“And here comes our rain,” I said. And right then the first close streak of lightning came, lighting up the creek and the woods around and holding for a time, with a kind of wavy light like the light of firelight, only brighter than the light of day. Then it was dark again, and right with the darkness the thunder came, with just a single, sharp clear bang.
Then we were in under the tarp, and the sound of the rain beating down on it was like a thunder all its own. “Now we will see if we get wet or not,” Jack said, and then for a while we said nothing. It was enough to sit there, hearing the rain beating down and being stopped just inches from our heads, looking out through the opening in front at the night being ripped apart by lightning, and then darkness coming back, and then lightning again, with a quick, strange sight of the river still unchanged and the trees bending in the wind and shiny with rain, with sometimes the lightning being close, and then farther off, as though the storm was everywhere.
Then the lightning was less and its thunder seemed to be moving on back up the creek away from us, and the thunder of the rain on the tarp eased away to a kind of drone. “That was quick,” Jack said, “but it was a good one. Was you scared?”
“Yes,” I said.
“So was I,” Jack said.
And then for a while we sat in the dark and listened to the storm moving off in the distance and to the droning, easy, safe-sounding noise of the rain, and after a while the strange thought came to me, that, like the creek and the woods all around, I had come through the storm pretty much unchanged, it seemed, but still somehow changed. I had been a part of it. Even being scared. Anyhow, I was almost sorry to hear it fading away up the creek, and for someone who would generally just as soon stay at home and explore the world with a short-wave radio, that seemed to me a surprising change.
What Jack was thinking I couldn’t guess; probably nothing that odd. He just stayed quiet beside me, staring out under the tarp flap at the dark and the rain. Then he said, “The storm has gone, but no telling how long this rain will hang on. So maybe now we should have some light of our own. Just to see what we look like again.”
I remembered where I had put the lantern up under the front seat, and I crawled up front and finally found it, and then Jack lit it, and set it up on the middle seat, and we sat looking around at the boat and the tarp and at each other, as though neither of us could think of a thing to say. And then finally Jack said, “So far, anyhow, we have not got wet a drop.”
9
Once it had hit, I guess it did not take the thunderstorm more than a half an hour to move on past us; but though the rain eased up, it kept on. For a while we sat in the lantern light and talked about our plans for the morning. Whether it cleared up during the night or not, we decided to finish out the night right where we were. Then in the morning we could move on down to the clearing and with luck catch a green trout for breakfast, or anyhow have breakfast there, a cooked one, then go on down to the Big Star landings and maybe, with real luck, find the lost skiff.
It was still raining when we put out the lantern and decided to get some sleep. Several times I would be just about going to sleep and Jack would say something like, “Rodney, are your hands blistered yet?” or “Don’t that rain sound nice?” or “Rodney? Have you noticed how the fish well keeps the water in the back of the boat from running in on us?” Always a question. Finally I said, “Jack, I wish you would be quiet.”
“I will,” he said, “but the sound of rain like that always gets me wondering about things. And I’m still wondering why Ellen was in such a big hurry to get us off up here to the creek.” I had been thinking about that myself, off and on through most of the day, but I said nothing. “Have you ever floundered?” Jack said.
“No,” I said, “but I know how it is done; with lights and gigs. Now we ought to get some sleep if we can.”
“I’m sorry,” Jack said. “I keep forgetting. But that is where Ellen is tonight, somewhere out floundering with Otis Duncan.”
“Oh?” I said. What he said had caught me by surprise. But after that I just lay there awake, wondering, and waited.
Then Jack laughed to himself. “Do you know what a flounder looks like, Rodney?”
“Not exactly,” I said.
“It has got these two eyes,” Jack said, “off to one side in its lopsided head, and close together. And that is what Otis Duncan looks like, kind of lopsided, the way he keeps his hair so long and pushed over to one side, with those big close-up eyes of his. I cannot see what she sees in him.”
“Who?” I said. It was stupid, but it seemed I had to say something.
“Ellen,” he said. “Who else did you think I was talking about?” I didn’t answer. I had known he meant Ellen, but it was though I hadn’t quite believed it yet, or understood it right.
Jack was quiet for so long that I thought he had finally gone to sleep, and then he laughed to himself again. “Ha,” he said, “maybe they will be getting some of this same storm themselves, and get their car stuck down at the end of some dirt road. While here we are, in no trouble at all.”
I stayed quiet, pretending I was asleep, and then Jack said, “Rodney?”
“Goddamn it, Jack,” I said. “Shut up.”
I waited, and then Jack said, “Holy cow,” low, like he was finally talking only to himself; and then pretty soon I heard him breathing slow and regular as though he had gone to sleep at last.
For a long time then I lay awake and listened to the rain, and thought. I thought about being fifteen, almost sixteen, and being stupid enough to be in some kind of love with a seventeen-year-old girl. Even one who, once, I had kissed. And who had kissed me back. She had; it was not something I had made up in my head. It had happened. And the truth, I thought, is that it had not meant a thing. Because naturally a seventeen-year-old girl is just fooling around if she is doing anything at all with a fifteen-year-old kid, even if he is taller than her. It is a damn sure bet, anyhow, that she is not going around eating her heart out for him. Not at the same time she is out floundering around at the end of some damn dirt road with some long-haired fish-faced country clod named Otis, of all the stupid names.
And at the same time I thought, you jerk you, did you really suppose that Ellen, a girl as pretty and wonderful as Ellen, would not seem interesting to some other boys, too, older boys, boys her own age, boys old enough to come out and ask her for a date? And did you really think there was some reason why she should not say yes if she wanted to, if the boy seemed nice enough, whatever he might actually have on his mind? She only paid you some attention now and then, I thought, and was friendly, and maybe laughed in a flirting kind of way sometimes, and let you kiss her once. She did not promise to marry you or love you or not have dates. And you have no damn reason to lie here half ready to cry like a stupid kid whose mother has just died or something. She was never your girl to start with. She never was.
For a while I tried not to think about it at all, just to listen to the rain and think about the skiff I was looking for and what the next day was going to be like, and if I had to remember something, to remember the lightning storm, the wildness of it, the realness, and the real difference I felt after it had passed, knowing something had happened and no doubt about it. And for a time I could make it work; and then the next thing I knew the sound of the rain would be the loneliest, saddest sound in the world and I would be thinking of Ellen again, and remembering Jack blabbing away in the dark not even knowing what he was telling me, never putting two and two together, not able to imagine why his sister was in such a hurry to get us off down a creek somewhere; so she could sneak off on a date and I wouldn’t know it. No, I thought, to Jack I am just as much a stupid kid as he is, and of no more possible interest to Ellen. And even if I told him the truth he would probably just laugh and not believe it.
And then for a while I lay there thinking about this and getting mad at Jack about it, which made no sense at all, but I couldn’t help it. For a while I even thought about waking h
im up. “Jack,” I would say, “wake up and let me straighten you out on a few things and point out to you what a stupid jerk of a poor retarded kid you really are,” and then I would tell him some things about what life is really all about and about sex and love and Ellen and me, and in the end I would say, “And now maybe you know why Ellen was in such a hurry to get me off The Hill; when it comes to me she is afraid of herself.”
I could have made an awful fool of myself, but I knew better; it was clear I was acting like a pouty, poor little thumb-sucking kid just thinking such a silly daydream. And after a while I got disgusted with it and mad at myself instead of Jack and got honest again.
The simple truth is, I thought, Ellen does not have to sneak off from me to have a date. But she is not the kind of girl who would think it was funny to let herself be kissed one night by a kid she liked and who acted like he loved her, and then when he was still worried about her father’s skiff, which he had lost, show him the next night that not only had he lost a skiff, he had also lost the girl he figured he just had found. And just leave him like that, kissed once, and all the rest lost. And thinking about this, I knew it was the truth. She had done it only to be kind. And I couldn’t hate her for it. She was just trying not to hurt the feelings of a kid.
I kept thinking about it, and I knew I finally had it right. And I honored her for it, but it hurt like hell all the same.
And I figured that Jack hadn’t meant any trouble, either. He hadn’t even known what he was saying. I was just as glad he hadn’t. But there was one thing left bothering me, that wouldn’t quite let me get to sleep even after it seemed I had thought it all out the best I could and was satisfied to let it go. It was that one remark of Jack’s, the last one, about Ellen and Otis Duncan being stuck in the mud down at the end of a dirt road somewhere. That just hung on in the back of my mind. And finally I thought, damn it, Jack, everything in this world is not somehow funny.
I guess it was the way he had laughed when the idea about it came to him that bothered me the most. I wished that once, anyhow, he had kept his mouth shut.
Then for a while longer I tried thinking about finding the skiff, and what lay ahead for me down the river, and I could only guess at it, but I did the best I could, trying to make better plans for what was to come, however little I knew about it. Then slowly the rain eased off and stopped, and I could hear it dripping off the leaves for a while longer onto the tarp and into the creek, until finally there was no sound at all, and I noticed a light at the opening in the tarp and I went and looked out.
High up in the sky there was a quarter-moon, clear as could be. It lit up the quiet woods with a kind of light that reminded me of White Plains and of winter and snow, and I wondered at how well known and yet far away all of that was. Yet it surprised me, too, this sight of the woods in moonlight, and the creek, smooth and faintly silver-colored, stretching out like a great wide path, and then sliding out of sight where it went into the darkness of a bend, that it should seem so familiar to me. As though I really knew where I was.
I sat there with my head sticking out from under the tarp, looking around at the moonlight and hearing the night sounds starting up again after the rain, the peepers peeping to each other and the frogs calling back and forth—rivet, rivet, it sounded like—and far down the creek a bullfrog starting up, with that slow deep gu-rump, and then a long wait, and then gu-rump again, as though he had all the time in the world. And for a time I wondered about it, about where I was and what I was doing and where I was going; and all I ended up with, that I was sure of, was that I was here, sitting in a boat tied to a tree somewhere on the western bank of the Little Star or Big Star Creek, waiting for morning; and what I was doing was looking for a lost skiff; and where I was going was yet to be seen. In a way, it didn’t really seem strange at all. And then I went back in under the tarp. All right, I thought, maybe with Ellen off my mind now, tomorrow I can really get serious about looking for that skiff; it must be out there someplace. Finally, I went to sleep.
But the next morning, Jack seemed to have forgot all about the skiff we were supposed to be looking for; all he wanted to do was fish and fool around. He had come through the night just fine, he said, dry as a bone and sleeping like a log. This seemed to please him out of all proportion, as though it was some big victory over nature for him, which proved his cleverness to the world. It was a nuisance. No matter what I said, he would not take it seriously.
I had known from the way the day started that I was in for some nonsense; it was hardly daybreak, yet Jack was up and had unfastened the tarp and rolled it back, and when I opened my eyes I was looking up into the sky and Jack was standing there grinning down at me. “Another day, another opportunity,” he said. Then before I was really awake good he had untied the boat and rowed us on down the creek to the clearing he had talked about, singing most of the way. What he sang was “Row, row, row your boat,” and so forth, over and over, loud and off key, drowning out the birds. He seemed to like the last part of it best, because he would sort of shout it out, “… life is but a dream.” It ruined what could have been one of the nicest parts of our trip yet, with the mist curling up off the water and the trees still wet and shining in the light of dawn, and the birds singing and fish jumping and all the sights and sounds of the woods seeming new and fresh again. Yet I couldn’t really hold it against Jack; he was just that kind of a kid.
At the clearing Jack built a fire with some dead pitchy pine he found back in the woods and split up with the ax we had brought, and then he threw dead oak limbs on it to burn down and make coals we could cook on later. Then we rowed to the marsh grass across from the clearing, where we fished, using spinning rods and lures, for a solid hour or so, it seemed, with no luck at all. I was ready to give up on it after the first ten minutes. But Jack said we had to have fresh trout for breakfast, and he would try one lure after another, sure each time that the new lure would make the difference. I just kept casting out and reeling in, and when finally something gave my rod a jerk, I just sat there looking at the line pulled tight down toward the bottom of the creek thinking I had caught a snag. Then the line slacked up and not more than ten feet from the boat the water shot up and a big green-and-white fish shot up out of it and curled over and slapped back down and was gone from sight, trailing my line behind him. Jack gave a shout in my ear that startled me more than the fish had done. “Reel,” he hollered, and I reeled and felt the line jerk again and then the fish fighting for his life with a kind of strength and fierceness that surprised me. But finally he seemed to tire, and when he came to the side of the boat and Jack slipped the net under him and got him into the boat, he just gave a few last flips and then lay there all tangled in the net, gulping at the air and heaving his sides, all his strength and struggle gone, as sad and yet as pretty a sight as you could see.
Jack just about jumped out of the boat with excitement. “He is three pounds if he’s an ounce,” he said, “three pounds if he’s an ounce.” He kept saying it over, and giving me a punch on the arm and then a clap on the back, and then just slapping his own two hands together, wham; so as not to hurt anybody, I guess. “We have got our fish for breakfast and then some,” he said, “thanks to your beginner’s luck.” Then he went back to fishing as though he never meant to quit.
It was my bad luck to have been the one to catch the fish instead of Jack, as for the next hour more, it seemed, I sat there getting chewed up by the mosquitoes, which had got bad for some reason after the rain, hoping Jack would finally catch a fish himself and get even, so that we could go in and have some food. I was starved.
It was a bass that I had caught. Jack called it a green trout, and when I said that it looked like a bass to me, he said that was what a bass was, a green trout, although I believed it was right the other way around. By the time Jack was willing to quit on trying to catch us another one, my own poor fish had long ago given one last flop and died. So we rowed back to the clearing, and with a lot of unnecessary advice from J
ack I cleaned the fish while he built the fire back up, and then Jack cooked it in the big iron skillet we had brought, frying it in a ton of lard, deep-fat frying, he called it, although it looked to me more like the poor fish was being boiled in oil. Then we ate it, and even with the taste of lard, it had a sweet, wild, good taste to it that was new to me, as though all the natural taste was still in it, the way it might have tasted, maybe, if we had eaten it raw, although Jack had cooked it practically to a cinder.
But we had sure wasted a lot of time, which I finally pointed out to Jack. “It’s nothing,” he said. “What is our hurry? Why not enjoy ourselves some? The world will not stop if we do not find that skiff today. Or tomorrow, either. Or never. Why act so sad about it?”
“I am not sad,” I said, “I am serious, is all; which sometimes I wish you could be for a change. After all, it was not you who lost the skiff, but me.”
“All right,” Jack said, “go ahead and spoil your own good time if you want to. For myself, if it was not for these mosquitoes, I would not have a worry in the world, so you will have to go on being serious by yourself.”
Then we cleaned up our mess from breakfast and bailed the rain water out of the back of the boat and straightened it all up again, hanging the tarp up on the sapling that was still there between the two blackgum trees, to let it dry out for a while. After that we went swimming and washed and then just loafed around, with Jack fishing for bream for a while with grasshoppers for bait, with no luck at that, either. It must have been the middle of the morning at least before we got started back down the creek again. Jack wanted to row and I let him; claimed he needed the exercise.
We had put the canned foods and cooking stuff back in the front of the boat. Because the tarp was still wet, we had spread it out over everything there. “When people see it like that,” Jack said, “they may figure we are hauling moonshine whiskey down the creek from our still hidden back in the woods. We could have some fun. If somebody at some landing asks us what we have got under that tarp, let me do the talking, as I look older than you, or more like a moonshiner anyhow. You try and look suspicious if you can. Or just keep looking serious; that will make them suspicious for sure.”
The Lost Skiff Page 11
