by Kathi Appelt
76
With the shoreline receding, Keeper pressed her sore hand against her pocket. If Yemaya was so powerful, why, oh why, hadn’t she helped her? After all, Keeper had given her not one, not two, not three, not four, but five—count them, five—of her most prized possessions: Sedna, the ningyo, the Meerfrau, the siren, and Lorelei. She had only two left, one of which was the likeness of Yemaya herself.
“Big Mama,” she called, and she repeated her wish, “help me find my mother.” Then she turned her head to see if she could hear a response.
Nothing.
Maybe, thought Keeper, Yemaya needed something bigger than a wish. “I know,” she said, “a prayer.”
She tried to think of a prayer, but most of the prayers that Signe had taught her were prayers of gratitude, like for blue skies and clean air and fresh cantaloupe and tiny geckos. They weren’t necessarily prayers for help.
Signe was not necessarily one for asking for help.
And besides, Keeper knew, Signe would probably not think that prayers were practical. “Let’s be practical, Keeper,” Signe would say.
Keeper looked straight up at the moon, folded her hands together, and then out of the clear blue…
“C’mon, c’mon!”
Captain! He was back! Wherever he had gone during the wild ride through the channel, here he was again. Relief at the bird’s appearance flooded over Keeper. Surely, if Captain was here, they couldn’t be that far from land.
BD sat up. Captain landed with a little skip-skip onto the bench, then he pulled his wings in, fluffed his feathers, and screeched, “C’mon, c’mon!”
Then both the bird and the dog looked directly at her, as if they were telling her, Okay, this has been fun, but let’s go home now.
Home, Keeper thought. How was she going to get back there?
Keeper had not intended to ride The Scamper beyond De Vaca’s rock. The plan was to use the tide to push her craft onto the sandbar and wait for Meggie Marie to meet her there. It was all supposed to be a snap. Nothing to it. Easy peasy.
Steps I, J, K, and L: Row to the sandbar. Find Meggie Marie. Tell Meggie Marie everything that happened. Ask Meggie Marie what to do.
That’s the way the plan was supposed to go. Keeper pushed her thumb into her back pocket. The plan was still there. But it was not working. There was nothing on the plan that said: Pass the sandbar and head out to sea.
And how could she find Meggie Marie now? Could Meggie Marie find her? That was a thought: Meggie Marie could find her!
Keeper reached for the charm around her neck. She’d make another wish. That’s what she’d do. And maybe she would send a small, invisible prayer to the moon too. But before she could think of what to say, a large wave picked up the boat and shook it. BD yelped. Keeper pulled on the straps of his life vest. “Hang on,” she told him, and in that exact moment another wave rolled up beside them and pushed the boat sideways. Her stomach lurched.
Which way was she going now? In the direction she thought the shore should be, there was only water.
Water, water, and more water.
She couldn’t even see the houses anymore, she realized with a gasp. For a second she couldn’t breathe at all. The shore had completely vanished, along with the sandbar.
Take a breath, take a breath, she told herself. She opened her mouth and pulled in a big gulp of air and looked as hard as she possibly could. But there was no sign of land anywhere. Only waves and more waves.
The moon was neither east nor west, north nor south. Instead, it was directly above, nudged against the highest point of the night sky’s dome. Smaller than it had been before. Farther away than ever.
Well, she had to do something. Praying and wishing weren’t getting her anywhere. So Keeper picked up the oar, then before she even dipped it into the water, she realized miserably that she had no idea which way to go. What if she started paddling and wound up even farther from shore? And besides, her hands were too sore to even hold it.
She let the oar drop and rested her forehead on her knees. She’d have to wait until dawn, when she could see land again. But how long would that be? Then she had a more unsettling question: What if, by that time, the waves pushed her so far out to sea that she couldn’t see the shore? Then what?
And she knew, De Vaca’s Rock or not, it was time to call her mother. Step J.
Slowly, carefully, she stood up and called out: “It’s me. It’s Keeper.” She listened. But all she heard was the splashing of the black waves against her boat.
She called again. “I’m here! Your Keeper is here!”
She listened again, and this time she thought she heard her own name echo back at her: Keeper. Keeper.
Or was it the wind?
She sat back down, and when she did, the carving of Yemaya poked her in her thigh—a reminder.
“If you give her a gift, she might grant a wish.” That’s what Mr. Beauchamp had told her.
A gift. She had already given her five gifts. But she had more. Keeper reached beneath the bench for her shoe box. It was a soggy mess, but there was one figurine left in it. She lifted it out. “The rusalka” Keeper said uncertainly. The rusalki were tricksters. They were known for shedding their tails and climbing into trees so that they could scare unsuspecting passersby.
Rusalki never combed their moss green hair, and they loved to spin in circles. The Scamper spun in its own circle.
Spun. Spin. Spinneroo.
Spinning in the water.
Tricked. She felt tricked. The riptide had tricked her.
“Go,” she told the carving, but before Keeper set her in the water, she planted a kiss on her head and pinned a huge hope to her own heart.
“Help me find my mother.”
77
Too raised his head from Dogie’s pillow for the umpteenth time and sniffed the air. The storm that he knew was eminent was growing. Outside the window, the moon was slipping back and forth between the clouds. Was the moon sending him a message?
What was it? All at once, Too knew he needed to wake Dogie.
“Yep, yep, yep!” he barked. Then he grabbed Dogie’s sheet with his tiny teeth and tugged.
78
In the haint blue house Signe stirred in her sleep. A moonbeam slipped through her window, then flickered out. The immediate darkness was sharp. Signe reached over to her nightstand and pressed down on the clock’s snooze button. The green light illuminated the numbers: 12:00. Midnight.
Odd, she thought, to wake up exactly at midnight.
Then the moon, as if she were playing a game, popped back on. Signe blinked.
Just as quickly, it flickered out again. In the darkness Signe rubbed her eyes. Tomorrow, Signe decided, she would talk to Keeper. She would tell her that crabs didn’t send messages, that there were no manatees in this part of the world, no sea serpents or water dragons or any other enchanted beings, no haints.
Most of all, she would tell Keeper that there were no mermaids.
Signe pulled the covers up and rolled over so that she couldn’t see the beckoning moon outside her window.
From too far off the shore, BD looked up at the very same moon and wished again:
Wake up, Signe, wake up. Your girl is out at sea.
Your girl is out at sea.
79
At the house next door Too was more successful than the moon. He walked in a circle on the pillow and watched as Dogie sat on the edge of the bed and scratched his head.
“St-st-storm?” he asked, looking right at Too.
“Yep, yep, yep,” barked Too.
Dogie pulled on his shorts and his T-shirt and then slipped his feet into his flip-flops.
“C-c-c-coffee first,” said Dogie.
“Yep, yep, yep,” said Too, but this time he didn’t mean to agree. He wished like crazy that he could say, Nope, nope, nope, no time for coffee, but he knew that Dogie never did anything without a cup of coffee.
He barked again, “Yep, yep, yep!” and for punct
uation he added a little growl.
“Okay,” said Dogie. “I g-g-g-get it.” But instead of walking out the door, he headed for the kitchen and the coffeepot.
“Grrrr…” Too trotted to the back door and sat down. He was ready to go. Ready. To. Go. “Yep, yep, yep!”
?02
80
Across the road, Mr. Beauchamp saw the moon too. What a long night this had been. He rubbed Sinbad and slumped down in his chair. What a long time he had been here, in this house beside Oyster Ridge Road.
He couldn’t remember when he had first swum ashore—how long ago was that? Seventy years? A hundred?
Where, he wondered, were all the ponies?
It was because of them that he had come to Texas, together on a large steamer that had struck the sandbar just out from the beach. The wild ponies of the Camargue, bound for a circus in Galveston. He remembered that awful day, remembered the terrified ponies, their screams as the boat jarred and listed, then began to take on water.
One by one, he had gently led them to the side of the boat and coaxed them to jump into the water. And one by one, they had trusted him. When the last one, a charcoal gray mare, balked, he pulled himself onto her back and kicked her hard in the ribs so that she leaped off the side of the steamer, her front hooves pawing at the emptiness beneath her, until together, they crashed into the water.
Mr. Beauchamp would never forget that moment. He felt like he was on a winged horse, a Pegasus. Flight. It was wonderful and terrifying all at the same time. When they hit the water, he slid off of her back and both of them rode the waves to the sandy beach.
Ten ponies swam ashore that night and disappeared into the salt marshes of the Texas coast, so like the salt marshes of France, but with fewer trees.
Gone. All those ponies. And something else, too— a porte-bonheur. Somewhere between the listing boat and the beach, somewhere in the salty water of the coast, he had lost it, fallen from his pocket.
No effort was ever made to round up the ponies. As soon as the captain of the boat was able to talk the owner of a tug into pulling him off of the sandbar, he sailed into the port of Galveston, stayed only long enough for repairs, and headed off for Egypt. Henri Beauchamp did not go with him.
Instead, he signed on with a passenger ship headed to France, back to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. He had to find Jack.
He was ashamed that he had reacted so badly. What did it matter? All that mattered, all that ever had, was how much he longed to hold Jack’s hand again.
When he got back to his village, he ran to the plaza with the fountain, but no one had ever seen a boy by Jack’s description. Dark black hair, sky blue eyes. He even tried to find the old fisherwoman, but she also was a mystery to the townsfolk. For days and months he went to the fountain. Night after night. But Jack never returned, nor did the sea wife.
Just as Henri was about to give up, he spotted a large black-and-white cat with a single eye. The cat seemed to wink at him, then wove between his ankles. Was it the same cat that had been in the market on that day when Jack had given him the token? Could it be? His heart pounded hard in his chest. He reached down and scratched the cat between his ears. Henri made a decision. He would sail around the world if he had to, until he found Jack.
The next week he and the cat embarked upon their journey, from London to Sydney to Vancouver to Hoi An to Auckland to San Francisco, all to no avail, until at last they made their way back to the coast of Texas. When he disembarked in Corpus Christi, the cat followed him to the shore. And in all those years Mr. Beauchamp had grown older and older.
And what about the cat? Was it the same cat year after year? The same one-eyed tom, black-and-white and huge? Mr. Beauchamp was never sure. From time to time, the cat would disappear for a stretch, then one day he’d show up again with a black spot in a different place on his coat, or an extra toe on his front paw, or most mysterious of all, the good eye would change, so that instead of his right eye being good, it would be his left eye that he looked through.
Regardless, Mr. Beauchamp’s cat was always named Sinbad, after the one-eyed pirate of fame and fable.
Together, they hitchhiked north to the lonely stretch of beach beside a large pond with a deep channel that ran between the surf and the marsh. When the tide was low, they could see the sandbar where his ship had run aground, its narrow ridge just above the water’s surface. This was where Mr. Beauchamp had lost the porte-bonheur. Maybe he could find it again.
For years he walked the beach, day after day, hoping that the tide would offer it up.
The Texas coast was where he had told Jack that he was going. Maybe, he thought, maybe, instead of trying to find Jack, Jack would find him. So he built his house and planted his roses and night-blooming cyrus. At night he could hear the ponies calling to one another.
Years and years, so many years passed that he lost track of how many times he had swum out into the surf, diving down, looking for the lost charm, so many times, until at last he was too old to wade into the water, afraid that the tide would carry him out to sea and he would not have the strength to swim back to shore.
And eventually, the ponies’ voices died away too.
All he had left of Jack were the cat and the roses and the night-blooming cyrus. The roses bloomed year-round, but the cyrus, ahhh, the night-blooming cyrus. They only bloomed once a year, then only on a full moon night. They would fill the air with their spicy-sweet aroma, and their scent would remind Henri Beauchamp of Jack and those nights long ago.
But this year the cyrus would not bloom at all, and Mr. Beauchamp, the broken stalk in his hand, did not believe that he would still be here, on Oyster Ridge Road, for another blooming of the cyrus, a whole year away.
And in that moment, the moon as bright as could be, Sinbad, with his one brilliant eye, looked toward the bountiful sea.
“Hurry,” he purred, “hurry.”
And the girl in the boat looked at that very same moon and wished again for her mother. And again. And again. And again.
81
Meanwhile, Dogie looked at the clock in the kitchen. Midnight. No wonder he felt so groggy. He walked to the sink and filled up the coffeepot with water. He’d only had a few hours of sleep. He’d need a couple of cups of coffee, despite Too’s obvious impatience.
While he waited for it to brew, he glanced at his broken ukulele. The koa wood was as shiny as it had been when his uncle gave it to him.
He frowned, then found a dishcloth and covered it. It reminded him of the way people cover a person’s face after they’ve died. Sadness inched its way up his fingers.
He loved that ukulele.
When he strummed it, it was like the strings called out the perfect words of his songs, words that tumbled out of his mouth with no hesitation, clear and happy. No stuttering. Perfect. He had not set out to be a musician and didn’t think of himself as such. Not really. But when he returned to New Jersey from the war, when his whole body could not stop shaking, his great-uncle Sylvester came over one day and handed it to him.
“Here,” he said, “it was given to me when I came home from my own war.” Dogie looked at the tiny instrument and couldn’t say anything. Not even “th-th-thank you.” His uncle didn’t expect him to. He just said, “Anyone who’s gone to war and lived to tell about it needs some music.” He paused. “The uke should help.”
Uncle Sylvester didn’t offer up any other explanation, just handed it to Dogie and walked out the door.
He did not want to tell anyone about the war, about what he had seen there or heard or smelled or tasted. There was no telling about it. And besides, he couldn’t make the words come out, even if he wanted to. He just sat there and shook, shook from head to toe. And the whole time, Uncle Sylvester’s ukulele sat beside him, small, silent.
It sat there until Dogie’s mother picked it up and handed it to him.
He let his right thumb strum lightly over the nylon strings. The instrument rang out. This is the difference between a uk
ulele and all of the other stringed instruments: It rings. Almost like bells, a ukulele has a crisp, ringing sound.
Dogie’s had it with him ever since, kept it beside him as he drove the yellow bus along the highways and byways, until he parked that same bus in the sand along this strip of Texas beach, and every night since, he’s sat on the porch of the haint blue house and played his songs, songs plain and clear, without stutters, for Keeper and Signe.
But that was before the incident with the crabs and the broken bowl and the shattered flowers and the cracked ukulele, leaving him with his unsung two-word song, and the moon as full as a bowl of gumbo.
82
A look of dismay crossed BD’s face. The waves were getting taller. The wind was kicking up. The little boat was built for a gentle pond; it was no match for the Gulf of Mexico. Even the smaller waves felt huge.
They needed to find the way home. Soon.
83
Keeper scanned the water all around. And around and around and around. The Scamper couldn’t seem to stay pointed in any one direction. Instead, it kept spinning, first one direction, then another, in sudden twists and turns. Then it would stop just long enough for her to catch her breath before it spun again. In the midst of the spinning, Keeper felt the wind pick up. The waves seemed to be getting taller.
She felt dizzy. So much spinning… and spinning… spinneroo!
Where was Meggie Marie? Keeper tried calling again. “Over here! We’re here!” Her voice cracked. It was getting raspy.
Her mother was supposed to be out here. This was the last place that Keeper had seen her. “Meggie Marie!” Keeper called again.
Then she listened. But there was no answer at all. Even the wind seemed to have forgotten her name. The moon, directly above her head, looked no larger than one of the bottle caps on a cold Dr Pepper.