“How can you possibly justify—”
He was never to finish that sentence.
He felt the vibration through his boots. By the surprised look on Hatchette’s face, he could tell that he felt the vibration too. He saw Isabella, down the way, lift her head and look around as though she sensed something was wrong. Then an explosion ripped through the air.
7
Moon Song felt the tremor beneath her feet and heard the mounting rumble. She knew there was trouble, but she did not know whether to dive overboard or run for her cabin. In the end, there was time for neither.
She felt her breath leave her chest as she was hurled into the air by what felt like a giant fist. Her lungs barely had time to refill before that same giant unseen hand plunged her beneath water that was as cold as ice. She struggled, thrashing deep in the water, not knowing which way was up and which way was down.
Then, as her senses came flooding back, she became nothing more than one focused thought—to get herself and her baby to the surface of the water as quickly as possible.
The height from which she had been dropped had plunged her several feet into the depths. The water had been smooth, but now, it was rough. Somewhere deep in her mind, she realized that her fear of getting on that boat had been justified. This ship had blown up, and now the pull of it sinking was dragging her down with it.
She fought her way against that pull, struggling her way to the surface with every ounce of strength she had. The moment she broke through, she took one great gasp of air, getting her bearings at the same time, then she plunged her face back into the water until she knew for certain that her baby’s face was out of the water. She began to swim, turning her head to the side only about every fourth stroke to gasp in some air, and then plunging her face back into the water. She had to get to shore and quickly. She had to get Ayasha out of the cradle board and the water out of his lungs or he would die.
But it was so far to shore.
Like the other Indian children living beside the great lake, she had learned to swim almost before she could walk. She and the other children, like little glistening otters, had played and cavorted in the water while parents looked on fondly. The waves of the lake had been part of her natural environment. The skills she had learned as a child served her well now as she fought for her life and for the life of her child.
She had thought her bad days were behind her, but what she had endured so far in her life was nothing in comparison to desperately swimming toward shore while wondering if her son—her heart—had drowned.
Skypilot was a strong man, but he was not a strong swimmer. In fact, his mother, a fearful and nervous woman, had not allowed him near the water when he was a child for fear that he would drown. He had always thought the wiser course would have been to make certain that he knew how to swim well—but she had not seen it that way. As an adult, he had intended to learn, someday. That day had never presented itself.
Now, he found himself in water that could very well be several fathoms deep. This knowledge struck great fear in his heart. That fear caused him to thrash around terrified because he knew what an abysmal swimmer he was. The knowledge that he was going to drown made him fight, with no skill whatsoever, even harder.
It was not pretty or graceful, but somehow, while praying constantly in his heart, he managed to kick and stroke and fight and splutter his way to a blessed place where his feet touched the ground.
It seemed like weeks had gone by instead of seconds, but at last Moon Song heard the sound she had been longing to hear.
Her baby’s angry, wailing cry was the sweetest sound she had ever heard. It had taken a bit of time for him to get his breath enough to howl, but howl he did. Knowing that her baby still breathed renewed her strength. In a few more moments, she had gained a foothold on a narrow, sandy spit of land from which a cliff soared straight up above her head.
She immediately dropped to her knees and pulled the cradle board off her shoulders. Ayasha’s face was red and swollen from crying, but he was alive. Quickly, she unstrapped him and gathered him up in her arms. She scooted a few feet to where her back was against the face of the cliff, as far away from the water as she could possibly get, and sat there, rocking back and forth with her baby in her arms.
On his hands and knees, Skypilot dragged himself onto the narrow spit of land where he gagged and retched up water. It felt like he had swallowed half of Lake Superior. After every drop was gone, he flopped onto his back, exhausted. It was then that he realized there was an oily taste in his mouth that lake water should not have put there. There was also a stinging sensation on his back and shoulders.
He crawled the few feet to the base of that soaring cliff he had been admiring only a few minutes earlier. He leaned his sore back, carefully, against the smooth stone surface and stared unbelieving at the water in front of him. The bright, full moon that had been smiling down upon him earlier now beamed, quite cheerfully, upon the pieces of debris dotting the water.
How could an entire ship simply disappear?
As he slowly regained his senses after his desperate swim to shore, he figured out where the oily taste had come from. There was a slick of oil on top of the water.
He had heard of massive boiler explosions that had ripped through dozens, perhaps hundreds, of steamboats in past years, sinking entire ships within minutes. He knew that hundreds of lives had been lost because of such explosions, but like everyone else on board, he had not thought it could happen to him. He had also assumed that as new inventions were patented and safety inspections increased, the danger had lessened. He had been wrong.
Moon Song and Ayasha had paid the price for his optimism. She had not wanted to board the giant ship. She had wanted to simply walk away into the forest, a journey he had deemed too dangerous. That position seemed ludicrous to him now.
The shock of what had happened washed over him as he stared at the inky-black lake. What was he supposed to do now?
Anything that had been on that boat that could float now bobbed up and down. Some of the flotsam hitting the boulders was not far from his feet. He saw what looked like a length of dark red cloth bobbing against one of the boulders. It took his brain a second to realize that the water-darkened cloth was close to the hue of the dress that Isabella Hatchette had been wearing as she had sketched on her pad.
He sprang to his feet, his own close call forgotten as he waded out, grasped the cloth, and discovered Isabella lying faceup, washed against the cliffs.
He half carried and half dragged her onto the ledge. At Bible college a group of do-gooders had come one weekend, teaching something they called first aid. One lesson dealt with saving someone’s life after a drowning. Get the water out of the lungs, he’d been told, but he couldn’t remember the exact method he was supposed to use. He thought it involved lying the body facedown over a barrel.
He did not have a barrel, so he did the first thing that occurred to him. He held her by her waist, her head hanging straight down like a half-opened jackknife. When nothing happened, he pounded her hard on the back with his free hand.
Suddenly, he heard a gush of water splashing against the rock upon which he stood. And then he heard a heaving gasp. He stood Isabella back up on her feet and steadied her while she took great gulps of air. Her eyes were glazed with shock.
“My skirt,” she gasped. “My petticoats. They weighed me down. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t . . .”
She turned her head and glanced at the lake, taking it all in, the slick of oil, the items floating on top of the water. He heard a quick, deep intake of breath. She held it for one long moment, and then the screaming began.
Moon Song had been too occupied with comforting her baby and comforting herself with his warm little living body pressed against her, to notice if there were survivors. Less than three minutes earlier, she had been fighting for her life. Now, she heard a woman screaming somewhere far down the spit of land. Someone else had survived!
She scra
mbled to her feet, held Ayasha tight against her chest, and began to run toward the sound of the woman’s voice.
Two figures came into view as she got closer. Her heart leaped up to see that Skypilot was alive and trying to deal with Isabella beside him. Moon Song had never seen a woman who would not stop screaming before.
Except for one time. A long time ago. When one of the women in the village was told that her young son had been killed. That had been a bad night for the whole tribe until the woman’s husband had threatened to beat her unless she stopped. Even after she stopped, Moon Song had been able to hear her tortured breathing in the tipi next to theirs as the woman tried to control her sobs.
It had been an embarrassment to the husband. Chippewa women did not act that way, but she had been a slave, stolen from the Shawnee tribe farther south. Moon Song did not know if the woman was especially weak or if that was the Shawnee way, but she never forgot it.
“My baby!” Isabella screamed over and over. “My baby! He’s gone!”
Moon Song hugged Ayasha even closer to her chest, grateful beyond words that she was not having to choke back her own screams right now.
Skypilot glanced around, and she knew it the instant he saw her. Their eyes met, and his face lit up with pure joy. He left Isabella to her grief and ran to her and Ayasha, gathering them both against his broad chest the moment he reached them.
He had never embraced her before, nor had she ever embraced him. Even though she had cared for him after his accident, she had always been careful. Men could get wrong ideas. Even decent men like Skypilot.
In the lumber camp, she had admired him above all the other men. She saw his kind heart and appreciated his fine mind. She had been told about how he had used his great strength to protect Robert Foster from harm when a Canadian axe man had gone after the lumber camp foreman, and she was proud of him. Most of all, she had secretly loved him—secretly because he had never shown the slightest interest in her as a woman—only as a friend. Because of this, she had carefully protected her heart from caring about him too much.
Now, finally, she welcomed the feel of his strong arms around her. It would have been a terrible thing to be alone tonight.
“You’re alive. And the baby is alive. Praise God!” He cupped her face and gazed into her eyes as though making absolutely certain she was all right, and then he ran a hand over the baby’s hair. “I thought I’d lost you.”
Moon Song’s heart swelled with the knowledge that he had been so very concerned about them. She laid a hand against his cheek. “I am not alone.”
“No, my friend, you are not alone.”
He kept one arm around her, as though he couldn’t make himself lose contact with her, as they watched Isabella pace back and forth a few yards from them, crying, wringing her hands, and screaming the name Archibald over and over.
“Archibald?” Moon Song asked quietly.
“Her husband’s name is James, so I’m guessing that is the baby’s name.”
“What happen?”
“The boilers must have exploded. I’m starting to wonder if that steamboat race the captain engaged in could have caused some damage.”
“Why us alive?”
“Maybe because we were the only ones on deck. Maybe because of that, we got blown clear while everyone else was asleep in their cabins.”
“Hatchette survive?”
“I don’t think so, even though I was standing only a few feet away. At least, I’ve seen no sign of him. No sign of anyone yet.”
“There might be no sign. Probably ever.”
“What do you mean?”
“Lake is very deep. Very deadly. Not like other lakes. Something in bottom grabs people. Keeps them down.”
“You mean like a monster?”
“No. Like . . .” She shook her head, frustrated that she didn’t have the ability to communicate what she wanted to say in English. “I have no words.”
“Could you be talking about currents?” He made a motion with his hands.
“Yes. Currents. Bad currents.”
Isabella appeared to notice Moon Song and Skypilot for the first time. Then she saw that Moon Song was holding a baby. She started laughing and crying, as though with relief, and came at them at a dead run, holding her sodden skirts with both hands.
“I knew he was alive! I just knew it! God would not allow me to suffer so.”
Moon Song instinctively clutched Ayasha closer to her as the crazy screaming lady came at them. Isabella’s arms were held out, ready to scoop Ayasha into them.
“Ayasha.” Moon Song held a hand up as though to keep her away. “Not Archibald.”
“Not . . ?” Isabella peered at the infant curled in Moon Song’s arms. “Why, this is just a dirty little Indian baby.” She grabbed a handful of Moon Song’s hair. “What did you do with Archibald?”
Skypilot pulled her away from Moon Song. “Stop it,” he said. “Moon Song had nothing to do with your baby. She had Ayasha strapped to her back when the boat blast happened. I saw them. He was in his cradle board. She can’t help it if having her child with her at the time saved him.”
A horrified look came over Isabella’s face, and she collapsed into her wet skirts, pressed her face against the stones beneath her, and began to sob. Skypilot laid a comforting hand on Isabella’s shoulder and tried to say soothing words. Moon Song wondered why he bothered with the soft words. Words could not take away the horror of the truth.
As Skypilot tried to console an inconsolable woman, Moon Song began to take stock of their situation. The full moon helped. It was starting to become clear to her that unless they could find a way past that cliff and off this small sliver of land that graced the edge of it, they were in a terrible situation. She paced the length of the tiny, rocky beach toward the north. Then she paced all the way to the southern end. It was only about ten feet wide and maybe fifty feet long. It stopped abruptly at both ends, with nothing but sheer cliffs as far as she could see. She waded in a few feet at both ends. The water became deep quickly. Too deep to wade.
“What are you doing?” Skypilot asked.
“We trapped,” Moon Song said.
“What do you mean, we’re trapped?”
“Water get very deep here very fast. We need to swim to better place.”
“I’m not a good swimmer. Frankly, it’s a wonder I didn’t drown out there.”
Moon Song called to Isabella. “You swim?”
Isabella ignored her.
Moon Song walked over and shook her by the shoulder.
“You swim?”
Isabella had been crying so hard, her face was practically unrecognizable. “Not very well,” she choked out. “Why?”
“Better to swim than climb.” Moon Song nodded meaningfully at the moonlight-illuminated cliff face.
Isabella dragged herself to her feet and walked over to where Moon Song stood. Her head went back farther and farther as her eyes measured the soaring mass of the cliff towering above them. “I could never climb up that thing.”
“Maybe I could climb it.” Skypilot’s hands were on his hips as he stared at the cliff. “I’d stand a better chance of climbing it than I would of swimming out of here.”
“In boots?” She pointed at his feet. “They slip. You fall. You die.”
“I could try it barefoot.”
“You ever climb cliff before?” she asked.
“No.”
“You ever see cliff like this before?”
“No.”
“It best to swim.”
“But I can’t swim.” He glanced out at the lake water and gave an involuntary shiver. “Honest, I really can’t.”
“Then how?”
“I vote we sit tight and wait for another steamer to come. Word will get back to Bay City that our ship blew up. They’ll send help.”
“Yes.” Isabella seemed to be getting a little sense back into her head, at least enough to participate in a conversation about survival. “Let’s wait for
a ship to come pick us up.”
“Bay City hear about this?” Perhaps white people had new ways of communicating that she did not know. “How?”
“I don’t know.” Skypilot sounded exasperated.
It was interesting to her that Skypilot’s and Isabella’s first thoughts were not about how to get out of here. Instead, their first thoughts had been on the chances of being rescued by another white person.
For the first time, she noticed that a portion of Skypilot’s right sleeve was burned away. “You hurt.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He glanced down at the sleeve. “I’ll live.”
That was more than she could say if they didn’t get off this bit of land. Ship or no, they could not stay here. A storm could materialize so quickly on this lake, and she could see the watermark on the cliff where the waves would hit in a storm.
She looked up at the cliff and out at the dark water. A conversation she had overheard on the ship the day before greatly concerned her. The captain had told another passenger that there were so few people traveling this far north at this time of year, there would not be another steamship coming along for another two weeks.
Help was not coming. If they didn’t get off this barren strip of rocky, wet land soon, they would be in deep trouble.
8
He was trying his best to put a good face on the situation, but the fact was, they were in a mess and he did not know what to do about it. He cursed himself for being a lousy swimmer. He cursed himself for having taken them on that ship. Then he stood back and looked up at that cliff face once again. What had seemed beautiful and pleasantly awe-inspiring from a distance looked strange and menacing up close. A lizard might be able to climb up the surface of that sheer rock face, but he was no lizard. Nor was Moon Song.
Isabella had finally cried herself out, and the only sound now was the splashing of the gentle waves against the tiny beach. He had loved listening to the waves while snug in his cozy boardinghouse room in Bay City.
Under a Blackberry Moon Page 6