Driftwood

by Valerie Sherrard

I wasn’t sure if she was crying about Monica, or the painting or both. I went over and patted her arm and said, “It’s okay, Mom,” but that just made her cry harder.

  That made me think it was a good time to go for a walk. I was on my own that day since Joey and his family had gone on a day trip to Hopewell Rocks. It had been fun hanging out with Joey for the past week and a half—way more fun than it would have been with Billy—but now they were down to their last few days.

  I headed down to the shore and ambled along for a while. I was looking for driftwood or anything else that might be interesting. All I found was a couple of dead jellyfish and I knew better than to touch them.

  Mom was staring at her easel when I wandered back to the cabin later. There was a brush in her hand, but it hadn’t been dipped in paint. Dad was at the table, tapping away on his laptop.

  “How’s it going there, Adam?” he asked.

  “Okay, I guess. There’s not much to do with Joey gone.”

  “You could go see Theo.” He and Mom had met Theo our first week there and they liked him so much they’d brought him over for supper one night. He’d told us stories about when he was young. They were cool but nothing like the story of Suen Qiu and the lychee.

  “He doesn’t have time to go there right now,” Mom said. “We’re eating soon.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, “I’ll just do something on my iPod for a while.”

  “That reminds me,” Mom said, “There was an alert of some sort from Billy on that thing when you were out yesterday.”

  “Okay.” I took the iPod to my room so she wouldn’t know I was ignoring Billy. I hadn’t told my folks I wasn’t friends with him anymore. That would only lead to a bunch of questions and speeches.

  When I checked my iPod I saw that he’d sent a message saying he hoped I wasn’t still mad. I deleted it without answering.

  ...

  “I hope this won’t be awkward,” Dad said as we crossed the road and walked through the field to the water. It was the next morning and we were on our way to join Keith Stillwater on his boat.

  Dad had said the exact same thing while we were eating breakfast earlier. There’d been no fear of Monica showing up at the door this time—or ever again.

  “Maybe she didn’t mention anything to Keith,” Mom said. “Don’t you think he would have found an excuse to cancel if he knew?”

  “Or, she told him and he’s planning to toss me overboard,” Dad said.

  “Doug! Watch what you say in front of Adam!” Mom said.

  I looked up from my cereal. “It’s okay, Mom. I knew it was a joke.”

  “It will probably be fine,” Dad said. “And you’ll have some time all to yourself, like you’ve been wanting.”

  Mom looked over at the unchanged easel in the corner. She didn’t say anything.

  Dad and I finished eating, got ready and headed to the water. Keith was already there. He waved and greeted us like we’d been buddies for years.

  “Should be a good day on the water,” he said. “Sunny, with just enough breeze to keep us cool.”

  We all put on life jackets and in no time we were on the boat, heading away from shore. Everything about it was fantastic! The way the boat zipped along, the air rushing against my face, the smell of the water—I loved it all.

  Keith steered the boat expertly. We travelled up the Miramichi River and then Keith said we were going to circle Sheldrake Island and head out to the village of Escuminac. I kept looking off at where the water seemed to go on forever with no land in sight.

  “Is that the ocean?” I asked.

  “Now that would make a real interesting summer project for you,” Dad said. “You could find out all about the bodies of water around here.”

  Keith gave Dad a funny look. Then he gestured in the direction I’d pointed. “Let me get you started on that,” he said. “A fair way to the east of here, that wide open water becomes the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The North Atlantic Ocean is a fair number of miles beyond that.”

  Dad says you remember things better if you find them out for yourself. I don’t know for sure if it counts when you find out by asking someone and I didn’t want to forget what Keith had told me so I went over it in my head a few times.

  It took a while for us to get to Escuminac. That was fine with me. Everything was perfect—the warm sun, the glittering water and the way the boat skittered along on the waves. Once we were there, we docked at a huge wharf. Keith said it was the largest inshore wharf in Canada.

  We checked out a big monument there. It was about a storm in 1959, when thirty-five fishermen were lost at sea. After we looked that over, we bought some deep fried clams with French fries and coleslaw for lunch. Then, we went walking on the beach.

  We were on our way back to the boat when I noticed a bit of wood sticking out of the warm, dry sand. I got to work, scooping and digging, but when I tugged the rest of it free, it turned out to be a flat old board. I would have left it there, only Keith looked it over and said he thought it might be a piece of plank, possibly from a ship. So, I brought it with me because you never know.

  Joey had his usual laugh when I showed it to him the next day.

  “Do you think maybe you got a little too much sun?” he asked, slapping the side of his leg.

  “It might be from a ship,” I said, like that was my own idea.

  “More like it might be from a barn!” Joey howled with laughter. “But, come on! Let’s take it to Theo. I can’t wait to see this!”

  Joey is the kind of guy who takes a long time to run out of smart-aleck things to say. By the time we got to Theo’s place, I was wishing I’d left that wood on the beach where I found it.

  Theo had hardly gotten himself into his chair on the porch when Joey announced that I’d made a great find.

  “Wait ’til you get a load of this!” he said. He grabbed the chunk of wood from me and laid it in Theo’s lap.

  Theo took hold of it and ran his hands lightly over the surface. His face grew serious as he stroked it and turned it over. When he opened his mouth, instead of speaking, he began to sing in a thin, warbling voice.

  A life on the ocean wave!

  A home on the rolling deep

  Where the scattered waters rave,

  And the winds their revels keep!

  Joey and I gave each other a look. You probably know the kind I mean. And Theo, even though he couldn’t see us, must have sensed something because he started to chuckle.

  “I’ll quit there for now,” he said. “But if you have time, I’ll tell you about this bit of wood, which has reached us from many decades in the past. And a most interesting past it was.”

  We told him we had plenty of time and after a moment, Theo began to speak.

  THE OAK

  About two hundred years ago, in a coastal town in northern Europe, a young man named Jozefat lived with his Aunt Katarzyna. She was a widow who had taken care of her nephew since his parents perished in a boating accident. Even though Jozefat’s aunt was poor, she managed to stretch what little she had in order to provide for him.

  Katarzyna had never had children of her own. She loved her nephew and treated him like a son. As Jozefat grew, she sacrificed more and more in order to give him as much as she could.

  Katarzyna was poor, but she had one prized possession. That was a splendid oak tree that grew at the side of her humble dwelling. It was the most majestic oak that had ever been seen in those parts.

  “When your uncle Piotr asked me to marry him,” she sometimes told Jozefat, “he said that he could promise me very little, but that if I would be his wife, he would build us a home in this very place, and we would always have this tree to shelter us. It is the only comfort left to me. Someday I will be buried under its branches and rest there forever beside my dear Piotr.”

  Jozefat thought this attachment to a tree was a trifle foolish. He especially thought so anytime a lumber broker offered a large sum of money if Katarzyna would let him cut down the massive
oak and harvest its wood.

  “Some things are not for sale,” Katarzyna would say. And that would be that.

  At such times, Jozefat could only shake his head. “Silly old woman,” he would mutter under his breath. It was his plan to sell the tree as soon as his aunt was gone. “I’ll plant another tree to shelter the graves,” he told himself, when he remembered her burial wishes.

  Then something happened that changed everything. Jozefat met a young woman named Halina and he fell in love with her. Halina loved him too, but her family would not agree to the marriage because Jozefat was so poor.

  The young sweethearts despaired until Jozefat devised a plan. He would trick his aunt into going on a trip with him, and while they were away, he would have the great oak tree harvested. The money he would receive would be more than enough to convince Halina’s parents that he was a good prospect for their daughter.

  Deceiving the old woman proved easier than he could have hoped. Before long the two had set off on what Katarzyna believed was a holiday her nephew had arranged to please her. For those few weeks, her heart sang with joy. It seemed that all of the love she had lavished on Jozefat and all of the sacrifices she had made for him had been worth it. And then, the holiday came to an end.

  When Jozefat and his aunt returned from their travels, nothing remained of the majestic tree except a huge jagged stump. Katarzyna stood very still, staring at the sight. When she turned to look at her nephew, her eyes told him that she understood exactly what had happened. They were full of sorrow.

  “What have you done?” she cried, and with these words she collapsed to the ground and died.

  Jozefat was sorry his aunt had died but he convinced himself that her death was caused by old age. And anyway, he was too overjoyed at the prospect of marrying Halina to spend much time thinking about the old woman’s passing.

  The young couple were wed a few weeks later. They moved into Katarzyna’s home, which now belonged to Jozefat, and they were very, very happy. A year after their marriage they had a son, the next year a daughter. Everything was wonderful and they were blessed with much happiness.

  But we must not forget the tree. The wood taken from the oak had been sawed into boards and the largest ones were bought by ship builders. That is how this very piece of driftwood became part of a ship. Not just any ship, mind you, but a pirate ship called The Plunder.

  The Plunder was manned by a motley group of ruffians and scallywags—men with dark and greedy hearts. Every deed done by the crew was as dirty as they were, and you might as well know that not a man among them had any great affection for the washcloth.

  The same indifference toward hygiene was true when it came to their teeth—or what remained of them, which was mostly brown and yellow stumps. These fellows weren’t the least bit dashing, not like the pirates you see in movies, and girls weren’t nearly as eager to kiss them.

  Jozefat and Halina had been married for seven years when The Plunder’s captain made a fateful decision. The crew was seriously short of supplies when they happened upon another vessel that would have been an ideal target to rob, except for one thing. The ship they spotted was flying a yellow flag, known as the Yellow Jack. This was a warning for other vessels to keep their distance. It meant there was some kind of terrible sickness on board.

  In spite of that, the captain gave the order for his men to attack.

  “She’s flying the Yellow Jack, Cap’n,” shouted the lookout.

  “Trickery!” roared the captain. “We’ll not be taken in by it.”

  It was true that ships sometimes hoisted the Yellow Jack in the hope that it would keep pirates away. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it did not. In this case, it didn’t matter for there was no trickery involved. The Yellow Jack was waving because there was a deadly influenza on board.

  It was into this pit of disease and death that the pirates went. When they realized their mistake it was already too late. Within days the sickness had spread through The Plunder’s crew. Everywhere you looked, men writhed in agony and those who had not fallen ill were weakened by a lack of food and fresh water.

  Desperate for help, the pirate ship made its way to a small coastal town in northern Europe—the very town where Jozefat and his family lived. Before long, several of the ship’s ailing crew arrived at their door brandishing swords and demanding food and care. When they took their leave several days later, Halina and the oldest boy had already taken ill. Before the month was out, mother and both children lay buried in the earth near the old oak tree’s stump.

  Jozefat lived out the rest of his days in loneliness and sorrow. If fate showed him any mercy, it was that he never knew the very tree he had wrongfully sold had returned and taken away everything he valued.

  Theo’s milky eyes stared into the distance as he finished his story, still holding the piece of wooden plank. None of us said anything for a minute. Then Theo said, “Adam, I can’t keep this. It came to you for a reason.”

  His thin hand trembled a little as he passed it back to me.

  “What’s the reason?” I asked.

  “That’s something only you can find out,” Theo said. “Now, would you boys care for some bread pudding?” That didn’t sound like something we wanted to try, so we said thanks but we should be getting back.

  I looked the piece of plank over carefully on the way to the cabins. Joey reacted to that just the way you’d expect him to. He had a few theories about why Theo had given it back to me, which were:

  1. I could smack myself up the side of the head with it, in the hope that I might knock some sense into myself.

  2. It was worthless, just like he’d said all along, and Theo gave it back to get out of paying the five bucks.

  3. I could hold it in front of my face whenever I meet people, so my ugly puss wouldn’t scare anyone.

  Joey was an appreciative audience for his own jokes. But when we got to his place, he stopped making fun and said, “Want me to take that useless old thing off your hands?”

  That was a surprise and I realized he wished Theo had given it to him instead of me. I told him, “Naw, I think I’ll hang onto it for now.”

  But honestly, I would have given it to him if it would have meant he could have stayed another week or two. Plus, I told myself that having Joey there had really made up for Billy not coming. Joey was bossier and kind of mouthy sometimes, but he was fun too. It was going to be boring without him around.

  ...

  Joey and his family had already left when I got up on Saturday morning. Some of the other campers were gone, too, and more headed out during the day. Keith and Monica Stillwater packed up just after lunch which is when Dad and I went over to say goodbye. Keith shook my hand and Monica hugged me and told me I was a good kid. Dad had tried to get Mom to come with us but she said there was no point.

  By that afternoon there was only one other cabin besides ours that still had people in it, and there was no one to hang around with. That changed the next day, when new campers arrived. For a while, I amused myself trying to guess who’d been there before and who hadn’t. Most of the folks I took as first-timers stood looking around, peering out at the bay and into the woods before they started unpacking their cars.

  After a while I got bored and crossed the road to sit on a rock overlooking the water. I probably hadn’t been there more than fifteen or twenty minutes when I got that neck-tickling feeling that someone was watching me. It was hard not to jerk my head around but I managed not to. If someone was there, I didn’t want to act like a nervous girl in front of them. Instead, I stood up and stretched, turned around and sat down again, except this time I was facing the other way. I re-tied my shoe, which was when a flash of red moved in the trees to my left.

  “You’re not very good at spying,” I called, just so whoever it was would know I was onto them.

  For a second, nothing happened. Then a face appeared, followed by the rest of what turned out to be a girl. “I might not be good at spying,” she agreed, “
but I bet I can outrun you any day of the week.”

  “Can not,” I said, even though I had no idea how fast this girl could run.

  She didn’t answer right away. She marched over until she was practically on top of me. Then she said, “Prove it!”

  “I’d hate to make you look bad,” I said. Her confidence was a bit unnerving.

  “Ha!” she scoffed. “I’ll race you to my cabin. It’s number four.” She got into a runner’s stance, knees bent, face thrust forward. “One, two—”

  I managed to get into position before she yelled, “THREE!” and we pushed off at the same time, sprinting across the field. I overtook her easily, and had a good lead by the time I reached the road. I paused just long enough to make sure no cars were in sight before dashing across and through the field toward the cabins.

  It was the easiest race I’d ever run, so you can imagine my surprise when I rounded the corner to cabin number four and saw her sitting on the deck.

  “Told you I’d beat you!” she said with a laugh.

  “But you were behind me,” I protested.

  “Still beat you,” she said. “Admit it.”

  “You beat me,” I mumbled.

  “So, what’s your name, anyway?”

  “Adam.”

  “Hey! Come and meet Adam,” she called out.

  I thought she was talking to someone in the cabin until I heard footsteps behind me. When I turned to look, I had to blink twice. Then I knew how she’d gotten there first even though I was ahead in the race. There were two of her!

  “Twins!” I said.

  “Right! We’re the Linden twins!” said the one on the porch. “I’m Makayla and she’s Mackenzie.”

  “How old are you? We’re ten and a half and we memorize things,” Mackenzie said.

  “I’m eleven,” I said. “You memorize things like what?”

  “Anything that’s interesting. Like, did you know that more than sixty percent of all the lakes in the world are right here in Canada?”

  “Guess how many that is!” Makayla commanded.

  The only lakes I knew about were the Great Lakes. I had no idea how many others there might be, but I figured it must be a lot if she wanted me to guess, so I said, “A thousand?”