Candy;

by White, Robb, 1909-1990

  "I saw a fierce sign," the man said.

  "He means it, too," Candy assured him. "WHioever owns this boat had better come and get her down from there before Mr. Jenkins finds her."

  "That's going to be quite an operation," the man said, studying the boat on top of the greenhouse. "It's going to take a derrick on a truck to lift her down."

  "I wonder how she got up there?"

  The man walked all the wav around the greenhouse studying the position of the boat. "The only way I can think of is that a ver)' big wave brought the boat inland and let her down on the roof."

  "There were waves plenty big enough to do it," Candy agreed, "but the ones I saw were going awful fast."

  The man walked down to the sea wall and studied that for a while. When he came back he said, "Probably the sea wall slowed the wave down so it was going slow and subsiding when it reached the greenhouse. Just slid the boat across the roof

  and ran out from under her." He smiled at Candy. ''But I wouldn't believe it if you weren't here looking at it, too. That boat is up there, isn't it?"

  ''Looks like it/' Candy said. ''A man told me once that he had heard of a hurricane that blew a piece of straw all the way through the limb of an oak tree, so I guess they can do anything."

  Mr. Daniels nodded. 'I've heard of things like that." He looked up at the boat, frowned, then looked down at her. He started to say something, then saw the plank of the Faraway she was still carrying. He bent his neck over to read the name. ''Faraway?" he asked.

  "She was my boat," Candy said.

  ''Gone?"

  "All except this and some splinters.'

  "What kind of boat'was she?"

  "No kind; just one I built."

  "You built her yourself? Was she a sailboat?"

  Candy grinned. "Well, sort of. If the wind wasn't too strong."

  "You must be a sailor."

  "I tr}'," Candy admitted.

  Suddenly he looked at her hard, stooping down a little. "Have you ever sailed any outside the Bay?"

  "Lots, but not in any boats I built."

  "Have you ever been as far as the islands?"

  Candy nodded. She wondered why he seemed so interested. His voice had changed, and he seemed to be excited about something.

  "What are they like, Candy?"

  "Some of them are pretty, with trees and things. Some are barely above water."

  "Anybody live on them?"

  "Down on the southern ones they do, but not up here."

  He pulled a leather bag out of his pocket and put some

  tobacco in his pipe, pushing it down carefully with his thumb. Then he lit it and puffed until he got it going. ''Candy/' he said, ''do you think a man could live on one of the islands if he had food and water?"

  Candy thought for a moment. "I don't see why not. It'd be awful lonely though/'

  "Do many people go out to them?"

  She shook her head. ''Nobody."

  His eyes kept searching hers and he was so serious about the islands. "You went out there," he reminded her.

  "Oh, well, I don't count. I've been to all of them, but other people don't go because they're scared of the reefs and currents."

  He said slowly, "Do you think that if a man went to live on one of them people would leave him alone, Candy?"

  She laughed out loud. "I know they would."

  He changed again. He let his arms drop, his shoulders sagged do\Ti a little, and he let his breath out slowly. "Good," he said.

  "Good what?" Candy asked.

  "Everything," he said. "Could I get a boat to take me out to the islands?"

  "If you paid enough." Suddenly Candy b^an to understand what he was talking about. "Are you going to go and live on one of the islands?"

  He looked at her and then examined the bowl of his pipe. "Yes," he said.

  "All by yourself?"

  He nodded.

  "Why?" Candy asked.

  "If I'm lucky, maybe I'll tell you—someday."

  Candy suddenly remembered the time when a man who had shot another man hid on one of the islands. It had taken the pohce a long time to find him. "Have you done something wrong?" she asked.

  "Yep/' he said.

  Candy began to feel uneasy. "Are you running away?'*

  ''I don't know, Candy," he said. 'Tm a little mixed up." Then he smiled at her. ''Will you do me a favor?" he asked.

  Candy was afraid of what he would ask her to do, but when she looked at him she couldn't see anything bad in his face-just gentleness and a kind of sorrow—so she nodded.

  ''Never tell anyone what I've told you. About living on the island. Will you promise? Please."

  '1 promise," Candy said.

  ''Good. For that I'm going to give you my boat.'*

  Candy was surprised. "I don't want anything. I don't mind promising."

  "I know, but I can't take the boat with me. People might see her and come to investigate. She'd stick up like a sore thumb."

  "WOiat kind of boat is she?"

  He pointed with his thumb at the Snipe on top of the greenhouse.

  Candy stared in amazement. ''Is that yours?"

  He nodded.

  She looked at the boat and then at him, then she laughed. "You can't give me a boat like that, Mr. Daniels. If you don't want to take her ^ith you, you could sell her for a lot of money."

  "I don't need any money. Candy, and I want you to have the boat. You'll take care of her and love her."

  Candv shook her head stubbornly. "You can't do that, Mr. Daniels."

  "Do you want me to leave her up there for Mr. Jenkins to ruin?"

  "Oh no. ril help you get her down right now."

  "How?"

  "Just yank on the rope. If we both pull, she'll slide right off. Of course she might get scratched up a little, but not much."

  "That would about ruin the greenhouse, wouldn't it?"

  Candy shrugged. "Maybe it would, but if we pulled her

  down right now Mr. Jenkins would think the hurricane had done all the damage, so he couldn't get so mad."

  Mr. Daniels thought for a while and then shook his head. "No," he said. ''We ought not to do that. I'm sure that Mr. Jenkins will let her stay where she is until you can get a truck with a crane on it to lift her down without ruining the greenhouse."

  ''Well, she's your boat," Candy said, "but just one yank and she'd be down on the ground."

  "She's your boat, but don't pull her down, Candy. Wait a little while."

  Candy felt everything going quiet inside her, so that even her heart seemed to stop beating. "Do you really want to give her to me?" she asked.

  "Yes," he said. "She's a good boat, Candv, and you'll like her."

  Candy said slowly, "I'll love her, Mr. Daniels."

  "Fine." He held out his hand and she shook it. "Good-by."

  Candy was startled. "Where are you going?"

  He smiled as he turned away. "To my island," he said quietly.

  For a little while Candy just stood there staring at his back as he walked toward the woods. She couldn't understand him and now nothing he had said seemed real. He had done something wrong, and didn't want anyone to know that he was going to live on an island. But he didn't know whether he was running away or not.

  He was, she decided, sort of mysterious, but she liked him anyway.

  Then she decided that everything that day was mysterious. She had just been wandering along feeling sad about the Faraway and the warehouse. Then there was the boat on top of the glass greenhouse. Then the man came, and all of a sudden she had a boat again.

  CHAPTER

  3

  Mr. Daniels at last disappeared into the woods, leaving only faint puffs of smoke from his pipe.

  Slowly then Candy began to realize what had happened to her. She looked at the plank from the Faraway lying on the grass and couldn't believe that the man had actually given her a real, solid, seagoing Snipe sailboat.

  Everything around her began to change. The sunli
ght got warmer and softer, the Bay she loved got bluer with sparkles all over it. Birds began to sing and bugs started yelling.

  She turned very slowly and looked up at the boat. She knew then that it was the boat she had always dreamed about—the one, in dreams, she had seen sailing and sailing. The one, in dreams, that she had scraped and painted and varnished and loved with all her heart.

  The green bottom paint was as clean as a mirror and not a seam showed. The red stripe of boot-topping followed the waterline exactly, and the hull paint was the glistening white she wanted. The only scar she could see was the broken mast.

  She was standing there beside the greenhouse with her hands clasped and her eyes adoring her new boat and her heart so big it was thumping inside her chest, when the little man whirled around the comer.

  As soon as she saw him, she thought of a fiddler crab with

  its skinny arms and legs, squinched-up face, and fierce eyes stuck out on little sticks.

  She knew perfectly well that it was Mr. Jenkins, but she was still feeling so warm and happy about the boat that she wasn't scared at all. She just stood there and smiled at him.

  ''What are you doing here?" he snapped. He had a voice like cornflakes and, even though he had stopped walking, he kept on hopping up and down, and his eyes glared at her from under the green isor of his cloth hat.

  Candy managed to say in a weak voice ''Nothing."

  "Well. Get off! Get off!" He made a little sweeping motion with his hands.

  She glanced up helplessly at her boat.

  Mr. Jenkins looked up, too. He must have seen the boat for the first time, because he stared at it for a moment and then put his hands over his face. He opened the fingers of one hand and peeked at the boat again.

  When he took his hands down, his face had turned gray and his eyes looked as if they had flashhght bulbs behind them. Then he began to tremble all over in addition to hopping all the time.

  "What do you know about this boat? What do you know about it?" he snapped at her, his two fists going up and down in front of his chest.

  Candy backed away a little. She didn't think it would be lying to say that she didn't know anything about it, because actually she didn't. And she was afraid of what he would do if she told him it was her boat. Swallowing hard, she said, "Nothing."

  He was almost moaning as he said, "I'll have to get it oflF my greenhouse. Get it off, and then I'll burn the detestable thing."

  He started away, but Candy found her courage again. "Wait, Mr. Jenkins," she said, and when he turned and hopped back toward her, she said weakly, "She's my boat. I'll get her down."

  All of a sudden he was standing perfectly still, neither hop-

  ping nor shaking. And his voice was different, too, when he said, 'Toung lady, directly under that miserable boat of yours there are orchids which are absolutely priceless. If that boat should fall on them, they would be crushed, and I could never produce plants like them again."

  Candy said slowly, '1 never could get another boat hke that one, either/'

  He began to hop, shake, and shout all at the same time. ''Don't talk back to me, miss. Don't do it, do you hear? I'll have that boat taken off my greenhouse and destroyed, do you understand?"

  Candy was so scared that she, too, began to tremble a little. But inside the cold scaredness there was one little warm place which wasn't frightened at all. She wasn't sure what her voice would sound like, so she said each word carefully, ''That's my boat, and you can't bum her up, Mr. Jenkins."

  He was really shouting when he said, "Young woman! Anything on my land is mine. Mine! Understand?"

  The warm place was getting smaller, but it was still there. "I'm on your land and I'm not yours," Candy said. She didn't know it, but her voice was clear and quiet. "So neither is my boat."

  They stood for a long time looking at each other. His eyes were glittery and looked like little shiny rocks. Candy wanted very much to blink her eyes and look away, but she didn't.

  Mr. Jenkins lowered his eyes first. "All right, miss," he said, still angry. "How do you intend to get that boat off?"

  She remembered the man saying it would take a truck. "I'll get a truck," she said calmly. "A truck with a crane on it."

  He seemed a little surprised. "All right, I'll give you until sunset to get that boat down. Sunset. If it isn't off by then, I'll have it taken away. Understand?"

  "Yes, sir," Candy said.

  Then he began to point his bony finger at her, jabbing it back and forth. "And—if a single petal of my flowers is damaged —a single leaf—I'll sue you. Sue you."

  Then he was gone, fiddler-crabbing away.

  For a long time Candy just stood there, a little stunned. Iler mind seemed to be full of thick molasses, and all she could think about was Mr. Jenkins saying he would sue her. She didn't know exactly what would happen if he did, but it would mean paying him money. And she didn't have any money, and neither did her father. Candy hugged herself, huddling up a little as she looked at the flowers she could see dimly through the glass.

  Finally she looked up at the sailboat. It was so cheerful and pretty up there.

  Getting it down was like one of those arithmetic problems that bothered her so much in school. When she first read the problem, there never seemed to be any way to start finding the answer. But, she remembered, if you really studied the thing, a way to ^'ork it always came out.

  She stood, studying the boat. A frown wrinkled her forehead and her gray eyes squinted a little. She began to gnaw gently on her lower lip.

  She was sure that she couldn't find any truck with a crane on it. Even if she could, it would be so busy lifting things in town that it wouldn't bother with a little boat.

  If she just pulled the boat down, it couldn't help falling through the roof on the flowers. Then she'd get sued.

  While she studied the angle the boat was lying on. Candy suddenly had an idea. By tying a rope to the bow—and she could tie it to the boat's broken anchor rope—she could get up in the pine tree over there and lift up the bow.

  But what would happen to the stern? It was already sticking out a little way beyond the edge of the roof, and if she lifted the bow, the weight would probably break down the glass wall and the boat would swing in and land on the flowers.

  She would have to get something under the stern that would hold it up. Then lift the bow up. Then slide the boat, stern first, out on something—something that would then let the whole boat come dowTi—gently—clear of the glass wall.

  But what? What could she put under there? It would have to be slick, so the boat would shde out on it. And it would then have to come down—slowly, so the boat wouldn't fall off and maybe break through the glass.

  Slick and gentle. Candy bit harder on her lip, and began to yank on her right ear. Something that was smooth and would let the boat down.

  Suddenly, already starting to run. Candy thought of something.

  Ice. She would pile up blocks of ice beside the greenhouse then, while somebody got up in the tree and lifted the bow up, she would ease the boat out on the ice. The ice would slowly melt and her boat would come down to the ground.

  Candy sat down and cried. She had done everything she could and her boat was still there. It was getting late. The ice piled up beside the greenhouse was melting fast.

  All she needed was just one somebody to get up in the tree and pull on the rope. That was all—just one single person. And she couldn't find anybody. They were all too busy taking care of their own belongings after the hurricane to come help her. Even the man from the icehouse wouldn't stay after he helped her get the blocks stacked up. She couldn't even find the man who had given her the boat; her father had gone to Miami and her mother was a Red Cross Gray Lady. She had even looked around for her best friend. Dotty T., although Candy knew she wouldn't have been much help.

  Candy was soaking wet from lugging the blocks of ice, her hair was in a tangle, and bark from the pine tree was sticking to her, but she didn't care.
She just sat and wept and watched the ice melting.

  Because tears were blurring everything, she didn't see the boy until he had walked past her. He was down by the sea wall and, after she wiped her eves, she saw that he looked a little younger than she was, but good and strong. He had a stick in one hand and wasn't dressed very well.

  j%-%

  Candy sat down and cried. She had done everything she could and her boat was still there

  But, Candy thought, he's got hands and he can cHmb a tree. She jumped up and ran toward him, scrubbing the tears off her face and snorting as she ran. A Httle out of breath, she said, ''Hi," and smiled as sweetly as she could.

  He swung the stick slowly toward her and then turned. He didn't even look straight at her as he said in a flat uninterested voice, "Hi." He didn't smile.

  Candy had never seen him before. He needed a haircut so badly that his eyes were practically hidden by ragged hair, and she wondered how he could see where he was going. His face needed washing, too, and his shirt needed buttons.

  But she didn't care what he looked like. All she wanted was some help. ''Are you busy right now?" she asked.

  "No."

  "Then can you help me get the boat down? It won't take but a little while, and it'll be easy."

  "No," he said, "I can't."

  She stared at him. "Oh, please," she said, almost crying again. "I've got to have some help, and I couldn't find anybody. All I need is to have you pull on the rope a little. It isn't hard and it won't take a minute. Please do it for me, won't you? Please?"

  "I couldn't do it," the boy said, and he wasn't interested at all.

  "Sure you could. You're plenty strong enough. I've already got the rope up in the tree. You could do it with one hand."

  The boy slowly shook his head.

  Candy stared at him, wondering why he wouldn't help her.

  He had the saddest face she had ever seen. Sadder and gentler even than the man who had given her the boat. The corners of his lips were pulled down so that his mouth looked unhappy and bitter. And when he pushed the hair away from his face, she saw his dark, strange eyes. As she looked at them, she suddenly thought, "That's the way people's eyes must look when they're asleep."