know what she's going to think!"

We skeddaddle out of there and then we have to return because I realize we are missing Darsie. I run around and around Nellie's yard, more and more frantic. Luckily we find Darsie under a bush. "Didn't you hear me CALLING?" I yell at her.

"I knew where I was," says Darsie with impeccable logic.

"We have to hurry back to Mommy, hurry back to Mommy," I keep repeating as I take baby running steps, trying to put speed into their little legs because I am afraid Nellie will stop us again and I'll lose the Gourds. I'm exhausted and worried and frantic. Thoughts of the birds are long gone. But I am able to move the little Gourds along. They move unthinkingly like herd animals but despite our speed, when we get to the parking lot Mrs. Gourd is already there, looking furious. She is sitting on the cement divider b.u.mming smokes off the cigarette man and when she sees us she rises like a towering fury and grabs the baby carrier out of my hands, but this is not what captures my attention, for at that moment I hear my mother's voice coming loudly across the sand, shrieking, "NED!" And the cigarette man is off the divider and running down the beach to meet her.

Ned.

My Ninth Adventure.

My mother hugs the cigarette man. He hugs her back. I stare at them thinking he must reek of cigarette smoke and how unpleasant for my mother but even at a distance I can tell she doesn't care. By the time she is done hugging the cigarette man, Mrs. Gourd and all the little Gourds can only be glimpsed swiftly shuffling down Main Street. She can get those children to walk even faster than I can without saying a word.

I was vaguely aware that Mrs. Gourd was haranguing me through the long hug but I did not hear her. I realize I have never seen my mother hug anyone except my brothers and sister and me. Is this man related to her in some way?

And then as they join me it becomes apparent how. He is another one of them. One of the men she met when Mrs. Martin came over. I wonder how many more are coming. I wonder if he has fathered one of us. I realize now that when my mother said as she took laundry off the line that the clothes hanger man was "your father" she might have meant any of us children; we were all swarming about at the time and she wasn't specific. If that is right and another father is H.K. and yet another Mr. Fordyce, who really seems too old to me, it is possible that we each of us have a different father and like the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria coming to sh.o.r.e, all the ships are sailing back to port this summer. Things come in waves or come in on tides, the moon pulling our destinies from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e so that what we think is coincidence seldom is.

I eye this cigarette man slit-eyed as he approaches. What does he want? Why sit on cement dividers and stare at the sea?

He holds out his hand to me. "Well, I'll be. I'll be. I'll be. I had no idea. No idea looking at you coming and going that you were one of Felicity's daughters."

"Well, I am," I say.

"Well, I'll just be," he says.

"Oh, you've said that, Ned," says my mother, laughing. She gives him a small punch on his upper arm and he swings her around in a circle so her feet don't even touch the sand. She is barefoot.

"I have left the others on the beach over by the house. You must come, you must come. And you must stay. You can sleep on the couch."

"I don't want to be any trouble," says Ned.

"Oh, you won't be," says my mother. "Will he, Jane?"

"Well, he might be," I say honestly before I think.

"Why didn't you tell me you were here, staying at the Dragonfly Inn and eating at that awful Bluebird Cafe?" My mother says this quickly to cover up what I have said. They are both pretending not to have heard it but we all have. My face is burning.

"I guess I was afraid of finding out you weren't here. You know, a lot can change after so much time." He gets his backpack out of the trunk of his car with that Ontario license plate.

"Well, that's true," says my mother, in tones that are practically singing. "Come on." She leads him down the beach. I follow at a short distance, which seems to be okay with them. They don't encourage me to keep up. Probably they are worried I am going to say something without thinking again.

Ned seems delighted to meet Hershel and Max especially. I think he likes boys better than girls. I grab Maya's hand and start to walk home with her. I don't hear what Ned says but I hear my mother, who is picking up shovels and pails and putting them into a large beach bag, say, "Well, that will be a treat. All right, see you soon." She and the boys catch up to me and Maya.

"Ned is going into town for some steaks and a bottle of wine and cupcakes. Isn't that dear? He thought we should have cupcakes."

"Yum," I say. I am trying not to sound sour but it is tough going. "Why were you going to the parking lot barefoot?" I ask her.

"I thought I saw you there from where we were on the beach. You've been gone so much. I came to greet you. Suddenly I missed you."

I put my arm around my mother's waist and we walk back the rest of the way like this.

While Ned is gone my mother makes a big salad and rice and she gets a fire going in a circle of stones on the beach. I sit with Maya and Hershel and Max on the low front step of our porch, which goes right into the sand and faces the ocean.

"Whales!" says Max, getting up and pointing.

I don't even look, I just say, "There are no whales, Max."

"Whales!" he says again five minutes later. He must be tired of his LEGOS. He is losing half of them in the sand. "Stop saying that," I say, digging up his LEGOS for him and depositing them at his feet. I feel like a dog.

Maya goes in the house and gets her Sears, Roebuck paper dolls.

"I need more clothes," she says, handing me the scissors and the catalogue.

"You don't need me for this. You know how to cut things out with scissors," I say to her.

"I hate cutting," she says, shoving the catalogue at me. I am really getting tired of little children and the mysterious workings of adults. I wish Ginny were here. I let Maya put the catalogue on my lap but stay slumped over it, my elbows on my knees, staring out to sea.

"You're pensive," says my mother in that jolly voice as she comes in to get more stuff to put on our picnic table. But she sounds a little worried too. She already has plates and napkins and silverware there. Now she is bringing out jam and bread and things we don't normally have with dinner. She puts out strawberry, raspberry and a jar of the new blueberry. She is a jam show-off, I think.

"Well," I begin, but then my mother looks up over my head down the beach and waves her arms wildly over her head. Ned is coming toward the house.

"Greetings," says Ned. He has a plaid mackinaw over his arm, which he dumps on the porch steps like he lives here. He holds up a grill he has in one hand. "I didn't know if you had one."

"That's wonderful. We don't. I wondered after you left how we were going to do this," says my mother.

He also has a bottle of orange pop for us. He pours wine for my mother and himself and pop for all of us. He has bought steaks and cupcakes and a bag of candy and two bags of potato chips and potato salad from the cafe. My mother says, "Uh-oh, the Bluebird Cafe?" She takes a tiny nibble with a fork and says, "You shouldn't have." He takes one off the same fork and says, "You're right, I shouldn't have." They grin. She lets us eat potato chips all over the beach while they sit on the steps and drink wine and heat the grill. Max keeps going up behind Ned and eating potato chips over Ned's head. He is getting a lot of little pieces of chips in Ned's hair. Ned hasn't even reached his hand up to brush them out. Perhaps he cannot feel them because his head is made of stone.

"WHALES!" Max keeps saying to Ned. "Whales!" and pointing out to sea until Ned finally puts his wine down and sweeps Max up like an airplane and runs all over the beach with him. Max screams in delight. My mother laughs. I pour more orange pop moodily into my cup and think about murder-suicides and wonder if they begin with too much food and fun and games. With happy cries echoing over the beach and chip bags blowing in the wind and attacking seagulls and no one paying attention really to the evil thoughts of one person in the group. I know I am wallowing and it is good. Somehow, unlike not praying for Mrs. Nasters, it does not seem like something that will send me to h.e.l.l. I know part of my problem is that I am tired. It has been such a long workweek with the little Gourds. They have taken every ounce of my energy and I feel it has all been outgoing and nothing has been incoming.

Thinking of the horrible chain of events that has led me to babysitting, I rise to my feet. Why have I not thought of this before? If not praying for Mrs. Nasters and only praying for Mrs. Parks has led to this pa.s.s, why can I not reverse the process just as easily? Why can't I pray for Mrs. Nasters and not pray for Mrs. Parks? I have been pacing in a circle in front of the porch steps and am so startled by the elegance of this solution that I trip over a step and land on my knees, spilling pop everywhere.

Ned glances over and says I look like the pilgrims going up the steps of St. Joseph's Oratory in Montreal. Then he tells us about Brother Andre and his miraculous healings and all the crutches hanging in the oratory from lame people who have walked after contact with him.

My mother comes up to me and says, as if imparting some great secret, "Ned is a Canadian."

I rise to my feet and say that I have simply tripped.

Ned goes on telling me about Brother Andre's pickled heart. How college boys once stole it out of the oratory as a prank.

All the time Ned is telling this story he is putting the steaks on the grill and through dinner he tells us more.

"Up in New Brunswick is a place where the Vikings landed. They had a whole community there. People have gone to dig up all their tools and stuff. Really made kind of a shambles of the place. The way I look at it, if the Vikings were in this one place then they were probably here and there and around, you know? So I make it my mission, in between odd jobs, to find myself a piece of Viking remains and auction it off on eBay for a fortune."

"Could you do that, Ned?" asks my mother. "Wouldn't the government legally be ent.i.tled to it?"

"Well, now, I didn't think of that at the time, but just let me finish the story, Felicity," says Ned. "I was digging every chance I got. Of course, only at night, because, you know, I didn't know where I was going to find a Viking remain. I kept close to the excavation site but I couldn't dig right on that land. It was an archaeological site, after all. A Canadian treasure. It belonged to the people. You don't want to disturb that which by rights belongs to the people. That would be cruddy."

"So where did you dig?" I ask, getting caught up in the story despite myself.

"In people's backyards. By moonlight. I couldn't even risk a flashlight. During the day I would check out likely-looking backyards. That is to say, ones without dogs. Here, Hershel, see if you can make like a dog." He puts a big steak on Hershel's plate and my mother doesn't even protest that Hershel can't eat that much. This is a party.

"Well, I dug and I dug, being careful, of course, to always replace the earth before I left."

"Didn't that kind of make a mess of people's yards?" I ask.

"Aerating," says Ned, and starts cutting enthusiastically into his meat. No one has even bothered with all the side dishes. The steaks are so big that they cover our plates, leaving room for nothing else. The boys have grease all over their faces. They have picked up their steaks and are gnawing on them like little animals but no one cares. We know Ned must have found something and we want to know what.

"Then one day, I hit the jackpot. But it wasn't in someone's backyard. I'd run out of those. It was on the edge of town, well, in a public park, if you want to know. I had to be real careful because that's where the tramps hang out and you don't want to wrestle with a tramp in the dead of night."

"Why not?" asks Max, his eyes huge.

"Tramps are mean, Max," says Ned. "Everyone knows that. I've traveled Canada from one end to the other and a good part of the United States too and I've never met a well-behaved tramp."

"Why not?" asks Maya.

"It's just not in them," says Ned. "Anyhow, so I'm there in the park, digging away in the dead of night, by moonlight, only and keeping one eye out for tramps, when my shovel uncovers it."

There is a long pause as Ned cuts and eats a big piece of steak.

"WHAT?" asks Hershel.

"WHAT?" asks Maya.

"WHAT?" asks Max.

Ned doesn't say anything, just picks up his steak and dangles it and points at it. It's as if the half-eaten rib steak is a clue. Everyone looks puzzled.

"You dug up a steak?" I ask at last, breaking the solemn silence.

"I don't believe a steak would survive from Viking times," says Ned.

"You dug up a dinosaur?" asks Max.

"You dug up gold like the Mayas," says Maya.

"I dug up a BONE!" says Ned. "Now, what's for dessert?"

"What kind of a bone?" asks Max.

My mother laughs and gets up to clear the table and Ned helps her and as we carry things back to the kitchen we try to get Ned to tell us about the bone but he says it is a cupcake story. And then he says it is a coffee story. And then he says it is a some more wine story. And I finally say that maybe what he needs is time to make up the rest of the story and my mother says, "JANE!" and Ned laughs and says, "Okay, okay." And we move to the porch steps and he says, "Okay, so I dig up this bone. I'm pretty sure it's a thigh bone."

"How did you know?" asks Maya.

"Because it looks like a thigh bone. Hey, I haven't spent my life eating chicken for nothing."

"It looks like a chicken thigh?" asks Max, sounding disappointed.

"Yeah, only like ten hundred times bigger."

"Ten hundred times?"

"Well, slight exaggeration but it was a very big bone. The way you'd expect a Viking bone to be. Oh, they were big guys, all right. Big red-haired guys."

"Was there red hair on the bone?" asks Hershel.

"No," says Ned. "But, now, this is pretty exciting. I didn't find any namby-pamby bits of pottery or old iron tools or such. I'd found myself a piece of a genuine Viking."

"Oh gross," I say.

"But without the red hair," says Hershel.

"It was still a bone. A big bone," says Ned.

"I wish it had some red hair on it," says Max.

"Oh gross," I say again.

"Gross," echoes Maya. I can tell she doesn't really care, she just wants to be on the girls' side.

"Well, it's not like it still had flesh hanging off of it," says Ned. "So anyhow, I think, if I show up with this, here at the local museum, why, they're just going to take it away from me. So I go back to the rooming house where I'm staying and I pack that bone in my knapsack and I get in my car and I head out for the prairies."

"Why the prairies?" I ask.

"Because no one cares what you do on the prairies," says Ned. Then my mother looks down. Hershel is suddenly asleep in the sand. She lifts him gently to put him to bed and Ned watches my mother walking out and the stories seem to leave with her.

"Well, time for more cupcakes," says Ned, and brings the package over. He and Max have two more each and then Max burps and has to lie on his back in the sand. My mother returns and looks at Max and she and Ned laugh.

By the end of the evening, during which time Max and Maya wander off to bed, my mother and Ned have laughed so much they have tired themselves right out and sit on the porch step with their feet half buried in the cool sand. My mother is drawing small pictures with the big toe of her right foot and now and then sighing. She gets up to get her cardigan and then, seeing that I have not gone to bed like the others, invites me down on the steps. She pulls me closer and envelops me in the sweater with her. It is getting a little windy and the sand and salt blow over us but no one suggests moving inside. We just watch the sea turning night colors. Ned won't talk about the bone anymore. He says it's a story for when everyone is awake so we sit in silence for a long time without anyone feeling they have to say anything.

"What a nice place to watch the sun set," says Ned finally.

"Well, I remember you saying that many years before," says my mother dreamily.