The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud

by Ben Sherwood

  But Tess wanted action. She wanted to tense the sails and feel the speed. She could hear the boat creaking, anxious to get going. The sheets flapped against the mast. On the horizon, she could see a vast expanse of gray altocumulus clouds with small ridges underneath like fish scales. She thought of the mariner’s rhyme, “Mare’s tails and mackerel scales make tall ships carry low sails.” It would be blowing hard in a few hours, just the way she liked it.

  When she cleared the harbor mouth and passed the light, she aimed the boat on an unlikely course. Her compass indicated a 58-degree heading straight for the Eagle Island Channel and the Powers Rock buoy. For Tess, the easy route was never an option. If she couldn’t make it through a little low pressure, how would she ever get all the way around the world? So she eased the sheet to a broad reach and filled the mainsail with wind. Then she watched her instrument dials leap as Querencia gained speed and rode a rising wind straight into the storm.

  SIX

  THE WOMAN IN THE BLACK DRESS WEPT.

  She kneeled beside a gravestone and clutched the granite slab with one hand. Her frail body jerked with every sob, and her gray hair, wrapped in a careful bun, seemed to shake loose strand by strand.

  Charlie St. Cloud watched from behind a boxwood hedge. He recognized the woman but kept his distance. He was respectful of the pain. There would be a time to step forward and offer a helping hand, but not now. So he tucked his work gloves in his back pocket, unwrapped a piece of Bazooka, tossed it in his mouth, and waited.

  He had opened this very grave that morning, carried the casket from the hearse, lowered it into the ground, and backfilled the job when the funeral was done. It was the only burial of the day in Waterside Cemetery. Work was pretty quiet. One of Charlie’s men was out trimming hedges. Another was pressure-washing monuments. A third was collecting branches that had come down in a storm. September was always the slowest month of the year in the funeral business. Charlie wasn’t sure exactly why, but he knew December and January were definitely the busiest. Folks passed away more often in the coldest months, and he wondered if it was the frost or a natural response to the excess of the holidays.

  Thirteen years had gone by since Charlie had first come to Waterside. Thirteen years had passed since the paramedics failed to revive his little brother. Thirteen years had vanished since Sam was buried in a small coffin near the Forest of Shadows. Thirteen Octobers. Thirteen World Series. Thirteen years keeping the promise.

  Charlie was still a handsome young man with a flop of sandy hair. That mischievous dimple in one cheek always flashed when he smiled, and his caramel eyes melted just about everyone he met. With each passing year, his mother insisted he looked more like his father—a compliment of sorts because the only picture he had ever seen of his dad showed a rugged man on a motorcycle with shiny aviator sunglasses propped on his head.

  Charlie had grown a few more inches and stood 6¢3≤. His shoulders were square and his arms well muscled from hauling caskets and stone. The only legacy of the accident was a slight limp, and it was barely noticeable. The doctors had said the pins, screws, and plates in his femur and fibula would set off metal detectors—but he never had the chance to find out.

  After the crash, he had finished high school, spent a couple of years at Salem State College, and gotten a degree in emergency medicine. He was a licensed paramedic, but no matter how hard he tried to move away, he could never go too far from Waterside. Even the love of a pretty teacher in Peabody couldn’t pull him away, for he was always drawn back to this place and the promise.

  Waterside was his world, eighty acres of grass and granite encircled by wrought iron. He lived in the caretaker’s cottage by the forest and ran the whole operation—interment, mowing, and maintenance. It was a responsible job, and he was a responsible young man, except for that one night on the bridge that had changed everything.

  Now twenty-eight, Charlie had spent his adult years looking after the dead and the living of Waterside. He had sacrificed greatly to keep his word to Sam. He had given up on big dreams of working for the Red Sox front office at Fenway Park or even Major League Baseball on Park Avenue in New York.

  Today, like every day, he watched someone weep, and his heart ached. It was always this way. Young, old, healthy, or infirm: They came, they coped, and they moved on.

  The woman’s knees touched the fresh mound of dirt where he had done his job with the backhoe. Thirty-six inches wide, ninety-six inches long, four feet deep. Eighteen inches of soil on top. All in strict accordance with the laws of the Commonwealth.

  The woman tried to stand but wobbled in her heels, then fell back to one knee. This was the moment to offer a hand. Charlie got rid of the Bazooka and moved toward her. He was dressed in the Waterside uniform: a pale blue polo shirt with the cemetery logo, pressed khakis, and work boots.

  “Mrs. Phipps?” he said.

  She looked up, startled, and seemed to stare right through him.

  “It’s me,” he said.

  She shook her head, puzzled.

  “It’s me, Charlie St. Cloud. Remember? Tenth grade English?”

  She wiped her eyes, then nodded. “Of course I remember, but you seem to have forgotten the predicate nominative. The correct syntax is: ‘It is I.’ ”

  “I is sorry,” Charlie said, his dimple flashing.

  Teetering in pointy shoes with a run in her stocking, Ruth Phipps managed a faint smile. Back then she was known as Ruthless Ruth, the terror of Marblehead High, renowned for ruining grade-point averages with her evil pop quizzes and impossible final exams.

  “Charlie St. Cloud,” she was saying. “Let’s see, you got an A on the first test, and then that crash—your brother—”

  “That was a long time ago,” he said, jamming his hands in his front pockets. “Anyways, I came by to offer my sympathies. And I wanted you to know that you picked one of the most beautiful spots in the cemetery.”

  She shook her head. “It was just so sudden. So unexpected. I never even had time to say good-bye.” Mrs. Phipps wiped the tears from her oval face, and she suddenly seemed human like everyone else. Her arms were as frail as a willow’s, her eyes as brown as bark. Death was the great leveler.

  “I’m so sorry,” Charlie said.

  “What’s going to happen to me now? What will I do?” Her body was still shaking. “What about my sweet Walter?”

  “Trust me,” he said. “It’s going to be all right. It just takes time. You’ll see.”

  “Are you sure, Charlie?” Her voice was a whisper.

  “Not a doubt in my mind.”

  “You were always such a bright boy. I wondered what happened to you.”

  “I live over there in that cottage by the forest,” he said. “You’re welcome anytime.”

  “That’s good to know,” she said, pushing a loose strand back in her bun. She straightened her dress and took a few tentative steps on the grass.

  “I ought to get going,” she said. “Thanks for your help, Charlie.”

  “My pleasure. That’s why I’m here.”

  Then Mrs. Phipps walked slowly down the hill toward the great iron gates on West Shore Drive.

  It was closing time, and Charlie zoomed the utility cart up and down the narrow paths, taking the turns like a grand-prix racer. In his early days on foot, it had taken more than an hour to cover all the acres, looking for mourners lost in thought, picnickers asleep on the lawns, teenagers hiding behind headstones. To speed up this routine over the years, he had modified the little vehicle, secretly adding horsepower and improving the suspension. Now, in the little wagon with WATERSIDE stenciled on both sides, he could secure the grounds in twenty minutes.

  He always started at the north end, high on the hill where angels with trumpets alighted on marble, and made his way south across the fields of stone packed in tidy grids. Every pound of granite, every begonia blossom, Charlie thought, was proof of the enduring human need to be remembered. Now he drove along the Vale of Serenity and gazed d
own at the harbor, where a vintage schooner was sliding into a slip. Then he stopped to greet an elderly gentleman wearing a seersucker suit and wielding a red watering can.

  “Evening, Mr. Guidry,” Charlie said.

  “Well, hello, Charles!” Palmer Guidry said. His hair was wavy and white, and his face was stubbled with an old man’s uneven shave. He was one of the so-called cemetery familiars, the regulars who came every day to pull weeds from his wife’s grave and wipe dust from her stone. An old cassette recorder playing Brahms was propped against a tree.

  “It’s closing time,” Charlie said. “Can I give you a lift?”

  “Why, thank you. So good of you.”

  Charlie stepped from the cart, shook the old ache out of his knee, and walked toward Mr. Guidry. “Here, let me give you a hand with your things.”

  It was a conversation repeated almost word for word every evening. Charlie had looked up Mr. Guidry’s condition. It was called early-onset Alzheimer’s and it afflicted his short-term memory. He couldn’t recall yesterday or the day before, but he could still summon images from the distant past. That was why he had no idea he had cleaned his wife Betty’s grave the day before, but he could still imagine her in his arms the very first time they danced at the prom. It was why he didn’t have a clue that Charlie often picked him up at night but could remember the puzzled look on Betty’s face when the stroke rippled through her brain all those years ago.

  Mr. Guidry folded his dust rag neatly and tucked it in his satchel. He switched off the tape player and made one last inspection.

  “I love these hollyhocks,” he said, running a hand along the crimson bloom of one plant. “You know, they were Betty’s favorite.”

  “I think you told me once,” Charlie said, picking up Mr. Guidry’s bag and cassette machine.

  “Did I ever tell you about the time Betty planted the whole backyard with pink hollyhocks?” he said, tucking the red watering can under his arm and shuffling toward the cart. “They grew seven feet high!”

  “I think you mentioned it once.”

  “Night, Betty,” he said, climbing into the front seat. “Sweet dreams, my love. Be back soon.”

  As they headed down the hill, Mr. Guidry recited the story of the hollyhocks for the thousandth time. Charlie loved the way Mr. Guidry twinkled with each word and how the tears always fell as they passed under the iron gates and made their way onto West Shore.

  “Thanks for the story, Mr. Guidry,” Charlie said.

  “Want to come over for dinner tonight? I’ll cook one of Betty’s favorites. Finest meat loaf on God’s green earth.”

  “Thanks,” Charlie said. “I’d love to, but there’s somewhere I have to be.”

  “Suit yourself,” Mr. Guidry said. “You have no idea what you’re missing.”

  He watched Mr. Guidry get into his gold Buick and slowly pull out onto the two-lane road. Then he checked his watch. It was 6:12 P.M. Sundown was exactly thirteen minutes away. The great iron gates creaked as he pushed them shut. It was definitely time to squirt oil in the hinges. Then again, there was something reassuring about the familiar sound.

  He turned the big skeleton key in the lock. Waterside was now closed for the night, not to reopen until eight the next morning. He walked back to his cart and sat down in the seat. He looked out across the grounds, where sprinklers were shooting mist into the air.

  The serenity around him was palpable. Now he had this paradise to himself; fourteen hours until the world returned. For him, these were the most precious moments. Time for himself. Time to be. Time to think. But most of all, time for his most important activity, hidden deep in the woods.

  SEVEN

  THE FOREST OF SHADOWS WAS THE LAST UNDEVELOPED section of Waterside, twenty snarled, tenebrous acres of oak, hickory, and elm, and very valuable property. Charlie regularly heard rumors that one developer or another was panting to snap up the land for condominiums. But this enthusiasm cooled a few months ago when the real-estate agent died mysteriously and a prospective buyer collapsed from a brain hemorrhage.

  Now folks whispered that the woods were haunted.

  Charlie knew better. The forest was the most perfect place in Waterside, and it suited him fine that no one dared venture into the gloom. On this night, he steered the cart along the bumpy trail and stopped next to the blue spruce. A squadron of Canada geese honked overhead. The light was low, speckling the undergrowth. He checked over his shoulder, a matter of habit. Of course no one was following, but he had to make sure. Absolutely sure.

  Then he quickly changed out of his uniform, wadding the pale blue shirt and khakis into a ball and pulling off his boots. He put on an old Celtics sweatshirt, jeans, and running shoes. He reached under his seat, pulled out his baseball glove and ball, and stepped into the woods. No one else would have spotted the slim footpath between the trees. It began on the other side of a rotting log, then widened into a trail that had been tramped down from his walk every night for thirteen years. It followed the line of a little hill to its crest, past a copse of maple trees, then dropped down beside a waterfall and swirling pool.

  Charlie, who knew every bump, every vine underfoot, could have run it with his eyes closed. He hurried through the cypress grove that gave way into a clearing. Here was surely the greatest secret of Waterside: a special place he had created with his own hands so many years ago. Back then, he decided to make it the exact replica of the yard at their home on Cloutman’s Lane. There was a perfect lawn ninety feet long with a pitcher’s mound, rubber, and plate.

  He walked to the swings and plunked himself down on one of the wood benches. He kicked his feet up and began to glide. He floated back and forth, and with the breeze beneath him, it felt like flying. Then he leaped from the seat, landed on the ground, and grabbed his mitt. He tossed the ball into the darkening sky. It touched the treetops before dropping back down again. Then he hurled it up once more.

  Just as it was about to land in his glove, the wind suddenly gusted and the ball went flying across the field, rolling along the grass, stopping on the edge of the woods. And then a little miracle happened, just as it did every night at sundown.

  Sam St. Cloud stepped from the gloom of the forest and picked up the ball. He was unchanged after all these years, still twelve years old with untamed brown curls and a Rawlings baseball mitt under his skinny arm. He wore a Red Sox cap and jersey, baggy shorts, and black high-tops. Oscar sprinted from the undergrowth, tail held high. With soulful eyes and his distinctive yowl, he, too, was the same as before. The dog nipped at Sam’s scrawny knees, then yelped at Charlie.

  “C’mon, big bro,” Sam said with glee, “let’s play catch.”

  A thirty-foot wall of water crashed into the cockpit, knocking Tess from her foot cleats and sweeping her into the lifelines. She gasped for air as the cold ocean wrapped itself around her, sucking her to the brink of oblivion, and then, thank God, her harness and jack line held fast. Moments before, she had zipped into her orange survival suit, essentially a one-person life raft designed for sailing in dangerous weather, enabling her to survive up to a week in the ocean without hypothermia.

  Tess coughed up a mouthful of seawater, then pulled herself back to the wheel. Querencia was pounding through the howling darkness under bare poles. The main was lashed to the boom, and the decks were cleared.

  Giant breaking waves were raging in twenty-second sets, hammering the hull, sending great blasts of spray in the air. Splotches of phosphorus streaked the sky in a stormy fireworks show. The ocean ahead looked like an endless range of mountains and cliffs rushing toward her at forty miles an hour, and monstrous peaks collapsed with the force of a landslide.

  Tess didn’t worry about the blistering wind, the confused sea, or the salt stinging her eyes. She didn’t care about the numbness in her hands or the pain in her hip from the last fall. She wasn’t alarmed by the radar showing another deep depression building behind this low. All of her attention—all of her loathing—was focused on one nagging
problem: the sloshing seawater in her new nonslip boots. “Damn,” she raged at the ocean. “Five hundred bucks for this gear, and the damn stuff leaks.”

  She checked the glowing dials in the binnacle. The anemometer for wind speed showed forty knots, then forty-five. As Querencia tumbled down the sheer slope of one wave, the speedometer raced, then climbing the next upsurge, the boat seemed to stall, threatening to fall backwards into the trough.

  Tess braced for the impact of the next breaker. Even as it slammed the craft, washing her sideways, she held fast to the wheel. Yes, she hoped, this was definitely good practice for the Southern Ocean above Antarctica, where she would face blinding snow squalls and icebergs. That is, if she ever got there. Another tower of water hit; another blow to her body; but she kept the boat aimed at the onslaught. It was one of the oldest rules of foul-weather sailing: Point one small end of the boat into the waves.

  Tess knew there were two good ways to measure nature’s fury. The first was a formula based on the Beaufort Scale, named after a nineteenth-century British admiral: wind speed plus five, divided by five. She did the math, and the result was ten. So this was a Force 10 gale on a scale of 12. All night, the crests had been breaking into spindrift, but now they were toppling, tumbling, and rolling over. That meant only one thing: The storm was gathering strength.

  Once before, Tess had made it through a Force 10. It had been on a family outing to the Gulf of Maine, and on that night she had invented her other test of a storm’s power. It was less scientific, but just as effective. She called it the Carroll Scale, named after her dad. It involved counting the number of mouthfuls of seawater ingested per wave. Any quantity greater than three meant you were crazy if you didn’t seek shelter.

  Dangerously close to pitchpoling, Querencia was hurtling down the face of a giant wave now at a near-vertical angle. Tess held her breath as she plunged into the trough with the next huge wave rising before her. She heard a loud crack over her head, looked up, and saw that the windex and masthead instruments had blown off. Then the boat broached as the wave smashed the starboard side. She lost control of the wheel, caromed off the cockpit coaming, and skated to the very edge of the boat, now heeling at an extreme angle. Her body was wrapped in the lifelines, and she felt the ocean whooshing inches from her face.