We all got up early the next morning and drove in the Nolanos’ Plymouth wagon to Glens Falls. In the back seat Carla sat between me and Phil, she was surreptitiously holding his hand. Vince was driving.
“All right, Carlie,” said Dad from the middle row of seats. “You've had a little sleep and a big breakfast, now let’s hear the whole story. The real story.”
“I told Mrs. Nolano the real story."
Marie turned around from the front passenger seat and shrugged. "Go ahead, dear, tell everyone what you told me."
Carla addressed us all. "Marc was fishing on the old rotten dock and I left my pole on a stick, stuck in between two of the boards on the dock, ‘cause I get bored just sitting there with a pole in my hand. I was doing a balancing act on the rocks near the water. That’s when Marc got a strike, there was a big splash in the water and his pole was bending and shaking really good. He goes ‘I got a big one here! Look at him jump! Another lunker bass! Paul loses again!'
"I just stood on my favorite rock and watched the big fish jump and Marc carefully work his reel and keep the rod up high like you taught him, Daddy, but the drag on the line kept whining and the fish was flopping and splashing like mad at first, but soon tired out. Marc got the better of it like he usually does, and the fish was now close to the dock, barely able to swim. Marc was getting his net ready—he never wants me to help him with it since the time I lost the pike—when I saw a dark green circle in the water, you know, like a whirlpool, right near where the fish last jumped and suddenly the green circle was a creature, its head came shooting out of the water and its neck was all slime green and it had Marc’s fish in its mouth! I swear it was a little dragon, with immature wings like bat-wings, only bigger. It obviously got jabbed with the hook ‘cause it was whipping like a snake being electrocuted and that’s how its tail swiped poor Marc’s arm. Then it was gone and Marc was laying on the dock, his pole in the water with its line all slack and floating—and no fish of course. As I started to run to help him I slipped on the rocks and fell and hit my head.”
“How many times have I told you—?” her mother, sitting just in front of her in the middle seat of the wagon, had turned and almost started the old forefinger wag, but she still didn’t have it in her to scold her daughter in her present condition.
"Did you get a good look at it?” I asked. I knew her as a level-headed intelligent and well-read big sister. I had no doubt she'd seen something very unusual.
“No, it was all kind of a blur, it happened so fast, but it was dark green and had webbed spikes all along its back.”
“Carla,” her mother scolded now, albeit gently. “That’s enough. That’s your concussion talking, sweetheart. Or all those silly books you’re always reading.”
“How big was it?” Phil wanted to know.
“Little—for a monster, I mean, like maybe ten or twelve feet, like an alligator or crocodile. But it wasn’t. It had a long neck like a dinosaur. But dinosaurs are extinct. Dragons never go extinct. I think it was a baby dragon, maybe just learning to fly. It must’ve fallen from the sky.”
“The only thing that fell from the sky yesterday was a meteorite,” I said. “I saw it.”
“Maybe you really saw my dragon fall!”
Dad directed his question to Marie. “What came first, fallin’ on her head or seein’ this dragon?”
Carlie answered from the back seat, “I saw it. Nobody believes me.”
“I do,” said Phil, squeezing her hand.
“We all do, sweetheart,” our mother dutifully lied. “We believe you saw something that you interpret as a dragon.”
“What about the fire?” I asked. “Maybe the dragon started it.”
“I didn’t see any fire,” she said.
“Yeah, cause you were knocked unconscious,” said Marie. "Trust me, the grass was on fire. We can go there later, you'll see the black patch."
When we got to the hospital, Marc was sitting up in bed eating scrambled eggs. He had some thirty stitches in his forearm, which was also in a sling. Whatever got him had torn through muscle, ligament, and even scraped his bone, but he was going to be okay. Saved by his flab. He asked our sister how she got the blue egg on her forehead.
“I slipped on the rocks.”
“You saw it, though, didn’t you, Carlie?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to tell everybody.”
“Tell us what happened, Marc,” said Dad.
"Didn’t Carlie tell you?”
“Carlie’s had a concussion.”
“I had a lunker on my line."
"As usual!" I said.
"A big bass. Almost had him, too. But Champ took him from me.”
