The Lost Skiff

by Donald Wetzel

  I guess it must have surprised her, but even so it had not been just a one-way thing at the end, sudden and short as it had been. Then she stepped back and gave her head a little shake and said, “Why, Rodney,” as though she was certainly surprised, all right, and then she said, “How nice you did that,” and that was all she said. I had not made a fool of myself, it seemed; and for a while after that we didn’t say much of anything, just listened some more to the singing. Then we noticed it was getting late, and we went home, talking about this and that as though nothing at all had happened, with still no mention of the skiff, walking along in the dark, barefoot in the dust, with only the stars for light and no trouble at all.

  6

  When I woke up early the next morning all my tiredness was gone and I felt altogether confused, but apart from that, fine. I even tried singing while I was brushing my teeth at the sink on the porch, and my Aunt Vera came out of the kitchen and stood looking up at me with such a worried look I had to laugh. No telling what was going on in her mind. She must have known by then that her own husband was surely a strange one and I was a Blankhard, too; she could have stood there wondering if the Blankhard blood had produced another nut. So I went over and gave her a hug, which I do occasionally anyhow, feeling that life has been none too kind to her, and not wanting her to think that all the Blankhards in the world are altogether lacking in feelings or imagination. And anyhow, I like her. “Nothing like a good night’s sleep,” I said, and that seemed to satisfy her.

  To tell the truth I had waked up with Ellen and the matter of the lost skiff all mixed up in my mind in a pretty crazy way. Since the moment I had lost the skiff it had been nothing but a hang-up to me, every time I thought of it, but now I had waked up positively excited about it and thinking that I could hardly wait to get looking for it, like this would surely be nothing but fun and certain to succeed. And all the time I was thinking this I was thinking about Ellen as well, although not nearly so clearly, just thinking about her and feeling more amazed, I guess, than anything else, and knowing that the matter of Ellen was in no way as simple as the matter of the lost skiff, although what the one thing had to do with the other was something that made no sense at all as far as I could see.

  After breakfast my confusion remained but I decided to stop worrying about it. I was sure of one thing. The things that had happened had happened. All of them. And all in one day. No wonder I’m confused, I thought. But this is a new day, and what will happen next I’ll have to wait and see. None of the things that had already happened had been planned that way, so I saw no point in trying to see too far ahead. It seemed to me, in my experience at least, that life when it is either good or bad can sometimes be very much a matter of surprises.

  So I decided that I had a lost skiff to find and I would do my best to find it, and that would be the most that I could do about that. If it had sunk and gone to the bottom somewhere, I could look forever and never find it, so it wasn’t altogether up to me. And with Ellen, as much as I dared to look ahead, this seemed a good way to look at it, too; that it wasn’t altogether up to me. For good or bad, though, I had learned enough, I believed, to count at least on some more surprises; seemed like they just came natural to me.

  As a good example, I had just finished making my bed and straightening up around the porch some when Jack came walking up the steps hardly making a sound and opened the door without slamming it and came over and sat down in the chair in front of my Star Roamer set. Which was a little thing, all right, but enough of a surprise to me that for a while I didn’t know what to say. He just sat there staring at the set, which wasn’t even turned on, almost like he was mad at it and had come over with his mind made up to finally solve its mysteries for once and for all. He hadn’t so much as said hello to me. And then finally, still staring at the set, he said, “I wish someone would explain a thing or two to me. I am not an idiot.”

  “Jack,” I said, “I have explained that radio to you the best I can, and you have read the little book that came with it as well. I may have found you somewhat slow about it, but I have never said you were an idiot or even thought it.”

  Jack reached over then and turned on the main switch. “Thank you very much,” he said. “But I am not talking about this little old toy radio of yours.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I see you have just turned it on. Good for you.”

  “A kid could work this thing,” Jack said, “with practice. If I had knowed it was worrying you so, I would have mastered it long ago. What I would like explained is something probably far beyond your brains to handle. And if we are going to get sarcastic about who is stupid, remember that I can break you in two like a dry stick, which if you was bald is just what you would look like.”

  Jack doesn’t like being puzzled. Although a puzzle is not an easy thing to bring to his attention, once he gets tangled in it and can’t figure it out, it comes to seem a kind of insult to him. I had seen it happen before. Then he finds it necessary to remind the world how strong he is, which is a fact; but with me it has never been more than threats.

  “I am trembling and faint with fear,” I said. “Watch and I will fall to the floor unconscious. What is it that has flown up your tail this morning?”

  “Your Uncle Charles, for one thing,” he said. “He has had Pa by the ear for the last hour and it don’t make sense. Pa don’t. Or Ellen, either. Your Aunt Vera just sits there. Nodding yes. Don’t she ever nod no once in a while?” Then he reached down and pulled the phone jack out and gave me a sly grin and turned the dial and got it on band two and got a Mobile station loud and clear.

  “That’s Mobile,” I said.

  “Think of the mystery of it,” Jack said, being sarcastic, then he turned down the volume. “Last night I argued with Pa all evening trying to get him to see that we ought to get back up on the creek the sooner the better if we was to ever find the skiff you lost of his. And Ellen makes it her business somehow and says why there is no hurry, it will probably be returned anyhow, and poor Rodney needs some rest and all sorts of nonsense more or less in agreement with Pa’s feeling on the matter. I was finally reminded to shut up about it and told that we couldn’t go up there because of the need of work around the place until a week from today, which is way next Monday, and that was final. But now all of that is changed, and it don’t make sense. Generally speaking, your Uncle Charles, if you want the truth, could not convince my pa of the time of day, or Ellen, either. But you can go over there now and there he sits saying all the things to Pa I said last night, with Ellen sitting there nodding yes to everything he says twice as hard as your Aunt Vera, and even adding some new arguments of her own to Mr. Blankhard’s. For no reason at all, she has changed her mind completely. And while Pa so far is just sitting there being polite to your uncle I can see he is giving ground and will probably start in nodding yes pretty soon himself.

  “So I guess we better start making up a list of what to take. At your uncle’s expense, he says, so we can make it a big list if you want. But what has got Ellen to change her mind like that is something she won’t even give me a hint about. Like she does not even trust her own brother. So I would like a thing or two explained, just for my own satisfaction. I do not like being taken for a fool. Not by my own family and friends anyhow. The only suspicion that has come to my mind is that maybe you have gone to Ellen begging her to do this for your sake, though I am sure you would not admit it if it was true and so I am probably wasting my time. But I can’t think of nothing else that makes sense at all. Did you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I knowed you would say no,” Jack said.

  “I have not mentioned the skiff to Ellen since I have been home,” I said. “And that’s the truth.”

  Jack looked at me hard and was quiet for a time, and then he said, “I’m not saying you’re a liar, but you are no more telling me the truth than Ellen was. Or why have you went so white?”

  There was nothing I could do about turning white and I knew
it; the only thing I could do was lie. I thought fast and then I said, “I guess I was not listening too good. I am still tired from yesterday. That was a long swim. It’s hard to get it out of my mind. I couldn’t help remembering one thing just now while you were talking. I haven’t told you about it, but I was swimming on my back and resting when these floating pine needles slapped up against my ear. To be honest, it scared the hell out of me. I guess that’s why I turned white. It’s the only thing I can think of.”

  “I sure would liked to have seen that,” Jack said. “Anyhow it is really nothing. I guess if people want to lie to me now and then it’s no business of mine. And maybe you have told the truth. The best thing is probably to forget it and hope that Ellen does not decide to change her mind again for some mysterious reason. Have you got started on a list yet? We will need lots of water for sure, as the water down on Big Star Creek is not fit to drink, and being out on water in the sun can give you a thirst that would surprise you.”

  “Nothing surprises me,” I said, and Jack looked at me odd, and I said, “But you are right. We must not forget water.” I hunted around on my desk and found a pencil and pad and wrote down water, and then I sat on the bed and Jack sat in the chair and we went to work making up a list.

  Jack must have spent the whole night lying awake thinking up a plan. “I had figured being gone three days,” Jack said, “if we was going to row, and I guess we are as Pa says the motor is not to be trusted any more. So we will leave it at three days but plan for five, as long as your uncle feels it is his duty, as he told Pa, to make sure us boys is well equipped as far as our safety and domestic needs is concerned for the time it might take us in our search. Pa really batted his eyes some at that one. Sounded like it had been read out of a book. So now we can plan to stop and fish some and take our time and have some fun as well as work and depending on the weather figure an easy three days down, keeping to the west bank all the way, after the Little Star gets to be the Big Star, and two days coming back along the east bank, with maybe staying a day at the point down at the basin if we find the skiff early or make better time than I believe we will. How does that sound to you?”

  I had heard him all right, but without giving it any thought. “That sounds fine,” I said. “I had figured on four or five days myself.”

  “We will figure five for the list we are making anyhow,” Jack said, and then he started naming off the numbers of different kinds of canned foods he thought we should take, and other items, and I was kept busy just writing it all down. I wish I had been paying more attention, because I noticed some of the items I was writing down, like Polish sausage and three cans of collards and a small bucket of lard, didn’t sound like items I would be apt to have a taste for. But since Jack had already worked it out I just went on writing down whatever he said and trying not to let him guess how much more than he was I was puzzled by the way Ellen had changed her mind and seemed in such a big hurry now to get us up on the creek and out of sight. If Jack had only known, it made a hell of a lot less sense, or maybe more sense, to me than he could have ever guessed at. Why it should have bothered Jack so, I didn’t know; but I knew why it bothered me, and I knew I would somehow have to get the answer to it if it was to be the last thing I ever did.

  To tell the truth, knowing only what I knew and no more, there was a plain hard hurt to it that I could not deny. And it made the whole business of looking for a lost skiff seem more or less like kid stuff, so I left it up to Jack and just kept nodding or saying “good” or “right” and agreeing with anything he said and writing it all down. It must have taken us a good hour, what with Jack changing his mind every so often and then having me stop and read the list back to him, but finally Jack said he couldn’t think of a thing he had forgot and we called it done. It was quite a list.

  Then Jack got to wondering out loud some more about how come his sister should have changed her mind so overnight, when usually once she had taken a side against him she would stick to it no matter how wrong she was or no matter what. “Why let it bug you?” I said. “Anyhow, I can’t see that it’s any business of mine.” I was anxious to get him off the subject altogether.

  “If you have not been lying all along,” Jack said, “then I suppose you are right at that. But you have not knowed Ellen the way I have, either, or you would understand how much she took me by surprise.”

  Well, I thought, you might also be surprised to know how well I have come to know your sister, although less than an hour or so ago I would have been a little more certain of this myself; but I could tell you a thing or two about surprises, such as you hardly get used to one when you get clobbered with several more. But all I said was, “For whatever the reason, the sooner we get started looking for that skiff I lost the better I’ll like it,” which was pretty much a lie, as I could tell by the phony sound of my voice, but which Jack seemed not to notice.

  And then Uncle Charles and Aunt Vera came in through the front door and Uncle Charles said to her, “I will go and tell the boys to start making preparations,” and he came back out to the porch and made a kind of announcement, saying that he and Mr. Haywood had consulted together on the matter of the lost skiff and were of a single mind that the sooner a thorough search for it was commenced the better it would be, and that he, my Uncle Charles, would see to it that we were properly supplied, being that I was the responsible party through whose negligence the skiff had been lost. “If you boys will prepare a list of necessary items needed to be purchased, your aunt and I will take care of it when we go into town with Mr. Haywood this afternoon. I have in mind only items necessary to your health and safety of course.”

  “We have got a list already worked up,” I said, “adequate to our purposes, I believe.” Sometimes when I talk to my Uncle Charles I find I have ended up sounding just like him. It bugs me. I had separated the list of things we already had on hand, like a tarp and fishing equipment and things of that nature, and made a separate list of things to be bought, mostly food. So I handed him this list and Jack and I stood back a bit to watch the results. For a while he just stood there looking at it and nodding his head up and down, although I don’t think he was really reading it yet, but just taking in the fact of its length. Then he gave us both a quick kind of questioning look, with a small sort of imitation smile on his face, as though there was a chance that we might be joking. And then he turned and walked into the other room, where he was quiet for a time, finally reading it item for item, I guess. Then he came back. “May I ask how long you boys intend to be gone?” he said.

  “Five days at the most, but more likely three,” Jack said.

  “Well,” my uncle said, “I would say that this list of foodstuffs is adequate to some unforeseen emergency needs of the entire population of both families here on The Hill for a week at the minimum.”

  “We have naturally figured it so as to be on the safe side,” Jack said. “You will notice most of it is canned stuff that can be brought back if not needed, which you could then eat up yourself. Or else save it in case of an emergency, like you mentioned. We plan to waste none of it however, I can promise you that.”

  “We have given some thought to all possibilities, including bad weather,” I said. “You can see that for yourself.”

  “Living out in the open,” Jack says, “it picks up the appetite every time.”

  “Yes,” Uncle Charles said, and for a while that was all he said, as he had gone back to studying the list again, and then, reading from it, he said, “Suntan lotion?”

  “For Rodney,” Jack said. “He burns. And there is not much shade out on the water.”

  “That is true,” my uncle said, “in both instances.”

  “We have thought of everything,” Jack said. “The lard is for frying fish.”

  “I had wondered about the need for a bucket of lard,” my uncle said. “But I suppose it can be brought back for later use along with the other items, if unused.”

  “If it don’t turn rancid,” Jack said
, “but that’s a gamble we will have to take.”

  Then Uncle Charles went through the list asking about this thing and that, until I felt sorry for him, and Jack and me both said a few cans less of one thing and another would do, until he seemed at last to be satisfied that he had done the best he could with it. “Now of course,” he said, finally, “there is one item here that I have not mentioned because surely it was included as a joke. I am referring to the item of six cheap cigars. Naturally I would supply you two young boys with no such a thing.”

  “Ha,” Jack said, “you have misunderstood. Them six cigars are strictly for the matter of our protection and health.”

  “You don’t say,” said my uncle, “as an antidote to snake bite I presume, to be chewed up and swallowed?”

  “I have heard of it being used like that for poison-oak rash,” Jack said, “only regular chewing tobacco rather than cigars is used and it is not swallowed but chewed up and spit out and rubbed on the rash. Myself, I would as soon keep the rash as to trust in such a filthy cure.”

  “We are certainly in agreement there, Jack,” Uncle Charles said, “but I am still at a loss as to how six cheap cigars may be employed to the end of your protection and health.”

  “It depends on the insects,” Jack said, “the biting ones. If they are bad, we could both of us come back as prickly with bites as a couple of cucumbers and wore out from the bother. But the one thing insects cannot stand is the smoke from cheap cigars. Only man can stand it, I guess. I believe if used right it would hold back a mad dog. But it is only the insects that we was preparing for.”