Water Lessons

by Chadwick Wall

  "Where are we going?" Lance said. Surely the boy was sweating profusely under that Bruins jersey and hoping for a break, a dip in the ocean.

  "We're going to an unknown underground bunker controlled by the Irish mob," Jim said.

  Tim exploded in a chuckling fit.

  "Coool!" Scott said.

  "Man, I don't know if that's mah cup o' tea," Dwayne's voice wavered, sounding uneasy.

  "They won't take too kindly to you guys!" Scott said.

  "Cut that out, this minute!" Tim thundered, his Boston accent flying thick and fast, his finger wagging at his charge.

  "Hmph! Shuddup, fool," LaRon stopped and turned toward Scott.

  The line halted. LaRon's face grew fierce as he puffed out his chest. "They wouldn't know what they comin' up against. We'd put a hurt on dem chumps reeaal fast."

  Reverend Ward and Walter lurched toward LaRon. Each clamped a cautionary hand on his shoulder and ordered him to relax. Tim Murphy did the same with Scott, and Jack and Jim stepped in front of Lance and Seamus.

  "Hey!" the old man roared, raising a clenched fist with an extended index finger. Walter's eyes bulged, his face flushed crimson with fury. To add to his unnerving look, the Commodore had now drawn his lips back like a growling dog.

  "I said, hey!" the old man boomed. "I better not hear any more of that garbage. We set off on this undertaking for one reason, and that kind of mean talk to each other isn't it!"

  Several seconds of the starkest silence passed. The old man switched his glaring stare from LaRon to Scott as if attempting to brand his order and threatening expression into their memory. Jim turned to Reverend Ward, who smiled at the old man.

  "That's it, boys," Reverend Ward said. "Y'all better do what Mr. Henretty says. Knock it off with those comments. We're better than that."

  "We can be," Dwayne said in a feeble voice.

  "Exactly. We can." The Reverend pointed his index finger in the air. "We do have the power not to stoop to those levels. Exercise that power and lay off that stuff. Let's have some fun."

  "Couldn't have said it better." Walter winked at the Reverend. "Now, let's be on our way, shall we?" The old man marched down the path, his military past still evident in his gait.

  The line wended around some crumbling concrete ruins and granite boulders. Alongside the trail lay more bogs and copses of pines, oaks, and cherries as before, with thick masses of brambles. Then the path forked.

  "We'll take the route to the left. The road less travelled!" Walter marched up the left course and its slight incline into the woods. The path leveled out. The ground, coated with pine straw, was completely clear of bushes and brambles. Ahead, someone had recently burned a small campfire.

  "Ah hah! Gents, we have arrived at our proper destination!" Walter said. "Now if all we grown-ups can get these healthy young upstarts to help us set up camp, we'll be doing just fine."

  For the next twenty minutes they assembled the six tents. Jim asked Jack to help him find kindling and any larger pieces of wood. Bit by bit, they stacked the wood in a large pile just outside the circle of tents. Jim and Jack then joined the others in assembling the final tent, finishing just as the sun started to vanish. Tim and the St. Brendan's boys occupied two tents. Beside those tents stood the tent for Jim and the Commodore. Adjacent to this tent stood the two tents for the Reverend and the Mount Zion group. Next was Jack's tent.

  After Jim and Walter prepared the fire, the boys roasted franks on long sticks they had fashioned. Jim took this opportunity to take Walter aside.

  "Commodore, a favor," Jim half-whispered. "Can I make a quick phone call while y'all do the hot dogs? Got to call your daughter, after all. My nightly call, you know?"

  "Oh, boy!" Walter laughed. "You mean you haven't called Miss Maureen today? You better be dialing your phone in the next few seconds or you'll be in deep, deep trouble, son!"

  Jim walked back down the path toward the ocean. When he was out of earshot, he dug into his shorts' pocket for his phone.

  A half-irritated, half-exhausted voice answered. "Jim, what's new?" More of a monotone, declarative line than a question.

  "Maureen, hey, how are you, sweetie?"

  "Jim, don't call me baby or sweetie. I've told you before."

  "Sorry, I forget. Sorry, I—"

  "I'm not doing so great, actually." A pause.

  "Maureen, what's the matter? Can I help?"

  Another pause.

  Jim felt a tingling heat on his forehead and the nape of his neck.

  "Maybe, I guess. Ah… I don't know how to begin…"

  "Is it something I did?"

  "It's not really your fault. I just… it's just been so difficult lately. You moved away. I encouraged you to go into the boat business with Dad. Now I don't have you as close and it's just hit me lately. But don't worry, I'll deal with it. Are we still on for tomorrow?"

  "Of course we are."

  "Good. So I take it you're out now on one of the Harbor Islands for the night?"

  "Lovells Island. Charming place."

  "Dad used to take Mom and me there sometimes, years ago. We'd sail up from the Cape for a few days, or we'd charter a boat from Boston like you guys just did. You should see George's Island. You'd like it."

  "I really want to make it better. Sorry you're going through all this. I know you care about me. You just wanted me to find my niche by helping me get into this boat business and all. I'm taking you out tomorrow. We'll talk about it, all right?"

  "Don't worry about me."

  "You're strong. I have to return to the campsite now. It's getting dark and I don't have a flashlight with me. Well, least there aren't copperheads and water moccasins this far north."

  "Call me when you guys dock tomorrow."

  "Will do. I love you, Maureen."

  "Love you, too," she mumbled. The three words came strangely, so very fast that they blended into one word.

  Then the line clicked. Their talk had not even lasted two minutes.

  He trudged back up the trail, his back to the ocean. Once again, there came the old familiar sound of the crashing waves and that sharp yet welcome seaweed-and-brine scent of the north Atlantic coast.

  Jim softly exhaled his despair as he entered the woods. Through the near-complete darkness and the web of tree trunks and brush, the fire roared, perhaps three feet high. The crew encircled it, sitting in their camping chairs and on a few scattered logs, roasting their franks.

  They greeted Jim as he appeared at the clearing's edge. He took his seat in a chair between Jack and Walter. When their glances met, the old man studied his face closely, a hint of solemnity and concern about the eyes.

  Jim looked at his feet, then at the glowing fire. The boys were laughing at something puerile and lighthearted but he was outside of their joy, something that seemed now foreign to him.

  He wondered why he now felt downcast. What was it within him? It was mostly Maureen's love, or the lack of love, rather, that he felt from her—despite how much he loved her.

  But there was something else. He had achieved so much since that day in mid-September, when he arrived in the Manchester, New Hampshire, airport. He had found more success than ever before in his youth.

  But he had become, in a sense, a different person in a far-flung land. And that new person was not loved, at least not romantically. He was truly alone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Undaunted glided forward on her course, her sleek prow surging its way through the strengthening morning light. The gulls soared and circled, diving about her masts and taut sails. His hands grasping the wheel, Jim inhaled the salt air deeply into his lungs and closed his eyes, as if to draw the moment into his memory forever.

  "Attaboy, son," the old yet robust voice cheered at his side.

  Jim opened his eyes.

  The Commodore grinned. "Relish it. This moment's one of those times that keeps a sailor coming back for more—for all those who love sails and the sea and that 'open road' feeling.
Not the open road, rather, but the 'whale-road', as the ancient Vikings called it. And out here, a guy's more connected with nature than on any road trip."

  Jim grunted. He was at such peace that he found himself reluctant to speak.

  "I wanted to show ya something," the old man said. "See that island back there? The one just near Lovells, where we camped? Know what that is? Or was?"

  Jim looked past Walter, who pointed toward the greenish, wall-encircled mass fading into the horizon.

  "I've heard bits and pieces. George's Island, isn't it?"

  "What's its claim to fame, my boy? You should know this one. Right up your alley."

  "It's the one with a fort, right? And a prison? Fort Warren."

  "Indeed." Walter lifted his eyebrows to emphasize the gravity of the subject, or to further build suspense.

  "That island was first used by the English colonists as farmland. Around 1850, the navy built a fort there, which would have been one of the best in our land. It just ended up being technologically obsolete upon completion. See, all the new ironclads and high-powered artillery rendered it ineffective as a major fort. So it became a military training ground. Federal soldiers at the start of the Civil War trained and drilled there. The Second Infantry, while revamping the parade ground there, wrote the lyrics to 'John Brown's Body.' You remember, boy, the great marching hymn of the North? Well, at one point in the war, the fort became a prison. It was noted for the humane treatment of its prisoners: three thousand of 'em if you added 'em up over the years. Among them were some notables. You know of Alexander Hamilton Stephens?"

  "The Vice President of the Confederacy," Jim said. "The acne-scarred, ninety-six pound 'little big man' from Georgia. Complex guy."

  "How so?" Walter said.

  "He paid for men and women, white and black people to be educated," Jim said. "Yet he still wrote and campaigned for slavery."

  "Correct. And who was Richard S. Ewell, otherwise known as 'Old Bald Head'?"

  "A general blamed by a few of his men for losing Gettysburg."

  "I guess you could say that, son," Walter laughed.

  "Ewell is my middle name, but there's no relation."

  "Hmm. Okay, now who was John Slidell?"

  "He was a senator from my state who later became a Confederate diplomat to France. He almost pulled Britain into the war on the Southern side. I grew up near a town named after him."

  "Correct. Yep, they were prisoners there. You know, those men were treated so well in there that they wrote letters for some of the Union guards who later went into battle, that should they be captured, they were to be treated by the rebels with the utmost care."

  "I like that."

  "Sounds like you know a lot of this already. Yeah, yeah, Mr. History," the old man leered askance at him with a look of mischief, "but do ya know about the Lady in Black? Otherwise known as the Black Widow?"

  "No, sir. Sounds very nineteenth-century, Victorian."

  "You'll like this one. Maybe weave this little yarn into what you're writing." Walter shook his finger, pointing upward. "During what you guys down below the Mason-Dixon used to call 'the War Between The States,' back when Fort Warren was a high-security military prison, there was a Confederate lieutenant there named Lanier. He mailed details on where he was imprisoned to his wife. So the guy's wife came up all the way to Hull and stayed with a Southern sympathizer. In her luggage, she'd brought two items: a pickax and a pistol.

  "One night she took a rowboat to George's Island, bypassed all the sentries, and ran to a specific section of the dungeon wall. Behind this, her husband and some of his fellow officers were waiting. They hoisted her up with a rope made of bedsheets, right through a cannon's embrasure.

  "The husband hid her for months in the dungeon. Prisoners built a tunnel with the pickax. One night, many men attempted to escape, right through the tunnel across the parade grounds. They sprang from the hole in the ground. With them came Lanier and his wife, who ran into a corridor. A guard confronted the wife. She aimed her pistol and fired. It was an old black powder box type, exploded upon firing. Instantly killed her husband just next to her.

  "The Colonel on duty—guy named Dimick—had no recourse but to hang the wife as a spy. Her only request? That they bury her in a dress, since she'd dressed in a fake Union uniform. Some of the guards found some black robes worn in a recent play put on by some of the rebel prisoners. She was hanged in those robes. To this day, the ghost of Mrs. Lanier is said to haunt Fort Warren. Her spirit's even mentioned several times in prison records.

  "You know, Fort Warren was finally decommissioned when I was in Korea. From that woman's death to the time the fort was decommissioned, that prison had many documented cases of soldiers seeing the Lady in Black. A few soldiers were court-martialed for discharging their rifles and running. One fella tried to desert after seeing her, literally fled his post."

  "Guess he didn't get far," Jim said with a wry smile. "There just doesn't seem to be much room to run back there."

  "Ha, I guess you're right. A soldier was court-martialed after blasting his rifle off while on sentry duty. He said he'd seen the ghost and was just scared to death. The best account is of the time three soldiers were walking under the big arched sallyport, or entrance. Suddenly, they saw these footprints starting from nowhere and going for maybe twenty feet and then disappearing. And they were tracks made by a woman's shoes! Where she walked to her execution."

  "That is quite a tale, Commodore."

  "I always did know how to 'swing the lamp.' So you know, that Lady in Black, or the Black Widow, it's almost as if her spirit, or part of it, rather, is imprisoned still on that island. I got a friend who lives on the Cape, in Barnstable. He was garrisoned on that island in the late forties. Swears he saw her ghost. And George wasn't drunk on any Narragansett when he saw the apparition, okay?"

  A twinkle of humor peeked out of the old man's eyes.

  "I do love those stories," Jim said. "Some are fantasy and some are hallucination. But you know, sir, down in the South we still believe in ghosts." Jim thought of Freddy, and shuddered. "There are spirits, and there are souls, and they are two different things altogether. If you or some writer isn't pulling my leg on that one, that was a spirit."

  "Speaking of such beliefs, my boy, you and I are the same. I'm of an older generation here that still holds those beliefs. The generation of my children—really mine are young enough to be my own grandchildren—well, they've rejected much of the old foolishness. But in many ways, they also rejected a lot of our wisdom and the sweet things. Many admire decadent celebrities and, of course, their own whimsy. But what can I do? I wanted to put Davie in a military academy to straighten him out. What I want to change is that he has little respect for anyone, even his elders. And he's just plain lazy. And he runs with a rough crowd. So I considered an academy for him."

  "Decided against it?"

  "Kathleen cried and begged me not to."

  Jim fidgeted with the wheel, turning it to the right. Seconds later, he corrected it toward the left. He remembered how he and his father that night had grappled, swinging each other in one direction, and then another.

  Jim winced at the memory. He had not been grateful enough for the man. But Jim felt like he could never impress him, and Jim mused once again that he perhaps instead sought his father's replacement in other elders.

  Jim looked out past the biminy onto the deck. Jack held up a line to the chaperones and the boys, who sat on the deck. They had taken a break from raising and lowering sails. Jim hoped Jack would touch on controlling the boom and not wait until moments before the boat docked in Boston Harbor.

  "I know it's gettin' a little rough out there with my little girl. She wearin' ya down?" The old man probably had heard some of it from her and could intuit the rest.

  "The new distance between us is taking a little toll on her. She admitted it last night."

  "I know my little girl. She keeps so much inside. But she divulged a bit to Kathleen y
esterday. You guys just need to visit each other more. Knock off work a bit early, if you have to. The work on the schooner's going swimmingly. Shave a little more time off to see my girl. It's fine."

  "Thanks, Walter. I've wanted to visit her more. I suspected the distance would be a little hard on us, but I didn't want to neglect the project."

  "Maybe a week or two more, with your men going full blast. Once you finish the deck, we're in the clear. We'll be primed for the big trip up the coast."

  "I can't wait. And it's a real treat for the kids."

  "I am quite pleased with everything," Walter said.

  They looked past the biminy at the group. The boys took turns tying a cleat hitch as Jack and the chaperones looked on.

  Behind them in the distance loomed Deer Island and Logan Airport off to the right and the buildings of the Financial District straight ahead. Barely visible on the horizon were the obelisk-like Customs House and the gold-capped State Street building. To the right of these buildings, between downtown and the airport, the beautiful arches of the Zakim suspension bridge spanned the Charles. Across the river, just to the right, rose Bunker Hill and the rowhouses of Charlestown. He had grown nearly as accustomed to these landmarks as those of New Orleans.

  Soon they would dock. He would finally be on solid ground, and with Maureen at last. A week had passed since he had seen her. He would be with Maureen, but with Maureen he would have to contend. Jim did, after all, have some vital questions for her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  After the Undaunted found its moorings at Rowe's Wharf downtown, and after Tim Murphy and Reverend Ward had spirited their energetic charges away to Sunday services, after Jack's Saab rolled reluctantly away to its strife-filled abode in Chatham, and Walter had set off homeward in his old station wagon, Jim climbed into his truck in the parking garage and leaned his head back against the headrest, his eyes closed.