Navigating Early

by Clare Vanderpool

  Seeing the picture made me wonder.

  “He must have been a good hunter—a good shot, I mean. How is it that he missed the real Great Appalachian Bear yesterday, at point-blank range?”

  “He wasn’t trying to hit her,” said Early.

  “That’s crazy. I don’t know that much about hunting bear, but I do know that if you go shooting at a bear like that, not trying to hit it, you’re asking for whatever you get.”

  Early just nodded.

  “What?” I said. “You think MacScott wanted that bear to kill him?” Even as I said it, it made sense. MacScott had lived a long time carrying the guilt and shame of what he’d done.

  “Didn’t you see it in his face?” Early asked. “He was asking that bear to put an end to his pain.”

  I looked back at the picture from just a few months ago. “I wonder how long it took for him to find out that he had killed the wrong bear back then,” I said. “Do you think he had to read it in the paper?”

  “I don’t know, but Fisher knew it right away.”

  “What do you mean? What does Fisher have to do with it?”

  “Look at his eyes. He knows there’s a big fuss being made over the wrong bear.”

  I looked at the picture more closely.

  “What are you talking about, Early? There’s nobody in the picture except MacScott, the bear, and that”—my voice caught in my throat—“bearded lumberjack.” I stared at the face and, strangely, I recognized it. Not as the face in the trophy case, but as the bearded face of the man who had helped Early during his seizure yesterday.

  “You think this is Fisher? So you saw this picture and thought Fisher was in these woods, and that’s why you set off on this wild-goose chase?”

  “It is Fisher!” said Early, clearly frustrated that he’d been telling me the same thing over and over and I still didn’t seem to understand. “I’ve shown you!” he yelled. “It says it right here”—he grabbed a loose piece of notepaper—“and here and here and here.” He held a stack of crumpled articles and pages with notes in his clenched fist. “But you won’t listen.” Then he hunched his head down into a green jacket that he must have borrowed from Martin’s closet, looking for all the world like a turtle in an oversized shell.

  I had no words left to argue with him. And they wouldn’t have helped, anyway.

  “Fine,” I said. “You keep looking for your dead brother. But for now, we’ve got to bury Mrs. Johannsen.” I grabbed the shovel that was propped up against the porch and set off to finish digging Mrs. Johannsen’s grave. “And then I’m done. I’m going back to Morton Hill. And I’m going to sleep in a bed. And I’m going to stay dry. And I’m going to mess up my sock drawer. And I’m going to listen to Billie Holiday when it’s not raining. Better yet, I won’t listen to Billie Holiday at all. I’ll listen to—”

  I stopped short as I reached the clearing where I’d expected to find Mrs. Johannsen’s mostly dug and empty grave. Instead, where there was supposed to be a hole in the ground, all the empty space had been filled in with the dirt we’d set off to the side, and there was a cross made out of wooden planks positioned as a grave marker.

  I took a tentative step forward, half wondering if Mrs. Johannsen had buried herself.

  Early came up behind me. “You can’t listen to Billie Holiday when it’s not raining, and your socks—Hey.” He looked at the grave. “How’d she get buried so fast?”

  “Good question.” I walked toward the cross to see the name that had been carved into the wood.

  MARTIN JOHANNSEN

  It was as if all the jelly beans in Early’s jar had exploded all over the place. This made no sense at all. And on the tree stump just beside the newly filled grave was a red tartan jacket, folded up and placed just so. I looked back at Early. He was wearing a different jacket, because he had left his back in the cave behind the waterfall, covering Martin Johannsen’s bones. That was why he had been shivering during the night.

  “Where’d you get that jacket?” I asked.

  “I’m not going to tell you. You don’t believe anything I say, anyway.”

  “Mrs. Johannsen probably gave it to you. It’s Martin Johannsen’s jacket.”

  “Is not.”

  “Is too.”

  “Is not.”

  “Then where’d you get it?”

  “I’m not telling you.”

  There was something familiar about the jacket. That drab olive-green canvas—very functional, very durable. Very military. I tugged at Early’s arms to see the front of the jacket where a name would have been sewn. At first he resisted, but then he let his arms go slack. There were capital letters, lined up neat and clear. Five letters.

  AUDEN

  My dream from the night before came to mind. Suddenly it seemed important. Early and the bear had been talking. What did they say?

  Early had put his arm around the bear’s sagging shoulders. He’d said something to the bear, and his voice was small and sad. What was it? I struggled to recall. It was like trying to find the words of a song, guessing where to place the needle on the record.

  Slowly the dream replayed itself in my mind.

  You can come back, Early had said. Just like Superman did after the kryptonite almost got him. And like Pi did when he kept his eyes on the bright star named for him.

  I remembered the bear speaking back. I moved the needle forward in my mind.

  The bear had lifted his sad face and said, “I’m not a superhero. And I don’t look at stars anymore.”

  The needle skipped ahead, and Early was crying. Then the bear got up, took off his heavy coat, and placed it on Early’s shivering shoulders. “Go home,” he said, and walked away, leaving Early alone. And the dream in my mind moved into the empty space, whirring and crackling, with no more words and no more images.

  I realized it wasn’t a dream. It was a scene I had witnessed playing out through the bedroom window, only there hadn’t been a bear. It had been a man. And that man was Fisher Auden.

  In that moment, it was as if all the fallen jelly beans had lined up in neat, colorful rows, just like those letters on the olive-green jacket. The bearded onlooker from the newspaper clipping. The woodsman covering Early’s skinny shoulders with his jacket. The dream that wasn’t a dream. Even the walnut shells that I saw scattered at my feet near the newly dug grave. Fisher Auden was alive. He had been following us, keeping watch over us in those woods. And he had buried the bones of Martin Johannsen.

  And now the silence. The painful, absolute quiet.

  Again, in that moment of strained silence, I was reminded that Early was not just a strange oddity of nature who counted jelly beans and read numbers as if they were a story. I knew he could feel hurt and disappointment, but before he had been fairly quick to bounce back. This time, something was different. During this whole long journey, Early had known his brother was alive, because in his mind, Fisher was a superhero. And superheroes never die. But now, tears streamed down Early’s face because his brother had come back. Only it wasn’t the brother he remembered.

  I had grown accustomed to Early being in the coxswain seat. He had been the one calling the commands, adjusting our course, directing, guiding. Now, strangely, our roles were reversed. I was the one who had traveled down this road before. I knew its twists and turns, its rocks and pitfalls. I knew what it felt like to be lost. But I didn’t know if I could guide us out.

  Early took off his brother’s jacket and put on his own. There was only one thing I could think of to say.

  “Tell me how you knew.”

  “You won’t listen.”

  “Yes, I will.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  I took Early by the shoulders. “I’m listening. Tell me.”

  Early set his backpack on the leafy ground and took out his crumpled stack of notes. “The explosives had a detonator. The German tank hit the shed where Fisher’s men were hiding. Then the tank was destroyed on the bridge. That means someone had to still b
e alive to push the detonator. Fisher would have been the one in the water, placing the charges, when the German tank blew up the shed. Fisher was still alive. He pushed the detonator. He was a hero.”

  “But his dog tags. They were found among the dead.”

  “He would have given them to another soldier to hold. He swam with his shirt off, and he didn’t want the dog tags to reflect in the moonlight.”

  That’s the way it was with Early. He could have the same information as everyone else, but it all meant something different to him. He saw what everyone else missed.

  “I see” was all I could say. And I did see. More than I wished I did.

  Yes, Fisher was alive. But he’d been wounded. Probably on the outside at first, back in France, but now, even more, on the inside. I didn’t know what had happened to Fisher between France and the woods of Maine, but the brother, the hero, that Early knew and idolized was gone. I knew what that was like. Poor Early. He was only now realizing that there are no such things as superheroes. But then, we both should have known. Superman doesn’t have a son. And Captain America doesn’t have a brother.

  “He was sitting right next to me,” said Early, “but it was like he wasn’t really here. I told him to come back with me. That he would be all right. He was raining inside and there was no Billie Holiday. No music at all. He told me to go home. And he left.”

  I searched for the right words to say, but they didn’t come. So I just took up Fisher’s jacket, folded it with the care and precision I would use to fold a flag, and put it in my backpack.

  Early wiped his eyes and said, “Let’s bury Mrs. Johannsen and go home.”

  For the second time that week, I put shovel to earth and began digging a grave.

  33

  Mrs. Johannsen was laid to rest next to her son. We covered her in the quilt off Martin’s bed and pinned the Civil War medal on a bright-yellow square. It was the sunniest part of the quilt, and we thought she’d lived with so much sadness in her life that she could use a little cheer.

  But cheer was something sorely lacking as Early and I walked, mile after mile, back through the woods of Maine. Our steps were heavy and labored. It took me a minute to calculate what day it was. Friday. We’d been gone for six days, living on little food and even less sleep.

  We reached the covered bridge that we’d crossed earlier in the week, but this time our footsteps were slower, and we didn’t shout to hear our voices echo. Halfway across, Early rested his arms over the railing and stared into the water. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out Fisher’s dog tags.

  I recognized the look on his face. Not only had Early lost his hero, he’d also been sent home. Dismissed. And I knew what was coming next, even before Early cocked his arm back.

  “Early, no!” But it was too late. He’d already cast the dog tags into the air.

  The shiny metal disks on the chain landed in the river with barely a splash.

  Something in me broke loose, and before I knew it, I’d shed my backpack and jacket and jumped into the swiftly moving water. My mom used to say Still waters run deep, and fortunately I landed in the water with enough force to send me down to the still waters.

  The sun penetrated far enough for me to make out fish and rocks and branches. I pulled and kicked my way down. Searching. Hoping. Then I saw it. A little shiny something. It swayed in the water, catching the sunlight and twinkling like an underwater star. I don’t know if I swam to it or if the current moved me in the same way it had moved the tags, but I found myself reaching, straining, to catch the small metal plates, snagged as they were on a branch. Why had Early cast Fisher’s dog tags away? He had said that Fisher was empty. That he was raining inside. Couldn’t Early see that his brother was wounded? I knew Early felt dismissed and abandoned. But couldn’t he see that Fisher’s scars hadn’t healed? Why didn’t Early hang on?

  The metal tags shifted, reflecting the light in a different way. As my lungs began to strain for air, I realized I’d been here before. Underwater, searching for something small and shiny and just out of reach. My navigator ring. I reached for the tags as I had for the ring I’d thought I’d seen in the swimming pool that first week at Morton Hill. As I had when I’d seen it in the stars that night with Gunnar. I wanted to take it back. Wished I could take it all back.

  I remembered the day of my mother’s funeral. It was raining outside, and I could see my dad lingering at her grave in the downpour. Could it have been raining even harder inside him?

  A couple of weeks after the funeral, my dad and I had sat in silence at the breakfast table. The house was kind of messy. Mom had always taken great care around the house. She wasn’t fussy but seemed to keep up with all the cleaning, stitching, mending, tidying, fluffing, and sprucing.

  On occasion she’d ask me to help with drying the dishes or cleaning out the attic. She’d say, If we all pitch in, it might take twice as long, but it’ll be more fun.

  Now none of that was getting done. Dad looked around him as if trying to figure out his role in this strange place. He hoisted himself from the table and declared it was time for us to get off our duffs and get the place shipshape.

  He started in the kitchen, with a bucket of soapy water and an assortment of rags and sponges, scrubbing down every inch of tile, cabinet, and stove from top to bottom. In his clearing of counters, shelves, and drawers, he tossed out old calendars Mom had saved because she liked their pictures of mountain streams and wooded forests. He boxed up crocheted pot holders, flowered aprons, and the special dish towels, embroidered with the days of the week, that Mom used only for show. Then he moved on to the rest of the house with a broom and a dust rag, packing up pillows, doilies, tablecloths. Anything that was not functional or practical, anything that impeded his dusting, mopping, or swabbing of the decks, was boxed up, tossed out, or basically thrown overboard.

  I mostly stayed out of the way and participated only when given specific orders. Dump this trash outside. Take that box to the attic. Pour out this dirty water and fill it up with fresh. And I watched as he stripped away all the softness in our house. The color, the warmth, the memories. Until all that was left was cold and hard. And clean. Very clean. I tried to look busy, afraid that if I sat still too long, I might get packed up or thrown out as well. But it wasn’t until he pointed to a box of miscellaneous items for the Salvation Army that I snapped.

  The box was filled with assorted screws, door hinges, and mason jar lids, and a yo-yo. Another difference between my mom and dad. My mother was a saver. My father apparently kept only the bare essentials. But on top of the screws, the hinges, the jar lids, and the yo-yo was a teacup. Not part of a set. Nothing fancy. Just a chipped teacup with little red flowers. It was my mother’s, and it had its place on a hook right next to the kitchen sink. She drank out of it every day. Coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon, and a special concoction of hot cider, honey, and a little of what she called the stuff for what ails you when she felt the chills coming on.

  “We don’t need to get rid of all this,” I said, my voice shaking.

  “A place for everything and everything in its place,” he answered, without looking up from his task at hand.

  “Then you can take it out yourself. I’m not doing it.”

  This time my dad stood up to his full height. “You’ll do as you’re told. Now, hop to it.”

  I was treading on thin ice, but I took another step.

  “You can’t just get rid of everything.” The ice groaned beneath me.

  “Son,” he said in a cautioning tone, hands on hips.

  I’d seen a drill sergeant one time in a movie, dealing with a new recruit who wasn’t following orders. That drill sergeant in the movie got in the soldier’s face and yelled, YOU UNDERSTAND ME, SON? ’CAUSE IF YOU CAN’T, I’LL SPEAK IN A LANGUAGE YOU CAN UNDERSTAND. I didn’t know exactly what that language was, but I had a feeling I was about to find out.

  I didn’t care.

  Disobeying my father, I picked
up the teacup.

  “You may want to forget about her, but I don’t!” That was when it happened. My hurt and anger made their way to my trembling fingers, and the cup slipped from my hands, shattering on the kitchen floor.

  The captain squared his shoulders and barked out one more command. “You are dismissed!”

  Dismissed. I was a civilian and did not speak the language of soldiers. But I understood that loud and clear. There was a great rending as the ice cracked, and my dad and I were set adrift and apart.

  And that was when I went outside and threw my navigator ring in the river behind our house.

  My lungs were bursting, and the river current tried to sweep me away. I plucked the dog tags from the underwater branch and kicked my way to the surface, gasping and sputtering for air. Early met me at the bank.

  “Why did you jump in, Jackie?”

  “Because,” I grumbled, handing him the dog tags. “I wanted to go for a swim.”

  “Fisher’s dog tags!”

  “Yeah, I just happened to come across them in the river … where you threw them. You should keep these. They’re Fisher’s. And he’s still your brother. Come on. I need to find a place to dry off before I freeze out here.” I had seen a shack just downriver from the bridge, and we headed that way.

  It might have been an old hunting cabin from fifty years ago, but now it was just a run-down shack with a few broken fishing rods, a paddleboat in the corner, and another boat, turned upside down, with a tarp draped over it. But it had plenty of light coming through the windows, and a potbellied stove in the middle of the room.

  We scrounged around for wood scraps and quickly got a fire going. I was glad my jacket and backpack had been spared another dunk in the river and stripped off my denims and shirt to dry by the fire. Wet again. It seemed like I’d spent most of the past six days wet.

  Early and I sat on the overturned boat and ate the last of the beef jerky and biscuits we’d packed up from Mrs. Johannsen’s house.