Navigating Early (14 page)

15
 

I
n the gray of early dawn, I kicked some dirt over the fire, which had long since died out, and we packed up our stuff without a word. The
without a word
part was fine, as I was sure that enough had been said the night before. Besides, Early was in mourning.

He laid Bucky on a sturdy maple leaf and set him adrift on the river. The current carried him out of sight, so at least the poor kid didn’t have to see his frog get swallowed up by a fifteen-pound trout.

A big old
I told you so
was on the tip of my tongue. My mom used to say,
Don’t pour salt in the wound, or you’ll never get the taste out of your mouth
. So I kept my mouth shut.

I was ready to get going, but Early said we needed a song for the funeral. I let out a sigh and waited for him to start up with “Amazing Grace” or maybe “Rock of Ages.” But once he started singing a heartfelt and very off-key rendition
of “Up a Lazy River,” I realized it was Monday. That meant Louis Armstrong.

It did provide a nice sendoff for old Bucky, and with that, we lowered the
Maine
onto the water and took up our positions. My arms and legs, cold and stiff from sleeping on the hard ground, practically moaned as I took the first few strokes through the morning fog. We hadn’t brought along any of the wax, honey, and vinegar concoction. But Early was apparently taking a moment to primp a bit as he put on some kind of ointment or lotion that he had in a flat, round canister. His meticulous attention to covering every area of exposed skin grated on my nerves. First the nose and ears, then neck, cheeks, hands, and ankles. When he reapplied it to the ears, I’d had enough.

“What is that stuff?” I grumbled. “It smells like shoe polish.”

“It’s made out of Mentholatum, lemon juice, and saddle soap. It keeps the bugs away.”

“Bugs? What bugs?” As soon as I asked it, I had a feeling I knew what was coming.

“Remember that part where Pi runs into a swarm of biting insects? They can’t be too far off, and I don’t like to get bitten by bugs.”

I did remember that part. In fact, I must have listened more closely to the story of Pi than I thought. The bugs, the sharks, the hurricane. I remembered it all.

I smiled at Early. The kind of smile you give to a little kid who still believes in the Tooth Fairy. “Well, you be sure to lather up real good, then. Sit tight and don’t let the
bedbugs bite.” If I’d been sitting closer, I might have ruffled his hair.

I rowed on as the fog thickened around us, and then—“Ouch!” I slapped at the back of my neck. Then again at my hand and my ankle. It wasn’t fog; it was a cloud of mosquitoes or biting gnats or maybe tsetse flies. Early sat calmly, apparently unaffected by the bugs.

“Ouch!” I said, again, swatting at my cheek. “Kind of late in the season for mosquitoes, isn’t it?”

“It’s been a warmer-than-usual fall,” Early said, looking over the side of the boat. “It’s called an Indian summer. That’s the opposite of a blackberry winter.”

“Quick! Give me that stuff. I’m being eaten alive!”

Early tossed me the tin as he concentrated, staring intently into the water, first on the starboard side of the boat, then the port. “Shh,” he whispered, with a finger to his lips.

“What? Do you think my talking is going to attract more bugs? I think we’re already in the thick of it.”

“Not bugs,” he whispered, still gazing into the water. “Sharks.”

I stared at him. I even opened my mouth to explain to him that sharks did not live in freshwater rivers. But after swatting another insect, I clamped my mouth shut, grabbed the dragging oars, and began rowing with a vengeance.

The Kennebec River stretched out for miles in front of us. Once I’d gotten Early’s bug repellent on, the insects left me alone, and we eventually rowed out of the swarm. By nine o’clock, the clouds had lifted, and the air around us was crisp and clear. I always loved October at home, with its
morning chill in the air, the afternoon sun warming the wooden planks of the front porch, bowls of steaming chili, and of course, baseball. I could feel a familiar ache coming back again, and I didn’t want it. I needed something to distract me.

“So, Early, why don’t you fill me in on the latest installment of Pi? What’s been going on in his world lately?”

“There are only a few numbers left that I know, and I don’t have those memorized. Some parts I can tell from memory, and other parts—I need to read the numbers. After that I have to figure out more numbers, but it takes a lot of calculating.”

That made me wonder, how
did
Early read those numbers? It was clear to me now that he was not making up a story and pretending that it came from the numbers. I should have known Early was not one to play make-believe. He may have thought some crazy, unbelievable things, but he
believed
them.

“Can you teach me to read numbers?” I asked.

“I don’t think it’s something you can learn. Nobody taught me. I’ve just always seen numbers differently than most people. Fisher says it’s a gift. He says when he sees the numbers that start with 3.14, it’s just a bunch of figures that don’t mean anything more than numbers. That made me sad for him. For
me
, they are blue and purple and sand and ocean and rough and smooth and loud and whispering, all at the same time.” He paused for a breath.

I wished I could see what he saw—color and landscape, texture and voice.

We passed under a rain cloud that shed a few sprinkles
on us. It made me think of Billie Holiday, her rich voice. She could just hum with no words and you could hear the sadness, the pain, the feeling. That made me think.

“Maybe it’s like listening to music,” I said. “How it can make you feel things without any words. There was a song at my mother’s funeral. It was all in Latin, and I didn’t understand a word of it, but the way the sounds blended together and the music rose and fell, well, it could make a person cry—if they were prone to that sort of thing.” I blinked hard.

“How come Kansas doesn’t have any color?”

“We have color.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, we—” Oh, not that again. “What makes you think we don’t have color?”

“Because in
The Wizard of Oz
, Kansas is all in black and white and grays. There’s no color until Dorothy gets to Oz.”

“Oh.” I laughed. “That’s only in the movies. Kansas has plenty of color. Especially in the fall.” I allowed the memory of it to draw me back. “The sky is a beautiful blue.”

“Like the ocean?”

“Kind of. My mom says if the world ever got turned upside down, you could just dive right into the sky and swim in it. And the wheat just before harvest is a golden blanket of waves and ripples.”

“That’s nice. What does it sound like?”

“It’s just waving wheat. It doesn’t make any noise.” But then I thought about it. “Well, I guess if you listen really hard, it makes a
shoosh
ing sound.”

“What if you listened harder?”

“If I listened harder”—I closed my eyes as I kept rowing—“I suppose it would sound kind of happy and full, like Benny Goodman and his band playing ‘In the Mood.’ It would be music you’d want to dance to.” I kept my eyes closed, trusting Early to guide me if I started rowing off course. “And then there’s all the fall produce in my mom’s garden and the Bentley orchards.” I could practically feel the dirt under my hands. “The pumpkins are bright orange, there are sweet red apples and yellow squash, and of course, there’s plenty of green. And all that ends up sounding like
mmmmmm
. Pumpkin pie, meaty stews, and cinnamon-apple cobbler. And the trees—”

“Yeah, the trees,” said Early.

I opened my eyes. I’d always liked the brilliance of leaves changing color at home, but here—I’d never been
surrounded
by trees like this, their leaves all turning color, to bright oranges, deep yellows, and flaming reds. Whole forests of trees that looked like they were on fire.

I eased up on the rowing, grateful for the rest and the moment to soak it all up. Early had given me a glimpse into what he saw and heard and felt through his numbers. And there was a beauty in it that was warm and real. “I suppose if color could be sound,” I said, “these trees would be playing a whole symphony.”

“A Mozart symphony,” Early answered, “if it were Sunday.”

We rowed along in a contented quiet, listening to the sounds of all the colors around us, when a barge emerged
from a little side stream and pulled up alongside our boat. There were seven or eight bearded and weathered faces staring down at us.

These faces belonged to a ragged band that leaned over their ship’s railing with arms crossed. They smelled a little rank even from a distance and looked like they’d been apart from civilization for some time.

They just stared, and I wondered if they were waiting for us to speak first. Then the group parted, and a large man stepped forward. He put his hands on the rail of the barge and peered down at us. Dense trees reached out over the Kennebec River, allowing brief flashes of light to shine through the branches and leaves as we floated underneath. It was in those flashes that I could see the man’s face—it was scarred on one side, and a black patch covered his left eye.

“That’s a fine-looking boat you have there, lads.” His face pulled into a contorted smile. “You look like you’ve had a long stretch of rowing. How about we tether your boat behind ours, and we’ll motor you upstream a ways?”

Early caught his breath. His eyes opened wide. I stopped rowing, and our boat lagged just a bit behind their barge. It was enough distance for Early to whisper what was on his mind.

“Pirates!”

16
 

Q
uicker than we could say
Jolly Roger
, we were pulled on board the barge, and the
Maine
was tied to a rope to be towed behind. One of the men with bulgy eyes took a firm hold on the back of Early’s jacket and plopped him in the corner of the barge, next to two slobbering bloodhounds. One of the dogs didn’t even look up; the other gave Early a passing glance and continued licking himself in what my mom would have called an unseemly manner. Then the man deposited me in the corner next to Early, and both dogs gave low warning growls.

The bulgy-eyed man rummaged through Early’s backpack and took out an apple, then pulled a dirty knife from his pocket and wiped it on his pants. He sliced a piece out of the apple and chewed it right in front of us.

Granted, it was rude to eat with your mouth open and not even offer us a bite, but if that was the definition of a pirate, my uncle Max would be a card-carrying member,
complete with a peg leg and a parrot perched on his shoulder.

No, these were just scruffy woodsmen giving us a lift upstream. Still, the scruffy woodsman with the apple was eyeing us pretty closely and seemed intent on us not moving a muscle. He rummaged through our packs some more and seemed to take a liking to Early’s compass. He admired its shiny case, shoved it in his pocket, and dumped the backpacks at our feet.

The barge chugged along, gasping and sputtering, sending occasional plumes of smoke into our faces. I thought about asking if we could move to the other side of the boat, away from the engine, but thought better of it. Early piped up instead.

“Do you have any rum?” he asked.

The man didn’t answer. He just continued eating the apple. I nudged Early, trying to shush him, but he went on. “Pirates like rum. I’ve never had any, but I heard it puts a fire in your belly. Does it do that to you?” Still no answer. “Sometimes I get a fire in my belly, but it’s usually just gas. It doesn’t feel good, so I don’t think I’d like rum. Do you think you’d like rum, Jackie?”

“No. Now be quiet and let the man eat in peace,” I whispered.

“But that’s our last apple.”

“Then let him eat our last apple in peace.”

Early finally quieted down as we slowly made our way upriver. I don’t know if it was the fumes or just fatigue, but my eyelids grew heavy, and the next thing I knew, it was
almost dark. The barge’s engine was off, and I could hear the side butting up against what sounded like a wooden dock.