Navigating Early (29 page)

I remembered the bear speaking back. I moved the needle forward in my mind.

The bear had lifted his sad face and said, “I’m not a superhero. And I don’t look at stars anymore.”

The needle skipped ahead, and Early was crying. Then the bear got up, took off his heavy coat, and placed it on Early’s shivering shoulders. “Go home,” he said, and walked away, leaving Early alone. And the dream in my mind moved into the empty space, whirring and crackling, with no more words and no more images.

I realized it wasn’t a dream. It was a scene I had witnessed playing out through the bedroom window, only there hadn’t been a bear. It had been a man. And that man was Fisher Auden.

In that moment, it was as if all the fallen jelly beans had lined up in neat, colorful rows, just like those letters on the olive-green jacket. The bearded onlooker from the newspaper clipping. The woodsman covering Early’s skinny shoulders with his jacket. The dream that wasn’t a dream. Even the walnut shells that I saw scattered at my feet near the newly dug grave. Fisher Auden was alive. He had been following us, keeping watch over us in those woods. And he had buried the bones of Martin Johannsen.

And now the silence. The painful, absolute quiet.

Again, in that moment of strained silence, I was reminded that Early was not just a strange oddity of nature who counted jelly beans and read numbers as if they were a
story. I knew he could feel hurt and disappointment, but before he had been fairly quick to bounce back. This time, something was different. During this whole long journey, Early had known his brother was alive, because in his mind, Fisher was a superhero. And superheroes never die. But now, tears streamed down Early’s face because his brother
had
come back. Only it wasn’t the brother he remembered.

I had grown accustomed to Early being in the coxswain seat. He had been the one calling the commands, adjusting our course, directing, guiding. Now, strangely, our roles were reversed.
I
was the one who had traveled down this road before. I knew its twists and turns, its rocks and pitfalls. I knew what it felt like to be lost. But I didn’t know if I could guide us out.

Early took off his brother’s jacket and put on his own. There was only one thing I could think of to say.

“Tell me how you knew.”

“You won’t listen.”

“Yes, I will.”

“No, you won’t.”

I took Early by the shoulders. “I’m listening. Tell me.”

Early set his backpack on the leafy ground and took out his crumpled stack of notes. “The explosives had a detonator. The German tank hit the shed where Fisher’s men were hiding. Then the tank was destroyed on the bridge. That means someone had to still be alive to push the detonator. Fisher would have been the one in the water, placing the charges, when the German tank blew up the shed. Fisher was still alive.
He
pushed the detonator. He was a hero.”

“But his dog tags. They were found among the dead.”

“He would have given them to another soldier to hold. He swam with his shirt off, and he didn’t want the dog tags to reflect in the moonlight.”

That’s the way it was with Early. He could have the same information as everyone else, but it all meant something different to him. He saw what everyone else missed.

“I see” was all I could say. And I did see. More than I wished I did.

Yes, Fisher was alive. But he’d been wounded. Probably on the outside at first, back in France, but now, even more, on the inside. I didn’t know what had happened to Fisher between France and the woods of Maine, but the brother, the hero, that Early knew and idolized was gone. I knew what that was like. Poor Early. He was only now realizing that there are no such things as superheroes. But then, we both should have known. Superman doesn’t have a son. And Captain America doesn’t have a brother.

“He was sitting right next to me,” said Early, “but it was like he wasn’t
really
here. I told him to come back with me. That he would be all right. He was raining inside and there was no Billie Holiday. No music at all. He told me to go home. And he left.”

I searched for the right words to say, but they didn’t come. So I just took up Fisher’s jacket, folded it with the care and precision I would use to fold a flag, and put it in my backpack.

Early wiped his eyes and said, “Let’s bury Mrs. Johannsen and go home.”

For the second time that week, I put shovel to earth and began digging a grave.

33
 

M
rs. Johannsen was laid to rest next to her son. We covered her in the quilt off Martin’s bed and pinned the Civil War medal on a bright-yellow square. It was the sunniest part of the quilt, and we thought she’d lived with so much sadness in her life that she could use a little cheer.

But cheer was something sorely lacking as Early and I walked, mile after mile, back through the woods of Maine. Our steps were heavy and labored. It took me a minute to calculate what day it was. Friday. We’d been gone for six days, living on little food and even less sleep.

We reached the covered bridge that we’d crossed earlier in the week, but this time our footsteps were slower, and we didn’t shout to hear our voices echo. Halfway across, Early rested his arms over the railing and stared into the water. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out Fisher’s dog tags.

I recognized the look on his face. Not only had Early
lost his hero, he’d also been sent home. Dismissed. And I knew what was coming next, even before Early cocked his arm back.

“Early, no!” But it was too late. He’d already cast the dog tags into the air.

The shiny metal disks on the chain landed in the river with barely a splash.

Something in me broke loose, and before I knew it, I’d shed my backpack and jacket and jumped into the swiftly moving water. My mom used to say
Still waters run deep
, and fortunately I landed in the water with enough force to send me down to the still waters.

The sun penetrated far enough for me to make out fish and rocks and branches. I pulled and kicked my way down. Searching. Hoping. Then I saw it. A little shiny something. It swayed in the water, catching the sunlight and twinkling like an underwater star. I don’t know if I swam to it or if the current moved me in the same way it had moved the tags, but I found myself reaching, straining, to catch the small metal plates, snagged as they were on a branch. Why had Early cast Fisher’s dog tags away? He had said that Fisher was empty. That he was raining inside. Couldn’t Early see that his brother was wounded? I knew Early felt dismissed and abandoned. But couldn’t he see that Fisher’s scars hadn’t healed? Why didn’t Early hang on?

The metal tags shifted, reflecting the light in a different way. As my lungs began to strain for air, I realized I’d been here before. Underwater, searching for something small and shiny and just out of reach. My navigator ring. I reached for the tags as I had for the ring I’d thought I’d seen in the
swimming pool that first week at Morton Hill. As I had when I’d seen it in the stars that night with Gunnar. I wanted to take it back. Wished I could take it
all
back.

I remembered the day of my mother’s funeral. It was raining outside, and I could see my dad lingering at her grave in the downpour. Could it have been raining even harder inside him?

A couple of weeks after the funeral, my dad and I had sat in silence at the breakfast table. The house was kind of messy. Mom had always taken great care around the house. She wasn’t fussy but seemed to keep up with all the cleaning, stitching, mending, tidying, fluffing, and sprucing.

On occasion she’d ask me to help with drying the dishes or cleaning out the attic. She’d say,
If we all pitch in, it might take twice as long, but it’ll be more fun
.

Now none of that was getting done. Dad looked around him as if trying to figure out his role in this strange place. He hoisted himself from the table and declared it was time for us to get off our duffs and get the place shipshape.

He started in the kitchen, with a bucket of soapy water and an assortment of rags and sponges, scrubbing down every inch of tile, cabinet, and stove from top to bottom. In his clearing of counters, shelves, and drawers, he tossed out old calendars Mom had saved because she liked their pictures of mountain streams and wooded forests. He boxed up crocheted pot holders, flowered aprons, and the special dish towels, embroidered with the days of the week, that Mom used only for show. Then he moved on to the rest of the house with a broom and a dust rag, packing up pillows, doilies, tablecloths. Anything that was not functional or
practical, anything that impeded his dusting, mopping, or swabbing of the decks, was boxed up, tossed out, or basically thrown overboard.

I mostly stayed out of the way and participated only when given specific orders.
Dump this trash outside. Take that box to the attic. Pour out this dirty water and fill it up with fresh
. And I watched as he stripped away all the softness in our house. The color, the warmth, the memories. Until all that was left was cold and hard. And clean. Very clean. I tried to look busy, afraid that if I sat still too long, I might get packed up or thrown out as well. But it wasn’t until he pointed to a box of miscellaneous items for the Salvation Army that I snapped.

The box was filled with assorted screws, door hinges, and mason jar lids, and a yo-yo. Another difference between my mom and dad. My mother was a saver. My father apparently kept only the bare essentials. But on top of the screws, the hinges, the jar lids, and the yo-yo was a teacup. Not part of a set. Nothing fancy. Just a chipped teacup with little red flowers. It was my mother’s, and it had its place on a hook right next to the kitchen sink. She drank out of it every day. Coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon, and a special concoction of hot cider, honey, and a little of what she called
the stuff for what ails you
when she felt the chills coming on.

“We don’t need to get rid of all this,” I said, my voice shaking.

“A place for everything and everything in its place,” he answered, without looking up from his task at hand.

“Then you can take it out yourself. I’m not doing it.”

This time my dad stood up to his full height. “You’ll do as you’re told. Now, hop to it.”

I was treading on thin ice, but I took another step.

“You can’t just get rid of everything.” The ice groaned beneath me.

“Son,” he said in a cautioning tone, hands on hips.

I’d seen a drill sergeant one time in a movie, dealing with a new recruit who wasn’t following orders. That drill sergeant in the movie got in the soldier’s face and yelled,
YOU UNDERSTAND ME, SON? ’CAUSE IF YOU CAN’T, I’LL SPEAK IN A LANGUAGE YOU
CAN
UNDERSTAND
. I didn’t know exactly what that language was, but I had a feeling I was about to find out.

I didn’t care.

Disobeying my father, I picked up the teacup.

“You may want to forget about her, but I don’t!” That was when it happened. My hurt and anger made their way to my trembling fingers, and the cup slipped from my hands, shattering on the kitchen floor.

The captain squared his shoulders and barked out one more command. “You are dismissed!”

Dismissed
. I was a civilian and did not speak the language of soldiers. But I understood that loud and clear. There was a great rending as the ice cracked, and my dad and I were set adrift and apart.

And that was when I went outside and threw my navigator ring in the river behind our house.

My lungs were bursting, and the river current tried to sweep me away. I plucked the dog tags from the underwater branch
and kicked my way to the surface, gasping and sputtering for air. Early met me at the bank.

“Why did you jump in, Jackie?”

“Because,” I grumbled, handing him the dog tags. “I wanted to go for a swim.”

“Fisher’s dog tags!”

“Yeah, I just happened to come across them in the river … where you threw them. You should keep these. They’re Fisher’s. And he’s still your brother. Come on. I need to find a place to dry off before I freeze out here.” I had seen a shack just downriver from the bridge, and we headed that way.

It might have been an old hunting cabin from fifty years ago, but now it was just a run-down shack with a few broken fishing rods, a paddleboat in the corner, and another boat, turned upside down, with a tarp draped over it. But it had plenty of light coming through the windows, and a potbellied stove in the middle of the room.

We scrounged around for wood scraps and quickly got a fire going. I was glad my jacket and backpack had been spared another dunk in the river and stripped off my denims and shirt to dry by the fire. Wet again. It seemed like I’d spent most of the past six days wet.

Early and I sat on the overturned boat and ate the last of the beef jerky and biscuits we’d packed up from Mrs. Johannsen’s house.

Early studied Fisher’s dog tags, letting them dangle and turn in the firelight. “He doesn’t want me. I tried to tell him to come home. But it was like he didn’t even understand me. Like that part in Pi’s journey where he
landed on the island and they were speaking another language.”