by Jen Bryant
I don’t know what to say.
So I look instead
across the hall, over his bed,
at the poster of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
who’s exactly the kind of person, every morning,
a kid should wake up to.
I’ve had it starred on my calendar since December.
Every year at the high school, the town
puts on a big July Fourth fireworks show.
Everyone goes.
And because it’s one of the few family
traditions we’ve kept since Mom
left, even Princess Denise
doesn’t complain.
We get there an hour early, about eight,
and are greeted at the gate by a
small group of anti-war
demonstrators
waving signs that say: War Makes Men Dead!
and Get Them Out—NOW! I know Dad
is not for the war, but he is for
keeping his
full-time job at Glassboro State; he tries to
appear neutral in public so he doesn’t
get into trouble with the college
administration.
Denise and Harry hang out with the protestors,
which makes me think for the first time
about Harry: he’s twenty and not
a college guy,
so why, I wonder, hasn’t he got drafted yet? We get
settled on our blanket in the middle of
the football field and buy
some sparklers
from the concession stand. Harry and Denise
come back and spread their tie-dyed sheet
next to us. Harry knows that Dad
lives in his own world
and that Denise doesn’t care a lick if Harry’s nice
to me or not. So I’m surprised when he
offers me some popcorn and a swig
of his Coke,
then asks what I’ve been up to since school’s been done.
I dodge the question: “How come you’re not
fighting in Vietnam?” I ask. Denise
hears and starts
to curse at me, but Harry holds up his hand. “I don’t mind, Dee,”
he says to her, and then to me: “I’m color-blind, Lyza.
Turns out that those of us who can’t tell
red from green
don’t have to kill other young men who can—or at least,
not yet.” I ask him if he heard about Dixon.
“Yeah, I did—he doesn’t like this
war any more
than me, but he doesn’t want to run off to Canada,
either, to get out of being drafted.” Harry
shakes his head. “The whole
thing stinks. …”
Carolann’s family arrives. They set their chairs
and blankets next to us, and as we’re
twirling sparklers and watching
the first rockets
and pinwheels go off, I wonder: What must they look like
through Harry’s color-blind eyes? And what would
he see inside my kaleidoscope?
Then I think maybe …
if I say a special prayer tonight, God might make
Dixon color-blind just long enough
to keep him home
from Vietnam.
Rockets flare; I see faces of neighbors that Mom
knows, too. I imagine her in some new park
watching fireworks like she used to
watch them here with us.
July Fourth was one of her favorite holidays. “Hooray
for parades, fireworks, and nothing but
hot dogs to cook,” she’d say.
Now, when I
think of her twirling a patriotic pinwheel in some other
field in some other town (maybe even with
some other family), I wonder if she’s
remembering me, too.
“I got us a ride … over to Brigantine!”
This is Malcolm’s out-of-breath announcement
as I open the front door
to let out the smoke from the meat loaf
that Denise is trying to bake.
“What’s on fire?” he asks, still gasping.
“Nothing—that’s just Denise trying to make
us dinner….”
We sit on the front-porch step.
“What do you mean,” I ask,
“about the ride to Brigantine?”
“It’s with Dixon. He’s got to go over near there
for his physical with the Army doc. He says we
can come, too. Tomorrow, ten o’clock.”
We run across the street to tell Carolann,
whom we find in the backyard
being chased by the twins and their fully loaded
squirt guns.
“Tomorrow? Does it have to be tomorrow?” she asks us,
jogging by. “I can’t. I promised my mother
I’d watch my brothers
while she’s in Millville with my aunt.”
Malcolm and I each grab a twin.
While they squirm and squeal, the three of us
argue a little over whether we should go anyway,
or wait. But even Carolann understands
there may not be another ride to Brigantine for a very long time.
“Plus Dixon doesn’t care why we want to go,”
Malcolm reasons. “But if we ask someone’s father
or mother to take us, they’ll want to know.”
Carolann gives in. “OK, go ahead without me.
But swear you’ll tell me everything
as soon as you get back….”
We swear on two Nancy Drew mysteries,
because that’s what she has handy
and because, really,
Carolann takes them just as seriously.
I call Information to get the location
of the Historical Society in Brigantine.
The lady on the other end of the line
sounds a lot like my mother (but she isn’t),
so I keep asking her to repeat what she
says just so I can listen to her nice voice.
“Right by the lighthouse, honey … you know,
that’s where the tourists go the whole summer
season, so all you need to do when you get
here is look for that blasted beacon….”
I thank her and hang up. Tomorrow, that
brass key is definitely coming with me. I’ll bet
it will fit some door or drawer or cabinet
with some new clue in it. Now I have to
decide if I should take the maps with us
tomorrow or leave them home. Denise has
a habit of snooping through my room when
I’m gone; that’s a good reason to bring them.
But we can’t figure out this thing if they get
stolen, lost, or torn; that seems like a good reason
to leave them. I can’t decide. I flip a coin:
heads, I bring them along; tails, I don’t.
(It’s tails.) I stuff them in my bottom drawer,
beneath my underwear, but then I’m not
so sure Denise won’t go snooping there.
Hmmm. I decide to slide them behind
the schoolbooks on my shelf. I also write a
KEEP OUT sign, which I’ll tape to my
door frame tomorrow, right before I go.
I know a sign won’t begin to stop Denise—
but it might make her leave a little faster.
Part 4
It’s gonna be a long, hard drag, but we’ll
make it.
—Janis Joplin, American singer
I bounce
down
the steps
a little too eagerly when I see the Duprees’
light blue Chev
y pull up Malcolm holds
the car door open for me I slide into
the backseat suddenly remembering that today
won’t be such a good one for Dixon.
We arrive at 9:45,
read the little handwritten sign in the window:
OPEN MONDAY THRU SATURDAY, 10 TO 6.
SPECIAL SEA HORSE EXHIBIT JUNE 15–SEPT. 15.
We tell Dixon to go
so he doesn’t miss his physical.
After he leaves, we feed the resident seagulls
a sleeve of saltines. We walk around the block,
come back at ten. An old man
with a long gray beard and skin as tan
as a coconut lets us in.
“You kids here for the sea horses?” he asks.
As usual when we meet someone new, someone who’s
white, Malcolm hangs back, waiting to see
how the stranger will react.
The old man, whose suntan makes him
almost as dark as Malcolm, seems completely at ease.
His round cheeks and eyebrows thick as dune grass
remind me of Santa Claus. On one strap
of his overalls, there’s a tag:
CHARLIE TUCKER, CURATOR.
He’s fine, my look tells Malcolm, who moves
cautiously
away from the door.
“No, sir,” I answer Mr. Tucker. “We’re here to do
research.” I hand him the slip of paper
on which I copied
the drawer, file, and document numbers
from the back of Gramps’ envelope.
“Can you help us find this?”
Mr. Tucker’s dune-grass eyebrows rise up together.
He strokes his beard with his left hand,
holds the paper under the nearest light
with his right. “Well … hmmm … this one’s
upstairs … one of our oldest collections…
doesn’t get looked at much … I’ve only had
one man
ask for it these past several years….”
He looks up again at our faces. He’s deciding.
Malcolm’s foot is jittering. My stomach’s fluttering.
Why didn’t I think about this? What if
he doesn’t let us see whatever it is
those numbers stand for?
“My father teaches at Glassboro State!” I blurt out,
hoping this might help.
Mr. Tucker seems interested. “He teach history?”
Now I have to lie.
But I decide this time it might be worth it.
I cross my fingers behind my back.
“Yep,” I tell him. “He’s home sick in bed,
so he sent us instead.”
Now Malcolm’s eyebrows, which are thin and straight
as toothbrush bristles,
rise up together. Mr. Tucker, however,
is convinced. “Come along, then,” he says,
unlocking the dead-bolted door,
leading us up the staircase to the second floor.
The second floor is dark. It has a row
of padlocked cabinets and two long tables
with reading lamps propped on top.
Mr. Tucker unlocks one of the cabinets,
takes out a brown leather-bound notebook,
hands us each a ballpoint pen. “You gotta sign
to look at the documents,” he tells us as he
switches on our light. “These are the property
of the Historical Society—rules say I have to
keep track of who reads them and when.”
Now both of Malcolm’s feet are jittery, and my
stomach has moved up into my throat. We
exchange worried looks. What are you
getting me into? is what his look says. Mine says:
Was my gramps doing something crazy …
or, even worse, something illegal? Is that
the real reason he wanted me to keep it secret?
We both sign the book, give it back to Mr. Tucker.
Ready or not, we are about to find out.
Mr. Tucker opens another locked cabinet.
I finger the key in my own pocket,
wondering if it might fit any of the other
locked drawers up here. Meanwhile, Mr. Tucker
brings a thick black binder over
to the table, opens it to a yellow divider
that’s marked in red pen: Ships’ Logs, 1680–1700.
He flips through the plastic page covers,
stops at a certain spot, and slides the whole binder
in front of Malcolm and me.
“I’ll be right there,” he says, pointing to a chair
on the other side of the room. “Rules also say
I got to stay
whenever these files are open. And remember,
use a pencil for any notes you take—
no pens allowed.”
We watch him walk over to the rocker,
pick up the newspaper on the cushion,
and make himself comfortable behind it.
“I thought your dad only taught math,” Malcolm whispers.
“He does,” I say. “But I didn’t think Pythagoras
would get us too far with Mr. Tucker.
“Besides,” I start to say, “this might be our only—”
“Sweet Jesus!” Malcolm whispers, tugging
on my T-shirt sleeve and pointing
to the date at the top
and the name at the bottom
of the ship’s-log entry
on the plastic-covered page:
June 3, 1699
Captain William Kidd
The ride back to
Willowbank takes
a lot longer. No one
talks. No one seems
to breathe. Dixon
passed his physical;
he reports for duty
next week. Malcolm
rocks his knees back
and forth, and my
stomach growls so
loud, Dixon turns
the radio up just
to drown it out.
I reach into my
pocket, feel around
for the piece of
notebook paper
on which I copied,
word for word,
exactly what
Captain Kidd, who
might be the most
famous pirate ever,
said in his ship’s log
on June 3rd,
more than two hundred
fifty years ago.
When we stop
along Route Nine
for gas and snacks,
I read the headline
on the papers stacked
beside the station:
Casualties Increase
as Johnson Moves
to Boost American
Troops. Before Dixon
and Malcolm come
back outside, I slide
the papers behind
the air pump
on which someone
has drawn a green
peace sign and
written underneath:
HONK IF YOU
LOVE JANIS.
That night, we meet again in my room.
Denise is at the diner,
Dad’s describing right triangles
to young men who have suddenly discovered
that going to college is one way to stay
out of Vietnam.
After I tell Carolann the details
of our trip to Brigantine, Malcolm reads out loud
every word
I copied from the pirate captain’s log:
June 3, 1699:
We are being pursued by a hostile vessel, most
probably of the Royal Navy. It appears that my
former identity as a loyal servant of Her Majesty
has been replaced by that of “Outlaw.” So be it. The
St. Antonio can outrun and outmaneuver almost
any ship. But there is the problem, should bad luck
or poor weather befall us and prevent our escape, of
the chest. This I will put to the crew, who must
decide quickly if we are to anchor and go ashore
unnoticed.
Captain William Kidd
June 4, 1699:
We have sailed into the Great Bay, located about fifty miles up the coast from the southernmost tip of the New Jersey Colony. Our ship is hid well, though not blocked from the open sea, should we need to make our escape. The crew, after much argument, has voted: First Mate Timothy Jones and I will together take a small boat and the chest and row several miles up the river that empties into this bay. At a point mutually agreed upon, we shall land the boat, bury the chest, mark its placement on paper, and return to the St. Antonio. After we lose our pursuers, we shall come back with a few more members of our crew and recover the treasure.
Captain William Kidd
June 6, 1699:
These past two days have tested me and my men in ways I could not have imagined. At first, our decision to hide the spoils of our latest raid, so as not to let them fall into enemy hands should we be overtaken, seemed prudent. At sunrise, Mate Jones and I rowed upriver for several miles in search of a suitable place to bury the booty. Then, just beyond a slight leftward bend in the river, our rowboat struck, with much force, a submerged tree, which immediately ripped a large hole in her hull. Mate Jones and I tried to keep the chest afloat as we swam for the riverbank, but of course it was no use. The river was swollen from recent rains, and we were forced to swim for our lives while the chest sank. Once we were safely ashore, however, Jones began accusing me of planning this accident. We argued; he drew his knife, intending to kill me, so as to make himself captain as well as the only living soul to know the location of the treasure. I was able to stop him only by stabbing him in the heart with his own weapon. He died straightaway. I dragged Jones’s corpse into the woods, covered it with leaves, and returned to the river, so I could try to mark in my memory where the chest went down. Then I walked back to the ship.
