A Note to the Reader Their bad day on the Battenkill hit Ed, Brenna and the rest of the gang pretty hard, but it’s not the end of the trail. This week Jack takes the lead and gives our heroes a priceless gift.

 
Our story continues…

 
Chapter Ten

 
As late as it was—they hadn’t gotten to bed until after two—and as tired as she was, Brenna couldn’t sleep. “Shakedown trip!” she thought, silently forming the words. “Shake-up, more like!” And she had been shaken up. No doubt about that. Willy-nilly, she relived the day’s terrible scenes. A little girl horribly maimed. Fenris dead. Linda swinging wildly between ungovernable rage and inconsolable grief. The grim trip back to town, with Brick driving the Wagoneer, tight-lipped and angry, while Linda curled up in a fetal position in the back seat, sobbing. Brenna, riding up front (“Just in case,” Ed had cautioned, thinking of Reverend MacGregor), unable to do more than reach back to stroke her head.

And Ed, driving home alone in the Ford, his old poncho wrapped around Fenris’ rapidly stiffening body, sprawled lifeless across the pickup’s bed. And then the ghastly nighttime burial scene in Linda’s backyard.

“God, what an awful day!” said Brenna, whispering her words into the silent, enveloping dark. Ed stirred and groaned, but he didn’t wake. If anything, he’d been a little too quiet since the…what, exactly? “Accident?” Brenna asked herself. “More like some sort of Blue Light Special Greek tragedy.” Well, however you described the day, Ed had been a little too self-contained, especially when he wrapped Fenris in the worn poncho and placed her in the pickup.

The water pipes sighed and pinged, echoing Ed’s occasional groans. Brenna wondered if the toilet seal had failed again. She was still wondering when sleep finally claimed her.

Downstairs, in his apartment behind the book shop, Jack Van Dorn was also awake. But he wasn’t troubled by disturbing memories. He was getting ready to take a bath. In the middle of the night, no less. Or whenever he damned well wanted one, he thought. What luxury!

The tub was full. Jack turned off the taps, hung his tattered robe on a hook behind the bathroom door, and tested the steaming water with a big, knobby toe. Satisfied, he lowered himself gingerly into the clawfoot tub, easing in little by little to allow his skin to get used to the heat. He leaned back. All the long years in cramped fo’c's’les and single-room occupancy hotels slipped away. Gone were the days of washing in a bucket or showering by the clock, waiting for a couple of gallons of tepid water to slip out of some miserly landlord’s clutches.

Jack let out a contented sigh. Seeing a mouse poke his nose out from under the radiator, Jack wished him good morning. “Don’t mind me, boy,” he said, addressing the quivering creature in a voice little louder than a whisper. “I’m gettin’ on a bit. Got to make the most of my opportunities, ya un’erstan’?” The mouse had nothing to say, apparently, but Jack thought he might be nodding in agreement.

The old man slid down and let his head sink into the warm, welcoming water. His thick, white hair floated free around him. Then, when the need to breathe became overwhelming, he shoved back through the surface, gasping for air. He grinned and turned the Hot tap on with his foot. Scalding water poured into the tub. Steam swirled in the room and fogged the mirror. Every muscle in Jack’s body relaxed.

“Comin’ up in the world, I am,” Jack added for the mouse’s benefit, even though he’d vanished from view. Then he thought of Molly Saunders. Mighty pleasant thoughts, indeed. “Did ya see that?” he asked the mouse a few minutes later. “Life in this old man, yet,” he crowed. But the mouse still had nothing to say.

When the water cooled to merely warm, Jack pulled the plug and stepped carefully out of the tub. He rubbing himself vigorously with a thick towel. He’d made up his mind.

He slipped flannel pajamas over his glowing body and combed his hair. Shuffling into his kitchen, he turned on the gas under a small pan of milk, then shook some sunflower seeds from a glass jar onto a paper plate. He carried the plate back into the bathroom and put it down next to the radiator before returning to the kitchen. No reason not to share his good fortune, was there? Certainly not. Charity begins at home.

When tiny bubbles formed around the rim of the pan, Jack poured the milk into a heavy mug, rinsed the pot, and turned off the light. He walked into his bedroom, setting the mug on the bedside table beside a dog-eared copy of Jonathan Raban’s Old Glory. Then he opened the middle drawer of the oak dresser and removed a dark mahogany box from under a neatly folded pair of long johns. Jack laid the box on top of the dresser, moving with the same reverent care that the old priests in the Seaman’s Mission used to take when they handled the gold dish with the hosts.

The rich wood glowed in the muted light. Taking a miniature key from a thong around his neck, Jack unlocked the box and opened the lid. Then he reached down, grasped the sextant by its frame, and lifted it gently from its cradle.

He took the handle in his right hand and felt the familiar weight. Squeezing the quick-release between the thumb and middle finger of his left hand, Jack unlocked the clamp and moved the index bar along the arc, forefinger just touching the limb, feeling the firm, frictionless glide of metal on polished metal. Next, he released the quick-release and turned the micrometer head. Lastly, he brought the eyepiece of the telescope up to his face.

All felt exactly as it should. The sextant was Jack’s most prized possession and his only treasure. He’d kept it with him…how long had it been, now? Fifty years! Fifty years he’d guarded it. At one time or another, he’d sold or pawned everything he’d ever owned. Everything but one thing. This sextant.

Hard to know why, exactly. He’d been an engineer. “Black gang,” they called the engineers then. Working down in the bowels of the ship, in the engine room, always filthy, always covered with oil and grease, temperature over 120 degrees, waiting to have the skin stripped off their backs by a jet of high-pressure steam. “Black gang.” Engineers didn’t need a sextant. They didn’t stand deck watch. But he had. On the schooners, on the Labrador. Sometimes even on convoy duty in the North Atlantic. Too many died too quickly for captains not to welcome a likely lad who wanted to learn. Too many died, period.

So he’d gotten a sextant. And learned to use it. And he’d been right glad he had. But now he’d never need it again. He knew that. It was time to hand it on.

He felt a pain from somewhere near his heart. Not much of a pain, to be sure. Not serious pain. Just a slight, tentative flexing of the fist that sometimes visited him in the night, clenching hard in his chest. Real pain, though, and not some twinge of sentiment. A little reminder of mortality, of the inevitable end of old age. Nothing lasts forever. Jack had known that for a long, long time…. Read more…

 

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Hooked? A new chapter in our serial adventure novel, Trip of a Lifetime, will appear every Sunday. If you’ve missed a chapter, or if you’re coming aboard for the first time and want to catch up, just use the hot-linked title to go to the archives.

 
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A REMINDER This is a work of fiction. All the characters are figments of the imaginations. It’s NOT a paddling guide. If you’re planning a trip on the Albany River—or any other body of water, come to that—consult the most recent edition of a good guidebook and be sure you’re thoroughly familiar with all applicable regulations. While maps of Ontario show some of the waterways mentioned here, the places depicted in our story exist only in our minds—and in yours.