I am losing my brains. We’re still here, still on Grand Manan, and now we have to fix a bunch more things on The Wanderer. Is this boat seaworthy or not?
Yesterday, I came across Uncle Dock and his friend Frank, huddled by the shore, talking. When they saw me, Uncle Dock said to Frank, “Shh. Enough of that.” He waved his hand in the air, as if he were swishing flies. “What’s up, Cody?” Whatever they’d been talking about, they didn’t want me to hear.
Here’s something else weird: when I came back to the boat tonight and went below deck, my father was lying on his bunk crying. Crying! The tears were streaming down his face.
“Something wrong?” I asked him.
He didn’t even wipe his face. He just said, “No. Nothing wrong. Everything’s just usual.” That’s all he said.
I have never, ever, ever, ever in my whole entire life, seen my father cry. Once when I was about eight and I came home crying because I’d fallen off my bike, he said, “Stop it! You don’t have to cry about it!” And when I didn’t stop crying, he went berserk. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” He whipped off his belt and waved it at me. “You want something to cry about? I’ll give you something to—”
My mother came tiptoeing in the back door and when she saw that belt, she tried to grab it, but my father is a strong man and he snapped it back and hit her with it, right on her bare arm. Then he threw the belt on the floor and stormed outside.
I don’t cry in front of him anymore.
Sophie told her Bompie-gets-baptized story. It went like this:
Bompie was a teenager and he’d never been baptized and his mother thought he really really really needed to be baptized and so she arranged with the local pastor to do the baptism in the Ohio River.
Bompie and the pastor did not get along very well because Bompie had been dating the pastor’s daughter and brought her home late too many times. Bompie was not exactly thrilled at the idea that this pastor was going to dunk him in the river.
Comes the day and Bompie goes down to the river with his family, and there’s the pastor smiling a big phony smile at Bompie, and comes the time for Bompie to get dunked, and the pastor slams Bompie down into the muddy swirling water and holds him there. And holds him there. And holds him there some more. And Bompie is running out of breath so he starts kicking the pastor and then he bites the pastor’s hand, which is covering Bompie’s mouth.
And the pastor let out a shout and Bompie got to the surface.
“Well?” Brian said. “What did Bompie’s father do?”
Sophie said, “Why, he gave Bompie a whipping for biting the pastor.”
“And his mother?” I said. “Did she give Bompie some apple pie?”
“Why, I believe she did,” Sophie said.
My father cried again today.
“Anything wrong?” I asked him.
“No,” he said. “Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s usual.”
I just remembered something else about Sophie telling the Bompie baptism story yesterday. When she was finished, Brian said, “So, Dad, you ever heard that story before?”
“No,” Uncle Stew said, “can’t say that I have.”
Brian looked smug, as if he’d just swallowed a watermelon. Uncle Dock said, “I haven’t either—”
“So!” Brian said.
Uncle Dock interrupted. “But that one about the train and the river—that one rang a bell, yep. I believe I might’ve heard that one before.”
I thought Brian was going to choke on his phantom watermelon.
Uncle Stew said, “Well, I haven’t heard it. Haven’t heard any of them—”
“Maybe you forgot,” Uncle Dock said.
“I don’t forget anything!”
“Maybe Bompie never told you,” Uncle Dock said.
“Why would he tell you and not me?” Uncle Stew was getting very red in the face. “Mo?” he said. “You heard this story before?”
“Nope,” my dad said.
“See?” Uncle Stew said.
“But then,” my dad said, “that one about the car in the river—that one sounded familiar.”
“Nobody ever tells me anything!” Uncle Stew said.
The whole time this was going on, Sophie just sat there juggling pretzel packets.