The Skeleton Tree Read online

  The land faded behind us. Uncle Jack kept pointing out interesting things, but I was too woozy to turn my head. I just slumped there and watched garbage floating past. Plastic bottles, metal barrels, fishing floats, they all bobbed dizzily on the waves. Uncle Jack said it was debris from a tsunami that had hit Japan more than two years earlier. “This is nothing,” he told us. “There’s a whole floating island of garbage out there. I kid you not. I saw it in front of me one morning and thought I was going to run aground.” He steered the boat with one hand, lounging in the sun. “I’ll spare you the details, but I saw things that don’t bear thinking about.”

  “Really? Like what?” Frank sat up like a squirrel, his eyes bright. “Things like bodies?”

  “You don’t want to know,” said Uncle Jack, which made me think they must have been terrible things. “The point is, it’s all going to wash up on the shore one day. In some places, it’s washing up already.”

  Around noon, I started thinking I might throw up. I thought no one could tell, but Frank cried in a delighted voice, “Look at him! He’s turning green.”

  “I think we need something to eat,” said Uncle Jack. He went down to the cabin and clattered through drawers. When he brought up the lunch, so did I. The smell of Spam and ketchup made my stomach twist, and in one hot rush everything spewed out through my nose and mouth.

  “Oh, gross!” said Frank.

  Uncle Jack made me lie down in the cabin. He gave me a big blue pill to make me sleep. Then he gave me another just to make sure. Still in my boots and jacket, zipped into my sleeping bag, I lay in a bed that heaved and tossed, and I dreamed of those things that didn’t bear thinking about.

  It seemed whole days went by. Confused by the blue pills, I couldn’t tell what was real and what was not. I was sure that my father brought me a glass of water, and that a seagull flew into the cabin and told me a story. I was aware at one point that the engine had stopped. Through the open hatch, I could see the sail full of wind, glaring white in the sun as Puff rushed along.

  I dreamed terrible dreams. Zombies chased me across an island made of garbage. One of them caught me and held me down; he started to rip my arms off, and I woke wrestling with Uncle Jack. “Chrissy, it’s all right,” he said. He’d brought water and soup, but I wasn’t hungry. He talked in a voice that was loud and distorted, and he stared at me with a worried look as I fell again into woozy nightmares.

  The sea gurgled past; the waves whooshed and burst. There was sunlight and darkness, and all I wanted was to get off the boat and onto solid land. Then something jolted me out of my sleep. I heard a shout, a bang, and Puff came to a shuddering stop. The floorboards burst from their places as the sea came roaring through the hull.

  The blue pills made everything seem unreal. But ice-cold water rose over my bed. And I knew the boat was sinking.

  I am aware that Frank has been talking to me. He brings this to my attention by kicking me in the butt. He doesn’t have to get up from his bed to do it. He just swings his leg and boots me.

  “Hey!” he shouts. “Are you all right?”

  Embers crackle in the fire. Flames leap through the smoke, casting their strange pictures. I nod to tell Frank I’m all right. “I was just thinking.”

  “Well, go think outside,” he says. “You’re creeping me out.”

  I take a plastic bucket and fill it quickly with the things I’ll need: a plastic cape and my tattered poncho; the paperback book with its ragged pages; a bottle of water and half of our last piece of fish. When I open the door, the trees tower above me, reaching down with shaggy branches. From the sea comes the soft bursting of the waves, as though the forest is breathing.

  The trail is a dark tunnel through the salal bushes. Anything could be hiding in there, and six weeks ago I would not have dared to go alone. Even now, with the bear and the wolves in my mind, I wish I had waited for Frank. But I know every twist and bend. I’ve learned my way through all the things that scare me. I just duck my head and run.

  Branches snatch at my bucket. Roots try hard to trip me, but I keep going, and as soon as I reach the clearing I see the skeleton tree. It stands alone on the grass-covered rocks, its branches twisting across the sky. The black shapes of the coffins rest in its gnarled arms, and I don’t look up as I dash underneath them, straight to the rocky shore where the wooden saint looks blindly out to sea.

  I feel terrible disappointment to find the ocean black and empty. There’s no Coast Guard ship, no helicopter. There’s nothing but my memories.

  It was somewhere out there on the waves that heave and roll, that I last saw Uncle Jack.

  •••

  I screamed his name as the sea came gushing into the cabin. But no one came running down to save me.

  In the open hatch floated puffy clouds bright with sunshine. The steering wheel gleamed, and the big sail thrashed back and forth as ropes stretched and shuddered. I felt a sudden dread that Uncle Jack had taken the kid and gone away, that I was abandoned on a sinking boat.

  I squirmed in my sleeping bag. I rolled myself off the bed and sank into ice-cold water that made me gasp. Puff wallowed, and I fell, first against the counter and then against the stove before I fled up the ladder to the cockpit. There was no land in sight.

  I turned around and looked toward the bow, and there was Uncle Jack—and Frank as well—trying to free the little red dinghy that really had become our lifeboat.

  Puff’s bow plunged into the sea, then soared up again with water streaming in silvery sheets. Frank was on his knees, clinging to the rigging as spray flew over him. Uncle Jack slashed at the ropes with a knife, and the waves were enormous.

  Sunlight flashed on the blade. Then the little boat suddenly sprang from its place. Snatched by a wave, it was pulled right over the lifelines, dragged away by the sea until it snubbed up at the end of its tether.

  “Get in!” shouted Uncle Jack. But Frank didn’t move.

  Uncle Jack had to pry the kid’s fingers from the rigging. He picked him up and balanced on the pitching deck, his feet far apart. He looked big and heroic with the sea raging behind him. When the dinghy shot up on a wave, he dropped the kid inside it. Then he turned around and made his way toward me, reaching for handholds as the sea swept over the deck.

  He clambered into the cockpit. “Did you bring the radio?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. The dinghy soared high above us on a passing wave, then dropped below the railing. The kid lay inside it, unmoving.

  “The flares?” said Uncle Jack. “The life jackets?”

  I shook my head. I could hardly think.

  “Wait here.”

  He plunged down the ladder, into the cabin. The water was chest-high and rising fast. Everything that could float was swirling around and around.

  “Uncle Jack, come back!” I shouted.

  He looked right at me for a moment. “Get in the lifeboat, Chrissy,” he said. Then he moved farther into the cabin, pushing his way through a floating mass of cushions and floorboards and blankets.

  The deck that had once seemed so high was now level with the sea. Only the low roof of the cabin stood above the water, and every wave surged through the cockpit.

  “Uncle Jack!” I cried.

  It looked as though a river was flowing through the hatch and into the cabin. I saw Uncle Jack take the VHF radio from its place, but the water pushed against him and he couldn’t get back to the cockpit.

  “Here!” he shouted. “Catch.” He tossed the radio up toward me.

  I tried to grab it. For a moment I had it in my hands. But it fell away. I lunged to grab it again, and nearly tumbled through the hatch myself. I grabbed on to its edges as the radio vanished into the swirls of black water, and I saw Uncle Jack looking up at me. I saw fear and sorrow in his expression—and something else as well. I had let him down.

  The sea gushed through the hatch. It rose right over Uncle Jack, sucking him into the darkness. Then enormous bubbles burst through the hatch, and th
e deck slipped away from my feet, and I was floating in the sea.

  The top of the cabin vanished. The lifelines dipped into the water. When the little red dinghy swirled over them, I tumbled inside it. The kid was sitting upright now, but he didn’t say a word and he stared straight ahead. His hands clutched like talons to the sides of the boat.

  The sea was full of ropes and sails, of things that had burst loose from the cabin. I saw boxes of crackers, a loaf of bread, some of Uncle Jack’s souvenirs. Then, afraid Puff would drag us down, I struggled with the rope that held us. There was a knot too tight to untie, and I went at it with my hands, then with my teeth. The lifeboat tipped up on one end. The bow went under. I could see Puff down below, a shadowy thing far under the surface. Then, at last, with a snap, the rope tore away, and the lifeboat slapped flat on the water. We began to drift with the wind, lurching over the waves.

  By then, Puff was gone. There was nothing but that terrible sea all around us. In the little red boat we skidded and whirled down the waves. I screamed until my throat was sore.

  “Uncle Jack!”

  “Uncle Jack!”

  But there was no echo on the sea. And of course nobody answered.

  The blue pills had worn off, but everything still seemed dreamily unreal as we floated in that little red boat. As it reeled over the waves, Frank sat without moving. He didn’t even shift his weight to keep us level. His jacket zipped up to his chin, his hands clamped to the sides of the boat, he looked right at me without seeing me.

  At the other end I leaned forward or sideways or backward to keep us level. But water still slopped over the sides and soon filled the boat to our ankles.

  The plastic scoop had tangled around the oars. I snapped it from its string and started bailing. I looked at my watch many times before I realized it had stopped. Seeing the hands frozen in place made me feel angry and hopeless. I leaned back my head and shouted at the sea and the sky.

  At sunset, the wind fell. The waves began to flatten, and there was no danger then of sinking. But I felt more frightened than ever as I watched the sky turn red. In that tiny boat far from land, I began to wonder what Uncle Jack had really seen. What if all the people who had been swept to sea were floating along around us?

  In every way, I was adrift in the dark. I didn’t know where I was going or what I would find; I just wished I was home with my mother. I pictured her standing at the big front window, looking out at the same darkness, thinking of me just as I was thinking of her. But she would have no idea that I was lost on the ocean. She would imagine me sailing happily with Uncle Jack.

  Darkness settled. Then stars choked the sky—more stars than I had ever seen. Across them drifted satellites, flying along with a silent, steady purpose that made me feel horribly lonesome.

  Frank sat as rigid as ever, rising up against the stars when the boat lifted on the waves. Shivering with cold, I tightened my sodden jacket and rubbed my arms to keep warm.

  At dawn I saw clouds in the distance. Then, under the clouds I saw land, a line of jagged mountains with snow-covered tops. Currents and winds were pushing us in that direction, but so slowly that I thought we might never reach shore. Frank’s fingers were white and wrinkled, like drowned worms hooked over the edge of the boat. His teeth ticked as they chattered, and little tremors ran through him, twitching around his eyes. I was terribly afraid he would die. I worried about what would happen if he did. I couldn’t sit with a dead boy, but how could I roll him out of the boat and watch him sink into the water’s blue darkness?

  I pried out the oars and began to row. For hours and hours I rowed that boat. My hands grew blisters, and the salt water that trickled down the oars made them burn. The sides of the boat warped in and out, until little bubbles started streaming up through the corners. Water oozed through the bottom. Rowing the boat would destroy it, but I had no choice.

  At the end of the day the mountains looked huge. The land appeared wild and empty, and when the sun went down there was not a single light along that huge shore, not a sign of people anywhere. Then the wind began to rise again, and the waves grew taller, and sometime before dawn I heard the rumbling sound of surf.

  I raised my head to look around. In the pale moonlight, ghostly plumes of spray appeared. The surf grew louder, and I saw streaks of foam shredded from the crests of enormous waves. The boat rushed like a sled through the darkness. I tore off my jacket, hoping I could row harder without it, and tried to drive the little boat away from land. But we were swept in among the breakers, and one hammered down on us.

  The oars flew away as I tumbled into the sea. Gasping from the cold, I struggled to the surface. My flailing hands clutched on to the boat. Now upside down, it arched out of the sea like a turtle, and I gripped its little spine and held myself there.

  Ten feet away, in the gray foam of the breakers, Frank floated facedown. His black hair shone, flat and smooth. His jacket puffed out around his back, swollen with air and holding his arms splayed across the water. I could hold on to the boat and ride it to shore, or I could let go of my last hope and try to save Frank. But I barely thought about it. I pushed away from the boat and grabbed Frank. I held on to his jacket, on to his collar, on to his arms while a tumbling wave tried to tear us apart.

  He snapped awake.

  His head shook like a dog’s, flinging water from his hair. His eyes grew impossibly big. And then, with both hands, he clutched onto me, pinning my arms to my sides.

  I couldn’t swim; I couldn’t even keep us afloat. But the more I struggled to get away, the more Frank fought to hold me. We both sank underwater, and the next wave drove us deeper. It rolled us over and over in a frozen darkness. It scraped us across the rocks on the bottom, then spun us up to the surface. I gasped as the surf thundered around us, and I kept my arm around Frank, lifting his head out of the water.

  We were just tiny things in that surf, pushed here and there, pummeled and punched. The waves whirled us along, but every one swept us closer to land, and the seventh—or the eighth or the ninth—slammed us down on a stony beach. With a rumble and clatter it drained away and left us stranded.

  I heard the boom of the next wave smashing. It pushed us higher up the beach, then tried to pull us back as it drained away in a gurgling rush through the stones. I grabbed a rock and held on.

  Wave after wave reached up to get us. They pulled away my boots, one after the other. They pulled Frank out of my arms and dragged him down the beach. On his back he slithered, spread-eagled, over the moonlit stones, screaming at me to save him. I grabbed his leg and crawled up the beach like a crab, scuttling a few feet at a time.

  My hands were bleeding. My knee throbbed. But I kept moving up from the sea, and Frank crawled along behind me like some terrible creature slithering from the depths. At the top of the beach we found a cliff, and we sat with our backs against it.

  I couldn’t believe how I’d tumbled so quickly from an ordinary life into my very worst nightmare. I was stranded in the wilderness with a kid who seemed barely alive, and I had no idea who he was.

  At dawn I looked out on a dreadful world. Waves thundered into the cove and hurled themselves at the stones below us.

  A line of kelp and seaweed lay bundled like rope along the base of the cliff. But there was not a stick of driftwood, and that puzzled me for a moment. Then I realized what it meant. At high tide, the beach would disappear. The cove would fill like a huge bucket, and we would drown like mice inside it.

  I shoved Frank’s shoulder. “Get up,” I told him.

  He groaned. He pushed my hand away. But he lifted his head and looked around, then dragged himself to the cliff. He pressed a hand against the rock where a trickle of water made it black and shiny.

  In a very little while, his palm began to fill. He slurped up the water and filled it again, and beside him I did the same thing. Together, we drank water from the stone. When he’d had enough, Frank turned to the seaweed and pulled out a handful of leaves. They looked like lettuce g
one bad in a crisper, but Frank shook off the pebbles and twigs, the tiny shells, and stuffed the seaweed into his mouth. The sound of his chewing made my stomach gurgle. I had eaten nothing since my night at the dock in Puff.

  “How do you know that’s safe?” I asked.

  He looked at me as though I was stupid. “It’s all safe, moron.”

  “Says who?”

  He didn’t answer. He kept chewing, stuffing more seaweed into his mouth.

  “How do you know it’s safe?” I asked him again. But he still didn’t tell me. I was so hungry that I didn’t care if the seaweed made me sick. I plucked out a wrinkled leaf and started eating, and once I’d started I couldn’t stop. Some of the seaweed was crunchy. Some was soft and slimy, and it slithered down my throat like globs of snot. All of it tasted awful, but I gorged myself anyway.

  Frank gazed out at the sea and across the little cove. Then he turned to me and asked, still chewing, “Where’s Jack?”

  The question sort of stunned me. I was afraid to tell him the truth in case he fell into his eerie sleep again, or in case he refused to move until I’d answered a hundred questions. So I told a shameful lie. “He’s gone ahead to look for help.”

  “Then let’s find him.” Frank stood up. He looked around again, down at my feet. “Hey, where are your shoes?”

  “I lost them,” I said.

  “Moron.”

  The cliffs were less than twenty feet high, but the rocks were sharp and jagged. With cuts on my hands, and nothing but socks on my feet, I climbed a lot slower than Frank. But he didn’t try to help me. He just scrambled up and disappeared over the edge.

  By the time I reached the top I was sure he would be miles ahead. But he was lying on his back on a bit of grass, with a dried stem stuck in his teeth.

  I had never imagined we would find people just beyond the cove. But it was still a huge disappointment to look to the north and see empty wilderness stretching on forever. If we had come to an island it was enormous, too big to walk around, too mountainous to cross. If we’d landed on the mainland, we might have to trek a thousand miles to find another person. It seemed useless to go on, but just as useless to stay where we were.