Barefoot Girls (26 page)

“Pam?” Keeley said.

“Yes?” Pam had said, abandoning the game they had been playing since they had boarded her “ship”.

“Um, if we keep being dragged, we’re going to be too far from the island. I mean, it seems like the tide is dragging us away,” Keeley said.

Pam shook her head and said, “Don’t worry, this next turn will get us back in the front of the island. We’ll be okay.”

But the next turn had them still pulling away from the island, not growing closer. Zooey looked at the churning water. Was this what Frannie had been warning them about? This tide? She looked at the island. It was still close enough to swim. But what about the boat?

Zooey couldn’t stay quiet any longer. “Captain? Do you think we should abandon ship? If we swim-“

Pam’s head snapped around.  She gasped and stared at Zooey. “Are you kidding? This is my parent’s boat! They’ll kill me!”

Zooey looked longingly at the island and then back at the thunderheads. What could she say? Pam would be in deep trouble if the boat was lost. But what were they going to do? She shrugged and said miserably, “I don’t know! I’m scared!”

Zooey looked around at the others. Amy looked as worried as she was, but Keeley had undergone one of her transformations from fun girl to mute girl. She was huddled down looking at her feet, practically bent in half, and saying nothing. She wouldn’t be any help now. And they needed help. Zooey looked around, searching for another boat, but the waters of the bay were empty. They all probably had weather radios, telling them to get off the water, warning them in time.

Exasperated, Zooey cried out, “We have to do something! What are we going to do?”

Amy, who had been looking around at the boat and then again at the island, suddenly brightened and said, “I have an idea! Pam?”

“Yes?”

Amy pointed at the water and said, “If we all jump in except you, you could throw us a bowline and we can swim and tow the boat in together. You’d stay at the helm and keep us on course. What do you think?”

Pam looked at the slowly retreating island wistfully and then at Amy. Her shoulders sagged. “I really thought I could do it. I forgot about the tide! There wasn’t a tide on the lake!”

Amy nodded and reached over to put her hand on Pam’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, it’ll be okay. With the three of us pulling, we should be able to tow it in. Zooey? Can you handle it?”

Zooey nodded more enthusiastically than she felt. She was not a strong swimmer like the others, usually the first to tire. But she was more worried about Keeley, who was still huddled and mute. She nodded over at Keeley. “But what about Keeley?”

Amy looked at Keeley and said, “Keeley? Hey, Keeley?”

Keeley didn’t move, still staring at her feet.

“Keeley!” Pam called more loudly.

Keeley’s head snapped up, and she looked around, blinking as if she’d been asleep. “What? What’s going on?”

Amy leaned over to be closer to Keeley and said, “Keeley, we’re going to need your super-duper frog-kick to get this boat to shore! Okay? You and me and Zooey are going to jump in and tow the boat. Okay?”

Keeley nodded sleepily at Amy, her face impassive.

“All right!” Amy said, clapping her hands together loudly. “Let’s go!”

They took down the sails and then the girls jumped in: Amy, then Keeley, and last, Zooey. Keeley seemed to finally wake up as soon as she hit the water, becoming her usual animated and engaged self again, whooping out encouragement to Zooey when she hesitated before jumping in and yelling for Pam to throw her the bowline. Once they had the line, Amy put Keeley, the strongest swimmer, in front, then she swam behind her to pull, too, but the line was too short and there wasn’t enough room for Zooey.

Amy swam back around to the helm where Pam sat. “Pam, throw us another line! I’m going to pull one with Zooey helping me, and Keeley’s going to pull the other!”

Dragging two lines, they started their swim toward the island. Zooey tried to help, pulling on the line as she swam behind Amy, but she knew her help was more symbolic than anything. She could barely keep herself afloat and wished she felt comfortable enough with the other girls to ask for one of the “sissy” life preservers stowed on the boat.

Although Amy was helping, she was too small to really make any headway. Had it been just Zooey and Amy towing the boat, it never would have worked. It was Keeley and her strong swimming, her famous and powerful frog-kick that made the boat move toward shore slowly but surely.

They were getting close to shore, but still far from the first part of boardwalk, when the rain started falling. First, it was a few hard drops plopping down in the water next to Zooey’s face. Zooey, swimming as hard as she could and lifting her head to gulp air, looked up at the sky when she noticed. A drop smacked right into her left eye.

“Ow!” Zooey cried.

Amy looked over her shoulder as she swam, wiggling along in the water. “What?”

“It’s raining! The storm’s here!”

Amy looked up at the darkening sky. “Oh, no. Zooey, can you keep towing? I’ve got to talk to Pam!”

Zooey, gasping and trying to keep her head above water, nodded. “Yes! Go!”  She weakly pulled on the line and just swam as best she could, no longer even trying to tow the boat. Luckily, Keeley was oblivious to the storm and continued to swim and tow the boat closer to the island. They were very close to the abandoned shack they had passed earlier.

Zooey couldn’t really hear the words, but she could tell that Pam and Amy were arguing. What about? They had to get out of the water! They could be hit by lightning!  She tried to listen to their conversation, but the wind, that had picked up even more, whipped the sound of their voices away. Worse, the water had become choppy and small waves kept crashing over her, making it hard to open her mouth for air without choking on seawater. She began to wonder if she was going to drown. She was growing so tired, so weak, she could barely keep her head above the surface. Thunder rumbled nearby.

Suddenly, Amy appeared beside her with one of the boat’s orange life preservers. “Here! Put this on, Zooey!” Amy shouted above the wind.

Zooey was so overwhelmed with relief she stopped swimming and went under. A strong little hand grabbed her and yanked at her, pulling her up. The bobbing orange preserver was thrust in her face. “Put it on!” Amy yelled.

Zooey grabbed at the preserver and wrapped her arms around it, resting on top of it. “Thank you! Oh!”

“Just kick!” Amy commanded. “We’re going to pull the boat up on the marsh and tie it to one of those old pilings there!” Amy pointed at the shack.

Zooey nodded in response and then watched as Amy swam ahead to Keeley to tell her. Keeley understood right away and started swimming and towing the boat even faster toward the shack. There was a clap of thunder overhead and then the rain started coming down hard in sheets, making it difficult to see more than a few feet in the distance.

Zooey stopped kicking, her legs so tired they hurt. They were going to die out here. And it was their own stupid fault. Why had she come along? She had known they needed an adult. The booming of another clap of thunder made her shiver. Now it would happen. She would be fried black right here in the water. They all would be. She closed her eyes and waited.

“Kick!” Amy screamed in her ear. Zooey’s eyes flew open. The boat was passing her on the right. Amy had swum back to her and was treading water just to her left. She looked at Amy’s face, but it wasn’t angry as much as determined, her little chin jutting out. Zooey nodded and then started kicking again, her legs heavy and weak. Amy swam away again to help Keeley tow.

Agonizing minutes passed, the thunder pounding closer, the salty waves rising and filling her mouth again and again as she kicked, causing her to spit and cough. Then they were next to the island. Zooey stretched her right foot down and came in contact with the bay’s spongy bottom. The relief was so immense, she felt a wave of nausea pulse through her, making her heave, her mouth sour and stinging with brine.

The other girls were moving quickly, Pam jumping into the shallow water and wading to the rear of the boat to push, Keeley and Amy up on a raised tuft of grasses next to the shack, pulling the two lines. They beached the boat, pulling it halfway out of the water so that the bow rested on the grasses while the stern still lay in the shallow water, and tied both lines to the shack’s pilings just as the first crack of lightening lit up the sky.

All of their heads snapped around, looking at the white jagged finger of light that cut through the darkness over the bay and touched the open water a half a mile from them. Zooey yelped.

Pam said, “In the house! We’ve got to take cover!” She pointed at the shack.

They all stopped and looked up at the slouching old building. This house was even more famously haunted than Old Lady Bennett’s with many circulating stories of the old sea captain still living there, his wraith attacking anyone who entered his eternal abode. In the darkness of the storm, it seemed to rear up above them, menacing and mysterious. Would it even be safe? The narrow wooden ladder that was its only point of entry had missing rungs and looked so dilapidated it seemed it would certainly collapse under their weight. The house hadn’t been occupied for years, and without an owner to keep up with the necessary maintenance, the salt air had feasted on it, peeling off its shingles, rotting its floorboards, rusting holes in the old metal cistern.

Pam started toward the ladder, but the others hesitated, staring up at the house. Pam looked back at them and put her hands on her hips. “Come on! We don’t have enough time to get home and we could get killed out here!”

Zooey thought of the captain’s ghost, waiting to attack. If they climbed up the ladder safely, who was to say he wouldn’t push them out the door when they tried to enter? They’d fall to their deaths, his horrible white staring face the last thing they saw before dying.  She started to shake her head, and looked at the other girls whose eyes were wide as they returned her glance.

Then another bolt of lightning tore through the air, and the sky cracked apart followed by a loud boom that shook the air itself.

The girls ran toward the little house and its ladder and climbed: Pam first, then Keeley, then Amy, and last, Zooey. Zooey was glad to let the others go first. If there was something waiting for them, let the others see it first. She knew she couldn’t handle it. If she didn’t die from the fall, she’d go stark raving mad and end up in an asylum like her Uncle Teddy. And other than death, there was nothing more terrifying than ending up like her father’s poor brother, sitting in a wheelchair staring at nothing, drooling slightly so that a string of saliva hung from his lip to his shirt, and smelling of spoiled milk and antiseptic.

Exhausted from swimming, Zooey took much longer to climb the ladder than everyone else, the only thing making her move after every break she took to rest was the boom and crack of the storm as it moved closer. The other girls leaned out of the open doorway at the top of the ladder and shouted encouragement to her until she reached them, upon which she collapsed on the floor next to their feet.

Keeley squatted down next to her. “Oh! Poor Zo! She’s plum tuckered out!”

Pam laughed and said, “Oh, here we go with the cowboy-talk! Where do you get that stuff from?”

Keeley looked up at Pam and said, “That’s not cowboy! It’s country folks’ talk. You know! You watch
Little House on the Prairie
, too!”

Amy said, “Will you guys quit arguing? We’ve got a patient here to take care of!” She walked carefully around the remaining portions of the floor in the living room and then went into the kitchen of the little two-room house, testing each board with one foot before putting her full weight on it. She yelled to them that the kitchen floor was really soft and not to go in there. An entire section in the southeastern corner of the living room had rotted away, most of the boards completely gone and showing, like narrow windows, the tossing waves of the shallow water below. A cedar trunk was pushed against the opposite wall and Amy opened it. Inside was a pile of old woolen blankets, neatly folded. 

“Cool!” Amy crowed, pulling the blankets out one by one. “There are even four of them! One for each of us! Yay!”

Zooey had sat up by this time and was looking around the room nervously. No ghost. Not yet.

Amy rushed over to Zooey with one of the blankets and wrapped it around her shoulders. “Better?” she asked, rubbing Zooey’s shoulders through the cloth.

But before Zooey could answer, a huge crash of thunder directly overhead made them all yelp. Then the rain that had been coming down hard before, pounded into the roof so loudly it sounded as if it was going to break through. Areas of the ceiling that were dripping before became little waterfalls pouring down all around the girls. There was one large dry area next to the window looking out on the water that wasn’t affected by the leaks, and the girls ran to it through the streams of pouring rain.

Outside it had become dark, the only source of light being the blinding flashes of lightening that illuminated everything around the shack briefly in stark glaring relief. The girls huddled closely together in a u-shape as they peered through the window at the storm. Then the sky went black and all that could be seen was the silvery sheet of pouring rain. Zooey held her breath. Was that it?

Suddenly a huge bolt powered down out of the sky and hit the water outside of the shack, blinding her with blazing light and the deafening cracking sound that followed felt as if the whole world was being torn apart. Zooey screamed a little, panicked.  A hot little hand grabbed her right one then, and she jolted and squealed again. The hand gave hers a squeeze and Zooey looked to see that it was Keeley’s hand and, looking up, saw Keeley's tight-lipped brave smile and nod of encouragement. Zooey tried to smile back.

It was amazing. Keeley, who could be terrified into a mute folded-up statue during an argument, was also this warrior princess, her eyes bright and her chin raised as the storm raged around them. Keeley nodded her head again, more meaningfully this time, toward Amy. Quickly, Zooey reached across and grabbed Amy’s hand with her free one, and then Amy took Pam’s, and Pam took Keeley’s, each exchanging scared smiles. Holding tightly to each other, they turned their attention again to the storm outside.

Although the wind buffeted the house with such power that it shook, and the howling around the eaves became a shriek, and the waves rose so high that they covered the marsh and licked at the pilings of the little house, none of them spoke or worried aloud. None of them screamed again or cried. Instead their little girl-knot simply became tighter, hands locked together.

Then, slowly, the noise of the storm started to abate, the shrieking wind in the eaves lowered to a dull howl, and the downpour tapered off to a gentle rain as the booming and crackling of electricity moved north. The brightening sky gradually lit the room and then Keeley began to sing, her clear bell-like voice ringing out and startling Zooey.

She was singing the chorus to “American Pie”, raising her chin in farewell to the retreating storm. It was a hugely popular song that year on Captain’s, sang at bonfire parties, hummed while hanging out laundry to dry, whistled while strolling down the boardwalk, yet now it felt personally significant to the four girls – singing of Rose’s betrayal, of their ever-tighter bonds of friendship, of the reality that they could have all died that day.

Pam and Amy joined in, their voices harmonizing. Amy was staring and nodding at Zooey as she was singing, and Zooey knew she’d have to join in, even with her horrible yodeling voice. At least she knew the lyrics to the chorus. She started singing, too, wincing a little at the sound of her wobbling off-tune voice. On the last bar Keeley released Pam and Zooey’s hands, and raised her hands in the air as if praising Hallelujah, and hooted the lyrics at the ceiling. Her tone and gestures were of triumph, as if saying, “Take that, world!”

They all trailed off then, not knowing more than the chorus of the song. Then Pam made a circle in the air with her hand and started singing again from the start of the chorus. The others joined in again, their voices raising higher, their smiles growing, their legs bouncing a little to the tune. Pam waved to them towards the door as they sang and they walked toward it, Amy refolding the blankets and putting them back in the wooden trunk.

They sang as they climbed down the ladder again, checked on the boat, which was still secured and safely tied to the pilings of the shack, and continued singing as they started to wade in shallows toward the southernmost section of the boardwalk and home.

Zooey was the last again on the ladder, climbing down this time, and she stopped at the bottom to look up. Maybe it wasn’t a ghost that had been watching her. Maybe it was the house, waiting for her, waiting for them. Staring up at it, she thought it didn’t look scary at all anymore.

They went home to accept the tearful kisses, fierce hugs, and punishments their parents thought suitable. Amy had to sandpaper the entire peeling porch railing at her house so it could be repainted. Pam had to not only pay for a new lock for her parent’s sailboat which she would never be able to sail again, but also had to clean the house from top to bottom for the rest of the summer. Zooey got away with the most, her parents making her go without dessert for a week; but they were always gentle with her, their surprise gift of a child. Keeley’s punishment was more extreme than the others, particularly after Pam’s mother had gone looking for the four girls and the missing sailboat and had stopped by Keeley’s parents’ house, giving Mrs. O’Brien an earful. The girls didn’t see Keeley again for seven days, and when she returned to them, she limped and would not go swimming or wear a bathing suit. She would also not tell them what had happened.