Navigating Early

  Early looked up from his knots. “That’s sad about Pi’s mom, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” I said, my voice catching in my throat.

  “You’re thinking about your mom, aren’t you?”

  “No,” I lied, nearly losing hold of an oar.

  “Yes, you are.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “What was she like?”

  I looked up at Early. I’d never had to describe her before. Everyone I knew also knew my mom. “She was just a normal mom,” I answered, not giving Early’s question its due. Then I remembered he didn’t have a mom. “She was pretty, and smart, I guess. She knew how to take off a bandage without pulling off the scab. She didn’t mind putting worms on a fishing hook. And she was good with words. Her high school teacher entered one of her poems in a contest. She didn’t win but said it was nice to be considered.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She died, that’s all,” I said, surprised to hear myself say it. And then I realized, not only had I never had to describe my mom, I’d also never had to explain what had happened to her. I hadn’t really spoken of her since she died. People had whispered their condolences at the funeral, but I hadn’t been required to give a response other than Thank you for coming. Early, however, was not a guest at a funeral.

  “But what happened?” he persisted.

  “I don’t know!” All I could do was keep rowing to stay ahead of myself.

  Early was quiet, but I knew he was waiting for an answer.

  “We’d been talking down by the creek,” I said, leaving out the part about getting lost during the Scout campout. “She said she had a headache and was going to bed early. But no one dies of a headache. The doctors said she had a brain aneurysm. That she died in her sleep.” I lifted the oars out of the water and let the boat glide. “But I wouldn’t know, because I wasn’t there.”

  I was absent, I thought, recalling the words in Early’s Pi story. I was absent, and I returned too late.

  “I was supposed to be in charge. I was supposed to take care of my mom. But I wasn’t even there. I was sleeping in the barn because it was cool there.” And because I was mad. “When I went into the house the next morning for breakfast, it was still dark; her chipped teacup with the little red flowers was hanging on the hook by the sink. She hadn’t touched it. I went to her room and found her in her bed. It shouldn’t have happened that way.”

  “You’re right,” Early said. “Those are two different things.”

  “What are?” I asked, surprised that he thought I was right about anything.

  “Dying and sleeping. A person should be able to do one without the other one sneaking up on him.”

  I tried to imagine those words coming from my mom. Tried recalling her voice. I realized I couldn’t hear her saying it. Her voice was gone.

  I tried to focus instead on how many strokes of the oars I took, and how many times I pumped my legs forward and backward, and how many breaths I took. Eventually, I guess I wore myself out with counting and pushing and breathing. Then I noticed Early pulling items out of his backpack. Honey, tobacco, lavender-scented ointment, jelly beans.

  “What’s all that stuff for?” I asked, trying to get my mind off my clenched gut and aching muscles.

  “They’re called provisions—things you need on a trip. But you can also call them victuals, provender, necessaries, staples. In the army, provisions can be called rations, but my favorite is foodstuffs.”

  “I know what provisions are, but all that stuff you brought—the honey, tobacco, jelly beans? What’s all that for?”

  “Tobacco is for ringworm and poison ivy,” he said, taking Bucky from his pocket. He poured a handful of water on the frog to moisten his skin.

  “And the jelly beans?”

  “They’re for Bucky. He likes jelly beans.” Early held one out to the frog, who gave only a halfhearted croak. “And the honey and lavender ointment are for snakebites.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “The rattlesnakes.”

  “Timber rattlesnakes,” Early clarified.

  “Everybody else seems to think there are no timber rattlesnakes in Maine. How come you’re so sure there are?”

  I knew my mistake the minute I asked the question.

  “Lots of reasons. First, it’s a matter of statistics and odds. There were seven sightings of timber rattlesnakes last year in eastern New Hampshire, and twelve in southern Canada. The odds of the timber rattlesnake not going past the Maine border are very low.”

  “Uh-huh,” I responded, with limited enthusiasm.

  “And timber rattlesnakes like quiet, remote areas, especially deciduous forests with rough terrain. They find a comfortable habitat in open, rocky ledges where temperatures are higher, but they also like cool, thick woods with a dense forest canopy. Maine has both. Not to mention the migratory patterns of the timber rattlesnake, which indicate that …”

  “Fascinating,” I muttered as Early wrapped up his informative segment on the timber rattlesnake. I yawned but tuned in again just in time to hear his closing argument.

  “Bucky gets nervous when there are snakes around, especially timber rattlesnakes.” He stroked Bucky’s head.

  Bucky didn’t look particularly nervous. In fact, he looked a little lethargic from the journey so far and hadn’t touched the jelly bean that Early still held in his outstretched hand. I thought about suggesting again that Early let the frog go but didn’t want another lecture on fidelity.

  I continued rowing in silence.

  We’d stopped a couple of times throughout the day, but it was near dusk, and we were both exhausted and hungry. Early’s peanut butter sandwiches, apples, hard-boiled eggs, and canned beans were running out fast.

  We pulled the Maine out of the water and hid her in a patch of trees along the riverbank. There was a fairly decent clearing of grass and fallen leaves that would make for a nice campsite.

  The night air was clear, and the temperature dropped quickly with the setting sun. I rubbed my hands together, trying to warm them with my breath. As my stomach growled and my cheeks grew cold, I wondered how I’d gotten into this mess of a quest with Early.

  “Let’s get a fire going,” I said, thinking maybe I should have just stayed back at school and been miserable for a week. At least I’d have had a warm bed to sleep in.

  “Superman could build a fire with his X-ray vision,” said Early.

  But then I would have missed out on this encyclopedia of comic-book information.

  “Yeah, well, Captain America would have to do it the old-fashioned way, and so do we. Help me gather up some twigs and grass.”

  As I placed dry leaves and grass in a pile and shaped a twig pyramid above it, I was glad I had learned to build a fire, even though my road to being an Eagle Scout had taken a detour when most of the troop dads went to war. Not to mention the fact that I’d gotten lost on the first survival outing. Only Jimmy Arnold’s dad was left, and that was because he got a ranking of 4-F, which meant he was unfit for service on account of his vision. He was a banker and didn’t know a mulberry from a whistleberry. The troop nearly fell apart when we were on a campout and he reached down to pet the “nice doggy” and had his hand bitten by a badger. Later we thought he’d gotten rabies, but it turned out he’d just developed a nervous twitch.

  I pulled out my Swiss Army knife, with its built-in can opener, and cranked the lids off the two cans of beans. We didn’t have a bowl, so I set the cans in the dirt and warmed them near the fire.

  We divvied up the hard-boiled eggs and waited for the beans to warm.

  My mind went to Fisher Auden. I remembered his happy-go-lucky face in the picture in the trophy case as he held his championship cup. I wanted to ask Early about his brother but thought it might upset him, and there was no record here to soothe him with its empty space.

  Plus, it was late and we were both tired. The beans went down good, and with full stomachs and the warmth radiating from the campfire, we str
etched out in silence, Early on one side of the fire and me on the other. It reminded me of the painful, awkward silence after my mom’s death. All the boys from the baseball team signed a card, but no one said anything. No one came over. No one even looked me in the eye. It was as if I had something contagious—as if somehow what had happened to me could happen to them. Except for Melvin Trumboldt. He came to the house and found me picking cucumbers out of Mom’s garden. He was the first person my age to drop by or even speak to me. And he said, “I’m real sorry about your mom.” That meant a lot to me.

  The fire had burned down to glowing embers when I finally worked up the courage to speak. “I’m sorry, Early, about your brother.”

  Early rolled over and said, “That’s okay. We’ll find him.”

  I found that a bit confusing. “You mean you don’t know where he’s buried?”

  “He’s not dead, Jackie. He’s just lost.”

  I sat up. “What do you mean, he’s not dead?”

  “Just like Pi. Haven’t you noticed how Fisher and Pi have been on the same journey?” Early reached for his backpack and took out the leather journal. “Remember when Pi first set off on his journey but the sea knew he wasn’t ready? Pi had a lot he needed to learn first. Well, look.” Early held out a postcard from Dover, England. “Fisher did the same thing. See, he says they were teaching him all kinds of things he would need to know, like how to eat on the run, run in his sleep, and sleep standing up. I bet Pi didn’t even know how to do that,” said Early, with the pride of a little brother.

  “Well, yeah, it’s called boot camp, Early. All soldiers have to do that.”

  “And see here,” Early continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. “After Pi built himself a boat, he set off on a great voyage.”

  “Let me guess. Fisher boarded a troop ship and sailed off into the sunset.”

  “It wasn’t sunset. I saw it in a newsreel at the Anchor Theater. It was really early in the morning—still dark, and they set sail on boats that could move in water and on land. See here. It was on June sixth. Summer before last.”

  “You mean D-day? That was the invasion of Normandy. But that’s not the same thing as—”

  “And remember when Pi landed on that one shore and the people were unfriendly? Remember how they threw sticks and arrows at him? Well, look at this.”

  Early handed me a worn newspaper article from the Portland Press Herald that read:

  ALLIED FORCES STORM

  THE BEACHES AT NORMANDY

  Germans answer with Deadly Force

  HEAVY CASUALTIES IN FIRST DAY

  “Heavy casualties, Jackie. That means those Germans killed a lot of them. But not Fisher. They missed him.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Early was shaping the Pi story to match what he knew of his brother’s life in the army.

  I wanted to smack him, but my heart was breaking for him at the same time.

  I tried reminding him of the facts. “But the dog tags. The letter.”

  “They tried to tell me he was dead. They must not have known he said he’d come back. That’s what he told me before he left. And now he’s looking for the Great Bear, just like Pi. And when he finds him, he won’t be lost anymore.”

  The Great Bear. Now it was clear. The Great Appalachian Bear.

  “Early, you need to listen to me very carefully. Are you listening?”

  “Yes, Jackie, I’m listening.”

  “They all say they’re coming back. Every soldier says that. And they mean it. They want to believe it. It’s just that … not all of them make it back.”

  “I know that some of the soldiers die. But Fisher is still alive. And he’s coming back. See here?” Early said, pulling more newspaper clippings and notes from his backpack. “His squad was supposed to blow up the Gaston Bridge along the Allier River in central France. With the direction of the current and the fact that there was a full moon that night—”

  But I didn’t care anymore about protecting Early’s theories or his feelings. I’d had enough. “He isn’t coming back!” I yelled.

  “Yes, he is.”

  “No, he isn’t.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Early, Fisher is dead!”

  “No, he isn’t.”

  Criminy! This could go on all night.

  “Look. You’ve got his dog tags. You’ve got a letter from the army. Just like every other family in that squad got dog tags and a letter. What makes you think you’re so special that your brother should come home when the rest of them aren’t?”

  “BECAUSE PI ISN’T DEAD, AND IF PI ISN’T DEAD, THEN NEITHER IS FISHER!” Early hugged his knees and began rocking back and forth.

  “Ohhh,” I breathed. That was why Early was so intent on proving that the Pi of his number story was still alive. That was why it upset him so much to have Professor Stanton suggest that the number pi would end. Early had said he wasn’t making up the story of Pi, he was just reading it. But I didn’t believe him. I thought Early was making up a story.

  Until now.

  It was partly in the way that Early told the story, in words that didn’t seem to be his own. But mostly it was in his inability to control the story. If Early needed Pi to be alive in order for Fisher to be alive, why didn’t he just create the story that way? Because he couldn’t. The story was not his to create. He was only retelling it, translating the story he read in the numbers.

  Early needed the numbers to continue, the story to continue, and he needed Pi to stay alive. Because in his strange, convoluted, and amazing mind, if Pi was dead, that meant that Fisher was dead also. I knew it made no sense. I knew it was crazy, but how could I argue with him? Part of me wished I had some crazy story that would make me think my mom was still alive and that she would eventually come back. But my brain didn’t work that way.

  I lay back, my heart pounding. As I stared up at the stars, it became clear to me that in joining Early in this quest, I’d certainly gotten into more than I’d bargained for. But I knew I wasn’t ready to turn back. Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t continuing out of any sense of fidelity, duty, honor, or any other of those words that Early liked to throw around. It was just curiosity, and maybe a little fear of getting lost on my own. I had no need to stick it out or complete the quest. No, Early was the one who couldn’t leave a frog behind. I would have cut Bucky loose in a heartbeat.

  And in this case, that would have been a better idea, because by the next morning, Bucky was dead.

  15

  In 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, an
d 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.