A Case of Curious

By the time, Dev had turned 5, the island was in complete agreement - never had a more curious, adventurous child been born into their midst.

Devlin Hugh Melanson had come into the world on a loud and stormy early morning, as if the weather was in sync with his birth. He had been a discontented infant, learning to crawl at an early age and howling in frustration when he couldn't get his way. He was attracted to closed doors and locked cabinets, anything out of reach, and the world of the outside - just before his 3rd birthday, he had forced open a latched screen door and headed onto the porch and down the steps where he tumbled and fell into a patch of poison ivy. By the time he turned 4, he could open windows and go missing before his bewildered mother had even missed him, turning up in muddy sheep pens, alseep in Sparrow's vegetable garden, playing happily in the tide and jagged rocks of the coastline. John Sullivan, halfway out of the passage one pre dawn morning, discovered him tangled in a barrel of baited fish, untroubled by the bloody hooks caught in his hair and contentedly chewing on a length of greasy coated rope.

At 8, he began dismantling things to see how they worked - a ships clock that had been in his mother's family for generations, a discarded boat engine, an ancient radio. He crawled into the workings of Aunt Florrie's pump organ, took apart his daddy's scatter gun, shooting off two toes in the process, pried open padlocks, small motors and a cast off wringer washing machine to examine their parts and put them back together again. Nana allowed him to tinker with her steam iron and then reluctantly handed over her antique toaster - a strange little affair with sides that flipped up and down with the turn of a knob on either side and had developed a distressing habit of smoking bread while not actually toasting it. By then Dev had acquired a collection of tools as well as an assortment of nails and screws, bits of wire and metal, odds and ends of hardware and plastic, and after a hour or two, the toaster was repaired and returned. By 15, he could fix lamps, pocket watches, brownie cameras, push pedal sewing machines, even his Uncle William's tractor, and slowly he began to charge for his work, saving enough to build a small workshop inside the barn. That boy, his daddy announced to the men gathered at Curt's corner store, that boy got a case of curious, ain't never seen anythin' like it.

Ayuh, Curt agreed, Smart as a whip with his hands.
Yep, Uncle Willie nodded sagely, reckon it's a callin' and a good livin' both.
Dunno, Uncle Shad said with a grin, fixin' folks pays a mite better.
Mebbe so, Dev's daddy paused to strike a wooden match on the heel of his boot, But it ain't near as useful.