کتاب 09-28

28

He slept through most of the next twenty-four hours, waking only to eat meals. Dinner was cold beef stew, left out on the side of the road in a deep steel pot. There were no bowls, so they took turns drinking right from the ladle.

It was rich—so rich it made Harper a little light-headed—and salty and gluey in consistency. Big carrots and buttery pieces of beef and a smoky undertaste of bourbon. Harper didn’t care that it was cold. She could not remember a better meal in all her life. John couldn’t manage the big pieces, but he was able to get down some peas and a few of the smaller bits of beef, and when he dozed off again, Harper thought his color was better.

Early on the afternoon of the following day, they found themselves at the bottom of a long rise, the sides of the road crowded with leafy oaks, so that the two-lane blacktop passed beneath a canopy of pale green. Sunlight flashed and winked through the waving branches and a dappled brightness danced across the road. It was a long, sweaty trudge to the top of the hill, but the climb was worth it. At the top, the trees parted to the right, to reveal a view that went for miles, across meadows and dense bands of forest. Harper saw grazing cows and the roofs of a few farmhouses. And beyond it all was a dark blue reach of ocean. When Harper breathed deeply, she thought she could almost smell it.

John had missed their glimpse of the sea when they crossed through Bucksport and asked Allie to turn him so he could admire the scenery. She held him tilted almost upright in the drag sled while he stared out across the fields, drenched in golden midafternoon light, and on to the deep blue water. The wind whisked his hair back from his smooth brow. Every time Harper looked at his forehead she wanted to kiss it.

“Is that a sailboat?” John said, narrowing his eyes. “Does anyone else see a sail?”

All of them stood there squinting.

“I don’t see anything,” Renée said.

“Me neither,” Harper said.

Allie pointed. “Yeah. There.”

John said, “Do you see something on the sail? A little splash of red?”

Allie peered into the distance. “Nnnoooo. Why?”

But John had turned his head and asked Nick with a few gestures what he saw. Nick nodded and replied. Harper didn’t catch it.

“What’d he say?”

“Nick’s eyes are best,” John replied, in a slightly irritating tone of satisfaction. “He sees the little splash of red too.”

“So what?” Harper asked.

“You never saw the Bobbie Shaw out on the water,” he told her. “The boat. But I did. I was out in it a time or two, the year I was a counselor at Camp Wyndham. There’s a picture of a large red crab on the sail.”

“No,” Renée said. “I know what you’re saying, John, but it can’t be Don Lewiston. It can’t. It’s been four weeks. I don’t know how long it would take to get from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Machias by sail, but not almost a month.”

“We ran into a few setbacks along the way,” he said mildly. “Maybe Don did, too.”

They stood there a while longer and then without a word Allie turned the travois and began to tramp on. One by one the others fell in behind her, until only Harper remained. Squinting hard into the distance.

There. On the very line of the horizon. A tiny white splinter against all that blue.

With a little red fleck upon it.