by F. M. Parker
Alice hastened to discover the story that her mother wanted to tell by use of her first few words. But then it might be more fun to turn those words into a story Alice wanted told. She spoke. “Until one web slips its reel.”
Martha was silent for a few seconds, then, “And that stops the spinner’s wheel.”
Alice was ready. “That made it so gosh darn real.”
Martha spoke, “Until the last rhyme line.”
“So what do we have when we put it all together?” Alice said.
“We have this,” Martha said.
Spider
I spin webs impossible fine,
Until one web slips its reel.
That stops the spinner’s wheel,
That made it so gosh darn real
Until the last rhyme line.
“That’s a foolish poem,” Alice said with a laugh.
“But a good way to start. Now let us try one with more feeling. ”Martha was looking at Benjamin’s watch lying on the table where she had placed it. The short silver chain was hanging over the edge and swinging to the movement of the ship.
“How about a poem about your father’s watch and measuring time? After all, we are only marking time until we reach America.”
“I like that. I can see him now pulling the watch from his vest pocket and looking down at it.”
“So can I. How about ’Father’s Little Clock’ for the title,” Martha said.
“That’s a good title,” Alice agreed. “You start.”
“All right, then. Father’s Little clock.”
Martha, For us the little clock ticks.
Alice, Ticking and tocking.
Martha, Clocking our future.
Alice, Clocking our past.
Martha, Timing our present.
Alice, The day and the night.
Martha, Beginning our A.M.
Alice, Ending our P.M.
Martha, For us the little clock ticks.
Alice, Ticking and tocking.
“Oh! Mother, I like that one.” Alice was pleased they had brought thoughts of her father into the poem game. She turned and hugged her mother very tightly.
“I do too. I’ll write it in my notebook and keep it for just us two.”
*
Alice lay on the bed in the cabin and pressed against her mother’s warm body. In this way she braced herself to prevent being rolled from the bed by the rise and plunge of the ship battling the enormous storm waves. She felt the Pannonia shudder each time its bow struck a wave head on. Then the ship would rise and right itself as the waves rolled beneath her keel and slid along her sides. Now and again the stern of the ship would lift clear of the water and Alice could hear the propeller whine with increasing speed, for then with its blades no longer restricted by the clutch of the sea water, its revolutions increased swiftly.
Her mother had slept, a miraculous accomplishment to Alice considering the constant motion of the ship. She had lain listening to Martha’s gentle breathing. Now she felt her mother stir as she came awake.
Martha rose and went to the porthole and looked out at the night, the storm clouds black and solid and pressing down heavily upon the heaving, wave tossed world.
She spoke over her shoulder to Alice. “It’s stopped raining. But the wind is still blowing hard and the waves are just as big.” She picked up the watch and checked the time. “It’s supper time and the dining room will be closing soon. Let’s go and eat?”
“I’ve got a headache and don’t feel like eating. Doesn’t the motion of the ship give you a headache?”
“Just a bit of one. Nothing serious.”
“Well it does me.”
“That’s too bad. But surely there’ll be something to eat that will appeal to you.”
“No, thanks. I’ll just wait for you here.”
“All right. It’s a long time until breakfast so I’ll bring you something back should you change your mind later.”
“If you want to.”
Martha climbed from the bed and pulled on her coat. “I won’t be gone long. Bolt the door after me.”
“Yes, mother.” Alice rose from the bed and stood by the door.
Martha stepped out through the doorway, gave Alice a last look, and turned and went off sliding her hand along the steel wall of the passageway to keep her balance upon the moving deck.
Alice closed the door and shoved the locking bolt into its socket. She again lay down upon the bed, closed her eyes and willed the headache to go away. Maybe she could eat a little. She drifted off to a light, shallow sleep as she waited for her mother to return.
*
A knock sounded on the cabin door. “Hello, this is Andrew. I didn’t see you or your mother at the dining room and have come to escort you there.”
Alice was pleased to hear Andrew’s voice. She rose from the bed and opened the door to Andrew’s smiling face.
“Mother already went to eat.”
“Then I’ll escort you.”
At the invitation, Alice felt her touch of seasickness lessen dramatically. “I would like that. If we hurry, maybe we can catch up with mother.”
She went into the passageway and locked arms with Andrew, and the solid feel of him gave her a comfort that here was a true friend. They hastened along the passageway with Andrew always able to anticipate the next movement of the deck and keep them steady on their feet. They climbed the stairs and came out onto the Pannonia’s open main deck. Immediately the storm winds roaring out of the darkness hit them, staggering them and flaring their coats. Andrew hurried them forward toward the stairs that led up to the dining room.
Alice checked the deck ahead. It was visible for a short distance ahead due to the meager illumination provided by the low wattage electric lights spaced at wide intervals. She felt a chill that wasn’t just from the cold spray that the wind tore from the sea and carried up and over the guardrail to strike her. She sensed something menacing in front of them. She shivered.
Andrew tightened his arm around Alice’s and struck out along the deck. Alice matched his stride.
They had progressed but half a hundred steps when ahead on the poorly lighted deck, Alice saw a woman struggling with a man. The man, dressed in black, had his arms around the woman and pinning her arms. He was dragging the woman toward an open hatchway. She was kicking and twisting wildly as she fought to break free.
“It’s mother,” Alice cried and raced toward Martha.
Andrew ran beside Alice. She heard his angry shout. “That bastard Stoddard has her.”
Before Alice and Andrew could reach Martha, the Pannonia struck a huge wave at an angle and rolled steeply to port. The ship’s movement flung Alice and Andrew against the steel side of the superstructure. A sharp pain ran through Alice’s right wrist as she broke her fall with her hand. She shoved erect just as Andrew reached out to help her regain her footing. They turned back in the direction of the fighting man and woman.
Stoddard and Martha had also been thrown against the metal bulkhead. The collision had broken them apart and Martha now backed hastily away from Stoddard. She seemed half stunned and did not move quickly enough and Stoddard lashed out with his fist and struck her and knocked her reeling. He leapt upon the dazed woman and seized her by the shoulders and shook her savagely. Still holding her, Stoddard pivoted and took three long steps to the safety railing. There he hoisted Martha up above the railing and outward over the black sea.
As Alice rushed at Stoddard, she saw him look into her mother’s face and shout something. Alice couldn’t make out the words, but their angry tone and the fierce expression on the man’s face showed his hate and intent to kill. With a last shout at Martha, he flung her into the darkness hiding the sea tens of feet below.
At that last instant as Stoddard released his hold on Martha, her hands shot up and grabbed him by the front of his jacket. As she fell into the blackness, she yanked him against the guardrail with the upper part of his body bent far out over the sea. He made a g
rab for the iron railing with the curved talons of his fingers reaching desperately for a hold to stop his fall. The fingers missed the railing and for a moment Stoddard hung there leaning over the water. Then the full weight of Martha’s falling body jerking downward on Stoddard tore his feet loose from the deck and they kicked wildly at the heavens as he up-ended over the guardrail. With legs and arms flailing, he vanished into the darkness and the sea with Martha.
Alice ran to the guardrail where Martha and Stoddard had vanished. “Mother! Mother!” she screamed in anguish down at the sea.
She hastily climbed upon the guardrail and leaning precariously far over, stared down at the sea. Nothing was visible in the blackness of the night except a now and again glimpse of the white cockscomb of one of the giant storm waves reaching up. Her beloved mother was down there in the brutal sea and enduring unimaginable agony. With that blood-chilling thought, Alice senses were flooded by the sea’s odor; its wetness, the tang of salt, the smell of rotting things that had died in that watery world.
“Mother! Mother! Mother!” Alice shrieked her torment down at the sea. The grief from the loss of her mother cramped her heart and it beat weakly against its cage of ribs. The world was a terrible place. How could something so awful happen to her mother? How could Alice ever survive without her loving, caring mother being near to hug her, to speak so very lovingly to her?
A whispering voice came to her. She leaned farther over the railing and cocked her head down at the water and listened more closely. The whispering rose and fell in volume and the tone was such that she couldn’t tell if it was that of a man or a woman. She felt a palpable force in the voice drawing her toward the darkness. What was that the voice said, come and join her mother? Yes, thought Alice, it would be the best to jump into the sea and die along with her mother and escape the cruel world. Would there be much pain as she died?
As she hesitated considering the rash act, the identity of the sound registered in her sorrow-filled mind. It was but the noise of the storm waves rising and sliding along the Pannonia’s steel hull. Alice hastily caught hold of the top bar of the guardrail with both hands and clutched it to her bosom. Her mother and father would be ashamed of her for surrendering so easily the life they had given her. She must guard that gift with all her strength.
Andrew, fearing Alice might jump or fall into the sea, sprang forward and caught her firmly around the waist. “Come down off there before you’re thrown into the water,” he said and pulled her off the guardrail and down onto the deck. He put his arms around her and pressed her quaking body against him.
“She’s dead,” Alice sobbed on Andrew’s shoulder. “My mother is dead. That horrible man threw her into the ocean.”
“By God, she took him into the drink with her,” Andrew said with awe.
“She’s gone! Gone! What’ll I do without her?”
“The ship is moving fast so let’s hurry and tell the captain. He’ll stop and look for your mother.”
“She can’t swim. Andrew, she can’t swim. She’ll drown.”
“Come on and let’s hurry and tell the captain,” Andrew locked arms with Alice and they rushed off toward the ship’s bridge.
*
Captain Adams was a broadly built man wearing a blue uniform. His .face hardened and his full, gray beard bristled as he listened intently to Andrew and Alice rapidly describe Stoddard’s murder of Martha and her last act of pulling him into the sea with her. He knew by the expressions on the faces of the two young people that they told the truth. Damn Stoddard to hell for his murderous deed.
The captain turned to Alice and caught her trembling hands in his huge ones. He lowered his bearded face and peered into her large eyes moist with unshed tears.
“I’m sorry for you loss, Alice,” he said speaking gently. “You expect me to turn the ship around and go back and look for your mother. I’d like to find her, and catch Stoddard. But the ship has traveled three, maybe four miles since she went overboard. With the sea rough and a strong beam wind striking the ship, it would be impossible to find the exact location where she might be. If by chance I could find the spot, I wouldn’t dare put men in small boats onto the water in a storm with twenty foot waves to look for her.”
Upon hearing the captain’s words there would be no search, Alice knew he was pronouncing the certainty of her mother’s death. Though she knew it was unfair, she was angry at the captain for not trying to find her mother. Her eyes pooled with tears and sobs strained to break from her throat. She pulled her hands free of the captain’s and wiped her tears away, and fought back the new ones welling up.
“Do you have relatives in New York, or anyplace in America?”
Alice thought quickly. What would they do with an orphan in the strange city? Put her in an orphan’s home? Not that. Never. “I have an uncle in New York.”
“Will he let you stay with him?”
“I’ve never seen him. But I’m his niece so I don’t know why he wouldn’t let me.”
“I would think so too,” said the captain.
“What’s his name?”
“Harold Tyler.” Alice replied using the name of a neighbor in Terryville.
“Do you have his address?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” said the captain. He spoke to Andrew. “Mr. Townsend, move Alice’s possession to one of the vacant first class cabins nearest the bridge. Then find the assistant purser and tell him to have one of the senior maids stay with Alice during the night and until we enter New York harbor tomorrow. Now see that she gets safely back to her cabin.” The captain gave Andrew an intent look that told him to be diligent with his duties.
“Yes, sir,” Andrew acknowledged the orders.
Andrew held out his arm to Alice. She took hold of it and they left the bridge together.
*
Alice lay in the black night on one of the two beds in the first class cabin on the upper deck of the Pannonia. She held her mother’s book of poems with her father’s picture inside it, and her father’s watch pressed tightly to her breast. They were all she had left of her beloved parents. She would keep them with her always. She stroked the cover of the poem book and gripped the watch and spoke into the darkness, “Oh, mother, oh, father, I feel so terribly lonely without you.”
Alice shivered as the last view of her mother’s death came again. Her white hands gripping Stoddard’s black jacket as she pulled him over the guardrail and down into the darkness with her.
Alice had always thought there was order and predictability in the world for her earlier life had led to that conclusion. That ordered life with her parents was gone forever, torn from her by their deaths.
She knew now that the world held murderous people, and deadly events that nobody could control. Even someone as powerful as the captain of the huge ocean going Pannonia, had been made weak and helpless to rescue her mother by the incalculable power of the sea and wind
She felt overwhelmed by the knowledge of the limitation of men and women to control their destiny. Had her parents known how fragile life was? They had given her no sign that they did. Still they must have recognized this truth and simply forged ahead showing no fear.
Alice must not allow her deep grief for her parents to make her weak. She, like they, must use her strength and courage to forge a path through the unknowable world that lay ahead of her.
*
The night spent itself with Alice unable to sleep and sitting in a chair in the cabin and staring out into the blackness lying on the sea. In the wee hours of morning darkness, the Pannonia steaming at full speed escaped from the storm with its winds and a black sky studded with a million stars unrolled across the heavens. With the winds gone, the tall waves weakened and the ship rode more smoothly. The sun hurrying westward, overtook the Pannonia and burned away the night with its brilliant stars and turned the sky pale blue.
A time later, Alice saw a long, thin fringe of dark gray become visible stretching across the ocean horizon far ahea
d. That must be the land of America, she thought. The sight of America caused her spirit to rise a little.
In the cabin near Alice, the maid that had been assigned to stay with her during the night, stirred in her blankets. After a few minutes, she rose from the bed and came up beside Alice and peered out the window.
“We’ll be entering the harbor soon and I should go see about my duties. Will you be all right by yourself?”
“I’ll be just fine. I’ll wait here until we reach America.”
“Then goodbye. I’m really sorry about your mother.”
“Thank you.” The maid left the cabin, quietly closing the door behind her.
Alice again faced the window and stared ahead as the Pannonia drove ahead with the two headlands of the harbor rose up out of the ocean and embracing the ship.
A time later, a knock sounded upon the door. Alice stepped to it and found Andrew with a worried expression upon his face.
“I thought you might want someone to talk with,” Andrew said and examining Alice’s face closely.
“Come and sit with me,” Alice said.
Andrew pulled a chair up beside Alice’s and sat down.
“Are you all right,” he asked with concern in his voice.
“Yes, thank you.” She was glad he had come to be with her.
“We should be docking in an hour or so.”
Alice laid her hand upon Andrew’s arm. “I don’t want to talk about that. I know nothing about you. Tell me about yourself. Where are you from?”
“I’m from Australia. My folks have a sheep station about fifty miles north of Sydney.”
“Then how in the world did you ever get here on the Pannonia?”
“Three years ago we hit a bad drought and the grass didn’t grow and the sheep were starving. My parents had to sell most all of them, just kept a few for breeding when the rains would come again. My brother and I decided to leave home and earn money to send to them so they could hold onto the land for it’s their life. I got this job as steward on the Pannonia. My brother got a job in Sydney. We’ve send every penny of our money that we don’t need to live on home to them. But now they’ve written me that the drought has ended. The Pannonia is sailing next to Sydney and I’ll get off there and go home. I’ve really missed them these past years and will be glad to see them again.”
