I ran back below. “Pep, Pep, wake up. We’re in Canada, Pepper, wake up!” I could hear myself sounding panicky and shrill.
“What? What the hell?” Pepper leapt up and followed me on deck, where I pointed to the red and white flag—its giant maple leaf waving in greeting.
“God almighty, Uncle Chet, what the hell have you done now?” she said.
“How long have we been asleep? We’ve got to get the hell out of here wherever we are. I’ll get Cheddar. See if anyone else is here. You wake up Uncle Chet; he likes you.”
With that, she jumped down below and shouted for Cheddar to wake up. He was up in a flash with the binoculars, scanning the buildings on the shore. No Coast Guard or harbormaster around yet.
“Mr. Toohey,” I whispered in a sing-song, nudging the giant of a man as his body ebbed and flowed with his snores. I moved the raincoat off his head.
“Mr. Toohey … Chet … Chet … Uncle Chet!” I spoke variations of his name louder and louder. He finally opened one eye and looked at me with one big blue eye. I didn’t know why, but he kind of reminded me of a whale.
“Flipper. Flipper,” he said, patting the side of my face. “You’re a grand girl. A grand girl. A credit to your dad. God, I love ya,” The great blue eye shut again, and the snoring resumed.
“He’ll be out for hours,” Pepper said with disgust.
“We’re in New Brunswick,” Cheddar said.
“No shit, Sherlock. I had a feeling it wasn’t Vancouver.”
“That means we’ve got to deal with Fundy tides. Looks pretty high now,” Cheddar said. “Where’s that whirlpool?”
“What whirlpool?” I gulped.
“Only the biggest one in the western hemisphere,” Pepper chimed in. “Did you flunk geography, Valedictorian?” I didn’t know if she was angry with me or just teasing. It was hard to tell with her.
“Anybody know the time?” she asked.
I picked up Uncle Chet’s hand and read the watch on his wrist.
“It’s almost noon,” I said.
“Our time. One in the afternoon Atlantic time,” Cheddar said.
“How’s the fuel?”
“Almost gone,” Cheddar said.
“That was probably a blessing,” Pepper said.
“A blessing?” I asked.
“Yeah. Who knows where we would have ended up if we had more fuel. He probably stopped here when he saw it was nearly gone. See if you can turn him over. Get under there, and see if his wallet’s in his back pocket,” Pepper said to me.
“Me?! I can’t put my hand in his pocket!”
“Go on, he likes you,” she said.
“You can’t move him. I’ve tried. And ten to one he doesn’t have any wallet or ID on him or anything. Everything goes on his tab. And he’s got tabs almost everywhere, but definitely not here,” Cheddar said.
“We’ll have to sail out of here. Do you know how to sail?” Pepper asked me.
“You know I don’t.”
“Oh yeah. But you sailed that Sunfish; you did alright for your first time,” she said.
“Which one is port again?” I asked her. She turned me toward the bow and wiggled my left hand with more patience than I figured I was entitled to after asking such a question. I grabbed a marker I found in the console and wrote a big P on the back of my left hand and a big S on the back of my right.
“Great. Just don’t turn around, Einstein. You take the helm. Cheddar and I will crew. You just turn the way we say to, and if he ever gets up, he can take over.”
My stomach lurched at the thought of piloting the Plunger. I may not know anything about sailing, but I knew that the Bay of Fundy was a peculiar place with strange tides. And that whirlpool—I did not want to be within fifty miles of that thing.
“What’s this guy want?” Cheddar muttered. We all looked to see an official-looking boat carrying an official-looking man toward us.
“Hmm. I don’t know. I think he’s just some guy,” Pepper said.
“No, he’s somebody. Harbormaster or something. Maybe a Mountie,” Cheddar said.
“I don’t even have a driver’s license!” I said, feeling the sweat suddenly burst from my underarms.
“That’s the least of our worries. Uncle Chet’s wanted in Canada.”
“What?!”
“Totaled a car. It wasn’t even his,” Pepper said.
“It wasn’t even him!” Cheddar shouted. I jumped. I had never heard him speak above his low-energy mumble.
“Yeah, stupid Scout. We were at a wedding in St. Andrews,” Pepper muttered. “Scout was so bombed he got in the wrong car and drove it into a rock. Uncle Chet took the blame so Scout wouldn’t lose the internship in the Senate.”
“Gran was so pissed she tried to marry Scout off to some bow-wow in a bigwig family up here, but he wouldn’t take the bait. And neither would they.”
“Uncle Chet was supposed to go to court, but he decided it was best to blow it off. Seriously, Ched, throw that tarp over him,” Pepper barked. “That harbormaster is coming straight for us!” Then, she called to this foreign authority with a big smile on her face.
“Hi!”
“You folks from the US?”
“Yeah. We got lost. We thought we were in Eastport,” she lied. “We were just getting ready to head back. We’re not coming ashore. Are we at high tide now?”
“Oh yes. You better take advantage of it. The water empties right out.”
“What about the whirlpool?”
“The Old Sow—that’s in the other direction. I thought you were headed back to the States?”
“Yes, of course. We just didn’t want to run into it.”
“Hmm. It’s the largest whirlpool in the world. The Old Sow can suck a boat down like a toilet. Say, ‘the Plunger.’ That’s an interesting name.”
“We bought it from a family who makes plumbing supplies, pipes, toilets, that sort of thing. O’Toole, I think it was.”
“I think you mean Toohey! Oh sure; we have a Toohey. Worth every penny. My folks installed that in ’74 when they built the house, and my kids have flushed everything down from diapers to report cards. Still going strong. You say you bought this boat?”
“Our parents did. We had permission to sail up to Eastport. Oops.”
“I didn’t realize Eastport had a dress code,” the man said.
“What? These old things? Thrift store finds. We’ve been wearing them as a college dare,” Pepper said. I was amazed—and relieved—at the ease at which lies poured from her mouth.
Pepper smiled and nodded and, every once in a while, looked over at me and winked. And then I remembered I had cash.
“I have cash!” I shouted. The ticket money!
“You have cash? What for?” the man said.
“Fuel. We need to get fuel.” Pepper said. The man pointed to a fuel station, and Uncle Chet snored loudly.
“What was that?!” the man said.
“Look, a walrus!” I shouted.
The harbormaster turned.
“No, m’dear. We don’t have walruses here.” Duh. I knew that.
“Probably a harp or harbor seal,” he said.
“We should get fuel before we totally run out,” Pepper said. The harbormaster waved us on, and Cheddar steered us over to the fuel station. We spent all the ticket money and started home.
The hum of the motor woke Uncle Chet. He stretched and stood up as we passed under the Passamaquoddy Bay Bridge, as if his internal compass indicated it was now safe for him to emerge. He pulled up his shorts, which were sagging halfway down his butt, and walked over to Cheddar, and they whispered a bit.
Uncle Chet wanted to stop in a port where he had an open bar tab. The place was closed, but Chet poked around until he found the owner doing paperwork in an office, and he agreed to open up and make us something to eat. We had to use a back door that was flanked by piles of empty booze crates and smelly old produce boxes.
As bright as the day was, stepping inside the bar was like stepping into the night. It was dark, cool, and smelled like old beer and mildew. We sat at the bar on twirly stools, and the owner put on the morning news. While the Tooheys all stared silently at it, I stole away and used the pay phone to call my dad.
“Uh, Dad.”
“Good morning, my social butterfly! I didn’t want to wake you, so I’m sorry I headed out without saying goodbye.”
“I’m not home. I—I had a sleepover with Pepper,” I said. Technically, it was sort of true. I couldn’t tell him the whole truth just now. He’d worry too much. Someday, I’d tell him the grandest Toohey story of all time. Just not now. Once upon a time, just north of the border, I woke up in Canada, I would tell him someday. After college. Maybe when he was in a rest home.
“Of course, I should have thought of that,” he said.
“We’re going for a sail. I don’t know what time we’ll be back. It might be really late. I might be sleeping over again,” I said, adding to my pile of almost-truths. It occurred to me that as a goody two-shoes with no social life for seventeen years, I had never had reason or cause to lie to my dad about anything. But standing in the office of a closed bar wearing a ball gown on a Sunday afternoon, it seemed like a good place to start, and I was surprised by how good I was at it.
“You’re a big girl now. You’ll be eighteen soon. I trust you to make your own decisions. This is just the kind of summer I wanted you to have. And with the Tooheys no less.”
“Bye, Dad.”
I felt terrible for lying. But I didn’t want him to think ill of Uncle Chet. Or worry. Or spoil my fun.