The Mourning Wave

by Gregory Funderburk

  “It’s Albert Campbell!”

  “How is he?”

  “Sore distressed.”

  Will moved in closer. He felt Albert’s head. It was bleeding. His lips were moving, forming the only words he now knew.

  “Save Maggie,” he repeated. Then he reached down into the water around his waist and raised his hand up offering to Will the ragged end of a length of clothesline.

  10

  SHELTER FROM THE STORMY BLAST

  It took some coercion to convince Albert to come up above the waterline and through a layer of the branches. He thrashed against Will’s attempts to lift him up, but when Albert saw Frank, his face took on a pensive quality, then calmed except for his lips, which continued to move, mumbling, “. . . and deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever.”

  When he met their gaze again, Albert’s countenance took on a more certain look, though it remained at odds with his circumstances. Frank, in an attempt at solidarity, glanced up through the black lace of dense branches and into the heavens, where he assumed God still presided, and seconded Albert’s supplication with a bruised benediction.

  “Amen,” he said.

  This expression struck Albert as most effective and he climbed up past Will and then Frank, upwards onto the deck to survey the black sea and broken sky. He looked down at Frank, at Will, then at the strange merger of boat and tree in which they had somehow found themselves deposited together.

  “Our shelter from the stormy blast,” he concluded. “Are we safe? Is it over?” he asked Will.

  “No,” Will said. “We’re in the middle of it. The eye. We’ll have to ride out the other side.”

  The wind whistled cleanly above them. Out of the water was almost as cold as in the water, but they each found a spot on the rough, wet deck, within a latticework of spiny branches where they could rest for a minute without slipping. They were small, wet creatures in a meager nest.

  “I need to tell you both something. Something you ought to know,” Albert said. He looked around as if this was to be treated confidentially. “I can’t swim. Can’t swim a lick. I don’t know how I got this far. Campbells, we don’t swim.”

  “I’ve seen you swim,” Frank said.

  “No. I don’t,” Albert concluded. “I can stretch my legs pretty far though.” Albert exhaled as if he’d been holding his breath for some time. “Will,” he finally said. “You got an awful knot on your head.”

  “I was about to say the same thing to you.”

  Albert pulled his bloody sleeve over his hand, reaching out to the older boy and dabbed at Will’s forehead. It started to bleed.

  “Sorry,” Albert said as blood ran into Will’s eyes. He breathed deeply again, looking around as if he’d forgotten something. “Have you seen Maggie?”

  Neither Will nor Frank managed a response.

  “She can’t swim either. Not a stroke.” He sighed hard, deeply. “Campbells can’t swim,” he added again, crestfallen, wiping the blood from Will’s face with his sleeve.

  Frank moved up a few feet, digging, grabbing something tangled in the density of the branches.

  “Get some sleep, Albert,” Will said.

  “No. I need to be awake. Maybe a rescue ship will come by,” he said. “I don’t want to miss it.”

  “Albert, we’re on a ship,” Frank said, holding up a battered ring buoy with letters on it. “I don’t know about it being a rescue one though.”

  In faded black stencil was written, “John S. Ames.”

  11

  JOHN S. AMES

  Will spotted the floating house before Frank. Bobbing toward them on the surface like a fugitive cork, it was soon upon them, washing by almost leisurely in the relatively quiet currents of the eye of the storm. A strange, whistling wind pushed it along slowly. The rain had ceased, but the night sky still flashed in an almost constant jaundiced yellow high above in the distance. Will spotted the movement first, a woman perhaps, at a window. Frank remained poised next to him, grasping the side of the boat, his knuckles white, his eyes locked on her, as well. Albert had fallen asleep lower down in the branches.

  She gazed back at them from the window frame, then suddenly disappeared. She returned; her wet, black hair wrapped around her pale face. She held a baby out the window to them. They stared at one other until the house drifted beyond their sight, but the boys remained frozen.

  “Think that was a ghost?” Frank asked in a whisper.

  “Don’t know,” Will said, just as quietly. Their phantom-like breath mixed in the midnight chill. “Doesn’t matter, Frank, we have work to do.”

  As the storm wall approached, Will began to prepare them. He woke Albert and bandaged his head with a strip of his shirt. They were both relieved Albert had not seen the woman with the baby. It may have unhinged him. Frank, apart from the indignity of having lost his britches, was generally battered about the neck and arms. Will had suffered a number of lacerations and bruises, and his head and chest hurt acutely. But in addition to the shock and grief over his sister, the gash and swelling above Albert’s brow indicated he had received a serious blow to the head. The deep cut had mostly stopped bleeding, but he looked as pale as the ghostly woman. He was groggy, coming in and out of consciousness, thinking he was speaking to Henry about poor Maggie. Will, using the clothesline around Albert’s waist and the schooner’s rigging, secured him to the deck using some secure blocking he’d found on the port side. He reeved the ropes through, though it took a while in the dark. Frank was tethered loosely to the second mast with considerable slack. Will elected to stay free for now but held onto one of the ropes in case a large wave was encountered. He’d tie himself down with his friends as the eyewall approached.

  As the winds started again, the trees held firm to the earth below and to the John S. Ames above, but the sky turned a sickly green. Dr. Cline of the weather bureau, whose boots Will shined at the Tremont Hotel on Saturday mornings, called this the dirty side. The lightning sheets now flared in olive hues across the edges of the sky. To look to the horizon was like looking through tinted glass. Severe clouds whipped toward them now at considerable speed, and with the increased whistle of the wind, the rain soon began to fall again upon them. A few moments later, it picked up again, and soon returned like a waterfall. The phosphorescent green flickering from the electricity in the sky now fell away, replaced by a razor cold sharpness in the night air. Will began silently counting the waves again as the wind continued to shift. Branches and boat began to rise and fall in the same rhythmic pitches as before, but the motion was in the opposite direction. It became frigid again by gusts.

  “We’re getting a haircut here,” Will told Frank. “We’ve got to get down.”

  The choice was to descend lower and risk drowning or stay here and get blown away. The branches, having been bent violently in one direction for several hours, were reacting badly now to being violently curved back the other way. More of the limbs protecting them vanished with each blow.

  “Will, my arms and legs won’t cater to me,” Albert said.

  “Brace your heart. Nerve your limbs, and let’s go down.”

  Albert closed his eyes tightly. “I might fall in. I can’t feel anything.”

  “We’ve got to get lower, Albert. Come on,” Frank encouraged.

  “Alright, but I have to do something first,” Albert said, remembering how Mother Joseph formerly calmed the mighty Gulf winds when they rose up out on the beach. Albert stood up, and with the same defiance, conviction, and technique he’d seen the Mother Superior use against the ocean gales from the orphanage’s balcony, began to rebuke the heavens.

  “Old Boreas!” he yelled out holding a long, loose branch aloft like a tiny Moses with staff. “Lay low, Old Man.”

  “Frank, I’m going to undo him. Keep him down,” Will called out. “Or he’s gonna
blow away!”

  Frank pulled Albert to him, even as the smaller boy continued to shake the stick at Old Boreas up above. Below them, the water sloshed back and forth violently, as if sea monsters were thrashing just under the surface. Tree branches raked over Will’s numb face as he moved downward. He swiftly tied Albert to the lower section of the mast with the clothesline as the rain plummeted down harder upon them. Albert was cooperative, having exhausted himself in his futile engagement with Old Boreas. He bent forward toward Frank and said something into his ear. Frank agreed and patted him on the chest.

  “What’d he say, Frank?” Will asked, as the wind increased.

  “He says Old Boreas ain’t listening tonight.”

  Will adjusted the bandage on the younger boy’s head. “Just hang on, Albert,” Will said.

  They began to pitch, hanging in defiance of gravity, then crash down beneath the water. In the next rise, Will re-tied Frank to the mast making sure he was secure, then tied himself down. They rotated, shuffled back and forth, and elevated up and down, swiveling like riders on a misconceived boardwalk attraction. Yet water flowed in and out of the canopy of branches in rough harmony with the storm’s own rhythmic methods, producing a tenable, if temporary refuge for the castaways.

  They were holding their ground.

  12

  OLD BOREAS RELENTS

  An hour later, the leaves on the branches had been thinned out considerably, leaving only long leaf-less spines in the water, but the rain was letting up. They rested in their resilient jumble of twigs and boards, rocking back and forth on the percolating sea. Every so often, a big wave would break over them, filling their noses and mouths with saltwater, but they managed through a series of cooperative exercises with one another to emerge again and again each time. Will could now gauge the arrival and size of each ensuing wave using his honed instincts and a full night of experience. He’d gone to school. Albert agreed to remain tethered to the mast, but Will gave Frank some additional slack so that he could move around, then untied himself completely as Old Boreas finally and mercifully relented.

  When a thin board about the size of the surface of a small table floated into their lair, Will peeled it back from the dark water and propped it up at their backs, distributing the remaining wind and rain across its surface. Moving closer to one another into a single mass behind the sheltering board in the remaining branches added to their modest comfort. The wood, like a parapet, gave their voices a more resonant quality than they had earlier. Or maybe this is just what they sounded like now.

  “I wonder where this came from,” Albert asked about the board. Will considered the question. Maybe it came from their school on Rosenberg Street, or Unger’s Market. Maybe it had come from Pearson Mercantile, from Lucas Terrace, or from the home of Grace Ketchum, the police chief’s daughter.

  “Grace,” he thought. Will’s veins coursed sluggishly, his mind slowing. Everyone he knew in the city might be gone. He felt his brain misfiring as he grappled with this emergent idea. His concept of a future was as fumbling as the work of his bleeding hands and numbing fingers as they worked the knots in the clothesline that kept his friends close.

  “Are you alright, Will?” Frank asked.

  “Yeah.” His voice did sound different—older, sadder.

  “Will,” Albert spoke up.

  “I know,” Will said. He had noticed it too a few minutes before. There were voices in the air, personal, and much aggrieved.

  “I hear hollerin’ out there. Do you hear that?”

  13

  THE HOLLERIN’ OF THE DEAD

  There were no words, just a deep wailing, like animals stuck in traps. Caught between the hope that some sort of help might emerge from the sounds and the hope that they would just go away, it seemed most likely that the noises came from unseen folks far worse off than even they were.

  “Is that people, or not?” Frank asked.

  No one said anything. Albert covered his ears, fearful of what the sounds might be. He soon voiced his theory.

  “It’s the hollerin’ of the dead,” he whispered edgily. “The hollerin’ of the dead. We ought to plug our ears.”

  “It’s not the hollerin’ of the dead, Albert,” Will said. “There’s no such thing.”

  “It’s most queer though,” Frank allowed, seeing that Will had hurt Albert’s feelings. “Sounds like a sad dog.”

  “Sad dog,” Albert repeated. “Or the hollerin’ of the dead,” he said more quietly.

  Will and Frank craned their necks to listen. Albert pulled his hands down from his ears and let himself hear for a moment, then his eyes suddenly widened.

  “Maybe it’s the other ones,” he said. “The sisters. Our people.”

  “Don’t think so,” Will said.

  Then, closer, the weeping sounds began to take shape, forming into forlorn words.

  “Help me.”

  “Please, Savior.”

  Albert plugged his ears again as a disembodied woman’s voice cried out that she was bleeding. All of the voices prickled Will’s skin, but the woman’s made him shake all over. If he had thought there’d be comfort in knowing there were other survivors somewhere, it was not here.

  “Do you see anything?” Frank asked. The voices had already begun to fade into the night.

  “No. I think it’s far away now.”

  “How long ‘til morning, Will?”

  “Probably three or four hours.”

  “I’m dreadful cold, Frank,” Albert said, bringing his hands down.

  “Me too, Albert. At least you’ve got trousers.”

  Far off or not, the voices still carried to them vaguely, but the words had largely faded, falling into the sounds of the sea itself, leaving only occasional distant calls for help, which none of them were sure they heard or not.

  “Hollerin’ of the dead,” Albert said, renewing his contention.

  As the eerie voices faded, the boys focused their attention on a light some distance away, rolling toward them along the surface of the water. They briefly considered the plausibility of rescue, but then heard a crackling sound as it came closer. Albert put his hands over his eyes this time. Will pulled his hands down, but Albert put them up again.

  “The fires of hell,” he asserted. “Hades’ flames. You shouldn’t look.”

  “Albert, it’s nothing.”

  A burning board hissed by, the waves lapping at its edges.

  “Don’t worry,” Frank said. “Look, Albert.”

  As the fire rolled away, new noises formed and vanished somewhere in the low clouds. Thinly constituted, they haunted just the same. Sporadic splashes sounded around them, as well. Every once in a while, it sounded as if heavy objects were being dropped into the ocean from a great height. All of this unnerved Albert further.

  “Grindy-lows,” he said.

  “What?” Frank asked.

  “They come for children in the cold water,” Albert explained. His mother had warned him about them long ago.

  “You mean vodyanoys,” Frank said casually, remembering the stories his Slavic aunt, Lida, had told.

  “Quiet,” Will said. “Let me think.”

  The boys didn’t speak for the next ten minutes, but even Will had to admit there were tricks in the air. The chilling thuds and splashes seemed to be getting closer.

  “Grindy-lows.” Albert whispered.

  “Shh,” Will responded.

  Albert pulled Frank closer. The noises began to fade, leaving only the sound of water lapping rhythmically against the John S. Ames and the remnants of the trees. Finally, Albert spoke up quietly.

  “There’s an awful lot of goblin-visitin’ goin’ on out here. Between the hollerin’ of the dead, the flames of Hades, and the grindy-lows,” he said. “I’m plum tuckered out.”

  14

  TOMORROW ALREADY


  “I’d sure like some trousers,” Frank said finally.

  “I can understand that,” Albert said.

  Albert looked at Frank, shivering, then back into the sea.

  “I’m still fierce cold, Will,” Albert said through chattering teeth.

  “I know, Albert,” he said.

  “Do you feel that?” Will asked.

  “What?” Albert asked.

  “The water’s pushing against us,” Frank responded.

  “I think the water’s going back in the Gulf. It’s pushing against the hull,” Will said. What had been a nudge became a current and the trees began to bend. “Find something to hold onto,” Will instructed. “We could come loose.”

  “Will, is the John S. Ames going to sink?” Albert asked, panicking. “Campbells can’t swim. Untie me!”

  “We’ll be alright, Albert,” Frank said, trying to calm him. “We’ll keep you up. You’re not going to drown. I’ve got you.”

  “I need some more slack at least.”

  “Just stay put, Albert. We’ll be alright,” he said, but sounded unconvincing as he retied Albert more loosely using the rigging at hand.

  The tide leaned against the raised stern harder each passing minute. Will edged out over the side to see what was occurring beneath them. It was impossible to see, but he could feel it and hear it. He had no idea what condition the forward part of the ship was in, or even if there was one beneath the waves. Frank gave Albert the stenciled life ring and Albert slipped it over his head. This relaxed him marginally.

  It was now clear they were slipping from the clutches of the salt cedars. With sounds of heavy friction, the boat’s hull scraped against the trees, until the aft section, the boy’s refuge, fell, hitting the water with a heavy pop, deflecting off the water and listing to starboard. The branches raked astern, carrying Frank with them and nearly off the back, but the rigging attached the second mast held, as did the knot around his waist. Will held Albert with one hand. With his other, he held on to the side of the boat. Though listing badly, the vessel remained afloat. Frank stumbled back down to them.