The Lost Skiff

by Donald Wetzel

  I laughed. “Who would think two kids would be rowing down the creek with a load of whiskey?” I said.

  “There is people,” Jack said, “that will suspicion anything if you give them half a chance. What I will say is, when they ask what is under that tarp, ‘Oh that? Why I have just got that tarp spread out that way to dry.’ Then I will go on telling them the truth and making it sound like a lie. Then we can just row away, leaving them to wonder about it. The people along the creek, the retired ones that have come from Mobile and elsewhere, nothing much happens in their lives at all; just the same wide creek going by, day after day, while they sit there watching it and getting old. By the time we get down to the basin, we could be practically famous up and down the river, just on suspicion.”

  “All right,” I said, “I’ll let you do the talking. And I will try not to laugh.”

  This seemed to please Jack, and he rowed along as though he was in a hurry now to get to some landings and see what would happen. The creek was growing wider and coming into fewer bends and longer straight stretches all the time. The bigger it got the more I wondered how a stream this wide and this deep could still be called a creek and not a river; it just didn’t seem right. We stayed in near the west bank, and it was getting near noon when we came to the first landing. “Now,” Jack said, “we are down on the Big Star at last.”

  It wasn’t much of a landing, just a short little pier stuck out in the creek, with several busted planks in it, and one beat-up half-sunk old green boat tied up to it out at the end. If there was a house somewhere back in the woods behind it, I couldn’t see it. “This may be the Big Star,” I said, “but if this is civilization again, then you could have fooled me about it easy. One lousy half-sunk boat.”

  “Wait and see,” Jack said, and then we eased around a big, wide bend, and on down the creek I could see all kinds of landings, with piers sticking way out into the creek and all kinds of boats tied to them, and here and there houses, built right down at the water’s edge, a strange sight to see. There must have been eight or ten landings and maybe four or five houses, all in a bunch and right side by side. Then away farther down the creek, just before it reached another bend, I could see another bunch of landings. “Just around that bend,” Jack said, “set back up on a little hill, about the only hill anywhere around here, is probably the oldest house on the creek. It is owned by Hank Byrd, who went to school with my pa. He’s kind of strange, but Pa likes him. The quietest man you ever saw. While Mrs. Byrd, she is an experience. The way she talks, she hardly ever gets to finish a sentence before she has started another one. It’s like listening to a tree full of birds. But if anyone knows something about Pa’s lost skiff, he will be the one to have heard about it. People like to talk to him; he just listens.”

  Jack had been easing the boat in closer to the shore, and soon we came to the first of the landings. Back up from the pier I could see a house through the trees, but no people. There were three boats tied to the pier, none of them Mr. Haywood’s. We went along from pier to pier, looking at all the boats. They were of all sorts and sizes, but none built at all like the one I had lost. Then up ahead we saw a man come out to the end of a pier and sit down on a bench that was there and sit looking up and down, out at the river. “See,” Jack said, “he is sitting out in that hot sun like it was a natural thing to do, but the truth is he has been watching us and got suspicious. He cannot figure us out. Watch how his eyes bug out when he sees that tarp.”

  “Ask him about the skiff,” I said.

  “I will,” Jack said, “but he will think it’s a lie.”

  “I wish you would get serious,” I said.

  “Just think about all that moonshine whiskey we have got hid under the tarp,” Jack said. “And watch me sneak by him.” I gave up and sat back and watched down the creek. The whole thing had got me somehow nervous. When Jack is being a clown there is no arguing with him.

  Then we moved on along and came to the pier with the man sitting on it, with Jack looking up and down the creek and around behind him and everywhere but at the man, who sat there staring down at us. Whether or not he was staring at the tarp I couldn’t tell. I tried not to look at him. “Are you boys looking for something?” the man said. It embarrassed me, the way we hadn’t even said hello

  Jack jerked his head up and stopped rowing, easing the front of the boat around so the man could get a good look at it, and then swinging it on around like he was trying to hide it. “Why, no, not exactly,” Jack said. “We are just on our way down the creek.”

  “Not exactly?” the man said.

  “Well,” Jack said, “some time ago we had an old cypress skiff go adrift, but we have about give up on ever finding it again.”

  “Is that so,” the man said.

  “Yes, sir,” Jack said. “But it is nothing to bother about.”

  “You’re from up the creek?” the man said.

  “Not exactly,” Jack said. “Although that is the way we have come. It has sure got hot today, ain’t it?” We were drifting away from the pier, I noticed, and Jack let it drift. I looked up at the man and I could see he was not satisfied about us at all.

  “It is a plain old cypress skiff,” I said, “pointed at both ends. I was the one that lost it. I’m from White Plains, New York. Have you seen such a boat?”

  The man stood up then, still puzzled, I guess, but we were drifting farther away. “No,” he said, “but if you have come that far, I certainly hope you find it.” Then he laughed and shook his head and went back up the pier toward his house.

  “You ruined it,” Jack said. “Just when I had him all confused. Did you notice the way he kept looking at that tarp?”

  “Jack,” I said, “all I saw him looking at was you. Like he thought you were a nut. And he was right. Now maybe we can just keep looking for the skiff.”

  After that, Jack decided that it was time for me to row. I was glad to do it. I felt like I could use some exercise myself, and the hurt of the blisters on my hands gave me something sensible to worry about for a change.

  At the next bunch of landings it was the same, all sorts of boats, big and small, but none of them Mr. Haywood’s skiff. And no one even came down to see what Jack was trying to act so suspicious about. “It is the wrong time of day,” Jack said. “In this heat, they would probably not get too curious if we was both acting drunk as well as suspicious.”

  “All I am interested in,” I said, “is finding your father’s skiff. And so far, I haven’t seen one even built the same.” It was discouraging. The sight of all those boats had got my hopes up. For some reason or other, the way things had happened, I was more and more determined to find that skiff if it could be found. But it was clear that Jack hardly cared.

  “It’s time we got out of this heat and had something to eat,” Jack said. “That last broken-down pier up ahead has not been used in years. If it’s still safe to stand on, we can tie up there. That crazy roof they have over it out at the end is full of holes, but it will do for shade. I have fished from it often. Never caught a thing.”

  When we got to it I could see it was in bad shape all right, with a number of pilings rotted clear through at the water line and just hanging there, and with planks broken out and rotted through all over it. Yet the shade looked good. So we tried it, and while it shook a lot at first, it didn’t fall down, even when Jack jumped up and down a couple of times to see if it would. Somehow I was not especially hungry, not for cold collard greens or Polish sausage and crackers again, anyhow, which was what Jack ate. Then he got a cigar and smoked it, stretched out on his back looking up at the holes in the roof and resting, he said. I would have sooner put up with the mosquitoes, or just kept going. But Jack claimed he was satisfied where he was. So we stayed there for what seemed a couple of hours, although it was probably not that long, with nothing for me to do but look out at the creek and watch a few motorboats go by near the other shore, so far away they looked like toys, with the sound of their motors trailing awa
y behind them, like echoes, it seemed. Then later I watched a single fish, out in the middle of the creek, heading upstream and half the time in the air in some of the laziest, easiest jumps you could imagine, sort of sliding up out of the water and hanging there stretched out like he was trying sailing for a ways, level with the creek and then flopping back in on his belly with a kind of soft hollow sound that hardly sounded like the noise of a jumping fish at all. I would see the water falling away and then his white belly flashing in the sun and then down he would come again, and then the easy plop he made would come drifting across the water to me in the hot, quiet air. I thought maybe Jack had gone to sleep, but without rolling over to look and make sure he said, “That’s a mullet you are watching. They just love to jump.”

  I watched it jumping on up the creek until it was out of sight. “Seems to me,” I said, “that a mullet, if that is what it was, must have a better reason for jumping than that.”

  “If he does,” Jack said, “nobody knows it. And I would not have said it was a mullet if it wasn’t. Of course if you would like to believe that it is the shrimp grass tickling their stomachs that makes them jump, or that they like to whop down on their bellies to get rid of gas, or that they just want to see up ahead where the creek is going, you can take your pick and believe what you want. I have heard all such things and more being guessed at. But Ma’s guess is that they jump for joy. Ma is a great believer in the natural joy of wild things; right up to the minute that they may be caught and ate by something else. Which is something I wouldn’t know about for sure; but I suspect that in the case of why mullet jump, she may be right.”

  To be honest, I had never thought too much about such things one way or another. I have often wondered why people do some of the things they do, but the world of nature seemed to me something that you could take for granted. A fish jumps, so to speak, because he jumps. But I didn’t argue it with Jack; after all, it was me who had brought the question up.

  Then Jack jumped up and set the pier to shaking, although just what made him jump up like that for no good reason was something I didn’t bother to ask. “We are wasting time,” he said, “we cannot just lie around here watching mullet jump all day.”

  Whatever it was that had got into him, I was glad to see him ready to get on down the creek again. “You’re right,” I said, “it’s time to get on down to where there are some more landings, as that is most likely where we will finally find the skiff. How far is it before we come on some more?”

  “Except for Hank Byrd’s place,” he said, “quite a ways.” Then we got back into the boat and started off again, Jack rowing and moving us right along. The creek ran straight for a time and then we came to the bend, and it was the longest and slowest bend we had come to yet. It kept curving back around, slow but steady. “Just before we get to Byrd’s landing,” Jack said, “there is a bream hole Pa has told me about that I have never looked into. It is back off the creek in a kind of slough, and you cannot get into it for the mud flat at its mouth except at high water, which we still will have when we get there if I keep rowing good. Pa says it is full of water lilies and grass; but that with patience, the biggest goggle-eyes on the creek can be caught there. You will notice an odd thing when we get to Byrd’s landing; while it is on the west bank of the creek, it also looks out west. Right at this point, the creek has doubled back on itself.”

  “Actually,” I said, “I am more interested in finding your father’s skiff than in fishing for bream, but if you want to spend a few minutes back in this slough I guess we could give it a try.”

  “Goggle-eyes,” Jack said, “is just about the sweetest-tasting fish there is.” The creek kept curving back around, getting wider as it went, and Jack kept rowing, watching the shore close. Even so, we almost went past the place he was watching for. It was just a small opening in the trees, coming in on a slant the same way the creek was curving, so that you had to go almost past it before you could see it. Mostly, it looked like a small stretch of marsh. But when we came in close to it, we could see it opening out, back through the trees, with stretches of clear water here and there, but thick with water lilies, too, yellow ones, and a surprising sight to see. “This is it, all right,” Jack said, and he rowed straight on toward it through the marsh grass. And I thought we had made it, and so did he, when the boat gave a lurch and dragged on a bit and then came to a stop.

  Jack stood up and looked down into the water, first at the back of the boat and then the front. “We have went aground,” he said, “in mud. We are still somewhat overloaded at the back, and that is where we are caught. But I believe we can get on through this muck, if we work it right.”

  “Maybe we can try it on the way back,” I said. “The tide already seems to be going out, and if we do get in there, there is the business of getting back out again later.”

  “Coming back we will be on the other side of the creek,” Jack said, “and the tide is not going out all that fast. We could just look around at least. I’ll get out in back and try pushing.” So he jumped out the back, and the mud seemed to hold him up better than I thought it would, but all his pushing and rocking the boat hardly moved us a foot. “You get up in front,” Jack said finally, wiping sweat off his face. “The front end is clear; it is just the last few inches of the back that is stuck.” He waited and I went up to the front, stumbling over the things under the tarp, and then I sat right at the end and leaned back while he grunted and shoved away and even cussed some, but we still stayed stuck.

  “It’s no use,” I said. “Stay where you are and pull, and I will jump off and push from this end and we will get back to looking for the skiff, which is what we are supposed to be doing anyhow.”

  “Rodney,” Jack said, acting a little sore, “I swear you are the quickest to give up on a thing that I have ever seen.”

  Which was a lie. “All right,” I said, “I will come back and help you push, and if we end up spending the night in that slough getting eaten up by mosquitoes, I can take it if you can.”

  “It is not more pushing we need,” Jack said. “I can push all right. What we need is some real brains about this. Look, I am some forty pounds heavier than you. If I get up there where you are, it will bring the back end that much higher. If you can come back here and find the strength to give one good shove, I believe we will float clear.”

  It was all right with me and I said so. “I will lift and shove,” I said. “Speaking of brains.”

  “Just shove,” Jack said. “My weight should do the rest.” So we changed places and I got back and sank down in the muck up to my knees and set myself, grabbing the boat under the bottom and getting ready to heave and push when Jack gave the word. I could just see him over the edge of the back, I was so low. He was standing up on the very end of the front, at the edge of the little seat there. “I will jump up and come down,” Jack said, “and when you feel the back end come up, give a shove like your skinny butt had just caught fire.”

  I was pretty mad by this time about the whole damn foolishness; so I braced myself. “Jump when you are ready,” I said. “Only try to come down on the boat.” Then Jack yelled, “Now!” and I jerked up on the bottom of the boat and gave it a shove with all the strength I had. It shot out from under me like a feather, and I went down on my face in the swamp grass and muck, but we were clear.

  When I got back up, the boat had drifted off into a bunch of lilies, and Jack was nowhere in sight. “Jack?” I hollered. Then slowly his head came up into sight from the bottom of the boat. Even that far off I could see how white it was. He held one hand up, held by the arm with his other hand, sort of showing it to me. “Are you hurt?” I said.

  Jack shook his head, and then in the faintest voice I had ever heard him use, he said, “Not much. But, Rodney, I have broke my wrist.”

  10

  For a minute I stood there, knee deep in mud, staring at Jack sitting in the bottom of the boat in the middle of the yellow water lilies, still holding his hand up for me to s
ee, his face a kind of dirty grey. Then I jerked myself loose and half waded and half swam to the boat, pushing lilies out of my way and stumbling around, but getting there faster than I thought I could. Then I was up in the boat looking down at Jack, and it was clear from the way he sat there, staring at his wrist, that he was in pain and no doubt of it. “Does it hurt much?” I said.

  “I can stand it,” Jack said. “But I heard it break. It went snap. Just like a stick. I heard it.”

  “Just stay there,” I said. “I will get us out of here and down to Byrd’s landing; and if they have a phone we will call your father, or else I will find some place where there is a phone. This is serious.”

  Then Jack, still sitting there pale and hurt-looking, tried to smile. “You do like a thing to be serious,” he said. “But maybe this time you are right. It is broke for sure. See, I cannot even wiggle my fingers.”

  “It was my fault,” I said. “I shoved too hard. But you just sit there and I’ll get us out of here in a hurry.” Then I jumped back out of the boat to make it lighter, and got around at the back and pushed it over to the mud flat. Then I went around to the front and found the track we had made in the mud coming in, and I got the boat pointed toward it and worked my way around to the back and backed off and then made a run for it, as best I could, and we dragged a little, but we went over the mud and out into the creek.

  “You done that good,” Jack said.

  “Don’t you worry,” I said, jumping up into the boat, “I will get you there in a hurry,” and then I started rowing, as fast as I could. Rowing, I turned and looked at Jack. He looked awful. “Is it hurting worse?” I said.