Beyond the Billboard

Almost nobody knows that thirteen-year-old Firebird Tucker and her family exist. Firebird is not allowed to leave their wilderness swamp hidden from prying eyes by a massive billboard, not even to go to school. And she must never, ever talk to strangers.
     But suddenly, strangers are everywhere. And despite her family's insistence that nothing can change, everything does.  In the midst of the turmoil, Firebird finally finds what she's been looking for--a way out.

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Firebird and her twin brother Ford have always accepted their father's isolated way of life and secluded home in the middle of a desolate swamp until the discovery of old family secrets changes everything.

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A chilling portrait of an isolated family and a girl's yearning to break free 

1
The eels writhed and twisted in the trap.
           “Three, no four,” said Ford as they winched the wire-mesh trap into the boat. “Big ’uns, Dad.”
           Trapper, Ford’s dad, said nothing. He never talked much, not when they were eel fishing in the swamp, or at any other time for that matter. Ford didn’t say too much, either. It seemed a shame to break the spell of this just-dawn time, when the light changed from gray to pretty pink. It made even the swamp look inviting. The mud sinkholes, deep enough to drown a child, seemed like innocent paddling pools.
           And there was another reason Ford kept his lip buttoned. He felt proud when he was working alongside his father. He felt like a grown man even though he was just thirteen. He didn’t want to spoil things with childish chatter.
           He was proud, too, that his father was a legend. The best eel catcher on the swamp. Actually, the only eel catcher on the swamp now. There had once been a little community down here. But the other families had moved out, given up on this kind of life years ago. Since then, their wooden houses had fallen into ruins, been swallowed up by the swamp.
           “Why’d they move on, Dad?” Ford had once asked Trapper.
           According to Trapper, the eel business was booming. The smokery upriver couldn’t get enough of them. And hadn’t they just bought a new boat, sleek, fast, made of wood, to replace their old rubber dinghy? That proved they were making big money.
           “So why did the others leave?” Ford had wanted to know. The McVeighs, the Evanses, the Seagers—they had all gone now.
           Trapper had just shrugged and grinned. “Just couldn’t compete with us Tuckers, I suppose.”
           “That’s true,” Ford had agreed. “We’re the best.”
           He and Trapper made a great team. And Gran, too—she was an expert eel skinner. Firebird, his twin sister, didn’t help out much though. She just wandered around the swamp. Or if she wasn’t doing that, she was staring at the billboard, lost in some daydream. Ford resented it sometimes, that Firebird didn’t pull her weight in the family eel-fishing business. That Dad and Gran didn’t even expect her to; like somehow, she had special privileges.
           Anyhow, Ford already knew his future. He was going to be an eel trapper like his dad and his granddad and his great-granddad and all the Tuckers before that. Why would he want to be anything different?            If he wasn’t eaten alive by mosquitoes first. One whined by his ear, then stopped. Ford slapped at his earlobe. It was one of their favorite places for sucking blood.
           Trapper dumped the eels into the plastic bucket on deck, where they thrashed about and made slime. Ford threw the grappling hook over the side, trying to locate two traps that they’d baited with crabs last night and left in the creek.
           Eels hunted at night. Sometimes they even slithered out of the water and wriggled through the swamp grass. Ford had seen them do it. He’d seen one, by moonlight, nearly a yard long, take chicks from a coot’s nest.
           The swamp where the Tuckers lived was a little wetland wilderness. It was a maze of creeks, some like this one, wide with clear water. Others just black, silty ditches. In between the creeks were tangled islands of reeds and willow, quaking grass bogs and sundews.
           Ford knew this treacherous place better than the back of his own hand. It was his personal playground, his neighborhood. He and his twin sister, Firebird, had been born here, grown up here. They’d almost never left it, not even to go to school. What did they need school for? Gran had taught them their letters and numbers.
           Once a week, Trapper took the boat to buy supplies at Hook Bay, just downriver. He often took Ford with him. He’d have taken Firebird, too, if she’d wanted to go. But she almost never did.
           “She’s like your mom,” Trapper would say approvingly, “a real home bird. Your mom loved this place. She never wanted to leave.”
           Trapper used to take Ford to the smokery, too, where they sold their eel catch. But he hadn’t done that lately. For some reason, Trapper had taken to going to the smokery alone.
           The swamp was on the edge of a wide river estuary. And somewhere that river ran into the ocean. The ocean was far away, but it still had a big effect on the swamp. Which way the current ran in the swamp creeks depended on that distant ocean, whether its tide was going out or coming in.
           Trapper said eels can smell the ocean. Even though they’ve swum miles and miles inland, up freshwater rivers and creeks, they can still smell the salty sea where they were born. And where they’d go back to die someday, if Trapper didn’t get them first.
           “Bastards,” said Trapper suddenly.
           Ford didn’t take much notice. He thought an eel had jumped out of the bucket and given his dad a nip with its razor-sharp teeth.
           But Trapper cursed again. And there was so much venom in his voice that Ford hauled in the grappling hook, with no trap on the end of it, and looked around.
           “What’s up, Dad? Did one get you?”
           But it wasn’t the eels Dad was swearing at. It was a big eyeball, sticking out of the reeds.
           “Recognize that?” said Trapper. “It’s a webcam. They’ve got one in the store at Hook Bay.”
           He edged the boat closer, taking care not to scrape a rusty shopping cart half buried in mud. Then he cut the engine.
           “Watch out, Dad,” said Ford. “It’ll film us.”
           “No, it won’t,” said Trapper.
           The camera lens wasn’t pointing at them. It seemed to be filming a big, dead tree on one of the willow islands.
           “So they came back, did they?” said Trapper, suddenly talkative. “Sneaking in here, setting up cameras, in my swamp. Wish I’d caught them,” he told Ford in a voice thick with fury. “I’d have taught them a lesson they’d never forget.”

Copyright © Susan Gates, 2005
 
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SUSAN GATES was a teacher in Africa and England before she became a full-time writer. She’s written many children’s books, including the teen novel Dusk. She lives in England.

Gr 6–8— Thirteen-year-old Firebird Tucker lives with her twin brother, her father, and her grandmother in a dilapidated old house in a swamp on the outskirts of a large city. Shielded from the eyes of passing motorists by a huge billboard, the family lives in almost total isolation. Firebird and Ford have never attended school and have never questioned the stories that Gran and their father have told them: that their mother died in childbirth, that Firebird is named for a car advertised on the billboard at the time of her birth, that Dad makes a good living catching eels, and, most importantly, that all strangers are dangerous and should be avoided. Dreamy, solitary Firebird begins to suspect that Gran is shaping the truth to suit her own wishes. Venturing into the city late one night, she makes some startling discoveries that confirm her doubts. The action comes to a climax in a dramatic storm scene in which Ford rescues his sister from floodwaters and is forced to accept the truth of her recent discoveries. Returning to the swamp, the twins come upon the ruins of the billboard, the destruction of which clearly signifies the end of the life they have known. Although using the billboard as a symbol is effective, other intriguing and potentially symbolic aspects of the story are not fully developed. The book's atmosphere is slightly reminiscent of the setting of David Almond's Heaven Eyes (Delacorte, 2001), although not as deeply mysterious. This book's primary appeal is as a coming-of-age story concerned with family secrets.—Ginny Gustin, Sonoma County Library System, Santa Rosa, CA

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