Chapter 28
Have you ever known you had to say something, but not known how to say it?
“Hey” is usually where you begin.
I found Granddad Angus huddled under the moose hide, working on something close to the dory’s bow.
“Hey,” I said.
Granddad Angus almost hung himself stepping out from under the moose hide. As he stepped away, he dropped it down behind himself as if he were trying to hide something.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Dory stuff.”
I nodded, like that made some kind of sense.
I wasn’t really interested in whatever last-minute carpentry he was doing. I was still trying to figure out how to tell him that I wasn’t going to be able to help him.
“It’s great to see you,” Granddad Angus said. He was clearly excited. “I’ve been working on a few ideas to make our monster go out with a big splash.”
That sounded great to me—except I wasn’t going to be any part of that great. I would be stuck on the shore with all the grown-ups, bored and alone.
So I told him what Mom had already told me.
“Mutiny and desertion,” Granddad Angus said. “First Warren, then Dulsie, and now you. That’s grounds for a flogging.”
“Dulsie isn’t going?” I said.
“She told me herself an hour ago,” Granddad Angus said. “She says she has a top secret idea for making some money.”
“She’s got a job?”
“What part of top secret don’t you understand?” Granddad Angus asked.
I still wasn’t certain. I didn’t like the idea of Granddad Angus taking the dory monster out by himself.
“I don’t have to do what Mom and Dad tell me,” I said. “I’m fourteen years old.”
And then Granddad Angus surprised me.
“It’s the prime minister of the country. You don’t always have an opportunity like that,” Granddad Angus said. “Your mother is right.”
“Sure,” I said. “Mom is always right. That’s the problem. She’s the worst thing that ever happened to Dad and me.”
Granddad Angus threw his wooden mallet down. It bounced two or three times, nearly landing on my foot.
“Don’t you ever say anything like that again,” Granddad Angus told me.
I took a step back, just in case he wanted to throw the mallet again.
“Your mom is the best thing that ever happened to your father,” Granddad Angus said. “I don’t think I’ll ever forgive him for letting her slip away.”
“That’s what happens though, isn’t it?” I asked. “People get married and people get divorced. It happens all the time on television.”
“Life isn’t television,” Granddad Angus said. “Life is a big wide ocean, which is why your eyes are dory-shaped, and not square.”
“But it still happens.”
“It didn’t happen to me and my Marjorie,” Granddad Angus said.
Marjorie was my grandmother. I didn’t know much about her. When you’re fourteen, people really don’t tell you much. I had seen a picture or two and heard a story about how she’d loved to dance with Granddad Angus any chance she got. But that was all I really knew about her and I’d always meant to ask him to tell me more.
So I asked now.
“Tell me about her, Granddad,” I asked.
Granddad Angus chewed a bit, as if there was something stuck in his teeth. I could tell he didn’t want to talk, but I also knew I wasn’t going to let him off the hook. I had a kind of funny feeling that he’d been wanting to tell me about her for a very long time, but just hadn’t known how to begin.
“Start with ‘hey,’” I suggested.
Finally, he cracked.
“Her name was Marjorie although everyone who knew her called her Madge. She was a patient woman,” he began. “She waited patiently while I went out to sea. Sometimes I’d be gone for days and yet whenever I got home there’d be a hot meal and a pot of tea.
“She always knew,” he went on. “I swear she could hear the bump of my dory hitting the wharf. And she never got tired of waiting. I’d always tell her that one of these days I’d be done with the water, but then off I’d go again.”
“Why didn’t you ever stay still?” I asked.
Granddad Angus shook his head ruefully.
“You might as well ask why the sea needs to be so deep,” he said.
Then he looked away.
I could see that he was sinking.
I had to change the subject fast.
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay out there?” I asked.
He just snorted scornfully in reply.
“What if there isn’t any mist in the morning?” I asked.
“I’ve already thought of that,” he assured me. “In fact, I’ve made a few changes to the old girl that I believe are going to knock you out of your sweat socks.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Wait and see.”
I still wasn’t so sure.
I had a very bad feeling about letting him take the monster out alone.
“What if they send out the navy?” I said. “What if there’s a battleship out there, waiting to sink the sea monster?”
“Let them come,” Granddad Angus said. “I’ll be more than happy to show them how rough us old-time South Shore sailing men can be.”
I had this sudden mental image of Granddad Angus blowing on his moose call and pedal-paddling like crazy up against a nuclear submarine.
“I can take it out alone,” he told me. “Those pedal-paddles make for easy work. All I have to do is get out into deeper water and it’ll be clear sailing.”
I wasn’t so certain about what Granddad Angus was telling me, but I wasn’t in any position to argue with the man.
So I just smiled and nodded and grinned when he winked at me.
I wish I’d winked back.