The Great Wide Sea

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

VIKING
Published by Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

First published in 2008 by Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

Copyright © M. H. Herlong, 2008

All rights reserved

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Herlong, M. H.
The great wide sea / by M. H. Herlong.
p. cm.
Summary: Still mourning the death of their mother, three brothers go with their father on
an extended sailing trip off the Florida Keys and have a harrowing adventure at sea.

eISBN : 978-1-440-64233-3

[1. Sailing—Fiction. 2. Brothers—Fiction. 3. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 4. Grief—Fiction.
5. Survival—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.H431267Gr 2008
[ Fic]—dc22
2008008384

 

GERRY SAYS HE remembers the sun and the fish. All the fish. The silver ones swimming around the rudder at anchor. The brilliant blue ones flashing across the fiery red coral. The big black ones curving like shadows at our bow as we sailed with the Gulf Stream.

But the one he remembers best, he says, is the first one he stabbed with his spear. He tells how he shoved the spear down right into the flounder's head, how he pulled the still-struggling fish from the water, and how he laughed—because he was six years old and could kill a fish.

He remembers all that, he says, but nothing more. He says he was too little when it happened. He says I have to tell him stories.

So I do.

Once upon a time there was family. Then a boat. And then islands.

Once upon a time three boys were lost at sea. One almost drowned. One almost went crazy. One fell off a cliff.

Gerry says I'm making it up, but I'm not. Everything I tell him is the truth. I just don't tell him everything.

I don't tell about the morning we woke up and Dad was gone. I don't talk about the storm. Or when we wrecked on the coral reef. I don't talk about—I never will talk about—when I left Gerry alone, standing there on the empty beach of that desert island with Dylan dying at his feet.

I don't tell stories about those things and I don't need to. Because Gerry is lying. He remembers it all. Sometimes when we go sailing now we watch the shore slip by and we remember together. Not with words or even looks but with blood rhythm—with the rush of electricity from one body to another. I pull in the mainsheet. I lean on the tiller. I tighten the jib. The boat flies.

And I don't need to tell stories. I sit close to my brothers on the rail and I get dizzy. Like when you stump your toe and it hurts so bad you think you'll faint. The world spins backwards. I lose my place in my life. I'm running and I don't know if I'll make it in time. Then it's all starting over again. And it's not a story at all. It's real and I am fifteen.

THE BOAT

CHAPTER ONE

WE DROVE ALL night to get to the boat. I kept asking Dad to stop and let us sleep, but he always said, “No, I want to get a little farther,” until Gerry fell asleep leaning against the door, his mouth open and drooling, and Dylan tilted over sideways on the backseat. Somewhere south of Miami, we pulled over at an all-night gas station.

“Dad, please,” I said when we got back in the car.

“It's too late,” he said, and drove us back onto the dark highway.

So I just sat there for hours, watching us rush into the hot, muggy June night and thinking about the spiky palm trees and mosquitoes and strange, quick lizards scuttling off into the crumbling asphalt along the edge of the road. When we finally made the Keys, my head was aching and the sun was just rising behind us.

“Look.” It was Dylan's voice. “The morning star.”

I looked. Dylan was barely eleven, but he knew about stars. One star hung there in the sky, still bright enough to be seen in the first light of morning.

“It's Venus,” Dylan said.

I closed my eyes, waiting for Dad to start some story or recite some poem, but he didn't. He didn't say anything. Even the way he looked had completely changed. He had wrinkles around his eyes. The gray in his hair shone in the dim morning light.

I shifted in my seat to see Dylan. “It's not a star,” I said. “It's a planet.”

Gerry stirred in the backseat. “It
is
a star,” he said, wiping his face with Blankie.

“You're only five,” I said, turning back around in my seat. “What do you know?”

“Dylan says it's a star,” Gerry said firmly. “And Dylan knows better than you.”

“Be quiet,” Dad said. “All of you.”

I pressed my forehead against the cool glass of the car window and stared out at the gray ocean. I still couldn't believe it. One day he had just announced we were going sailing for a year. A whole year. “Like on the lake, Ben,” he had said. “You'll love it.”

“I won't love it.”

“But you love sailing.”

“I want a car. Mom said I could get a car when I turned sixteen. Five months and I'm supposed to get a car.”

“That's not important anymore.”

“It
is
important. She said—”

“Enough,” he'd said. “Just stop.”

I had stopped. What difference did it make what I said? He had already decided.

In Key West, Dad found us a room in a motel near the marina where the boat was docked. Gerry curled up on one bed, holding Blankie bunched in front of his face. I stretched out next to him. Dylan made a pallet on the floor. Dad had the second bed all to himself. I lay watching his still profile backlit through the curtains. Suddenly he sat up trembling and covered his eyes. Then he stood, wiped his face with his shirttail, and picked his way through the litter on the floor to step outside and close the door quietly behind him.

I eased out of bed and opened the curtain a tiny bit to look out. Our window faced the parking lot, but I could see a scrap of the marina if I pressed my cheek against the glass. Dad was right. I did love to sail. He and I had explored the lake together for hours, just the two of us. By the time I was twelve, he had let me go out alone on the twenty-two-footer we kept on the lake. For the last year, I didn't even have to ask. I knew all the coves in the lake. I knew the shallows and the deep trench running through the middle. I loved to sail. But I also loved to come home, and this time we weren't coming home.

I climbed back into the bed, but I couldn't sleep. Maybe it was the way Dylan slept so soundly, not moving at all. Or maybe it was the little sniffing, crying noises Gerry was making. He had dropped Blankie on the floor, and his thin, careful fingers were searching for it in his sleep. As I reached to pick it up, he suddenly rose up on his knees, his hair sweaty, his eyes wide open.

“Mom?” he called.
“Mom?”

I sat up in front of him, but he looked through me.

“Mom!” His voice went shrill. “Mom!”

I touched Blankie lightly to his face. “Gerry,” I said, “wake up.”

He turned slightly and saw me. His face crumpled. He took Blankie.

“Ben,” he whispered. Then he flopped over and curled into a ball facing the wall.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

He jerked his head in a quick nod and covered his face with Blankie.

I looked up and there was Dad, standing halfway in the door.

“He was crying again?” Dad asked.

I didn't say anything. I just lay down beside Gerry and shut my eyes. After a minute or two, Dad left. I wished I could shut my ears too. Why did I have to hear every sound? The maid's cart scraping from room to room. Cartoons on the TV next door. Gerry still whimpering a little. And Dylan so utterly quiet.

I felt as if I hadn't slept in months, as if I had lain in my bed every night, my mind filling up with things while I stared at the stars Dylan and Mom had stuck on the ceiling of our room two summers ago. If I was lucky, my mind would eventually start playing the tapes of a story I liked to tell myself, like the one about the car I was going to get. If I was not lucky, my mind would start playing the other tapes.