The owner saw me though the window and opened the door for me. She followed me to the table where the empty cooler from yesterday was sitting. “Six large fish and four small ones?”

I put the cooler up on the table, picked up the empty one, and nodded to her. “Yes, ma'am, six big ones, four small ones. How many for tomorrow?”

She lifted the lid on the cooler and looked in at the fish. She took two twenties out of her apron and handed me the money. “Six more and a dozen small ones. How are your beans turning out?”

I shook my head. “I have been soaking them overnight. I have tried not salting them. I have tried slow cooking. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

She opened the door for me. “Clean them well, soak them overnight, bring them to a boil, then slow cook them. Takes about two and a half hours. Depends on how old the beans are. Was that fancy car out there when you came in?”

I looked out the window. An expensive-looking black car was parked a good distance away. I hadn’t noticed it earlier, but I stepped out of shadow in the woods so no one would seen me appear out of nowhere. “I didn’t notice it, ma’am.”

She asked, “Could you stay here ‘til the first customer comes in? I’ll give you a bowl of gumbo.”

I smiled up at her. “Gladly then, but let me watch you fix it.”

She already had it ready, so apart from seeing the final seasoning and touches, I didn’t learn much. I’d nearly finished eating when the first couple of customers came in. The owner was busy so I took my plate and bowl into the kitchen and washed them before leaving with my cooler. I used the front door, but I went to the side and saw that the black car was still there.

The car door opened, and a large man stood up. He gestured for me to come over to him. I walked close enough to recognize him. It was the man who’d made me nervous enough to give up a route a few months earlier. He still made me nervous, but I didn’t want to give up this route. I walked up close enough to talk but not close enough for him to grab me.

He smiled at me.

I smiled back. “I really shouldn’t talk to strangers.”

He said, “My name is Roland, Roland Hebert.”

I said, “I saw you a few months back.”

He smiled broadly. “Then I’m not really a stranger.”

I gave him a weak grin. “Not so sure. Is there a reason you want to talk to me?”

“I like fresh fish. Tell you what, in exchange for your name, I’ll buy you meal here. You can eat one of the fish you just delivered, if you want. That’s what I’ll be ordering.”

I looked up at the sky. It was still early so I had time before it got too dark to shadow step. I should’ve paid attention to the weather forecast, and I should’ve kept up with the moon’s rise and fall times. It was half a moon and waning, I kept up enough to know that, but I was a fool and hadn’t check on the timing.

He pointed. “If you just look through the trees there you can see the moon coming up.”

I looked where he’d pointed. “Thanks.”

I did a double take, realizing he’d answered a question I hadn’t asked and he smiled.

***

The owner wasn’t happy with seeing me eating with Mr. Hebert. She recognized him as a customer and greeted him, but I could tell she was bothered.

Mr. Hebert whispered, “I should probably pay and leave before you do. She might call the sheriff if you left with me.”

He took out a business card, wrote an address in the top corner on the back, and drew a small map. His drawing and writing were delicate and precise. The pen he held was one of those big expensive-looking pens; it looked tiny in his huge hand. He flipped the card over and slid it over to my side of the table. The card had his name, an email address, and a phone number. “In the old carriage house, I have a couple of freezers and some ice makers. If you left me a few nice fish, I would be happy to pay you. I’m not usually around, so if you just left the fish, I’ll leave you money under the flowerpot with the fake flower in it. It’s kind of hard to miss.”

I asked, “How much money?”

He looked at his empty plate. “I just paid twenty-six dollars for this, and I think it was well worth it. With a tip that would be about thirty-two dollars. If you brought me the very finest fish, let’s say two of them a day, unless I left a note requesting more since I entertain sometimes, I think paying you thirty dollars each for those fish would be a good deal for us both. I wouldn’t have to go out. I could fix them how I want them, and I would have, at least by my experience in the restaurants you supply, the very best.”

I ask, “Channel cats like this?”

He made an odd gesture with one hand like he was holding a wine cup. “Always catfish, but if you managed a bighead carp every now and then, I would pay a bonus.”

I squinted my eyes. “Don’t catch a lot of em. You really like them?”

He nodded and gestured for the check.

I got up. “Thanks for the meal, Mr. Hebert, I should get back home before it gets dark.”

I waved to the owner and went out the door. I’d just eaten two suppers and I probably shouldn’t have. The moon was bright and still rising. I had some time before I needed to get home, so I checked the map on the card Mr. Hebert gave me. The shadows were long, and I was as fast as anyone I knew when twilight shadows merged into moon shadows. I enjoyed the rush of moving fast and found his place in minutes, stopping shy of the wards. Some tall trees with long shadows which looked like they’d reach and didn’t look warded seemed safe, so I considered going right in but stopped. If I got in, and the sun went down, the shadows would be all moon shadow, and they’d be from above, and I’d be stuck for hours.

I held my hand out at arm’s length and put my pinky and pointing finger out so I could measure an hour’s movement of the moon to guess how long I had. Ten minutes at most. I almost shadow stepped to the tallest tree then stopped again. If the tree was warded, I could be stuck at the top. I slid through shadow, testing the invisible walls made by warding. They were too tight to get through and seemed well placed. The wall around Mr. Hebert’s place was tall, and no trees were near enough to climb. I slid into shadow and took myself up a tall tree outside the warded area.

It was a trap. I was way up high in a tree with no low limbs. The ward let me in, but it wouldn’t let me go back into shadow. A little scared, I started looking for the ward. With my legs wrapped around a limb, I lowered myself so I was hanging by my legs under the limb. Just out of reach, a steel spike was nailed into the tree. The head of the spike probably had something carved on it that created the ward. I couldn’t read it or reach it. I pulled myself back up and sat on the limb, thinking about my situation.

Two people walked out from a nice big house that was surrounded by nice smaller houses. A swimming pool was at the back of the big house, and a large driveway encircled all the houses. A hedge maze in the middle of the gardens was out behind the big house.

One of the people was a woman. Probably pretty. Too far to tell, but her clothing and shape made me think she would be if I saw her up close. The other was a man, and he had a rifle casually resting on his shoulder. They were walking toward me and got closer to the tree.

The man looked up. “Mable, I think we caught ourselves a Goblin.”

I had no other way to escape, as far as I could see. I let myself slip. Made it look like I was trying to catch myself. Shouted, turning the shout to a scream, then stopped as I slid into shadow before I hit ground. I moved through shadow until I got to a bridge I knew had deep water under it. I fell out of shadow and splashed down hard. It was the only way I knew to safely get rid of the momentum from a fall that high.

***

Jordan glared at me. “Monroe, gather the boys. The old man, too. This concerns him.”

Monroe said, “I’ll stay with the old man. The rest of you can run.”

Jordan glared at Monroe. “Phil can mostly cook and take care of the old man. He caused this, if anyone should suffer the consequences of exposing us, it should be Phil. I always figured it would be Dennis that exposed us.”

I asked, “Where will you go?”

Jordan turned his glare back to me. “None of your business. Maybe we will meet again, but we can’t just have you leading someone who wants to catch Goblins to the rest of the family. Honestly, Phil, I thought you had better sense.”

***

The next couple of days, I watched as my family, all my kin, gathered up belongings and took them to shadow. I made my runs delivering fish and put all the money in the coffee can. One by one, they finished gathering everything they wanted to take and stopped coming back. Monroe took most of the spices, but he left me a copy of his recipe book.

***

The old man and I sat together eating étouffée.

He had his penny whistle with him. “Phil, can you take me and your box up to Oak Hill, or do you have something you need to do?”

“Nothing special going on. I don’t have a crate, Dennis used mine to carry his stuff. I’ll need to find a new one.”

He smiled. “Later this afternoon would do then. Bring your penny whistle too.”

I returned his smile.

***

At the top of the hill in the shade of the oak, I sat on a cardboard box that made pretty good sounds but wasn’t going to hold up long. The man stood and rocked back and fourth playing sad Irish tunes. I beat on my crate substitute and sang the songs he’d taught me over the last fifteen years. He couldn’t sing while playing the penny whistle, so I had to keep my voice clear while singing songs that made me want to sob in anguish.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

He paused and looked up at the tree. “I think I would like to be buried up here.”

I looked at him and struggled again to keep from crying.

He shook his penny whistle to clear the spit from it. “You know I’m not going to last much longer.”

I nodded.

“You could bury me and probably live at my place for a few more years. It isn’t like anyone ever comes out and checks on me. My bills are mostly paid automatically, and you could probably fake my signature.”

I asked, “Shouldn’t we get you to a doctor?”

He shook his head. “When you take me through shadow, the worst of it’s better for a while. I can’t afford a doctor. A doctor will bring in specialists I can’t afford. They’ll send me to a hospital I can’t afford. Then they’ll put me in the cheapest nursing home, and a nurse will decide to over-medicate me one night because of my complaining, and I won’t wake up and drink any water. I’ll dehydrate and die. I was a nurse. I know the story, and I know how it ends. You may not want to see the ending. I won’t blame you if you decide to leave.”

***

The last two weeks I’d stayed busy keeping ice on the old man’s body, digging, maintaining trout lines, and making deliveries.

I ran into a problem trying to burying the old man beneath the tall oak on the hill. The dirt was hard, and there were large hard roots that would probably kill the tree if I broke them. The places in the soil without roots were the hardest spots on the hill. If I hadn’t figured out to dig into an old stump that had turned to soft pulp, I would’ve never manged to honor the old man’s requests. I scraped the soil smooth over the old man’s unmarked grave and once again debated with myself over the value of a Goblin’s prayers. I played my penny whistle until tears and rough breathing took over, and I was too busy blowing my nose to play.

***

I sat at the table. With only myself to cook for, all I had were the fish in the cement tanks to take care of. No point in making a fancy breakfast. Not much point in anything. I needed a project, or I was going to end up following my Goblin instincts and adopting an unloved child. Last thing I needed to do was start my own Goblin family. I was making good enough money, but the moment someone realized that no one was legitimately living here, I was going to have to move.

Someone was going to notice that the old man wasn't answering calls or letters. Someone was going figure out he wasn’t filing a tax return.

I thought about what I wanted to do. I wanted to sit on a box and beat on it while my family played music around me.

That gave me a plan. Simple, maybe, but I needed a goal. The next good moon-lit night, after I’d delivered fish, I was going to find another wooden crate like the one Dennis took. Dennis and Jordan had been the family scroungers for the longest. I’d gone with them to haul things, but they’d always been the ones who found discarded items we could use. It was time for me to learn to scrounge. If I found a new place to live and a place to keep fish, that would be a bonus.

***

All my plans changed when I saw the fish. On the line between two nice big catfish was the biggest bighead carp I’d ever seen.

It was too big for our tanks and too big for our scale. I put it in a cement tank where the circulating water would run over it, but that wouldn’t work for long. On a whim, I decided to see if I could deliver it to Mr. Hebert.

I rushed through re-baiting and clearing my trout lines, rushed through my deliveries, then went to Mr. Hebert’s estate. Sliding through shadow, I looked for holes in their wards. No luck there. The walls were tall, and no trees were close to the walls. Even if I got in by a tree, there were no trees on the other side that might let me get out. A pair of ladders would be best. I could probably manage that, but if they had dogs or the guy with the gun came out, I’d be done for.

I wanted a good look, but I didn’t want to get stuck up in a tree again. Inching up and back down the tree I’d gotten caught in, I found the point where it had become a trap. Too low to see over the fence, but now I knew the feel of it. I checked more trees and farther back into the woods, I found a safe one that gave me a bit of a view. The man with the gun was out in the front area looking up at the tree I’d been stuck in earlier. He must have a way to detect the presence of a Goblin. I knew to avoid cameras, and I could feel their effect on light, so I hadn’t studied the front gate earlier.

I went and looked at the gate from across the road. It had an old security camera. Through the gateway I couldn’t see much. The driveway was curved, and a wall blocked the view so a pedestrian like me couldn’t see into the property. The gate started opening. I backed up then ran to the woods on the other side of the road. Once in the woods, I took to the shadows up in the trees.

A black convertible drove out and stopped just outside the gateway. It was the pretty girl. I shadow stepped to the shade of a tree near the road, stepped out from behind the tree, and sat down on the embankment.

She yelled, “Don’t sit there, that is solid poison ivy!”

I shouted back, “I’m not allergic.”

She asked, “What is a little boy like you doing way out here?”

I answered, “I was going to try and make good on a deal and deliver some fish, but this place seems a bit tight on security.”

She got out of the car. Definitely good looking. She brushed back her hair and smiled at me. “I don’t remember ordering any fish.”

I smiled back. “Not you, a man named Roland Hebert.”

She laughed and pointed down the road. “Roland’s place is a quarter mile farther.”

I said, “Thanks,” and ran back into the woods.

The next estate was a nice, single-building affair. No carriage house. The estate after that had a wall but no gate and no wards and lots of trees and a carriage house. This one matched Mr. Hebert’s description and had a pot with an artificial flower.

I had to travel the shadowed path three times to bring a cooler big enough, the two catfish and the bighead carp. With that done, I was a mess, but I still wanted to see around the yard. I got angry and left. He had two jockey statues out in front of his house like a lot of rich places did. I felt like taking the fish back, but I just wanted out of there and went home and cleaned up.

***

Finding a nice crate was going to be another thing entirely. I didn’t want to steal, but I was willing to trespass to find what I needed. After a few hours, my search had narrowed down a bit. These days, crates were cardboard unless someone was shipping cast iron fittings or something heavy and similar to a cast iron fitting. Figuring out the right size item was another issue. I went home and spent a while beating on the cardboard box.

In the barn with the old man’s car and his riding lawn mower, he’d had a small woodworking area with a table saw and some sheets of plywood. I knew how to drive a nail and clench it, so I figured I could probably build a crate. I never really examined my old crate to see how it was made. It had been labeled with a picture of a potbelly stove on a sheet glued to the side and wooden supports on the sides, but I didn’t have much more to go on. It wasn’t as heavy as a lot of crates were, but it held up for ten years of my abuse.

I smashed a finger trying to hold parts together in a corner and nail the crate I was making. The resulting box I’d made sounded bad and wouldn’t last a month of me sitting on it and thumping. I needed to find a good crate or learn how to make one without banging up all my fingers.

As I slipped through shadows, I could tell winter was not far off. Searching for a crate was taking me to the edges of towns. At a machinist’s shop with a field of rusty cast iron pieces spread around outside the shop with grass growing up through them, I found a covered work area where crates were assembled. Several crates were in the middle of being made, so it was possible I could watch from shadow and learn.

I had enough fish in the cement tanks to keep orders filled for a couple of weeks, so I wound my trout lines up on boards and took them to the shed. They needed some repairs anyway. This way I could be free to find a crate or maybe learn to make a good one.

***

In the shadow under a corrugated steel roof where the zinc coating was just on the edge of being defeated by weather and starting to show dots of rust, I watched as an elderly Black man put together crates. He detected something, somehow. He glanced up and rubbed his eyes a few times as he looked into the dark recesses where the roof connected to the supports. He took a break to smoke a cigarette and watched the shadow I hid in the entire time. I watched him work and learned a bit more about crates. He had a handmade clamping jig that would be ideal, but I only needed to make one box, and it looked like more work and expense to make the jig than it would be to make a crate. He had a grinder he used to trim off nails that he didn’t want to hammer the ends over on. He had a compressor and switched out between several heavy staple guns and a nail gun. Making a box looked like more work and equipment than I wanted to own or learn to use.

I learned the man’s name was Mr. Miller when another man came out with a cart filled with fittings to request a crate.

At lunchtime, Mr. Miller sat with his thermos and coffee. Another Black man who had been setting out more iron fittings to rust in the yard came in to join him.

Mr. Miller pointed to the shadow where I had hidden. “There’s something up there.”

The other man asked, “Should we leave some food for it?”

“No, not one of the folk, at least not likely. They avoid iron, so this wouldn’t be the place for them. It’s up close by the roof, anyway, and rusted iron’s the last place they’d want to be.”

“Lost soul maybe?”

“Nah, it ain't trying to rattle nothing. This one’s kind of a puzzle. It doesn’t mind smoke, and it doesn’t mind sparks. Not scared of steel, and doesn’t feel particularly angry.”

“I think I’ll leave the corner of my sandwich here, just for luck then. No point in offending something we don’t savvy.”

Mr. Miller nodded. “Respect goes a long way toward getting along.”

While he was gone for a bathroom break, I took a break for lunch myself. Just a cheese and mayo sandwich since I wanted to get back quick. I took one of my cheap Styrofoam coolers and put some ice and a couple of catfish from a tank in it. The cooler had the start of a crack, so I would’ve had to throw it away anyway. I returned to my shadow, and at the first chance, I put the cooler under the bench where the men had left the corners of their sandwiches. I thought I’d figured out as much as I was going to figure out when he noticed the cooler.

He opened it and smiled up at me. “Seems like we’re being friendly, but I’m not sure what I owe you. Pardon, but I’m a bit nervous about the sort of deal this might imply.”

I shifted through shadows to see if anyone else was around and stepped out of shadow into the sun outside the shed. “Pardon my spying on you, Mr. Miller. If you want, you can call me Phil. I had a crate I never knew was important to me before I lost it. Now I’m just trying to learn a bit about crates.”

He gave me a long look. “You live in a crate?”

I nearly laughed. “Nah, I just like to sit on one and beat it like a drum.”

He asked, “So you want a cajon?”

I was a bit confused and concerned. Maybe he was asking if I wanted to grow up.

He chuckled and explained, “A cajon is a crate-shaped musical instrument that you sit on while you drum on it. What sort of music you like?”

“If it’s lively and a beat goes with it, I mostly like it. If it makes you want to move, I love it.”

He sat down and lit a cigarette. “I’d be glad to invite you in, but I’m not so sure if that’s safe. Forgive my rudeness.”

I stepped in and sat on a counter. “I guess I should run off. Just call the fish a gift with no strings attached. I got fish to spare. I spied on you and figured out that finding a box might be easier than making one. Thank you, Mr. Miller, and sorry about spying on you.”

He got up, opened the lid on the cooler, and looked at the catfish again. “I always wanted to make a cajon. I figured I might make a bit of money that way after I retire. Come back in a week, and I’ll have a box you can try out.”

I scooted off the counter. “Then I’ll be in your debt.”

He gave me a long look. “Still don’t know what you are, so the thought of debt and owing things makes me nervous.”

I said, “I’m a lost boy, like Peter Pan, but instead of flying, I move in shadows. Apart from that I don’t do anything magical. I’m probably about your age, but I only have a second grade education, and I don’t know much more than how to cook and catch fish. I don’t know all that much about cooking either. There are a lot of things in my life that haven’t worked out, but apart from my personal sorrows, I don’t know anything about curses, so you don’t have to worry. If you make me a crate to slap on, I’ll be in your debt, so I hope you like fish.”

He nodded. “I do like fish.”

***

Mr Hebert was in the kitchen when I came in to deliver fish to the old lady.

“Long time no see, Phil.”

I nodded to him and set the cooler of fish down where I usually did and picked up the empty cooler. “Gotta run.”

He smiled and said, “That carp was amazing. You never came by for payment.”

The old lady asked, “He brought you a carp?”

Mr Hebert held his hands wide. “A huge one, seventy-one pounds of perfection.”

I waved and stepped out.

Mr. Hebert followed and said loudly, “If you’re in a hurry, I’ll give you a ride.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Well, then, I’ll walk with you.”

We walked. We got down the road a ways and he asked me, “Why disgust? I get a lot of reactions, but I can’t figure that one out.”

I thought I’d kept a good poker face. but he managed to read me anyway. I made sure I was ready to move before I said, “Your lawn jockeys.”

He stopped walking. “My lawn jockeys? They came with the house. They’re kind of traditional around these parts. More large houses have them than don’t.”

I nodded and stopped a distance from him. “And most of those houses have racists living in them.”

“Are you calling me a racist?”

I looked up at his face. “I used to think they were traditional, but then I saw an Obama lawn jockey. The men who made it and sold it and bought it knew exactly what that meant. You might not be a racist, but you have symbols that say you don’t have an issue with racism going on.”

He said, “I’ll take a sledge hammer to them tonight. Unless you want to sink them in a river. With the ring, they might make a good anchor.”

I said, “You could have them painted white.”

He smiled at me. “I might just do that.” His smile broadened. “So, can I talk you into bringing more fish?”

I started walking again. He caught up quickly, so I stopped again. “You don’t have to come the whole way with me. I’ll bring a few more fish.”

I walked and glanced back occasionally. He stayed by the side of the road, watching me. After a turn in the road, I took off into shadow.