Navigating Early (31 page)

He turned to face the auditorium and spoke without the use of the microphone. He didn’t need it, as his voice was already loud and the room was pin-drop quiet.

“Proof by contradiction,” he began. “Professor Stanton says there are no more ones in the number. Unfortunately, his numbers are wrong. The one did disappear for a while, but Professor Stanton didn’t know that Pi was just lost. He was sad and had a big hole in his heart. He’d lost so much and didn’t have his mother or father or any friends. He just needed more time in the empty space. Until”—Early pointed to the sequence of numbers that had made the crowd gasp—“someone would find him.”

Finding Pi
 

F
OR A LONG TIME
, Pi lay hurt and alone, drifting between life and death. His thoughts meandered from memory to dream. His hands, his arms, and his whole body were so translucent that he was certain he could no longer be counted among the living.

Until he heard a sound. It was a voice, hoarse and raspy. “Is someone there?”

Pi sat up, or thought he did, although he could barely feel the rock beneath him. His head ached where he’d cracked it. He touched the trickle of blood that made its way down his scalp. If he could feel his head ache and his blood still trickled, then he must be alive, he reasoned.

“Hello,” he croaked. “I am here.”

A shadowy figure peered over the ledge above him. Another tortured soul whose burdens had led him to this place.

“Take my hand,” the voice said.

Pi got to his feet and thrust the pack up and out of the
hole. It landed with a thud. He reached for a rock jutting out above his head, then found a foothold and hoisted himself up a few inches. He searched for another rock and another foothold. Finally, he was able to grab hold of the hand that reached for him. The hand was firm and strong and pulled him out of the hole.

Pi had many questions to ask.
What are you doing in this desolate place? Can you really see me? Am I still alive?

But before he could speak, he gazed into the face of the one whose hand he still held. Pi stared, dumbfounded.

“Father?”

The man looked equally surprised and held his son in a long embrace. “Pi,” he answered in a whisper.

Standing in his father’s arms, something shifted in Pi. He took in what seemed like his first real breath in a very long time. The air around him felt different on his skin. Pi wasn’t sure if he had earned the name Polaris or not—but it no longer mattered. He had longed to hear the name his mother called him.
Pi
.

Words flowed out, and Pi learned that his father had been hunting when their village was attacked. He returned to find such devastation that he’d wanted to leave along with the other survivors. But he stayed for many months, waiting for his only son to return. His son did not come back. Heartbroken, he felt that his burden was too great to bear, and he, like Pi, was drawn to the place of lost souls.

Now that father and son had been reunited, they needed to find their way out of the winding catacombs. But how? It was dark, and they had been wandering in the maze of tunnels and caves for so long. Then Pi saw the drawings on the
rock wall. The drawings were simple and moved from one cave to the next, telling the story of an ancient people on a journey. The people in the story followed the sun until it grew dark. Then, in another room, the drawing showed them following the stars, until finally, there was a bear. A great black bear, shown leading her cubs. The people followed her. And so did Pi and his father.

As they walked, the air gradually got cooler and sweeter. The whispers and sighs faded away, and eventually the light of day replaced the darkness. Pi and his father passed through a misty waterfall and found themselves on dry ground.

Both of them took a moment to breathe in the fresh air and warm their faces in the sunlight. Pi’s hands were no longer translucent. They were flesh and blood.

35
 

W
hen Early finished, the auditorium was silent.

The moderator stared at the chalkboard and then back at Early. “Well, you’ve given us a great deal to think about, young man. I’m sure there are many of us who would like to take a closer look at your figures and ask a few questions.”

Professor Stanton’s face grew red. “This is absurd. He’s a boy!” He turned his attention to Early. “You can’t come in here with your silly story and prove that my theory is wrong.”

“Yes, I can,” Early replied without emotion.

I could see it coming like a freight train.

“Cannot.”

“Can too.”

Professor Stanton didn’t know what I knew all too well. There is no arguing with Early Auden. But the good professor was a learned man, and he’d figure it out sooner or later.

“Can
not
.”

“Can too.”

Probably later.

The story of Pi seemed to be one that could conjure up a lot of different memories and connections. Pi’s story was a journey, like that of Fisher. But as Early talked this time of Pi being hurt and losing his way, it reminded me of someone else. During the ride home, I glanced sideways at my dad and noticed for the first time the worry lines on his face. He wasn’t in uniform, and his body seemed to relax without the weight of his medals and brass. I thought about the way he had clung to me when Early and I returned to Morton Hill—like a sailor who’d been washed overboard and found a life preserver to hold on to. Could it be that my father, the navigator, had been washed overboard and lost his bearings, just like me?

I could imagine my navigator ring at the bottom of the river, and I was sorry I’d thrown it in. But I also knew I didn’t need a navigator ring to find my bearings.

When we were back on campus at Morton Hill, my dad gave Early a warm handshake.

“You did a fine job back there, son,” my father said. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you were talking about, but you seemed to have all your
i
’s dotted and
t
’s crossed.”

Early smiled. “Yes, sir.”

Early passed me on his way back to his workshop. “I don’t think your dad was paying attention,” he said in a whisper that was loud and clear. “There weren’t any
i
’s or
t
’s in the equation.”

My dad shook his head as Early walked away. Then he leaned against the jeep and crossed his arms. It felt like when he’d talked to Fisher. Easy and open. Like he’d just taken a deep breath and was letting the words exhale out instead of holding them back.

“I should never have brought you so far from home,” he said. “I guess I just didn’t know what to do. Imagine that. I give umpteen commands all day long and navigate a ship all over the ocean, and I couldn’t figure out what step to take next.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Jack, about packing up all of your mom’s stuff. I just thought if I could put things in order, if I could make things right—but I couldn’t.”

He raised his face to the sun for a long minute. “Well, what do you say? Maybe it’s time to pull up anchor and head home.”

I leaned up against the jeep, next to him, and crossed my arms. “I don’t know. I don’t mind it here. And, see, the thing is, I sort of wrecked a boat a while back.” I raised my face to the sun. “You want to help me build a new one?”

EPILOGUE

Connecting the dots. That’s what Mom said stargazing is all about.
It’s the same up there as it is down here, Jackie. You have to look for the things that connect us all. Find the ways our paths cross, our lives intersect, and our hearts collide
.

Once I started paying attention, I noticed all kinds of crossings, intersections, and collisions. For one, Fisher showed great improvement under the watchful care of a certain young candy striper at the local hospital. She had curly red hair and green eyes and answered to the name of Pauline. But that was only because that’s what Early had called her the first time we met her at the Bear Knuckle Inn, and she thought it was prettier than her real name, which was Ethel. She took Fisher for long walks and even held his hand, which hardly shook anymore.

Then there was Gunnar’s letter to his sweetheart, Emmaline. Gunnar had given me that letter, asking me to do what he couldn’t bring himself to do—mail the letter. So I
did mail it, with my address on the envelope, just in case. It came back with a handwritten note that said
Return to Sender
. Apparently Emmaline had moved on. So the letter went back into the little rose-colored book of poetry in my desk for some time, where it would have stayed indefinitely, had I not chosen Hopkins as the topic of my famous poet essay and had I not acquired some of Early’s deductive reasoning skills of putting two and two together. Although, with Early’s method, it was more like putting together two and two plus a pinch of this and a dash of that.

It happened one day in the library. I had to write a paper on a famous poet, and being familiar with Gunnar’s
fire-folk
, I chose Hopkins. Miss B. said she might have just the thing. She reached into her desk and pulled out a very old-looking book. It was a collection of poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins. She told me I might look at the volume in the library but could not check it out, as it had been a gift to her.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. Taking the book to an open table, I glanced at the inside cover. In a masculine hand, it read:
To E. from G. Christmas 1928
. The date rang a bell. Gunnar had given a book of poetry to Emmaline for Christmas. Had it been in 1928? I took the
Journal of Poetry by Young Americans
from my book bag and studied the name on the envelope.
Emmaline Bellefleur
. Inching my way closer to Miss B.’s desk, I hoped to spy something with her full name on it.

She looked up from her work. “Can I help you, Mr. Baker?”

“Um, this is a very nice book,” I said, handing it back to her. “Do you have a favorite poem?”

She looked surprised by the question and seemed to catch her breath. “Well, yes, I do,” she said softly. “I have a special fondness for ‘The Starlight Night’—all that talk of stars and fire-folk and circle-citadels.” She seemed to get lost for a moment in the poem or in her memory.

I carefully lifted the letter and said, “I think this is for you, Miss Bellefleur.”

She looked at the handwriting on the envelope, then back at me with tears in her eyes. I didn’t stick around to watch her read it, but I knew I wouldn’t be surprised if Gunnar Skoglund showed up on the grounds of Morton Hill Academy in the near future.

Then there was Archibald MacScott. The night of the cave, and the snakebite, and Early’s seizure, and a million other things, Fisher had gone back to the site of the bear attack to bury a second body—MacScott’s—but the one-eyed man and the 1894 Winchester were gone. There was a good deal of blood on the ground that led away from the site, but the trail ended at the river.

We’d thought the bear had killed him right there on the spot. But in light of this new evidence, Early thought maybe MacScott had wanted to have a proper burial at sea, so he had mustered what little life he’d had left to drag himself to the closest body of water and dropped dead as he plunged into the river. Then Early thought better of it and decided that the Winchester, which had been the great burden of MacScott’s life, had become too heavy to bear and maybe
he’d just bent to drink from the river but the gun’s weight had pulled him to a watery death. Early seemed to find both scenarios equally gruesome and interesting and never declared which he liked best.

Back at school, the boys of Morton Hill Academy were always eager to hear the tale of Early’s and my journey. As I told it, over and over, I realized what an adventure it had been. Who would have thought a motion-sick kid from Kansas would have embarked on a journey that included pirates, a volcano, a great white whale, a hundred-year-old woman, a lost hero, a hidden cave, a great Appalachian bear, and a timber rattlesnake—in Maine!

My mom was right. Our stories are all intertwined. It’s just a matter of connecting the dots. I keep looking for her to pop up somewhere in this story. To somehow, mysteriously, be a part of the connections, intersections, and collisions. I keep feeling that I should have something more than just the broken fragments of her teacup tucked away in a box in my closet. But I know Elaine Gallagher Baker, the civilian; she’ll turn up somewhere. And when she does, I’ll hear her say,
There are no coincidences. Just miracles by the boatload
. In the meantime, I have a piece of paper on my wall. It’s a drawing of my own constellation, with stars named Dad, Gunnar, Miss B., Fisher, Martin, Eustasia Johannsen, Early, and me—Jackie Baker. With a red pencil, I connected each star. And not so coincidentally, it formed the shape of a teacup with little red flowers.