“To tell the truth,” I said, “the big reason I started out in such a hurry to get down to the basin this morning wasn’t so much to find out if Mr. Haywood’s skiff was there, but so I could get back and have a chance to see you one last time. Just to see you. But here I have already seen you today, and late as it is, I will have to camp for the night at the point; so I will stop and see you tomorrow, too. I’ll have to get started back up to Mr. Haywood’s landing, of course, so I won’t stay long. But it sure will be nice to see you again.”
Seeing how serious she had been about it, and how scared, it seemed, it had made me talk kind of fast and foolish, as though I didn’t want to admit what I knew was on our minds. Being alone, I mean. It was like it actually scared me, too. And looking at her, I knew I hadn’t got honest the way she had or leveled with Brenda Sue one bit, and I knew she knew it. So I tried again. “Brenda Sue,” I said, “I’m glad you weren’t afraid to tell me, because otherwise I would have rowed my head off trying to get down to the basin and back up to your landing to see you tonight. And then I would have started back up the creek by moonlight, and tomorrow would have been lost. But if you are worried at all, I will tell you something. I am the sort of person who can make all kinds of mistakes and say the wrong things and even burn a barn by accident or lose a skiff through ignorance, and I am far from perfect when it comes to the things I may happen to notice or to think, and I won’t pretend a thing different. But when it comes to people, I believe I can be trusted.”
It was wonderful to watch and see the worry leave her face. Then we said good-by, and soon Brenda Sue was out of sight going back up the creek and I was alone again, rowing hard against the wind, with the sun getting low in the sky off to my left, while I rowed down the last, long, straight stretch of Big Star Creek, due south, with far ahead, just coming into view, Lucian’s Fishing Camp, with one last chance still left to me before dark of finding the skiff, a skiff—with all that had happened that seemed to have nothing to do with it or even with my looking for it—that was still a real skiff, and still was lost.
For a while it was good just to go along rowing my crazy head off and thinking about nothing else, or trying to anyhow, except such a simple thing as a skiff I had lost and was trying to find. It seemed to me, when it crossed my mind now and then, that back there at the point some things had got pretty complicated for a while. Well, I thought, I guess nothing is really simple at that, not even a thing like starting out down a creek with nothing else in mind but trying to find a skiff that had drifted off and disappeared. But then I just rowed, and rowed hard, and kept it as simple again as I could.
Then I guessed I must be getting near to the basin and the bay, because the fishing camp was just up ahead and I could smell a different smell blowing in off the water. And then a sea gull, the first I had seen, came sailing in from the west, blown in by the wind, and right over my head he tilted sideways and slipped on down and kind of hung there, gliding on the wind, looking at me, so close I could see his eyes, as though he was wondering as much about where I had come from and what I was doing there as I was wondering about him. Then he gave a push with his wings and sailed up and off ahead of me toward the fishing camp, and I thought, well, as far as a sea gull is concerned, all I am doing out here in this wind at the end of Big Star Creek is looking for a skiff I lost, although there is more to this than would meet his eye, high as he flies and carefully as he looks. On the other hand, I thought, there is a chance he has seen Mr. Haywood’s skiff and even knows right now where it is, so why should I feel so smart about it, just because I’m a man, while a sea gull is only a bird. Then he came sailing back, high overhead, not even interested enough any more to drop down for a second look, and then he flew back off the way he had come, showing me how easy a thing like that could be done, while I just sat there, rowing, but feeling again, even so, a kind of excitement, the way it had been when I started out in the morning and had somehow felt like some crazy kind of a bird myself, caught up in the wind. And then I rowed on past the fishing camp, still feeling that way, feeling strong and happy and not really caring if things were simple or complicated or both at once, and not worried about anything, not even bothered any more by the wind, as though a curious sea gull, of all things, had showed me again the way things really were. Or the way they could be, anyhow.
14
With the directions Jack had given me, finding my way out into the basin and through the opening in the marsh grass was so simple that it seemed I must have done it sometime once before. Anyhow, when I rowed through the opening and came out into the shallow water on the other side and turned around and looked, the first thing I saw was the point, off in the distance, with the three big live oaks right at the end of it, their leaves blowing and shining in the sun, like a kind of natural beacon. I knew I had finally made it.
For a while I let the boat drift, seeing the shallow water spread out around me like the water in some giant pond, not blown into waves but only being rippled by the wind. It was the marsh grass, stretching away as far as I could see all around it, that caught the wind and made a sight I had never seen before, the tall thick grass bending and lifting in long sweeping dips and waves, as though whatever it was that it was fastened to, the ground it was growing on, was something that floated as well, the whole thing moving like one single floating thing. I knew it was only my surprise, but at first, sitting there in the boat, hardly drifting in the quiet water and seeing the marsh grass sort of rocking and waving in the sun, I had a feeling I was seeing something as unusual as if I had actually caught a glimpse of the whole round earth kind of rocking and spinning along in space. It was a feeling that surprised me, as if I really believed that the marsh and the shallow pond where I floated at the time, all of it and myself included, was a kind of miracle, which, with one big wind blowing hard enough, could be lifted loose from whatever held us in place, as easy as the ending of a dream. It was a sight I had never seen before anyhow, and a feeling I can hardly describe. I guess it should have puzzled me, as nature seldom gives me much of a feeling one way or another, or at least nothing to wonder about. And in this case I might have wondered what the hell was going on with my brains, and even worried about it, but actually it didn’t bother me at all. To tell the truth, it seemed interesting, although I’m sure I cannot explain that, even to myself.
I drifted awhile longer and watched the marsh grass waving in the wind, and then I picked up the oars and started rowing toward the point, noticing how thick the shrimp grass was in the shallow water, looking down at it on either side of the boat and seeing how still and dark it looked in contrast to the wind in the marsh grass in the light of the evening sun, as though I was looking down at the top of some watery kind of forest where already it was night. And almost to the point, rowing along, wondering about this and about all the other things that had happened and had been new and different and in one way or another had surprised me since I started out with Jack with the simple purpose of looking for a skiff I had lost, it came to me as a kind of shock suddenly to realize that I was alone in a strange place and about to spend the night there and that it didn’t worry me a bit. And this surprised me so much that I stopped rowing again for a minute, for no reason at all, and just sat there looking back the way I had come, as though there was something that had happened along the way that I hadn’t noticed at the time, something I had missed, like I might have also missed the lost skiff, watchful as I had tried to be. Because back then, to start with, I could have done it, I knew, alone all the way; but it would have been something. And now, it didn’t even seem strange.
And then as though I was certain I would find the skiff at the point, I started rowing again, rowing hard, like I was trying to make up for all the time I had lost, in all the ways that I had, since I first started, as though this could be done in the last few hundred yards. I was headed straight due north toward the three live oaks, but as I got close I could see that there was no good place to land there, and I swung to
the west and out around a little strip of marsh grass. And then back to the east I saw the clearing under the three trees, a big one, flooded with sunlight coming in under the branches from behind me, with a wide, green stretch of crab grass coming down to the water’s edge, and all of it, the big clearing and the wide, green grassy beach, empty. All I could see was the dark rounded pile of ashes left from a campfire back under the oaks, in the center of everything, like a cold hard rock that could have been there forever. I had come too late.
I rowed on in to the shore.
When I had pulled the front of the boat up onto the grass, I didn’t do much for a time except wander stupidly around the clearing, looking about under the three big oaks and at the woods behind them, and then out at the marsh grass, waving in the wind, hearing the oak leaves making a soft singing sound as the wind blew through them, high up over my head, even looking up into the leaves, surprised at the thickness of them. I guess I was just trying to see where I was, and to get it through my head that I had made it down to the end of the creek and had gone as far as I could go. And the skiff was still lost.
The whole thing seemed strangely hard to believe, but finally I knew it was the simple truth, and I stopped wandering around looking at things and acting like some idiot walking in his sleep. I went down to the boat and got the ax. I will not, I thought, eat cold Polish sausage for one more meal; and whether I have failed to find the skiff or not, I still am hungry and I have got a right to eat.
I built a fire in the ashes that the other people had left there, and opened two cans of beef stew and heated it, and ate all of it, except what I’d burned on the bottom of the pot. By the time I had finished with that and with cleaning up my mess, the sense of strangeness that had bothered me was altogether gone. I looked around the clearing again, seeing it for what it was, not the empty end of a crazy searching trip, but a clearing, and a fine one at that. A nice place to spend the night.
I went down to the boat and got the tarp and brought it back up by the fire and folded it several times to make a kind of mattress, and then I brought up a couple of blankets and folded one for a pillow, and spread the other over the tarp. There was really no need of a fire, but I threw some more wood on it anyhow, and sat down beside it on the blanket and looked out at the water and the marsh grass, with the sun low in the sky and lighting up the waving tops of the marsh grass so that great glowing streaks of light seemed to go streaking and bending across the whole marsh, while the water down in front of me rippled and sparkled like a bright, steady starlight kind of fire, looking almost cool, warm as the evening was.
Okay, I thought, let the night come.
And all I did for the next hour or two—sometimes it seemed that time had stopped altogether, while other times it would seem to go shooting past me, so it is hard to be exact—was to sit there and think and watch the day blow away, so to speak, and night to come trailing in behind it, like its dust. I guess that is a thing I would not generally think of saying, but at the end, right as the sun was just half in sight at the farthest edge of the marsh, the whole sky turned into a thick, hanging sort of red-colored cloud, and it made me think of the clouds of dust I have seen in the evenings following cars up the dusty road past The Hill. And I believe there is some dust of sorts in all sunsets anyhow. But this one, with the wind blowing and the marsh spread out as far as I could see and the sun almost straight out in front of me, was about as great a sunset as I could ever hope for.
To tell the truth, it was terrific. There were times when I didn’t have better sense than to stare right into the sun itself, as though with everything else the way it was, I might as well go blazing down myself. And while I would not recommend it as being good for the eyes, particularly somewhat weak eyes like my own, those few good stares I gave the sun are something, along with the marsh in the wind that evening, that I will most likely not forget.
I doubt if I will live out my life or even manage to die in some great blaze of glory, but at least I believe I have a hint now of what a word like glory means. It’s in the world, at least. Whatever harm it may have done my eyes, I saw it.
Or else I don’t know what it was I saw or felt, but it was something. And the surprising thing is that I am the sort that generally can take a sunset or leave it alone. But it probably was not just the sunset, either. In fact, I’m certain it wasn’t. Because I didn’t just sit there looking at the view, getting blinded by the sun and letting the wind blow through my empty brains. Or if the wind did sometimes sort of seem to be shoving my thoughts around, the thoughts were there anyhow, thick as marsh grass, just steady waves of them running through my head, like a dam in my memory had burst at the same time my eyes had been opened up, and I was remembering old things and thinking new ones practically together.
I won’t try and say all the things I remembered and thought about, while another part of my mind was just sitting there watching the sun go down. But if I have made it seem like nothing but a great deal of confusion, the fault is mine. In the end, at least, when the sun was gone and the stars were out and the moon was lighting up the darkness of the woods behind me, it all seemed clear to me. With all the things I had remembered, chief of which, naturally, was my mother, and all the new things I had thought about, chief of which, also naturally, I suppose, was Brenda Sue, the one big single simple thing I had been remembering and seeing and thinking about the whole time was—what it had to be, I guess—life itself. And what had come to seem most clear to me about it was the endless wonder of it, even in a world where life itself ends, in a world where people die, in a world that will someday die itself. Even so, the biggest thing, the greatest thing of all is life. Unless, of course, there is actually a God, at that.
Which, as I lay wrapped in my blanket listening to the wind and the marsh’s night sounds, watching the last few red coals of my fire glow bright in the wind and grow smaller and smaller, I decided that there was. That there is a God, I mean. I guess I didn’t have to decide anything, really, but I decided it anyhow. I couldn’t see any reason not to.
And I suppose it is an awful thing to admit, but later, just before I went to sleep, being thankful for the coolness of the wind and the fact that it kept the insects so well blown away, and thinking in a careless sort of way about the things that had happened on the trip down the creek and about Brenda Sue and tomorrow and the days to come, the thought went through my mind as clear as though I had said the words, I sure am glad Jack broke his wrist. It was the first real thought I had given to Jack in hours. It hardly seemed fair to him.
Then, hoping it wouldn’t rain, I went to sleep.
Sometime during the night, unknown to me, the wind went down, and what woke me up, with the light just starting to show around the tops of the trees, was not the sun or birds singing but what must have been a dozen or so big swamp mosquitoes buzzing around my head and having a regular feast off my face and hands. This, and one big single drop of something wet that splashed down exactly on my ear, like it had been aimed. So I woke up startled and swatting at mosquitoes and looking around in the greyness, wondering what wet thing it was that had plopped down in my ear and where had it come from? I sat up, and worked at the mosquitoes for a time and then I got quiet and noticed the dampness and the wet smell in the air and a kind of dripping sound, like water left dripping from a faucet, high up in the leaves above my head. I listened, and felt a drop go plop on my hand, and I knew that even if it was so light a rain that I couldn’t hear it or really feel it yet, up in the oak leaves it was raining, and that that was what I heard dripping down through the leaves and what had plopped into my ear as I slept. Rain.
I got up and walked out from under the trees and stood looking out at the marsh, seeing it as only a big, misty-grey flatness, not able to see the rain, but feeling it, anyhow, on my face and hands, like a soft, cool wind, a drizzle so light that instead of falling down, it just seemed to hang where it was. But it was rain all right.
In the dim, misty light, Mr. Haywood�
�s white boat down at the water’s edge was the brightest thing I could see, and even so it looked strange, small and blurred and like it might have been half floating in the mist itself. I went down to it, and it was still well up on dry ground and safe enough, but everything in it, the oars and the seats and the supplies that were in the open, was covered with water so thick that I could brush it off with my hand, as though the rain was so light that it was practically sticky and would just stay where it hit, without the weight to roll off. I grabbed a rag from under the front seat and tried to dry a few things, but it was like trying to clean up spilled paint, and I soon gave up on it and went back up and got my blankets and the tarp and came back and stored the blankets up in front and then spread out the tarp and fastened it the way Jack and I had done before. Which would keep things from getting any wetter, I figured, and would be ready to make into a tent again if worse came to worse later in the day and the drizzle decided to change itself into a pouring rain.
I went back up under the oaks and built a fire with some of the wood I had brought up the evening before. It wasn’t light enough yet to leave for Byrd’s landing, so I got a can of plums and the last can of hash and had breakfast while I waited, listening to the steady drip and plop of the rain in the leaves up over my head, but staying dry enough by the fire, noticing how the flames went straight up into the air, as calm and steady as the flame on a candle in a closed room. With a day this still, I thought, this rain will probably just hang around forever, because it sure won’t be blown away, and at the rate it’s falling it’s hardly apt to rain itself out. And then I thought, well, how about that; less than a week out on a creek and I am an expert on the weather. So then I glanced back to the east, half expecting to see the sun come breaking through, but the sky, though lighter, was a solid dark grey and looked as though it meant to stay that way.
The Lost Skiff Page 17
