“Nope.” His father kept shoveling. “You’re just one letter off, though. Cows. It was cattle country. There were ranchers who used to let their cows just wander through the swamp. You know that big concrete bridge we take to get into Cocoa? It used to be just a little wooden bridge. When it came time to take the cows away, they’d round them up and herd them across that bridge. A cattle drive right across the Indian River. Can you imagine that?” He was starting to breathe heavily. His arms and neck were shiny with sweat. “We went from land cowboys to space cowboys, all on the same island,” he said. His T-shirt had turned flesh-colored. “What kind of cowboys do you think will come next?”

Frankie looked at the truck bed. It wasn’t even half-filled. He said, “Sea cowboys.”

His father snapped his head to get the sweat off his face. “We already have those. They’re called sailors.”

“Sky cowboys?”

“We have them, too—airline pilots,” he said. “There may not be any cowboys left.”

It took a long time to fill the truck bed. Frankie sat down on the ground and was drawing Bigfoot prints in the sand with his finger when his father announced that they were finished and motioned him back into the cab. On the way home they stopped at the Minute Mart and got Freezies. Frankie’s father pinched his cup between his legs so that he could steer the truck and shift gears at the same time. Glancing at Frankie across the wide, bulging front seat, he said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m having fun.”

At home, he unloaded the sand at the side of the carport. Then they went back for another load. They kept Mr. Krieger’s truck overnight, and the following day they did it all over again, twice, only this time when they got home he drove the truck right up onto the lawn at the opposite end of the house and shoveled both loads of sand over the fence into the backyard. The mound reached halfway to Katherine’s bedroom window.

All his father would tell any of them, when they asked about the sand, was that it was part of the project he and Frankie were working on. They were a team, he said, and it was a secret.

“So,” Katherine said to Frankie that night while he was brushing his teeth, “talk.”

“Huh?” Frankie said through a mouthful of toothpaste.

She took hold of the skin over his Adam’s apple and twisted it. “What’s with all the sand, dingus?”

“I don’t know!” He leaned into her hand and dipped his head, dripping toothpaste down his chin.

Matt walked into the bathroom and reached around the two of them for his hairbrush.

“He won’t talk,” Katherine said.

“Let him go. Talk about what?”