The Wanderer Read online

  We also noticed cracks in the ends of the booms, where they come together. This is a big problem. Uncle Dock says we will lash-and-tongue them and hope that the cracks don’t get any bigger.

  Also on the big problem list is the water maker—that broke, too. Nobody’s really sure exactly what the problem is, but Brian is determined to take a hot shower tonight, so we’ll power through and try to fix it. And speaking of showers, we all stink! Everything on the boat stinks, too.

  Uncle Stew is yelling at me to help him fix something, so I guess this is over and out from Sophie: Sierra-One-Papa-Hotel-India-Echo.

  QSL?

  88.

  WIND AND WAVES

  CHAPTER 36

  BOUNCING

  Rolling and bouncing and wanting to puke.

  Later:

  Puking.

  Later:

  Not puking.

  CHAPTER 37

  WIND

  The sea, the sea, the sea. It heaves and rolls and rumbles at me.

  The winds have been howling since last night at sunset, and we’ve nearly worn ourselves out coping. When the wind first picked up, we reefed the main, pulling it down and tying the bottom to itself to make the sail smaller, and we were about to reef the mizzen when the main boom broke. We’d been fearing that would happen.

  Uncle Dock and Uncle Mo lashed the ends together with line, torqued it with a steel pipe, and then lashed the pipe to the boom. We’re praying it holds.

  The wind howls around the sails, lunging at us from one side and then careening around the other, knocking us off our feet. The waves swell and grow, blowing streaks of foam. I don’t know how to judge how high they are—they seem two stories high—and you can’t believe it’s water standing up like that, arching over you.

  We’ve now double-reefed both sails and Uncle Dock is barking orders in true captain fashion. I’m glad I know what most of the terms mean. You don’t have time to think about where starboard is or where the bosun’s locker is or the difference between a halyard and an outhaul; you have to know. And I’m glad that I’ve touched every line and pulley on The Wanderer and know how things work, because I feel as if I’m really helping and right now it doesn’t matter if it’s a girl or a boy doing it, as long as somebody gets it done.

  Dock is calling—

  CHAPTER 38

  HOWLING

  It’s all wind and walls of water. Everything howls and churns.

  I think we are doomed.

  CHAPTER 39

  BOBBING

  We’ve lashed down every loose thing and have been powering through for about six hours, but the wind is still increasing and is clocking around from the southeast. Earlier, it was as if we were riding a roller coaster and sometimes it was almost fun, racing along, trying to stay perpendicular to the waves so they wouldn’t push us over. Shooting up the wave, shooting down it, up and down!

  Now the waves are more fierce, cresting and toppling over, like leering drooling monsters spewing heavy streaks of foam through the air. Sometimes as the big waves rear up behind you, you can see huge fish suspended in them.

  It’s so hard to see, so hard to think, so hard to stay upright. I was kneeling on deck, fastening a line, and when I turned back, I couldn’t see anyone else on deck, even though just a minute before I’d seen Dock and Cody and Uncle Mo there, and when I shouted out to them the wind blew my voice back into my mouth. Inside my head I heard a little voice whimpering.

  “Too much tension on the sails!” Uncle Dock roared, as he emerged from the mist. He was staring up at the sails, where grommets at the top of both sails were popping out, zing, snap, zing! The main was ripping all along the top of the sail.

  We got it down and tried to put up the heavy-duty storm trysail, but before it was all the way up, half the grommets had torn out. A blast of wind pushed Uncle Mo up against me, flattening me against the jackstays.

  “Flag line on the mizzen broke!” Cody shouted.

  “See?” Uncle Mo said, as he tried to stand up. “That boy’s no idjit. He knows a few things.”

  The mizzen sail also started ripping, so we brought that one down, too, but as we brought it down, the halyard vibrated free and stuck at the top of the mast.

  Uncle Dock clung to the rail and said to the sea, “Oh, Rosalie!”

  And here we are, bare-masted in gale winds and high seas, bobbing like a cork, about as far from land as we could possibly be.

  CHAPTER 40

  NO TIME

  No time for stories of Bompie, for juggling, for learning knots. The wind howls and the seas rage and our sails are down.

  When I came below my father hugged me.

  “I don’t want to die,” I told him.

  He held on to me. “You can’t die,” he said. “You can’t. And Sophie can’t die like this.”

  “Sophie can’t? What about Uncle Dock—and Brian—and—”

  “We can’t let it happen.”

  What does he mean? It’s as if he is talking in code. It’s as if everyone talks in code where Sophie is concerned. Even Sophie talks in code.

  CHAPTER 41

  SURFING

  I’ve been at the helm for much of the time, and those waves have no mercy. Walls of water come crashing over us every five minutes, and the wind howls—Hooo-rrrrrr! Hooo-rrrrr!—and tries to blow us over. One monstrous wave swept Cody right off his feet as he was working up on the bow.

  “Get that safety harness on, Cody!” Uncle Dock barked. “Lock down that wheel, Sophie!”

  I locked it down as close to our heading as I could, while Uncle Stew made some hot chocolate to warm us, and we all gathered round to try and figure out what to do next. We are bone-tired from battling the wind and waves. There is so much power and force in the wind and water. We’re like wee grains of sand out here, surrounded by tremendous energy that could pulverize us into a zillion atoms. You can’t help but feel that the wind and the water have something against you personally.

  I’m sitting in the forward cabin, and the waves are slightly bigger than before, with the wind blowing at fifty knots. The sea looks white and eerie, and there is an odd smell in the air, like fish and seaweed and mold all mixed together.

  Uncle Stew and Brian are trying to fix the trysail, but the wind has shifted again and we are making our course without any sails at all. We are no longer beating against the waves; instead, they are pushing us along at great speed.

  Cody just shouted down that the mizzen boom has broken too.

  What next?

  Later:

  We’ve decided not to raise the storm sail because of our limited halyards and the stress on the booms. Instead, we are surfing. Surfing to Ireland.

  Later:

  I’m in a funk, even though I don’t want to be. It’s that same old thing that bugs me from time to time. I want to do all the gnarly work on the boat, like all the stuff on deck, and I keep volunteering to do it, but I always seem to get stuck at the helm.

  “Don’t think you can handle that, Sophie. Take the helm.”

  “A bit rough up there, Sophie. Take the helm.”

  There’s nothing wrong with being at the wheel; it’s just that it looks so exciting up there, out in the open, with the boat flying and the waves crashing.

  Later:

  When I volunteered to help put up the trysail, Dock asked Cody instead, and I threw a little fit.

  “I know I’m not as strong as Cody, but I make up for it in effort!” I shouted.

  Uncle Dock looked weary. “Take the helm, Sophie,” he said.

  I was standing there at the wheel having my own personal angry silent talk into the wind when Brian came up to me and said, “Quit being so selfish, Sophie.”

  “Selfish? Me? What the heck are you talking about?” I was so angry at him. I don’t know where it came from.

  “This isn’t all about you, you know. Everybody should do what he does best, and everybody’s got to take orders from the captain.” He jabbed his hand at my shoul
der.

  “Quit it!”

  He jabbed me again. “You’re only on this trip because Dock took pity on you. You’re only here because you’re an—”

  “What? I’m what?”

  The boat rolled and he pushed his hand at me and I pushed him back and he went up against the rail. The boat rolled again and he was struggling to get upright and grab the rail. He was going over, and I was frozen, clutching the wheel.

  Cody appeared out of nowhere and grabbed Brian, pushed him toward the center of the boat, and said, “Put your stupid harness on, Mr. Know-it-all!”

  Brian dived into the cabin, and Cody gave me an odd look. “What was that all about?”

  “Nothing,” I said. I was shaking, and I’m still shaking, and Brian is avoiding me, and I’m avoiding him.

  I don’t feel like Sophie. I feel like a stupid little sea flea.

  CHAPTER 42

  BATTLING

  Ferocious wind and waves. It feels like we’re in a battle, and it’s better when you’re up on deck trying to fix things and trying to stay upright, because when you stop and come below and have a minute to think, you know you are going to die.

  Which is why I’m going back on deck.

  CHAPTER 43

  WEARY

  It’s very bad out there. We’re so weary, too weary to write.

  Everyone has cried today, except me. I’m not going to cry.

  CHAPTER 44

  THE SON

  Today my father told me I’d been a good son and he’d been a bad father, and he was sorry about that.

  But he was wrong: I haven’t been a good son.

  CHAPTER 45

  ALONE

  Bad, bad, bad, bad. How long can this go on?

  Earlier, when I was at the helm and we all happened to be up on deck at the same time, I turned to see Uncle Stew with his arm around Brian, and Uncle Mo with his arm around Cody, and Uncle Dock gripping the rail and staring out to sea. Was he thinking of Rosalie? I wanted to leave the helm and put my arm around Uncle Dock, or have him put his arm around me, but I couldn’t leave my position.

  We are all alone out here.

  CHAPTER 46

  BOMPIE AT THE OCEAN

  Maybe we have entered some weird place where the seas always rage and the wind always howls, and maybe we are going in circles and will never escape and eventually we will die of hunger.

  Earlier today when Sophie and I were collapsed on bunks, trying to make ourselves sleep, she told me another Bompie story. It went like this:

  When Bompie was a young man he set out for the ocean because he had never seen the ocean before. He hitchhiked from Kentucky to the Virginia shore and when he got to the ocean he sat down in the sand and fell in love with the ocean. He loved everything about it: the smell, the sounds, the feel of the air on his face.

  He waded out into the water, where the waves kept knocking him down, but still he kept going, until he was standing neck-deep, and he floated on his back staring up at the sky, and he was reminded of another ocean, far away, one in England. And he realized he had seen the ocean before, long ago, when he was small. And then he realized that this was the same ocean, that all that water stretched thousands of miles from Virginia to England, and maybe this water that was holding him up had once licked the shores of England and maybe it was the same water he had splashed in as a toddler.

  And finally he let his feet drift downward, but he couldn’t touch bottom, and he looked toward the shore and realized he’d been pulled far, far away from it, and he started swimming, giddy-up, giddy-up, he told himself, but it was so far, and he was so tired, and a wave swept over him and pushed him under, and he was so very weary, bone-weary, and he didn’t know if he had enough strength to keep going, and he tried floating again, and resting and then swimming some more, and eventually he made it back to shore.

  He lay down on the sand and slept, and when he woke, he hitchhiked back to Kentucky.

  You know the rest: a whipping and some pie (apples again).

  CHAPTER 47

  FORCE TEN

  The sea, the sea, the sea. It rolls and boils. It feels as if The Wanderer will be swallowed up, and I’m afraid.

  We’re in a force-ten gale, Uncle Dock says, with winds at fifty knots an hour and waves like walls of water pounding us day and night, and still we have no sails up. Every twenty minutes a wave breaks behind us and fills the cockpit with water. We all keep saying that the wind has to die down soon; it’s been blowing too hard for too long.

  “‘Courage!’” Uncle Dock yelled out earlier. “‘This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon!’” It seemed like a strange thing for him to say, since we were nowhere near shore, but then he explained that he was quoting from a poet named Tennyson.

  Uncle Stew (I-Never-Get-Seasick Stew) is seasick. He looks yellow and frail, and the rest of us are covering his shifts and praying that we do not succumb, too.

  It’s now one A.M., a wave has just filled the cockpit, and I’m up on watch. Please let the wind die down.

  CHAPTER 48

  NIGHT

  Will someone find this dog-log floating in the sea? Will my mother know what happened to us?

  We tried to get a message to you last night, Mom. We love you.

  If I could start my life over—

  There is no day. It’s all night.

  We have to yell to hear each other above the wind, but what I want to do is whisper. I want to say nicer things, but there is no time. All our time is spent fighting the wind.

  Last night I dreamed about Sophie, and this morning I asked Uncle Dock if Sophie knew what had happened to her parents. He said, “At some level, Sophie must know. But consciously? That’s something only Sophie can answer.”

  I asked him why no one would talk about it, why they wouldn’t tell me or Brian. He said, “It’s not the time, right now. And maybe it should come from Sophie. It’s her story.”

  CHAPTER 49

  SPINNING

  Cody and Uncle Dock and I went on watch at about one in the morning. It seemed as if the weather had started to let up, and we were hoping that by the end of our watch, we’d be able to turn The Wanderer over to Uncle Mo and Brian and Uncle Stew in calmer seas.

  “‘Smite the sounding furrows!’” Uncle Dock yelled.

  “More poetry?” I said.

  “Yep,” he said.

  We’d been on watch about an hour when Cody shouted to me: “Sierra-Oscar! Your Highness—where is it?”

  My head was so numb. My ears were plugged. What was he saying?

  He shouted again, tugging at his belt. “Your Highness!”

  I tapped my head, as if there were a crown there, and curtsied. I thought he was playing some kind of game.

  He left his post and dashed below deck, and when he came up, he was holding my safety harness. Oh. He’d been saying harness. I felt so stupid. Cody fastened it for me and said, “You’ve got to wear this, Sophie. You’ve got to.”

  “Aw,” I said, “weather’s letting up; we’re okay.”

  “We’re not okay, Sophie. Wear this.”

  But the seas did seem to settle for an hour or so, and the wind eased. I watched Cody as he moved about the deck. One minute he was trimming a sail; the next minute he was fastening a line, scooping up a loose cushion, stowing it, returning to the sails. Dock was doing the same things on the other side of the deck. They moved with seeming ease in those choppy seas, and it seemed as if this were a play and their movements were gracefully choreographed.

  Around three thirty in the morning, about a half hour before the end of our watch, the wind and waves picked up again. Uncle Dock was in the cockpit, Cody was at the wheel, and I was sitting next to the hatch that covers the cabin, watching the waves coming up behind us, in order to warn Cody and Dock when a big one was on its way.

  As each wave started to build, it made me weak and queasy, not so much from the motion, but from the fear that this wave would be too big, that this one would roll us over
. Off in the distance, I saw a wave that looked different from all the others. It was much bigger, at least fifty feet high it seemed, and not dark like the others. It was white—all white—and the entire wave was foam, as if it had just broken. I stared at it for a couple of seconds, trying to figure out what was up with it, and by that time it was right behind us, growing bigger and bigger, still covered with foam.

  I shouted a warning to Cody: “Cody! Look behind—”

  He turned, looked quickly, and then turned back around, crouched down, and braced himself.

  Most of the waves that break behind us roll under the stern, the foam sometimes coming up over the sides of the cockpit. But this wave was unlike any other. It had a curl, a distinct high curl. I watched it growing up behind us, higher and higher, and then it curled over The Wanderer, thousands of gallons of water, white and lashing.

  “Cody! Dock!” I yelled.

  And then I saw it hit Cody like a million bricks on his head and shoulders. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and covered my head.

  I was inside the wave, floating, spinning, thrown this way and that. I remember thinking Hold that breath, Sophie, and then wondering if my breath would last. Such intense force was pushing me; it didn’t seem like it could possibly be water—soft, gentle water—that was doing this.