by Cynthia Lord
I slide my hand behind my back and cross my fingers for good luck. Say yes, Aaron. “It would mean a lot to everyone. Wouldn’t it, Dad?”
He turns to Aaron. “What do you think?”
Aaron’s eyes flash around him, like he’s looking for a place to run. But unless he jumps overboard, he can’t go anywhere. “I don’t have any sheet music for those songs,” he says finally.
“Can you find him some music to follow?” Dad asks into the mic.
“Of course!” Mrs. Coombs says. “I have a songbook here at home that’ll do just fine. Send him over tonight after supper, Jacob. I’ll have it all marked with what I want him to play.”
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from grinning as Dad hangs up the mic.
“Let’s check how your traps are doing over near Sheep Island, Tess. Watch your feet, kids.” As the boat pulls away, Dad pushes a trap off the rail, and I watch the rope attached to it unwind off the deck until it reaches the buoy tied at the end. The rope yanks the buoy into the water, marking the trap.
Across the waves lies the low, hazy hump of Sheep Island. The spot I’ve been fishing has proved okay, but I think there’s a better one. “Today I’ll move one of my traps a little ways farther into the channel between Sheep Island and Dead Man’s Island,” I tell Dad as he guns the engine.
Though both islands have been deserted for generations, Dead Man’s is pitted with cellar holes — and a few even have stone chimneys still standing.
“Why’s it called Dead Man’s Island?” Aaron asks.
The concerned look in his eyes makes me want to tease him a little. “That’s where we Bethsaida Islanders buried the people who didn’t survive last year’s Fourth of July picnic. Donnie Burgess and his electric guitar were never seen again.”
Aaron’s gaze turns on me, angry.
“I’m just joking,” I add quickly.
“The story is that long ago a shipwrecked sailor washed up there,” Dad says over the engine’s roar. “There’s a plain headstone for him in the cemetery over behind those trees. They didn’t know what name to carve, so they left it blank.”
I’ve heard that story plenty — Amy and I even told it to Libby a few times. Though when we told it, the islanders did lots more screaming and fainting at the horror of finding the dead body than when Dad tells it.
“Why didn’t the man’s family ever claim him?” Aaron asks. “Or at least tell people his name?”
“I don’t imagine they ever knew what happened to him,” Dad says.
Looking toward the island, I wonder if that sailor did have people at home waiting. Hoping day after day, month after month, that he’d show up on their doorstep, older and tired, with an amazing story to tell.
People say it’s better to know the truth, but what if the ending’s a bad one? Is it still better to know? Or is it kinder to keep that string of hope dangling? To believe that maybe if you just wait long enough, everything could still end the way you want.
“What was the island called before the sailor came?” Aaron asks.
“Good question.” Dad checks his boat instruments. “It probably had another name before then, but I guess everyone started calling it Dead Man’s, and that’s what stuck.”
On the nearby rocky edge of tiny Sheep Island, a group of seals sun themselves. Their huge round bodies are stretched out, warm and drowsy. They raise their heads, curious, as we go by. A few more seals swim in the water between the island and our boat, the sun flashing off their wet fur.
“It doesn’t make sense to name a whole island for a guy who didn’t belong there,” Aaron says. “I’m sure he didn’t even want to be there.”
“No, but it’s where he stayed.” Dad slows the boat near my first buoy. He leans out to snag the buoy with the gaff, a long pole with a hook on the end.
As Dad starts the hauler, I head for the rail, but Aaron doesn’t move. “My grandmother drowned, too,” he says.
Below me, waves slosh against the hull and I half-expect them to rise up in white-capped fury and pull us down to the depths. Anyone who knows anything about the ocean knows you never, ever say the D word on a boat.
Though my first trap hasn’t even broken the surface, Dad stops the hauler from pulling the trap up through the water. “Natalie said she had cancer?”
Aaron nods. “Fluid filled her lungs at the end. I didn’t know a person could drown in a room full of air.”
“I didn’t know that either,” Dad says quietly.
Every time I’ve allowed myself to imagine that unnamed sailor’s last seconds, there was always a dark, cold ocean folding around him, and maybe a horrible patch of watery light way up overhead — never once had I thought of someone drowning from the inside.
Stripping off his rubber gloves, Dad drops each one on the deck. He puts his arm around Aaron and turns him into his shoulder. I expect Aaron to duck out from under Dad’s arm or back away, but he leans his forehead, just enough to touch, against Dad’s shoulder. Behind them, I feel alone and “extra,” though I’m close enough to see every breath they take. I feel guilty for having an easier life than Aaron. For me, losing everything only means my home. I can’t even imagine finding myself all alone, too.
“I’m sorry,” Dad says. “You’ve been through more than any child should have to.”
I step closer. I feel a little bad about Dad taking one hand off Aaron for me, but I need Dad right now, too.
In the water near our boat, a seal lifts his head up, locking eyes with mine. “Look, Aaron,” I say.
He raises his head off Dad’s shoulder just as the seal tucks into a dive, smooth as a wave.
“Wow,” Aaron says.
“Don’t let those big eyes fool you,” Dad teases. “They’re a bunch of thieves. Seals stick their heads into lobster traps and eat up the bait or the lobsters, sometimes ruining the trap in the process. So we fishermen have nothing good to say about them.”
“I’m a fisherman,” I say, “and I think they’re beautiful.”
“They have to eat, too,” Aaron says quietly.
I nod. “That’s right. They just want their supper.”
“Will you still feel that way if one of those robbers has eaten your lobsters?” Dad asks me, picking up his gloves.
“Yes!” But when my trap is hauled, it’s empty. Even the bait bag is gone. I shrug. “Anyone can have one bad-luck day.”
“Or a good-luck day, if you’re a seal,” Aaron says.
It’s so surprising to hear him joke that for a second I can’t believe he really said it. “Yes, it’s a very lucky day for a seal,” I say.
And even Dad smiles.
After supper, I take Aaron over to Mrs. Coombs’s house to get the music book for the Fourth of July picnic. The cooling-down evening smells like Christmas trees and salt air. As we walk, I spin around counterclockwise to reverse the bad luck of Aaron saying “drowned” on the boat. When I twirl for the third time, he looks at me like I’m crazy. He should be grateful I’m protecting him, because bad luck is as real as good luck.
As we come up her walk, Mrs. Coombs opens her front door — before we’ve even knocked. I should’ve known she’d be watching for us.
“Hello!” I give her a wide, cheesy grin.
She narrows her eyes. Mrs. Coombs thinks any happy kid is up to no good. “I marked the songs for you to play.” She hands Aaron a thick, spiral-bound music book, Beloved Tunes of the American People. A fringe of yellow Post-it notes juts from the pages. “I picked all the favorites.”
I want to ask, whose favorites? But if I said that, Mom’d hear about it — probably even before I got home. Mrs. Coombs has the fastest phone-dialing finger in Maine. And I bet she has Mom on speed dial.
“Be at the picnic no later than eleven,” she tells Aaron. “I’ll borrow one of the music stands from church. We can set it up that morning on the parish hall steps.”
“Okay,” he says.
As Mrs. Coombs closes her door, Aaron sticks the songbook
under his arm.
“It’s nice of you to do this,” I say. “Everyone will love it.”
“I hate playing what other people want.” He fingers the yellow bits of paper. “I probably don’t even know half these songs.”
“There’s a piano in there.” I point to the parish hall next door. “You could try the songs out. And if you don’t know one, maybe I could hum it for you.”
Aaron looks uncertain as he shifts the music book under his arm. “Don’t they keep the door locked?”
“Not usually. There’s nothing worth stealing in there, unless a thief wanted a load of bean supper plates and rummage sale stuff.”
Aaron hurries across the lawn. He almost drops the music book as he runs.
“Wait! Don’t walk on Mrs. Coombs’s grass! She’ll —” I glance back to the house, half-expecting to see her charge out of her front door, brandishing her phone.
Not even a curtain quivers in the window, so I run across the grass after him.
Inside the parish hall, Aaron sits at the black upright piano and dusts the keys with the bottom edge of his T-shirt. Then, striking a note, he wrinkles his nose. “Ouch.”
“It doesn’t get played much. Just for special events like the talent show or our island holiday party in December.” My voice rings in the empty room, sounding like I’m more than one person. I flip light switches on and off until I find the one that controls the lights above the stage.
Today, that holiday party feels a world away. In the summer, it’s easy to forget how frozen the air can feel out here in winter, like the sky itself could crack from it. Sea foam freezes into long lines and swirls on the shore, and any boats still left in the water wear skirts of ice each morning.
Aaron’ll feel all settled in with us by then, I hope. He plays a chord, and a shiver runs between my shoulders. His face is serious, his eyebrows down and his eyes looking just above the keys. He plays three notes, and then repeats them. I imagine words to the notes, “Come a-long. Come a-long.” Swaying gently side to side to the music, I watch the muscles in his forearms move as the song fills out, his right hand stretching up higher on the keys and his left hand crawling down lower. I wish I knew the real words — not that I would sing along, except in my head. “Where did you learn to play?”
“My grandmother had a piano. She taught me. I never knew I was a musician until I went to live with her. Then Home Number One had a keyboard.”
The way he calls the place by a number tugs at me. I don’t ever want to hear him call us Home Number Three.
“I was glad to leave that foster home. I missed my grandma, and I couldn’t even get away from the other kids because I didn’t have my own room. The only way I could be alone was to plug the headphones into the keyboard and play. I was only there a year, but it was long enough.” He sets the music book on the piano’s music stand. “I think they wanted a younger kid anyway.”
“Where’d you get your trumpet from?” I ask, then add quickly, “I mean who gave it to you?” hoping it didn’t sound like I thought he stole it.
“When I was eight my caseworker at the time told me to write down what I wanted for Christmas. I wrote only ‘a real trumpet’ on my paper. I wanted an instrument I could play in the school band.” He lifts one shoulder. “I was surprised when I really got one. Most Christmases, I wrote what I wanted, but then when the present came, it totally wasn’t what I asked for — like one year I asked for a skateboard and I got a football instead. I don’t even like football.” Aaron starts a slow, bluesy piano melody. The low notes pound like waves rolling up and back on the rocks.
“That’s really pretty music,” I say. “No one in my family plays any instruments.”
“Grandma told me my mom played piano a long time ago. I’ve never heard her, though.”
“Has your mom ever heard you play?” I ask.
“No.” He flips open the book to one of the Post-it notes. “I don’t know ‘You’re a Grand Old Flag.’”
My mom would never miss seeing me in a concert. She’d write it on the calendar and be there in time to get a good seat. I imagine what it must be like for Aaron: standing up at the end as the audience applauds, but she’s not there. Or unwrapping his trumpet that Christmas morning and not being able to hold it up and show her. Or seeing his birthday cake in front of him, and she’s not telling him to make a wish. But it’s all a big white blank in my imagination, because I can’t even pretend what it would feel like not to have my mom at those times. “Couldn’t she have just showed up at one of your school concerts?” I ask. “Even if it wasn’t technically allowed. I mean, it’s not like they check IDs at the door, right?”
“She never knew when the concerts were. And I couldn’t tell her, because I didn’t know where she was.” He frowns. “Are you going to hum or not?”
I sigh and hum the first verse. I think I sound like a human kazoo, but Aaron nods his head in time with me.
“Have you written back to her?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Every time I try, it comes out wrong — like I’m mad or I don’t know what to say. I wish I could just talk to her.”
“We could make your mom a video of the Fourth of July picnic,” I say. “Then she could hear you play and see where you live now and meet Libby and me. We could show her cool things about the island.”
“Your parents would have to ask Natalie. I hate how everything has to go through her. It’s not like I’m a baby!”
“Well, what if —”
“Look, forget it! Okay?” he snaps. “I don’t even know if my mom has a TV that works. Or a computer. Or whatever she’d need to watch a video.”
I close my mouth. I feel bad that I kept asking questions and now he’s upset. I wish I knew a good joke or something funny, to make him smile and take the anger out of his forehead. As Aaron plays the second verse of the song by himself, I glance to the stacks of boxes along the wall marked LADIES’ AID SOCIETY RUMMAGE SALE. I don’t think Aaron even sees me leave.
The clothes in the first box have a stale, old-people smell. I find a tweed sport coat and a wide blue-and-orange-striped tie. Sorting through sweaters, shirts, baseball caps, and a pair of ladies gloves so narrow I don’t think they’d even fit Libby, I snatch up a slate-colored felt hat. The sort that snowmen wear.
“I’m sorry, sir. You do not meet our dress code.” Holding the clothes out to Aaron, my chest seizes with panic. What if he sneers at me for acting babyish?
Taking one hand off the piano keys, Aaron holds his palm upward. “You couldn’t pick a better tie?”
I smile, draping it over his hand.
Knotting the tie in place, Aaron gets up from the bench. From another box along the wall, he pulls out a knitted brown scarf with two huge, lime-green pom-poms at the bottom.
I’m not much for style, but that scarf is dirt ugly. Aaron wraps it loosely around my neck, flipping both ends over my shoulders. The pom-poms hit me in the back.
“Oh, how very brown.” I pose with one hand on my hip. “What do you think?”
“Not quite.” Aaron pulls out a purple sequined hat. He drops it on my head and tips it down on one side. “Better.”
By the time we’re done, Aaron’s decked out in the tweed coat with his hat squashed low over his eyebrows, dark sunglasses, striped tie, and a rolled-up napkin for a cigar.
I’m wearing someone’s raspberry-satin prom dress, bunched in my hand to keep it from dragging on the floor, the sequined hat, the brown scarf, and a whole jewelry box’s worth of cheap, chunky necklaces.
Aaron sits back on the piano bench. “I’ll play piano, you take the vocal part.”
I smile, until I realize what he actually said. “Wait a minute! Do you mean actual words? I can’t sing!”
“Everyone can. Some people are terrible at it, but everyone can sing.” He flickers out a few twinkly notes on the piano. “Pretend you’re someone else, then. That’s what I do when everyone expects me to be someone I’m not.” He glances at me. �
�The one, the only, the incredible —”
Oh, glory. “Um. Lola?”
Aaron grins, like I hoped he would. His left hand plays low notes, while his right hand passes me Mrs. Coombs’s Beloved Tunes of the American People. “Pick one from here, Lola.”
I flip through the pages. “Home on the Range” would sound ridiculous on Bethsaida, unless I substituted Eben’s dog, Beast, for “buffalo.” “Auld Lang Syne” isn’t a summer song. And I don’t even know “Sentimental Journey.” “I think a better title for this book would be Beloved Tunes of Really, Really Old People.”
I find a hymn I know from church.
“I don’t know this one,” Aaron says as I set the book open on the piano. “I’ll follow you.” He begins playing, slow and gentle. “You didn’t take your cue, Lola.” He begins again.
“I’ve got peace like a river,” I sing so quiet I’m almost whispering.
I’ve got peace like a river
I’ve got peace like a river in my soul.
I’ve got peace like a river
I’ve got peace like a river
I’ve got peace like a river in my soul.
“Very pretty,” Aaron says. “Keep going.”
I’ve got joy like a fountain
I’ve got joy like a fountain
I’ve got joy like a fountain in my soul.
I’ve got joy like a fountain
I’ve got joy like a fountain
I’ve got joy like a fountain in my soul.
I’ve got love like an ocean
I’ve got love like an ocean
I’ve got love like an ocean in my soul.
I’ve got love like an ocean
I’ve got love like an ocean
I’ve got love like an ocean in my soul.
“You have good pitch,” Aaron says.