I tell myself to sleep, so that a dream may come to prepare me. But I toss and turn and can’t get comfortable. I’m roasting, and I feel like I can’t get a full breath. It’s stuffy down here. The air is thick and stale in our quarters. We’re just south of the equator. Sweat beads on my forehead and upper lip.
I’m turned toward the ship’s wall when I hear Fob’s four paws tripping and scratching down the ladder. I sit up in the dark. Then I hear solid footsteps creaking down the ladder after him. Fob taps toward my hammock. I reach out and feel his head. He’s greasy, but I don’t mind. I pet him anyway and pat for him to jump up on my legs. He does and curls up.
“Lu?” I hear.
“Yes,” I whisper. “I’m here.”
I hear a match and then watch as a lamp is lit. Eustace’s face glows behind it.
“You must be tired,” I say. “You’d better get to sleep.”
He kneels next to my hammock. Eustace has the beginnings of furrows in his brow, like a grown man might. “I brought you something,” he says. He lifts his hand in front of the lamp. He’s holding what looks like a crooked white stick.
“A bone?” I ask. I reach out and touch it. It’s slick with oil. “You want me to stir the beans with this or what?” I say.
“Look at it,” he says. He’s grinning now. Then he pinches his lips together to stop himself from smiling.
“You sure are behaving strange,” I say. I hold the bone and feel its shape, like a relaxed boomerang, but thicker on one end than the other. “Hold that lamp up higher for me.”
He does, and he’s grinning again.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he says. “Nothing at all.” But he doesn’t stop smiling.
I rub my thumb over the bone’s surface and think hard about where this bone came from and why Eustace is behaving like a dog that’s cornered a coon. I hold the bone so that the thicker part is toward me and the thin part is facing away. “It sort of looks like a dog’s back leg, without the knee joint, of course.”
Eustace nods.
“It sort of looks like a femur,” I say again. I turn it around and around. “It sort of looks like a leg that’s withered.” My heart starts to pound. I talk louder. “It sort of looks like a leg bone that’s never been used.” My voice is shaking. I run my hand over the outline of the bone. “It sort of looks like what a whale’s leg bone might look like if the whale never grew the leg.” Now I’m shouting. “It sort of looks like a remnant leg bone of a whale, which proves that whales used to have legs, which might prove that they used to walk on land!”
From somewhere in the dark, someone yells at me to quit yammering. Then someone else threatens to come over and shut my mouth for me.
Then, from the pitch black behind me, Nova shouts, “She has suffered your snoring and gases for months! You be quiet, or I will put you on the overnight watch!” I hadn’t even known she was there.
Eustace pats my arm. “I thought you’d like it,” he whispers. “Good night.” He blows out the lamp and disappears into the dark. Fob leaps off my legs and scrambles after him.
I lie back. This bone is the very first part of my own collection.
I drift off for a while, dreaming of a whole whale skeleton hanging from a ceiling, with the leg bones dangling right below it.
I wake with a start. I open my eyes, but it is still dark. The Medicine Head moans. I cover my ears, but nothing stifles the noise. Finally, I put my feet on the floor. I wiggle my toes. It wouldn’t hurt just to look.
Nova breathes deeply. She must be completely exhausted. I don’t want to wake her. I don’t want the Medicine Head to wake her. I worry that the head might be calling Captain Greeney. Maybe he’s right on my tail. Maybe the Medicine Head is trying to warn me.
I gingerly stand and then crouch down to reach beneath my hammock. I pull the Medicine Head’s crate toward me and hold it. I stop and listen, but no one is moving at all. Then I stand and climb up onto the deck. The smoke is gone. All that’s left is the fatty scent of the whale’s burned blubber.
I tiptoe across the deck toward the rail of the ship, where I sit down and hold the Medicine Head’s crate on my lap. It’s cooler up here, and I think the colder air will maybe calm it. Maybe I won’t have to open the crate after all.
I sit for a while and think. The waves slap against the side of the ship. The sharks splash and fight and tear at what’s left of the whale, set to drift by the sailors.
But then I hear it again. Hold me. The Medicine Head won’t rest. I untie the rope and let it drop. I peel away the top and peer inside. The Medicine Head has an expectant look, one that begs me to pick it up. The forehead is uncreased. The eyebrows seem lifted and waiting. What harm could it do? I wonder. What’s the worst that could happen? Perhaps I’ll get a glimpse of home. Perhaps I’ll see my family again. What I wouldn’t give for one glance at Priss’s face! Or Mother’s. Or Ruby’s. And even if the Medicine Head gives me a terrible vision, I might need it for the future. Yes, I think. I have to pick it up.
I reach in slowly and stretch my fingers around it. I touch it. I lift it.
The wind blasts my face. I hear many voices, but the loudest is Captain Greeney’s. Visions speed past my eyes, so fast I can hardly grasp any of them. I see Eustace hiding behind a barrel and shooting a gun. I see Nova shouting up at the men in the rigging. I see all my shipmates gathered at the hull, pointing at the sea. I look, too. Out there is another ship, American flags waving. But then I hear a boom, and I see black smoke rising. A cannonball explodes in front of me! When the smoke clears, Captain Greeney is standing on the deck of the Xerxes. He has his sword through Captain Abbot’s heart.
I let go of the head. It falls back into the crate. I breathe carefully in and out. My heart is thumping. Was that a premonition? A warning? What am I supposed to think? That Captain Greeney is out here on the ocean searching for me? Chasing me? That he is planning to kill Captain Abbot? I wanted a vision of my mother or my sister or Ruby or a memory of my father.
I feel very angry. I wanted to see someone I miss, someone I love. I don’t even care if it’s a sad memory. I just want to see something from Kansas.
“Show me something from home!” I shout at the Medicine Head. I snatch it up again.
A blast of air. A flurry of memories. And then I’m back in my Kansas home.
I’m wandering around, moving from room to room. What is this pain in my chest? I put my hand there, but I don’t feel anything wrong. Why can’t I see well? I put my hands to my eyes and feel them swollen and sore. From crying. From wailing in a bottomless, endless ocean of despair.
Oh, of course.
It’s the first night after Father’s death. I cannot be consoled. Nothing eases the pain. My heart feels as though it’s been collapsed in a vise. I walk and walk around. I try to sit and lie down. No matter which way I turn or move, the pain will not be relieved. Now I go from room to room and I bash my head against the doorframes. Hard on this one. Harder on the next one. Until I see stars on the third.
Ruby is here. She’s following me, telling me to stop it. She’s telling me to lie down and close my eyes. She’s telling me to drink water. No, no, no! I shout at her. Get away from me! I scream. Leave! I yell. Finally, Ruby grabs my arm and drags me up the stairs to my room and puts me in my bed. I scream and yell and kick at her. I hate you, I say.
Ruby slaps my cheek and holds my chin. “Hallelujah Wonder!” she says. “I know you got big pain in your heart.”
I cry hard and snot comes out of my nose.
“You’ve got to get ahold of yourself. Think what your father would want. Take a big breath.” She breathes in to show me. “Now breathe out slowly.” She blows out long.
I try to take a big breath, but it’s choppy. I can’t. I gasp again. I feel like I can’t get enough air. My fingertips are numb.
“No, no,” she says. “Exhale slow.” She blows out to show me.
I exhale, slowly.
“It’s
the breathing out that’s the important part,” she says.
I put down the head. And I’m back on the Xerxes.
I stare up at the sky. All the stars in it would make you woozy. And the moon with its half-smile would, too. But they can’t stop me from remembering the rest of that horrible night on my own, without the head. I remember what happened next. I remember every moment of my father’s death and the days that followed.
I breathed out slow like Ruby showed me. I drooled on her hand.
She didn’t wipe it away.
“That’s a good girl,” she said to me, letting go of my chin. She tucked me in like I was a baby and sat on the edge of my bed. She rubbed my back as I curled up like a seashell and cried softly. Then my cries turned into hiccups. Then I fell asleep for sixteen straight hours. When I woke up, she was still sitting there with me. Her eyes were closed as though she were sleeping upright. I’ll never forget that.
After my father’s death, I was afflicted with dyspnea. Do you know what that is? Dyspnea is when you start to pant like a dog does after he’s been out running. But instead of getting filled up with oxygen, you get filled up with carbon dioxide because you’re not exhaling long enough. Too much makes you dizzy and makes your ears ring and fingers tingle. That’s what was happening to me.
I close the top of the Medicine Head’s crate. I suddenly realize that I really didn’t need to hold the Medicine Head to know what to do. My own brain works just fine. My own imagination is vast. My own dreams can do the rest.
“I don’t need you,” I say to the Medicine Head.
“Whatchee got there?”
I jump, scared. I was certain I was alone. “Nothing!” I say. I turn around and try to hide the Medicine Head’s crate behind a coil of rope.
Captain Abbot stands behind me. “I said, whatchee got there?” he says.
I foolishly try to move the crate farther with my boot heel. It scrapes along the deck. The only light is from the moon. I can see Captain Abbot clearly. He is holding a pistol in his hand.
I slowly stand up.
“I can hear it,” he says. “Like you. I’ve been hearing it all night. It’s the heat what gets to it.”
My breath comes short and shallow. “I know,” I whisper. “About the heat, I mean.” A big wave hits the side of the ship, and I lose my balance a little. But I quickly right myself.
“You don’t have your sea legs yet,” Captain Abbot says. “Like your father. He never got his, either. But it didn’t keep him off the ships.”
I’m quiet. I’m scared, but I’m also mesmerized. I want him to keep talking about Father.
“Yes, I knew him,” Captain Abbot says. He inches closer to me. His face is ancient, almost as wrinkled as the sea. “He found me.”
Now the Medicine Head is thrumming Hold me, hold me again.
I look at the pistol. Captain Abbot clenches and unclenches it. “‘For what?’ you might ask,” he says. “‘Why did he find you?’ You must want to know.” He uses the pistol to point at the crate, which is settled directly at my feet.
“Don’t!” I say. I move in front of the Medicine Head.
“Easy,” he says. “Your father, he came to ask me about those,” he says.
What does he mean?
“Medicine Heads,” he says, as if reading my mind. “That’s what you’ve got, correct?” He eyes me a long while.
I wonder what he means by “heads.” Are there more?
“You don’t have to tell me,” he says. “I know. I hear it. I can’t get it out of my head. Those things will drive you to do evil. They will drive you mad. They will drive you to want to destroy them.” He directs the pistol at the Medicine Head again.
At that, my body lunges forward, toward him, toward a madman holding a pistol. “No!” I shout.
Captain Abbot opens his mouth and steps back. I’ve surprised him.
“I can’t destroy it,” I say. My voice is shaking.
Captain Abbot lowers the pistol to his side.
“That’s correct,” he says. “You shouldn’t.”
He walks to the rail of the ship and stares out at the ocean for a long while. Then he raises the pistol to his own chest.
He cocks the hammer.
“No!” I shout. I put my hands out. “Don’t!”
He pulls the trigger. A blast breaks the calm air.
Captain Abbot collapses onto the deck.
As I rush to him, I kick over the Medicine Head’s crate, and the head rolls out. I leave it. The deck is slippery and the ship bobs up and down, and I nearly fall twice, but I finally reach the captain.
“What have you done?” I say. “Why?” I push to turn him over on his back and he rolls easily. I realize that he’s frail as a withered tree branch. Any bulk he has comes from layers of clothing.
I look for the wound to put pressure on it. I feel his chest, but there’s no blood, no hole. Nothing. I wait. Nothing happens. I look to where the Medicine Head rolls around on the deck at the whim of the waves. I’m angry at it. I’m angry at myself. I look up at the night sky, all the stars, the moon. I’m angry at the sky. I’m angry at my father.
I look down at Captain Abbot, dead on the deck. I’m about to shout at him. But the words catch in my mouth.
Captain Abbot opens his eyes.
I jerk back but then lean close again. “Captain?” I say.
He coughs. He lifts his fist to his chest and pounds on it. Then he struggles to sit up. I help him, but I’m confused. Did he miss? He couldn’t have. The pistol was pointed against his chest. Did the pistol misfire? After he sits up, a bullet falls to the deck. I pick it up and turn it over and over. It’s hot and wet with blood.
He blinks. His eyes are watery and red and prehistoric.
“I don’t understand,” I say. The Medicine Head seems to be laughing. I look at it, lying cockeyed on the deck. “Be quiet!” I demand. “Shut your mouth!”
Then Captain Abbot chuckles, too. He alternately coughs and laughs and clears his throat.
I shake my head back and forth. “I don’t understand what’s happening,” I repeat. I despise not understanding. I want to understand everything. Life used to seem so rational, with simple explanations. But there’s no explanation for this. There’s no explanation for so many things. Did Father ever feel uncertain, like I do now? Is that what led him to science? Did he use his study and his travels and his reading to search for answers to the never-ending questions?
“Just a demonstration for you, child,” Captain Abbot says. “You see, I had one.” He thumps his chest some more and spits out a gelatinous glob. “I had a Medicine Head. Like yours. I had one.” He puts his hand on my shoulder and uses it as a crutch to stand up. He dusts off the front of his coat. “Given to me by the same tribe that gave one to your father.”
I hold my breath. Again, I can hear the Medicine Head calling to me. It’s getting louder and louder.
“Be quiet!” I say. I hold on to Captain Abbot’s arm. “Not you,” I say to him.
“I know,” he says. “I know what you’re hearing. It got so that the head kept me up at night with its shrieking and whining. It would show me things sometimes. But the more I held it, the more I got trapped in the past, or trapped in the future.”
“You had one, and I have one,” I say. “Are there more?”
“There were three,” he says. “What you have there is the last one. The tribe is wiped out now. Disease.”
“Well—well—” I have so many questions. My thoughts race, and my mouth won’t cooperate. “Well, where’s yours?”
He grabs my chin hard with his hand.
“I destroyed it,” he says.
I gaze deep into his eyes. Like rings in a tree, I can see his life, the impossible years of it.
“You couldn’t have,” I say. “That would mean…”
“Yes,” he says. “I am, this year, one hundred seventy-nine years old.” The Medicine Head rolls to Captain Abbot. He tosses it into the crate and slaps
on the lid.
From the confines of its crate, the Medicine Head howls like a Kansas tornado.
I slap my hands to my ears.
Captain Abbot laughs like a madman.
CHAPTER 29
My ears are hot, as though they’ve been burned with a fire poker. The Medicine Head screeches.
“Make it stop!” I shout. “How do you get it to stop?”
Captain Abbot pats me on the back. “Bring it to my cabin,” he says. “We’ll put the crate in the cooling hole. That’ll calm it.”
I scramble to the Medicine Head’s crate, pick it up, and follow Captain Abbot to his cabin. He opens the door, then slides away a green velvet curtain. As soon as we enter, he kneels down, pulls up a trapdoor, and reaches for the crate. I lean over and look in. It’s dark and cold. The smell of salt meets my face.
“Come. Come,” he says. “I don’t want to steal your head. Frankly, I wish I had never seen another one. But give it here. It’ll be quiet down here.”
I hand it to him, and he carefully places it in the icy hole. I stand up and listen. The voice quiets. In a few seconds, I can’t hear it at all. Relief washes over me.
I look around at Captain Abbot’s cabin. Oil lamps made of gold and silver burn brightly inside. On a dark mahogany desk sit a cask of wine and crystal glasses fit for the finest table in the finest castle. Maps of the oceans and landmasses of the world lie out, the corners held down by red, blue, green, and orange gems, big as my hand. Above a small but ornate fireplace hangs an enormous painting of a whaling ship crashing into an iceberg. It’s beautiful and tragic. On a shelf above the captain’s neat cot sit a jar with what looks like a human heart preserved in alcohol, a Revolutionary War medal, and a diploma from Harvard University.
My mouth drops open in awe. This place reminds me of Father’s collection. It makes me feel at home, a little.
“I’ve lived long enough to have many great adventures and collect many fine things,” Captain Abbot says.
“What’s that?” I ask, gesturing to a tall stuffed bird standing in the corner.
Wonder at the Edge of the World Page 19