If You Find This

by Matthew Baker

  “Did you see that?” I (piano)said. Mr. Carl and Mr. Tim were fishing from the pier, Mr. Carl chewing a glowing cigar, Mr. Tim wearing a plaid jacket. “Since when are they friends?”

  “Since always,” Jordan (piano)said, tugging his mask to his neck.

  We each gripped an oar, rowing toward the wharf, the oars (piano)rattling in the oarlocks. The rowboat (forte)thwacked into the dock. Zeke tossed the duffel bag into the boat.

  “This maybe isn’t the best time to mention it, but do we even know where we’re going to dig?” Jordan (piano)whispered.

  “PAWPAW ISLAND, THERE BOTTLED SHIPS, BONES FROM BOW, NINE PACES INLAND,” Zeke (piano)whispered.

  “So, what, we’ll find the island, look at some bottled ships, tie a bow on a bone, and then take nine steps?” Jordan (piano)whispered.

  “We have all night to solve it!” Zeke (piano)hissed.

  “It’s a whole island!” Jordan (piano)hissed.

  Zeke stepped into the boat, lurched onto a seat.

  “You’re shaking the boat, Boylover,” Jordan (piano)grumbled.

  “Call me Boylover again,” Zeke (piano)said.

  “What?” Jordan (piano)said.

  “Call me Boylover again,” Zeke (crescendo)said.

  “Boylover,” Jordan (piano)said.

  “I meant don’t call me Boylover,” Zeke (sforzando)said. “My name is Zeke. And my grandfather’s name was Hyo. Call me Boylover again and I’ll feed you to my dogs.”

  “Boylover,” Jordan (piano)said.

  Zeke bent over the duffel bag.

  “After I fight the Isaacs, you might be next,” Zeke (piano)muttered.

  “Scary, Boylover,” Jordan (piano)said.

  We rowed to the mouth of the harbor. I was shivering from the wind. Mr. Carl and Mr. Tim were (forte)pounding on the door to the lighthouse, (forte)shouting the lighthouse keeper’s name.

  “Did they see us?” I (piano)said.

  “Maybe they just need more bait,” Jordan (piano)said.

  “You better row faster,” Zeke (piano)said.

  The waves were whitecaps beyond the harbor. The lake was hazy with fog. Hooks and lures and screwdrivers (staccato)clattered along the deck, from bow to stern to bow to stern, the rowboat seesawing across the waves. Zeke was hunched across a compass and the map of the lakes. We rowed through the drifting fog, like people voyaging through a world of clouds.

  I spotted something glowing. Ahead of the boat, a light flickered above the water. The light flickered, vanished, flickered again in the fog.

  “We aren’t alone,” Jordan (piano)hissed.

  “What?” Zeke (piano)said.

  “Something’s there,” I (piano)hissed.

  Zeke raised the spyglass, peering at the light. The light swung about, a streak of gold. Zeke lowered the spyglass.

  “What is that?” Zeke (piano)said.

  “Probably the ghost of Grandpa Yo-Yo, a light that fat,” Jordan (piano)said.

  “What did you say?” Zeke (crescendo)said, whirling.

  “Probably the ghost of Grandpa Yo-Yo—” Jordan (piano)said, but then all at once Zeke flipped his grip on the spyglass and leapt standing and swung the spyglass at Jordan, and Jordan tipped backward, clutching his forehead, dropping to the deck.

  Jordan’s oar swung in the water, unmanned, jerking the boat. “What do you want?” Zeke (forte)shouted, brandishing the spyglass like a cutlass, and staggering as the rowboat (forte)knocked through a wave. Jordan scrambled at Zeke, but Zeke kicked him in the chest and knocked him to the deck again. “You whiny, ignorant, gap-toothed runt.” Zeke shook the spyglass, his hands all tendons and knuckles. “Is that it? You just want some nicknames of your own?” Zeke kicked Jordan again. “You ginger, you mutant, you goon, you worm.” I wanted to help, but I didn’t know who to help, and the rowboat had swung sideways, waves (forte)plowing into the hull. The rowboat lurched, tilted, teetered midair, then (sforzando)slammed flat, the fishing tackle (staccato)clattering. We didn’t have any life preservers. I fumbled at the oars. “Exile, outcast, leper.”

  In the fog, the light vanished, flickered, vanished again. Jordan (piano)coughed. His ear was bleeding. His forehead was bleeding. Zeke stood waiting, clutching the spyglass, (piano)panting, ready for an attack. But Jordan didn’t attack. Instead, he crawled onto a seat. He bowed his head. He just sat there.

  Zeke staggered. He had destroyed the fight in Jordan, somehow. Somewhere, in everything he had said, he had said Jordan’s True Name.

  Jordan swayed, on his seat, as the rowboat swayed. The metal mask hanging from his neck was still dripping.

  “For a while my dad couldn’t live with us, because he used to hit us,” Jordan (adagio)said, staring at some fishing sinkers on the deck of the boat. “Hardly ever, really, and afterward he was always sorry. But sometimes he would just get, like, wound up, and totally lose control.” He hunched his shoulders. “I’m worried I’m becoming my dad. Already sometimes I feel like hurting people, not for any reason, just totally random people. I’ll see Calculator, and suddenly for no reason at all I’ll feel like punching his teeth out.”

  That answered that question. We weren’t = friends. We weren’t even ≈ friends. If he wanted to punch my teeth out, obviously we were ≠ friends.

  “Or you,” Jordan (adagio)said, pointing at Zeke. “I’ll see you, and totally randomly I’ll feel like knocking your head into a wall.” He frowned. “The meanness is like this snake inside me, and in the beginning it was tiny, but then it molted its skin and got bigger, and then it molted its skin again and got bigger again, and it keeps getting bigger, and if I could kill it I would kill it, but I can’t, I can’t stop its growing.” He wiped blood from his ear. “But I never hit anybody. Sometimes I feel like hitting everybody, but I never hit anybody. When I say things, that isn’t me being mean. That’s me holding myself back.”

  Zeke dropped the spyglass. He didn’t look like he wanted any power over Jordan anymore. He turned toward me.

  “I’ll row for now,” Zeke (piano)murmured.

  The waves were dragging the rowboat toward the flickering light. Zeke stumbled to the oars as the rowboat pitched. My arms were > shuddery, not from the cold, but from the tiredness. I staggered to the seat across from Jordan’s.

  Jordan wouldn’t look at me. His fists were clenched. Parts of him were fading in and out with the fog. I didn’t know what to say, but I had to say something, so I started talking anyway.

  “Even when you’re eleven, there are already so many yous that you’ve been,” I (allegro)said, gripping the underside of the seat as the wind thrashed my hair. “Sometimes I miss who I was when I was seven, when I was five, when I was three even. The ways they thought. The things they felt about my parents. The words they used that I don’t use anymore. And I keep trying to bring all of those mes together, to be all of them at once. When I walk, I want to feel like all of us are walking, like a smaller me overlapping a smaller me overlapping a smaller me still. But I can’t. Every day I lose some more of them. Already they’re so faded that they’re nearly gone.”

  This was the sort of Dangerous Idea that normally sent kids running away from me, but once I had started talking, I just couldn’t stop.

  “Do you know the thing about violins and fiddles?” I (allegro)said. “They’re these musical instruments. But they’re actually the same instrument. The difference is how you play it. If you play the instrument this way, it’s a violin. If you play the instrument that way, it’s a fiddle. That’s the choice you have to make, as the musician, every time you play it. But you have to make the choice with yourself, too. You play yourself this way, you’re a fiddle. But you play yourself that way, and then you’re a violin, a completely different sound, something you never knew you could be.”

  Jordan’s eyebrows scrunched together. Jordan glanced at me. Jordan let his fists relax.

  “You’re like zero years old and a hundred years old at the same time,” Jordan (piano)said.

  “Sor
ry,” I (piano)said.

  “Why are you sorry?” Jordan (piano)said.

  “I wanted to help you, but when I started talking, only weird ideas came out,” I (piano)said.

  “Well. They were weird. But they helped,” Jordan (piano)said.

  The light swelled to the size of a house, and then the rowboat slid into a clearing in the fog where the light shrunk to the size of a lantern. That’s what the light had been all along—a lantern, hanging from the prow of a rowboat with paint peeling from its hull. A bearded man was fishing at the prow. He was wearing ragged pants, a ragged shirt, and a sort of hat that hadn’t been stylish for at least a hundred years.

  “Something about that man feels very wrong,” Zeke (piano)whispered.

  The bearded man unhooked a lure from the weave of his pants where seven other lures were hanging. He knotted the lure to the line of the pole. He glanced at the rowboat.

  “He saw us!” Zeke (piano)said, ducking.

  The bearded man (pianissimo)shouted something that got lost in the wind. We stumbled to Zeke’s seat, grabbed the oars, rowed together. The rowboat spun sideways, but the waves were still dragging us toward the bearded man. His rowboat reared with a wave, (mezzo-piano)crashed back. A chain dangled from his rowboat, its anchor somewhere underwater. Our boat was aiming to plow sideways into his. As we bobbed closer, I gripped my knife behind my back, ready if he tried to board us.

  “Are you boys lost?” the bearded man (forte)called. One eye was milky with white, like a fog had settled across the color there. His beard was pointed like the endpin of a cello, and his voice had a hollow twangy timbre. He plucked a strip of raw meat from a brown paper wrapping, hung the meat from the hook of the fishing pole.

  Our rowboat (piano)knocked into his, swaying.

  “Is that meat?” Jordan (glissando)said, frowning.

  The bearded man (fermata)cast the line. “Squirrel,” the bearded man (forte)said. “Shot on the island this morning. You boys aren’t fishing, are you? This is my spot. You boys can’t fish here.”

  “We’re leaving, we’re leaving,” Zeke (forte)said, leaning into the oars.

  The bearded man (staccato)reeled the line. “This spot’s prime fishing,” the bearded man (forte)said. “Shipwrecks, you’ll see, that’s where the big fish live.”

  Zeke stopped rowing. The hull of our rowboat (piano)scraped against the hull of the bearded man’s. “Shipwreck?” Zeke (forte)said.

  “THE DANTES is the wreck under us now,” the bearded man (forte)said. He (fermata)cast the line again, the meat still on the hook. “A laker, a cargo freighter, sunk by one of the November storms.” He pointed into the fog with the pole. “Onshore there, there’s another, named the PAWPAW.”

  Jordan’s eyes were > his normal eyes. Twice as big, maybe.

  “You’ve seen the PAWPAW?” Jordan (mezzo-piano)whispered.

  Zeke grabbed my shirt.

  “The PAWPAW went down on the island itself!” Zeke (mezzo-forte)whispered.

  I was gaping at the bearded man.

  “The odds of that were about 1%,” I (mezzo-piano)whispered.

  “An old wood schooner, wrecked a century ago, almost,” the bearded man (forte)said. “I like to camp there, sometimes, when the weather’s agreeable. Shot this squirrel there. You boys aren’t camping, are you? That’s my spot. You boys can’t camp there.” He lowered the pole, but Zeke (forte)said, “Wait, keep pointing!”

  Zeke leaned into the oars, our rowboat (mezzo-piano)grating past the bearded man’s toward the island in the fog.

  I (forte)shouted to the bearded man, “Can you see with that other eye?”

  The bearded man squinted the white eye. “Not you, or my boat, or this lake,” the bearded man (forte)shouted. He tugged at its lid. “This here is my eye for other things. For seeing the other worlds. The ruins. The spirits. Where the fish sleep.”

  The fog sucked the rowboat into itself.

  “What a creep,” Jordan (mezzo-piano)muttered, (piano)laughing.

  Then a motor (sforzando)growled somewhere in the fog, and Jordan wasn’t laughing anymore.

  “That man didn’t have a motor,” I (piano)said.

  Zeke frowned.

  “The Isaacs are early,” Zeke (piano)muttered.

  A sailboat lit with electric lights slid from the fog, seven hooded kids on its deck—Little Isaac at the helm (ISAAC 17), Big Isaac at the railing (ISAAC 19), five Isaac wannabes slouching alongside (LUCAS 4, IAN 24, ETHAN 26, KEVIN 15, SCOTT 10), most of them evens, none of them primes. Little Isaac spun the wheel, and the sailboat swung, circling the rowboat, trapping us in the wake.

  “Hey, it’s Odom!” Big Isaac (forte)shouted. “And the freak’s locker partner!” A Wannabe Isaac (SCOTT 10) spit at us, but the spit corkscrewed in the wind and hit another Wannabe Isaac (KEVIN 15) in the face. Little Isaac spun the wheel again, and the sailboat swung into the fog.

  “Are you allowed to bring seven people to a duel?” Jordan (piano)said.

  “Big Isaac is Little Isaac’s second. The rest aren’t allowed to do anything other than watch,” Zeke (piano)said.

  “Did you bring what you stole from the Isaacs? For if you lose?” I (piano)said.

  Zeke ignored me, pretended he hadn’t heard.

  The rowboat (mezzo-piano)ground onto a sandbar. We hopped overboard into the shallows. Jordan lugged the rowboat by its prow. Zeke hoisted the bag of fireworks above the waves, wading toward the island. I (piano)splashed ashore, wriggling back into my shirt, yanking the collar to tug the wooden mask through. The fog had vanished. The island was forested.

  “Like a rib cage,” Zeke (pianissimo)whispered.

  “What?” I (piano)said.

  Zeke pointed. A rock bluff loomed farther along the beach. Below the bluff, a shipwreck sat pinned to the sand, half underwater, half abovewater, moonlight spiking through the curved ribs of its hull.

  “We’ve been misreading the tattoo this whole time!” Zeke (piano)said. “The punctuation! It wasn’t PAWPAW ISLAND, THERE BOTTLED SHIPS, BONES FROM BOW, NINE PACES INLAND! It was PAWPAW ISLAND, THERE BOTTLED, SHIPS BONES, FROM BOW NINE PACES INLAND!”

  “SHIPS BONES?” Jordan (piano)said, but I knew what Zeke meant. My brother was still young, but this was the sort of thing he might become when he died. Some trees became the frames of ships. And afterward, after he had been wrecked, he would be bones like these. Rotten timber.

  “The key’s buried NINE PACES INLAND from the PAWPAW!” Zeke (piano)said.

  “THERE BOTTLED,” I (piano)whispered.

  The hooded silhouettes of Isaacs and Wannabe Isaacs were pounding along the beach, past the shipwreck, coming toward us.

  “The Isaacs are coming,” I (piano)hissed. “We can’t dig while they’re here.”

  “You dig,” Jordan (piano)said. “We’ll duel.”

  “He can’t dig,” Zeke (piano)said. “He’s my second.”

  “I’ll be your second, Skulltooth,” Jordan (mezzo-piano)said. “Let him dig.”

  “ ‘Skulltooth’? What’s ‘Skulltooth’? And since when will you be my second?” Zeke (mezzo-piano)said.

  “Listen. I hate normal names. I can’t call you Zeke,” Jordan (mezzo-piano)said. “ ‘Skulltooth’ is a nickname masterpiece. It’s single-handedly the toughest and most totally prestigious nickname I’ve ever invented. I spent forever making it. How can’t you like ‘Skulltooth’?”

  Zeke squinted.

  “It will do,” Zeke (mezzo-forte)said.

  Jordan thumped my back, (mezzo-forte)saying, “If the lighthouse man knows we stole his rowboat, he might already be sweeping the lake for us. We need to get that key and get out of here. Move fast.”

  I tore down the beach, just as the Isaacs and Wannabe Isaacs came stomping up, Big Isaac (forte)shouting, “Where’s he headed?” and Jordan (forte)shouting, “What do you care, Trollhole?” and Big Isaac (forte)shouting, “Who are you calling Trollhole?”

  I (forte)splashed alongside the shipwreck. Bats swooped awa
y from the rotting hull. The beams (glissando)creaked, the waves (forte)battering the ship. I was standing at the SHIPS BONES, on the ISLAND of the PAWPAW shipwreck, where the key to the trunk had been THERE BOTTLED. I touched the bow of the ship. The paint rough, the wood glassy. Something (piano)skittered inside the shipwreck. Rats, or maybe opossums. I crossed from the shipwreck toward the bluff, NINE PACES INLAND, FROM THE BOW, counting my paces.

  After nine paces, I was > halfway between the shipwreck and the bluff. I gripped my knife and dropped to the sand, digging. I listened for the clink of knife against bottle, but as I dug, I heard only the (piano)scratch of knife against sand, and once the (piano)chime of knife against stone.

  I heard someone (pianissimo)shouting. A pair of lighters flickered along the beach. I kept knifing at the sand, but wasn’t finding anything, only sand and stones. I tossed my knife aside, started digging frantically with my fingers. Everything felt unbalanced. This wasn’t the answer. I was still missing something. I felt my brain trying to solve an equation—rearranging variables, simplifying ratios, squaring roots.

  I stopped.

  I shoved a lock of hair out of my eyes.

  The numbers clicked into place, everything canceling everything.

  1 Grandpa Rose footstep ≈ 1 1/2 Nicholas Funes footsteps.

  9 paces for him ≈ 13 1/2 paces for me.

  I was digging in the wrong spot.

  Golden fireworks spiraled along the beach, throwing light onto the sand, the driftwood, the shapes of the duelers. I pushed myself standing, counted 4 1/2 paces, found myself at the rock bluff. Waves (forte)smashed against the rocks, (forte)lashing the bluff with water, drenching me. The trees above the bluff were shadows the shape of my brother. There was a hollow. Fireworks streaked (forte)fizzing from dueler to dueler, flashing against the beach, the tempo rapid-fire. I braced myself, a wave (forte)whirling against the rocks, spraying me. I wiped water from my face. I shoved my hand into the hollow. I felt the shape of something. A lip of rounded glass. The neck of a bottle. A misfired firework arced into the sky, exploding with a (fortissimo)boom that shook the trees, raining golden light.