Mariner's Compass

by Earlene Fowler

  The Wood-carvers’ Museum was about twenty miles up Pacific Coast Highway past the towns of Cambria, Cayucos, and Harmony. I glanced at the turnoff for Harmony as I passed and wondered briefly if Azanna Nybak was mourning Jacob right now.

  The museum was located among a strip of highway shops that served passing tourists and the nearby residents of the small town of San Simeon, which crouched below the monolithic Hearst Castle, the only true tourist trap between the artsy shops of Cambria and Big Sur. Tucked among a candy store, a kite shop, and general store selling drinks, beef jerky, and postcards, the museum appeared to be just another gift shop with an emphasis on wood items. But if you looked closer at the wooden items for sale you could tell these weren’t some Made in China knickknacks, but one-of-a-kind, hand-carved bowls and animals and even, incredibly, wooden matchsticks carved in the shapes of scissors, forks, and knives.

  Since no one seemed to be around, I wandered through the free museum in the back of the store, looking at exhibits by California wood-carvers. They included a mantle, chest, and picture frame carved by Arthur Julius Kofod, who worked on Hearst Castle, and another master carver, the late Rudolph Vargas, who lived in the San Gabriel Valley. Back in the gift shop area, I was studying the detailed sheep and cattle in a rosewood nativity scene when a square, solid-looking young man came out from a door behind the counter.

  “Oh, hello,” he said, his hand flying up to stroke his dark goatee. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  I walked over to him. “Hello, Mr. . . .” I glanced at his name tag, then couldn’t help smiling. “Burl?”

  He gave an ironic laugh. “My father had a very wry sense of humor, and yes, I’ve heard every wood joke there is. I hated my name when I was a kid, but now I can appreciate its uniqueness. And since I carve now, too, it’s a great conversation starter.”

  “No doubt. My name is Benni Harper, and I just called—”

  “Wow, that was fast.” He held up a finger. “Just a minute.”

  In a few seconds, Burl came back carrying two packages. One was a sealed manila envelope, the other was wrapped in white tissue paper. The second package was oval and about eight to ten inches long.

  “So, how’s old Jake doing?” Burl asked.

  I paused a moment before telling him the bad news. His dark eyes blinked rapidly for a moment. “I liked Jake. He never talked down to me when I was a kid. I learned a lot about wood carving watching him.” The young man took a deep breath. “He was a pallbearer at my dad’s funeral last year.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  He looked down at the tissue-wrapped package with a question in his eyes.

  Without a word, I unwrapped it, knowing from its weight and feel that it was something Jacob Chandler had carved. A murmur of appreciation came from Burl when I pulled back the last piece of tissue. Wet heat burned at the back of my eyes.

  It was a bas-relief portrait in pale oak of my mother. He’d somehow captured in the hard, unforgiving wood her delicate, heart-shaped face; her strong chin; the slight downward slant of her eyes, eyes that stared back at me in the mirror every morning. Her lips turned upward in the shy, half smile she wore in so many of her photographs.

  “My dad used to beg Jake to enter his work in competitions,” Burl said, touching a finger to my mother’s smooth cheek. “But he never would. Said he carved for himself, not to compete with other people.”

  I quickly wrapped the wood portrait back up and clutched it and the unopened manila envelope to my chest. “Thank you, Burl. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you about his service. He didn’t leave me a list of people to call. He’s buried in the Paso Robles Cemetery.”

  Burl nodded, his hand stroking his goatee. “That’s okay. I’ll let the other people in the guild know.”

  “Okay, thanks.” Then I remembered the stones. I pulled them out of my purse and set them on the counter before him. “Do you know what these are?”

  He picked them up. “Sure, they’re sharpening stones. Good ones.”

  “Anything in particular you can tell me about them?”

  He set them back down on the counter. “Not much. They’re just a couple of good Arkansas natural oilstones. Some carvers think they’re the best there is.”

  “Arkansas? That’s the name of the stone?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, there’s a black Arkansas, too, that’s not translucent like these.”

  The stone is important. Was this what he meant? It was important because it was another link to Arkansas and my mother?

  I thanked Burl and started toward the door. Just as I opened it, he called to me. “Hey, I never asked. Were you related to him or something?”

  Without turning around and without stopping, I answered over my shoulder. “I honestly don’t know.”

  In the truck I tore open the manila envelope and found another wood carving lesson and five white letter-size envelopes addressed to Jacob Chandler. Every one was addressed to General Delivery and postmarked a different town: Flagstaff, Arizona; Eugene, Oregon; Spokane, Washington; Bakersfield, California; San Bernardino, California.

  All of them were in my mother’s handwriting.

  My hands shook as I arranged them by postmarked dates. The first one was dated June 2, 1961. The last one was a little over two months before my mother died—April 13, 1964.

  The cab of the truck suddenly felt stifling. I rolled down the window halfway and pulled the two sheets of thin blue stationery out of the first letter.

  Dear Jacob, the letter started.

  I refolded the letter and shoved it back in the envelope. I couldn’t read my mother’s letters in the parking lot of a strip mall. Instead, I read the wood carving lesson.

  No matter how carefully you work, sometimes you cut too deeply or break off a piece. Don’t lose hope. Stop and think before going on. You may be able to use the mistake to your benefit. Sometimes the mistake can be repaired with wood putty or epoxy resin filler. Cutting too deeply is harder to correct. Often the only solution is to carve around the mistake and attempt to blend it into your design. Sometimes there is no solution, and the wood must be tossed away. Don’t be afraid to experiment. Don’t copy what others create, but listen to your heart and carve its voice. Details make the carving come alive. One detail may be the secret to the whole piece. Search for that detail.

  One detail? What was he talking about? I read it over again slowly, trying to make sense of the directions. There was no doubt that what he was having me search for was somehow hidden in these messages. Was it his true identity? His connection to my mother? Something else?

  Maybe the answers were in my mother’s letters to him. The miles back to Morro Bay seemed endless. I kept glancing over at the manila envelope, tempted to pull over and read them immediately. Instead I drove as fast as I dared, fighting the evening wind buffeting the truck.

  I parked the truck haphazardly in front of the charred garage and rushed through the back gate, expecting an enthusiastic welcome from Scout.

  The yard was empty. I called out his name a few times while circling the house. There was no way for him to get inside because I’d locked the dog-door, certain that somehow it would provide a means for Duane or Cole to do something destructive. Just in case, I checked through the house, only panicking when finding the last room empty. I’d owned Scout long enough to know he was not the type of dog to wander off. He was so well trained that not even cats could tempt him to venture off his own property.

  “Next door,” I said out loud, relieved. “He’s probably visiting Rich.”

  Rich said the last he’d seen of Scout was about two hours ago. “I walked down to the bookstore on the Embarcadero. He was lying on the front porch when I left.”

  Panic turned my mouth to cotton. I licked my lips, salty with fear. “Rich, he wouldn’t run off.”

  “First, let’s not jump to any conclusions. We’ll drive around and look for him. Maybe he’s just acting out because he’s mad you left him alone.”

  For
the next two hours we drove around Morro Bay searching for him, including the narrow, rocky hills across the highway where houses clung to the rocks like barnacles. It was dark when Rich convinced me that we’d be better off going back home and calling the county animal shelter. Maybe somebody had picked him up.

  After a call to the animal shelter came up dry, a thought occurred to me. “Duane and Cole are involved with this. I bet they have him.”

  Before he could stop me, I rushed across the street to their little saltbox house. One light shone through a front window, but no one answered my urgent knocking. I called Scout’s name through the window, listening for his frantic bark. The house was silent. I tried the back gate. It was locked.

  “Benni, don’t you think . . .” Rich started to protest as I climbed the wood stake fence surrounding their backyard. I was over it before he could get the rest of his words out.

  He was standing in the front yard, his arms folded across his chest when I climbed back over the fence. “Nothing back there,” I said, ignoring his disapproving expression. “I know they have something to do with it. I’m going down to Tess’s store and find out where they are. Don’t try to stop me.”

  “Benni, I wouldn’t even try to, but I am going with you.”

  “Fine, the more manpower the better.”

  Tess was sitting behind the counter on a metal stool, reading a Good Housekeeping magazine when I burst through the door. Shell wind chimes hanging next to the door clattered from the sharp whoosh of evening air. Her head jerked up from her magazine with a sharp, startled gasp. No one was in the store, though the other Embarcadero shops were crowded with tourists. The room smelled pungently of dust, old mold, and grease from the fish-and-chips restaurant next door.

  “Where are Duane and Cole?” I demanded. “They took my dog and I want him back.”

  Her expression turned into one of practiced denial. “My boys wouldn’t do that. They liked Jake’s dog.”

  “Scout is my dog, and he’s gone. You know he’d never wander anywhere, and your boys have been harassing me for a week. I’m warning you, if they’ve done anything to Scout . . .”

  She tossed her magazine on the counter and slipped down from her stool. “I told you my sons liked Jake’s dog. Besides, they wouldn’t hurt an innocent animal. They—”

  “Where are they? I want to ask them myself.”

  She pressed her painted orange lips together tightly and didn’t answer. From behind me, Neely’s voice called across the store. “They’re over at the Masthead saloon like they always are on Saturday nights. Now leave her alone.”

  I turned and watched her walk across the store toward us. Her shaggy brown hair was pulled up with a plastic hair clip. In the fluorescent lights of the store, her face was as pale and emotionless as a clamshell.

  “Keep cool,” I heard Rich murmur behind me.

  “You know about this,” I snapped at her.

  Neely’s face stayed calm. “I told you where they are, now get out.”

  “If I don’t find them there, I’ll be back.”

  Her glittery laugh was sharp as glass. “Don’t worry, they’ll be there.”

  Out on the street Rich caught my arm to keep me from darting in front of a van full of college students.

  “Slow down, kid. We need to think this thing out before we go barreling into a dive like the Masthead.”

  I jerked my arm out of his grasp and started walking uptown. “If it’s too tough for you, then go home,” I said over my shoulder. “I’m going to find Duane and Cole and make them tell me where my dog is.”

  He jogged to catch up with me, his dark face irritated. “You are as stubborn and bullheaded as a donkey, little girl.”

  “Are you coming or not?” I asked, walking up the steep hill toward downtown.

  “I’m with you,” he said with an exasperated sigh. “I’d never forgive myself or be able to face your husband if I didn’t.”

  I stopped and faced him. “Look here, Mr. Trujillo, if you think I can’t take care of myself, guess again. I’m not afraid to go into that bar and confront them without you.”

  “I know you’re not, Benni. That’s what really scares me.”

  The Masthead was the last of the old-time fisherman’s bars built back when fish not tourists were the town’s biggest economic power. It sat on a corner in an innocuous white building. The gray, peeling sign was shaped like a barracuda. Underneath the sign were black-tinted windows, a small yellow neon light announcing “cocktails,” and the ever alluring orange and purple California Lotto sticker.

  I burst through the door into a cramped, dark bar that didn’t look any different than any cowboy bar I’d ever been in, except for the fact that the music playing was rock and roll instead of country, and the multicolored gimme caps worn by the patrons promoted fishing industries rather than feed stores and tractor dealerships.

  I spotted Duane and Cole across the room sitting with a grizzled old man wearing a Greek fisherman’s hat and a thin, hard-looking woman with unnaturally bright copper-colored hair. I pushed through the loud, laughing crowd, dodged a moving pool cue, and planted myself in front of their table.

  “Where’s my dog?” I asked over the deafening voices around me. I felt Rich move up behind me and rest his hand lightly on my shoulder. Deep in my throat a cough from hovering cigarette smoke tickled, threatening to erupt. I swallowed saliva and fought the urge.

  “What?” Cole said, his face frozen in genuine surprise. Next to him, the old man picked through a plastic bowl of stale-looking bar mix.

  The woman gave a raspy laugh and nudged Duane with her elbow. “Duane, baby, this little girl’s lost her doggie. You seen it?”

  Duane smiled slyly, then slowly took a sip of his beer.

  “Where is he?” I asked, raising my voice an octave. No one in the deafening crowd even noticed.

  “We don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cole said, his eyes darting to his brother, then back to me.

  “I swear, I’ll kill you both if you’ve hurt Scout.”

  Duane said in a loud voice to no one in particular, “Now, isn’t threatening to kill someone, like, some kind of crime or something? Think they’d lock up a police chief’s wife for that, or would she just get off with a hand slap? What do you think, Cap?” The man continued picking through the bowl and didn’t answer.

  I leaned closer, resting both hands flat on the table. “Where’s my dog?”

  Duane brought his beer up to his lips and drank. Foam dotted the tips of his thin mustache when he smirked at me. “Honey, you’re ruining our evening with friends here, accusing us of such a terrible thing as dognapping. Maybe you should use some of those same connections you used to get us harassed by the local pig squad and have them find your mutt.”

  “I’m only going to ask one more time,” I said, anger rising up in me like water boiling. Rich’s hand tightened on my shoulder. “What have you done with my dog?”

  Duane looked over at his brother, who shook his head slightly. He licked his lips and said, “Like I said, if you’d just twitch that fine little ass of yours under your police chief’s nose, I’m sure he’d call out the whole force to find your puppy dog.”

  I grabbed the half-full beer stein sitting in front of him and threw the beer in his face. The woman screamed and jumped up, frantically brushing at her thin silver blouse.

  “Shit, you little . . .” Duane yelled, lunging at me over the wet table. Cole grabbed his shoulders, holding him back.

  Laughter surrounded us as I felt Rich move between me and Duane and start forcefully pushing me toward the exit.

  “Hustle your butt, kid,” he commanded in my ear. “Don’t look back.”

  We were outside by the time Duane made it to the doorway of the bar. Yelling out curses at me, he was held back by Cole and another man. “You’ll be sorry,” were the last words I heard before Rich and I rounded the corner out of earshot.

  Rich kept his arm around my trembling shoulder
s the three blocks back to my house. By the time we reached my gate, I was calmer but still angry.

  “I guess I don’t have to tell you that wasn’t the smartest thing in the world to do,” he said.

  At this point I was so tired of the whole situation involving Jacob Chandler that I didn’t care. “I know.”

  “I think you should call your husband.”

  “No.”

  He gave me a strange look. “He has a right to know.”

  “He doesn’t have a right to anything.”

  “What happened between you two?”

  I frowned at him. “Nothing.”

  He looked at me for a long moment, his dark face calm. “I realize it’s none of my business, but I’m worried about you.”

  “Don’t be. I’ve got enough problems with one overly protective man, thank you very much.”

  His hurt expression caused guilt and regret at my hasty words to pull at my heart. This man had not only just ridden around with me for two hours looking for my dog, but also he was willing to try to protect me from a crowd of drunk white men, and here I was treating him like dirt. I was glad Dove wasn’t around to see me or I’d be getting a slap upside the head.

  “I’m sorry, Rich, that was rude of me. I do appreciate you helping me look for Scout and for everything you’ve done. The thing with Gabe, it’s just so complicated.”

  “Want to talk about it?” He pointed to my concrete steps. “As Lucy from Peanuts would say, the doctor is in.”

  I didn’t think I did, but once I sat down and started telling him the true identities of the photographer and his wife, I found myself pouring out all my feelings about Gabe and how torn I felt about his way of caring for me, the doubts I had about being married to a cop. He listened without comment until like a worn-out battery I eventually stopped talking.

  When he saw that I was finished, he spoke. “Now, don’t get mad at me, but I’m going to try to let you see things from his side.”