Wreck of the Gossamer Read online

  Suspicion in the sailor’s eyes.

  “And yes,” he continues, “both of our puzzle boxes are safe too. Tucked in nice and neat. We’re going to have to wait until tomorrow to finish them.”

  Johnny C. nods, then offers a little smirk.

  “But you already knew that, didn’t you?” Victor laughs. “You just went to check them, didn’t ya? That’s why you were below just now.”

  “Aye. That I did, lad,” Johnny C. admits. “Like I said. That’s my future in there. My valuable cargo. Hate to let it out of my sight, especially since you know now what I have in there. Stupid of me to tell so much, I reckon.”

  “Well, what the hell?” Victor shrugs. “Sometimes you have to tell someone. Right? And you have to be able to trust your shipmates.”

  Johnny C. snorts. “You haven’t spent much time on ships, have you? Desperate men sign on as sailors, lad. Not the most trustworthy lot.”

  He nods toward the crates. “So you’ve packed everything else back up too? All your experiments and such? Too bad you have to wait.”

  The ship rocks. Victor reaches for the edge of the wheelhouse to steady himself, then points to the sky. “I’d say I definitely have to wait. Look at that!”

  A dark cloud mass has assembled and piled higher, now reaching hundreds of feet into the air. Its appearance is abrupt and troubling.

  “Looks like a damn nor’easter forming up,” Johnny C. shouts. “Storm like that could push us sideways all the way back to Boston!”

  Leaning against the wind, Victor pulls a hammer out of his belt as he walks back to his crates and pounds a few extra nails into the lids. He notices some hinged rings recessed in the deck, so he finds a couple ropes to drape over the boxes, then attaches them to the rings.

  Johnny pops up a bit higher from the hatch and rests his arms on the deck. “What the hell is all that stuff in them crates anyway?”

  Victor tugs and tests until he’s satisfied with the tie-down. “Jesus, not now Johnny. I’d have to find a pencil and paper and I’d need to draw the whole thing out in order to explain it to you. How about if I tell you about it tomorrow when we unpack again?”

  Affronted, Johnny shrugs. “All right. Fine, never mind.”

  But Victor can see the thoughts ticking in Johnny C.’s head. He’s managed to latch onto the concept, however vague. Pointing west, Johnny shouts, “You did say you wanted to send a message back to land. Right? Can you really do that? From way out here? How can you do that without a telegraph line? Sounds like voodoo to me.”

  Victor laughs. “Yeah, well, maybe it is voodoo. But that’s why I’m here. I want to see if the idea is real, or if it’s just a crazy dream.”

  Johnny just shakes his head, then they quickly climb below.

  Chapter 3

  The Banging of the Gate

  Amanda Malcolm awakens with a start, as the lilting bleat of a goat fills her head.

  She keeps her eyes shut. Not yet willing to concede that it’s morning. Sounds and smells swirl around her.

  Fresh hay.

  The pungent presence of farm animals. Clucks from chickens.

  Behind all, there lingers the vaguest scent of the blue morning glories that grow just outside the barn. She doesn’t need to open her eyes to remember that the barn was where she slept. She also remembers why.

  Sitting up slowly, she looks down from the loft, trying to blink herself awake. Her gaze moves past the door and toward the warm dirt strip that serves as a path between house and barn. Paths go two ways, right? A man and a woman can stay at either end of a path, or they can meet in the middle. She and Wayne need to find the right compromise to get back what’s missing from their once cherished life. She misses that connection. Perhaps he misses it too.

  A cow softly groans as Amanda descends the ladder. Chickens rush over to mill about her feet.

  Stroking Jessie’s fur. Mucking out the horse stall. She’ll feed the animals too, before taking the short walk up to the house.

  She spreads corn for the Rhode Island Reds. Yellow dots skitter across the dirt floor. She laughs as the chickens bob their absurd heads. Amanda grabs and tosses another handful of kernels, just to enjoy the show.

  She finds herself prolonging her chores by talking softly to each animal. Simple yet soothing comments.

  “There you go. My, aren’t you hungry? Don’t eat it all at once, silly! You’re looking shiny and healthy today.”

  And then she sees him, leaning against the barn door. Watching her.

  Amanda turns away, scattering more feed. “Surprised you’re up,” she declares after several moments. “Your head must hurt.” She nervously continues the scattering motion, even though there are but a few kernels left in her hand.

  Wayne sighs and looks down, surprisingly contrite.

  “Okay, so … I guess you know I’m sorry about all that. It’s just … well … you know how I get.”

  Amanda nods, gritting her teeth. “Since you know it too, why do you do it?”

  “Look, don’t lecture me, woman. I said I was sorry, didn’t I?”

  She bites her lip and walks over to lift more straw into the horse stall—even though there’s already plenty there.

  Wayne mutters something mildly acquiescent, waits for a few seconds, then walks away. The conversation ends before another argument evolves. These days that’s what passes for an uneasy peace between them.

  Amanda and Wayne avoid each other for the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon. She works in the barn and in her garden. He works in the fields. Later in the day when she comes inside to start dinner, she finds him sleeping at the kitchen table.

  Clanking pots bring him awake.

  “Chickens need more feed,” he mumbles. “I’ll take the wagon.”

  Avoiding eye contact, he walks to the counter and struggles to pull open a jammed kitchen drawer. Its wood swollen by the humid June weather.

  “The chickens are fine, Wayne. There’s more than half a sack out there. That’s enough to see us ’til Saturday.”

  “I ain’t going to town on Saturday,” he lies. “Least not until late in the day. So I’m getting some damn feed today, understand?”

  “What about dinner?”

  “Keep it warm.” He uses a butter knife to pry open the drawer, chipping some of the already peeling paint around its edge. He takes out a pair of work gloves and a handkerchief.

  Amanda closes her eyes as he leaves.

  Once dinner is cooked, she waits for a while. Then she eats it out on the porch by herself. It’s tender mutton and noodles with fresh yellow beans. In better times she and Wayne would often eat on the porch together, laughing, talking, and watching the sunset.

  The smell of honeysuckle drifts in from the fields as she takes her last bite. Bushes cast ever-longer shadows toward the house. She places the plate on the deck beside her. Bitsy appears and licks it clean.

  A musty but sweet scent also lingers. It comes from a small ditch that runs along the south side of their property. Wild lilies grow there, flared orange blossoms still visible in the moonlight.

  Gutter flowers. That’s what her grandfather called them. He gave her the same name—but as a term of endearment.

  “Those bright lilies don’t care where they grow,” the old man said. “They seem to especially like soggy ditches. A flower like that can draw beauty out of any old, rotten place. A gutter flower makes its gutter a place better just by being there.” Then he’d whisper in her ear. “Try to bloom where you’re planted, girl. If you can. This is a damn gutter where this family is living, but the right flower can make it a better place. And be damn proud of your beauty as you grow.”

  But Amanda didn’t take Grandpa’s words to heart. She didn’t stay where she was planted. She left the gutters of Boston, and she came out here to the Cape. Here to join Wayne.

  One other thing she knows about those wild orange lilies is if you pick them, the bloom withers in just a couple hours. Unlike roses or tulips, a
wild lily isn’t happy when it’s picked. A wild lily that’s removed from its gutter often just wilts and dies.

  Wayne doesn’t return until after eleven that night. Amanda has left the house and climbed back up to her barn loft. Wayne settles onto the porch. She hears the clink of a bottle touching a drinking glass. He calls to her, and she answers only that she’s in the barn.

  The bottle pours again. Wayne yells to her every fifteen minutes or so using a string of comments that don’t really amount to anything other than anger and resentment.

  He shouts comments like, “Ya ain’t going to live in that barn forever, woman!” and “Well, fine then, you just go on and stay in there, you hear me? What the hell do I care?”

  There are long pauses between every shout. In between, she wonders if he’s fallen asleep. But then more curses and comments spill forth.

  “Yeah?” he slurs. "Well, what the hell’s the matter with ya anyway? Damned if I know. Damned if anyone can figure out the likes of you.”

  A sudden thud brings Amanda upright. At first she thinks he may have fallen off the porch. Then she realizes it’s just his empty bottle, tossed out into the yard.

  “Don’t know what the hell I saw in ya in the first place. I really don’t,” he bellows. “Shoulda seen you was crazy! Shoulda seen that first thing, I reckon. But I didn’t. I was some kind of fool.”

  On it goes, his words growing weaker and more difficult to understand. Mumbles in the dark.

  Amanda barely sleeps, rising finally at three o’clock in the morning. As she slips out of the barn, she can see him still sitting in the porch chair, head slumped forward and arms hanging down at his sides like vines from a withering tree.

  The night before she had promised herself that she’d see the ocean. She’ll finally do that. She can walk there if she wants. No need even to saddle the horse. Ones she reaches the water, she’ll remove her shoes and stockings, hold her dress up, and run through the surf.

  Amanda races across the front lawn with an anxious heart. Away from the barn. Away from the farmhouse. The front gate bangs as she leaves, and she hurries eastward toward the vaguest hint of morning sunlight.

  Chapter 4

  Wind & Wave

  Ship turning, bobbing, unable to sustain its compass heading.

  Johnny C. climbs out of his hatch, battens it tight, then sprints for the rear one. That opening leads to the engine room two decks below.

  Returning to the crew quarters, Victor discovers that the bag with the two puzzle boxes has slid out from under his bunk. There’s no easy way to wedge it in place, so he finds a narrow slot between the bunk and the wall and places the bag there, wedging a towel next to the bed support to hold the boxes in place. Thinking for a moment, he takes his own box back out then slowly breaks it apart, nimbly working its intricate puzzle, peeling back the multiple levels. He remembers what Johnny C. said—that a sailor can store important valuables inside. Working quickly, he picks up various items that mean something to him and places them inside the box, slowly reassembling it as he goes. He grabs things from a shelf near his bunk. Others items come from his footlocker. He also pulls out some clothes, rummaging through the pockets, finding more things to slide into in the narrow top layers of the box. With all the items inside and the puzzle fully reassembled, he slides it back in place beneath the bunk, wedging the towel back into its space.

  Standing, Victor looks down the middle of the small cabin. Eight bunks line the walls. The upper one, at the far end, belongs to a sailor who enjoys dropping a fishing line over the side when they are in the shallows. Victor saw the man catch two small cod the previous evening. That sailor also keeps a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun on the wall above his bunk. He only takes it down when he’s fishing, keeping it handy in case he snags a dog shark instead of a cod.

  “Them little sharks, boy, they go nuts when hooked,” he explained to Victor. “They go weaving back and forth under the boat, maybe even get themselves into a paddlewheel. They make a big mess of things if you let them. This here shotgun puts right a quick end to that nonsense, let me tell ya.”

  As the boat heaves, Victor staggers over to make sure the gun is securely fastened. It would be foolish to allow it to shake loose, falling and maybe discharging. Satisfied that it’s secure, he dogs down the compartment’s single ten-inch porthole, then heads back up to the deck.

  The clouds looked snarling and angry. Wispy streaks of rain hang down—gray, wet dishrags floating from the sky. The rain seems to fly toward them alarmingly fast, pushed sideways at the same time. The swells, which had been coming from opposite directions just moments ago, now seem to join together. The water in front of the Gossamer piles up like a hill, then churns and folds, producing a tall washboard of mini-whitecaps. The liquid mountain reminds Victor of a beer glass being filled too quickly, its foam head rising and spilling over the top.

  Why hadn’t they seen this coming? Why hadn’t they been more careful? Victor curses to himself as he stumbles along the pitching deck. This storm lurked just a few hours away, and yet they never knew it was there. So sudden. So perilous.

  Who could have prevented this? Maybe Victor himself. That’s why his work is so important. He reminds himself of that as he struggles out of the compartment. Radio, if he and others are able to perfect it, could be immensely valuable to ships at sea. Messages could be relayed. Notices of storms, enemy ships, icebergs, all of that, could be shared. Evasive action could be taken. Lives could be saved.

  Victor finds the other hatch and descends into the warmth of the engine room. He reaches the edge of boiler #1 just as new swells start to tilt the ship. Until that moment, the Gossamer had mostly bobbed up and down, with an occasional fishtail motion. But this time the ship leans nearly twelve degrees before slowly moving back to center. Not terrible. But troubling.

  The action is followed by a steep drop. Victor absentmindedly grasps the boiler to steady himself. He hears a slight hiss followed by searing pain in his hand. Swearing, he jerks his hand away, instinctively sticking all his burned fingers into his mouth.

  The pain must be ignored. He instead analyzes the sailors’ worried faces and quickly realizes something is not right. Swells usually don’t build this quickly. In most storms the sea typically produces eight-foot swells, which slowly build to twelve-foot swells, then sixteen-foot and so one. It typically takes a half hour or so for each increase of two feet in height.

  Feeling swells of this magnitude on the very leading edge of the storm makes everyone in the engine room nervous. They look at each other, but say nothing. Has the worst of the storm come right at its start? Or is this just a taste of its power, with the worst yet to come?

  Chapter 5

  Shack

  The gate, closing with a loud clank, awakens Wayne from his troubled sleep. An aggravated urgency compels him to follow, but his mind is hazy and his direction uncertain. Amanda hears him stumbling, bull-like, off the porch. A string of curses follow as he crashes into the flowerbeds below.

  Wayne is in no shape to run, and it wouldn’t matter if he could. With her dress hiked above her knees, Amanda is pretty fast. Only a few years earlier, she was outrunning most of the boys in her North Boston neighborhood. Kids would chase each other and throw apples, but she was wily enough that no one ever hit her.

  She jogs in a steady gait. In twenty minutes she’s close enough to the sea that she picks up the pungent smell of low tide. But there’s no direct path from her house to the ocean. Instead, she must follow the road to the east. Eventually she’ll pick up a winding trail that leads through the marshes.

  As she slows to a walk, she looks at the sky and wonders if this trip should serve as the more formal escape she’s long contemplated. Perhaps she should just run to a neighbor’s house and ask for asylum.

  Maybe Widow Ryan? Now there’s a woman who would understand her plight. Even though Amanda doesn’t know her well, she does know that Widow Ryan would take her in immediately and probably make her a
cup of tea. They likely would talk and talk for hours. She’s already heard stories from the old woman about the lot of a farmer’s wife. She knows how lonely that life can be, and she’s always helpful to others—with better advice than most other women Amanda had met.

  Twice she hears wagons on the road and ducks into the tall grass. If no one sees her, she’ll have no explaining to do.

  Wagons pass. She walks on. More hints of light from the east. Then something touches and surprises her. Raindrops on her face. Thunder in the distance.

  With salt flats all around her, there’s no decent place to hide. Determined, she grasps her dress collar tightly and bows her head. In ten minutes she’s nearly across the flats and heading toward high banks near the water’s edge. There she sees a few small fishing shanties sitting precariously on the dunes. She’s been here before. If it was daytime, the shanties would look bright and colorful with shades of yellow and green. But in the dim early morning, they look muted and gray.

  A low rumble warns that the thunder is coming closer. If she needs shelter, this is the only place to find it. Best to take it now. It occurs to Amanda that barn-like structures have been good sanctuary for her during the past few days.

  By the time she reaches the door of the closest shanty, the rain is in full force, slipping in cool rivulets down her neck and between her breasts. Her dress seems like flypaper sticking to her skin.

  Inside she stumbles over a pile of fishing nets. She also sees faded red and white buoys, used to mark lobster pots when they are placed out in the shallows. She moves to the back of the room and settles down behind a pile of raincoats and tarps. She pulls one of the tarps over her, both to stay warm and to hide, in case anyone else ventures into the shack.

  Then she rests. After a few minutes she pulls up a second tarp, then a third, to help stay the chill caused by her wet clothes. The rain beats a steady drone, and soon she falls asleep, making a quiet promise to herself to awaken just before the full sunrise.