Trouble

by Gary D. Schmidt

  Henry's mother dropped him off at Whittier Academy.

  American History, still studying the explorations of those True American Adventurers, Lewis and Clark.

  Language Arts, reading the "Prologue" to The Canterbury Tales, trying to remember the distinguishing characteristics of every pilgrim—and there were a bunch.

  Life Science, a black-and-white film on the migration patterns of sea turtles.

  Sea turtles!

  Government, on how congressional districts are drawn up within states.

  "You know, Sanborn," Henry said at lunch, "do you ever have the feeling that nothing we do here really matters?"

  Sanborn took a bite out of his sandwich. It was grilled chicken. Henry watched it hungrily. "You just figured this out?" said Sanborn.

  "No, I mean really, really doesn't matter."

  Sanborn took another bite of his grilled-chicken sandwich. Henry fingered his lettuce-and-bologna sandwich.

  "Don't get all cosmic, Henry. That gets really weird really quick. Besides, it does matter. Did you know that grilled chicken tastes a whole lot better than bologna?"

  "So you're a better person because you know about the migration patterns of sea turtles."

  "If Lewis and Clark hadn't discovered whatever it was they discovered ... I don't know, we'd all be living on the East Coast or something. And if The Canterbury Tales hadn't been written, there would be one less good story in the world—and don't make that face. You know it was good—even if it is Delderfield reading it. And if sea turtles didn't migrate ..."

  "Yeah, what if the sea turtles didn't migrate?"

  "Then the world would be a less beautiful place, and that would matter. Especially to the sea turtles." Sanborn finished his grilled-chicken sandwich and licked the mayonnaise off his fingers.

  "Especially to the sea turtles?"

  Sanborn nodded. "Especially to the sea turtles."

  "You are a piece of work, you know that, Sanborn?"

  Sanborn stood and held his arms wide open. "The finest craftsmanship around," he said.

  Henry chucked the rest of his bologna sandwich at him, and got hollered at first by Sanborn and then by cranky Coach Santori—who was the cafeteria monitor that day (which explained why he was cranky)—and then by Sanborn again.

  When he got home that afternoon after crew practice—and after only one holler from perfect coxswain Brandon Sheringham, and after running the eight barefoot laps ordered by Coach Santori because he threw food in the cafeteria—the green sea was wild. Henry went down to tie up his kayak even higher—Black Dog took one look at the waves and wouldn't come down to the cove with him. Henry was amazed to see how greedy the sea was, pulling at the sand as if it would suck out the whole of Cape Ann.

  All the late afternoon, the wind grew stronger, wailing around the cornices of the house, gusting so fiercely that the great oak beams shuddered, remembering what a storm could do. Black Dog, curled up tightly in her quilt, watched the casement window with wide eyes, whining when the wind shrieked high, and then raising her head when the first bands of rain blew down, so thick and solid that Henry could not tell if the darkening day was the coming night or the coming storm.

  At supper—Black Dog huddled beneath the dining room table—Henry's mother decided not to go in to the hospital to visit Franklin. Instead, she and Henry went to watch the storm come in. But it was hailing now, and the ice beat at their faces, so it was hard to see. When Henry's mother shone a flashlight past the black boulders, it seemed as if the entire cove had collapsed and the waves were rolling across what had once been sand. But with the dark and the hail and the shrieking wind, it was hard to be sure.

  They did not stay out long.

  Black Dog was waiting for them in the kitchen, her tail below her belly and her ears looking as if someone had pulled them down and tied them beneath her chin. She yelped when the power flickered, and yelped again when it went off entirely.

  Never before had Henry seen the house absolutely darkened.

  He and his parents found candles and lit them. They called up to Louisa, who called back that she was fine and they could leave her alone. So they went and sat in the north parlor. The rain flooded the windows, falling like drapes. The wind was loud enough that they had to shout at each other, and the water dashed so hard against the house that Henry began to wonder if it was the waves, and not just the rain, that were reaching up the ledges.

  They tried to play Scrabble, which is hard to do by candlelight, and which no one except Henry's mother and Franklin liked to play—his mother because she was so good at it, Franklin because he could be aggressive at anything.

  "D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R," she spelled out for them, setting down each tile precisely. "And on a triple word score."

  Henry's father sighed.

  Black Dog whined.

  Henry held one of his tiles up to the candlelight and stared at it.

  A sudden silence; then the wind whipped around the eaves of the house and rushed down through the chimneys, moaning and howling as if it had lost its way.

  "That's enough for tonight," said Henry's mother. She took the tile from Henry's hand.

  Henry went upstairs with a candle to do his homework. Black Dog followed, flopping belly-up in front of him as they went down the hall—and even up the stairs—until finally Henry set the candle on the chinaware shelves and picked her up just so he could make some headway. He laid her down in her quilt—her legs got all scrambled in her eagerness to get covered—and he retrieved the candle. But when he sat down at his desk, Black Dog leaped from the bed and curled beside his feet—which he gladly snuggled beneath her warm body.

  He started in. But all the new shadows that the flickering candle called out from the corners of his room began to spook him, and it is hard to do pre-algebraic equations when you are spooked, even just a little. It's especially hard to do pre-algebraic equations when you are pretty sure that they matter even less than the "Prologue" to The Canterbury Tales—which he was supposed to be prepared to translate up to the lines "Now have I toold you shortly, in a clause,/ Th'estaat, th'array, the nombre, and eek the cause/ Why that assembled was this compaignye"—which, Henry told Black Dog, took a lot of guts to write, since Chaucer had written seven hundred lines before this one and there was nothing "shortly" about it.

  So Henry tried calling Sanborn—at least they could do the problems together—but the phones were out, too.

  Lightning, flashing full and fast across the sky. Thunder over the sea, louder than all the waves on the stones.

  Henry put his pencil down. He looked outside into the flooded darkness. "I guess we may as well get ready for bed," he said.

  Black Dog leaped from beneath the desk and jumped back onto her quilt. She pawed at it, then sprawled down into a heap.

  Henry changed into shorts and blew out the candle. But before he got into bed, he looked out the window again, and then went over to the glass doors and peered through. The rain was crashing onto the stone balcony, and past that there was nothing but rock and water for uncounted miles.

  He reached out his hand for the doorknob.

  Lightning again, turning all the glass white for a second. Black Dog whining in her quilt. Thunder, bellowing and licking its chops so loudly that Henry felt the vibrations in his bare feet.

  He let his hand drop. He shivered, then got into bed and pulled as much of the quilt as Black Dog would let him have over himself. He shivered again.

  Lying there, Henry wondered what would have happened to Chaucer's pilgrims heading to Canterbury in a storm like this one. And what would have happened to Lewis and Clark in the thunder and lightning? Would they have turned back and headed for shelter in St. Louis?

  And where do sea turtles go in a storm, so that they can keep their beautiful selves safe and away from Trouble?

  Lightning, and then thunder again. Very close.

  Henry got up. Black Dog raised her head and perked her ears high. Henry crossed the room, and with a jer
k he opened both glass doors and stepped out onto the stone balcony.

  It was even wilder than he had imagined, but warmer, too. The hail had stopped, but the rain beat against him so that in less than a moment he was completely wet. He held out his arms—which was not easy, so strong was the wind—and felt the entire planetary atmosphere pushing against the house, against him. He staggered. But even so, he stepped to the edge of the balcony and looked down. The waves, freighted with crashing tops, threw themselves against the rocks like suicides.

  And in the darkness and noise and space, Henry was all alone—until Black Dog came and gently stood beside him, leaning against his dripping legs.

  She whined only a little bit.

  Henry reached down and scratched her behind her immediately wet ears. Together, they watched the storm torment the night, and even when the hail came again with its piercing cold pricks, they watched, until finally Black Dog wasn't whining just a little bit. So they went back into Henry's room and closed the glass doors. Henry fetched a towel from his bathroom and dried off Black Dog—though not before she shook herself to spread most of the rain around the room—and then Henry dried himself off, too, even though he hadn't realized that he was down to his last towel and now it was sort of soggy and doggy.

  Henry and Black Dog slept well that night, lying close together, while the storm ground its teeth, and threw its tantrums, and snatched at anything that could move—including Henry's kayak, which it grabbed from its tie-up by the high rocks and sucked away from shore, thrashing it along the tops of the waves until it sank into a silence deep and still.

  By morning, the storm had passed and the sky had hued to an opal lavender. Black Dog, who had slept in a pretty damp quilt, was ready for the new day, and so was Henry—after he found a new towel and showered. He dried his hair out on the stone balcony, Black Dog sitting beside him. It seemed as if they were on a different planet. The sea was a spring blue, and the high rocks were drying in the morning sun. Seagulls flew everywhere, squawking and screeching over what the storm had dragged up from the ocean bed. The horizon curved with geometric purpose.

  Henry's mother was not in the kitchen when Henry and Black Dog got down. In fact, she didn't seem to be anywhere in the house. Henry went outside and looked in the carriage house—the BMW and Fiat were still parked there.

  He finally found her in the back gardens, on the path that led down to Salvage Cove. She stood, just looking, and when Henry and Black Dog came up, he could see why.

  Most of the beach within the cove was gone. Close in, the black boulders had been torn down into a jumble. Between them and the far end of the cove, only a small strip of sand remained.

  And at the far end lay uncovered the framing and decking of an old and ruined ship.

  The waves were still high, so Black Dog would not go down, but Henry and his mother clambered into the new landscape and across to the wreckage. Silt covered much of the ship's backbone and rib cage, but there was no mistaking the beams that jutted up out of the sand, warped and twisted around the collapsed deck planks. The prow had come loose and lay flat, and the stern work lay in ruin. But most of the ship was still pretty much in place. Inside the rib cage, barrel staves, strewn planks, and the stumps of two thick masts emerged from the sand, all covered by clumps of dark seaweed.

  Henry reached out to touch the end of one of the curved ribs. It was charred with fire. In fact, all of the ribs were charred. The decking was licked black along its edges.

  "Who knows how long this has been buried here," said Henry's mother, "and we never knew it."

  Henry stepped inside the rib cage—"Careful," said his mother, "there may be something sharp"—and he kicked at the sand as if to release the ship. But most of the sand was hard and solid, like sediment. It would take a whole lot more than kicking at it. So he decided to pull away some of the clinging seaweed from a board pegged along the ribs. But even this was slow work, since the wind had thrown the seaweed in armloads and tied it in knots. He pulled at it anyway, and when one big knot finally came loose, Henry glimpsed a metallic black beneath, and heard an iron clunk.

  "I think I've found something," he called, and his mother—and Black Dog, who couldn't stand being left alone above the cove—came over. Black Dog stuck her snout into the seaweed and sniffed cautiously, her back legs tense and ready to bolt if anything should turn up.

  Henry pulled off the remaining seaweed, and more and more of the metal began to show, rounding into curves, and then a ring of circles, and then a mostly decayed clasp that, at one time, must have opened and closed. Henry looked up and down the stout board. Clumps of seaweed had knotted themselves along its length, all at the same height, all clinging to the chains and clasps fastened deep into the plank.

  "Chains," said Henry. "This must have been the cargo hold. They would have tied up animals here, probably. Maybe cows to transport. Or sheep."

  His mother reached for the clasp and hefted it up; probably it was heavier than she had expected. "No," she said, "sheep would have been in pens. And for the cows, they would have used ropes, not these." Some of the iron flaked away in her fingers.

  Then, suddenly, she dropped the clasp she had been holding.

  Henry looked at the chain again. He looked at the size of the clasp, and thought about what it might go around, what it might hold in the dark and sunless hold of that ship.

  Black Dog backed away.

  Henry felt a tightening at his throat.

  He looked back up at his house. His father was standing at the library window, looking down at them. His hands were up to his face.

  She gave him a collection of Keats. In the autumn, you have to read Keats, she told him. And so he did, late at night, after his brother had gone to sleep. He hid Keats deep in his heart. "It sure must be almost the highest bliss of human-kind, when to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee," he whispered into the dark.

  But his father looked at him as if he knew. "Remember, you were Cambodian before you were American," he told him. His eyes were hard. And now, when they worked after school, his father turned to work with his brother—even on those jobs where he was too young.

  He worked alone. With Keats hidden in his heart. And her there as well.

  5

  MR. CHARLES EDWARD CHURCHILL, who was the Smiths' lawyer, recommended that the family not do anything about the ship until he had investigated the legal rights of ownership. Though the wreck was clearly within the boundaries of the Smiths' property, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts might have jurisdiction over finds of a historical nature that might render null the rights of individual ownership. (Mr. Churchill always talked like this.) There would most likely be local ordinances that would need to be consulted, and assuredly federal codes as well. So the Smiths, he insisted, should not advertise in any way information about the find until he had finished his research—though by the time that Mrs. Smith gave Henry this cautionary news, he had talked about it all over Whittier Academy, and Mr. DiSalva was so excited that he was already planning a Whittier field trip to Salvage Cove. The find, he pointed out, might even explain the cove's name.

  "We'll need some experts on early American shipping to help us," he said, and so it was probably his phone call to the Blythbury-by-the-Sea Historical Society that brought the society's president, Dr. Cavendish, and the society's corresponding secretary, Mrs. Lodge, and the society's librarian, Mrs. Templeton, out to the cove the very afternoon after the storm. Henry and Black Dog led them down—Henry held Black Dog's collar because Mrs. Templeton did not like dogs and could not understand why this particularly ugly and rambunctious one should not be in a cage—and though the members of the historical society were all unhappy about the steep angle of the descent, they gasped in awe and delight when they saw the ship's stark ribs. They pronounced themselves excited.

  Probably it was Mrs. Lodge who, as the society's corresponding secretary, called the Blythbury-by-the-Sea Chronicle after their visit. The next morning, the reporter from the
paper drove up just as Mrs. Smith was driving out of the carriage house to take Henry to Whittier. The reporter pulled up beside them, but Henry's mother was firm. No, he could not have an interview. No, he could not go down to the cove to take pictures. No, she had no comment to make, and would he please leave now, as he could see that they were very busy.

  "This wreck is a hugely important historical find," said the reporter. "Don't you think that you owe it to—"

  "No, I don't," said Mrs. Smith. "Haven't you intruded enough?" She rolled up her window, waited for the reporter to back out, and then she and Henry drove to school.

  But the picture of the ship that appeared on the front page of the Blythbury-by-the-Sea Chronicle the next day showed that the reporter didn't believe that he had intruded enough. "He obviously waited until we left, then came back and went down into the cove," said Henry's mother at dinner.

  "I suppose so," said Henry's father.

  "You didn't see anyone?"

  "Not a soul," said Henry's father.

  His mother sighed.

  Henry quietly ate his two fresh scrod fillets—which were fresh because the fish they came from had been swimming off Cape Ann while Henry had been in Language Arts that morning, trying to figure out why stupid Chaucer gave the stupid Squire some cruel locks. He usually ate four and sometimes five scrod fillets, but Henry's mother had left them out for just a minute, and Black Dog had smelled them, and so they were all on half-rations.

  "Wouldn't you have seen someone prowling around the property?" Henry's mother said.

  Henry's father did not answer.

  Henry's mother wondered aloud why Black Dog hadn't said anything, and what good was a dog if she couldn't chase Trouble away?

  Black Dog, happily filled with fresh scrod fillets, lay under the dining room table and did not answer.

  Mr. Charles Edward Churchill was not pleased when he saw the picture of the ship in the Blythbury-by-the-Sea Chronicle, and he drove over that night to express his disappointment that they had not heeded his advice and had even encouraged publicity—"We never encouraged publicity," said Henry's mother—and allowed a field trip! Mr. Churchill hoped that they would be more circumspect in the other matter that he had taken up on their behalf.