Dragonfly by Jaxn Hill

We took the bus to the shore. There was this crazy man who’d appeared that spring. He dressed in camo and had a deep, booming voice. I guess he was homeless, and the beach police must have been afraid to try to run him off because he was a pretty large and sturdy looking individual. His deal was, he went into the sea every day, in the shallows where people swim, and if you got too close he would grab you and dunk you under.

At first people were freaked out by it. But as the days grew hotter, and more people crowded the shore, and nobody drowned, it got to be kind of a game. Kids would try to see how close they could get without being dunked. The guy was fast, though, and he could catch most people — grab them, pull them under, let them up. It was pretty funny to watch, actually, girls in bikinis shrieking and sputtering, teenaged boys jumping and splashing to try to evade his long arms. We stood watching from the shore, laughing and carrying on a bit, cheering for the best looking girls — he always managed to grab them I noticed. But he caught almost everyone.

Then suddenly Torstein said, “He’s my cousin, you know.” We were all stunned! Was this another Torsteinism, like Sully belonging to all of us, or was he making a statement of fact that he and the Dunker were blood relations? Torstein looked nothing like the Dunker. Torstein had short, straight almost black hair and a hooked nose. He was one of those short guys like a gymnast who is slightly muscle-bound, so that saved him from looking too delicate. But the Dunker, he had about a yard of gnarly dreadlocks streaming out the top of his head, a kind of bulging forehead and dark eyes set deep under it. He was well over 6 feet tall, taller even than our Bruiser.

Sully had come with us to the shore, and he’d been having a fit to try his luck with the Dunker, only he couldn’t swim. I didn’t bring any trunks, so I wasn’t going in the water. I was just there for a corndog and a gander at the bikinis. The Dunker was in water up to his waist, but that would have been almost over Sully’s head, so he couldn’t go alone. Before we could ask Torstein if he were serious about the madman being his cousin, he had whipped off his coat and shirt, and was stripping down to his shorts, saying to Sully, “Let’s do it! Let’s try if he’ll dunk us!”

He held out his hand to Sully, and they went splashing out into the water. Sully had just been wearing a ratty old pair of shorts and a t-shirt. That’s what he was wearing when the Dunker lunged at him, grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him away from Torstein, plunged him under the surf — then lifted him back up and launched him like a missile through the air, back toward shallower water. Sully was screaming and laughing all the way. He splashed down in about 2 feet of water and came scrambling back toward us on the shoreline.

Meantime the Dunker had grabbed Torstein, but didn’t dunk him. He gave him a big old bear hug. Clearly they knew each other. Sully was standing with us, watching, and said, “Why doesn’t he dunk him?”

Other people splashing around, waiting for the game to continue, were wondering the same thing. Even Torstein, it seemed, was wondering. The Dunker had let him go and was backing away from him, shaking his head, no. Torstein was gesturing to himself and the water — he’d come to be dunked, clearly, probably the only person who came with the purpose of being dunked, and the Dunker was refusing. Except — it was a ruse!

Just as Torstein was about to give up, already turning away, the Dunker’s right hand shot out and grabbed him, twisting him around so he tumbled toward the Dunker who caught him, dunked him, and brought him sputtering back up. At that same moment, a crazy seagull dive-bombed them and landed on Torstein’s shoulder — and bit him on the ear! That was the kind of weird stuff that happened to Torstein. He was still recovering from the surprise dunk attack, and he just laughed at the bird and shooed it away. Then he came wading back to the shore, with the Dunker beside him. They were both laughing.

Torstein said — and I am not kidding — “This is my cousin, Duncan.”

Duncan the Dunker?! We all shook hands, but it’s hard to keep a straight face at a moment like that. Which is why it’s great to have a kid in the crowd. Sully piped up, “You dunked me and you threw me!” The Dunker’s response was to grab him again and toss him in the air. He was that big of a guy, to toss a five-year-old in the air. Sully started squealing, and the awkward moment was over before it really got started.

So, yah, apparently Torstein and the Dunker really were cousins.

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