The Wanderer

by Sharon Creech

This morning The Wanderer came off her cradle. Dock and Brian and I were on board as the crane lifted The Wanderer up in a sling and lowered her into the water. It was such an eerie feeling: down, down, down she went. I didn’t think it was going to stop going down, but then there was a floop and a wobble and there she was, bobbing like a cork.

  Afloat!

  “You okay, Brian?” Dock asked. “You look a little wobbly.”

  “Sort of want to throw up,” Brian said. “This boat looks awful small now in the water. This is all that will keep us alive?”

  “Small?” Uncle Dock said. “This here Wanderer is a pretty big baby.”

  “Our little island home,” I said.

  I sent a postcard to my parents. I told them that soon I was going wandering on The Wanderer.

  SHAKEDOWN

  CHAPTER 5

  AFLOAT

  We have begun!

  Last night, when we sailed by the stars along the Connecticut coastline on a trial run, I thought my heart would leap out into the sky. Overhead, all was velvety blue-black pierced with pearly stars and blending into shimmery black ocean. The smell of the sea, the feel of the wind on your face and your arms, the flapping of the sails—oh, it was magic!

  We are really on the way! The sea is calling, calling, Sail on, sail on! and the gentle rocking of The Wanderer makes me think of Bompie—was it Bompie?—holding me on his lap when I was young, whispering stories into the air.

  The first leg of our journey will take us through Long Island Sound to Block Island, and then a short hop on to Martha’s Vineyard, a loop around Cape Cod and up the northern coast, and then on to Nova Scotia, and finally the long stretch to Ireland and to England, land of Bompie! Uncle Dock estimates that it will take us three to four weeks, depending on how long we stop when we spy land.

  Cody is keeping a journal, too, only he calls it a dog. When I first heard him say that, I said, “You mean a log?”

  He said, “No, a dog. A dog-log.” He said he is keeping this dog-log because he has to, for a summer project. “It was either that or read five books,” he said. “I figure it’ll be a lot easier keeping a dog-log than reading all those words somebody else wrote.”

  Uncle Dock maintains the official captain’s log, and in the front of it are neat maps that chart our journey. Uncle Stew and Brian said they’d be too busy “to record the highlights,” and when I asked Uncle Mo if he was going to keep any sort of record of the trip, he yawned. “Oh,” he said, tapping his head, “I’ll keep it all in here. And maybe I’ll sketch a few things.”

  “You mean draw? You can draw?”

  “Don’t sound so surprised,” he said.

  I was surprised, because it doesn’t seem like he has the energy to do much of anything.

  We all have daily chores (from Brian’s list) and duty watches, and Uncle Stew came up with the idea that each of us has to teach something along the way.

  “Like what?” Cody asked.

  “Anything—navigating by instruments, by stars—”

  “Right,” Cody said. “Easy for you, but what if we don’t know any of that stuff?”

  “You must know something you could teach us,” Uncle Stew said with a little smirk.

  “How about juggling?” Cody said. “I could teach you all how to juggle.”

  “Juggle?” Brian said.

  “Doofus,” Cody’s father said.

  “I’d like to learn how to juggle,” I said. “I bet it’s not as easy as it looks.”

  “What’s juggling got to do with anything?” Brian asked.

  “Well, if you think it’d be too hard for you—” Cody said.

  “Who said anything about hard? I could juggle. It just seems a stupid thing to learn on a boat.”

  I’m not sure yet what I could teach, but I’ll think of something. We have to decide by tonight.

  The weather is perfect today—sunny and warm—the current is with us, and the wind has been gently nudging us toward the hazy cliffs of Block Island. I’ve been to Block Island before, once, but I don’t remember who it was with. My parents and grandfather? I remember walking on top of a big hill with lush purple and yellow flowers and scraggly brush growing around the rocks. And I remember the old blue pickup truck with lawn chairs in the back and riding along narrow lanes, staring out at the ocean and singing: “Oh, here we are on the Island of Block, in a big blue pickup truuuuuck—”

  My grandfather bought me a captain’s cap, which I wore every day. We went clamming at night, and I scouted airplanes in the cottage loft.

  And every summer after that, I longed to return to Block Island, but we never did. There wasn’t time.

  I’ve thought of something I could teach my boat family: the stories that Bompie taught me.

  Dock and Cody have just caught two bluefish. Success! But I didn’t like watching Cody club and gut them. We’re all going to have to do this, though. It’s one of the rules. It’s my turn next, and I don’t want to do it.

  But the bluffs of Block Island are in sight, and the bluefish is filleted for lunch, and I am hungry....

  CHAPTER 6

  SLUGS AND BANANAS

  My father is driving me bananas. He lies around like a slug and doesn’t help with anything and barks orders right and left. Sophie is lucky; she doesn’t have any parents to bug her.

  Uncle Stew said the only reason she’s on this trip is because Uncle Dock took pity on the orphan. That’s what Uncle Stew calls Sophie: the orphan. I want to slug him when he calls her that.

  Sophie talks about my aunt and uncle as if they are her real parents, even though they are only her adopted parents and she’s only been with them three years. Brian says Sophie lives in a dream world, but I think it’s kind of neat that she does that. At least she isn’t sitting around moping about being an orphan.

  Sometimes I wish I were an orphan, because my father is a big crab and my mother is afraid of him and always hiding in the corner looking pitiful.

  But I guess I’m not supposed to write about stuff like that in this dog-log. I guess I’m supposed to write about the journey and all that.

  We started it. The journey, I mean. Amazing. I thought we were going to be stuck on land forever, what with Brian coming up with new lists every day. That boy sure likes to make lists. So does his father. They’re a real list-making team.

  Nothing is happening except that the boat is actually sailing and not leaking too much or tipping over. Yet.

  CHAPTER 7

  WILDLIFE

  Last night, after anchoring The Wanderer in the Block Island harbor, Cody and Brian and I took the dinghy to land and walked along the beach. Brian can be a real fusspot, carefully rolling up his jeans so they won’t get wet, and leaping out of the way of the waves, and constantly checking his watch.

  “It’s seven ten,” he announced, and then ten minutes later, “It’s seven twenty,” and then ten minutes later, “It’s seven thirty.”

  “Give it a rest, okay?” Cody said. “What does it matter what time it is?”

  Brian dodged a rock wedged in the sand and jumped back from the ocean spray breaking around it. “We have to be back before dark,” he said.

  Cody looked at the sun, hovering in the western sky. “You know what? I bet we’ll be able to tell when it’s starting to get dark—without a watch!”

  “Huh, huh, huh,” Brian said.

  Two girls were coming from the opposite direction. “Hey, look, some wildlife!” Cody said to Brian.

  “Where? What?”

  “The babes,” Cody said, eying the girls. “The babes.”

  One of the wildlife babes stopped in front of Cody and smiled sweetly at him. “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey,” Cody said.

  “You wouldn’t, like, you know, happen to know what time it is, would you?” she asked. Her friend blushed and flicked something off her arm.

  “Huh, huh, huh,” Brian said, jerking his puppet-arm, and dangling his watch-laden wrist in front of Cody. “Sometimes a
watch comes in handy,” Brian said.

  We returned to The Wanderer (before dark, much to Brian’s relief) and spent the night on board in the harbor instead of sailing on, because Uncle Dock said we need to do some more fine-tuning.

  Today, more sun!

  I went up the mast in the bosun’s chair for the first time, to replace the bulb for the anchor light. Up there, you can see for miles and miles, to the ends of Block Island and across the ocean: water and more water and sky and more sky. And since there are no stays on these masts, you really feel the motion of the boat and the water up there. You feel the air on your face and in your hair, you smell the sea, you feel so free.

  Later, while Uncle Dock was tinkering with the electrics, Cody and I returned to shore and walked down the beach to the lighthouse and on back to the bird sanctuary. Cody spotted a fuzzy chick and said, “Hey, you little chick. Hey, you fuzzball,” which surprised me, because usually he is busy flexing his muscles and you wouldn’t expect him to be so tender with little birds. As we left, he called, “Bye-bye, birdies.”

  He sure is a funny kind of guy. One minute he is talking about babes and the next minute he is talking to the birdies.

  We are barely under way with our journey, and already everything seems more fluid and relaxed. I wear what is dry and near. I go to sleep right before I collapse, and wake up to the sound of people talking in the cockpit. I’m ready to get out on the open ocean, though. I want to be moving, to be sailing, where it doesn’t matter if it’s day or night, where time is all connected. I’d like to catch a fish, to feed myself directly from the ocean. I hope to be a voyager, a wanderer, sailing on to Bompie!

  CHAPTER 8

  THE DOLT AND THE ORPHAN

  Had to get away from Dad last night, so I went with Sophie and Brian over to the island. Brian’s getting on my nerves. First he had to ask a zillion questions like was he wearing the right clothes and should he take a jacket, and then the next minute he was telling us how to paddle and how to tie up the dinghy and all that jazz. Next thing he’s going to be telling me is how to breathe.

  Brian gets on Sophie’s case, too. She said something about how her mother wouldn’t like hearing me call girls wildlife or babes, and Brian stopped in his tracks and said her mother wasn’t here, so tough beans. Then, to rub it in more, he added, “And which mother are you talking about, anyway?”

  Sophie didn’t miss a beat. She picked up a rock and sailed it out across the water. “Look at that!” she said. “Can you throw that far?” I couldn’t tell whether she hadn’t heard him or whether she was ignoring him.

  I told him to shut his yap. He said, “I don’t have to if I don’t want to.” What a dolt.

  Today Sophie and I escaped without Brian and went back to the island. Sophie’s a lot easier to be around than anyone else on the boat. She’s always taking deep breaths and smiling at the wind and the sun and the waves. She doesn’t get on your case about stuff.

  I almost put my foot in it though. We found one little chick stumbling along by itself in the brush and I said, “Hey, it’s an orphan!”

  Sophie said, “It is not!” and she scooped it up and took it back to a nest we’d seen.

  I wish I hadn’t said the thing about the orphan.

  Sophie also went up in the bosun’s chair today. Uncle Dock had been standing around staring up at the light thingy at the top of the mast, wondering how we were going to change it.

  “Want me to go up there?” Sophie asked.

  “Maybe Brian ought to do it,” he said. “Brian? Go up in that bosun’s chair and change that thing, okay?”

  “No way!” Brian said. He looked green. That mast is a tall, tall, spire.

  “Cody! How about you?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. Okay, so I wasn’t thrilled about it. I don’t much like heights.

  Sophie said, “Listen! I’m the lightest and the smallest. It makes sense for me to go. I’d love to go!”

  “I just don’t want you getting hurt, that’s all,” Uncle Dock said.

  I guess that meant he didn’t mind if Brian or I got hurt. Geez.

  Sophie said, “Hey! Are you going to treat me like that the whole trip? Aren’t you going to let me do anything?”

  So Uncle Dock reluctantly let her go up, and you should have seen her! She was laughing and shouting “Whoopeeee!” She scurried up there in no time, and got that bulb changed, and said, “Let me swing up here a bit, okay? It’s brilliant up here!”

  “She’d better not get hurt up there,” Uncle Dock said.

  Last night we all had to say what we were going to teach everyone else on our voyage. That’s one of Uncle Stew’s big ideas. Uncle Dock is teaching us how to read charts, Brian is teaching points of sail (whatever that is), Uncle Stew is teaching us how to use the sextant thingy, my dad is teaching us radio code or something like that, and I’m teaching juggling. That really ticked some of them off, that I was teaching something “dumb” like juggling. But I don’t care. Juggling is cool.

  It got a little weird when Sophie said what she was teaching. She said she was going to teach us Bompie’s stories.

  “And how do you know Bompie’s stories?” Brian asked.

  “’Cause he told them to me.”

  Nobody said a word.

  Later, Brian said to me, “What the heck is she talking about? She’s never even met Bompie!”

  “Leave her alone,” I said.

  CHAPTER 9

  BEHEADING

  We left Block Island early to begin what was expected to be a sixteen-hour sail. Everyone was on deck as we set off for Martha’s Vineyard.

  “Ahoy! Blast off!” Cody shouted into the wind. Cody likes to annoy his father by mixing sailing terminology with whatever flies into his mind, and he often gets the sailing terms wrong, or uses them at the wrong time, or uses them all together. “Reef the rudder and heave ho, take off!” You can see Uncle Mo grinding his teeth whenever Cody does this. Brian and Uncle Stew don’t find Cody funny, either, but Uncle Dock doesn’t seem to mind, and I like it. It makes me feel less self-conscious about getting everything right.

  “Winch the mast and hoist the boom!” Cody shouted.

  “Cut it out,” Brian said. “You might have to get it right sometime when our lives count on it, and either you won’t know what to say or no one will listen because you talk gibberish all the time.”

  “Aw, lighten up, Brian,” Cody said. “Reef your sails.”

  The wind and current were with us all day, and so were the fish. We caught seven bluefish, but two got away. I killed (killed!), beheaded (beheaded!), and gutted (gutted!) the first two, with Uncle Stew and Brian standing over me. You could tell they were hoping I’d chicken out or that I’d make a mess of it.

  “Bludgeon it first,” Uncle Stew instructed. “Between the eyes.”

  “Hit it with the winch handle,” Brian said.

  “Beat the wench!” Cody said.

  “Not the wench, you idiot,” Brian said. “The winch. And she’s not beating the winch, she’s beating the fish with the winch.”

  “Light-en up, man, light-en up!” Cody said.

  With the winch handle, I bludgeoned the poor, helpless, defenseless fish.

  “The idea,” Brian said, “is to kill them as quickly as possible.”

  Beating that poor fish really bothered me. I kept telling myself that I’d been eating meat and fish all my life and I’d never thought twice about it.

  “You think it’s dead?” I asked.

  “No,” Brian said. “Cut off its head.”

  “Execute it!” Cody said. “Off with your head!”

  I got the fish’s head cut halfway off and I was thinking, Okay, Sophie, okay, it won’t feel this—and then as soon as I started in on the other side, the fish started flipping and floundering.

  “Get on with it,” Uncle Stew said.

  “Yeah, hurry up,” Brian added.

  The hardest part, I learned, is not the beating, not the blood,
not the guts, not the slitting the throat. The hardest part is breaking the spine. That part makes my heart skip, flip, wobble. When my fingers fold around the spine—that power line—and turn the head to the left or right, I feel a massive release of something—pressure, tension, energy, or maybe just pure life force—in the two or three seconds that it takes to break the spine. Where does that force go?

  We made great time today, pulling into Vineyard Haven on Martha’s Vineyard within eight hours—half our expected time.

  “We are voyagers!” I shouted when we spotted land.

  “Land ho, avast and abast and aghast!” Cody shouted.

  The main reason we were stopping here was to visit Uncle Dock’s friend Joey, who’d spent the last five years rebuilding an old wooden boat that he’d found in a swamp. Joey’s boat is immaculate, with an all-teak interior and exterior, a sleek design.

  I kept running my hands over that beautiful wood until Uncle Dock said, “Well, she’s a beauty, but The Wanderer is still my love.” I think he was a little jealous because of the fuss I was making over Joey’s boat.

  “I think The Wanderer is a beauty too, Dock,” I said. “And if I had to choose which one to sail across the ocean, I’d choose The Wanderer.”

  “Yep,” he said. “Me too.”

  Joey invited us to his cottage for dinner. It seemed weird being in a house. So much wasted space! You could fit so much stuff in there! On the boat there is a place for everything, and everything is compact and small, and nothing is on board that isn’t needed. There’s no room for extra junk.

  After dinner, Cody and I were sitting on the dock when Brian came out and said, “Something’s up.”

  “What do you mean?” Cody asked.

  Brian kicked at the dock. “Dock and Joey were in the kitchen talking, and I just went in to get some water, and they shut up so fast. Do you think they were talking about me?”