The Treasure of Maria Mamoun (15 page)

“Hot chocolate, too,” he said. A thermos was propped in the corner of the hollowed hull.

Maria looked around. No one else was on the beach. And it really was a beautiful day. It was sunny and warm, and the breeze was light. And she'd never been sailing before. And ever since she'd seen
The Last Privateer
bobbing on the dock she'd wanted to go sailing.

“Oh, all right,” she said. “But you'd better be safe. If you do anything scary, I get to say turn around and you can't argue. Promise?”

“Promise.”

*   *   *

Within a few minutes they were under way. Paolo had launched them expertly. He quickly loosed the line with one hand and steered with the other. He raised the sail as they drifted from the dock, and pointed them toward the mouth of the bay.

“Where are we going?”

Maria opened her backpack and handed him the modern chart and pointed to the three tiny islands in the northeast corner. “There.”

“Why? There's nothing on those rocks except bird poop.”

“I just want to go there,” Maria said. “No questions.”

Paolo shrugged. “Okay. No questions. But you can't just sit there like a landlubber. You have to work for your passage. I'm going to teach you how to sail on the way over.”

“Okay,” Maria said.

“Okay,” Paolo said. “This kind of boat is the simplest kind. One sail, small, easy to handle. It's called a catboat for some reason, although maybe it should be called a dogboat.” He nodded at Brutus, who lay curled at their feet.

Maria smiled and Paolo continued. “Where we're sitting is starboard. The other side is port. You can remember because ‘port' has four letters and ‘left' has four letters, and when you face the bow—the front—port is left. The back is the stern. This stick is the tiller, it's for steering, and you just push it opposite the way you want to go. The rudder is attached to the tiller underwater, and when you push the tiller left, it goes right, and vice versa, so we can steer. Try it.”

Maria put her hand on the tiller. She was surprised by the force she felt pushing against it, and let go. Paolo quickly took it again.

“It felt weird, like it was going to jump out of my hand,” she said.

“That's because of the force of the wind on the sail,” Paolo explained. “The wind pushes the sail in one direction, but the centerboard, which is an underwater keel, keeps us from sliding sideways in that direction.”

Maria nodded. She was already lost in all the new vocabulary.

“This is the boom.” Paolo whacked a metal pole that ran along the bottom of the sail with his hand. “Remember ‘boom,' because it hits you with a boom in the back of your head if you aren't paying attention when we come about. It goes from one side of the boat to the other like this.”

For the next few minutes, Paolo demonstrated how he controlled the angle of the sail by moving the boom from side to side with ropes and pulleys—sheets, he called them. Every time he moved the sail, he moved the tiller, and the boat zigzagged back and forth across the bay.

“What we're doing is tacking,” he explained. “You almost never have the wind directly at your back, so you have to tack back and forth to move forward toward your heading, which is the direction you want to go. Now, if you want to turn completely around, you jibe. You yell, ‘Coming about,' so no one gets hit. That's when it's important to remember the boom and duck.”

He completely loosed the sail, gave the boom a shove with one hand, and pulled the tiller all the way over with the other. “Coming about! Duck and come to port!”

Maria hesitated and he pushed her head down and pulled her over to the other side of the boat. As she slid across the bench, the sail swung completely across the deck and reached the end of its lines with a shuddering stop. Brutus raised his head and sniffed. The boat swung in a wide arc and suddenly they were facing in a completely new direction.

“You have to switch sides because our weight matters in a boat this small,” Paolo explained. “See how we are tipping over? Even big boats heel because of the wind pushing on the sail. But on something larger, you don't need to switch sides.”

As a gust of wind caught the sail, the boat heeled closer to the water, but Maria found that she wasn't scared by all the strange movements.

“It does feel like flying!” Maria said. “I thought it would and it does!”

“Here, put your hand on the tiller with mine and just try to get a feel for what I'm doing,” Paolo said.

Maria put her hand near Paolo's so it wasn't quite touching his, but almost. The tiller vibrated under her palm like something alive and buzzing.

Paolo steered them out of Ironwall Bay. “You do realize there's no way you could have rowed out to those rocks. I mean, it's really far.” He adjusted the tiller.

Her cheeks burned. “I know,” she said, though she hadn't known at all.

Paolo pulled on the sheets and pushed on the tiller, and took them around a promontory to the neighboring cove. The mansions along the shore were mostly still shuttered, but here and there Maria could see signs of life. Housekeepers hung rugs over the porch railings of one large mansion, and next door a stable hand exercised a horse. Teams of gardeners pruned, clipped, and mowed this yard, while painters painted that house, and at one estate they sailed past, workers were setting up a large white party tent.

“Maybe we should go back. There are a lot more people out than I expected,” Maria said.

“The summer people are coming, the summer people are coming!” Paolo said, as if he were Paul Revere announcing the British invasion. “Don't worry. The workers won't tattle. Most of them can't speak English anyhow.”

“What do they speak?”

“Portuguese.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled,
“Olá! Bom dia!”

“Bom dia!”
a worker from the tent-raising crew called back.

“You speak Portuguese?” Maria asked.

“Not really. Just food and curse words, mostly,” Paolo said. “It's kind of like Spanish. You speak Spanish?”

“No. I can read signs, and I know some words from kids at school.” Maria looked out at the brilliant water.

“What's your mom?” Paolo asked. “I mean, it's just that she has a little accent.”

“I'm supposed to lie and say it's French. Most people believe that. Anyhow, she did go to a convent school in Paris, before she met my dad and followed him to New York. But she was really born in Lebanon.”

“You speak Lebanese?”

“Arabic, you mean. Not really. I was born here. And my mom wants me to be American, so she only speaks English at home. The only time I ever hear her speak Arabic is at the grocery store or when she loses her temper. There really isn't anyone else for her to speak Arabic to anyway—my grandparents are still in Beirut and I'm never going to meet them.”

“Why not?”

“'Cause they're always blowing each other up over there, my mom says.” The wind caught her hair and whipped it across her face. Maria pulled it back and tied it in a loose knot. “But really it's because her family disowned her for getting pregnant with me.”

“That's harsh,” Paolo said. “I can't imagine not having my grandparents.”

“It's okay. I mean, the lady in the grocery store was kind of like a grandma.”

The sharp, sudden memory of Tante Farida caught Maria off guard. She wondered what Tante was doing now. Who visited her? Was she lonely? If you didn't have family, a big family like the Newcombs, you ended up alone.

She shook her head. “Is your whole family Portuguese?”

“No,” Paolo said. “My dad was from Brazil. But everyone you met last night, my mom's side, is all longtime Island. So we always just spoke American. I just learned a little Portuguese from listening to my dad and the guys he worked with.”

“You have a huge family,” Maria said, “in that tiny house.”

“Yeah. I guess. Back when my dad was alive though, it was just him, me, and Mom in our own house. I mean, we saw everyone at holidays and stuff, but we didn't live with them like we do now.” Paolo looked away. “Let's tack. You do it this time. Loose this sheet and haul that one.”

Maria did what Paolo said and miraculously the boat turned. “Do you miss your dad?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Paolo looked back at her. “Do you miss yours?”

“I never knew him,” Maria said. “He went back to Puerto Rico before I was born…”

He shrugged. “I guess you can't miss what you never had.”

“I used to think that, too. It's weird, though. Since moving here, it's not that I actually
miss
having a family, it's just that I'm kind of
noticing
I don't have one…” Maria paused. “Mr. I tells these stories of growing up with his cousins, and you have all those people around…”

“Come on,” Paolo said. “Grab the tiller. I want you to try to jibe.”

They spent the next hour tacking back and forth, working their way around the tip of the island. Maria loved the soaring feeling she got when the boat came around and the wind filled the sail.

On the eastern side of the island the wind came close to their back, so they could both take a break from the constant tacking. Paolo kept his foot on the tiller and his eye on the heading, and Maria lay back on the tiny deck. She was almost falling asleep when she heard the roar of a close engine. Brutus leaped to his feet, barking. A small powerboat whizzed by them, splashing spray, then circled back and cut the throttle.

“Attention!” A boy called from the boat. He stood straight and saluted. “It's Major Dirt!”

His friend next to him laughed.

“You can tell by the smell that he isn't washing well!” They chanted in a military cadence. “Sound off! One, two! Sound off! Three, four!”

Maria froze. She felt the same sick sinking in her stomach she'd had when the Barbies attacked. She glanced at Paolo. “Can we go?”

“Yeah.” His eyes looked fierce, and he was pushing the tiller over to turn the boat around.

Maria adjusted the sheets. It was a small comfort. Even if their sail was ruined, at least she knew what to do with the lines. Slowly they began to move in the opposite direction, but they were going largely against the wind, and the powerboat puttered alongside easily.

As they made their way back toward the Ironwall Estate, the two boys jeered and hurled insults.

“Where'd you get that boat?” the taller and blonder boy said.

“Yeah, you steal it?”

“Looks an awful lot like a yacht club boat, doesn't it?”

“His mom certainly didn't buy it for him.”

“She can't even buy him new clothes!”

“Yo, Major Dirt!”

Maria winced for Paolo. They ignored the boys as best they could and headed for the promontory. When they were nearly there, the boys in the powerboat turned away and roared off in a cloud of foul smoke. Maria felt tremendous relief now that Ironwall House was in sight.

“Who were those guys?” Maria asked.

“Taylor Bradford and his jerk friend.” Paolo steered the boat toward the dock and let the sail down so that it slowed.

“Do you know them from school?” Maria asked.

“Taylor got me suspended for fighting. Twice.” He jumped from the boat with the bowline in his hand and looped it around a cleat. “Throw me that line,” he said.

She tossed the stern line. “I don't even know how to fight.”

“Well then, aren't you little Miss Perfect?” He didn't look at her.

“No. That's not what I meant.”

But Paolo kept looking down at the cleats. He finished securing the boat and whistled Brutus off. “You and Brutus go on without me. I'd better get this back before one of them says something.”

“I'm sorry, Paolo,” Maria tried again. “Those guys were real jerks.”

“Yeah, I know.” He packed the remains of their picnic breakfast into the bag and handed it to her, still without meeting her eye. “Sorry I couldn't get you where you wanted to go.”

“Paolo—wait—”

But Paolo had already pulled the lines back aboard. He pushed the boat off the dock and pulled up the sail.

“I'm sorry—” Maria moved to the end of the dock trying to get him to look at her, but he steered away.

She walked slowly back to the Great House with Brutus, kicking sand and chucking shells. She felt terrible. She hadn't helped Paolo at all, and he probably was getting in trouble right now for helping her.

 

21

H
IGH
AND
D
RY

“‘The blank spot,' five letters,” Maria was saying a short while later. She sat beside Mr. Ironwall on his huge bed, the
New York Times
crossword puzzle spread on the blankets between them. Brutus, still damp and sandy, had been relegated to a towel on the floor.

“Your heart is not in this,” Mr. Ironwall said. “What is distracting you?”

Maria couldn't tell him about sailing or the horrible boys who may have been, at that very moment, turning Paolo in for a thief. She struggled for something relevant to say.

“I went to the library and looked up privateers,” Maria finally said.

“And?” Mr. Ironwall raised his brow.

“And I found out that a privateer is like a legal pirate,” Maria said. “And Captain Murdefer was an ancestor of yours, wasn't he?”

Mr. Ironwall's eyes widened. “And how did you discover that particular skeleton in my closet?”

“Well, Murdefer is actually
mur de fer
, which means ‘wall of iron' in French,” Maria said. “So someone in your family changed the name. Probably to hide the fact that you all are descended from pirates.”

“Aha, you're a regular Sam Spade.”