The Lost Skiff

by Donald Wetzel

  I waited until the marsh was in view as far as I could see and until I figured it was as light as the morning was going to get, letting the fire die down as I waited, and then I left, leaving the clearing the same as I had found it, except for some new ashes added to the old and a small streak of smoke from the last of the coals lifting up straight and lonely-looking into the air below the dripping oaks. Then I rowed out and headed south and with a few good strokes the clearing was out of view, and I let the boat coast, seeing how flat and still the water was, with the drizzle drifting down into it so slow and fine that it hardly showed as anything more than a kind of sheen, brightening the water, strangely, under so dark a sky. The marsh grass stood straight and still as a wall all around, and in the quiet I could only remember the evening before with the wind blowing and the water sparkling and the marsh grass bending and waving, and wonder, as I started rowing on again, how I could have stayed there at the point for just a matter of hours, less even than a day, and have it seem, as I rowed away from it, that I was leaving a place as well known to me as some place where I had spent months or even years.

  Then I came to the opening in the marsh grass, and looking back, the three big oaks that marked the point were just one big misty cloud of green, looming up out of nowhere, it seemed, as though what was marked there was not so much a place as a mystery. I stopped and took one last look, and then, like some kind of an idiot, I actually gave it all a wave. Sitting there in a drizzle with my clothes already gone limp from it, water dripping down off my face and hands and down the back of my neck, with no living thing in sight anywhere around, I took one last look at the oaks and then lifted my hand and waved. It was about as crazy a thing as I have ever done, waving good-by to some trees and a place. But I did it. I sure was glad I was alone. Then I rowed on through the opening and out into the basin and headed back east, not worrying about the lost skiff or the rain or anything else, but thinking of Brenda Sue, and rowing hard, so used to rowing finally that it had come to seem like nothing at all.

  15

  Except for slowing when I went past Lucian’s Fishing Camp to check if the skiff might possibly be in among all their plywood boats, and again when I went past a couple of houseboats and some landings, I never eased off my pace.

  Neither did the drizzling rain.

  I kept to the east bank, the way I had planned, but I didn’t really expect to find Mr. Haywood’s lost skiff among the few places scattered along there, and I didn’t find it. However, I did try to keep it in mind, although that wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to do. Seemed that the closer I got to Byrd’s landing, the more my mind just seemed to go blank, and I would row along as though all I could think about was rowing. Toward the end, I would say that maybe some others had rowed this boat of Mr. Haywood’s faster and farther, but none with better concentration or more like a machine. It was almost as though I had completely forgotten where it was I was going.

  I hadn’t, of course. Not at all.

  I knew, all right. But for some reason or other it just seemed better not to think about it.

  Although that is not quite the truth, either; I mean that “for some reason or other” business. I am not that dumb, even when I try to believe it myself. The reason I didn’t want to think about it was that I knew that where I was headed was to see Brenda Sue and to see her alone, and on a rainy day at that, even if neither of us had planned on the rain. And I had never had a situation quite like that to think about before. In fact, nothing like that at all before, ever. Not going to see a girl alone who just naturally seemed to like me the way Brenda Sue seemed to like me, and with the crazy business of my being so scared around girls having somehow cut out altogether for me, and not to be counted on for any help.

  And whatever this may show about me, I knew that thinking about all this wouldn’t be much of a help, either. Far from it. So I just rowed, not even minding the rain. It was cool, at least. And if my mind wished to stay blank, I figured it probably knew best.

  Anyhow, that was the way it happened. Then finally I came rowing around a bend and turned and looked over my shoulder up the creek ahead of me, and there it was on the other shore, the house up on the hill, looking small and dark in the distance. Down below it was the pier, just as I had remembered, sticking out into the creek, with the little tin roof out at the end shining in the rain, a landmark I couldn’t miss, like a sign just for me, saying BRENDA SUE. I had reached Byrd’s landing.

  Then the rain seemed to blur my eyes and I could feel rain trickling down my neck, and for some reason the oar handles felt cold and clumsy in my hands. My breath wouldn’t work right, and the thought went through my mind, I am too wet and dirty and I probably smell like a campfire or a wet dog, or both, and I have got no business barging in on Brenda Sue all alone like this, the way I am. And then I turned and headed across the creek for the landing and Brenda Sue.

  I was glad she wasn’t waiting out at the end of the pier, to watch me come rowing up in the rain and bang into it and then stumble around in the water in the back of the boat and then slip on the wet planks getting out on the pier, like I hardly knew how to dock a boat or get out of one. Once the boat was tied and I was safe on my feet and had straightened out my clothes as best I could, I felt considerably more like myself. Standing up, I am tall, at least, and I always stand straight. Even soaking wet.

  Well, I thought, I’m a mess for sure, but maybe Brenda Sue won’t mind too much; whatever it is that she happens to see in me, it is hardly apt to be the snappy way I dress. Then I started walking up the long curving path to the house, noticing the silence and the emptiness all around, looking up once at the house and seeing how closed and empty it looked and wondering, with a kind of quick numb feeling in my stomach, if maybe the house was really empty and Brenda Sue was gone. I had hardly looked back down when I heard the first human sound I had heard since I landed. It went through me like a shock, although all it was was the simple slam of a screen door swinging shut.

  The sound was still hanging in the air when I looked up and saw Brenda Sue standing on the steps looking down at me, and then she walked down the steps and started running down to meet me. Like a nut, I stopped and just stood there, watching her. I didn’t even wave. What other girl in the world, I thought, wouldn’t care, but would just come running? And I watched her, seeing the light-blue dress she was wearing blow back against her and lift up when she ran, suddenly knowing that she must have run like that down this same path a million times, since she was a kid, running just to be running; and now she was not just a kid, and was running to me. And however crazy it may sound, the way I saw her then, the way I felt, I knew there could never be a sight more wonderful to see, as though I saw her running down to me this way, from a little kid until finally now, down through all her life. For an instant, as though time held still, it was like that, I saw it all like that; and I just stood there, knowing that this was what I hadn’t known before, ever, the real wonder of it, that it is not just two people, and not just now, but two whole lives. And then I didn’t think she would really do it, but she hardly slowed, and we met, out in the open for anyone to see that was there to see, and I just picked her up and held her. And of all the dreams and thoughts I had ever dared to have about how some girl might really someday seem and feel to me, I had never dreamed or thought that a girl could surprise me so, and feel and seem, most of all, so precious. Just hanging on to me, being held by me in the rain; without even so much as a kiss having happened.

  “I didn’t find the skiff,” I said.

  “I know,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  Then I put her down. “I’m soaking,” I said, “and must smell like a dog. I hope I have not got you all wet.”

  “It’s all right,” Brenda Sue said. “I should not have been so glad to see you. I was afraid something might have changed your mind. There was a boat went up the creek ahead of you, a white one. I just saw it going out of sight. Rodney, I wish you could see all the rain in your ha
ir. It’s like beads.”

  Through all that drizzle I had forgot to wear my hat. “Well,” I said, “I’m glad to see you, too. The house looked so empty, I thought maybe you had gone. I am sorry I have got you so wet.”

  “I am sorry about all this rain,” Brenda Sue said.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “It’s hardly your fault.” Then I thought about what she had said about the rain in my hair, looking like beads, and it seemed to me that it must look pretty silly, so I ran my hand through it and rain scattered out from it and splashed on us both. “Rodney, the human sponge,” I said.

  “It was pretty,” she said. “Honest. But now all you have done is mess it up. Come on to the house and you can comb it.”

  “I guess there is not much sense in our standing out here in this drizzle at that,” I said, and then with both of us wet by this time, but with it not bothering us that I could tell, we walked on up to the house and went in. Then the screen door slammed shut behind us and the sound faded, and the next thing I knew I was standing in Brenda Sue’s bedroom, because that’s where the comb and the mirror were, standing bent over her little dressing table staring in the mirror at my own unexpected face, with, behind it, Brenda Sue’s face, watching my eyes in the mirror while I watched hers, the light on the table shining up on our faces and making them look like we had both been caught somehow by surprise. And for a time I did the best I could, but with Brenda Sue right behind me, it was confusing, with our eyes looking at each other in the mirror like our own real eyes, but with our faces seeming somehow separate and with eyes of their own, seeing us looking at ourselves, until finally I said, “Brenda Sue, do you have a feeling we are being watched?”

  She laughed, and I watched her laughing in the mirror, laughing myself and seeing that, too, but noticing at the same time the way she lifted her head a little and the tip of her tongue showed when she laughed, back from her teeth, but showing, and the way little wrinkles formed at the corners of her mouth and how white her teeth looked and how red her lips. And then she stepped back from the mirror and her face was serious and pale and soft in the different light. “It’s like we are being watched, at that,” she said, “but there is no one here but us.”

  My hair was as combed as I was going to get it combed and I stood up straight and turned out the light below the mirror and turned to Brenda Sue. And what I thought was, And here we are in your bedroom, and we had better get out. But that was not what I said. I said her name.

  The light in the room was the light of the rainy day coming in through the windows, and the quiet was the quiet of the rain. And for a time it was the same as it had been outside, except that the coolness of the rain was gone and the words we said had the sound of whispers, no matter how we said them, and the feeling of space around us was altogether different, as though there was hardly room for us to stand back now and then, even if we wanted to. But slowly it changed, as though the day got darker and the room got smaller, although this was just the way it seemed, while the change was real. Just standing there we slowly changed, as though we grew older and quicker and stronger and more certain, and without ever saying it, more single together in what was happening and what we felt, until the change was all that seemed to matter. But then I knew it could not go on just slowly changing forever, and I guess Brenda Sue knew it, too. “We had better go out on the porch,” she said.

  And knowing she was right, the sound of my voice surprised me. “No, not yet,” I said.

  Then the newness and difference slowed the change, and we talked in whispers and admitted our surprise, and rested from it, side by side, even listening to the rain, and wondering when it had changed and we hadn’t noticed. I told her how pretty I thought her dress was, and she mentioned again the sight of the rain in my hair. And I was glad I had said, “Not yet.” “See?” I said. “There is nothing to be afraid of.”

  I believed it, and it seemed that Brenda Sue did, too. And then it was different again and the room got still except for the sound of the rain, and the change was more than it had been before and went on like the rain, like it had to go on, and could go on and on and on forever. And then Brenda Sue took my hand. “Rodney,” she said, “we had better go out on the porch after all.”

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  “But I’m scared,” she said.

  “What is there to be scared of?” I said.

  She squeezed my hand tight. “I don’t know,” she said. “But I’m scared. I have never really liked a boy so much.”

  We had better go, I thought; we had better go, all right. “I have never liked a girl so much,” I said. It was the truth, and it seemed right that I had said it, and everything seemed right again to me.

  “Rodney,” Brenda Sue said, “I can’t help it, I’m scared. I have never been kissed lying down before.”

  “Honest,” I said, “there is nothing to be scared of.”

  Then there was only the sound of the rain, just for one long minute, and then Brenda Sue pulled away. “Oh, Rodney, yes there is,” she said.

  And I felt the pounding of her heart and the pounding of my own, and I knew that she was right. And suddenly I knew that that was what it was, not the things people said, the trouble and worry and the awful things that can happen, not that to be scared of, but the pounding of our hearts, the bigness of that pounding, all the meanings of it, all unknown. And I finally had the sense to be afraid myself.

  “You are right,” I said.

  We lay there awhile, listening to the rain, being quiet together, and then we got up and went out onto the porch, where we stood for a time looking down at the creek, watching the rain beat down into the water like it would never stop.

  “When the rain lets up, I will leave,” I said.

  So we sat on the porch and talked and watched it rain, our voices going back and forth as steady as the rain itself, drumming on the roof above our heads. We talked about everything, mostly ourselves, but ourselves and everything else, as though the whole crazy world could someday be ours, even if not right now. And the rain kept pouring down, like a kind of company to us, as though we weren’t altogether alone at that.

  It wasn’t a hard rain, but it was steady as the ticking of a clock, and finally, more and more, it was not so much a kind of company to us that I was waiting to have leave so that I could leave, too, as it was a reminder of time itself, time not stopping, time just drumming the minutes and hours away, while we sat and talked, as I stayed longer than I should have stayed, until both of us knew it, and until that was all we seemed to be talking about, that when the rain let up I would have to leave, if I was going to make it back to The Landing by noon the next day, the way I had promised.

  But the rain didn’t stop or even slacken. And I sat on the porch with Brenda Sue and talked, letting the rain be a kind of clock without hands for me, blurring time, but telling me that time was passing, even so, until finally the sound of the rain got to be too much, and I knew that I had to get up and go, rain or no rain.

  Brenda Sue or no Brenda Sue.

  I got up. “I have got to go,” I said, “rain or no rain.”

  Brenda Sue got up and looked at me and then out at the rain and then back to me again. “If you have given Jack your word to be there,” she said, “then I know you have to try. I’ll go with you to the boat.”

  “You will get soaked,” I said.

  Brenda Sue only nodded, and then we stepped out into the rain and walked down the steps and down the long curving path to the pier, as though as far as we were concerned the sun was shining bright, as though the rain didn’t matter at all. Then we were in under the little tin roof at the end of the pier and the sound of the rain was a different sound, like a kind of music almost, from the sound of the tin, I guess, and we stood and looked at each other not knowing how to say good-by or what else to say, either. Then we said good-by the same way we had said hello in the morning, both of us already wet this time when she reached and put her arms around my neck and I
picked her up, and it was the same, the same surprise and wonder and almost disbelief, and the same wonderful happiness, the same realness, with even the same rain, and both of us wet. And when she stepped back from me all the serious, sad look that had been on her face was gone, and she was smiling as wonderful as I had ever seen her smile. And I knew what Brenda Sue must have known then, too, that we couldn’t say good-by. Because what we were still saying and all we could say even now was hello.

  So we didn’t try. I untied the boat and got into it and looking up at her just before I picked up the oars and shoved off, all I said was, “Brenda Sue, I’m sorry if the rain and I have half ruined your dress; but I will never forget how pretty you look in it right now.”

  And I knew I never would.

  I rowed off, watching the blue dress blur and fade out of sight in the rain. And when the last flash of Brenda Sue’s waving hand was gone out of sight behind me, I turned and looked up ahead of me at the creek stretching out in the rain and then up at the sky overhead, and then I settled back and rowed.

  16

  I guess I had rowed along for a good half hour before I finally got the pictures of Brenda Sue to stop running through my head, the way a song will do sometimes, until as much as you might like it you are practically begging for it to quit. It just didn’t make sense, rowing up a creek in the middle of the afternoon in a steady, miserable rain, soaked to the skin and with water running down from my hair into my eyes, half blinding me a good bit of the time, and all these pictures of Brenda Sue, smiling and laughing and serious and scared, changing all the time, but going on and on in my mind, clear as could be, and not making any more sense, considering the situation I was in, than if what I was doing was rowing along with a bunch of butterflies all flying around my head. But finally it eased off.