Surprise Stories

by Nick Niels Sanders

  “In the spring, the younger children were given the job of chasing the chickens out of the vegetable garden; older children collected the eggs and still older ones got to bottle feed the lambs. As the years went by, the girl learned to plant and tend the vegetable garden and to milk the sheep and goats.

  “In the summer, the younger children played but the older ones continued their chores collecting eggs, tending gardens and milking the animals.

  “In the fall was the harvest. The boys helped the men to get in grain, hay and straw as soon as they were strong enough to be of use. The girls and younger boys helped the women to harvest the grapes. One day, when most of the grapes were in, the men and older boys would go away to do things in the fields and the women would strip off their shifts and stomp the grapes in the large barrels until the grapes were liquid and the women were stained purple above their knees. The young girls all wanted to participate in stomping the grapes, mostly so that their legs could be stained purple too – once they were old enough, they realized it wasn’t as much fun as playing in mud and puddles. Every year there was a harvest festival, when everyone dressed up to meet with the other families for a big community supper at the church. Other than Sunday trips to the church, this was one of the few times each year that everyone in the family got to dress up.

  “The little girl did not feel poor. She and her family had as much as anyone else she knew. She was well fed. She got to play with the other girls and boys her age on her farm, who were all her brothers and sisters and cousins. Most of her clothing was shabby, patched and darned – and she learned early how to sew. She had Sunday clothes to wear to church. The rest of the time, she dressed in home-spun and home-made clothes – she had woolen sweaters and woolen tights, of hand-spun wool from their own sheep, knitted by her mother and grandmother and aunts, sometimes ones that had been handed down from older girls who outgrew them. When it was cold and the firewood was running low, they just put on more clothing to keep warm.

  “The little girl was very bright – she learned quickly and well. This meant that she was given more responsibilities around the home and around the farm. She went from milking animals to working with the milk; the family generally drank the goat milk and made the sheep’s milk into cheese. Her father sold most of the cheese at the Farmers’ Market. She was given more cooking responsibilities. And she went to school in Dijon.

  “In Dijon, she met children who had store-bought clothes and wore shoes every day. Her school had indoor plumbing, the rooms were never cold, and there were electric lights. The little girl quickly realized how poor she and her family were not to have these things. She studied hard, got very good grades and learned many things. When she finished at the Dijon school, she left home. One of the teachers at the school gave her a place to live and she found a job in Dijon. She worked as a shop girl, then as a cashier. Then a rich family hired her as a lady’s maid. This was a kind family, who got to know her, and after several years recommended her to the employment of another rich family in Paris. This new family in Paris spoke mostly English, though they knew French quite well, and the girl got to use the English she had learned at the school in Dijon. This new family thought she was very clever. After she had worked for them for several years, they recommended her to a visitor, an older English woman who was looking for a combination lady’s maid and companion. She hired the girl for that job. They spent some time in Paris and then in London, at the woman’s homes in those two cities. Then they began traveling.

  “The girl thought all her dreams had come true. She was rich – or at least she was in the employment of a very rich lady. She had nice clothes and she was seeing the world. Her life became more and more complicated. Sometimes she would wonder how her family was doing on the farm outside of Dijon, and think about whether she was really any better off now than she would have been if she had stayed home.

  “When she saw the Fijian dancers, she saw another group of people who were clinging to an old fashioned, simpler set of roots, much as her own family had done. She had many of the same concerns for them – were they actually any happier or better off than they would be if they embraced the modern culture? She is still thinking about that and still doesn’t have an answer.”

  Let’s Sing

  After Marcella’s story, there was some discussion about what it could mean, and a lot of sympathy with Marcella for the hard life she had had to lead. When this conversation began to flag, Jim pulled out his recorder and began to play. What he chose was Bach’s Ode to Joy, but he didn’t get far before people were asking if he knew all sorts of songs, ranging from childhood favorites (“The Itsy Bitsy Spider” was one) to folk tunes (“Home on the Range”) to popular rock songs. He admitted he could do little with the rock songs, but he could do a lot with child songs and with a lot of folk songs, if they all knew the words or the words were simple enough for everyone to learn quickly.

  He played “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” and almost everyone knew the words and sang along. “Let’s do it again now, without the recorder,” he suggested. He started them off and got them back together once, and paid attention to voices. Ron’s baritone he knew, and his own tenor, but that left ten other voices to fit together and to create a harmony for. James could sing bass, as could Ralph. Mark was a baritone and Paul a tenor. Among the women, it seemed that Maria, Marcella and Julia could probably sing soprano, and the other three were altos, although Michelle might have trouble with the high end of the alto range.

  Jim wanted to enhance the singing by adding harmonies, and the range of voices made that a natural undertaking, with four or five part harmony possible, just using the different voices. He rearranged where they were sitting so that they were grouped by voice range. Maria, understanding what was happening, volunteered that she could sing either alto or soprano – Jim asked her to stay with the sopranos.

  Jim asked the sopranos to sing the song and he hummed a harmony part, which he then taught to the altos. With the sopranos and altos singing, he hummed some more, two times through, then taught the tenors this melody to sing. In the meantime, Ron had been humming a bass line to himself, and while the tenors were learning their melody, he taught the bass line to the basses and baritones.

  They all sang together. The effect was not as artistically successful as it might have been, but everyone was delighted. They asked to sing it again, and again, and again:

  The itsy bitsy spider

  Went up the water spout

  Down came the Rain

  And washed the spider out

  Out came the sun

  And dried up all the rain

  The itsy bitsy spider

  Went up the spout again.

  At this point, Jim called a halt. “We have to sing something else. I heard someone mention ‘Home on the Range.’ Does everyone know that one?”

  Everyone did. They sang through the first verse and the chorus without coaching. Jim asked if anyone knew the second verse; Ron did; Jim did; no one else did. Jim and Ron sang the song all the way through.

  Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam

  Where the deer and the antelope play

  Where seldom is heard a discouraging word

  And the skies are not cloudy all day

  Home, home on the range

  Where the deer and the antelope play

  Where seldom is heard a discouraging word

  And the skies are not cloudy all day

  How often at night where the heavens are bright

  With the light of the glittering stars

  Have I stood there amazed and asked as I gazed

  If their glory exceeds that of ours

  Home, home on the range

  Where the deer and the antelope play

  Where seldom is heard a discouraging word

  And the skies are not cloudy all day

  Jim did not have to develop harmony lines this time because he knew them from his recent experie
nce singing this song in four part harmony with his choir. The soprano part was easy, since it was the basic melody; he taught the tenors and altos their parts while Ron taught the basses theirs. They brought everyone back together and ran through the song with all four parts singing. This time it was a real success and everyone was amazed by how good they sounded. They sang it a couple more times through.

  All of this was very diverting, but it took time. The moon was getting lower in the sky and the singers’ eyelids were getting lower as well. With thanks to Marcella for her supper and her story, and to Jim for his choir directing, the evening was declared to be complete, people drifting away to their lean-tos and to sleep. Tonight, Marcella went one way and Paul went another. It was not an unfriendly end to the evening; in fact, everyone left feeling warmed by the company and presence of all of the others. Val and Shelly had taken turns in joining in the singing – Shelly had sung in “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and Val had come to replace her for “Home on the Range.” Only Roger, who had listened from his lean-to, had not participated in the singing.

  27

  September 27

  Marcella awoke at sunrise and went to prepare breakfast. Things had been thawing rapidly in the coolers – actually, it was amazing that they had stayed cool as long as they had. She found sausage and eggs and large jug of orange juice – the last of the fruit juice. The sausage smelled good, but there was meat in the same cooler that was clearly spoiling. And that cooler was noticeably warmer than the others.

  Chopping and sautéing onions took a few moments; she easily located a supply of cheddar cheese. In another pan, small sausage patties were cooking slowly. She set aside several loaves of moldy bread (there must be birds that would be willing to eat it) before locating a bag of bagels that were fine. Her miracle for breakfast today was cheese and onion omelets with sausage, toasted bagel and orange juice.

  People began arriving, and Marcella cooked their omelets one at a time. Valerie came to get one for Roger Applebee while Michelle sat in the Kitchen Tent to eat hers. Michelle left and Valerie returned with Roger’s empty plate, conveying his compliments to the chef.

  Maria arrived and ate, and Marcella promptly put her to work moving anything that was still salvageable from the warm chest into cooler ones. Maria worked at it for a bit, concluding, as Marcella had, that about two meals of meat had spoiled and was now inedible.

  James was among the early arrivals, had his breakfast then went to talk to Roger Applebee.

  “Here I am again.”

  “I’m glad you came.”

  “Do you want to talk?”

  “No, but I want you to tell me the story of the sinking of the ship again.”

  James ran through the story again. Since it was not a story he was reading, it came out different each time. Roger noticed the differences, and questioned him about them, to be sure the stories really were consistent with one-another.

  “Where was it on the reef?”

  James looked around. The spot was visible from where he stood, and he pointed to it.

  “That is where you found George yesterday.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he try to swim out there?”

  “I think he actually did swim out there. I think he tried to swim down to the Fiji Queen. The Fiji Queen, I think, is in water that is far too deep to get to with a free dive. It would take a diver’s bell or SCUBA gear to get to her. I think that is why George drowned.”

  “I see.”

  “Please don’t follow him down that path.”

  “Oh, no! I don’t intend to do that. I would like to go out there to say good-bye to Jayne. But I don’t think I can swim that far. But maybe if I practice at it, I could get better so I could get there. You swam out there yourself yesterday pretty quickly.”

  “Yes, practice would help.”

  “Well, I just finished breakfast. Maybe later this morning, we could go swimming, you and I.”

  “I have some things to do this morning, but I will come back before ten o’clock to go into the water with you.”

  “Thanks.”

  James rose and left. He learned from Valerie that Roger had cleaned his plate at breakfast and had sent compliments to Marcella. James walked away feeling that this was a new Roger Applebee that he had not seen on board the Fiji Queen, much less since Jayne’s death. He wondered where it would lead.

  Back at the Kitchen Tent, almost everyone was up. Some were still eating. Mark and Ralph were getting ready to start back in on palm frond whittling. Julia was describing to Mark with some enthusiasm what she had seen snorkeling the previous afternoon, and how anxious she was to do that again. Maria was bent over an open cooler, working with its contents.

  James decided it was a good time to go to check the water level in the pool of water they had filled their bottles from the previous day. No one noticed him leave.

  Morning

  James walked to the dividing lava flow separating Camp Beach from Coral Beach, then along the rocky area to the water pool. He had made his marks at water level in the afternoon, when the sun was from the opposite direction, but he had made them at several points around the pool. As he looked now, he thought the water level was exactly the same as the previous day. That was reassuring.

  As he was checking, and clambering over the rocks, the sunlight faded then came back again as a cloud passed overhead. It started as one cloud. Then there were zephyrs of light breeze. Then more clouds. Not particularly concerned about the clouds, James continued to scramble along the rocks until he was on the wall overlooking Black Beach. He climbed easily down to it. The sand really was black, even where it was completely dry. Where it was wet, it was shiny and black. There were small waves here today – nothing amounting to surf, but more than they had noted a couple days ago when they were here. A storm was coming, though it didn’t seem to be very threatening - at least not yet.

  James decided he should turn back as the rain began to fall. There was no change in air temperature, and the rain actually was rather warm, so he really wasn’t uncomfortable so much as the climb back to ground covered in sand was made more difficult by all the rocks being wet – to say nothing of his being wet. He walked past the small dry creek bed that he and Paul had investigated, and was interested to see that it had some water in it.

  He arrived back at the Kitchen Tent to find everyone except Roger, Val and Shelly there. Mark and Ralph were helping Ron and Jim to whittle palm fronds. Marcella was puttering around the kitchen, fretting over what to feed everyone. Maria and Paul were in conference by one of the food coolers. Jeanne and Julia were deep in an effort to figure out how to weave a basket from one of the finished palm fronds. He walked over to Maria and Paul and inquired about how things were going.

  Maria: “Paul and I were trying to figure out what was on the life raft we lost during the evacuation of the Fiji Queen.”

  “You lost one?”

  Paul: “Yes. It lit on a sharp coral and was punctured in the waves after the Fiji Queen went down. As it sank, the rope holding it to the next life raft was severed. The raft and all of its cargo disappeared.”

  “Why haven’t we talked about this before now?”

  “Frankly, in all the tumult, Maria and I both forgot about it.”

  “And it came back to mind now because?”

  “Marcella came to me this morning about one of the coolers. We have at least two meals’ worth of meat that has gone bad. This cooler is no longer even slightly cool inside. We will be losing more food rapidly over the next day or two. Marcella is fretting. Suddenly, I remembered that we lost a life raft of supplies, and I had no idea what they were. So I came to talk to Paul, hoping he might remember.”

  “And I don’t. I tied the life rafts together bow to stern, with about half a raft length between them, so the little outboard could pull them all to shore. I maneuvered them into place for loading, but even with the lights running inside, it was really dark loading th
e rafts, so I was not able to keep track of what went where. And I doubt the others were paying any attention to which raft they were loading.”

  “And we got to shore and everyone started unloading. And I went to look for you and found you were missing. My world went blank at that moment, and when you yelled, all I could think of was that you were alive and coming to get you.”

  “I must admit, I was in much the same state of mind. And there was a lot of focus on getting the camp set up and stuff stored under cover. Finding some wood and starting a fire. It was a busy time.”