by Kathi Appelt
“Who else could it be?” she asked BD.
And then all at once, it occurred to her: Jacques de Mer! A girl who grows up on the Texas coast also knows the legend of Jacques de Mer.
62
Every landscape has its magical beings. The ancient forests of the pacific northwest have Sasquatch. The piney woods of Alabama have Bigfoot. The Texas coast has Jacques de Mer.
As the story goes, there was once a family who came to the beach to picnic for the day. The family had a mother and a father and a little girl and a tiny boy— barely toddling, he was that small.
The boy was very quiet, and the beach was noisy, filled with the sounds of the waves brushing against the shore, the cries of the birds, and the whistle of the wind. The family spent the morning wading along the edge of the water.
The little girl ran back and forth in the waves, laughing with glee. The mother and father watched her closely. They took turns holding on to the tiny boy’s hand. But the tiny boy watched his big sister and wanted to play in the waves too. Except that his mother and father kept holding his hand.
But somehow, some way, they let go. And he was so quiet. And the beach was so loud. And before they knew it, he was gone.
They were all frantic. The mother cried and cried. The father called and called. The little girl curled up on the sand into a small ball, as small as she could, and hid her face.
Soon a crowd gathered and lots of people helped the search. To no avail. The tiny boy was gone. Vanished.
But several days later a deckhand on a nearby shrimp boat looked out beyond his nets and saw a man swim out of the water, only the man wasn’t just a man. His upper body was a man. His lower body was a fish. Down his back, a large fin. A man of the sea. And in his arms, the body of the tiny boy.
The shrimper was furious. He called his mates to the deck and pointed and called out, “He killed the boy!”
And everyone started shouting, “Monster! Kill the monster!”
No one else saw the merman, no one but the shrimper. But they did see the body of the tiny boy, settled gently at the edge of the waves, just as quiet in death as he was in life, so very quiet. And everyone was certain that a sea monster, half fish, half man, had taken the boy.
So all the blame fell on Jacques de Mer. Not on the riptides that will pull you out. Not on the sinkholes that will draw you down. Not on the tug of the waves themselves that beckon, beckon, beckon.
Beware of Jacques de Mer.
Beware.
63
BD could feel The Scamper picking up speed. He lowered his head between his paws. All he could do was lie in the bottom of the boat and worry. Where, oh where, he wondered, was Signe?
As if he were wondering the same thing, Captain piped up, “C’mon, c’mon!” What he meant was, Where, oh where, is the watermelon? But no one seemed to be paying attention.
But BD’s worrying and Captain’s piping could not distract Keeper from the channel in front of her. The opening was only thirty or so yards away now. She squinted her eyes so as to assess the situation a little better. Yes, the mouth looked wider. Yes, it looked like the boat could just squeeze through. “Yes!” she cried.
She waited for BD to bark with her, but there was no response from him except for another thin whine.
The moon, a little higher in the sky now, cast a broad chunk of light over them. Keeper took a deep breath of relief. The ditch looked completely manageable.
She glanced at the box underneath the seat, then glanced ahead at the opening of the Cut and decided, yes, there was enough time. She took another of the carvings from the shoe box.
Lorelei.
If she made another offering now, it would seal the deal to get them through the channel.
Lorelei was carved out of a plank of pine. It wasn’t unusual to find pine planks deposited on the beach.
“Likely came from an old house that the sea claimed,” Mr. Beauchamp had told her. Keeper knew that there were lots of abandoned houses along the coast, old fishing shacks that no one used anymore. Eventually, the sea rolled up under them, picked them up, and carried them away.
First a tree, then a house, and finally, Lorelei. The plank had had three different lives. Keeper thought her Lorelei was beautiful. She was warm in Keeper’s palm. Keeper pressed the carving against her cheek.
Isn’t that what people do when they love someone, press a palm against their cheek? Signe did that to Keeper all the time, pressed her palm against her cheek.
Before Keeper could change her mind, she set the Lorelei in the dark water beside her boat. “Swim,” she whispered.
Keeper could only barely see the tiny figure bounce on the moonlit waves. Now there were only two figurines remaining, one in the box and one in her pocket. She swallowed hard. Two. That was a very small number. Gone were Sedna, the ningyo, the siren, and the Meerfrau.
She called again to Lorelei, “Swim to Yemaya!”
Queen of the sea.
64
All at once…
Whoosh! As though the channel were swallowing it whole, The Scamper swung right into the middle of its mouth.
Finally, finally, finally! thought Keeper.
Swwooosh!
Smack! The boat bumped into the edge of the mouth. Keeper fell backward against the stern. She leaned to her left to help right the prow so that it pointed toward the middle of the channel.
Then she heard the boat creak as it scraped one side of the ditch, then the other. She pulled herself back up, then jerked her hands away from the edges of the boat to keep them from being smashed against the hard banks that rose on either side of her. An eon of daily rushing back and forth had polished the banks smooth. The exposed layers of limestone and sand sparkled in the moon’s light.
At her feet, BD pressed against her. He was shaking. Or was she the one who was shaking? Keeper clamped her teeth hard, to keep them from rattling.
The Scamper was the Best. Boat. Ever. Dogie had reworked every single part of it, every last plank. Keeper was certain it would carry them safely to the waiting sandbar only a hundred yards from shore, which should become visible as the tide rolled back, carrying them with it.
Step I was finally under way!
A blaze of excitement surged through Keeper, and without thinking, she shouted, “I’m coming!” The shouting made her feel braver. BD’s tail thump felt reassuring. A happy sound. She opened her mouth to shout again, when…
Bang! The prow dipped down and jammed against something under the water. Keeper tipped forward and slammed, hard, into the seat in front of her. Her hands barely caught her in time to keep her face from meeting the wooden bench.
Water trickled over the sides. Keeper pushed herself back, trying hard not to fall on top of BD.
She pulled an oar out from under the bench and pressed it against the bank. She gave a mighty shove, but she couldn’t get enough leverage. Stowing the oar, she pushed against the side with her hands, scraping her already sore palms on the limestone banks. The salt water on her raw skin felt like fire.
The Scamper moved a tiny bit. Keeper pressed as hard as she could. Then, just as quickly as it got stuck, swish, the boat popped back up again, knocking her backward this time. A half inch of water sloshed from the tip of the boat to the back.
She would have to figure out a way to bail. But just as the thought crossed her mind, they were out, clear of the channel. Hooray!
The boat shot into the surf and bobbed there. Keeper looked behind her, but she could not see the Cut, only the rushing water streaming out of the ditch behind her, pushing her toward De Vaca’s Rock.
“We made it!” she shouted. “Whaahoo!!!”
Victory!
65
Just ahead of The Scamper, the falling tide streamed out of the Cut and into the gulf, rushing toward the sandbar. There the stingrays hovered on the strong currents. How many were there? Hundreds? Thousands?
Even more were on their way, flying beneath the waves, into the Gulf
of Mexico. They traveled from Bermuda and St. Thomas and even the western coast of Africa. And there, riding the waves with them, the old swimmer coursed through the water. Someone had finally made a wish on the porte-bonheur, he was sure of it. The long fin on his back sliced through the surface of the water.
66
From his place on Dogie’s bed, Too sat up and looked out the window. He could see the moon rising higher in the distance.
The breeze felt cool on his nose. He sniffed the air. Yep, yep, yep, he thought. There was an atmospheric disturbance afoot. He was sure of it.
He looked at Dogie, still sound asleep. Should he wake him up? He listened as the man’s breath rose and fell in the calm night air. He sniffed again. Maybe it wasn’t urgent yet. He would wait a little longer.
Too didn’t know that just yards away, atop the quickly retreating waters of the Cut, in the small boat called The Scamper, his friend BD glanced up at the same moon, and made a doggy wish: Wake up!
Someone needs to wake up.
67
In the deep disappointment of the night, the sound of Sinbad’s purr slipped into Mr. Beauchamp’s ear. The cat was nestled right on his shoulder, just behind his neck. Mr. Beauchamp reached up and patted him, rubbed his silky fur. Was there anything sweeter than the sound of a purring cat?
“Ah, Sinbad,” he said. Then he tried to catch his breath. The air felt thick and heavy, and he had to draw deep, deep drafts of it to get enough. It felt like his lungs were being squeezed. He coughed, and each cough brought a shot of pain.
He placed his hand over his chest. The cat purred a little harder.
On the small table beside Mr. Beauchamp sat a single piece of driftwood and, next to it, his carving knife.
He had made a few attempts to start the new figurine for Keeper, but he hadn’t gotten very far. The one she had asked him to carve… he wasn’t sure he could. So the wood Keeper had brought to him, a slender chunk of juniper, had lain there, quiet and undisturbed.
Juniper. He remembered the juniper forests of the Camargue. Maybe this very piece had come from there? It was possible.
He patted the cat again. Lately, he had felt more anxious than ever, as if he needed to make course corrections that were resisting his efforts. He gulped in a wad of air and released it as slowly as he could. Tonight, he thought, this was supposed to have been a special night. The moon was full and just as blue as could be. A night of possibility.
Instead, the night-blooming cyrus that he grew in pots on his porch were swept into a heap on the drive below. They wouldn’t bloom now, not after crashing to the ground. Their absence was just as heavy as their perfume that should have filled the air. Now he felt bereft in the presence of the empty spaces where his beloved plants used to sit.
“This was our last chance, mon ami borgne” he said to the black-and-white cat.
He sighed. A memory of his French village slipped into his thoughts, a sweet memory of two boys holding hands in the moon’s milky light.
Holding hands made him think of his young neighbors.
“He should ask her to marry him,” Mr. Beauchamp said to the cat, suddenly irritated. “Should’ve asked her long ago.”
Sinbad knew that Mr. Beauchamp was talking about Dogie. If the cat could have spoken, he would have sounded just like an echo. But he couldn’t. Instead, he jumped off the chair, spread out his front toes, and stretched.
Love, thought Mr. Beauchamp. It’s not something to put off. It’s too hard to find. The old man knew this to be a true thing: Don’t put off love, no matter what.
“He should ask her,” he repeated. Sinbad scratched the back of his ear with his back paw and settled into a moonbeam and purred as hard as he could.
68
Nestled as he was on top of the dog, Captain was the only critter in the boat who was completely happy. The sea was his natural home, and he was glad to have his very best friend, BD, out here on the dark waves.
He raised his head to squawk, “C’mon, c’mon,” but when he did, a glimmer of light caught his eye.
There. Right there. Pressed against Keeper’s breastbone. He hopped off of BD’s head and onto the side of The Scamper to get a better look. The glimmer bounced up at him again.
Why yes! He had seen that shiny object before! It was his fallen star!
He was sure it was the same one he had discovered all those years ago. His fallen star.
He remembered the day—oh, how many days back?
Thousands? Way before the storm and the whole window incident. Way before he broke his wing. Back when he was in his most radiant prime.
There he was, skimming over the shallow water, looking for a tasty bite—a clam or a small crab or an itty-bitty sea turtle—when there it was, gleaming just below the water’s surface.
He saw the sparkle of it smiling up at him. It was beautiful, all round beneath the water, a perfect fallen star. That’s what it had to be! After all, he had seen stars falling into the ocean all his life, and he had always, always wanted one. But they were too fast and far away for him to catch.
All at once, every feather in his entire body, every bone, every muscle, every tingling talon wanted it. All seagulls love shiny objects, and he was no different. He was, in fact, a classic seagull.
He flew over the star, back and forth, back and forth, admiring it, until finally, he swooped down and picked it up. It was heavy in his beak, but that didn’t matter. When he picked it up, a chill zipped through him from stem to stern. Nevertheless, he hung on to it.
Possession of a fallen star would raise his stature in the gull community. As far as he knew, none of the other gulls on this strip of beach had an object as lovely as this one. While he spiraled into the sky, the shiny fallen star gleaming in his beak, thoughts of acclamation in his head, he became more and more pleased with his wonderful new acquisition.
But then he was duped by a single chunk of watermelon. That’s right. Watermelon was his downfall.
As he flew down the beach, he noticed a tall woman stretched out on a beach towel, sunbathing. Next to her was a bowl of something juicy and red. Something fruity. He smelled its delicious aroma as it wafted up into the air. Hallelujah, brothers and sisters! Watermelon! His favorite food of all time. He looked down and saw that she had a huge bowl full of it. Oh frabjous day, calloo callay.
Two events of good fortune in one short afternoon. And while he flew by, the sunbathing woman reached into the bowl and tossed a huge, juicy, ripe, red, delicious, mouthwatering chunk of watermelon into the sky in front of him.
Here’s something to know about seagulls: They have very short attention spans. As soon as that watermelon rose into the air in front of him, Captain completely forgot about the star in his beak. He forgot about everything except… watermelon!
Without even thinking, he opened his beak just in time to catch the tasty morsel as it rose into the sky, and as he grabbed the juicy melon, the wonderful fallen star, all shiny and round, fell out of his beak and right into the hand of the tall woman.
He gulped down the watermelon and circled back around. But it was too late. He saw the surprised look on her face, saw her smile, and then saw her put his star in her beach bag, out of sight. He couldn’t see the gleam of it anywhere.
But, to his delight, the tall woman called out to him, “Thank you!” and she tossed another chunk of melon straight into the sky, straight up into his beak. He swallowed it and made a large aerial circle around her. And sure enough, while he circled, she lined up a dozen chunks of watermelon on the foot of her towel. A feast!
“C’mon, c’mon!” he cried, and then swoosh, down he went.
Soon his belly was so full, he could barely lift himself off the ground. In his watermelon frenzy he had forgotten all about the star. That was so long ago. He had also forgotten about the tall woman. He had never seen her again after that day.
But right now, on a small boat at sea, he was certain that the object around Keeper’s neck was the same fallen s
tar that he had recovered all those years ago.
He fluffed his feathers up as fully as he could and shook his head. There was the star all right. But where was the watermelon?
“C’mon, c’mon!” he shouted at Keeper.
69
BD wished he were braver. As he hunkered down in the boat, he wished he had enough gumption to take the rope, jump overboard, and pull them all back to the pier. That was BD’s wish.
But, as pointed out before, BD was not a water dog. Not one of those spaniel types who lives for jumping into the drink. Not BD. For now, all he could do was hunker down in the bottom of the boat.
Why didn’t somebody wake up?
70
That morning as Signe had stood at the kitchen sink, the steam from the ruined gumbo settled on her skin. How could she have known, when she climbed into the green Dodge station wagon with Meggie Marie almost eleven years ago, that she would still be here? The Dodge was still here too.
On that day so long ago, she had waited until her grandparents were gone, maybe to the grocery store, maybe to town to visit friends, she couldn’t remember, she only knew that she had to go. But when she got to the end of their driveway, she turned around. An overwhelming sense of loss curled around her and tugged her back. She needed something, anything, to take with her. So she hurried back into the house, and the first thing she saw was the bowl. Her mother’s wooden bowl. When she had been a little girl, her mother had set her in this very bowl, on the kitchen floor, and spun her around and around. It was a happy memory.
She grabbed the bowl and ran. Ran as fast as she could. Ran down the road of her neighborhood, with its tall trees and its neat yards, ran away to the highway.
Signe climbed into the car and did not look back.