But I sat there until I had figured the whole thing out. I had followed the treetops along the east bank of the creek just the way I had planned, and I had followed them right on around and straight into Mud Turtle Creek and a good ways up it. I had known the creek was there, but I had forgot. And if it hadn’t been for that mudbank that stopped me, I thought, I might still be following those treetops like an idiot. And then I finally thought, well, I am not lost, anyhow, just a long ways up the wrong creek and stuck in the mud.
Once I had figured it out, I could see there was no point in just sitting there feeling tired and stupid, and I stood up and shoved the boat free of the mud with an oar and turned it around and started back the way I had come. And somehow it didn’t surprise me at all when the rain started coming down harder again and the light faded more and more in the sky. By that time, I think I expected it. I don’t think it would have surprised me if it had started to thunder and lightning as well.
I had almost got dry, but soon I was soaked again. This time, the rain seemed colder, and more often than not as I rowed along I couldn’t see a thing. I got so it hardly bothered me when I would go sliding into some bushes or bump up against a snag, although when I would back away from whatever it was I had run into, it was sometimes hard to remember which way the front of the boat had been pointing before. And when finally I must have gotten turned around and rowed the wrong way and ended up on either the same mudbank again or another just like it, it hardly made me mad.
The creek had won out after all, and I knew it. And for a time I sat there feeling more or less like I wished it was all right for me to cry. But then I straightened up. Well, I thought, the mistakes were mine and here I am and there is no way to change it, certainly not by crying; anyhow, there has been enough lousy water in this night already. Then I looked around in the rain, not able to see a thing, and in my mind it seemed I could see the whole long creek stretched out somewhere behind me, the way I had first seen it and the way it was, and then the thought came to me: okay, so I have lost; but that long old creek has been there forever, while I am hardly sixteen damn years old.
So then I worked the boat loose from the mud again and got it turned around and rowed until I bumped into a tree sticking out from the bank, where I tied the boat for the rest of the night. Then I lit the lantern back under the tarp and put the oars in place and fixed up the tent the way Jack and I had fixed it before. I took off my wet pants and shoes and put them up on the fish well, and then I dried myself off with one blanket and wrapped up in a couple more, and blew out the light. Then I lay there listening to the rain. It sounded like it never meant to stop.
But I was just too tired to care.
17
It was enough to be dry and warm for a change and not to have to sit staring up into the dark and the rain looking for treetops that had disappeared from sight; I went to sleep quick. And I slept hard.
I guess that when I went to sleep I was more tired and discouraged than I would admit. The last thing I really remember was blowing out the light, as though I had blown out the last of my hope as well. All I could understand was that I was tied to a tree way up at the shallow end of Mud Turtle Creek, and that I should have been back on the Little Star, still rowing. There was nothing left for me to do but wait. And all I had really meant to do was to lie there listening to the rain and waiting for daylight; but I guess I just gave up.
Which was probably the smartest thing I had done in some time.
I don’t know how long I slept, not more than a few hours, I imagine, but it sure made a change in the way I felt. I could tell it even before I was altogether awake again, waking up slow and easy and feeling the boat under me rocking a little and tugging at the rope that held it fast, slowly noticing that the rain had stopped and that everything was quiet, with just the boat moving slow and easy in the water, still holding me half asleep, even after I knew where I was. Then I opened my eyes and lay there awhile longer looking up at the tarp above my head, not really seeing it but just knowing it was there, close enough to touch, not being certain yet if it was daylight outside or still night, dark as it was in under the tarp, but not awake enough yet to care.
The first clear thought that came to me was that a heavy tide must be running, pulling at the boat, and that that was what I felt, the tide moving past me. If it had been the wind, I would have heard it. But there was no sound at all. And then slowly my mind started working a little, although I was not really awake enough to call it thinking, but somehow I knew that if it was a good strong incoming tide that I felt, rocking the boat the way it was, then as nice as it was to just lie there half asleep, I had better wake up and get going. Because if I got back down to the Little Star soon enough, with a good strong tide behind me, I might make it yet to The Landing in time.
Yet it was hard to get all the way awake, even when it was clear to me that I ought to, that it was time; and I stayed where I was as long as I could, stretching and feeling my muscles slowly waking up, too, it seemed, like my body had been having a sleep of its own and no more wanted to get moving now than I did. But then the boat gave a tug at the end of its rope that I could not pretend I hadn’t felt, and I gave up and rolled over and crawled to the fish well and threw back the flap of the tarp and looked out.
It was morning. And it was an incoming tide, all right, which had swung the back of the boat around facing east. So that what I saw was the sight of Mud Turtle Creek, stretching out long and straight in front of me and narrowing down in the distance, where it seemed to disappear right into a woods that was all that stood between me and a full and blinding sight of the rising sun. For a time I just kneeled there leaning on the seat and staring out at the creek and the woods and the rising sun as though my mind had gone blank, as though I hardly existed, as if I had lost track of myself altogether. It was as though the sight I saw was something I had never really seen before and was almost impossible to understand. I might as well have been crouched there staring out at a brand-new world. And then I realized I was hurting my knees and hardly breathing; and feeling almost foolish about it, I crawled on over the fish well and stepped out from under the tarp and stood up and looked around. And even then it took a while longer, just standing there and looking all around, to get the notion out of my head that either the world or myself, one of us, had more or less just been born.
I suppose all that it really amounted to was the fact that, having spent most of my life so far in cities rather than in woods, I had never actually seen a sunrise quite like this one before. That and the fact that having gone to sleep in a boat in the rain, tied to a tree along a creek where I was not supposed to be, with time running out on me and with the skiff I had lost still lost, I had honestly somehow not expected to wake up the next morning to anything great.
It was surprising, to say the least.
Yet I looked around and I had to admit that I had never felt greater in my life. And then I saw that I was lucky as well, because off back down the creek I could see the bend where Mud Turtle Creek joined with the Little Star. I had done better rowing back down the creek in the dark than I had known. I had almost made it all the way.
So I grabbed a can of tomatoes from the front of the boat and opened it and drank off the juice and threw the rest away, not wanting to waste time sitting there eating, and then I loosened the tarp and threw it up front and put the oars back in place and untied the boat and started rowing. Ten minutes later I was headed back up the Little Star and moving right along, rowing hard, with most of the creek still caught in the shadows of the morning, but plain enough to see, and the sun rising higher all the time.
It was the easiest rowing that I had come to yet, with no wind to hold me back and with the tide coming in strong behind me, low and rising, and judging from the high-water tide marks along the shore, having a good ways to rise before it was full and would turn and start back out. I was in luck, for a change. And I rowed along, hearing a fish jump now and then in the quiet or a bird singin
g off in the woods, and then everything would be quiet again except the sound of the water sliding past the boat and the sound the turning oarlocks made, sounding now like music in my ears.
By the time you could really say that the sun was up and it was day, I had reached and passed the clearing where Jack and I had stopped at noon to eat, on our first day coming down the creek. And as late as we had left that morning and slowly as we had moved along, and had reached that clearing by noon, I was certain I could make it back up to The Landing with at least an hour to spare.
I rowed my way on up the long twisting part of the creek that went winding about through the cypress swamp as though it might as well have been the longest and straightest and quickest stretch I had come to, as far as the way I wouldn’t let it slow me down. And then the rest of the way, past the place where I had lost the cypress skiff and then past the clearing with the PRIVATE, KEEP OUT sign, and then finally past the island, more and more I let myself slow down, as the need for speed was finally gone. And it was well before noon, with the day not even good and hot yet, when I rowed up easy to The Landing and made the boat fast.
For a time I sat there resting in the boat and looking around at the empty clearing, and then I started unloading. I stacked everything out in the open, about where Jack and I had stacked it to start with, the morning we left. It made a good-sized pile, but although I did the best I could with it, it all looked a good bit the worse for wear, especially the sight of all those cans with their labels soaked off. Then I spread out the tarp to dry in the sun and took a couple of blankets back to some shade at the edge of the clearing and stretched out on them, ignoring the mosquitoes, and went to sleep.
I sure was tired. But I had made it.
I never even heard the truck drive up. What woke me up was the sound of Jack’s laughing. I had gone to sleep flat on my back with my cap pulled down over my face, and I pushed the cap back and looked up and there was Jack, looking down at me and laughing, and when he saw my face he started laughing even harder. I noticed his wrist was in a cast. “See,” I said, “I told you it was broken. I didn’t find the skiff.” I had no idea what he was laughing about to start with, but when I said this, he slapped himself on the leg with his good hand and started laughing all over again, and then Ellen was standing there beside him, just smiling at first, and looking kind of curious and worried, and I smiled back and said “Hello,” and Ellen started laughing, too. Then I slowly stood up, stiff from sleeping on the ground, and Mr. and Mrs. Haywood came up and stood there looking at me, Mr. Haywood just staring for a time and then slowly shaking his head from side to side, as though he did not quite believe what he saw.
“You poor boy, you,” Mrs. Haywood said.
I could not have been more surprised than to hear her say that. “Except for not finding the skiff,” I said, “I feel fine. I have just been resting from the trip.” Then I looked down at myself, wondering if there was something wrong in the way I looked, and I saw that I was not too clean and was barefoot and without a shirt, and that some of the red color in my cap had run down in the rain and had left some red marks still showing down across my chest and stomach, as well as more or less changing the color of my jeans from grey to a kind of dirty red. When Jack saw me looking at myself he started in laughing again, and when I looked up Mr. Haywood was laughing, too, in that quiet way he has. “I guess I must look a little funny at that,” I said. “I got caught in some rain coming up the creek last night.” Then I looked around smiling to see if that was what everyone was laughing about, and this time even Mrs. Haywood had to laugh.
“I have heard of it raining cats and dogs,” Jack said, “but never blood.”
“It was this crazy cap of mine,” I said, and I took it off, and for just a second everyone was quiet, and then Jack let out a laugh so loud it made me jump, with Ellen making a wild kind of squeal at the same time and then turning away and grabbing Mrs. Haywood and hanging on to her still squealing and laughing and acting like she couldn’t catch her breath, while Jack started jumping around the clearing, slapping himself and laughing as though it was about to choke him, until he turned and saw me looking at him, and then he lay down on the ground and laughed. Even Mr. Haywood turned away from me, laughing, when I looked at him. In fact Mrs. Haywood was the only one who still seemed able to stand there and look me in the eyes. “Mrs. Haywood,” I said, “I get the impression that I am somehow responsible for the fact that most of your family seems to be having fits right now.”
“Rodney,” she said, “I’m sorry, but I wish you could see your face.” And then Ellen got control of herself and let go of her mother and grabbed me instead and still laughing dragged me with her over to the pickup and stood beside me while I stood there and got a good look at myself in the rear-view mirror on the side of the truck.
No wonder they are laughing, I thought. I guess the most startling thing of all was my hair. It was supposed to be blond, but it was as solid a blazing red as if it had been dipped in paint, while my face looked as though it had been used to mop up whatever red paint that had been spilled. Only my nose had escaped. It looked as white and unnatural sticking there in the middle of my face as the painted nose of a clown. Then I looked away and they were all standing around watching me. “Well,” I said, “I went away a boy, but as you all can see, I have come back a clown.” Then Mr. and Mrs. Haywood stood there smiling and shaking their heads at me and Jack and Ellen stood back and did the same, almost as though I was as much to be wondered at as laughed at. “Watch,” I said, “and I will do a funny thing.” And then I walked past them all and walked down to the pier and out to the end of it and off it and into the creek. I could hear Jack laughing again before I hit the water.
One thing about Jack, it sure is easy to make him laugh. I got as cleaned up as I could by swimming around in the creek, but all the way back to The Hill, all Jack would have to do was to look at me from the other side of the back of the pickup and start in laughing again. For some reason, it didn’t bother me at all. Just out of stubbornness, I was still wearing my red cap. Ellen rode in the back with us, and for a while she tried asking me about the things I had done after Jack had been brought home from the Byrds’, but I was too tired to give her much in the way of answers, and I guess she could tell this, but every now and then I would see her looking at me, as though she was still wondering about it all.
The first thing I did back at The Hill, after helping unload the pickup, was to take a hot bath. And the next thing I did, tired as I was, was to write a letter to Brenda Sue. Which I had promised I would do. It wasn’t much of a letter, I guess, but she had wanted a picture of me so I sent that, too. The first picture of myself that I had ever sent to anyone. I hoped that the letter would explain it.
Dear Brenda Sue, I wrote. Well, I have made it back okay, none the worse for wear, and like I said I would do I am writing so that you will know that I made it back in time to make connections with the Haywoods as planned. I certainly enjoyed meeting you. It was a pleasure to meet your parents, too. They were certainly nice to Jack and me. As you can see, I am rotten at writing letters, but you mentioned a picture of me, which you will find enclosed. It’s the only one I have. I am the one in the middle holding the basketball, and never mind about those other four. Ha! Ha! I am not as skinny now as when that picture was taken. I am tired from the trip, so this letter will be short the way a stupid letter ought to be, but all that I am leaving for you to read between the lines is something I hope you will understand. I will say one thing, however, and that is about the name your mother calls you, Babe Honey. What I want to say about it is only that your mother is sure good at names! All your names. Brenda Sue Babe Honey, I mean. I guess it is none of my business, but I could not think of better names for you if I tried. And that is all I will try and say in this letter, except to say that I am not joking when I end this letter the way I end it now. I mean it.
Then I wrote, Love, and signed my name, Rodney Gerald Blankhard. I got a stamp fro
m my uncle and waited for the mailman and gave him the letter, and then I went in and stretched out on the bed and slept until supper. Once, Jack came over and came pounding up on the porch and stood there saying my name a few times, but I was too tired to talk, and he finally went away.
At supper, I ate like a horse, and then I went back to bed again. I could not have stayed awake if I tried. Aunt Vera made Jack let me sleep the next morning, and even with the heat on that back porch, I slept until noon. On The Hill, a thing like this is news, and when I got up and started moving around, everyone sort of treated me like I was just getting over some kind of a sickness. Even Jack kept asking me how I felt. I felt fine. I had never felt better in my life.
And I guess I got everyone convinced of that, because that night I sat on the Haywoods’ porch, with my uncle and Aunt Vera there, too, having come over to thank Mr. Haywood for bringing me back from The Landing and to see about paying for his lost skiff, and Jack and I told them about our trip together down the creek, and then they all stayed, my uncle and aunt and all the Haywoods, while I told them about my part of it alone. All that seemed right. I don’t think I have ever talked so long at one time in my life. I was surprised at the details I remembered and at the way it all came back to me. I would have thought it was something I could hardly ever tell to anyone, that it would be impossible to remember or to explain, yet once I got started I could hardly stop. And they all laughed some now and then, but the nicest thing about it was that they listened like they cared. Like it was interesting even. And then I came to the end, and it was quiet, and I felt embarrassed at having talked so long. Then Mr. Haywood stood up and said, “Rodney, I will not have your uncle pay one penny for that old lost skiff of mine. You did a fine job of looking, and that is all that matters. And maybe someday you will find it yet.”
Then it was quiet again and my uncle stood up. “I will not insist,” he said. And that was all he said, for once, and then he and Aunt Vera left and Mr. and Mrs. Haywood went back inside the house, and soon Jack got up and went in, leaving just Ellen and me.
The Lost Skiff Page 20