The Wanderer

by Sharon Creech

  In my dreams, I was always on land, usually playing on a beach. I remember that in one of the dreams, I could see the wave coming in the distance and I started piling up sand bags to make a barrier. I can’t get rid of the feeling that the waves of my dreams were all pointing to The Wave that got us on the ocean.

  And now I’m having new dreams, worse ones. In these I am not on land, but on a boat, and the wave is coming and it gets me and it sweeps me far, far away, and when I wake up from the dream, I feel as if I am still floating, far out at sea.

  And I keep coming up with lists of things I want to do, hurry, hurry, things to do. I want to learn how to weave—to build my own loom and weave silky cloths like my mother does. I want to go hot-air ballooning. Skydive. Hike the Appalachian Trail. Mountain-bike a thousand miles. Canoe down a long, long river and camp along the way. Climb mountains. Build a cabin on an island like the woman with her dog on Grand Manan.

  And I want to take people with me. Bompie and Cody and Uncle Dock. My parents. Even Brian and Uncle Stew could come.

  Maybe sailing will go back on my list once we reach Ireland. The dolphins came back today, and they leaped and rolled and made me laugh. It was like an invitation: Come on, Sophie, have fun in the sea.

  Cody says he thinks that we built up energy on the first part of our trip—getting stronger, storing energy—and when the wave hit, the energy became a protective layer that wrapped itself around us and saved us. It makes as much sense as anything else does these days.

  And Cody said, “You know what? When that wave hit, you know what I thought about, when the water was pouring over me? I thought about Bompie—”

  “I did, too!” I said. I’d forgotten that, until Cody mentioned it. “In the middle of the wave, when I thought I was underwater, I thought about Bompie struggling in the water—in the rivers, in the ocean—”

  “Me, too! Isn’t that strange?” Cody said. “You know what I said to myself, under all that water? I said, ‘Giddy-up, giddy-up!’”

  “I did, too. How weird.”

  “Maybe we’re losing our marbles,” Cody said.

  Last night, Cody and I got into this very serious talk about Life. We wondered if maybe people never die, but simply live on and on, leaving other planes behind. When you come near death, you die on one plane—so to everyone you are with, you are dead, but you—the you in you—doesn’t stop existing. Instead, you keep living the same as always and it just seems as if you’ve had a close call. We wondered if maybe we’re not each just one person, but many people existing on millions of different planes, like a line that branches off and branches again and on it goes, but it always has one central trunk.

  I was getting a headache from so much thinking, and then Cody said, “At night on the ocean, a person thinks strange things. Let’s not think anymore. Let’s juggle.”

  So we did. We juggled wet socks.

  CHAPTER 60

  QUESTIONS

  My father’s not yelling at me and he keeps asking me if I’m okay. I want to talk to him, but I don’t know how to do it or what to say.

  What I wonder is this: how come you don’t notice the time going by, and you don’t think you are changing in any way, but then all of a sudden you realize that what you are thinking today is different from what you thought yesterday and that you are different from what you were yesterday—or last week—or last month?

  I feel as if I’ve been asleep my whole life, and I wish I’d been asking questions like Sophie does, and I wish I knew more things. But even though I feel that, I don’t know how to turn into a person who asks questions, who knows more.

  And my father—I have seen him just about every day of my life, and all of a sudden he looks like a complete stranger to me. I don’t know anything about him. I don’t know where he was born or what he does at work or how he got that scar on his forehead.

  Everyone is talking about reaching Ireland, but I feel weird, as if we’re not really going to get there, or as if I’m not ready to be there. And what will happen with Sophie when we do reach Bompie? Maybe that’s part of the reason I don’t want to get there. I’m afraid for Sophie.

  And I keep wondering how Sophie knows Bompie’s stories and if they really are Bompie’s stories, and if they are, did he only tell her ones about struggling in the water, and if he did, why did he do that?

  And then I remember one of Bompie’s stories that was not about water. It was about his father dying. Last night I dreamed that Bompie was telling me that story, and when I woke up I went looking for my dad, and he was lying on a bunk, and I poked him until he woke up.

  “Just checking,” I said.

  LAND

  CHAPTER 6l

  AHOY AHOY

  Cody and Dock and I were on watch in the wee hours of the morning when Cody shouted, “There—ahoy!”

  I peered into the darkness. “What? Where?”

  “There—see that dark shape thingy?”

  We stared at Cody’s dark shape thingy, until we realized it was only a low cloud.

  A half hour later, Cody called, “Ahoy!”

  “Where?”

  “There—lights!”

  “You mean those moving lights—those boat lights?”

  “Crumbs,” he said.

  But then, just before dawn, there it was, a dark shape peeking out behind blue-gray clouds.

  “Ahoy ahoy ahoy!” Cody shouted. “Ahoy, see there?”

  It was a mountain. Land. Land ho!

  “Oh, mountain,” Cody sang, “oh, beautiful mountain of mine!”

  The land, the land, the land! Oh, blessed, blessed land. Oh, sweet, sweet land!

  We roused everyone else, and within a few hours we were sailing along the southern coast of Ireland. It is such a relief to be able to steer by land instead of compass. Oh, land!

  Uncle Dock was in fine form. He stood at the rail, reciting part of a poem. He said it’s from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”:

  “Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed

  The lighthouse top I see?

  Is this the hill? Is this the kirk?

  Is this mine own countree?”

  When I asked him to repeat it so I could copy it down, he said that the word country is spelled countree. I liked that. I had to ask him what a kirk was. He said it was a church. Sure enough, from where we stood, we could see both a lighthouse and a church.

  So we all recited it again with Uncle Dock, and when we finished, Cody added, “Oh, Rosalie!”

  Uncle Dock said, “Why’d you say that?”

  Cody said, “I dunno. It just seemed to fit somehow.”

  We’ve come up along the southwest coast, and now we are nearing Crosshaven. The weather is kind and the sun is shining brighter than ever to light up the rocky cliffs and nubby green fields of Ireland. We’ve passed old castles and farms, cows grazing, and tiny cars puttering along. I want to pump up the inflatable dinghy and rush to shore.

  But a fight has broken out down below between Uncle Stew and Uncle Mo. Much shouting going on and the sound of things being thrown about.

  CHAPTER 62

  LAND

  We are on land! We are alive and we are on land!

  I thought I was hallucinating when we first spotted land, real earth with trees growing on it and cars rolling along it.

  And then we nearly didn’t make it into the harbor, because my dad and Uncle Stew got into a major major fight. It started with Uncle Stew asking who was going to sort out getting The Wanderer repaired, and if the rest of us should rent a car and drive on to Bompie’s instead of waiting to sail to England when The Wanderer was fixed.

  In the middle of arguing over that, they started fighting over which adult would stay with the boat, and then Uncle Stew said Sophie should stay too; she shouldn’t go to Bompie’s! Brian agreed with him. Then Sophie came below deck in the middle of all this and said, “I’m going to Bompie’s and that’s that.”

  It’s a mess.

  We tried phoning Mom, but ther
e was no answer. Then Sophie tried her parents: no answer. Then Uncle Stew tried phoning his wife, and he got the answering machine, so he left a message saying we’d arrived. I couldn’t believe no one was home! I thought they’d all be waiting by the phone, but Uncle Dock said, “Well, they had no idea when we’d reach land—it could’ve been three days ago or next week or—” and he’s right, I guess, but it would’ve been nice to hear a familiar voice celebrating our arrival.

  Sophie got a little panicky. “Where are they?” she asked, over and over.

  Right now we are wobbling around learning how to walk again, and my dad has gone off to rent a car to drive from here to England, and we still don’t know who all is going yet.

  But we’re on land! And we’re alive!

  CHAPTER 63

  BURSTING

  I wasn’t going to write in this journal once we reached land, but Cody’s still writing in his dog-log. He says the journey isn’t over yet.

  Yesterday afternoon, once we’d docked The Wanderer, we stumbled out onto land, and it was so weird. We looked so silly, wobbling around, as if the land were moving underneath us and we couldn’t stay upright. That’s the first time I felt seasick—on land!

  We went into a pub and ordered up all kinds of food—big plates of it, with things swimming in gravy, and fat loaves of fresh bread, and fresh vegetables and fruits. How odd not to have to hold on to our plates as we ate, and how strange to be able to eat and drink at the same time.

  We were all chattering away like crazy, talking to anyone who would listen. At one point I looked around, and we were each talking to a different stranger, each of us pouring out our tale.

  “You should have seen that storm—”

  “Our booms came apart—”

  “The waves—like mountains—”

  “Knocked out the radar, everything—”

  “Thought we were done for—”

  “Cracked open my face—”

  “The wind—like nothing you can imagine—the sound—”

  “Slammed—”

  “Blown—”

  “Pushed—”

  We were bursting. The strangers were nodding at us, tossing out their own stories.

  “The sea’s a devil—”

  “A tricky creature she is—”

  “And my uncle, he drowned out there—”

  “Seventeen boats lost back in ’92—”

  “See this leg? Not a real one. The sea, she claimed the real one—”

  For hours we went on like that, pouring out the words, and at one point I wondered how much these strangers cared about what we were saying, or if they cared at all, and why we felt such an urgent need to tell them our story, and why they told us theirs.

  In the middle of all this, I could sense Cody watching me and listening to what I was saying, as if what I was saying was odd. I tried to listen to what I was saying, but I was so caught up in the telling and in listening to everybody else, that I couldn’t concentrate.

  As the light faded outside the windows, it felt like we knew these people and they knew us. They told us where to get rooms for the night and followed us down to The Wanderer, where they shook their heads over the sorry-looking state of Dock’s “baby,” and they helped us lug our wet clothes up the long hill, and bid us all a calm and peaceful night on their own Irish soil.

  I dreamed strange dreams, with so many people coming and going in them. There was Dock’s friend Joey from Block Island, and Frank and his family from Grand Manan, the lady and her dog, and Dock’s Rosalie, and the Irish strangers, and in and out of all these people wandered Cody and Uncle Dock and Stew and Mo and Brian. And me. There were other people, too—people who looked familiar, and who seemed to know me, but they faded into the crowd before I could figure out who they were.

  CHAPTER 64

  NEW BODY

  It’s barely light out but I can’t sleep. Everything smells and feels different. No rocking and rolling, no wind. We’re in an Irish inn at the top of a hill, and from the window I can see the harbor, and I can just make out The Wanderer bobbing there.

  Yesterday was so peculiar. I felt like I had a new body and the new body didn’t know how to work very well. It was walking funny and knocking into stuff and wanting to touch the strangest things: the floor, the pillows, dry towels.

  We were all pretty hyper last night, talking away as if we’d just been given voices. I never heard Sophie talk so much. At first, I was talking so much myself that I wasn’t listening to anyone else. And then I heard Brian say, “I was sleeping when it hit, and I thought I was a goner! I’ve never been so scared in my whole life! I felt like a little puny chicken in a meat market.” He was thumping on the table and clutching at his throat, and I don’t know, he just surprised me because he could make that whole scary thing into something that was almost funny.

  And then I heard Sophie tell someone, “Yep, these are my cousins”—and she pointed to me and Brian—“and we’ve been planning this trip since we were little kids—”

  I was going to correct her, and then I realized she was mixing her story with my dad’s and Uncle Stew’s and Uncle Dock’s.

  “Brian didn’t think we’d really do it,” she said, “but I always knew we’d do it.”

  And then she was talking about The Wave, and how it rose up behind the boat. “And it was so black and tall and—”

  The Wave was white.

  CHAPTER 65

  PUSH-PULL

  We’re in the car on the way to Bompie’s: me, Cody, Brian, Uncle Mo, Uncle Stew, and Uncle Dock. Uncle Dock found someone to start repair work on The Wanderer while we all drive on to Bompie’s. This was after a huge fight. Now everyone’s touchy and crabby and hardly speaking. Uncle Dock is really disappointed that we can’t sail The Wanderer around the Irish coast because he wanted to stop at a friend’s house in one of the coastal towns. Finally, he got the other uncles to agree that we could drive that way and stop there briefly.

  “But we’re not staying!” Uncle Stew said.

  “We’re not spending a week there or anything,” Uncle Mo said.

  We couldn’t get the phones in the inn to work last night, so we still haven’t called home. It makes me jittery. Where is everyone? I hope we can call from Uncle Dock’s friend’s house.

  We’re crammed in like sardines in this car, and it’s hard to write because Brian keeps looking over my shoulder, trying to see what I’m writing. Uncle Stew is driving, and we’ll be lucky to get there alive. We’re careening around narrow roads, and he keeps forgetting to drive on the left side. We’ve already nearly wiped out a flock of sheep and a couple of farmers.

  Everything is so beautiful: green, green land and cliffs overlooking the sea. Were we really tossing about on that sea just a few days ago? I wish everyone wasn’t in such a bad mood so that we could stop and wander through some of these little towns, but the uncles look mighty determined. They have their sights set now on a quick stop at Uncle Dock’s friend’s and then getting on to Bompie.

  I’m feeling pushed and pulled: I long to see Bompie, but I’m also terrified of seeing Bompie.

  CHAPTER 66

  THE VISITOR

  Wonder of wonder of wonders!

  We squeezed down a narrow lane in a tiny village along the Irish coast, and we pulled up outside a wee cottage, and Uncle Dock went up to the door, and when it opened, he staggered back and clutched his chest.

  We were all sticking our heads out the windows like a bunch of goons, trying to get a better look. Then Uncle Dock was hugging the life out of someone in a yellow dress, and we heard him say, “Oh! Rosalie!”

  “Rosalie?” we all said. “Rosalie?”

  And then we were pouring out of the car, and Uncle Dock let go of Rosalie so we could take a good look at her. She has the sweetest face you ever saw and very big round eyes, and she was smiling the biggest smile you ever saw, except maybe for Uncle Dock’s smile, which was the biggest smile in the universe.

  CHAPTER 67<
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  PHONE CALLS

  This weird life we’re in is getting weirder and weirder. Yesterday, Uncle Dock got the surprise of his life when he found Rosalie at his—and her—friend’s house in Ireland. I didn’t think we were ever going to tear the two of them apart.

  Dock’s friend let us use the phone, so we all called home and everybody was jumping up and down on both sides of the ocean, and people were shouting and laughing, and then we all flopped down on the floor in a used-up heap.

  Sophie kept saying, “I can’t believe it. I didn’t ever think I was going to hear their voices again. I’m not dreaming, right? I called and they were there, right?”

  The only not-so-good news in the day was that Sophie’s mother said Bompie hadn’t been well, and that if we hadn’t called her by tomorrow to say that we were nearly to Bompie, she was going to get on a plane and go see him herself.

  So then we were all rushing around, hurrying to get on to Bompie’s, and Dock didn’t want to leave Rosalie, and we practically had to pull him out the door. The only reason Dock left at all is that Rosalie promised to join him at Bompie’s in a couple days.

  As soon as we were all back in the car, everyone started saying, “Rosalie! Oh, Rosalie!” and Uncle Dock was blushing, but he was so happy he didn’t even mind us teasing him.

  Now we’re on the ferry, steaming across the Irish Sea toward Wales. I keep looking for the sails, feeling as if I’m supposed to be doing something. None of us were too eager to get back on a boat, I can tell you that.