Innocents Aboard

by Gene Wolfe

  Sheba had pulled the Ford off the road and onto the beach some distance away. She and Doc were sitting side by side on the sand in front of its bumper. Roddie remembered that people like them were not supposed to use the beach and wondered what would happen if the police came; perhaps the police did not care when the beach was so nearly empty.

  Already, the gentle little inshore waves were washing the sleeper’s thighs. Roddie’s father called, “Roddie! Come back here!” But the sleeper did not even look around.

  Boots dashed out to him. Roddie noted the moment at which she could no longer wade and had to swim. She paddled in front of the sleeper, barking, lifted by the surf like a small, noisy boat.

  Roddie’s mother was on her feet. “I’ll get him, Ray.”

  Boots had run back to his father, appealing far from mutely to that highest of all courts. “I’ll do it,” he said. He was pulling off his shoes and socks, rolling up his trouser legs.

  Roddie looked for the sleeper again. He was hard to see, so far from the shore lights; but it seemed to Roddie that the waves had reached his neck. If Jim were still calling, Roddie could not hear him.

  Roddie hunkered down in the rumble seat, thinking about the moment when he would have to make himself visible to his parents. It would come very soon now, and he was not sure he could do it. How did you make yourself visible? The only way he could think of was by jumping out of the bushes, but that was for when they were playing cowboys, he and Wes and John.

  “Roddie! Roddie! Roddie!” His parents’ voices sounded far away.

  Raising his head, he saw them waist-high in surging waves. Boots was with them, or perhaps even farther out—her barking could hardly be heard above the pounding of the surf. He stood up, pretending he was pushing the bushes aside, cupped his hands around his mouth. “Here I am, Mom!”

  They did not hear him, but perhaps that was only because it was so far. He tried to inflate his body, to render it real and substantial. “HERE! Over here!”

  He could not quite hear what his mother said; but he saw her touch his father’s arm and point, and his heart seemed to swell. He jumped up and down in the seat, shouting and waving. “Here! Here! Here! IT’S ME!”

  His father had seen him and was splashing toward shore. His mother was ordering Boots to abandon the search, her faint “Here, Bootsie!” and the clap of her hands borne on the salt sea-breeze. His father would be angry for a while; but when he was angry with Roddie, he would not speak to him, or even look at him. So that part would be all right.

  His father shouted, “Roddie, are you still in the car?” and he strained to make himself visible again.

  “Roddie, stand up!”

  His mother was just coming out of the water. “Is he gone again, Ray?”

  “No, he’s hiding back there. He thinks that’s very funny.”

  “Ray—”

  “Let him alone. He and I are going to have a talk about this when we get home. Get the dog in the car. Make her stay on the floor.” Soaked to the shirt pocket, angry and dripping, his father got behind the wheel.

  Softly his mother asked, “Roddie, are you well now?”

  Again that swelling in his chest. He answered, “Yes,” and although she did not appear to see him, she smiled and took her place beside her husband. Boots came up panting and climbed in next to her feet.

  Roddie slipped out of the rumble seat as the car began to move.

  The road had shrunk until it was no more than a single lane surfaced with oyster shells. Roddie hated oyster shells, which snapped under the wheels of cars and trucks to release a choking white dust. He had rolled up his window, and he wished that Doc and Sheba would close theirs, too. But the car was much too hot for that; the sleeper’s face was beaded with sweat. So was his; he had taken off his shirt, and he used it now to wipe his face. He thought of wiping the sleeper’s as well but decided it would do no good. “Why can’t I go back in?” he asked Jim.

  “Couldn’t nobody here,” Jim said.

  “Because of the car, you mean?”

  Jim did not reply. He seemed to be studying the sleeper.

  Doc had not spoken for a long while, making Roddie wonder if he was really Doc again. Now Sheba said, “We got to get some gas. You got any money?”

  Doc only stared at her.

  “Ain’ got none—don’ look at me like that.” After a moment she added, “Probably not no stations ’long this ol’ road anyhow.”

  “’E’s been here. ’E told me.”

  “Only that one time, an’ that ’bout a year ago.”

  “’E said they wouldn’t know.”

  “Those police was back at the house? Don’ think so. They Houston police anyway, ain’ come out here. This here out in the county. They has to call the sheriff, get the sheriff to send them out a deputy.”

  The narrow road bent about a clump of moss-hung live oak to reveal a one-pump gas station. An elderly black man came out as Sheba pulled the old Ford up to the pump. “Evenin’, folks. How many tonight?”

  Sheba looked at Doc, but Doc said nothing. She said, “Fill it up.”

  Doc got out and walked into the station, a shack smaller even than the cottage. Roddie could not imagine what he was doing in there, and whatever it was made no noise. There was only the gurgle of gasoline from the hose and the singing of millions of frogs.

  “That boy sick?”

  Sheba nodded.

  “You tell his mama, take him to the doctor.”

  “His mama gone,” Sheba said. “I takin’ care of him. We gone take him tomorrow, that why we need so much gas.”

  “That old man goin’ to pay?”

  Sheba nodded again. “He probably lookin’ to buy some cut plug, too. I tol’ him you might have some.”

  The man hung up the hose and went into the station. Roddie heard a dull tap, as if someone had thumped a melon; then he saw a foot through the doorway, its toe pointed downward as though the man had lain down inside. After a minute or two, Doc came out and got back into the car. Sheba drove on.

  They crossed a creek on a rattling wooden bridge, turned, and turned again. The road lost its coat of oyster shells and became no more than a jolting track of red dirt. Roddie rolled his window down, but the car was moving so slowly now that the air coming through the window seemed only to add to the heat. Mosquitoes clustered on the sleeper’s cheeks and neck, darkened his forehead until his hairline appeared to reach his eyebrows; from time to time he tried languidly to brush them away. Sheba waved a hand before her face as she drove.

  A gator bellowed not far off, a noise not very different from the bellowing of a bull. “That’s an alligator,” Roddie said. “A real big one, too.”

  Jim said nothing.

  Trees, bearded but dead, gave way to clearings that looked like meadows. Sheba stopped the car, pulled up the long handle of the emergency brake, and switched off the lights. “Road don’ go no farther. They a boat over there, but it look like we got to pour the water out.”

  She and Doc left the car, and Roddie climbed over the front seat to follow them.

  “Sheba, honey,” Doc said, “what we doin’ way out here?”

  “This where he want to come,” Sheba told him. She had hold of the half-sunken skiff’s painter. “He’p me.” Together they turned the skiff on its side, flooding the already-soft soil at their feet and revealing two oars and a rusty bailing can. “We should of bring a flashlight.”

  Doc said, “He want go to the cabin?”

  Though a thin crescent moon had risen, Sheba’s nod was next to invisible.

  Roddie had been looking around for Captain Hook, but could not find him. While Doc and Sheba were putting the skiff back into the water, he went to the window of the car. “Is he still in there?”

  Jim nodded.

  Doc climbed onto the board seat in the middle of the skiff and took the oars. Sheba said, “Wait a minute, I got get the boy.”

  “We got a boy?”

  “In the back, ain’ y
ou see? When the last you remember?”

  “Back my house, offerin’ up that white boy,” Doc said. “We gone to throw him in?”

  “This ’nother ’un,” Sheba told him. She opened the car’s rear door and took the sleeper by the hand; when he came out, Jim followed. All of them crowded into the skiff, Roddie and Jim slipping past Doc to the bow, the sleeper sitting in the stern beside Sheba.

  “They hear with us,” Doc muttered. “I ain’ move an’ you ain’ move, but this hear boat move. You feel it?”

  Sheba shook her head. “You don’ remember ’bout that old man back at the gas station?”

  “Isrul Caruthers? What ’bout him?”

  Sheba cast off the painter. “Nothin’. Jus’ I think maybe you kill him.”

  Doc shook his head, pulling at the oars. “I hope not. I know him ever since twenty-six.”

  Sheba said, “Then how come he don’ know you?”

  “He don’?”

  “No, sir. He say, ‘That ol’ man goin’ pay?’”

  “He ain’ Isrul then,” Doc said. “Isrul know me any time, day or night.”

  “That good. How far now?”

  “Jes’ a bit. Mr. J.J. Randall, he build this place only it be drier then. It flood hear sometime, though, so he put it up on the big pilin’s. I done the roof—that back when I work for him. Then the big storm come, and it be wet an’ Mr.J.J. don’ come no more. I use it ever since. Mr.J.J., he gone now.”

  Uninterested, Sheba said, “Uh huh.”

  “You think I really kill him?” Doc asked.

  “That man at the gas station? I don’ know.”

  Something large slithered into the water at their approach.

  “That li’l boy.”

  “Course you did.”

  Doc did not speak again. Their voices and the plash of his oars had quieted the frogs, so that it seemed to Roddie that he could hear the most minute noises, the most faraway sounds—cars and trucks and buses back in town, his mother calling him. He felt, too, that if he spoke, Doc and Sheba would hear him; but he did not want to speak to them and did not know what to say. He no longer believed that Captain Hook was somehow in Doc, and he wondered whether Jim still believed it.

  Sheba said, “You want me row awhile? You mus’ be gettin’ tired.”

  Doc shook his head and continued to row. After a moment he chuckled, the stridulous merriment of an old man.

  “What you laughin’ at?” Sheba asked him.

  “That Isrul Caruthers. He think I come way out here with a young gal, maybe I don’ want nobody know. So he ask you if the old man pay.” Doc chuckled again.

  “Uh huh. You goin’ go to his funeral?”

  “I s’pose,” Doc said. “I know Isrul since twenty-six.”

  “You bes’ not. The police gone be after you for killin’ that boy back in Houston. You don’ remember, but the police be all over your place when we get back. That why we come out here.” Sheba was silent for a moment. “Maybe we could tell them we be out here together, somebody else use your house.”

  “Maybe. You know I never didn’t mean for all this. Not killin’ no li’l boy.”

  Sheba did not reply. In the silence, Roddie heard a faint, slow ticking, as though a grandfather clock stood somewhere in the darkness beneath the trees, its hands raised in horror, its pendulum telling the hours of the salt marsh through which they rowed with more precision than the beating of Doc’s oars.

  “Used, I think they’s way away,” Doc said softly. “I try to make them hear me. I ever tell you ’bout Big Mike?”

  “Huh uh,” Sheba said.

  “That Big Mike, he be a panther, used to kill all the deers ‘round hear, cows, too. Mr.J.J., he hunt Big Mike many a time. One time he out hear huntin’ quail, it gettin’ dark, so Mr. J.J. and Jess start for home. Jess his bird dog.”

  Sheba said, “Uh huh.”

  “Mr. J.J., he hear Big Mike holler, you know how they do? Like a woman that’s scared, almos’. It sound like he way off, so Mr.J.J. don’t pay it no mind. Jus’ ’bout then Jess give a holler, and Big Mike rear up in front of her. Mr.J.J. say he mus’ of shot twice with that li’l bitty bird gun, ‘cause there was empties in it after an’ he been goin’ loaded case Jess put up some birds comin’ back. He don’ remember a-tall. I ask do he hit Big Mike, and he say he don’ know, he jus’ glad he ain’ hit Jess.”

  Sheba laughed softly. “Better be glad he don’ shoot off his own foot.”

  “So then I say, Mr. J.J., how come Big Mike right there when you jus’ hear him way off? An’ he say, I think that big ol’ panther put his head right down at the dirt when he holler so I think he way off. He wait for me to come by, and if Jess ain’ see him first, he kill me sure. Sheba, these what we been messin’ with, I think they jus’ the same. They be not no long ways away. They jus’be waitin’ till we get a li’l closer.”

  “You think they still goin’ give us that treasure?”

  Softly, Jim said, “Aye,” and Doc dropped one oar. Roddie had to cover his mouth to keep from laughing.

  Sheba asked, “What the matter with you, old man?”

  “Didn’t you hear somethin’?”

  Sheba shook her head. “I didn’t hear nothin’.”

  “It behind me, closer to me than you,” Doc muttered. He bent over the gunnel of the skiff, feeling with one hand in the dark water for the oar.

  It was then that Roddie saw where the ticking came from. Something that seemed almost a sunken log was drifting slowly toward the skiff—toward Doc’s groping hand—when nothing else in the water moved. The ticking came from that, the slow, slow beating of its heart.

  Doc said, “Pull it out, Sheba. It back by you.” He took his hand from the water.

  Sheba thrust hers in, grasped the oar near the blade, and swung the loom to him. “You keep on droppin’ these, we never gone get there.”

  Doc glanced behind him. “We there now, don’ you see?”

  “I ain’—”

  There was a scream from the darkness before them, a paean to hate and agony worthy of a damned soul charring in the flames of Hell. Sheba froze, her mouth wide open, a hand upraised; the sleeper’s eyes went wide, so that it appeared for a moment that he was about to wake. Doc continued to row, the slow beating of his oars unaltered.

  Sheba gasped, “What the matter with you?”

  “Nothin’ the matter with me,” Doc replied placidly.

  “You hear some itty-bitty noise and drop the oar. You hear that and don’ even look ’round again.”

  “‘Cause I know what holler,” Doc told her. “That be a li’l ol’ bobcat. What you think, gal? It be Big Mike? Big Mike, he gone ’fore Mr. J.J.”

  Roddie had spotted the cabin, a black bulk against the less solid blackness of mere night; he pointed it out to Jim a minute or two before the side of the skiff scraped the little landing stage moored at the foot of its steps. The screamer yowled, a softer sound this time, and Roddie thought he caught a flash of green.

  Doc shipped oars and pulled a kitchen match from his shirt pocket. Striking it on his thumbnail, he held it up so that its flare of blue and yellow drove the night into sudden retreat. A large black cat arched its back at the top of the cabin steps, glaring at them through a single green eye.

  “Not even no bobcat.” Doc chuckled. “Jus’ a li’l pussycat got lost out hear, maybe throwed out somebody’s car.” Tossing the match into the water, he rose and stepped onto the stage. “Now pass me that rope, gal, so I can tie the boat up, and don’ talk no more ’bout who scared and who ain’.”

  As though in a dream, the sleeper followed Sheba out of the skiff. Roddie saw the hungry way in which Jim eyed him.

  Sheba was looking at him, too. “We gon’ do it tonight?”

  Doc jerked his half hitches tight and grasped the sleeper’s arm without replying, leading him up the rotting steps. The cat spat at them, then moved aside.

  Jim said, “This won’t be like town. ’Im an’ me, an’ ’e. That
’s all there be.”

  “You said you wanted both parts of me,” Roddie protested.

  “Said we needed both.” Jim grinned as he followed Sheba up the steps, slipping through the doorway just as she closed the door.

  Roddie heard it shut, and the rattle of its old-fashioned latch. For half a minute or more he stood on the little landing stage, wondering whether Doc and Sheba would open for him if he knocked, as they had back at the cottage. Light poured from the wide windows of the cabin; Doc had struck another match and lit a candle, or perhaps a lantern of some kind.

  Something moved uneasily in the water. Roddie watched it for a moment, then went up the steps and caught the cat by the loose skin at the back of its neck. It yowled and clawed, but its claws seemed no more than feathers stroking Roddie’s arms. He tried to quiet it, then decided that its cries and frantic movements might actually be helpful.

  It liked the water even less than it liked Roddie, wailing and splashing as he pushed it under.

  The cabin door flew open. Looking up, Roddie saw Doc with a rifle in his hands. Captain Hook stood behind him, his hand upon Doc’s shoulder. Roddie let go of the cat, which scrambled back onto the stage. Fire flashed from the muzzle of the rifle—the report struck Roddie’s ears like a blow. The cat shrieked with pain, and with a backhanded swipe Roddie knocked it into the water again.

  Apparently satisfied, Doc shut the door.

  The big gator was coming, swimming with astonishing speed: even the slow tick of its heart sounded faster. Roddie helped the wounded cat onto the stage and urged it up the steps. He had wondered vaguely whether the gator would have difficulty in getting up onto the floating stage; it took it with a rush, its body propelled by a powerful stroke of its tail. It was larger than Roddie would have guessed, eight feet long at least and as thick through as one of the empty drums buoying the stage.

  Bleeding and frantic, the cat scrambled up the cabin door. Roddie pounded on the rough planks with his fists. Inside, he heard Sheba say, “They here.” The door swung open again.