Their jealousy turned into respect mingled with resentment when Gary, one of the OGs paddled close and said, “Hey, I remember you. You’ve picked up some skills. Tell me you didn’t learn to ride like that on Lake Erie.”

“Lake Michigan.”

Poppy was conscious of the strange sound of her own laugh, a laugh that once came easy to her.

“So, where you been?”

Poppy shrugged. “Everywhere, just about.”

“But there’s no place like here, that’s for sure. Once a dunebilly, always a dunebilly.”

GARY AND CAROL TOOK POPPY under their wing, introducing her to the other OGs. Gary’s family had a shell-fishing grant; grants were priceless. You had to be grandfathered in, and you had to stay active to keep it. The guys who had grants might drive crappy rusted-out trucks over the flats, but they could buy out anyone on the Cape with all the money they made. Some of the guys scored two to five thousand bucks a week working both tides, day and night. These were the real Fleetians, and Poppy knew they’d accept her, but only to a point.

Carol convinced Gary to score a coveted town permit for Poppy. “You need something to keep you busy,” she said. “And this is the best job on the Cape.” She’d put on waders and hit the mudflats with the equipment Gary loaned her: a rake, a culling knife, a bushel basket, and a ring to measure the oysters. Shell-fishing was hard: she had to bend over for hours at a time, lugging a bucket and ice through the muck, culling and clearing off baby oysters spat from the adult shells. Picking wild was good, lucrative work—perfect for a surfer, because it offered what she was already used to: solitude, and the tides.

Gary explained that some guy at Oysterfest a few years back had eaten a bad oyster and blamed it on the bacteria. Now there were laws that required the pickers to ice the oysters, and log every oyster they picked, where it was picked, what time they iced. Her friend “Andy Clam” said, “They even make you record your shits.”