Lost on the Water

by D. G. Driver

  “Have they changed the rules? Are they letting girls go now?” she asked after a moment. “I thought the girls all gathered at the Robinson’s farm for a party every year.”

  I thought about lying, telling her yes, the rules had changed. That would’ve been dumb, because she could check that out easily enough. “Um, no,” I confessed. “I think they didn’t notice I was a girl.”

  “And you didn’t bother correcting them?” Her disappointment in me dripped through her words.

  “I should have, I know, but I was too curious to find out what it was all about.”

  I expected her to get on me about that, but she didn’t say anything. She continued staring out the window, her complexion as pale as the white chiffon curtains around her.

  “Did you tell them who you were related to?” she finally asked in such a quiet voice I barely heard her.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, then that makes a bit more sense.” She stood up and stretched her back. As she stepped out of her room down the hall, she continued speaking, muttering more to herself really. “I suppose it makes sense. I don’t know if it does or not.”

  I followed her. “So, can I go?”

  Grandma didn’t look at me, but she slowed her pace as she began to pass by my bedroom. She pressed the splayed fingers of her right hand on the door for a moment and then pulled them away again. The door swung open. Her fingers curled up in her hand like they had felt something awful.

  “Is one of them planning to help you out with a boat?”

  My hopes that she was going to say, “Sure, there’s a kayak in the garage,” had just been dashed.

  “No one has an extra kayak,” I told her. “But I can rent one from the tackle shop. Fifty bucks a day. Mr. Taylor’s got one ready for me. All I have to do is call.” I handed her the business card.

  She took it and stepped into my bedroom. As though the card had a brochure’s worth of information on it, she sat on the bed, put on her glasses, and studied the card for a couple minutes, her right hand on her forehead as if the process of understanding it was giving her a headache.

  I knew it was about the cost. I was certain of it. So, I offered up, “I’m sure Dad’ll be okay with it. He’ll pay you back. We can call him and ask.”

  “They’re on a plane right now,” she said wistfully. She stood up again and moved past me into the hallway. I followed her into the kitchen. “I just don’t have a hundred dollars lying around. And I don’t know about sending you out there with a bunch of boys you don’t know.”

  “You know them,” I said. “I mean, they all acted like they knew Grandpa and said they were at his funeral.”

  Something crossed her expression, as though she had a sharp pain. “Yes, well, your grandpa was well loved by this town.” She fiddled with the business card in her hands and stared out the window over the kitchen sink. “I’m not sure I can approve of this without talking to your folks, and I won’t be able to reach them until tomorrow morning.”

  “That’ll be too late,” I said. No, I didn’t say that. I whined it. I didn’t mean to, but it came out that way.

  Grandma slapped the card down on the counter. Whining didn’t sit with her too well. “You’d need a boat, camping gear, food. Your grandpa knew where all that stuff was, but I don’t. And I can’t…” She gestured at the garage and then waved her hand as if to dismiss it. “The bike was right in front. It was easy to get at. I don’t go farther in than that. It’s just too much.”

  Too much stuff? That wasn’t a problem. I could dig through it. It’d be fun. It’d fill up the afternoon. I bet Grandpa had a lot of interesting things stowed away in there like tools, equipment, fishing gear, and maybe even some antiques.

  “Would it be all right if I went in there and looked?” I asked.

  Grandma frowned but still didn’t look at me. “The spiders. Black widows and brown recluses everywhere. Too dangerous.” She still stared out the window at the garage across the yard.

  “I could wear gloves,” I offered.

  She shook her head and waved her hands around her face. “That still doesn’t solve the problem of the boat, Dannie.” She tore her eyes away from the window and looked at me directly for the first time since I brought it up. “You can’t go.”

  “That’s not fair, Grandma!” I shouted, just like she was my mom. “Everyone is going.”

  “No. Only boys are going. You are not a boy. You don’t have the right to go. If the boys knew you were a girl, they wouldn’t let you go either.”

  “I wasn’t going to tell them,” I said.

  “Did you think they wouldn’t figure it out?” she came back at me.

  “No.”

  “Not when you change your clothes or go to the bathroom?”

  “I’d pee in the woods. And who changes their clothes at a campout anyway?”

  Grandma frowned at me, hard. “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “I’m pretty tough, Grandma. I’d fit in, and they wouldn’t even notice. Besides, almost all my friends back home are boys. I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal about it.”

  “You don’t know any of these people.”

  “And I won’t get to know them either, thanks to you! You think you’re this hip, cool grandma with cable TV and internet, but you’re just a boring old lady in a boring, stupid town. The only fun thing to do around here AT ALL, you won’t let me do. I wish I was in California! I wish I didn’t have to stay here!”

  I grabbed the handle on the back door, opened it, and ran outside all the way down to the lake. Once I got there, I plopped onto a big flat rock and kicked stones into the water rippling up on the bank.

  The guilt took over immediately. Grandma hadn’t deserved that, and I knew it. She was just watching out for me. But she didn’t realize that at almost fifteen I was a lot more capable of doing things than she thought. I wasn’t a little kid. And I was hardly what anyone would call girly. I’d been to lots of campouts in the past with my friends and their dads. No one ever complained that I didn’t pull my weight. Maybe back in her day, in the 1950s or whenever, girls couldn’t do anything but wear ponytails and poodle skirts and chew gum, but things were different now.

  Still, I shouldn’t have yelled at her like that. Just because she was too chicken to go in the shed and find stuff. For all I knew, there was some kind of small boat in there, tucked under a bunch of old junk. It was possible. So now I’d never know for sure because no one had gone into the garage since Grandpa had died. What was she going to do if she ever had to move? I mean, Grandpa had died half a year ago already.

  I gasped as a realization came clear to me. Oh no. Grandma wasn’t afraid of the spiders. She wasn’t overwhelmed by the mess. Grandma didn’t want to go in the shed because it was all Grandpa’s stuff, and she couldn’t handle seeing it and touching it all. It would hurt too much.

  I felt like such a jerk. What was the matter with me? Staring dumbly at the water, I tried to come up with words that would show her how sorry I was. I still wanted to go to the campout thing with the guys, but it didn’t mean I needed to run her over like that. Years and years of my dad drumming into my head, “Don’t say you’re sorry unless you mean it” had its effect. That, and my teachers always telling me, “Sorry means you’re not going to do it again.” Grandma needed to know that I felt bad about what I’d said, and that I really hadn’t meant to be so awful. Time clicked by as I thought it out, and I figured the longer I took to go back and say something, the less authentic my apology was going to be. I had to go talk to her.

  Slowly, I stood up and turned around to head back to the house. I didn’t see her on the back porch, so I figured she was inside emailing all her friends about what a selfish little brat her granddaughter was. A part of me guessed she would have closed the door on the garage and locked it while I was out of sight to keep me out of it, but a quick glance over there showed me that she had left it alone. I don’t think she had even come outside at all.


  For the first time, I took in the size of the garage. It really wasn’t that big when I walked up close to it. Maybe someone could squeeze a compact car into it and still have a workbench at the far end, but it would be a tight fit. Definitely not big enough for a boat, unless it was mounted up on a wall or the ceiling. And if that were the case, Grandma would have fessed up to having some kind of boat, wouldn’t she?

  Maybe it was just in the definition of “boat”. The guys were pretty specific about using kayaks. Grandma probably knew that, so she wouldn’t have said they had a kayak if she knew they didn’t. But maybe they had something else that floated, like a canoe or even an inflatable raft. Grandpa fished. Mr. Taylor in town had said so. Did he not fish on a boat? Where did he fish, then? Just in the backyard? I kind of doubted it.

  I stepped up to the garage and peered inside. It really was cluttered. Grandma wasn’t kidding about that. Quickly, I shot a look over my shoulder to see if she was watching from the window. She was probably expecting me to disobey her and go in the garage, watching to prove herself right. I didn’t see her anywhere, but then there also was this terrible glare across the window panes obscuring any possible view inside.

  Deciding not to cause even more angst in my poor grandma, I didn’t go all the way into the garage. I really wanted to, but I held off. I’d get a chance later when everything cooled down again. Instead, I picked up my bike from where I had dropped it and put it just far enough inside the garage so the doors could close around it. Grandma would appreciate me taking care of the bike this way.

  As I put the kickstand down, I heard a strange scraping come from the back of the garage. I jumped backward into the sunlight, thinking maybe a raccoon or possum might be living back there, and it might not be a good idea to get too close. When I cleared the doors of the garage, I saw two squirrels dash out from behind the garage as if spooked. I wondered if the sound I’d heard wasn’t from inside the garage but behind it.

  Cautiously, I walked the length of the garage to get a look. Afternoon sunlight blasted the side of the garage, but a couple large, shaggy trees branching toward the roof created a cave of darkness in the back. The ground was rocky, and the grass hadn’t been burned up by the summer heat like everywhere else in the yard. It was thick and long. I had to watch my step, so as not to trip over hidden rocks.

  A few holes in the ground led me to think that a couple animals had burrows under the garage. A mole? Rabbits? A groundhog? Maybe snakes. I shivered, remembering what the guys had said about snakes earlier in the day, and watched where I put my feet. A scratching sound to my right didn’t catch my attention quite fast enough for me to look before I got smacked in the head by a falling piece of wood. It didn’t hurt too bad, but the surprise of it knocked me to my knees.

  At first, I thought I’d been clobbered by a branch that had somehow broken off from the tree overhead. As I rubbed my head, I looked around for the offending branch. Instead of a gnarled and knotty tree limb, I put my hands on a piece of smooth wood. What I could see of it, from where it had fallen into the thick grass, was about an inch thick and four inches wide. I tugged at it, and it moved easily. The thing was a lot longer than I expected.

  It was the bottom of a wooden oar!

  I instantly stopped looking for snakes and rabid creatures on the ground. Something had made this oar fall on me. The sound I’d heard earlier, that scared the squirrels, had to have been the other oar falling. Sure enough, lying just a little farther away, half-hidden in the grass was the match. Holding one in each hand, I turned around to face the garage in order to see what might have knocked them over. The oars clattered to the ground when I slammed my hands to my mouth to try to stop myself from screaming.

  6

  What Was Hidden Behind Grandpa’s Garage

  I didn’t see an animal or a bird that could have knocked the oars over. The tree branches didn’t come low enough to have been the culprit. There really wasn’t a breeze at all back here. So, I was completely at a loss as to why these oars fell and why they fell right at the perfect time to catch my attention. I was awfully glad they did, because what I saw when I turned to look at the back of the garage, leaning up on its side, hull facing out, was a ragged little wooden rowboat. I jumped up and down excitedly in the grass with my hands over my mouth, so Grandma wouldn’t hear me and come running.

  A boat. A one-person tiny rig that, if I had to guess, had been built by my grandpa. The wood was terribly warped and needed to be patched and sanded down. At one point it had been painted with some red and navy-blue paint, most likely the same paint that had been used for my bedroom in the house, but that had mostly faded or chipped off.

  I badly wanted to flip it over and see the inside, but I was also kind of scared. The way it had been propped up made it a perfect home for some wild creature that wouldn’t like me revealing its secret hideout. Cautiously, I tapped on the bottom of it with one of the oars to scare any critters away, ready to run if needed. Nothing came running out, and I didn’t hear any buzzing from wasps, so I wedged that same oar between the boat and the garage and used it to tip the boat over. I jumped back four feet as it crashed to the ground and then settled into place.

  I have to admit I was surprised the whole thing didn’t crumble into pieces. The wood looked pretty weak from age and maybe the feasting of some carpenter bees. Due to the curve of the hull, the boat leaned to one side. I stepped up to it and put my foot on the edge to level it out. No doubt about it. This was a tiny boat, very shallow with only one crossbench for a single rider to sit on.

  Grandpa wasn’t a short man. How did he even fit in it? The boat looked like it was built for someone about my size. But that didn’t make any sense.

  If it wasn’t Grandpa’s, whose boat was it?

  I scratched my head and stared at it for a minute or two. When I felt something tickling my ankle, I jumped. Honestly, it was probably just a blade of the long, overgrown grass, but just in case it was a black widow spider or a tick, I shook my leg and jumped back a pace or two. Having broken back out to the sunlight, I leaned back to see if I could catch a glimpse of my grandma on the porch or in the window, hoping she hadn’t seen me sneak back here. The porch remained empty, so she must still have been inside somewhere.

  With a deep sigh, I stepped back into the shade. I walked slowly around the boat, searching for any obvious holes or problems with it. Then I got inside it to see if I would even fit. I can’t say it was comfortable, but I got my legs in all right. I was only five-three, and hopefully still growing. From what I could see, the boat was pretty solid, and I wondered if it would float. It took a whole lot of self-control not to grab the end of it and tug it down to the lake to find out for sure. Shoot, it was a small boat. I might have been able to carry it.

  I willed myself to leave it there. Grandma would surely catch me. I doubted that Grandma didn’t know the boat existed. Granted, she said she never went into the garage or poked into Grandpa’s old stuff, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know what was there. No, I figured Grandma did know about this boat, and she didn’t tell me about it on purpose.

  Maybe it was no big deal. Like, she didn’t tell me because she forgot. Or she didn’t think it was the kind of boat I would want for the trip.

  Then again, maybe she didn’t tell me because she didn’t want me to know.

  I decided to leave the boat right where it was, not even tipping it back up again. If I had a chance, I’d come back and look at it some more.

  Walking back to the house, I realized I had just wasted a whole bunch more time before going to apologize to my grandma. I also realized that if I didn’t tell her I’d found the boat and tried to sneak it down to the lake later without her knowing about it, then my apology wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans. So, what if I didn’t apologize just yet? Let me add up all the things she was going to be mad at me for and apologize all at once. Then she could just ground me for the rest of the vacation if she wanted to. Tell my parents. Make me watch Wheel
of Fortune marathons and learn to quilt. Whatever punishment she decided.

  As long as I got to—maybe, if the boat would float—go to the campout tomorrow night.

  I found Grandma inside, watching TV. Well, the TV was on. Ellen Degeneres was gushing over Christina Aguilera and dancing around the stage while the singer belted out a new tune. Grandma was asleep on the couch, still sitting up, her head tilted to the side, glasses on her face, and a rumbly little snore coming from her nose. As quietly as I could, I sat down on the other end of the couch and waited. Picking up the remote, I pressed the button to see what was on the other channels and found about twenty other shows that I would rather watch than a talk show, but I didn’t change the channel. That would have been rude, and I was already in the How Big of a Jerk Can You Be? category.

  Finally, it was five o’clock, and the news came on. The music from the opening credits jarred Grandma awake, and she sat up with a start.

  “Oh!” she sputtered.

  “Hey, Grandma,” I said.

  She rubbed her eyes and then fixed her glasses. “Oh dear,” she said with a weary smile. “I did it again, didn’t I?”

  “Maybe you should watch a more interesting show at this time of day,” I suggested.

  Grandma laughed. “It doesn’t matter. I could be on a roller coaster at four in the afternoon, and I’d still be comatose. It’s just the time I shut off these days.” She stood up and stretched. “It’s not a big deal when it’s just me, but I have you to think about this week. I should have been getting dinner ready.”

  “It’s too early for dinner,” I said.

  “Well, that’s true if you’re going to make dinner from a box mix or out of a frozen bag like your mother does. However, those of us who like to cook real food, we start doing it a little earlier in the day than twenty minutes before it’s time to eat.” I followed her into the kitchen where she gathered up her car keys and purse. “I forgot to put meat out to thaw, so I’m going down to the store to pick some up fresh.” She paused and looked at me. “You want to see the hustle-bustle part of town for yourself? You might talk me into a burger instead of the wonderful baked spaghetti I was planning to make.”