Navigating Early (16 page)

Other than that, this translucence, they were just men and women going about normal daily tasks of chopping wood, washing clothes, honing tools. They lived near one another but separately, in tents and huts. They spoke to one another, but only words of necessity.

Pi eventually took his place among them, set up his own tent and his own work. But still he wondered,
Who are these people, and why are they here?
As he watched them from a distance, he considered them a group apart from himself. Until one day, as he placed twigs together to make a fire, he noticed his own hands—the thin sheerness of them, their translucence—and suddenly he saw everything clearly.

I am one of them
.

He saw it in his hands as clearly as he saw it in their faces. The grief, the loss, the pain. This was a land of lost souls. Human beings who had weathered great storms in life, had suffered unspeakable loss, had been put to painful tests of existence, and still remained standing—but just barely. These people, like Pi, had been drawn to this place by shifting currents and fickle winds and had all ended up here for the same reason: to bury their dark secrets and accidental treasures.

17
 

D
ark secrets and accidental treasures
. The words drifted their way into my drowsy head. The heat from the hearth had warmed me through, and with a couple of corned beef sandwiches in my stomach, my eyelids drooped and I shifted in my seat, trying to stay awake. MacScott’s men were full of ale and heavy with sleep, but MacScott’s eye remained open, glowering, as Early continued his story. MacScott traced his finger over the wooden grain of the gun stock, almost in a caress. Early had captured the pirate’s attention in a way that was both admirable and frightening.

I heard Early in a distant, far-off way. It was as if I were on a boat, floating in the middle of a lazy stream, with wakefulness on one bank and sleep on the other.

Dream took over, and I felt myself floating in the world of Pi, translucent, among the lost souls. I saw the faces of the men and women going about their chores, but I realized
that the things they were doing didn’t lead to anything, didn’t accomplish any task. A young man in overalls placed kindling in a campfire but cooked no food. A bearded man cut down a tree but left it where it fell. A woman wearing an apron hung little-boy denims on a line to dry, but … there was no little boy to wear them. I wanted to move on. To row away from this place. But I had no oars. I clutched the sides of the boat. My hands were light and sheer. Translucent.
I am one of them
, I said, rousing from my dream.

My heart was pounding. MacScott’s chin rested on his chest, his rifle cradled in his arms. He and his men slept soundly, but I couldn’t hear Early. He wasn’t sitting at the hearth. I clutched the arms of the easy chair, glancing at my hands to make sure they were solid. But still my heart pounded. I
was
one of them. I was lost. I’d felt this way before. At the regatta. I had been trying to row my way back to the dock in a sinking boat. Early had called out his commands that guided me back. Where was Early now?

I recalled Early’s telling of Pi being hauled aboard the pirate ship. And yes, Pi’s nighttime storytelling on the ship kept him alive, but still he was thrown into the brig every morning. I didn’t know if there was a brig at the Bear Knuckle Inn, but I didn’t want to wait around to find out.

Then I saw him. Early stood at the counter as the young barmaid cleaned mugs and whiskey glasses. She kept her head lowered, her eyes on the hot, sudsy water as she washed one glass after another.

I moved to the bar. “Come on, Early. We need to get out of here before everyone wakes up.”

But Early paid me no mind. He just looked at the girl as if he knew her from somewhere.

“Is your name Pauline?”

Pauline?
I recognized the name. She was the Haggard and Homely Wench, from the pirate vessel.

The girl shook her head, a limp strand of hair hanging in her face.

“Are you sure? Maybe it was and you don’t remember.”

“I think I know my own name,” she mumbled.

“Come on, Early. Let’s go.”

Then Early did something I’ll never forget. He reached across the bar and gently took that strand of stringy hair and tucked it behind the girl’s ear.

She looked up, startled.

“You have a very pretty smile.”

“What?”

“You have a very pretty smile. You just don’t remember.”

She touched a soapy hand to her face. She still wasn’t smiling, not with her mouth, anyway, but something had changed in her green eyes. The dullness was gone, and something light and alive had taken its place. With that and the bubbles of soap clinging to her hair, there was something … well … pretty about her.

But before she could say anything else, there was a terrible explosion outside that shook the whole place, rattled the windows, and nearly made the bear’s head come off the wall.

It was enough to wake everyone in the Bear Knuckle Inn, and we all streamed out to see what had happened.

MacScott, his men, Early and I, we all looked to the top
of the mountain that Olson had driven up earlier. The explosion had shot a great blaze of fire into the air. And creeping down the mountain was a trail of fire shooting its way left, then right, in a winding blaze of yellow and orange and heat.

“Get up there and put out that fire before it hits the trees!” yelled MacScott. “Bring a truck round, and we’ll go up the back side.”

Men were scurrying every which way. And I couldn’t take my eyes off the blazing spectacle.

“Early,” I said.

“Yeah, Jackie.”

“What
was
in those barrels?” Those barrels that were right side up and upside down on the rickety truck with gaps in the bed.

“Nothing but dried-up rum. It was all turned to black powder.”

Black powder. Explosive powder
.

It must have been pouring out of the kegs all the winding way up the mountain. I didn’t know if it was the gas lantern or maybe a stray cigarette that had set off the explosion, but it didn’t matter. Early needed no explanation as he looked up the mountain in awe.

“I’ve never seen a volcano before.”

18
 

T
his was our chance to retrieve the
Maine
and make a clean break from MacScott and his band of not-so-merry men. Early and I made our way down the hill from the Bear Knuckle Inn to the river, where the
Maine
was still tethered to the pirate ship, or rather, the logger’s boat. But as we slipped and slid down the wooded slope, dodging branches and twigs, we came to a sudden halt—partly because we reached the bottom with a thump, but mostly because of what we saw. Even with all the fire and noise and hubbub, Long John Silver staggered his way ahead of us, down to the dock, and clambered aboard the logging boat.

What he was doing, I couldn’t say, but it involved a lot of banging, clanging, pitching, hurling, and cussing. And even if we had dared to sneak down to the dock to untie the boat, it was too late, as the barge suddenly came to life with a cough and a sputter and slowly puttered away from
the dock. There was nothing for it but to watch as the boat chugged off with the
Maine
in tow.

It was a pathetic sight—the legendary rowing boat of Morton Hill Academy’s fallen hero being led upstream into the wilderness like some great king being held captive and taken away in bondage.

It was painful to watch, but we did, Early and I. We watched like some kind of honor guard, waiting until the
Maine
rounded a bend and drifted out of sight.

“Now what do we do?” I said, not really expecting Early to have an answer.

“Let’s go, Jackie. We have to walk now.”

Part of me wanted to argue. To say
We can’t just head off into the dark
. But I could already hear how that conversation would play out.
Yes, we can. No, we can’t. Yes, we can
. And as always, Early would have the last word. Still, I opened my mouth to argue.

The words never came out. Instead, up the hill at the Bear Knuckle Inn, we heard the unmistakable sound of a lever-action rifle being readied for firing.

“Let’s go,” I said, and we headed into the darkness.

We’d lost some of the supplies that we’d left on the
Maine
, but Early and I each had our packs on our backs, which meant that we still had the essentials—the map, matches, our blankets, a flashlight, tobacco, extra socks, and lots of jelly beans. So in the orange glow of the burning mountain, we walked. It wasn’t so bad, traveling at night. The air was still, there was a three-quarter moon, and so far, we had
encountered no bugs, sharks, pirates, or volcanoes. What more could a couple of travelers ask for?

Then I heard a twig snap. I stopped and held my breath, straining to hear what manner of creature might go bump, or snap, or hiss or growl, for that matter, in the night. But the lions and tigers and bears remained silent. Oh, my.
That could be worse. They could be lying in wait
. My mind was playing all kinds of tricks on me when Early broke the loud silence.

“Jackie, did you know the Appalachian Trail—”

“Yes,” I answered, hoping to avoid the list of facts that was sure to be coming my way. “I do happen to know that the Appalachian Trail is the nation’s longest man-made trail, stretching through fourteen states, from Maine to Georgia,” I said, quoting a nature journal I’d read in the school library. “It’s roughly two thousand one hundred and seventy-eight miles long, and very few people have hiked the trail all the way through.”

I paused, pleased with my knowledge, and waited for Early’s reaction. Unfortunately, it was a little too dark to see his face, but I imagined him looking a little deflated that I had stolen his thunder. “See,” I said, “even a kid from Kansas knows a thing or two about the Appalachian Trail.”

“So you already know about the hiker who got stuck in a bog and had to be pulled out by a couple of horses. And that the horses got spooked and nearly tore him in two.”

Now I was the one who was deflated. His trail knowledge was much more colorful than my own.

“And,” he continued, “did you know that a logger went missing on the trail a few years ago?”

“Uh, no, I didn’t know that.” I racked my brain for some equally interesting and disturbing tidbit about the trail, or Maine, or Kansas, or anything, but only stumbled on a tree root. “What happened to him? The logger, I mean.”

“They don’t know, but if he wasn’t killed by some wild animal, or crushed by a falling tree, or drowned in the river—well, then he’s probably lost his mind in the woods. People do that, you know. Go crazy when they’re lost. They call it
going mad
, only it doesn’t mean
mad
like you’re angry but
mad
like
cuckoo
.” Early drew circles around one ear to emphasize his meaning. “You can also say
nuts
or
cracked
or
bonkers
or
bananas. Batty
is my favorite. That’s British for
crazy
. Which would you rather be, Jackie? Angry mad or crazy mad? I think I’d rather be crazy mad, because you can be crazy and still happy. Mozart may have been a little crazy, but his music …”

Great
, I thought as I stopped listening to Early. Not only did we have to worry about bugs, sharks, pirates, and volcanoes, not to mention a ferocious bear that slashed people’s eyeballs out, but apparently there was also the possibility of a crazed logger on the loose. Or the possibility of us stumbling over a slashed, mauled, half-eaten logger’s body. Either way, this trip was filled with the strange and dangerous. We walked in silence, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched. Somehow I suspected that we had not seen the last of MacScott.

After some time, when we could no longer see the fire and smelled only a hint of smoke, we figured we were far enough from the Bear Knuckle Inn and the volcanic mountain that
we could take a rest. We stretched out under our blankets, using our backpacks as pillows, and I could soon tell from his heavy breathing and slight snoring that Early had fallen fast asleep. I was tired too. Exhausted, in fact. But for me, sleep did not come so fast.