Racing the Moon

by Alan Armstrong

  “From there out to Tangier it’s about twenty miles straight across open water, but of course we’ll be zigging and zagging to keep the wind, so it’s going to be up to you, Alex, to keep us on course following the buoys against the map and working the compass.”

  On the map Tangier looked tiny and far away, barely a gray-brown dot against the bay’s blue green. “It’s the top of an undersea hill,” Ebbs explained. “That’s all any island is, a mountaintop sticking up out of the water.

  “From Washington down to Smith Point it’ll take us five to ten days, depending on the wind and tides. Then to the island, a day—with any luck. If we don’t make it in one we’ll anchor and sleep on board. It’ll be a little tight, but we’ll manage. You can sleep down below—there’s room, but it gets stuffy—or I’ll wrap you in tarps and tie you down on deck so you won’t roll off in your sleep.”

  Alex didn’t like the idea of getting tied down. She and Jeep moved around at night, but sleeping in the space under the deck didn’t sound like much of an alternative.

  “What’s the island like?” she asked.

  “Flat. One church. Three miles long, a mile across. It’s close enough to Wallops that you can hear the roar when they do a test firing. If they launch we’ll get to see the flare.”

  “Great!” Chuck exclaimed. “Any chance they’ll do one when we’re there?”

  “Launch times are classified,” Ebbs said, “but I hear from my friend Pete they’re getting ready.”

  17

  UNDER WAY

  Alex had hardly slept watching for clouds and shooting stars and packing and repacking her knapsack. The only nonessential things in it were the last pages of Smith’s journal and her space rock. Chuck’s pack, though, was bulging with binoculars, tools, and spare radio parts, and then there was the Signal Corps radio itself. Ebbs objected to his bringing it. It was heavy and would take up a lot of space in the small cockpit, she said, but he wouldn’t go without it. “To be sailing just across from Wallops, where they’re doing all that rocket and radar work and not listen in? No, ma’am. I might pick up something really important.”

  “Like what?” Alex asked.

  “Like when they’re going to launch.”

  They set off in fair weather on an easy breeze that sent the No Name skimming past farms fragrant with mowing and new-turned earth.

  They rode along for a while, absorbing the quiet music of the boat cleaving water. “I didn’t want to tell you before,” Ebbs said, “but one reason I wanted you two along is so I wouldn’t run into ghosts and have to scare them off by myself. When a sailor named Joshua Slocum went sailing alone around the world a hundred years ago he met ghosts and had to talk all the time to get them to go away. He talked to himself until he ran out of things to say, then started singing. He sang himself hoarse. He got really scared when his voice gave out. I wanted you two along so I wouldn’t have to do all the talking to keep off the ghosts. Not that I believe in ghosts, but Slocum didn’t either. When you’re alone too much weird things happen. It’s in his book.”

  Ebbs spotted a good mooring place. Alex set the anchors. After supper they sat silent, looking into the fire. Then Ebbs began to study the sky. Stars shone like dots and bands of Queen Anne’s lace in a deep slate field.

  Suddenly something bright streaked overhead.

  “A rocket!” Chuck exclaimed.

  “Nope,” said Ebbs. “An opener for the Perseid meteor shower we get here late summer every year—just as Smith predicted. That was one of his powers that Powhatan pretended to find marvelous—Smith could make fires appear in the sky. But of course Powhatan knew to expect them.”

  There were some last soft robin calls. The night air had taken on a sweet, damp pine fragrance. Sometimes a breeze drifted in off the river, a zephyr so different from the land breeze that Alex wondered how two such different bands of air could lie so close together. Now and then there were night bird calls, surprising but not startling. Even the plop of a large fish did not startle Alex now. From the other side of the river came the idle barking of a bored dog.

  “You bring any Smith pages along?” Ebbs asked.

  “Yup,” said Alex, unwrapping them from the wax paper at the bottom of her pack. She began reading aloud.

  I could have gone on from adventure to adventure, a freebooting soldier-for-hire until I died forgotten in some unknown place, but I knew I was capable of better. But better what? I asked myself. Doing what? My gold afforded me a year living alone in a rough country hut, toughening my body and training myself for anything, reading Machiavelli on war and Marcus Aurelius and some other Romans again to learn what made for a good leader. I learned that what counts most is being absolute master of oneself, resolute, never wavering, never undecided, never without a Next. I read Caesar’s Gallic Wars and decided I’d be a writer too.

  Shares in Virginia being offered for sale, I bought one and began to study Mr. Hariot’s book about Roanoke. His was the only text there was about life in Virginia, and it had pictures. I read it over and over and taught myself the few Algonquin words he gave. A week before my twenty-sixth birthday I sailed for America.

  My companions—we were 105 in all—were all for finding gold. Talking with them I discovered they knew nothing about settling, building, farming, or defending themselves in a raw and hostile land. They said they’d pay somebody else to make their fortress and feed them—but what if there was no food to buy and no one to do that work? What use would their money be then? I knew a little about Virginia from Mr. Hariot’s book. They knew nothing.

  Most of my fellows called themselves gentlemen. Despite my experience and captaincy they classed me with the few, twelve only, described as laborers.

  I saw trouble coming in the leaders’ ignorance. I made so much trouble demanding plans and training that before we landed Captain Wingate had me locked in the brig as a traitor to be hung. My dog stayed close. But for his company I’d have gone mad. We spoke to each other. My jailors heard us talking together and thought me crazed.

  I arrived at Virginia in the brig, my dainty gentlemen with their manicured hands intending to hang me, but then they opened the orders box we’d been sent out with and discovered I was supposed to be one of their Council. Me! A commoner of no breeding ranked with them!

  They wouldn’t have it, never mind orders. They voted to keep me under guard while they set the lesser sorts to building the fort—but what did these goldsmiths, tailors, and perfumers know about fortress making? They built a bird’s nest of twigs and mud while our gentlemen scratched for gold, dug for gold, dreamed of gold, and lived off the ships’ stores.

  Our commoners were as gold-smitten as the others, lazy except for mining and panning, and anyway they knew nothing about planting. For the moment grains of gold counted for more with them than grains of wheat. It was the fable out of Aesop: they were all singing crickets, but the song those crickets made was the dreary rattle of barren silt in their sluice pans.

  For a few weeks the Natives were glad enough to trade their corn for our copper goods and edge tools, but our President managed this business badly, paying too much for too little and so spoiling the market to the point our grocers grew insolent and demanded guns for grain.

  When things became dire enough I was released and sent out to get food because I knew something of the Natives’ tongue. I went several days upriver to where our needs and profligacy were not so well known. When my offers to trade glass beads for corn did not prevail I let fly with my muskets, going for broke as was my manner always, we few collectors greatly outnumbered in everything excepting my leader courage. My men said I seemed in myself the glaring force of a thousand.

  I got us a boatload of corn, but on returning I found our fort attacked, seventeen hurt, a boy slain, and only a cannon blast from one of our ships sending the Natives off.

  Finally seeing me as the one who best knew the business of providing and defending, the people turned to me for fort building and defense. Right aw
ay I set them to training at arms, baking bricks, grinding shells to make mortar—at least such as could. So many were ill! Within days of my taking command scarce ten could stand, such extreme weakness and sickness oppressed us.

  Then treachery: while I was off on another food-gathering trip, our gentlemen commandeered the one remaining seagoing vessel. They were about to turn tail and run themselves back to England with the last of our supplies when I surprised them.

  They were more and better armed, but they knew I meant it when I yelled, ‘Stay or sink.’ Wingate’s face I well remember, ferret-eyed when he saw me, his mouth curling ugly, and he was never a pretty man. He knew I’d kill him if I had excuse even if it meant my own death, and now was opportunity. I made my face show my joyful determination. They came cringing back to be kept by the heels and sent as prisoners to England, and so it fell to me to lead all.

  From that day on my rule was no work, no food—gentleman and commoner alike. No more gold hunting, not that there was ever much found there. Now we panned for food in plain dirt, dug it, grubbed it, hoed it—every man a farmer and none excused.

  Spirits improved. Nothing cures despair like work. Giving them purpose, I gave them hope. Without hope there can be no endeavor. That much I got from my Romans, that and what some took for ruthlessness. In easy times some kindness will do, but hard times demand iron rule, and our times were hard indeed. We were starving.

  I went on another mission after food. The Natives surprised the party I’d left behind with the small boat and killed two. Alone and twenty miles inland I was beset by two hundred. Two of them I slew, but I got shot deep in the thigh and had many other arrows stuck in. At last, trapped in a swamp, they took me prisoner and tied me to a tree.

  I knew enough of their language to demand that I, a chief, be brought to theirs. I would not treat with any lesser man, though they might kill me if they would. When their Chief came to me I signaled I had a great matter to discuss with him but would not do so bound.

  Untied, I showed him what I had in my pocket wrapped in an oiled cloth: a round ivory compass. I demonstrated the roundness of the Earth and how the sun chased night round about the world continually. He took this for great magic and led me to the center of Powhatan’s village through a file of armed men, their torsos and faces streaked red and black. They all made grim to terrify me, but they couldn’t: I put my Turks’ heads in my mind and began a roaring chant to unsettle them.

  When I came before Powhatan it was cold. I was still wearing what they’d pulled me from the swamp in. He was sitting before a fire, upon a seat like a bed covered with a great robe made of deer and raccoon skins and decorated with rare shells he’d traded for.

  Powhatan was holding the ivory globe compass. I gave him to understand I could show him stranger things still—that I could even make fires in the sky, for it had turned clear and it was the time of the meteor shower. What finally clinched it was my taking back that globe, juggling it with four or five pebbles I picked up, then sneaking it onto his shoulder without his seeing.

  He gasped. He was a child for magic. My tricks for Powhatan astonished the great chief into admiration, or so I thought until he called for water to wash his hands and feathers to dry them and then had two great stones brought before him.

  They dragged me to the stones and laid my head between them. They were standing over me with their clubs raised to beat out my brains when a slight girl just coming into womanhood rushed forward and took my head in her hands. Her hands were warm and light.

  I didn’t know it then, but it was a test. The girl was Pocahontas, Powhatan’s dearest daughter. He never intended to kill me: he would adopt me to command my magic. The next moment he had me wrapped in his great robe adorned with the shells and pronounced me a werowance: his son. It was my twenty-seventh birthday.

  I went back to Jamestown with provisions and carried on there, steadily planting and tilling to provide a sufficiency, guiding and building until a new group of colonists arrived. Men too ignorant to be grateful found my rule harsh and pushed me aside. Then, by accident or treachery, a coal fell on the bag of gunpowder I carried at my side. It exploded and burned. I suffered a terrible hurt that destroyed my manhood. Maimed and limping, out of favor and sick at heart, I returned to England on the ship that had carried out the newcomers. I was twenty-nine.

  Alex stopped reading.

  “He was here,” Ebbs said, her voice heavy with emotion. “On this bank. It gives me gooseflesh to think of it. Smith, here. But enough. Turn in.”

  18

  OLD HANDS

  After a week on the water Alex’s and Chuck’s complexions were darker, and their hands, water-wrinkled and soft at first, were hard from working the ropes and doing camp chores.

  They’d had every kind of weather from cold squalls of cutting rain that felt like spears of ice to dry burning sun to steamy, bug-buzzing nights. Alex had followed Ebbs’s cloud-checking routine, so the weather changes didn’t surprise her, just the timing. She’d watched the barometer too, but it never said when things would turn. They’d practiced knot tying, coming about fast, leaning out when a strong breeze made the boat heel. Alex began to regard the boat as a kind of animal, something alive with its own rhythms and habits, likes and dislikes.

  She found the river alive too. To Alex it was an endless, undulating gray-green snake rippling along, its riffles and small waves shimmering like scales. It struck Alex that with Ebbs everything was alive: clouds, boat, river, winds, space.

  There were places along the river where boaters could tie up for gasoline, milk, beer, cigarettes, and ice cream. Ebbs was always good for a vanilla cone. Jeep liked them so much that whenever a marina came in view he’d start barking. Alex got her to buy ketchup to spice up the space foods, told her she’d better plan on sending some up with the astronauts.

  At night the crew would study the tide chart and the river maps. Ebbs pointed out landmarks to look for the next day—things Smith would have seen—as they ate their space-food dinners. Around the campfire their talk would run long and unguarded, confidential and all over the place, the way talk goes sometimes in the dark among people who’ve come to trust one another. Chuck tried to explain why he’d had so much trouble in school—“so many things are going through my head at the same time, I can’t focus on just one”—and Alex why she liked flying so much—“being alone and above everything, like I’m in charge of it all.” Ebbs told them she’d wanted to be a doctor, started medical school but caught TB from one of the cadavers she was dissecting, and had to quit. When she went back it was to study nutrition.

  A couple of times they woke up to a silken world of mist, the fog fragrant with earth and river smells. Later, as the sun burned off the silver, the air took on the aroma of growing greens and flowers. Ebbs loved those mists, but she wouldn’t set out until they lifted for fear of getting rammed. Except for maybe missing a good going-out ebb tide, it usually didn’t matter much because until the sun warmed the air there was little wind anyway. The big boats, though, were on the river day and night, calling out with their powerful musical horns—wonderful sounds heard on shore, Alex discovered, terrifying if you were low on the water.

  If anyone was around where they landed, Ebbs would ask permission to camp. Some nights they’d camped in soft pockets of tall grass and reeds, once on a muddy patch of raw red clay, another night in a stand of oaks that looked like feathers. Once, in a squall, they’d slept on board, Chuck in the cockpit fiddling with his radio, Alex with Ebbs up on deck, the girl tied down in her slicker with Jeep tight beside her as the boat pitched and the wind made the shrouds hum and moan and sometimes scream like fighting cats as the halyards slapped against the mast.

  That night, all Alex could think about was having to pee, but she was too embarrassed to make Ebbs crawl out from under her tarp to untie her, so she lay there, twisting this way and that, afraid she’d fall asleep and wet herself. It was a terrible night. The next day they had to wear their wet clothes
to dry them out.

  Their last night on the river they tied up by a pine grove. It was warm and damp. They didn’t bother putting up the tents.

  Supper was another round of Ebbs’s space food. “Turkey with dressing,” Ebbs said.

  “Doesn’t taste like turkey,” Chuck said, wrinkling his nose. “Tastes more like yesterday’s beans.”

  “No, I think it’s pretty close,” Ebbs said, thoughtfully sniffing the bite on her fork. “Anyway, you heard last night how Smith and his crew were starving when they explored around here. He prided himself on equipping his expeditions with everything they’d need, but he overlooked nets—a big mistake because these waters are full of fish. Smith’s people saw them in the shallows and tried to scoop them up in their frying pan. No luck.

  “It was a fish that gave Smith the hurt that almost killed him. Standing in the shallows, he saw a big flat one glide by. He took out his dagger and stabbed it in the back. It turned and whipped him with its stingray tail—a barbed spike charged with poison. ‘My arm swoled up the size of my thigh,’ he wrote. Then it turned black. He was delirious, sick and dying, when they gave him some potion—he doesn’t say what—and he survived to eat that ray fish.

  “I wish we knew what the potion was that saved him. He should have said, but maybe he didn’t know. Apothecaries—those were the druggists in those days—were real secretive, like pill makers today. We need to do better sharing what we know. After all, we’ve inherited for free most of what we see and use—everything from hybridized grains to sailboats to penicillin to radar. It’s all part of the common store.”

  Dessert was the oranges Ebbs fished out of the bilge.

  “But they’re dirty,” Alex complained, shaking some scum off of hers.

  “They’re OK,” Ebbs said. “The cool water’s kept them fresh, and their skin keeps ’em clean inside, like bananas and hard-boiled eggs. They’re safe so long as you’re careful how you peel them.”