“I almost took a bath,” he said, as a cracking sound was heard.
The forward mast broke free, but then the schooner righted itself, its bow rising up a few degrees as the tide, now rushing harder, began to push them south, presumably out to sea at a moderate pace for several minutes. Soon though, buffeted by opposing waves, they began to lose momentum and slowed. The stern of the boat now sat stable, though very low in the water. Waves lapped over the bow, but the craft had found a sort of equilibrium, bobbing in the slowly rocking water.
“Is that it?” Frank asked.
“We must be halfway to South America by now,” Albert said.
“Albert, we can’t be that far out,” Will said. “We were stuck in the trees before. Near home.”
“Look up there,” Frank said, pointing.
The moon appeared for an instant between the racing clouds. This seemed to buoy Albert, but then the rain started up again, first rippling in snake-like trails over the water, then, the skies opened again, pouring down upon them as it had done before. Frank grunted and tried to stand up but fell back down. Exhausted, angry, he found his balance and raised his hands above his head like an orchestra conductor.
“It’s past midnight,” he yelled belligerently. “It’s Sunday!”
Will scooted toward Albert, rubbing the boy’s arms and shoulders. His shivering slowed as they watched Frank yell at the sky. Upright, but unsteady on the inclined deck, Frank continued his angry diatribe directed at the clouds. “No more!” he yelled. “It’s tomorrow, already.”
Albert adjusted his bandage and looked up at Frank.
“Old Boreas,” Albert said to Will. “He still ain’t listening.”
“Let him go on,” Will said to Albert.
Frank’s voice carried over the water, gliding over the waves.
The rain finally lessened to a drizzle, then stopped altogether. Frank remained silent for a moment, surprised.
“Damn right,” he said, and fell back down with his friends, his work done.
Albert glanced at Will and shifted his weight. He looked at Frank, impressed. Will smiled. Another half hour passed with Frank mumbling to himself, Albert shivering, and Will checking on how low the boat was sitting in the water.
Albert fell asleep first, then Frank. Sleep wouldn’t come to Will because he knew what his friends didn’t: slowly, but surely, the John S. Ames was sinking.
15
ARGONAUTS
The horizon still admitted no suggestion of dawn when Albert nudged Frank awake. They were rolling in heavier, undulating swells, or maybe it just felt that way because they were so low in the water. There seemed to be something apologetic in the movement of the water now. The choppiness that had carried them out into the Gulf had smoothed out under them. Will, still awake, had watched Albert stir, then get up and lean over the side without saying anything.
“Frank.”
“I’m cold, Albert” Frank said. “Just get some sleep.”
“I am, only look down there, Frank. In the water.”
“Go back to sleep,” Frank said.
“Frank, I think there’s people down there. There’re lights down there.”
Will remained still, but a slow shiver threaded his spine. Frank stood up now and moved to the side still tethered loosely, as he had been since before they broke loose from the trees.
“Look. Under the waves,” Albert said curiously to Frank. “Are they angels?” A long peal of distant thunder rolled far away, perhaps inland, if there was still such a place. “There. Down there, see the orange, in the light,” Albert said pointing. “See?”
“What do you make of that?” Frank asked. Albert’s lips were blue, but he stopped trembling as he had been all night. “What is it?”
“A foretaste of glory divine.”
Albert untied himself from the mast. Frank’s knots were not as secure as Will’s.
“Frank. It’s our people down there. Under the waves and all around. It’s getting brighter. Heavenly host.”
Frank untied himself too. He joined Albert, looking over the edge.
“Oh my,” Frank said, leaning farther over. He ran his hand across the surface of the water and laughed. “How can it be like that down there?”
“I don’t know, but there’s Sister Genevieve. Sister Raphael,” Albert recited the names in a sort of melody. A warm smile spread across his face. “Peter Faulkie and the little girl with the lisp. Look, Sister Camillus. Frank, see ‘em?”
“Frank,” Will said with intensity, sitting up. “How’d Albert get loose. Tie him off.”
“Will, come see this,” Frank said. “There’s the Boudreaux’s. Eugene Grube and his little brother.”
“Frank,” Will said.
Will could tell, even from looking at his back, that Frank wasn’t listening. The long poem Miss Thorne made them read in school last spring came into Will’s mind. Odysseus on the wine-dark sea. Homer. He retrieved the loose clothesline and slipped it through one of Albert’s belt loops then reeved it through a rusty fixture of the John S. Ames.
“Frank,” Will said again, his voice high and tense. “Are you with me?”
Frank was not with him, but drawn by something Siren-like from under the waves.
“Fair flowers of paradise extend their fragrance ever sweet,” Albert half sung. “The world is dressed in green and gold. The mansions, glorious. White shores. Yonder fair green country.”
“Will, you have to see this,” Frank said, leaning over still more, searching beneath the slowly rolling water. “Look at those lights. Michael and Anastasia Zarkerey. Her hair has gotten so long, Will.”
“No.”
“Why do we tarry?” Albert asked, convening with Frank on the wonder of it all, reciting names together in a common narrative.
“There’s the train. Do you see the trolleys?” Frank asked Albert.
“Frank, stay in the boat,” Will commanded. Frank’s face was near the water.
“The trolleys,” Albert repeated.
“Frank, don’t,” Will said.
“Sister Elizabeth’s going into town,” Albert said. “Will, the oleanders along Broadway, they’re raining down along the trolley’s curving path. Come look. Heavenly fields, daylight serene.” Albert was now secure but had swung his legs over the side. He put his feet in the water. “It’s morning, Will. Blissful. Blissful beyond compare.”
Frank’s face was so close to the surface now that seawater splashed in his eyes. Will continued working fast, but the clothesline, once run through a shackle on the rigging, wouldn’t reach Frank.
“The girls,” Frank said. “The girls are going to the gardens, Will. All the children are following. The sky is blue. Everyone’s there.”
“Home of my soul,” Albert said edging farther out. “Home of my soul.”
“The sky’s not blue,” Will said.
“Home of my soul,” Frank repeated, seconding all of Albert’s observations now. “Look at the Pagoda. The bath houses on the beach. The Murdoch too.” Will wanted to look down in the water but didn’t dare. He stared ahead, but this handicap hampered his subjugation of Frank. “There’s really people down there, Will,” Frank said firmly. “Can’t you see them?”
Will was losing. He glanced out over Frank’s shoulder and across the water, still refusing to look down. The ocean swelled with bulging waves and long slow ripples. The sharp edges with marbled tips had disappeared, replaced by a becalmed, almost glassy rolling finish.
Keeping one hand on Frank’s shoulder, Will wrapped his other around Frank’s waist securely. A few inches taller than Frank, he could see over him. He glanced down, his heart beating hard. He shuddered and looked away.
“It must be warm down there,” Albert said.
“It must. It’s the day the seasons change,” Frank answered.
&nb
sp; “Like cotton bathed in sunlight,” Albert said.
Will wanted to join them. He resented his part. Safety. Warmth. Home. A sheltering fold. He didn’t want to be against these things, but they were all fatal beliefs right now. Frank and Albert were lost in echoes.
“Look now, Albert,” Frank said. “There they go.”
“Back home, safely led,” Albert agreed. “The sisters are tucking the children in, Will. Their clothes, starched with salt air, folded beside their beds.”
“They’re waiting for us,” Frank said. Will tightened his grip on his friend. “They’re calling us. They’re falling asleep.”
“Time is fleeting,” Albert added. Then his eyes suddenly grew wide.
“Maggie.”
16
WELL, SOMEWHERE
Will released Frank and moved between Albert and the water. Albert now recognized he’d been tied off and struggled to escape.
“My sister’s down there!”
“I don’t care.”
Will grabbed him by the shoulders with both hands.
“Let me go,” he pleaded. “Please just let me go. She’s down there!”
Albert pushed Will with surprising strength and Will fell backwards over the side and into the water.
“We’ll come back, Will,” Frank said.
Albert was getting loose again. Will was underwater, incensed.
“Save Maggie,” Albert said as he worked the complex knot Will had tied.
Will surfaced.
“Frank, stop him. He’ll drown!” Will called out.
Frank would not obey. Instead, he helped Albert with the knot.
Albert leapt over Will and into the water.
Before going for Albert, Will looked back at Frank. The severity of his expression may have kept Frank in place had he been looking, but he wasn’t. He was about to leap in too, but instead paused a fraction of a second to see what would happen to Albert.
Albert was sinking. Campbells, Frank recalled, can’t swim. The boy descended surely, falling away, quickly disappearing into the depths.
Will hated to be under the water again. It was pitch black. His eyes stung and he had lost sight of Albert’s body already. He dove deep and swung his long arms, but had to come up for air. Breaking the surface, he saw Frank again looking over the side, pointing to a spot in the water.
“Stay!” Will yelled.
Frank shook his head and Will went down again as deep as he could go through the inky water. As far as his lungs could take him, fifteen feet below the surface, he had to make a decision. He plowed lower and the back of his hand hit something. He clenched it, pulled it close, guessed which way was up and began kicking. Albert was dead weight. Will gulped. Seawater brined his stomach. He’d been told once that drowning was peaceful. This was the opposite. The water was like wet clay. Pushing forward, upward, he sensed no progress, but saw a ripple of murky color above and kicked with all the strength he had left. He emerged twenty feet from the boat, Frank dove in and was there straight away, taking Albert’s body. Will’s vision was fuzzy and darkening, closing at the edges.
Frank pulled Albert up and over the edge of the boat and onto the deck and went back for Will, still bobbing in the water. Frank pulled him up and loaded him in.
Albert’s eyes were closed. He was blue; his limbs limp; his face comprehensive in its fixedness. Frank moved over to Albert, praying for his survival. He shook the smaller boy, slapped him, unsure of other means to revive him.
“What do I do?” Frank cried.
“Stick your finger down his throat,” Will prescribed, gasping. “Turn him on his side.”
Albert vomited great quantities of saltwater, convulsing back to life. Will was dripping, freezing. Frank was repeating Albert’s name and that of Jesus.
“They said,” Albert gulped, still coughing up the sea. “They said. . .”
Will moved to Frank, who was shaking, and took Albert from him, holding the younger boy closely. “Don’t talk. Just rest. Just rest.”
“Sorry,” Frank said to both of them. “I’m so sorry.”
Albert, leaning back into Will, looked up into the sky, wheezing. Thinning clouds sped by. Frank looked up too, seeing hopeful pinpoints above. He reached his hand over Will’s shoulder and leaned his head in, connecting all three of them.
“Stars,” Albert said in a high voice, hoarsely. Finding he couldn’t raise his hand to point upwards, Albert lifted it barely and let it fall back. A pleasant look of melancholy possessed his face. “They said. They said we couldn’t go. We couldn’t go with them.”
“No?”
“No. They said we have to stay.”
Frank looked across the ocean, imagining, hoping for a hint of dawn, then looked down into the water. Whatever had been there before, the waves were now shadowed darkly. Lightless. “I guess we ran them off,” he said.
“No,” Albert said. “We just can’t see them anymore. They’re still there.” He went into a coughing fit again before he could go on. “Well, somewhere. Maybe up there,” he added, trying to lift his arm again up into the vastness above. “More real,” he coughed some more. “More real than real.”
Will patted Albert’s head and reached for Frank.
“But wherever,” Albert said, turning to Frank. “Maggie’s going to be happy.”
Frank looked down at him as Will cradled the younger boy against his loneliness.
“It’s almost all outside there. She loves outside.”
17
A QUESTION OF GRACE OR CHANCE
Soon, Will could distinguish objects in the moon’s distant reflection. The rain stopped completely. Albert had fallen asleep next to Frank, mumbling Maggie’s name.
“Frank,” Will asked. “What was that all about?” Frank looked at him cocking his head sideways like a dog hearing a sound no one else can. “The sisters. The Pagoda, the trolleys.”
Frank looked over his shoulder at him. “You didn’t see it?”
“I was the one who got hit on the head. Not you. There wasn’t anything down there.”
“Albert saw it too. How do you account for that?”
Will shrugged.
“Maybe it wasn’t real like we think of real, but I saw it. We both did.”
Will breathed in the cold air and exhaled like none of it mattered. He noticed he couldn’t see his breath anymore as he had most of the night.
“Suit yourself,” Will said.
The seawater moved them side to side in a lullaby motion. A spate of stars could be seen above.
Frank shook his head. Sometimes Will acted so sure of himself that Frank knew that he wasn’t, but there was no point fighting about the miraculous that was evident, so he dropped it.
“I don’t know if I can make it for another hour, Will. How do we know which way is in and which way is out? What are we going to do?”
Will looked back and exhaled. His resentments washed out into a respectful fondness that had something to do with Frank’s expression of forbearance and the idea of grace the sisters always talked about.
“It’s almost morning. Things will look different then. The sun will tell us,” Will said. “If we were stuck in a grove of trees before, like I told Albert, we can’t be far out.” He moved his sore neck experimentally and looked at his friend anew. Frank’s head and shoulders, his legs and feet, every part of his body was covered with young bruises and fresh cuts. Will imagined his own body looked the same. He knew he had a gash on his forehead and his eyes felt swollen. One of his legs had a good rip in it. He wanted to put his arms around Frank because they were both still shivering, but he knew that would hurt them both too much.
He envied Albert’s ability to sleep, though he feared Albert had been concussed and that perhaps he should stay awake. Even so, Will hadn’t the heart or energy to wake him. He deci
ded instead to just watch him closely. He couldn’t fix everything. The peculiar atmospherics that purported to be the stillness after the storm were oppressive and called a new weight into his chest. There was a sort of creeping panic in the air as they waited for the dawn. The thought of what came next began to burrow inside him like a threaded screw. He suspected that whatever this forming emotion was, it would be disclosed further to him in the daylight, and with greater severity. It might be unbearable, driving all the way through him. He also had to acknowledge that they hadn’t survived yet. Something else could always happen. These cyclones could turn. These typhoons never put a cap on what was enough. They didn’t obey rules. Storms could come back, but it seemed surprisingly easier for Will to think of this than the other. Albert had water demons and Frank, his evil Slavic fin-folk. Then there were the Sirens, or whatever they were that’d nearly drowned poor Albert. Will thought of Miss Thorne, and how that Homer fellow she was so fond of would put it: it was the Scylla on one hand and the Charybdis on the other. On one side, he and his friends had seemingly made it through the night. They remained in jeopardy, at least until dawn and most likely beyond that, but he also felt the fear of the prospect of tomorrow and of all the following tomorrows. Will was afraid of what it would feel like when the sun came up.
The black sea trundled heavily back and forth and up and down, and the clouds elided together as this slow-moving anxiety washed over him, showing him what his life might look like in the daylight. He’d have to remember. He’d have to second-guess. It would recede away maybe, but he suspected would always come back like a tide. He felt in his throat the perverse magnetism of needing to sort it all out. The coming emptiness was pressing in at him already. He reached up and covered his ears, Albert-like, to keep everything in. Or out. He didn’t know which.
“What if the storm comes back?” Frank whispered. “What if we sink lower. Water’s about to come over the side already.”
The Mourning Wave Page 4
