The Lost Skiff

by Donald Wetzel

  And whatever she noticed and may have wondered about me, I believe she remembered well enough that I had not come riding up to her house on a big white horse, a knight in shining armor, but rowing my head off, scared and half covered with mud, a more or less normal kid, who, the first thing he did when he saw her, was to sit there staring at her long bare leg, for all the world as though he might have liked to bite it.

  With her shyness and soft way of talking, I have not meant to make it seem that Brenda Sue struck me as being nothing but a nice sort of backward kid. I mean that when I would glance over and see her sitting there looking at me, it would not be like a fool, but like a girl. Yet she was not being cute about it, either; just open. Like right after we had eaten supper and I went down to straighten up the boat before it got too dark; I didn’t ask her if she would like to come along or anything, in fact it was Jack who I told where I was going, but when I left, Brenda Sue got up and just came along with me, not saying a word, walking beside me down the long curving path to the pier as though it was nothing more or less than I had expected. Then she sat there at the edge of the pier in the last of the sunlight swinging her legs out over the water and watching me straighten up the stuff in the boat and cover it up with the tarp for the night. Looking down like that, I guess she saw a lot of my hair, because finally, having first said something about how well supplied with food we were, she said, as naturally as though she might have been mentioning the sunset or something, “You sure do have nice hair.” Just that. And when I looked up at her, surprised, she was not even smiling, just sitting there swinging her legs and looking as serious about it as if she had mentioned something sad. All I could do was wonder.

  Then I went back to working at the boat. “Well,” I said, “these stupid curls of mine have brought me more trouble than any other single thing.” And then thinking I might be misunderstood altogether, I was quick to say, “From boys. But there is nothing I can do about it.”

  “I like curls,” she said. Then she let it go at that, and so did I.

  When I had finished with the stuff in the boat, I got up and sat at the edge of the pier beside her for a while, watching the sunset, trying to get my mind back on Jack, still wondering if I was doing the right thing in not calling his father to come get him, letting him sit up there with a broken wrist for as long as I already had, just so I could keep my word about looking for the skiff. While in the meantime I could also sit here, watching the light lifting up off the creek, with Brenda Sue, who I hadn’t even asked, sitting beside me, swinging her legs out now and then where I could see them, both in the air and reflected in the water, a pretty sight to see. It just didn’t seem right or fair to Jack.

  Still, we sat there together, watching the sunset and talking, until there wasn’t any sunset left to see. She had, she told me when I asked her, just turned fifteen. The soft way she said it, it was as though it still seemed a kind of wonder to her. It somehow did to me, anyhow. I had said I was almost sixteen. Or maybe it just seemed a kind of wonder to us both, to be not altogether strangers any more, although strangers so short a time ago, and to be just the ages that we were, and to be sitting there together, alone, talking in the dark.

  For a while after that we just sat there, and finally I said, “I guess I had better go see how poor Jack is coming along,” and I got up and Brenda Sue got up and we walked back up the hill toward the house together, finally coming into the light again, and turning at the same time to look at each other, each of us caught, wondering and surprised, it seemed, and then pleased, I guess. Anyhow, I must have smiled, because Brenda Sue did, and it held this time, long. And when she finally ducked her head, it seemed to me that for the time her smile had held I must have also held my breath. For a second after, anyhow, I was left half dizzy; and if that seems half crazy, it is still the truth. Then we went on up the path and up onto the porch and looked at Jack.

  He was sitting there in a chair with his left hand stuck inside his shirt, with a big Sears, Roebuck catalogue on the table in front of him spread open to a double page of guns, pretending he was reading about them. He hardly lifted up his head when we came in together. He looked terrible. “Why have you got your hand inside your shirt? Has the swelling gone down any?” I said.

  “Because I am tired of trying to freeze it plum off,” Jack said, “and I don’t have a sling for it. Even with only a sprain, a sling can help. Brenda Sue, your ma says for you to do the dishes. She is out back with your pa at the car, holding a light for him.”

  “I will fix you a decent sling first,” Brenda Sue said, and she ran off the porch and came back with a big, thin red scarf and went around behind Jack’s chair and leaned over him, ready to fix his sling, but Jack wouldn’t take his hand back out of his shirt so that she could adjust it.

  “Just tie the two ends together like you’ve got it now,” he said, “and if it needs adjusting Rodney can do it while you are washing up the dishes.” It hardly sounded friendly, but she guessed at it and did it the best she could, and then went back into the kitchen. But when Jack had eased his hand back out of his shirt and into the sling, I could see what he had been doing; he had not wanted her to see it. It was swollen to at least twice its normal size. “You know what I think?” Jack said. “I believe I have broke and badly sprained my wrist, both.”

  I stood there looking at him, feeling like hell about it. “Damn it,” I said, “it is time to stop this craziness and call your father.”

  “No it’s not,” Jack said, “not after what I have went through already.”

  “Jack,” I said, “I can see how much it has swollen and I can guess at how much it must hurt. Being stubborn about it just doesn’t make sense. We can look for that skiff another time. No matter what I have said before, it is not that important to me.”

  “Just wait,” Jack said, “this sling is really giving me the first relief I have had. Anyhow, Rodney, when you have made up your mind about a thing, you should let it stay made up for a time. Or people will get not to trust your word.”

  I stood looking down at him, shaking my head and not really knowing what to say, and finally I said, “It may seem strange to you, or a sign of weakness, but I do not like to see people suffer. Whether from my stupidity or their own.”

  “Honest, Rodney,” he said, “I am not really suffering all that much. Look, here is how we will do it. I have asked Mrs. Byrd and we can sleep here on the porch; there are some cots around on the other side. I will get you up early. Then I will claim to the Byrds that my wrist is better, only not quite well enough yet so that I can be of help to you going on down to the basin. Then I will say, ‘But there is no reason Rodney should not go on down to the basin and get that skiff by himself. If he rows like I know he can row, he can get down there and back, easy, by early evening.’ And by then my wrist will be rested enough and we can make it back up the creek, just taking our time, and still get back up to The Landing on Saturday!”

  “By Saturday,” I said, “your broken bone may have started setting up crooked, and there is no way for you to sleep comfortable with a broken wrist either in the boat or in the woods, and rains may come up and hold us back. And all that time your wrist will be hurting like hell and nothing will have been done about it; and your lousy plan is no plan at all. It’s crazy.”

  But Jack shook his head for a bit, as though I was the crazy one. “You have not let me finish,” he said. “Naturally I would not wait and let you take forever rowing us both back up the creek. You have not thought it out. What I will do, once you get good and started down the creek tomorrow, I will discover that my wrist is surely broke after all. Then I’ll call Pa. And when he gets here, if he wants to wait for you to get back from the basin, I will be in such pain as to make a wait seem cruel. And he will have to take me back to get this bone set. Then you can go on and look as much as you please for the skiff, just so you manage to get back to The Landing by Saturday. Which I believe you can manage to do.” He looked at me and waited, and when I s
till couldn’t think of what to say, he said, “Well, that’s my plan. And unless you are actually afraid of a few nights alone on the creek, then you have got no reason to talk about calling Pa. I will do it in the morning.”

  I just stood there looking at him, and then finally I gave up on it. “No,” I said, “I don’t know any more what is right, but I’m not afraid of the creek alone. I will do it. But if you have the sense to change your mind before morning, I hope you will have the nerve to admit it. It’s good to be brave, I guess, but there is nothing wrong about having good sense, either.”

  Then I looked up and saw Brenda Sue standing in the door to the porch right off behind us. How long she had been standing there I could only wonder; at least for a while, I figured. Jack saw me staring and turned enough to see her. And then the first one of us to think of something to say was Brenda Sue. “Ma called in for me to come ask how your wrist was feeling now,” she said.

  “Tell your ma, thank you,” Jack said, “I believe it’s feeling better.”

  For a time longer Brenda Sue stood there, looking first to Jack and then to me, and then looking last at me, she said, “If that’s what you want, that’s what I will tell her.” I just nodded, and she left. Then in no time she was back, and she went around in back of Jack and untied his sling and pulled it up some and then tied it again. “The least you can do with that wrist,” she said, “is have it held right.” And then we sat there, with Jack gone back to reading the catalogue and Brenda Sue and me sitting there talking about other things, with the light from the moon finally showing clear on the clearing and the creek below.

  Finally Mr. and Mrs. Byrd came in, tired from working on the car, but pleased that it was done and running again. Jack had to do some good arguing, even interrupting Mrs. Byrd several times, to get her to change her mind about their driving us both back to The Hill right then. The way he finally won was to act like he was getting his feelings hurt at their being in such a hurry to get rid of us, even though we had been there since shortly after noon. “Well,” Jack said finally, “for some reason Ellen and the folks could not seem to wait to run me and Rodney back off to the creek, but I guess I can see why you should not want us just hanging around here, either. I am sure sorry for the trouble we have put you to already, as well as the trouble now of that long drive back to The Hill, but that is up to you, of course. Rodney and me can come look around in the basin for that skiff some other time, although I imagine it will be gone by then for sure.”

  Then he hung his head and shook it a bit from side to side, as though he had just been told he had not a friend left in the world. It was the worst I had seen him act yet, but it worked. “Jack Haywood,” Mrs. Byrd said, “you know very well that you and your friend Rodney are more than welcome to spend the night here, as I have already said. It is not a question of that at all, and I am surprised that you could think such a thing. I’ll have Babe Honey make up the cots for you right away. It was only your wrist we were thinking about. Why, all this time we have been talking, I have never seen a boy looking more worried about his friend than Rodney there worrying about you. And I am worried, too. But we can wait until morning, if that is still what you want to do.”

  I had been worried about Jack’s wrist all along, but at the time Mrs. Byrd had been watching me I had been worried most of all about Jack’s lying and his lousy job of acting like he had had his feelings hurt. In a way, if they had thrown us both out on our heads after that I would not have blamed them; still, I had to admit that when Jack gets his mind set on something he will not let it easily be changed.

  Then Brenda Sue went away and came back with her arms loaded down with sheets and bedding and pillows, and I jumped up to help her. It seemed the least I could do, although I could see it surprised them all at first. To be honest, after we went around to the other side of the porch, just Brenda Sue and me, and started working together getting the first cot ready to be slept in, it seemed a little strange to me, too. Especially as we were working at it half in the dark, with the only light being moonlight, filtering in onto the porch through some pines near the house, so that a sheet stretched out on a cot seemed to catch the only light there was, like a sponge. It was hard not to notice it, or not to find it somewhat strange to be working around in the moonlight, a boy and a girl who had just met, suddenly making up a bed. In fact, it must have seemed strange to Brenda Sue, too, because we ended up making up both the cots without either of us once mentioning the fact that this was what we were actually doing. Mostly we talked about the moonlight, and how somewhere out there on the creek was the lost skiff I was looking for, which, if only I was lucky enough, I might find tomorrow. Then the cots were ready, and Brenda Sue walked to a place where you could see the creek through the trees, and for a minute we looked at it, not saying anything, seeing it through the screen and the pines, but still clear and shining down below us, curving away out of sight. Then Brenda Sue said, “If you should not find it tomorrow, Rodney, will you look again for it later?”

  I thought about it, and I knew I would. “It is a funny thing,” I said, “but it already seems like I have been looking for that lost skiff forever. I don’t guess I could ever give up on it altogether now. I would just have to keep looking.”

  We were quiet, watching the creek again. Then we heard Jack coming back toward the porch where we were, ready to go to bed now, I supposed. “If you don’t find it tomorrow,” Brenda Sue said, “I will keep on looking for it, too.”

  Then we said good night and she left, and I went in and thanked the Byrds again and said good night to them, and then Jack and I went to bed. I had meant to stay half awake, to see how Jack was making out through the night, but I guess I was tireder than I knew, because the last thing I remember was this kind of picture that came to my mind for a while, not exactly a dream, but not something clearly thought about, either, a picture in my mind of Brenda Sue in one boat and me in another, each of us rowing alone but out somewhere on the creek, looking for the same lost skiff.

  12

  Sometime in the night I seemed to hear a kind of moaning, and for a while I kept trying to shut out the sound of it; but then it came to me that it might be Jack, in pain, and I woke up with a jerk and looked around. But it was only a wind that had come up, blowing through the screen. Far off across the creek the moon was starting to go down, and in the last of the light I could see Jack stretched out on his back on his cot across from me, his left hand and wrist lying on his chest, kind of curved and big and strange-looking, as though it was hardly a part of him, like a sleeping cat. Yet I bent close and looked, and it was his bent hand and swollen wrist all right; and with the wind moaning in his ear and his wrist broken, Jack was sleeping.

  For a minute, bending close and hearing the moaning sound of the wind and seeing Jack’s easy breathing as he slept, with his hurt wrist lifting up and down on his chest as he breathed, it kind of gave me a chill, strange as that may sound, as though I had waked up in a different place than I had expected, and was suddenly not certain about who I was or who Jack was or even where we were, as though even time wasn’t certain. It could have been some kind of cave I had waked up in, with only the sound of the wind to tell me where I was, and only moonlight to let me turn and see Jack, like a dumb, hurt animal, asleep in his pain. Then I lay back down and after a while it all straightened out for me, and I was sorry that I had thought of Jack that way; still, for a minute, that is how it had struck me. Then the moon went down and there was only the sound of the wind blowing through the porch screen, reminding me where I was; and I thought, well, I guess we are all still animals at that, strange as it seems; and then I went back to sleep.

  I woke up in the morning half certain that it would be raining, that the wind that had waked me in the night was due to a storm coming on, and that my chance would be gone to get down to the basin and find out if the skiff Mr. Byrd had seen was really the one I had lost. Yet when Jack shook my shoulder and I opened my eyes, it seemed that the wind was blo
wing gusts of sunlight everywhere I looked, with the porch screens shining with it, trembling in the wind, and the pine limbs dipping and bending so hard that even the pine needles had the glint of actual needles to them; I looked, and there was not a cloud anywhere in sight.

  “This wind is no good,” Jack said, “it will slow you down for sure. But at least it’s out of the southwest, which will help keep water in the basin so that you can get in to the point all right. What worries me most is that somewheres behind it there is probably a storm.”

  “We have come through one storm already,” I said, “although I have to admit that another one could be a nuisance. How is your wrist?”

  “The same as since I broke it. Broke.” I looked at him, and while his color was better than it had been the day before, there were some wrinkles between his eyebrows that had not been there before that gave him a kind of steady puzzled look, although more than anything else, he looked tired. “To tell you the truth, it has come to be a bother. I feel like a skittish bitch with six tits and eight pups; there just ain’t no right way to be. This sling helps some, though.”

  “I had better hurry then,” I said, “so I can get gone, and you can call your father.” While I got dressed, Jack sat on the other cot and, talking low, told me that he had already talked to the Byrds about my going on down to the basin alone, and while they hadn’t thought it was such a smart idea, they had agreed that he could hang around until I got back in the evening and took him with me back up the creek to The Landing. “To be honest,” Jack said, “they thought it was crazy, especially when they made me let them see my wrist. But I was stubborn and they give in.” Then he laughed. “Ha,” he said, “imagine the looks on their faces when as soon as you are well out of sight I tell them I have changed my mind completely. They will believe I have went crazy for sure. If I say so myself, the thing I am best noticed for is my stubbornness.”