Trouble (7 page)

The waves were still high, so Black Dog would not go down, but Henry and his mother clambered into the new landscape and across to the wreckage. Silt covered much of the ship's backbone and rib cage, but there was no mistaking the beams that jutted up out of the sand, warped and twisted around the collapsed deck planks. The prow had come loose and lay flat, and the stern work lay in ruin. But most of the ship was still pretty much in place. Inside the rib cage, barrel staves, strewn planks, and the stumps of two thick masts emerged from the sand, all covered by clumps of dark seaweed.

Henry reached out to touch the end of one of the curved ribs. It was charred with fire. In fact, all of the ribs were charred. The decking was licked black along its edges.

"Who knows how long this has been buried here," said Henry's mother, "and we never knew it."

Henry stepped inside the rib cage—"Careful," said his mother, "there may be something sharp"—and he kicked at the sand as if to release the ship. But most of the sand was hard and solid, like sediment. It would take a whole lot more than kicking at it. So he decided to pull away some of the clinging seaweed from a board pegged along the ribs. But even this was slow work, since the wind had thrown the seaweed in armloads and tied it in knots. He pulled at it anyway, and when one big knot finally came loose, Henry glimpsed a metallic black beneath, and heard an iron clunk.

"I think I've found something," he called, and his mother—and Black Dog, who couldn't stand being left alone above the cove—came over. Black Dog stuck her snout into the seaweed and sniffed cautiously, her back legs tense and ready to bolt if anything should turn up.

Henry pulled off the remaining seaweed, and more and more of the metal began to show, rounding into curves, and then a ring of circles, and then a mostly decayed clasp that, at one time, must have opened and closed. Henry looked up and down the stout board. Clumps of seaweed had knotted themselves along its length, all at the same height, all clinging to the chains and clasps fastened deep into the plank.

"Chains," said Henry. "This must have been the cargo hold. They would have tied up animals here, probably. Maybe cows to transport. Or sheep."

His mother reached for the clasp and hefted it up; probably it was heavier than she had expected. "No," she said, "sheep would have been in pens. And for the cows, they would have used ropes, not these." Some of the iron flaked away in her fingers.

Then, suddenly, she dropped the clasp she had been holding.

Henry looked at the chain again. He looked at the size of the clasp, and thought about what it might go around, what it might hold in the dark and sunless hold of that ship.

Black Dog backed away.

Henry felt a tightening at his throat.

He looked back up at his house. His father was standing at the library window, looking down at them. His hands were up to his face.

She gave him a collection of Keats. In the autumn, you have to read Keats, she told him. And so he did, late at night, after his brother had gone to sleep. He hid Keats deep in his heart. "It sure must be almost the highest bliss of human-kind, when to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee," he whispered into the dark.

But his father looked at him as if he knew. "Remember, you were Cambodian before you were American," he told him. His eyes were hard. And now, when they worked after school, his father turned to work with his brother—even on those jobs where he was too young.

He worked alone. With Keats hidden in his heart. And her there as well.

M
R.
C
HARLES
E
DWARD
C
HURCHILL,
who was the Smiths' lawyer, recommended that the family not do anything about the ship until he had investigated the legal rights of ownership. Though the wreck was clearly within the boundaries of the Smiths' property, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts might have jurisdiction over finds of a historical nature that might render null the rights of individual ownership. (Mr. Churchill always talked like this.) There would most likely be local ordinances that would need to be consulted, and assuredly federal codes as well. So the Smiths, he insisted, should not advertise in any way information about the find until he had finished his research—though by the time that Mrs. Smith gave Henry this cautionary news, he had talked about it all over Whittier Academy, and Mr. DiSalva was so excited that he was already planning a Whittier field trip to Salvage Cove. The find, he pointed out, might even explain the cove's name.

"We'll need some experts on early American shipping to help us," he said, and so it was probably his phone call to the Blythbury-by-the-Sea Historical Society that brought the society's president, Dr. Cavendish, and the society's corresponding secretary, Mrs. Lodge, and the society's librarian, Mrs. Templeton, out to the cove the very afternoon after the storm. Henry and Black Dog led them down—Henry held Black Dog's collar because Mrs. Templeton did not like dogs and could not understand why this particularly ugly and rambunctious one should not be in a cage—and though the members of the historical society were all unhappy about the steep angle of the descent, they gasped in awe and delight when they saw the ship's stark ribs. They pronounced themselves excited.

Probably it was Mrs. Lodge who, as the society's corresponding secretary, called the
Blythbury-by-the-Sea Chronicle
after their visit. The next morning, the reporter from the paper drove up just as Mrs. Smith was driving out of the carriage house to take Henry to Whittier. The reporter pulled up beside them, but Henry's mother was firm. No, he could not have an interview. No, he could not go down to the cove to take pictures. No, she had no comment to make, and would he please leave now, as he could see that they were very busy.

"This wreck is a hugely important historical find," said the reporter. "Don't you think that you owe it to—"

"No, I don't," said Mrs. Smith. "Haven't you intruded enough?" She rolled up her window, waited for the reporter to back out, and then she and Henry drove to school.

But the picture of the ship that appeared on the front page of the
Blythbury-by-the-Sea Chronicle
the next day showed that the reporter didn't believe that he had intruded enough. "He obviously waited until we left, then came back and went down into the cove," said Henry's mother at dinner.

"I suppose so," said Henry's father.

"You didn't see anyone?"

"Not a soul," said Henry's father.

His mother sighed.

Henry quietly ate his two fresh scrod fillets—which were fresh because the fish they came from had been swimming off Cape Ann while Henry had been in Language Arts that morning, trying to figure out why stupid Chaucer gave the stupid Squire some cruel locks. He usually ate four and sometimes five scrod fillets, but Henry's mother had left them out for just a minute, and Black Dog had smelled them, and so they were all on half-rations.

"Wouldn't you have seen someone prowling around the property?" Henry's mother said.

Henry's father did not answer.

Henry's mother wondered aloud why Black Dog hadn't said anything, and what good was a dog if she couldn't chase Trouble away?

Black Dog, happily filled with fresh scrod fillets, lay under the dining room table and did not answer.

Mr. Charles Edward Churchill was not pleased when he saw the picture of the ship in the
Blythbury-by-the-Sea Chronicle,
and he drove over that night to express his disappointment that they had not heeded his advice and had even encouraged publicity—"We never encouraged publicity," said Henry's mother—and allowed a field trip! Mr. Churchill hoped that they would be more circumspect in the other matter that he had taken up on their behalf.

"The other matter?" said Henry's father.

Henry's mother coughed quietly.

"The matter of the pretrial hearing for Chay Chouan," said Mr. Churchill.

"Oh," said Mr. Smith. "Of course."

"You understand that you all absolutely must attend the pretrial hearing," he said.

"Is it absolutely necessary that
all
of us attend?" said Mr. Smith.

Mr. Churchill nodded like God. "I would go so far as to call it mandatory," he said.

"Louisa will never come," said Henry.

"Then Louisa must prepare herself, because she must come," said Mr. Churchill.

"Louisa hardly comes downstairs anymore," said Henry. He didn't say that his father never went outside the house anymore, either.

Mr. Churchill shook his head. "The judge needs to see a family that has been forever changed by an egregious incident," he said. "Everyone must be there."

"Not 'forever,'" said Henry's mother. "Franklin is going to get well."

Mr. Churchill inclined his head to acknowledge this, but Henry could see that he didn't believe at all that Franklin was going to get well.

Henry wanted to smack his jowled face.

"Nevertheless," Mr. Churchill repeated, "you all must be at the hearing. Louisa as well."

So a week and a half later, Henry's parents and Louisa got into the BMW. Inside the carriage house, a yowling Black Dog was tied to the tool shelves. Henry figured the rope would keep her busy long enough for him to lug three bags of dry cement against the carriage house doors, then for him to scramble into the car, and then for the car to get out to the road. By that time, Black Dog would be at the carriage house doors, planning her escape. They left the service door to the house unlocked, since if Black Dog didn't get in that way, she would try to find another, more expensive, way in—maybe through the armorial windows, for example.

They drove out beyond the back gardens—
yowl, yowl, yowl
behind them—and along the driveway and past the cove, and Henry looked down on the bones of the ship, streaky with salt as they dried in the new sunlight. Members of the Blythbury-by-the-Sea Historical Society had been at work on it, and now most of the backbone of the ship was naked and exposed, along with half a dozen orange barrel hoops, five cutlasses (whose placements were marked but which Dr. Cavendish had taken with him because Mr. Smith had let him—which was not Henry's recommendation), the long barrels of two small cannon, and the stout board along the backbone, whose chains and clasps were now cleaned of their seaweed coverings.

Henry put his hand up to his neck, and shivered.

He missed his kayak. He wished he were heading out in it now, on this green late-April morning, the waves swishing gently against the shore, each one bringing back a few grains of the sand that had been sucked away. He wished he could feel the waves rolling beneath him—the waves and the kayak and his body, one thing.

But instead, he was in the silent car, dressed as if for a Father Brewood sermon, driving in midday traffic, heading for the Manchester courthouse and Chay Chouan's pretrial hearing. His father, in the front passenger seat, was staring blankly out the window. Louisa, next to Henry, was pressed against the seat and already crying silently.

He wished he was in his kayak.

***

Mr. Churchill met them in the courthouse lobby and escorted them to a paneled waiting room that had only a single high window in it. He led Henry's parents in, and asked Henry and Louisa to wait outside for just a few minutes. He closed the door.

Louisa sat down on a bench in the hall, and Henry sat next to her. She was still silently crying—Henry figured that Mr. Churchill would be pleased at the effect. He reached over to take her hand, but she moved abruptly away from him and wrapped her arms around herself.

Henry looked at her huddled and tight shape. His heart almost stopped. He almost began to weep himself. But instead, he leaned over to her. "Do you remember watching
The Wizard of Oz
?" he said.

Louisa turned and looked at him.

"Whenever the Wicked Witch came, I'd hold your hand, and we'd duck under the blankets we'd rigged up between two couches. Remember? And we'd wait until the music changed. And when it did, that meant Dorothy and Toto were back on the Yellow Brick Road again. And we'd come out from the blanket fort."

Louisa nodded, even almost smiled. "And then we'd say—"

"Oz," Henry finished.

"Oz," Louisa said. "Because everything was okay for now."

"Even though we knew we'd go under the blanket when the Wicked Witch showed up again."

"But we could breathe until that happened," Louisa said.

Henry held his hand out. Louisa looked down and took it. "Tell me when we can say 'Oz,'" she said.

"I'll let you know." And they leaned in toward each other.

This was how Mr. Churchill found them, and he was clearly disappointed—Louisa was not crying. He led them both into the small waiting room, and they sat down across from their parents at a smooth table. "Now," said Mr. Churchill, "to what all of you are required to do." He folded his hands together. "This is a pretrial hearing. That means the judge will be deciding whether there is sufficient evidence to recommend that Chay Chouan be bound over for trial on charges of aggravated assault and leaving the scene of an accident resulting in serious bodily injury. The hearing will probably be brief, since neither party is contesting the facts. It is still important, however, that you as a family present yourselves to the judge in a way that will incline him toward the prosecutor's position. So ..."

Mr. Churchill described how the Smiths ought to present themselves in a way that would incline the judge toward the prosecutor's position. They would be, he said, the Grieving Family.

By the end, Henry wanted to hit his jowled face again.

Mr. Churchill looked at his watch. "Questions? No? Then I suggest we all go in."

And so they did.

The courtroom smelled a little like St. Anne's Episcopal Church without the scent of the beeswax candles. The oiled wood, the slightly worn cushions, the smell of reverence and formality everywhere. Henry settled into his seat as if it were a Sunday morning. Except for one of the Blythbury-by-the-Sea policemen, the reporter from the
Blythbury-by-the-Sea Chronicle,
Dr. Giles—who nodded at them—and Dr. Sheringham—principal of Longfellow Prep and father of Brandon Sheringham, perfect coxswain, and clearly the genetic source of his nose—the courtroom was mostly empty. Again, like St. Anne's.