Joseph was next in the splashed-by-water bucket brigade, followed by Rayna, Tanaka, and the members of the crew. No one else repeated any strange words or phrases when they awoke, although they had to shake away the deep slumber, and they all remembered having strange dreams.

I saved Hood for last, because I didn't feel comfortable dumping a bucket of water on his covered head. I asked Rayna if it was okay.

“Let me take care of the Hooded One,” she said, and went in alone. A few minutes later, they joined us in the Mess Hall, Hood somehow looking even droopier than usual. He sat in a chair, and remained silent. Well, he was always silent, but he sat very still and offered no painted words.

I asked Joseph to go upstairs with me onto the deck of the ship and deal with Dad. I knew that somehow Dad was different—that a bucket of water wasn't going to do a thing to him. He'd been in the freezing ocean without waking up, for crying out loud. And those cuts …

The cuts. I stopped short just before I reached the door to the hallway and asked everyone to show me their arms.

With raised eyebrows, everyone did as I asked, and pulled or rolled up their sleeves. Hood made a gesture to do so but hesitated, then refused.

I looked at Joseph's forearms. There were odd-looking, dangly hairs randomly placed along his arms, a couple of freckles, and even a pimple that looked like something out of a carnival freak show. But no scratches.

I examined Mom's arms next. Then Rusty. Then Tanaka, Rayna, Captain Tinkles and the other crew members. No scratches. Hood shied away when I approached him.

“Hood, what's the deal? Let me see your arm.”

He shook his head, somehow showing a sense of embarrassment through the rough covering of his robe.

Rayna walked over and leaned in toward my ear.

“Jimmy,” she said, “Please. You do not want …” She paused. “You are not ready to see the arm of the Hooded One. Please, do not push him.”

Nodding, ignoring the intense curiosity that sprung up in my head, I looked at Hood and tried to appear patient and understanding.

“Well,” I said, “What about your arms, Hood? Do they have scratches on them?”

He shook his head. He was okay in that regard, but I just couldn't help wondering what was up with this guy. I thought about the time we found him deep in the woods after we'd been to the Pointing Finger, and I had seen him in the distance—robeless, eerily pale, and hunched. Rayna and Miyoko had told me to wait while they went to him and clothed him once again in his robe. Raspy had stolen it to fool us into leading him to the Givers’ book.

Rayna had said something similar then, something about how I should not see him yet. I knew he had other clothes on beneath the robe, so it wasn't like they were protecting his modesty. Was it his identity, his true identity they were trying to conceal? Could he perhaps be someone that I had known earlier in my life? I made a note in my head to grill Rayna or Miyoko about it later.

“Jimmy-san,” Tanaka asked, “why you go crazy and ask to see our arms?”

“I'm not crazy, Tanaka.” I pointed upward, indicating the place where my dad lay. “Dad is up there, sleeping like a dead man, and he's been dragged through cold water and dropped and flown through the air, and he's showing no signs of waking up. I think something is wrong with him, more than the weirdness of you guys all sleeping like you were. Anyway, he has small cuts all over his right forearm.”

“Small cuts?” Rayna said. “On one arm only?”

I thought for a second to make sure. “Yeah, just the right one. Does that mean anything?”

She shook her head.

“Jimmy,” Joseph said, “what in the world were you talking about, saying your dad had been dragged through water and all that? What happened up there?”

“Come on, I'll tell you up there. Miyoko, why don't you stay down here and tell these guys what happened, too.”

“All right,” she said. “I just hope they believe me.”

“Are you serious? How could anything surprise us anymore?” I grabbed Joseph's arm. “Let's go.”

After everything that had happened so far that day, I half-expected Dad to be gone when we walked out onto the deck. But he was there, on his back, motionless, like a fallen soldier left for the vultures. It surprised me how relieved I felt when we could see that his chest still rose and fell with regularity. Obviously, my confidence that he was okay was weakening.

“My goodness,” Joseph said, then ran to his side.

He grabbed Dad's cheeks and pinched them, then lightly slapped them. “Come on, old boy, wake up! J.M.! Wake up, man! Can you hear me?”

Frustrated, Joseph gently laid Dad's head back down and let go.

“Jimmy, what have we gotten ourselves into?” He looked at me, pain in his eyes.

“I don't know,” I said, barely above a whisper. For the first time that day, I wanted to fall down and bawl my eyes out.

“We should try the water on him, too,” Joseph said. “I'll go get it.”

As he left and went down into the cabin area, I picked up Dad's arm and looked at the scratches again. With more time to look, I realized that I had missed something earlier. The cuts were not quite as random as I had thought. There was something … regular about them. They didn't quite form a word, but there was some definite shape or reason to their arrangement—almost like a string of several letter ‘O's intertwined. Something lingered on the edges of my mind, like trying to remember the name of a friend from an old neighborhood—it was somewhere in the old memory bank, but just didn't feel like coming out yet.

The scratches meant something. What was it? It was beginning to drive me bonkers.

Joseph ran up behind me, water sloshing out of the bucket as he came, making hard splattering sounds, like a drunk and his spittoon in an old western.

“Watch out,” he said.

I stood back and watched as Joseph poured the water onto Dad's face.

Nothing. Not a flinch or a twitch. The only movement was the hair on his head and eyebrows as the cold water washed over him.

Joseph knelt down again, ignoring the wetness of the deck, and brought his ear down until it hovered just above Dad's nose and mouth. Joseph's eyes were looking in my direction, and then he closed them, concentrating.

“I can definitely hear him breathing, although it seems so faint and shallow.” He brought his head back up and looked down at Dad. “I hate to do this, but let's try one more thing.”

Joseph put his hand on Dad's arm, grabbed some skin, and pinched it with all of his might. No response.

Something was seriously wrong with my father.