The Lost Skiff Read online

  Ellen, I noticed, had a tent of her own, a new one that came wrapped in a plastic bag so small that I had thought all along it must be a sleeping bag. But it was Ellen’s tent and she put it up herself in no time at all, out at the front of the clearing as close to the creek as she could get it. “Ellen likes to hear the frogs and the creek and all when she sleeps,” Jack said, “although it seems to me kind of silly. Especially if what she wants is a good night’s sleep.” I guess it was about the smallest tent for a grown person to use that I’d ever seen, but I knew better than to start a conversation along those lines with Jack, as he would have thought of something smart to say, one way or another. I had wondered all along about what the sleeping arrangements were going to be, but I hadn’t said anything to him about that, either.

  And then the food and everything else was out of the back of the pickup and there was nothing left but the canvas that had been over the boxes of food to keep out the dust and a couple of old dusty blankets. Jack still hadn’t said anything about where we would be sleeping, and now I really began to wonder about it, because Mr. and Mrs. Haywood had cots and sheets and blankets and pillows in their tent, and Ellen had sheets and a pillow anyhow, but I couldn’t see anything left for Jack and me to be comfortable with at all. In fact I didn’t see anything left that looked like it could possibly keep us dry if it rained, or, unless we slept in our clothes, that would keep us decent, so to speak. I worried about it for a while, while Jack and his father were over looking at the two boats they had come to repair and trying to decide which one was in the worst shape, and then Ellen came over to me where I was still standing by the pickup. “I hope you are prepared to rough it some,” she said, “because if I know Jack he probably hasn’t bothered to bring a thing to keep you two boys out of the rain or off the ground tonight but a couple of old blankets.” Then she looked in the back of the pickup and saw for herself, and shook her head. “Ma never should have left it up to Jack,” she said. “Honest, it’s like he thinks he’s some kind of animal that can just lie down and sleep on the ground.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. “If it’s good enough for Jack it’s good enough for me. Anyhow, it will be an experience.”

  “I’m afraid that just being around Jack sometimes can be an experience,” Ellen said. “I sure hope you get a decent night’s sleep, though.”

  “Well,” I said to Ellen to change the subject, “I see the others are already working on the boats so I guess I ought to see if there is some damage I can do there myself. I didn’t come along just for the ride, you know;”

  “I am sure you can be a big help if you want to,” Ellen said, “and you must stop running yourself down like that. Everybody has forgot about last summer but you.” She was referring to a number of stupid things I had done the summer before when I first came to The Hill, like getting dragged through the lot on my face by a yearling cow I had lassoed and couldn’t turn loose, and other things, including last, but not least, smoking in my uncle’s barn and probably being the one that set it on fire, although this couldn’t be proved one way or the other, as well as it being a wreck of a barn that was about to fall down of its own accord anyway, and not much of a loss, as Mr. Haywood said. None of which Ellen had forgotten, I was sure, but I didn’t argue with her, either.

  We went over to the boats, and Jack and Mr. and Mrs. Haywood were working on the biggest boat of the two, sanding and scraping away at the blistered paint on the bottom of it and along the sides, sending dust and chips of paint flying up into the air all around them. We stood watching a minute, and it looked simple enough to me, and then Jack said, “If you two get tired of standing, you can drag up a log and sit down. If you don’t mind our sweat.”

  “It is only the hot air that might bother me,” I said. “Where is some sandpaper?”

  “Rodney and I will do the other boat,” Ellen said.

  “Better watch that he does not rub a hole right through the bottom,” Jack said.

  “Ignore him,” Ellen said. “He hasn’t figured out yet what you meant by that remark about hot air.”

  “I figured it out,” Jack said. “I am just ignoring it.”

  “That’s real sweet,” Ellen said, and then we went over to the other boat, which they had moved over out of the way, and got it up, bottom side up, onto some logs we dragged over, and started sanding it. It wasn’t in near as bad shape as the other one, and Ellen got on one side and I got on the other and we were able to move right along with it, as well as to talk a little about this and that while we worked. The only thing that began to bother me after a while was that the logs hadn’t really lifted the boat up high enough. My back began to hurt, and I got tired of talking to Ellen most of the time without looking at her. I am somewhat taller than Ellen, despite the difference in our ages, but it was a quite a good distance that she had to bend down, too. She kept working right across from me, so that we could talk, I guess. Anyhow, if I moved up or back along the boat, Ellen would move up or back, too. It might have been different with a girl developed along smaller lines, or even just a lazier girl, not sanding so hard all the time, or if Ellen hadn’t been wearing one of those baggy fall-away kind of blouses, which as a matter of fact had struck me at first as being kind of shapeless. I’m no prude or silly kid about these certain natural physical characteristics of girls, even when they are more characteristic with some than with others; but this is not a phenomena that has come to bore me to death yet, either. Anyhow, it was clear to me that all Ellen was interested in was sanding the boat, and so I stayed bent down, much as my back got to hurting, watching where I was sanding like a hawk, which Ellen bragged about later to the others, saying that I was the most careful sander she had ever seen. And if it struck her as an odd way to have a conversation, she never mentioned it and neither did I, although toward noon I did make some references to the condition of my back, and Ellen said, “You’ll get used to it,” meaning one thing, and I said, “I doubt it,” meaning another, and Ellen laughed in a way that made me wonder.

  We stopped at noon and ate and then rested a bit. I noticed we were all pretty sweaty and sort of stained with the color of the boats we had been working on, Mr. and Mrs. Haywood and Jack looking somewhat ghostly, you might say, and Ellen and I kind of streaked with red. Ellen had a big smear of it across her forehead, and some of her hair was stuck to her cheek. I was thinking how pretty she looked, even so, when she looked and caught me staring at her and laughed and said, just for me to hear, “I guess you and me are a strange pair all right.”

  No doubt it was mostly just our looks at the time that she was referring to, but the way she laughed, it was hard to tell. This is a new thing I have noticed recently, a certain way of laughing Ellen has sometimes now, as though there is more to the joke than meets the eye, which I am supposed to understand as well as Ellen, but which I am not always so certain about. But Jack had heard her and naturally could not let it pass. “Ha,” he said, “that’s the truth for sure.”

  I let it pass. “Well,” I said to Ellen, “that’s better than being a pair of strangers, I guess.” I thought it was a pretty good answer, under the circumstances, with Jack standing there watching us both like he was watching a ping-pong game or something. But all he said this time was, “Ha.” I could see I had surprised Ellen considerably, too. To be honest, it had surprised me as well.

  So I got up and went down to the creek and glanced at my reflection and saw I was a mess, all right, and then I walked along at the edge of the clearing by the creek, noticing some honeysuckle blooming there, climbing up a post. It seemed a funny place for someone to put in a post and plant some honeysuckle, but there it was. I was wondering about this when Ellen came up beside me and said, “I see you have found the skiff.”

  I looked around, having no idea what she was talking about. “What skiff?” I said. “All I have found is this honeysuckle.”

  Then Ellen went over to the edge of the creek and looked down into some tall weeds and grass right next
to the water. “If you will look in around the wild honeysuckle on that post you’ll find a rope tied to it some place, and at the other end of it, if you’ll come here and look, is the skiff I was talking about.” I went and stood by Ellen and looked, and finally I saw it, just the front of it with a piece broken out, sticking up in the grass, and the rest of it, with all the paint rotted off it and full of water and hardly floating, in up against the bank. Then I noticed the rope running back through the grass to the post. It didn’t make sense to me. Why tie up a sunk boat? Seemed a little sad even, like whoever had owned it had just gone off and said to hell with it. “See?” Ellen said. “I thought you had discovered it for yourself.”

  She actually seemed to think it was something, and this confused me, and so I tried to think of something funny to say. “Well,” I said, “I certainly hope nobody drowned in the wreck.” Ellen didn’t even smile, just looked at me puzzled, and I tried again. “A terrible sea disaster,” I said, and I heard a grunt this time, and I turned and there was Mr. and Mrs. Haywood standing on the bank behind me. It was Mr. Haywood who had grunted; then Jack came running up.

  “Well,” Jack said, like he was real happy about it, “I see you have found the skiff.”

  It was getting monotonous. “Either that or a dead horse,” I said. “Let us pull in the rope and see. But in either case, I’m afraid we have found it too late. The most we could do is to bury it.” I had thought this would be good for a chuckle or two from someone, but there was not a sound. But I couldn’t stop, it seemed. “Naturally,” I said, “having been at the bottom of the creek so long it will be too wet to burn.” With this last remark it was finally altogether clear to me that for some reason or other I was nowhere near being as smart right then as I had hoped.

  Then Mr. Haywood nodded as though he understood. “I guess Rodney has never seen a cypress skiff before, left in the water to keep it tight.”

  Nobody else seemed to have anything to say right away then, so I said, “No, sir, I guess I haven’t. I am not familiar with boats of any sort, to tell the truth, and under water like that, it just looked like a hunk of junk to me. I guess it’s your boat?”

  I was sure of it by then, particularly the way Jack was looking at me, like I had flipped my lid while he stood there watching. “I built it,” Mr. Haywood said.

  There was some more silence and then I said, “Oh.”

  “Twenty years ago,” Jack said. “Before you was born.”

  Again there was nobody in any hurry to say anything else, and finally I said, “I thought it looked old, all right.”

  When I get my foot in my mouth it sometimes seems I will have to blow my head off to get it out. So I decided to see if I could only shut up for a while. Then Jack got down in the weeds and Ellen did, too, and started tugging at the skiff. It seemed the least I could do was help. So not saying anything I got down there with them, and I had hardly got there when I slipped somehow and the next thing I knew I was swimming around in the creek with my clothes on. But then as long as I was in the creek anyhow, I swam up to the back of the boat and tried to push it some, which didn’t do any harm at least; and then to my surprise the skiff was up on the bank with all the water dumped out, and I stood there dripping in my wet clothes and admiring it with the rest of them. They all seemed to agree that it had come through the winter just fine. I looked, and I couldn’t find any holes in it, either. Just that one little piece missing at one end.

  Then they left it to dry out some and went back to sanding, except for Ellen, who stayed with me a while, still looking at the skiff. I had never seen a boat quite like it before. If it had ever been painted, there was no paint left on it now. It was just bare wood, dark and smooth. It was small and neat and came to a point the same on both ends, with one seat in the middle and two small seats near the ends. The name skiff seemed to fit it perfectly, like a description. “I’m sure sorry I made those smart remarks about your father’s skiff,” I said.

  “That’s all right,” Ellen said, “how could you have known?”

  “Well,” I said, “I could have waited and found out, I guess,” and Ellen couldn’t think of any argument for that, and we went back to sanding our boat like the others were doing. I didn’t even bother to change out of my wet clothes. Being such a wise guy about Mr. Haywood’s skiff had dampened down my pleasure in the day considerably, and being wet as well for a while seemed right enough.

  But Ellen went on talking away while we worked as though she hadn’t noticed how I had made a fool of myself, and after a time I began to forget it, too. By the time we had finished sanding the red boat I was dry again and Mr. Haywood was already starting to paint on the white one, singing while he worked, which I had never heard him do before, and Jack had worked the skiff back in the creek by himself and was hollering for us to hurry up and go swimming with him. So I got my suit and went one way into the woods and Ellen got hers and went another, and I was back and waiting for her in the boat with Jack when she finally came walking out of the woods and down to the pier in a suit that surprised me more than I hope I let show. The top part of it was practically a sack, or two sacks really, one being made of a kind of net you could see through and under that another sack that you couldn’t, and all of it hanging down in about as shapeless a way as I have ever seen it managed with the top of a girl’s bathing suit yet. It was something you couldn’t help but notice. And the shorts were just as short and tight as the top was baggy, and you would have to notice that, too, if you had eyes at all. Anyhow, when Ellen came walking up, the impression anyone would have to get was that she was mostly a matter of long white legs.

  I didn’t say a word about it, naturally, but Jack, who hadn’t seen the suit before, either, I guess, had so much to say about it that it got embarrassing. He waited until we were out of sight of The Landing, heading for the bridge, then first he told Ellen that she must have forgot to take her new suit out of the package before she put it on, and then he said he supposed it had the advantage that she could seine for shrimp with it, as well as swim in it, or do both at once, even. And then he said something which was none of his business but which I had noticed, too, and that was that it looked to him like she ought to be careful about bending over in it, unless there was more to it than met the eye. It hung off her shoulders about the way the blouse she had been working in did. And this made Ellen as mad as I have ever seen her yet, and I didn’t blame her.

  “It is none of your silly business,” she said, “but naturally there is more to it than meets the eye, and if you were not such a nasty stupid little kid still wet behind the ears you would know that. Or you could at least have some decent manners like Rodney and wait and see.”

  I was sure Ellen hadn’t meant that last part just like it sounded, although at the same time I couldn’t think of any other way she might have meant it, either. But for once Jack kept his mouth shut and I looked away and did the same, and Jack kept rowing, and Ellen was quiet, too. And then faint at first I heard her start laughing, and I looked and she was sitting in the end seat hiding her face in her hands and shaking her head from side to side and laughing, and I started laughing a little, too, and she stopped long enough and said, “Rodney, if I said what I think I said I’m sorry,” and I laughed out and said, “It’s all right, Ellen, you said the truth.”

  And that set Ellen off even harder, and me, too, and finally Jack gave up and stopped rowing and said, “Well I guess I could have waited along with Rodney at that,” and then he just leaned on his oars, with Ellen beating him on the back with her fists as hard as she could, which with her laughing still out of control was not very hard.

  Finally Jack started rowing again and we got more or less quiet, but every time Ellen would look at me she would get red a little and then start laughing again, and so would I, and that would start Jack acting foolish again. It’s a wonder we ever got to the bridge and had our swim, but we did.

  Later, after we had all gone to bed for the night, Ellen in her little toy
tent and Jack and me out under the stars on the ground, I thought about it and I was surprised that it hadn’t embarrassed me more than it had. It had hardly embarrassed me at all, and this kept me awake awhile thinking about it. I finally realized that Jack, being a wise guy like he had, had actually done me a favor. Because what had been really embarrassing me for some time, ever since I had come back to The Hill, was going around trying to pretend I didn’t notice a million or so things about Ellen every time I was with her. And now, as though I had come out and said so, I knew it was understood between Ellen and me that I noticed. Or else what had all our laughing been about?

  3

  I was the last one to get to sleep, I believe, and as far as I could tell, the first one awake the next morning. It was surprising how a smooth stretch of grassy ground could turn out to have had so many lumps in it. When I woke up it was still half dark in the clearing and Jack lay sprawled out beside me still sleeping away like a dog. I don’t think he had waked up one time during the night, at least not when I had been awake. It looked like he had just flopped down and stayed where he had dropped. I had to admire him for it. I looked up and there were still some stars in the sky, but only the brightest ones, not the millions I had noticed each time I had waked up before and looked around at where I was. So I figured it was close enough to morning to get up.

  As I had slept in my clothes, it was easy enough to do. Even so, I kept as quiet as I could. If the others could sleep, I figured, I should let them. So I went down to the pier in the half-dark and sat there awhile in the quiet, watching the light slowly working down through the tops of the trees across the creek, with a kind of warm mist rising up off the water at the same time, and everything slowly coming into view without a sound but the soft still sound that creek water seems to make when that is all there is to hear. Then a bird sang somewhere off in the woods and then stopped, and I realized I had even beat the birds getting up for once.