Eleven (11 page)

He took the cover off the castle and picked up the
medieval woman, angling her inside Caroline's tangerine-colored room. He placed the pieces of roof over the towers and glued them carefully, one after another, circling the top of the castle; they fit well.

It was light now. A rim of sun appeared over the edge of the river. He rummaged through the small cans of paint, finding a charcoal color, and one a lighter shade. He experimented with them, painting on a piece of wood, then swiping at the wood with cloth so the color would look less flat, more like old stone.

Taking short, even strokes, he began to paint. The wood was smooth, and the pieces he had joined were tight and even.

It was soothing work, and he found himself humming the way Mack always did, stopping to touch the small trees he and Caroline had fashioned from bits of soap pads dipped in green paint, the gravel that made the path around the castle, and the small mirror that had become the moat.

He half-listened to the sounds around him, the call of two mourning doves outside, pots banging into each other at Onji's. And over Sam's head, Mack moved around, the bed creaked, a shoe dropped.

Sam stepped back. The first coat of paint was dry already. He went over to the sink to wash out the brush and had begun the second, lighter coat when he heard Mack at the workroom door, the intake of his breath. “Sam?”

Mack walked over to Sam's table. He reached out and touched the castle with one finger: the towers, the tiny
windows, the smooth face. “Beautiful work,” he said at last, his voice thick. “The work of a craftsman.”

Sam looked up.

“It's Boldt Castle,” Mack said.

“Yes.” Sam thought of the day he and Caroline had named it. “How did you know?”

“How could I not know?” Mack said, almost as if he were talking to himself. He raised his hand to run it through his thick hair. “You've made it look like stone, and I can almost see water in the moat. But how did you remember? So long ago.”

Remember. Sam stood still. Remember a castle?

Mack touched one of the tower roofs. “How did you know how to do this? To cut the pieces this way?”

“Anima's book,” Sam said absently. “But, Mack—”

The back door opened, and Onji's footsteps came down the hall toward them.

Sam wanted to reach out and close the workroom door. He wanted to ask Onji to go away, to please not be there just now, because he was so close to finding out what he needed to know. And the rest of the story would take only a few minutes. He saw it in Mack's face, in Mack's blue eyes that were clouded with tears.

But Onji stood in the doorway. Onji, who talked, who always talked, didn't say a word. It was Mack who said, “The first time I put a hammer into his hand, I knew how it was going to be. The same for me—”

Onji came closer. “He remembered the castle.”

“Yes,” Mack said.

Sam took one step, and then a second, backing up against the wall with the shelves. He didn't make a sound; he was entirely still even inside himself, except for the pulsing in his throat and in his chest.

“It's so much like Boldt Castle. The windows, the towers…” Onji's voice trailed off.

Mack nodded with the barest movement of his head.

“So, Mack, I'm going back to my place,” Onji said. “Maybe you'll want to talk now. Maybe you'll want to say things to Sam.”

So Onji had known the whole story.

There was no sound in the workroom after Onji's footsteps died away, only that coo of the mourning doves outside, and the quick
la-la-lee
of a red-winged blackbird.

Night Cat must have felt the silence too. He jumped off the windowsill, onto Sam's table, and made himself a place next to the castle.

“I don't remember. Not all of it.” Sam's voice sounded strange to himself. “Please—”

Mack's sigh was so loud it seemed to take up all the space in the room. He picked up one of the knights. “I should have told you before, but I thought you didn't remember, and I didn't want to tell you what a mess—” He began again. “What a terrible mess I made of everything.”

Sam didn't move, even though the sharp corner of the shelf was digging into his shoulder.

“So much began because I was angry,” Mack said.

“You're never—”

“A long time ago.”

Mack touched the castle again. “I built a sailboat when I was young. I bought the wood, pieces at a time, I cut and sanded, fitted it all together. It took years.”

“In the Thousand Islands,” Sam said before he could stop himself.

Mack bent his head. “It was a perfect boat to sail through the waters of the St. Lawrence, to maneuver around those islands, around Heart Island. A narrow boat that responded so quickly in the mist—”

Sam closed his eyes.
Freighters’ horns back and forth, one after the other, warning in the fog.
And hadn't that woman who'd come into the shop asked about Heart Island?

“Some of those islands were so large you couldn't see where they began or ended. And there was one that had only enough soil to fly a flag.”

A
little tuft of land. A flag whipping in the wind.

“We'll go back now. Today. Back to the Thousand Islands, back to the castle.” He touched Sam's shoulder. “Back to where it all began.”

They crossed a bridge into Gananoque on the Canadian side of the St. Lawrence. Mack parked the truck, and they sat on a bench near the water. The bag with Onji's lunch lay between them as they waited for a ferry to take them to the castle.

Sam glanced out at the pier, at the wisps of mist that rose above the river, and watched a small boat slapped by the waves as Mack began to talk. “We lived on the American side, and I kept the sailboat there,” he said. “But we always came to this town, to Gan, Lydia and Onji and I.” He talked slowly, looking out at the water. “There was a bulletin board every summer, telling who'd caught the largest muskie.” He put his large hand on Sam's shoulder. “That's not important.”

The muskie was more important than Mack knew, the word
muskie.
Hadn't it brought them here?

The picture of the sailboat was in Sam's pocket, and he pulled it out, seeing it tremble slightly in his fingers.

Mack ran his hand over it, almost the way Anima had run hers over the sweater. “My boat.” He turned to face Sam. “How did you find it?”

Sam hesitated. “I climbed up into the attic.”

“You went up the pipe?”

“I lied about it afterward—” He stopped and began again. “I'm sorry about that, about the lying.”

“The pipe,” Mack repeated. “And you found everything that was there? The little boat? I'd meant to give it back to you someday. But as time went on, it got harder. And you never asked.”

“No one else could have built that boat.”

Mack put his arm around Sam. “There's so much more to tell.” He stopped and pointed. In the distance, a gleaming white ferry had appeared on the river, its horn sounding. A familiar sound.

Mack sighed. “When I was young I was always angry. Angry over foolish things. Angry until I brought you home to Anima and Onji. And then the anger seeped out of me like sap from a tree. But it was too late to mend things with my daughter; it's my worst regret.”

The ferry had angled its way to the pier; the blast of the horn was all that could be heard.

Aboard the ferry, they climbed to the top deck. The mist
was stronger, sheets of it spread across the water as the ship pulled out slowly, almost lumbering.

Mack was talking about the castle now. “Boldt was the name of a man who changed the shape of the island into a heart for his wife, and you'll see the stone deer called harts.”

They passed islands and then went under a bridge that curved upward like a steel cobweb. It must have been the bridge that Onji had described. And there, suddenly, was the castle Sam had dreamed about.

“Three hundred men worked there every day,” Mack said. “But the day George Boldt's young wife died, everything stopped. He never went back.”

They left the ferry and climbed a gravel path. “Years later, I was one of the workers who began to restore it,” Mack said.

Sam glanced up at the towers, the roofs like cones, the narrow windows cut into the stone. If only Caroline could have seen it. Mack, smiling down at him, nodded. “Yes, it's like yours.”

They wandered through the rooms. It was cold inside, but there was a fire in the massive fireplace. They sat on a bench watching the flames, and Mack took a breath. “You came here often. Your mother brought you. You'd follow me, the sound of your footsteps so loud, going up the stairs and down. You watched everything, squeezing in to see me hammer …”

If only he could remember.

“Everything was my fault,” Mack said. “We argued over
something, my daughter and I, and I left and went to Florida. I lost my daughter, lost you, lost everything.”

Wait.
Sam felt his teeth going into his lip. Mack's words echoed in his head:
“Your mother brought you.
… I
lost my daughter, lost you.”

Sam's clenched hands went up to his face.

He knew. He didn't have to wait to be told. He tried to speak, but the sound wouldn't come. “My mother,” he began at last, “was your daughter? Was really your daughter.”

Mack turned, shock in his eyes. “Julia, of course. How could you not have known? I built the little boat for you in her kitchen.”

Something was filling Sam's chest, growing, coming up into his throat. He opened his mouth, and a sound came.

Mack's arms were tight around him again, the heat from the fireplace warming him. “Oh, Sam,” Mack said.

Sam was crying now, but whatever had filled his chest began to melt, to seep away with the tears.
“Like sap from a tree.”
“It was your voice shouting.”

“When?”

“At the Children's Home. Banging doors, one after the other.”

“I was so angry,” Mack said. “In a rage. That woman. How can I ever tell you? How can I explain? When your mother died, no one knew where I was, so a neighbor took you to the home. But then they found me.” He ran his hand over his face. “Shocking, the packet that came in the mail: a loving note from Julia written just before she died,
and legal papers giving me the right to take care of you, to raise you.”

He was quiet for a moment. “I'd missed you, thought about you both all the time.”

Sam wiped his face with his sleeve. It was all right, it was going to be all right.

“I came up on the boat to get you. I never stopped, never slept. You'd been in the home for almost a month, and that night, the woman wouldn't let me have you. ‘I'm tired,’ she said. ‘Come back tomorrow.’

“I waved the court papers in front of her. I said you weren't going to stay there one more night, one more hour.

“ ‘Legal or not, you'll wait until tomorrow. He's in bed, and that's where I'm going soon. I'm not getting any child ready now. I've done my work for the day.’ ”

Sam pictured her face: she had lines across her forehead, and her hair was flat against her head.

“That terrible place.” Mack raised his hand to his chest. “I can't tell you how angry I felt.”

That something inside.

“I took the stairs two at a time. I opened one door after another—”

“You called, shouted.”

“I wrapped you in a sweater and scooped you up in my arms, you and the boat, and went down the stairs. ‘Night Cat,’ you said.”

Sam nodded, remembering the stairs tilting, his arm out, wanting the cat.

“The woman blocked the way into the kitchen, where Julia's cat was cowering under the table. Blocked the way until she saw my face.”

They sat back, the flames crackling in the great room of the castle. Mack's eyes were closed. He seemed out of breath.

“I took you to the boat,” Mack said.

“I remember the sound of foghorns,” Sam said.

“I was too angry to think straight, or I wouldn't have taken you out in the storm. We went onto the rocks, the hull split, and the boat went under, all of it. We were in the water, and I reached out for you and the cat. Somehow you'd held on to the little boat I'd made.” Mack's mouth was unsteady. “I nearly lost you the second time.”

They went outside then, Sam feeling the wonder of it. They watched the moat below them, the boathouse across the way, swirls of mist.

“We took a train then to Onji and Anima,” Mack said. “Both of us were soaked, the cat shivering. There was a nurse who sat nearby and bandaged my leg. I never thought what people would think. And then I carried you the last mile and they were waiting. And you were safe.”

“Safe.”

“I told myself I'd never go near the water again,” Mack said. “I'd never have a boat again.”

He smiled at Sam. “The next day we heard about the newspaper report.” He shook his head. “Onji and I went back to let them know we were alive.”

What Sam was feeling inside was a burst of happiness. He and Mack belonged together. Julia was his mother, Lydia his grandmother.

He realized what Mack had said.
“Never have a boat again.”
He put his hand on Mack's sleeve. “Don't say that. Let's build a boat. The two of us, together.”

In the mornings, Sam still awoke before it was light.
Go back to sleep
, he told himself, yawning. The castle was finished, after all. He closed his eyes, but there was one more thing he might do for Caroline, even if she never knew it.

He nudged Night Cat lightly with his foot. The cat climbed over him and jumped off the bed to wait at the bedroom door.

Sam went downstairs into the kitchen and shredded a little leftover chicken for the cat, and took a roll for himself.

He still thought of Caroline. If only he could tell her the whole story.

In front of the castle, he plugged in the small cutters, listening to their buzz, and cut a rectangle into the front of the
castle over the curved doors. Enough glass was left for one more window.

He smoothed the edges of the opening, fit the glass into it, and framed it by gluing on small pieces of wood. He stepped back.

The medieval lady was visible now; she stood in the tangerine room, looking out. Making
friends with the world instead of hiding
, he told Caroline in his mind.