Whose Waves These Are

by Amanda Dykes

  “Yes, he’s something else.”

  Annie thinks back on his account. Michael’s and Hosea’s lives, their tale and Ed’s, linger like a shadowy cloak about her. “What did he mean when he said Bob gave him a way to honor Michael?”

  Jeremiah shakes his head. “I’m not sure. I’d never heard that part of his story. But you saw the look on his face. There’s a story there, and he’s relishing making us wait.”

  Annie scrunches up her nose. “It’s so strange. Bob didn’t seem like one for secrets. But the last time I was here, I was so caught up in my own . . .” She searches for the right word. Trauma? Confusion? “My own world, maybe I just didn’t notice. Or maybe he shielded me. But there are things I should have cared about enough to ask.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Like my own grandfather. I know he was buried at sea, but shouldn’t there be some sort of memorial for him? A plaque or something? Maybe a bench or a marker in the graveyard? I never saw anything like that here.”

  Jeremiah rises then, crosses the room and stoops to look out the porthole window. “You know Bob,” he says at last, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “He never does things the way you’d expect. Some memorials . . . they’re living and breathing ones. People, walking around, carrying that other person with them until the day they die.”

  He looks far away then, and Annie doesn’t speak, doesn’t want to break into whatever world he’s in.

  Jeremiah sucks in a breath, as if to ground himself here, in this rainy reality. “You know what I mean. Bob and Roy,” he says. “People who knew them both talk about them as if they’re the same person. Never apart. Someone can be so much a part of you that . . .” His eyebrows pinch together. “You know what I mean.”

  She doesn’t. She can imagine such a strong connection between people, but she’d never felt such a closeness, not to anyone. Had he? He’d looked so bereft when he spoke of it, and yet there was a light in his eyes, too. Something in her aches.

  “Yes,” she says at last. “I think I do.”

  And if any one soul could keep a fire burning within him as memorial for the one lost, it is Bob.

  Even so, there are things that don’t add up. A key. A closet and a boathouse full of rocks. They have to mean something . . . and she intends to find out what that is.

  The stress of the last days is catching up to her here beside the fire, with the world all gray outside. Eyelids heavy, head resting against Ed’s driftwood wall, and settled into a communal quiet with the enigmatic postman beside the crackle of the fire, sleep sneaks in.

  She awakes to low embers and an empty room. She should be cold . . . but something warm and secure is draped around her. It is Jeremiah’s jacket, smelling of pine. And the man, she sees when she rises and pulls that jacket tight against a shiver, stands outside, silhouetted against a setting sun. He leans against a tree, staring out over the waves.

  She moves to go to him, but something stops her.

  Wait.

  The very word from Ed’s story that kept him from shattering something. Is she about to shatter something, too? She watches as Jeremiah lowers himself to the rock the tree grows against, until he’s sitting. He pulls something out of his back pocket—a paper.

  Annie’s breath catches. It is the letter from his boat, the one he’d stowed away so carefully inside a book.

  He opens it. Studies it. Holds it long . . . and then, folding it back up, bows his head. Brings his hands, folded together, up to his forehead. A posture she has seen her mother take when bringing her very heart before her God. It is the stance of unanswered questions, of troubles too heavy to carry alone.

  No sound emerges, yet she knows with an anchoring within her that this moment is sacred.

  She waits until he rejoins her, and the two of them at last cross over the sandbar, to freedom.

  And yet she has the sense that somehow she’s leaving it behind in the dark.

  sixteen

  AUGUST 1945

  The air crackles at night. Tensions tangling like invisible warriors in the atmosphere above them all. Radio waves bringing news to their homes: of the April death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the man who had led them in this war, of the masses of ships headed for Japan. Will they invade that country? How high will the casualties be? Numbers, higher than high, are tossed about as if they aren’t faces or lives. The war on the European front ended months ago, but this turmoil with Japan shows no end in sight, and the world war rages on.

  That mid-August evening, Robert leaves the radio and heads for the dock.

  The dew on the wood is real, something he can see, touch, feel. It is not full of questions too lofty for the human soul. It’s just here, reminding him the way forward is to keep on with the work at hand, reminding him there’s a God out there who can create dew, water from air, and if He can do that, then He can see them through this war.

  He wonders if Roy’s sitting in dew on his ship, wherever he is. He prays for the thousandth time—Bring him home.

  A light shriek from the house—his mother. The screen door slams. Her footsteps hurry down the path toward him. He’s up on his feet, heart pounding, running toward her.

  They meet at the shoreline, and he searches her face, hand to her shoulder. “What is it?” With relief, he sees joy there.

  “The war. It’s—”

  A whoop sounds from across the bay.

  “It’s done,” she says. Astonishment boils into laughter from deep inside her. Tears spring to her eyes. “It’s done.”

  Her words skid off Robert, trying to sink in.

  Lights begin to come on in homes whose windows usually go dark about now. Fishermen go to bed with the sun in order to wake with it again tomorrow, but their windows blaze tonight.

  One boat engine fires up, then another.

  Mom squeezes his shoulder. “They’re gatherin’.”

  A laugh tumbles up from some locked-away place inside Robert. “I’ll get the boat ready,” he says, grinning. It’s all he can do to keep from jumping in the boat right now and opening up the engine full-speed to search the Atlantic for his brother and bring him home. Last they heard he was on board a destroyer somewhere in the North Atlantic—somewhere right out there in the dark waves beyond.

  His mother disappears into the house, returning minutes later with a lidded basket and thermos. What she has in there, he can only guess. Their cupboards are as sparse as any in the country just now. But that was one of Ansel’s workings of magic, the way the women could pull up a feast out of anything, at a moment’s notice, war rations and all. And no one worked the magic better than Savannah Bliss.

  Dark settling around them, they stop long enough for Jenny, babe in arms, and even her stalwart Aunt Millicent. After William was born, Jenny’s parents had returned briefly from Minnesota, where they had moved soon after Jenny married Roy. But when they left, Millicent had insisted she join Jenny while she learned to care for her son.

  They make their way across the harbor, around Long Island, and into the Weg. There, sure as Sunday, on one of the tiny islands is a telltale bonfire on the beach. Ansel’s setting to celebrate in Picnic Cove. It is aptly named, for the boats can get close to the shore without danger of run-ins with hidden rocks.

  The celebration is already in full swing, fire reaching heights twice that of Tall Reuben, who’s roasting a hot dog on a branch over its flames. Ethel and Pearl provide music, one on the guitar while the other one sings, pulling a ring of children in a circle round and round. Picnic blankets slapped down on the earth stake a claim on this newly announced victory. Mrs. Crockett scurries around, heaping slabs of her blueberry cake onto everyone’s plates.

  People in cities are probably throwing confetti, tossing hats, but they haven’t known celebration until they’ve tasted Mrs. Crockett’s cake, cooked with plump berries that just hours before were soaking in the sun and breathing in the sea air.

  Robert stands back, watching joy beat with a puls
e. This, then, is liberty.

  Before long, a square dance forms, and Robert is pulled into the flurry of movement. It’s not his gig, this dancing, and he feels the awkwardness of his lanky form trying to fit into the measured maneuvers.

  He thinks of another dance. A snowy December night, when a girl with fire in her soul slipped into his arms alongside the dark waters of the Charles River. Three letters he’d written her since then, with only months of silence as an answer. Perhaps tonight he’ll try again—one last time.

  The memory is cut short when Mrs. Bascomb, old enough to be his great-grandmother and crabby enough to land in a crab trap, grabs him by the elbow and hollers, “Do-si-do, yow’un!” He grins like a fool at being called a kid in her Down East way—and feels a little like one, too, as he spins her.

  The party lasts until the moon is high above them and they’ve spent themselves in rejoicing. And the afterglow of it lasts and lasts, buoyed by the letter that comes from Roy a few days later: He is coming home. Their ship will be docking in Boston within the next two weeks.

  Yet with each day that passes, there’s a growing feeling inside Robert that he cannot stamp out. Something is amiss in that letter. It was Roy’s voice, but it lacked his usual vivacity.

  The feeling festers like the storm clouds that roil into the week that follows. Robert does his best to carry on as usual, the best thing he can think to do.

  As usual, he stops at Joe’s Landing every morning for gasoline and bait. And as usual he pulls his traps in and stops there every afternoon to trade with Hal, accepting his folded payment from the cash the man keeps in an old pail.

  Wednesday morning is the same. Robert’s earlier than usual, as Ma woke early to prepare to leave for Bangor.

  “We need supplies for your brother’s homecoming,” she’d said. “We’ll make it a day to remember, when he and Arthur get back. Maybe the other boys will return the same day!” As they’d prepared to leave, she’d talked on about the whole plan. Millicent was to drive, and Jenny and the baby were going, too. It’d take them three hours to get there, and who knew what schemes the three of them would concoct in that time. Fireworks and confetti, maybe a full brass band, if they had their way.

  Still dark outside, the lights had been aglow with hope when he’d passed Jenny’s house. Docking now at Joe’s Landing, Robert winds around other shadowy fishermen milling about on the dock, some jovial, some still enrobed in sleep—all purchasing bait, filling gas cans.

  Robert does likewise and is just about to head out when he hears footsteps pounding. He narrows his eyes, straining to see down the Harbor Road in the morning sea smoke—and a figure emerges.

  “Robert,” the man pants. It’s Jim, the postmaster. He heaves, not used to running. “I caught ya.”

  Robert closes the distance between them. Jim’s blue shirt is buttoned wrong, half tucked in. His billed cap is askew. “What’s doing, Jim? Anything wrong?” He can feel a knot forming inside.

  The other men sense it, too—they’ve stilled, watching from the landing, like pawns staggered on a chessboard, frozen in time.

  “This just come in.” Jim hands a scrap of paper to Robert. “Over the wireless. Didn’t have time to put it on the right paper.” This explains the torn scrap of envelope the scribbled words are on. “But it seemed important. Wanted to get it to ya before you headed out.”

  It’s a string of numbers—coordinates.

  N 43° 4’ 7.9

  W 66° 0’ 21.1

  Robert had drawn enough lines on navigational charts, consulted enough compasses to know these numbers indicate a location somewhere just south of Nova Scotia. Not home, but not an ocean away, either.

  “What is this?”

  Jim taps the paper. “It’s from Arthur.”

  “Arthur Baxter?”

  “Ayuh. Didn’t have time to write down the rest of the message. It said . . .” Jim presses his eyes closed, nodding as he recites. “Come now. See Roy. Arthur.”

  Vaguely, the sound of movement registers behind him. The men doing something. Maybe giving him space, sensing this is no ordinary message.

  Arthur must have broken a thousand protocols to send this message. He would never divulge that their destroyer is stalled, vulnerable, but that had to be it. Otherwise why send coordinates?

  A sinking sickness sets Robert’s feet to running. He’s rounding the fog-wrapped building to where Joe keeps the gas cans, and nearly collides with the man himself.

  Joe’s lugging two cans—one in each hand. “Grab that one, too.” Joe tilts his head to a green paint-chipped can. This will take Robert’s gas rations for the next week, at least. But he’ll worry about that later.

  They approach the Savvy Mae, and she’s bobbing, as if she knows, too. Lined up like soldiers beside her are Tall Reuben, Gus Packer, Melvin Buck, Tim Baxter, each with a gas can. Their rations. Everything they have to fuel their livelihood. The widow’s mite, right there in rusty cans offered at odd angles.

  Robert wants to refuse, but he knows he may need it all to get that far and back. He wraps his fingers around the metal handles and dips his capped head to the men in their yellow oilskins. The overalled uniform of the fishermen is as valiant in this moment as full navy uniforms and medaled chests.

  Tim grips his shoulder. It’s his boy, Arthur, who sent the message. But he doesn’t send a message for him, just purses his lips, gives a solid nod. A man of few words, like his son. It’s a benediction, that grip. One Robert would have given anything to have from his own father just now.

  Robert nods back and steps through the opening they’ve left for him to board the boat. Sloshing cans tucked inside, he turns to thank the men for these cold vessels of hope. “Thank you,” he says. “I’ll pay it back.”

  Joe shakes his head. His Harry’s still out there somewhere, too. “Get to your brother,” he says. “Get him home.”

  “You be careful, young Robert!” Gus chimes in. And they disappear into the curtain of fog as he navigates toward the Weg.

  “Get to your brother.” There is something final and dark in those words. They drill into him, out through his heart and into his veins until he’s turning hard starboard, over to home. Docking, running. Let them still be here. Ma should come. Jenny should come. He pounds up the weathered steps, shoves the heavy oak door open and feels the emptiness.

  “Ma!”

  Silence.

  He runs out back in case she’s digging in her garden, but all is still.

  Jenny’s house is next, and it’s the same—all silent. Breakfast dishes neatly put away, and a hand to the kettle on the stove burns him with the knowledge that he’s just missed them.

  There’s a twisting in him, a heavy sickness. They are gone to Bangor. And something is wrong with Roy.

  He stops long enough to scribble a note for Mom, that he’ll be gone a good piece of time and not to worry if he doesn’t return for a day or two.

  Out on the open sea, he lets the engine loose.

  seventeen

  Robert navigates toward the USS Franktown, weary after five hours at sea and another spent chasing down the ship’s whereabouts, after it drifted from Arthur’s coordinates. The Savvy Mae is like an ant in the shadow of a mountain. He cuts his engine, bobbing out there in the open blue with nothing in sight but this behemoth ship. There’s a reason they call these ships destroyers. He is David and it is Goliath, fifty fold.

  It’s quiet. Eerily so. He hears the sound of the Naval Jack flapping in the breeze, the solid blue flag spangled with forty-eight stars in perfect rows.

  His pulse hammers. Somewhere on board his brother’s heart beats, too. Please, God. The heart that beat beside his own before they’d even drawn breath. This friend he’d shared a lifetime with. Only a wall of war-thick steel and military protection between them.

  He’d had hours to come up with a plan. Considering every possible way to board a well-guarded military ship whose crew was almost certainly not in the practice of letting civilians ab
oard.

  And every possibility—from sneaking aboard, to feigning distress, to masquerading as his brother—led him down a path of near-hope, only to be dashed with the final verdict: This will never work.

  He can almost hear his father, picture him casting a sidelong glance, eyes creased the way they did when he smiled. What’re you gettin’ so all-fired-up and tangled about, son? The answer’s always the simplest. No matter how mixed up the problem is. Scale it back, son. Peel it back until you find the simplest truth. Then do that.

  The simplest truth in this moment that so much hinges upon comes down to two things—the sun coming out long enough from its storm-threatening sky, and a piece of glass no bigger than his palm.

  He waits. In the distance through his binoculars, he sees men on deck. Some moving about, and some—two of them—watching him. A third joins them, and Robert sees from the black-billed white cap that he’s an officer. Probably the officer of the deck. He can’t see faces. Uniforms, yes. Navy and white upon the gunmetal gray of the ship. He’s hoping, praying, that one of them is Arthur.

  He doesn’t blame them for their diligence. The war may be over, but times are still tense and no doubt will be for a long while. There are those who have not been pleased with this outcome. Saboteurs even on American soil that they’d all heard about. If it were him on board the destroyer, he would be watching and wary, too.

  He glances at the sky, clouds still scudding en masse. “Come on,” Robert mutters at them. “Move!”

  They do, but still no sun.

  When at last they break, he whips his mirror into action, tilting until it spells his message in Morse code. PERMISSION TO BOARD.

  A pause. One of the three men disappears, and the other turns to face the officer.

  Their signal light flashes back: IDENTIFY YOURSELF.

  He does, feeling the humility of answering: THE SAVVY MAE. ROBERT BLISS.

  The third man reappears, a fourth with him. That man takes charge. Flashes back: ONE TO TWO.