by Nick Garlick
The islanders were stranger still. The men all had really short hair and wore thick wooden clogs. The women all wore pinafores to protect their dresses. There wasn’t a pair of jeans in sight. Or a leather jacket or a pair of sneakers like some of the kids in his school had had. He almost felt like he was walking around in a museum.
At the entrance to one of the shops, he bumped into a man who looked down at him and said something Flip didn’t understand at all. So he just nodded politely and went inside to buy some Bazooka Joe bubble gum. The shopkeeper and his three customers fell silent as he entered. Then the shopkeeper spoke and this time Flip recognized the word Amsterdam. But nothing else!
The grown-ups laughed.
Was he stupid? Flip asked himself. What was wrong with him? Why didn’t he understand them?
The shopkeeper came around the counter and gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he said, smiling. “I was just saying it was the boy from Amsterdam and asking you what it was like living on our little island. Quite a change for you, I shouldn’t wonder. Now, what would you like?”
Flip asked for some bubble gum and was given two for the price of one. “For being a good sport,” the shopkeeper said.
Flip didn’t know what that meant, either, and only found out when he bumped into Mr. Bouten on a path leading off to some woods beyond the village.
Mr. Bouten helped Uncle Andries on the farm three days a week. He was an old man with a big flat nose that looked like somebody had jumped on it, and a crooked leg that made him lurch from side to side when he walked. He wore faded blue overalls, a black beret, and massive wooden clogs that scraped on the ground with each step.
“You will call him Mr. Bouten,” Uncle Andries had said the first time they’d met. As soon as he’d walked away, though, the old man had winked to Flip and whispered, “But you can call me Hendrick when he’s not around.”
Flip never had called him that—he couldn’t get used to calling grown-ups by their first names—but even so, he liked Mr. Bouten, who always seemed happy to see him. That morning was no exception.
“Hello, Flip,” he said with a smile. “Got a day off, have you?”
Flip nodded. “Aunt Elly said I should explore the island.”
“Well, you’ve got a good morning for it,” Mr. Bouten said. “But I wouldn’t stay out too long if I were you. Storm’s coming.”
Flip looked up at the sky. The sun was shining; there was hardly any wind and only a few thin white clouds on the horizon. It was lovely weather.
“Oh yes,” Mr. Bouten said, noticing his puzzled look. “It’s going to rain, all right. Take my word for it. But tell me,” he added, “what have you seen so far?”
“A bit of the village,” Flip said. And then because he was pretty certain Mr. Bouten wouldn’t laugh at him, he explained about not understanding what anyone had said.
“Ah,” said Mr. Bouten. “Well, up here we speak two languages: our own one, Fries, and the Dutch you all speak in the rest of the country. We have to know that, otherwise we couldn’t talk to the vacationers.” He smiled again. “So the next time someone says something and you don’t understand, you answer in Dutch. They’ll understand you, I guarantee it.” Abruptly, he turned and pointed at the woods behind him. “But you don’t want to waste your time talking to me. If you’re out exploring, you should try in there.”
“Why?” Flip asked.
Mr. Bouten smiled. “Well, it wouldn’t be exploring if you knew what it was, now, would it?” And without another word, away he limped toward the village.
Curious, Flip set off in the opposite direction.
STEPPING INTO THE woods was like stepping through a door into a new world. Within just five paces, Flip was surrounded by towering pine trees, walking on a thick carpet of dead pine needles. If the island was quiet, here it was more so. The trees shut out the breeze. The needles muffled his footsteps. He was engulfed in silence and shadows.
He walked on until his way forward was blocked by a massive tangle of weeds and brambles. Just as he was about to turn back, he spotted a path that led into the tangle. He followed it, only to see it narrow to a tunnel that forced him to get down and crawl on his hands and knees. When he emerged at the far end, he was in a ragged clearing open to the sky. And there, directly in front of him, was the most amazing sight he’d ever laid eyes on.
It was the wreck of a World War Two bomber. Its nose was buried deep in the earth, while the tail had come to rest on a jumble of broken tree trunks and stuck up like an arm pointing at the sky. The left wing had been ripped away, leaving a gash down one side big enough to climb through.
There wasn’t anyone else in sight, so, treading carefully, Flip pulled himself up inside the plane and crept through the fuselage to the cockpit. The leather on the pilots’ seats had long since rotted away, leaving only the springs and metal frames. The joysticks had vanished. Every dial in the instrument panel had been ripped out. But there was no missing the line of jagged bullet holes beside the pilot’s seat, and a foot-size gash in the floor in front of the copilot.
“Can you see the bloodstains?”
The voice was so unexpected, Flip jumped. When he got his breath back and peered outside, he saw the three Mesman Boys, standing in a semicircle.
He’d seen them a few times since his arrival on Mossum, walking past the farm, carrying strings of dead birds they’d shot with their slingshots. Renske had told him their names, so he knew who they all were. Jan was the oldest. He was thirteen. Petrus and Thijs were twins. They were eleven. All three wore leather boots that came up to their ankles, gray shorts, and white short-sleeved shirts with the top button closed. They had the same short haircuts as Uncle Andries, which made their ears stick out from the sides of their heads like pegs. That morning, as ever, three dead crows hung from the boys’ belts by their tail feathers.
“We saw you coming and hid,” Jan said, laughing. “Thought it would be funny to scare you.” Then he pointed with his slingshot. “Look at the instrument panel. And that big hole in the floor. Isn’t it great? I bet the pilots got blown to pieces before they crashed!” he added with a grin.
Sun and wind and rain had long since faded the stains, but now that he knew where they were, Flip could just make them out. He didn’t think it was great, though. Back in Amsterdam, he’d had a friend whose uncle had flown a fighter for the RAF in the war and been shot down. Flip had seen him once, limping along the street with the left sleeve of his jacket flapping empty because he’d lost his arm when he’d crashed. He hadn’t looked as though it had been great getting shot to pieces.
“It’s a British bomber,” Jan said. “Crashed here in 1944. After bombing Germany.”
“And it’s haunted,” Thijs added.
“People in the village say you can hear the dead Englishmen moaning at night,” Petrus said.
Jan shook his head at his younger brothers, but the look in their eyes said the twins believed every word.
“Actually,” Flip said, “it’s American.”
Jan frowned. “What do you mean, American?”
“It’s a Martin B-26 Marauder,” Flip said. “It’s an American plane. It had a crew of seven and machine guns in the front, the middle, and the back. It had drop tanks so it could fly all the way to Germany on bombing missions, and it could carry up to two tons of bombs.”
In an instant, Flip knew he’d said something wrong. All three boys’ eyes narrowed and they stood up straight and folded their arms across their chests.
“How do you know?” Jan asked.
“I read it in a book,” Flip said. Which he had, back in the school library a year before. The library had been the one place he’d been safe from Willem Veen and he’d spent as much of his free time in it as he could.
“Oh, really?” Jan said. “Show me.”
“What?” Flip said.
“This book of yours,” Jan said. “Because our dad told us it was British. So I want to see this book that makes
you say he’s a liar.”
“I didn’t say he was a liar,” Flip said.
“Yes, you did,” Petrus said. “He told us it was British. You say it’s American.”
“So you’re calling him a liar,” Thijs concluded.
Flip was so startled by what was happening—and how fast it was happening—that he didn’t know what to say. Or what to do. In the silence, Jan leaned forward and rested his hands against the fuselage.
“You too rude to answer?” he demanded. “Don’t they teach you any manners in Amsterdam?”
“Our father says they’re all like that in Amsterdam,” Petrus said. “They think they know best. About everything.”
Not to be outdone by his brothers, Thijs joined in. “And look how long his hair is. Like a girl’s.”
Flip didn’t think his hair was long. It just covered the tops of his ears, and he’d seen pop groups in magazines with hair much longer than that.
“Perhaps you are a girl,” Thijs said.
“I’m not a girl!” Flip said.
“Then prove it,” Jan said.
“How?”
“Fight me.”
The three brothers instantly spread out again in a semicircle. Flip, his heart pounding in his chest, recognized the maneuver. It was the way Willem Veen and his friends had always arranged themselves before a fight so that if Willem began to lose, the boys on either side of him could jump in and help. Flip knew he didn’t stand a chance of winning against the three of them.
Jan took a step forward. But the moment he did so, a siren began to wail in the distance. All three brothers looked at each other.
“Lifeboat!” they yelled in unison, faces lit up with excitement.
Jan turned and ran for the tunnel. His brothers sprinted after him. Within seconds, they’d vanished.
Flip stayed where he was as the siren continued to wail. A minute later, unable to contain his curiosity, he jumped down out of the cockpit and ran after them.
IT HAD BEEN sunny when Flip had entered the woods. But now, when he emerged from the tunnel, it was to see the sky a forbidding dark gray, with clouds stretched across the island from horizon to horizon. The tops of the trees behind him were creaking and waving in the wind.
The Mesman Boys were far away, heads down, running as fast as they could. He ran after them until he came to Uncle Andries’s farm, where he saw his uncle leading Leila out of her field and heading off at a run away from the village. Behind him came Mr. Bouten, wheeling his bike.
“What’s happening?” Flip asked.
“The siren’s calling the lifeboat out,” Mr. Bouten said.
Flip pointed at Leila. “Why do you need a horse for a lifeboat?” he asked.
“Jump on,” Mr. Bouten said, “and I’ll show you.”
So Flip perched on the bag rack behind the seat and off they went. Soon they reached a wide brick building set in low-lying sand dunes. It had a wooden roof and giant doors that took up the whole front wall. Gathered before it was a group of men and eight other horses: all big, sturdy farm animals. As Flip jumped down from the bike, three men rolled the doors back to reveal a blue-hulled lifeboat.
It was sitting in a white metal cradle mounted on two massive iron caterpillar tracks. The moment the doors opened, the men ran inside and emerged with coils of rope and thick canvas harnesses and bridles. Within minutes, eight of the nine horses—all but Leila—had been lined up in pairs in front of the lifeboat and harnessed to metal hooks on the front of the trailer.
While this was happening, Mr. Bouten went inside and unfastened a rope attached to a metal cleat on the wall. Down from the ceiling dropped eight pairs of green rubber wading boots, the kind that came up to a man’s chest. He loaded them into a horse-drawn cart behind the lifeboat, then piled on waterproof jackets, pants, and hats, more ropes, and a thick wooden pole.
At the front of the cart, Uncle Andries was harnessing Leila between its shafts. Mr. Bouten grabbed the reins and climbed up onto the seat. He beckoned Flip to join him and pulled a whistle from his pocket with the other hand. With one long shrill blast, he signaled the men who’d brought the horses to the lifeboat house to urge them forward.
The horses bent their heads, dug their hooves into the sand, and heaved. Every muscle in their necks stood out with the strain. Metal horseshoes slipped and skidded on the bricks before the door. Then the lifeboat lurched, rolled forward, and kept rolling, picking up speed with every yard. The men trotted along beside their horses. A couple of them had long waving whips and gave them a crack from time to time to urge the horses on. And at the back, head up and keeping pace with the others easily, came Leila. The wheels of the cart left the sandy path and thrummed along the surface of the road.
Flip glanced behind him and saw the Mesman Boys standing by the empty lifeboat house, watching him enviously as he rode away out of sight.
The rain drummed down. The caterpillar treads rumbled and clanked as the men’s heavy boots and clogs pounded along the road, keeping time with the clatter of the horses’ hooves. Manes and tails shook. Harnesses jingled. The lifeboat rolled past Uncle Andries’s farm, skirted the village, and took a path that led off to the northern shore of the island. When it reached a gap in the dunes it kept going, down a long slope and out onto the open sand.
In his two weeks on Mossum, Flip had never been down to the beach, and the sudden vast expanse of sand and sky took his breath away. It stretched off in all directions for as far as he could see and made him feel about as big as a matchstick on a soccer field.
But there was no time to sit and stare. The moment the horses stopped at the water’s edge, the lifeboat men sprang into action. Two of them grabbed a heavy anchor fixed to the back of the lifeboat trailer by a chain and hammered it into the sand. Uncle Andries and four other men started getting dressed in the yellow waterproof clothes. Mr. Bouten pulled on a pair of green waders, grabbed the pole from the back of the cart, and strode out into the surf in front of the lifeboat.
He paced back and forth, ignoring the waves crashing against him. All his concentration was focused on finding a good flat spot for the lifeboat trailer. When he found it, he jabbed the pole into the sand and raised his hand.
On the beach, the horses had all been unfastened and split into two groups of four. One group was led to the right, the other to the left. Mr. Bouten strode back up the beach to stand beside Flip and they watched as the ropes attached to the canvas harnesses were clipped to heavy iron rings at the rear of the lifeboat trailer.
Flip looked into the thick rolling waves crashing onto the beach and shuddered. He’d never learned to swim and the sight of such a vast stormy sea made him nervous. He couldn’t imagine what it did to the horses.
“Aren’t they scared?” he asked Mr. Bouten.
“A little perhaps,” the old man replied. “Like we all are, your uncle included. But they’re brave. And this is a job they do. A brave horse likes doing a good job. And they know we’re here with them and won’t leave them. That makes a big difference. They know they can trust us. Trust’s important to a horse.”
With everything now ready, Mr. Bouten stepped forward and let out a second blast on his whistle. Once more the horses bent to their task and heaved the lifeboat trailer forward. They didn’t hesitate. They strode straight out into the sea and kept going until the men guiding them brought them to a halt. The water crashed around their flanks, but they stood patiently in the surf, attentive to the calming words at their backs.
Flip marveled at that calm, at the way the animals responded to just the tiniest encouraging nudge or word from their owners. He no longer felt nervous. Watching these eight horses brave the power of the incoming waves sent a thrill like electricity prickling through his whole body. It was as if a door had been opened into a part of him he’d never known existed and he felt so suddenly alive he wanted to laugh and shout out loud.
And then, so quickly he almost missed it, the lifeboat was sliding free and into the waves with the
men on board gathered at the stern, huddled behind the wheelhouse. The engine turned over. The propellers churned. Out to sea it went, spray crashing up over the bow. Soon it had been swallowed up in the rain and was no more than a blur heading for the horizon.
The men left on the beach sighed with relief and started unhooking the horses and leading them back up onto dry land.
“Now you see why we need horses for a lifeboat,” Mr. Bouten said to Flip. He was shaving a splinter of broken wood off the side of the cart with a big pocketknife. “Best way to get the boat into the sea. Especially when there isn’t enough money for one of them new motorized trailers.”
“What happens now?”
“Now,” Mr. Bouten said, “we get the trailer ready for when the lifeboat returns. When it does, the horses will pull it up out of the water. And then it’s back to the lifeboat house.”
“Where is the lifeboat going?”
“There’s a boat taking horses to Ameland,” Mr. Bouten said. “Run into trouble near Hook Start. Don’t know any more than that. Heard nothing since the first distress call.” He folded the knife shut and slipped it back into his jacket pocket.
“Can I stay and watch?” Flip asked. He didn’t want to leave the horses. Or this broad beach out under the dark, looming sky. It was all like nothing he’d ever known and he didn’t want it to end.
Mr. Bouten shook his head. “You’re going straight back home,” he said. “I don’t want your aunt worrying where you are. Or getting angry with me for keeping you out in the rain. I’d rather face a Force Ten gale than your aunt when she’s angry. Can you find your way back by yourself?”
Flip said he could and reluctantly, very reluctantly, set off up the beach and into the dunes. He hadn’t gone more than a few steps into them when he heard a familiar voice.