The Lost Skiff Page 4

  I guess I sat there doing nothing for a good half hour or so. There was really nothing else to do. I thought a little about Ellen and the way we had laughed together when she had made that mistake after Jack had made his, and I was not so sure that Jack had done me such a favor in the long run at that. In a quiet morning like it was and with plenty of time to think about it, the way Ellen had laughed then, in fact the way she often laughed since I had come back to The Hill, was something that bothered me the more I sat there with nothing else to think about and thought about it.

  Then the birds were really starting to get good and waked up, until it began to sound as though they were having a kind of singing contest among themselves, even those that couldn’t sing to amount to much chiming in with their special one or two-note deals, over and over, which I suppose sounded nice enough to them. Down the creek a ways there was one bird—I would guess it was a water bird of some kind, because I could not remember having heard a bird like this around The Hill—and when he sang the notes had a kind of hollow sound or softened sound, the way things will sound around water. It was like it was half held back, or as though he used a mute. Yet it was clear despite that, and quick and climbing, and then it ended on a kind of half-note, every time, as though he stopped before he really had to. Silly as it sounds, it made me think of the way Ellen sometimes laughs, half held back and kind of mysterious, and an aggravation in a way. Anyhow, I noticed this song more than the others and got so I kept waiting for it, thinking about Ellen and me and getting more aggravated about it all the while.

  In the early morning when you’re alone it is sometimes hard to kid yourself about things, and I guess that was what was bothering me. The truth was, I realized, that since I had come back to The Hill this time, Ellen was insisting more and more on not treating me like she had before, even though that was still pretty much the way I wanted it, with Ellen beautiful and sweet as ever, and me still two years younger, polite as hell, and safe. That was the truth of it, although why that should get me aggravated with a certain pretty bird song was something else again, and not like me at all. As far as I am concerned, birds are birds.

  And to be honest and realistic about it, that bird song didn’t actually sound like Ellen’s way of laughing any more than it sounded like a fire truck. It was just that I couldn’t get the whole matter off my mind. On the one hand it seemed I wanted Ellen to take more notice of me, more as an equal, so to speak, and on the other hand it seemed I wasn’t so anxious about this after all. And I figured out finally, with no help from the birds, that Ellen probably guessed all this and it was this, sometimes, that made her laugh the way she did. And thinking about it, I realized that there were other things, too, now that I brought them to my attention. The way sometimes I would kid with her as I never would have dared to do before, and the way sometimes when we were out exploring around The Hill in the evenings she would do a little thing like take my hand for a minute, at night, when the path was not plain, as though I would know the way. Like I was obviously not altogether a kid any more; not to her anyhow. And a couple of times when my hair had been messed up she had threatened to get a comb and comb it herself, though naturally she had never done this yet. But then some little thing along this line would come up and Ellen would say something intentional or I would say something by accident but either way it might have some meaning that could be looked at in more ways than one, and then Ellen would wait and when it flustered me, as it usually did, she would laugh.

  Not that it is so awful to be laughed at in such a way; it’s nice even. There is a friendliness to it that is unmistakable, and she would sometimes put her hand on my arm at such a time as though to say I must not let my feelings be hurt or stay flustered, and I wouldn’t. But all of this, nice enough in its way, was not exactly the way I had figured things would be, and this, when I got right down to it and would admit it to myself, which I finally did, hardly hearing the birds sing at all, by that time, was what had come to bug me more than I wanted to say. Jack’s stupid fresh remark to his own sister, and then Ellen’s remark about me, which certainly hadn’t been intended quite like it sounded, this in a way had brought something out in the open between Ellen and me, and while it seemed almost a kind of relief, at least to her, and to me, too, at the time—the way we had laughed, especially—still I had to admit, thinking it over, that things had changed more than I really wanted them changed. The truth was, it kind of took the solid ground out from under me, and left me not only still turned on but sort of turned loose as well, with nothing certain any more except that like it or not there was nothing that could automatically stop me from really falling in love with Ellen now, and probably making a fool of myself altogether.

  I sure hadn’t planned it this way. If I had planned anything in the back of my mind it was only to have it be the way it had been the summer before, with me going around eating my heart out for Ellen and being more polite to her than anything she could have possibly been used to, with this being because of the difference in our ages and being the only way I could give her a good hint about how I felt about her without making a fool of myself in a way you could point your finger at and say, You poor fool, you. To me, come to think of it, it had looked pretty foolproof at that.

  But now I knew the truth. With the little special laugh of hers, Ellen had changed all that. And for a while, sitting there thinking about it, it almost made me mad. It didn’t seem quite fair somehow. I’d been willing to love and to lose, as they say, without even trying, however ridiculous it might seem; seemed to me that that should have been enough. I shouldn’t have had to worry about it, too. And what made me madder all the time was the idea that kept getting clear to me, that it wasn’t Ellen’s fault at all, but my own. No matter how polite you are about it, it finally seemed to me, if you go out of your way to show a girl that you really like her, why shouldn’t she figure that you really mean it?

  And what I didn’t know was, how much did I really mean it?

  I looked over toward the tent where Ellen was sleeping, surprised that all along she had been this close and I hadn’t turned and noticed it. Her pillow was pushed half out of the tent, and her long black hair was spread all over it. The way the tent was set up, facing the creek, that was all I could see. I looked around and no one else was awake that I could tell, even though it was altogether daylight now; then I looked back at the tent, and when I did Ellen had turned and was awake and looking at me, and she smiled a sleepy, friendly kind of smile I had naturally never seen her smile before, and then she put her face back into the pillow, and went back to sleep, I guess.

  I looked back out at the creek for a time not knowing what to think or even what I had spent the morning thinking, just altogether confused and somehow half happy and half miserable at the same time, if that’s possible; and then I thought to myself, the hell with this, I’ve been sitting here long enough as it is, and I got up and without glancing at Ellen’s tent I went back to the edge of the clearing and woke up Jack.

  It wasn’t so easy to do; I had to shake him until his head shook. How he could sleep so sound on ground that hard and in daylight as well I could not imagine. And even then he was not happy about being waked.

  “Let’s take the skiff and go exploring down the creek,” I said.

  “I first explored that creek some years ago,” Jack said, “but I have never dreamed of flying an airplane before, which you just ruined for me by waking me up. I was the pilot. I think we was lost. The only one that stayed calm was me. But take the skiff yourself if you want. There is only the red boat to paint and then we are through, and I imagine we can manage it without you this one time. Now I would like to go back to sleep and see if I can get started up with that dream again; I hate to leave all those passengers in such danger.” Then he laughed, at himself, I guess, because I hadn’t said a word, and lay back down to sleep if he could.

  Well, I thought, I would just as soon go without him anyhow. I had never been farther down the Little Star Cr
eek than a few bends below The Landing, and with Jack along it would not be a matter of exploring so much as a matter of a guided tour, with such interesting landmarks pointed out as where he almost caught a ten-pound catfish once, or shot at a ten-foot water moccasin and missed, or where somebody drowned, through no fault of his. Mostly, I wanted to get away from The Landing for a while. Mostly from Ellen. Or anyhow, just to be alone, and maybe get my mind off my own nature and that of girls and see for myself if there was anything going on of interest in just plain old nature itself, new and unknown to me as it was, here as elsewhere.

  I went back into the woods where I had hung my swimming trunks out to dry on a limb. Even though they were still practically dripping, I changed into them, in case I wanted a morning swim, and went back to the clearing where everyone was still sleeping or still trying to, and got into the skiff, and somehow not making it look nearly as easy as it should have looked, I rowed on down the creek and out of sight of The Landing, leaving Jack dreaming of staying calm while his sensible passengers screamed in panic, if that was the case, and Ellen still sleeping, or at least with her black hair still spread out around on her pillow the careless way I had seen it last, when she had smiled at me and then gone back to sleep, as though there was nothing unusual or to be worried about, about this or anything else in the world.

  I was glad when The Landing was out of sight and I knew I was on my own for a while. Right away, it seemed, I got the knack of rowing worked out and had no more trouble to speak of with it. The skiff, once I got used to it and the quick way it moved along and could be turned so easy, seemed about as right for me as any kind of boat that had to be rowed could be. I had done some rowing before, but usually in boats that would have been better off sunk, in my opinion, tubs that not even an expert could row without feeling clumsy. The kind of rowboats they rent out at lakes and public parks, big enough for the whole family and a dog or two as well. You can’t really row any place in such boats, you just float around and beat at the water and let it go at that. At least that was my experience with rowing, and Mr. Haywood’s old cypress skiff was certainly a nice surprise to me. Made me feel like I had a natural right to be rowing down Little Star Creek at that, stranger to it or not. Seemed to me, at least, that for a while there I just shot along, winding and narrow as the creek was.

  Then I slowed down. There was no point in speed particularly, I figured; one part of the creek was as new to me as another, with all of it, so far, looking more or less the same. There hadn’t been another single clearing on either side since I had left The Landing, not a house or a sign of people anywhere. Just the creek, deep and clear and black-looking, with still some streaks of mist rising up off it here and there, a river really, if you think of a creek as being something more or less along the line of a brook, but, by whatever name, winding and curving along so easy and slow it hardly seemed to be moving at all, with woods as thick and tangled as jungles almost, coming right up to the water’s edge on either side, like two big walls. I had never been out alone on such a creek before in my life. I wouldn’t say it was scary exactly, but you could say it was strange, to say the least. The quietness of it, especially.

  Then I passed a little brook of some kind running into the creek, and I thought about exploring it, but then I decided I would stay with the Little Star to avoid any confusion about where I was or how to get back again later. Right past the place where I had seen the little brook, the creek started around the biggest and longest bend I had come across yet, widening out at the same time in a way that surprised me, until it must have been a good block or so wide, and still curving away. I stayed close to the side I was already nearest to, and after a while I noticed that the trees were thinning out some along the shore, and then I came to a place where there was a sandy beach ahead of me, plain to see, and when I got to it the water was shallow and sandy along the bottom as well, and there was even enough of a clearing in the trees so that I could have landed and explored it some if I had wanted to. But I wanted to get on around the bend, which seemed as though it had no end to it, and I had found out already that there is something about going down a strange river that once you start into a bend you have a strong wish to see what is around at the other end. So I kept on, and finally the bend came to an end, and started another big bend, back the other way. And right there was another little brook, bigger than the first one I had seen; and for no good reason I decided to explore it.

  I hadn’t gone any distance at all when I worked my way around a little bend and to my confusion out in front of me was another creek every bit as big if not bigger than the Little Star. Jack hadn’t mentioned another such creek, and this puzzled me, but then I thought, well I’ll try it for a ways and see where it goes. After all, exploring was what I had set out to do. So I explored it a ways, and then started around another big bend, which kept going on and on and getting wider, and I got more and more suspicious that maybe I hadn’t discovered anything so new at that; and when I came to the sandy beach again I stopped and got out and feeling pretty foolish I said for the birds to hear, “I claim this crazy island in the name of Rodney Gerald Blankhard, Sir Nut, himself.” And it’s the truth, right then a big crow flew by high up over my head and went caw, caw, caw, three times. “Drop dead, you wise guy,” I said to him, and then I got back in the skiff and went on down the stream, still feeling pretty foolish for a while for thinking I was discovering a river when all I had been doing was rowing all around an island that I hadn’t had sense enough to know was an island. I guess it was the deep woods on both sides that confused me about it; they had made everything look pretty much the same. Anyhow, details in nature have to be pretty obvious for me, like here is a woods, there is a field, or I am apt to miss them altogether.

  It wasn’t more than a few bends farther down, with the creek widening out regular by this time, that I came to the first sure sign of civilization I had come upon yet. It wasn’t much, just a barbed wire fence running down the side of a cleared field right down to the water’s edge, where there was a post stuck up with a sign on it that said, PRIVATE, KEEP OUT. SO I knew there must be people somewhere around. I must admit that for some reason it made me feel somehow relieved.

  I have said it was a cleared field, but what it really was was just a large clearing. What the fence was for I couldn’t figure out, as I saw no cattle or horses or any signs that they might have been there and had gone, so what the fence was supposed to keep either in or out was a mystery. There weren’t even any boats there, nothing at all. Still, the sign was clear enough in what it said, and though I would have liked to stop and explore a little there, I kept going. As far as I am concerned, private property is private property, wherever you find it.

  But it wasn’t much longer until I came to my next sign of civilization, though if I hadn’t been going slow and trying to observe my surroundings I might have missed it at that. It was just a path. It was at a place where it looked like there might have been a clearing once, but it had been left neglected and grown up again to grass and bushes. It had a kind of abandoned look about it even, like an empty lot with trash in it, or a lonely look, anyhow, an empty clearing in the woods at the edge of the river, of no use to anyone. But then I saw the path, plain to see once I had seen it, coming down through the tall grass as far back up it as I could see and coming right down to the edge of the river, and, naturally, stopping there. I looked, and there wasn’t any sign around saying keep off, but I knew that the path meant people, for sure, so after thinking about it I took a chance that they wouldn’t mind if I explored a little and I pulled the skiff up enough on the bank to hold it from drifting off, and having nothing better to do in the way of exploring I started following the path back up away from the river.

  The ground rose up fairly steep for a ways, and I went straight up it following the path; then it ran more or less level for a time, with the path beginning to curve about some here and there even when it seemed to me that some of the clumps of weeds and little low b
ushes it went curving around could have just as easily been stepped over. Well, I thought, maybe the path has been made by old people or by kids. One thing for sure, I figured, it’s a path, and a path has got to lead someplace.

  So I kept following it, and it twisted about more and more in a way that didn’t seem reasonable to me at all, but I figured that if the people that made it could put up with it so could I. Then it turned and went down a long slope, going more or less straight again for a change, and I could see it was leading on into a pretty big kind of woods that looked more and more tangled the closer I got to it. If there was a house anywhere back in there it stayed well hidden from my sight by the trees. Then the grass thinned out and gave way to only bushes and shrubs and things of that sort, and the path had to be watched carefully or I could see I might lose it. And I was bent down watching where I was going and staying right on the path when the next thing I knew I had been led right up against a thicket of some kind, higher than my head and solid almost as a wall, with no way for a man to get through it at all. And the path went right on into it.

  I stood and looked down at the path going on into the thicket and there was no mistaking it, that was where it went. There was a time then, not long, really, I suppose, but it certainly seemed long enough, when I just stood there looking down, hardly knowing what to think, hearing some bees or some insects of some kind humming around in the still air, and feeling the sun shining down bright on my bare back, feeling like some kind of stupid giant. Then I stayed quiet and got down on my knees and sighted along the ground where the path disappeared into the thicket, and I could see where it went on for a ways, like a tunnel, and then twisted and turned and curved out of sight. I knew by this time that it had been an animal path I followed, and not a big animal, at that. I guess you could say that in a quiet sort of way I was amazed.