Adventures of a Cat-Whiskered Girl (12 page)

"Is good boat," Harold said.

"Prepare to be sick ... and wet ... if we have to go in that thing," I said.

"How come you know all about coracles?" Molly asked me.

"My uncle has one."

"Is it safe? Will we drown? Will we die?"

"Well, we won't drown, if Harold knows what he's doing. And even if he doesn't, I do. But if we're in
the thing for very long you won't care if you drown. Harold, how far is it to this island?"

"Not far," Harold said. "Get in boat. We go."

Once we were in the coracle it all came back to me. I remembered how much I hated my uncle's one. Harold's was larger, and it bucketed and flipped and spun, also tilted wildly from side to side, and dipped forward and back. Harold stood and worked the oar, first on one side, then on the other. Each time he switched sides, the oar would drip water into the boat, so we were getting wet, being pitched about, and feeling sick.

"This is fairly disgusting," Molly said.

"I told you," I said. "But it's tolerable for a short trip. How soon will we get to the island?" I asked Harold.

"Not long," Harold said. "Five, six hours, maybe."

"Kill me now," Molly said.

Harold was good at handling the boat. The big problem with a coracle is that you can't point it in a direction because it doesn't have a point. If you don't pay attention or stop working for a moment, it will just spin and bob, going nowhere. The Hudson has currents, and finally Harold found one—then all he had to do was steer, and the river carried us south at a pretty good clip. The boat didn't bounce and wobble as much.

It was a mild morning, and the view from the river was pretty. We stopped being nauseated and were almost comfortable, except when a barge or ship went past. Big oceangoing freighters and huge barges pushed by powerful tugboats go up and down the
Hudson, and they look really very big when you see them from water level. When one of them passed us it was like looking up at a moving mountain. Then the ship would glide beyond us and the river would feel very smooth for a minute ... and then the water churned up by the ship's massive propellers would catch us. Wave after wave would shake us and cause the little boat to jump up and smack down again and again. It was a completely scary experience. Add to that, the ships would sound their horns when they saw us, and the noise made us temporarily deaf, so getting knocked around by the wake of the propellers would take place in silence.

"I may have miscalculated just a little," Harold said. "The trip may be longer than five or six hours."

Molly and I looked at each other.

"What happened to 'Harold have boat. Boat good. Harold good giant' and all that stuff?" Molly asked.

"Oh. Sorry. Harold make mistake. Trip take longer," Harold said.

"Forget the pidgin English," Molly said. "We know you can talk regular. Why the act?"

"Harold have inferiority complex," Harold began. "I mean, I ... I do it beause I'm short for a giant. Talking like that sort of jacks me up a little. It sounds more gianty."

"So you're educated?"

"I have a degree from Vassar College."

"I thought it was a girls' school."

"They take a few males. They need them in the Dance Department, and in my case the Anthropology Department wanted to study me."

"Is that what you studied, anthropology?"

"I majored in classical accountancy," Harold said.

"And Professor Tag was your teacher," I said. "That makes sense."

"My senior project was about double-entry bookkeeping in the age of Pericles," Harold said.

"What were you saying about miscalculating, speaking of people who are good with numbers?" Molly asked.

"Oh, yes, that," Harold said. "Remember when I said it would take five or six hours to get to the island?"

"Yes."

"Well, if that had been correct, we'd have arrived around noon. But I got mixed up. Comes of trying to figure in my head using roman numerals."

"And now that you've thought it over?"

"We'll get there more like midnight," Harold said.

"Oh, goodie! More time in this stinking coracle!"

"Well, I could put in at that little island over there and you could get out for a while and stretch your legs," Harold said. "Would you like me to do that?"

"I don't know about Audrey," Molly said. "But I was just thinking I would whack you with your own cudgel if you didn't."

"I call dibs on going behind that bush first," Molly said.

"I'm next," I said.

"I'll start unpacking the lunch," Harold said.

It was a small, rocky island, not much bigger than an average backyard. There was a nice patch of soft grass with a few little trees around it, and there we sat and ate the sandwiches Chicken Nancy had packed—goat cheese on crusty bread with thin slices of sweet onion. There was also a bottle of lemonade, and some thick, crumbly sugar cookies. The sun warmed the grass, and we lay on our backs, shading our eyes with our hands.

"Remind me," I said to Molly. "Why are we making this trip?"

"Because Chicken Nancy wanted us to make it."

"But she never said why."

"She's wise. She's a wise woman. What's the point of knowing someone like that if you don't do what she tells you?"

"I always do what she tells me," Harold said. "Those old wise women can throw a mean curse if you make them mad."

"I don't think Chicken Nancy would curse anybody," I said. 133

"I take no chances," Harold said.

"But why did she send us?" I said. "That's what I would like to know."

"Well, obviously she thinks it's destiny, or maybe your destiny," Molly said.

"Not yours?"

"Maybe mine, but I think yours."

When we got back into the coracle, it didn't seem as horrible as it had before lunch. We were used to it. We'd gotten our sea legs, or more accurately our sea bottoms, since all we had to do was sit. Harold had equipped the boat with a couple of water bottles, so we could take a drink, and an umbrella, which we used to keep the sun off. The bouncing and rocking didn't bother us anymore, and we even dozed off at times and napped our way down the river.

Harold paddled like a true giant. He never seemed to get tired. But he did get hungry. So did we. "Time for supper!" he said, and turned the little boat in toward shore.

There were four or five old barges, huge things made of massive tarred timbers like squared-off tree trunks. They were tied together with hunks of thick rope, and partially beached on what looked like a mud flat. "This is where we can get something to eat," Harold said.

He tied up the coracle to the side of one of the hulking barges, and we scrambled up a ladder. Then we had to go from barge to barge on shaky plank walkways.

"These are old railway barges," Harold told us. "People bought them for one hundred dollars apiece when the railroad was through with them." 135

"What did they do with them?" I asked.

"They lived on them," Harold said. "Back during the Depression, when nobody had any money. There used to be a lot more of them—it was like a little town. Now just Pirate Pete lives here, and he runs a speakeasy and restaurant."

"What's a speakeasy?" Molly asked.

"At the time, the sale of alcohol was made illegal," Harold said. "So these illegal bars sprang up. Speakeasies, they were called. Pirate Pete's is probably the only one left, now that there is no more Prohibition law."

There was a sort of house built on Pirate Pete's barge, with a regular house roof, and windows, and a
chimney with smoke coming out. We went inside and saw it was all one big room, with tables and chairs and a big bar, and there were clusters of green wine bottles with round bottoms hanging from the ceiling. Inside each wine bottle was a wire with a tiny light bulb. They cast a weird green light that made the whole place seem like it was under water. There was a big painting of a mermaid behind the bar, and there were fishnets with cork floats hanging on the walls. It was a neat place.

Pirate Pete was a little, greasy-looking guy with no hair, and no eyebrows, and I think he had no eye- " 136 " lashes. "Why, it's Harold the giant! Welcome to Pirate Pete's," he said.

"Harold hungry," Harold said, reverting to his giant-talk. "Girls hungry. We want food."

"I have smoked eel sandwiches and home-fried potatoes," Pirate Pete said. "Beer for the giant, and ginger ale for the girls."

"Bring food," Harold said. "Harold has money. Harold will pay."

There was a stack of smoked eels, looking stiff, on a platter on the bar. Big things, they had fierce faces, but they smelled sort of yummy. The smoked eel sandwiches were on big football-shaped rolls, freshly
baked. I had never tasted smoked eel before. It was excellent, and the home-fried potatoes were perfect.

"Pirate Pete catches the eels right here in the Hudson River," Harold told us. "And he smokes them himself. It's not the cleanest river, as you may have noticed—but just this once won't hurt us." Then to Pirate Pete he said, "Harold want more. Bring more eels. Bring more beer. Then bring apple pie and coffee."

The apple pie and coffee were even better than the eel sandwiches, and went well with the setting sun, which we watched through the windows.

"Okay! Enough eating! Here is money!" Harold paid Pirate Pete. "Now we go back on river."

"Come again," Pirate Pete said.

Making our way along the shaky gangplanks was even scarier now that it was almost dark. We climbed down the ladder into the coracle, and headed out into the river.

The river was quiet at night. There wasn't much traffic, and we passed a number of big freighters and barges at anchor. Most of the time, the only sound we heard was Harold's paddle hitting the water. Then there was a tremendous splash. "That's river sturgeon jumping," Harold told us. "They can get to be as long as fifteen feet, and weigh eight hundred pounds. They jump clear out of the water, and to answer the question forming in your minds, if one of them fell on the boat, it would probably be the end of us."