Across a War-Tossed Sea

by L. M. Elliott

  Suddenly there was a great crash of wind on the northwest-facing window, and within seconds a hard rain hammered the tin roof.

  Wesley had grown up in England’s torrential rains, but he still marveled at how suddenly weather changed in the States. He picked up his wind-up clock. Four forty-five A.M. Only fifteen minutes before the alarm would ring. He might as well dash to the bathroom before anyone else got up.

  Easing out of bed, Wesley tiptoed toward the doorway so as to not wake Charles. Wesley was glad Charles had slept through his nightmare-shouting this time, especially now that Wesley had proven he could stand up for himself in a fight.

  In fact, the dream was weird in that it wasn’t so much Wesley in danger as it was Charles. Like Charles needed him, for once. Wesley looked over at his big brother’s bed.

  It was empty.

  Bobwhite. Bob-bob-white.

  Just as Wesley had on the day of the Thanksgiving hunt, Charles followed a quail call to a field of tangled wildflowers and grasses, matted now with early morning frost. He waded through it, his pants and shoes getting wet and cold from the ice crystals. The crisp air was laced with far-carrying smells, and he could just barely catch the scent of a large body of moving water. He turned east.

  Charles emerged on the James River oxbow, a big, meandering U the river took around Turkey Island. There was the makeshift camp Wesley had described. Charles sighed in relief and leaned over, resting his hands on his knees for a moment. He’d walked for two straight hours, covering six or seven miles. He was already exhausted.

  The moon was setting. Looking west over his shoulder, Charles saw a mountain range of dark clouds massing in the distance. Rain’s coming, he thought, better hurry.

  Passing the ashes of a campfire, tripping on a pile of discarded oyster shells, Charles found his way to the shed Wesley had described. Just beyond it was a forest of marsh grasses, spreading into the dark water. A long silvery streak of moonlight lay across the narrow oxbow like a shimmering bridge to Turkey Island. Charles trotted to the shoreline.

  “Okay, Wes, where the blazes is that canoe?” Panicked that the boat might not be where Wesley said, Charles thrashed the marsh grasses as he searched.

  Frawnk! Awk-awk-awk. Startled, an enormous great blue heron lifted off in flight, almost smacking him in the face with its six-foot wingspan. Charles fell back on his butt, shouting, “Damn it, Wes!” as if somehow his brother was to blame for his being startled.

  But sprawled on the ground Charles could see a dark, solid mass through the swaying veil of grasses. There was the canoe, overturned and pulled up onto the ground. It’d been carefully hidden in a patch of tall, wispy wild rice, probably to prevent someone from doing exactly what he was about to do—steal it. “All’s fair in love and war,” he muttered, trying to convince himself.

  The nine-foot, wood-and-canvas canoe was hard for Charles to flip over by himself. But he was absolutely determined, and somehow managed to yank and tug it to the marsh’s edge. As its pointy tip struck water, the canoe suddenly slid along easily, almost like it was helping, like the taste of river woke it up. Charles had to rush to leap in before it floated away without him.

  The canoe bobbed and swayed as Charles settled himself on a caned seat in its back end. He’d never been in a canoe before. For a moment he marveled at its graceful construction. Tightly spaced strips of golden wood bent upward in a long slender ribcage. Its skin was a bright green canvas. It looked like a fish, he thought with a smile. It should slice through the water quickly.

  It would, of course, with proper paddling. But Charles had no idea how to do that. He’d only been punting along the quiet Cam River in Cambridge. He’d propelled that small, flat-bottomed boat by plunging a pole into the shallows and pushing off the riverbed.

  Charles took up the canoe’s paddle. Shaped like a long wooden spoon, the paddle was almost as tall as he was, and heavy. But he’d gotten strong playing American football. Charles thrust the blade into the water, pulling it backward hard.

  The canoe staggered and spun to the right. Charles tried again, only turning the boat completely around this time, heading back to shore. Cursing, he stuck the paddle into the water to push off the muddy sand bottom. He nearly lost it altogether as the paddle temporarily stuck and the canoe lurched back into the current.

  After ten minutes of flailing and splashing, spinning and rocking, Charles figured out he should place just the bottom tip of the paddle into the water. To go forward in a straight line, he needed to alternate on which side of the boat he did his strokes. Only then did he move along with the tide.

  “Hot dog!” Charles exclaimed. “Now I’ve got it!”

  The canoe skimmed along peacefully, with Turkey Island close on Charles’s right. He paddled steadily, as the first glimmer of dawn skipped along the water, like a stone thrown flat from the horizon. He watched a muskrat swim half-submerged, then scramble out onto a mound of sticks. A hawk threw itself into flight from a snag in a grove of ghostly gray sycamores. A colony of seagulls that had slept through the night on the quiet swells of the oxbow took off in a flurry of white wings and shouting to search for breakfast.

  Relishing what he figured would be his last glimpses of Virginia, Charles happily saluted the low-hanging willow oaks that dipped themselves into the shoreline waters. “Cheerio, trees! Wish me luck!”

  Then the little canoe rounded the southeast corner of Turkey Island and hit the main channel and rushing currents of the James River.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Tap, tap, tap. Wesley knocked urgently on the door to the Ratcliff brothers’ bedroom.

  Ron opened it halfway, suspicious. “Now, listen here. Just because we’ve called a truce doesn’t mean we’re best pals all of a sudden. No need to walk to school together, you know.” But then he noticed Wesley’s clothes were soaking wet. “You okay? What gives?”

  “It’s Charles. I’ve looked for him everywhere—the barn, the woodshed, the chicken houses, the root cellar. I can’t find him. He didn’t sleep in his bed last night. Do you suppose someone’s kidnapped him, like the Lindbergh baby? Or like that Robert Louis Stevenson book—the one about David Balfour? You know the one I mean?”

  “No,” Ron guffawed. “Besides, who’d bother kidnapping Chuck? It’s not as if he’s some famous person’s kid or anybody who’s real talented or nothin’. Don’t start with all your dumb make-believe games again, Wes.”

  The fact Ron used his name—for the very first time—instead of “runt” or “limey” startled Wesley and stopped his panic. “Right. You’re right.”

  “Of course I’m right.”

  For a moment the boys stared at each other, thinking. Suddenly, Wesley knew. “I think Charles has run off,” he whispered.

  “What? That’s nuts!”

  From inside the room, Bobby pulled the door open wide. He was buttoning up his flannel shirt. “What’s going on, boys?”

  Ron answered. “He thinks Chuck’s run away.”

  Bobby frowned. “What are you talking about? He would have told me if…” Bobby trailed off. “He was acting kind of weird last night.”

  Wesley nodded.

  “He did seem mighty upset by that letter,” Bobby continued, thinking out loud. “He’s forever talking about how he should be helping the fight in England. Do you suppose…?”

  Wesley nodded. “I think he’s trying to get home.”

  “Aww, get out of town,” said Ron. “What’s he going to do, swim?”

  Wesley felt a sudden sharp pang in his heart and that terrifying sensation of choking. He gasped. “The canoe!”

  “What canoe?”

  “The canoe that belongs to—” Wesley stopped himself. “Oh, never mind. I told Charles about a canoe I saw near Turkey Island Creek when we were hunting at Thanksgiving. I bet he’s going to try to take it downriver!”

  Another vicious surge of wind and rain pelted the house.

  “Good Gawd Almighty,” breathed Bobby. “He’ll drown for
sure in this squall. Come on. Let’s go. There’s no time to lose!”

  On the river, Charles was paddling out of the protective shield of Turkey Island, not realizing that a tempest lurked there, waiting for him.

  Its first blast of wind shoved him so hard he nearly went over the side of the canoe. The next gust slapped the canoe itself into a spin. Then, leaping and bucking, the tiny boat was caught up in the strong currents of the James’s main channel and rushed downstream, Charles facing backward.

  “God’s teeth!” he cried.

  Charles back-paddled desperately, trying to regain some control of the slender little craft. But in the choppy swells, he merely thrashed at the water. The canoe lurched side to side. Waves splashed up into it in bucketfuls. Within moments, Charles was ankle deep in water.

  Another explosion of wind shoved the canoe into a swirling eddy of angry water. The canoe turned around and around. Finally, it squirted out into jarring whitecaps in the middle of the widening river. In horror, Charles realized that he was nearing where the Appomattox and the James rivers converged in a crashing tug-of-war of currents, turbulent even on a mild day. He’d seen it before from the shoreline, the day of the turkey shoot. Bobby had commented then that it was one of the most dangerous spots on the river.

  Get back to shore! his mind screamed.

  He paddled frantically against the current. Please, oh, please.

  Charles heard rain pounding in a torrent down the river, coming straight at him like a freight train hurtling along its tracks. He stopped midstroke, as he helplessly watched the downpour overtake him. What could he do? There was an inevitability to what was about to happen—like a torpedo racing toward a ship.

  Charles was engulfed.

  A black waterfall of rain battered him. He clutched the wet, slippery paddle as best he could. He slammed it into the water. Pull! Pull! But a massive surge of waves jerked the paddle out of his hands. The boat tipped, dumping Charles into the freezing water.

  He felt himself sinking.

  Swim, Charles!

  Somewhere in the watery blackness, Charles thought he heard Wesley’s voice, crying out as he did during his nightmares, urging a drowning man to fight for his life.

  Swim!

  Charles fought his way up. He bobbed to the surface, gagging and coughing. The back end of the canoe knocked into him. In a moment, it would be gone, washed away. In a moment, Charles would have nothing to keep him afloat. In a moment, he could die.

  Catch it, Charles! Now!

  Kicking hard, Charles lunged for the overturned canoe, just like he had for Bobby’s football passes. The canoe bucked and dunked him. But Charles held on. He wrapped both his arms around its pinched-flat point, clasping his hands together to build a stronger grip. He pressed his face against the green canvas, his head just barely bobbing above water.

  Hang on, Charles! For God’s sake, hang on.

  Charles made himself think about the six young evacuee boys who survived when their ship, the City of Benares, was sunk by Nazi U-boats. Those children had floated on high seas for eight days before being found—surviving on half a biscuit and one sardine a day. If they could do that, he could do this.

  Stiff upper lip. Don’t be downhearted. His mind recited the commands British officials had given him and Wesley as they climbed the gangplank to sail to America.

  Surely the storm will push the canoe toward shore, he told himself. Eventually.

  Stiff upper lip. Don’t be downhearted. Charles repeated the British mantra over and over in a bizarre singsong of confusion and determination.

  But after a while, trembling in the frigid waters, spluttering against the brutally constant waves, all Charles could do was concentrate on the feel of his clasped hands. Concentrate on keeping his fingers locked together. Concentrate on spitting out water and breathing in air.

  All else was blackness, water, and cold.

  “This is it!” Wesley ran into the Chickahominy hunter’s camp, Bobby following.

  “Hey, Bobby,” Ron shouted, thigh deep in wild rice grasses. “Someone’s dragged something into the water from here.”

  Bobby came to look at the trail of flattened grasses and scratched mudflats. “Good scouting, Ronnie!” He clapped his brother’s shoulder. Then he looked across the waters. Now even the oxbow, usually quiet and serene, was all churned up by the wind and rain. “This is bad.”

  Wesley looked up at Bobby with mournful eyes. “Are we too late?”

  He could see Bobby clench his teeth. And when he spoke, Bobby didn’t answer Wesley’s question. “Come on. Let’s get back to the truck.”

  The three of them raced through the rain, through the field, through the woods, to the truck, parked by the roadside. Bobby had only been driving for a few weeks, and the trip around Curles Neck had been wild, worsened by the fact the truck’s headlights were still painted over with only a narrow slit for the beams to shine through—a required blackout precaution. In the pelting rain, Bobby could barely see. But none of them complained, or thought about the deep trouble they faced for having taken the truck without asking Mr. Ratcliff.

  “Where do we go now?” was all Ron asked.

  “Down toward Shirley Plantation,” Bobby answered. “Here’s my thinking. Charles has got to get all the way down the oxbow before he reaches the main channel. If we hurry and get to the point of Eppes Island, we may be able to see him coming downriver.”

  Ron and Wesley clutched the dashboard, as Bobby swerved around a corner. “What’ll we do then?”

  “We’ll figure it out when we get there,” muttered Bobby, as he jerked the big steering wheel to dodge a thick branch that had fallen into the road.

  They drove for ten minutes in tense silence, punctuated only with cries of “Look out!” when Bobby encountered ponds of standing water from the downpour. Finally, they came to a grinding stop, sliding on wet gravel on the border of Shirley Plantation. The beautiful old house was the first of many English plantations established along the James, in operation since the mid-1600s. It’d been built there for good reason—the site commanded a clear view up and down the river, right where it suddenly widened and flexed its currents before joining with the Appomattox River.

  The boys scrambled to the edge of a bluff. Holding hands to their foreheads to shield their eyes against the blasting wind and rain, they squinted and peered west up the waters toward Turkey Island. They spotted floating logs and debris rushing along the waves, thrown into the water by the storm. But no canoe.

  They turned left toward the east, looking to where the James suddenly bloated to one mile across. Nothing but bullying waves in a wide, angry flood of water.

  Wesley dropped his hand and hung down his head in misery. He knew too well how quickly stormy water could suck someone under, never to resurface. Where are you, Charles? Please show me where you are.

  Suddenly, Wesley cried out. He tugged on Bobby’s sleeve and pointed. Down by the rocks was a crumpled canoe. Lying beside it, facedown, was Charles.

  27 May 1944

  Dear Dad,

  I know Mr Ratcliff telegrammed about my pneumonia and nearly drowning in the James River. You must be angry with me for running away and showing such ingratitude to the Ratcliffs. Believe me, I kick myself for it every day. When the doctor realised my lungs were closing up, he treated me with a new medicine called penicillin. It is made from mould, of all things, and is frightfully expensive. The dose cost Mr Ratcliff $20! (He could have bought 250 loaves of bread for the family with that money.) But he did not hesitate to pay for it. I felt like such a heel.

  So, I am working as the soda jerk at Mr Epstein’s store after school. I had to give up playing baseball, which I should have been good at, since it is very like cricket. But I owe the Ratcliffs that $20. I make ice cream sundaes and am paid $1.50 for each afternoon. I give half of it to Mrs Ratcliff.

  When school ends next week, I shall work the farm doubly hard, too. Mr Ratcliff has forewarned us that when we harvest the
winter wheat and plant corn, he has to hire German POWs. He wants to clear fifteen new acres to plant tobacco, too. Breaking ground for new fields will take a lot of labour. I will try to behave while they are here.

  The POWs are hard for me to tolerate, though, Dad. The guards bring them into the drugstore sometimes for a Coca-Cola after working a farm. Some act like ‘der Führer’ will arrive in the States any day—as if we Allies are not on the brink of taking Rome and invading France. Last month, they refused to work on Hitler’s birthday, and paraded around their POW camps, singing, to celebrate it!

  But back to my confession. You may notice I said I give half my pay to Mrs Ratcliff. When I ran away, I took a man’s canoe. It got pretty mangled. He is a Chickahominy named Mr Johns. He actually built the canoe himself. I have helped him repair it. (Wesley did too. He is quite bats about being with a real Indian.) But Mr Ratcliff says I still owe Mr Johns the price of a new canoe—$37. And he is quite right. So I give the other half of my pay to him.

  Wesley and the brothers are totally wizard about my running off and causing such trouble. They think it rather a daring lark on my part. When I was sick, Mrs Ratcliff called me, ‘Poor little thing,’ which was humiliating, but I am glad she is not mad. Mr Ratcliff, however, remains stern with me, which is proper. Patsy hardly speaks to me. But she rarely talks with anyone, really, for long. She is all torn up about her beau, Henry, being MIA.

  It is a bad business. I promise to make you proud of me again someday.

  Your son,

  Charles

  Dearest Mumsy,

  I do hope you GET this letter. The Richmond newspapers keep warning that mail to England may be held up as a security measure because of the coming invasion. The Yanks have already stopped letters from you. They are worried some silly Brit might spill the beans about the place and day since the Allied armies are gathered in England. They do not know what a tight-lipped lot we are, do they?