First Chapter

Hans puts two plates down on the table and says, "Cosmos, you're in worse trouble than you thought. We've got to talk."

"Sure, Dad." As usual his father has saved the most serious conversation until dinner. Cosmos sits down at the oak kitchen table and pushes his hair back away from his face. Hans slides the salad bowl mounded with fresh greens toward Cosmos, then digs into a platter of Dungeness crab. He pressures a crab leg to split between his large thumb and forefinger and shakes jagged chunks of crabmeat onto his salad.

"They're talking Juvie," says Hans. "They're talking six months."

"What? Says who?"

"Says Noreen. You couldn't have a better PO, but she says the jig is up. The prosecutor wants to nail you good. Make an example. Noreen says the Commissioner is going to go along with it. Six months. Maybe longer."

"What's going on with this stupid system? It's not as if I stabbed somebody."

"Shut up," says Hans. "I know it's not fair. Never said it was. They say it's the accumulation thing. You know how many times you've been in trouble since you were fourteen? Would you believe thirteen? Thirteen. Want to count them?"

"Most of it was all that little shit. The cops were just bored. Rambo muthers."

"Shut up and listen," says Hans. "Commissioner Levy is calling it the 'hole syndrome.' He's talking a pattern of noncompliance. He's talking 'habitual offender.' Son, if we don't do something, you will go to Juvie."

Since the divorce three years ago, Cosmos and his father have been living in a small Victorian house, two city blocksfrom the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Little blank spots of silence are pretty common over dinner, and Cosmos enters one of those blank spots now. He stares at his plate. He stares at the large salad bowl his father shoves toward him. His father made that salad bowl. His father made almost everything wooden that Cosmos can see from the table. His father made the table.

The sharp sound of another splintering crab leg brings Cosmos to attention. "All right," he says. "I'm listening."

Hans takes a bite of what has become his crabmeat salad, chews and swallows, then puts his fork down. "I'm not going to have you locked up with a bunch of violent weirdos," says Hans. "No De Haag goes to jail."

Cosmos does not change his grim expression. "Thanks," he says.

"So here's what we do," Hans goes on. "We've filed a petition for a youth-at-risk hearing with Commissioner Levy on Friday. We're going to admit all the old stuff and, sure, your second-time graffiti offense in Seattle, and the little matter of the water gun you pointed at that psycho on the ferry. Yes! Yes! It's bad, you know. Don't deny it's bad. We plead guilty guilty guilty!"

"'Guilty guilty guilty' doesn't sound like my kind of song," says Cosmos.

Hans chomps hard on another mouthful of crab and lettuce. Cosmos can tell by the way his dad's eyebrows are coming together in a wrinkle over his nose that he's getting madder and madder. And not at Cosmos.

"The cops are going nuts these days," says Hans. "When I was a kid on the farm in Iowa, we stole watermelons out of farmers' fields, tipped outhouses on Halloween, stuck corncobs in people's mufflers, hid behind trees and threw tomatoes at cars when we went into town on Saturday nights, drank sloe gin mixed in with our Cokes right in front of the cops, went tearing through farmers' fields at night with spotlights hunting jackrabbits, spray-painted our names on every rock and overpass in Iowa, drove eighty miles an hour down gravel roads. And that's just for starters. Jeez! When I think about it. And I never got a ticket for anything! Never got in trouble with the law. Not once!"

"Yeah, and today they'll cuff a kid for cutting across somebody's lawn at night. Spruce got cited for jumpstarting his dad's car -- had one foot out of the door trying to get the car to roll forward, and they ticketed him! Can you believe it!?"

"I know, I know," says Hans. "Today everything's turned on its head. The country is trying to criminalize its youth! That's what's happening!" Hans guzzles his mineral water and slams it down on the table.

Cosmos loves to hear his dad go on one of his diatribes. "Amen," he says.

"Remember that word," says Hans. "You're going to need it."

"What word? Amen?"

"Amen. You see, I've got this idea for an alternative sentence for you. It's the only thing I can think of to get around this stupid system that would want to put you in Juvie."

"Amen," Cosmos says again. "You mean like community service? Amen! Last time I did community service it was for the women's shelter. That was cool. I learned a lot."

"No, I mean as in 'For Jesus' sake, amen'."

"What do you mean, 'For Jesus' sake, amen'?"

Hans gets up and walks to the sliding glass doors that open from the kitchen onto a large wooden deck. Hans is a big guy, a good six foot three when he unslouches hisshoulders. He has wild curly blond hair and a Santa Claus beard that's more red than blond. He's wearing what he usually wears: a red plaid shirt and baggy jeans, caulk boots, and a red kerchief around his forehead. His hands are huge and his long arms angle up to narrow shoulders. He's pear-shaped but strong as a forklift, and he's Port Swan's finest woodworker. Standing in front of the glass doors, he looks like a scruffy king ...