April 2009
By David Roper
July 12, 1959: 44.04N/68.35W, a small island east of Isle au Haut, Maine: So I ran, as I always did. Actually seeing two mermaids was all too much for a 9-year-old to understand. Who in the world would ever believe me? Talking about it with humans was going to get me nowhere; even as a nine year old I knew that. No, I knew where I had to go, and I hurried along back to the beach and the dinghy, and rowed back to my father’s cruising sloop.
Dad was busy up on the bow, cleaning up after putting a coat of varnish on the forward hatch. He looked over his shoulder. “Beachcombing good, Pal?” he asked as I climbed aboard the old sloop, and hurried below, uttering a quick “Oh, fine, Dad.” I worked my way forward past the galley, through the saloon and then into the forward cabin until I reached the door of the anchor locker. The small door had an old rusty horseshoe on its face, which my grandfather had put there way back in 1939 when the boat was launched.
The door gave access to an opening through which only a small boy could crawl. But it led to a world of isolation and insulation from the outside world, a world that was away from the cruelty of sixth-grade bullies and disbelieving adults. It led to a world usually filled with soothing gurgling sounds, the cool dampness of aged wood, the smell of manila anchor rode, an undulating motion, and a half-light that, to this 9-year-old, somehow felt like a protective cloak. But what was much more important was who lived there. It was the home of an ancient oak wizard: the Stem.
I crawled in, and sat there and waited, peering forward into the true darkness of the bow, where the mahogany planks met the great wooden, sea-parting, guiding timber that held much of the boat together, while leading the way through the seas. I heard my father’s scuffing on the deck above while he worked with the anchor line. Still, I waited – perhaps 10 minutes.
And then, when a slight tidal surge began to lift the old sloop slightly, I heard that noise I wanted to hear; it came from the very farthest point forward. The Stem was awake. I leaned forward into the darkness, I could just make out the cracked face of the aged oak, the wise curve of the stem as it turned up to tie in the planks of the bow.
“I saw mermaids, Stem. Two of them,” I whispered. “They were girls on top, and fishes on the bottom.” Then I heard my father coming down the forward hatch. “This will be our secret, Stem,” and I turned and crawled out, through the narrow space, and into the light of another world, a world where there are no such things a mermaids.
The next morning, as my father and I sat in the cockpit drinking our orange juice, we watched as a breeze began to develop from the northeast. “That’s not a good sign, Pal – a northeast breeze building this early in the morning in Maine in the summer. Wind could pick up pretty good.” He poured some milk on my Rice Krispies. “We should get an early start today.” I looked up at the canvas sun awning as it began to come alive for the first time since we’d been in this harbor. But mermaids, not wind, was what was on my mind.
“Would there be time for me to row ashore? Just one more time for beachcombing?”
“Well, I think it best if I row you in, with this building wind and all. Finish up your cereal, grab your lifejacket, and we’ll go right away. Then we should head back towards Camden.”
Then I remembered. My heart sank. “Dad, I’m sorry, I must have left my lifejacket ashore, near the spot where I’d beached the dinghy yesterday. Pleeeeese, just one more time ashore. You like the beach, too.”
“Well, go get one of the adult lifejackets from under the port bunk. It’s too big for you, so just hang on tight to it, OK? I’ll row.”
When we were about halfway to shore, the breeze began to pick up again, and the newly formed following seas started to smack the dinghy’s transom. I felt the cold fingers of spray on my back as I sat in the stern looking forward to the beach.
“Don’t move too far to one side; stay in the middle of the seat,” Dad said. Even to this day, I remember that edge to his voice, that tone of emerging anxiety. I looked down at the accumulated bilge water around my feet, and watched it search for the slightest downward slope, which was toward the very quarters of the dinghy. The chop was now building such that waves were threatening to overwhelm the corners of the stern. The shore and the boat were now each about one hundred yards away. “I’m going to turn back,” Dad said firmly. “STAY STILL AND IN THE MIDDLE.”
And then he tried to spin the dinghy quickly, pulling on one oar and pushing on the other. And it might have worked if there hadn’t been so much water in the dinghy, but the spinning motion sent the bilgewater careening to the starboard side, knocking the little boat off balance and driving one quarter under, this time to stay. The swamped dinghy settled, slowly it seemed, into the surface of the cove.
My head went under. I popped up. The saltwater, stinging like tears, invaded my nose, my eyes, my senses. I remember blinking, wide-eyed, while under water, seeing blurred blue everywhere. I came up again. I flailed, and in doing so, I let go of the big adult lifejacket. But my eyes caught sight of my father, still many yards away but swimming towards me. I went under again. I choked spasmodically, my body to the sea just a confused void that needed invading. The sea did not discriminate; small boys were included, and this one gave in to it and just stopped fighting.
What happened next came from down under, rather than from the surface. Suddenly, I stopped going down and started going up, propelled by a soft, lifting touch on my rear end. I surfaced, chocked up seawater, and gasped at the precious air. A short time later, an arm came around my neck; it was the big, hairy familiar arm of my father. “I’ve got you, Pal. I’ve got you,” he said, and he pulled me toward the shore, the waves helping us along. We both crawled up on all fours. I remember my father lying on his back next to me, his chest heaving. “Are you alright?” he asked.
“Dad, I was going to the bottom! I was going to the bottom! I wasn’t going to come up that last time until you pushed me up.”
It’s no longer 1959. Fifty years have passed. But I’ll never forget that look on Dad’s soaked and shivering face, that questioning look of disbelief at what I’d just said about him pushing me up. He had said nothing, but because of what’s happened since in my life, I now know what he must have been thinking. He was thinking he was still 10 yards away from me when my head popped to the surface of that cove. It wasn’t Dad who pushed me to the surface.
David Roper lives in Marblehead, Mass.
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