River Odyssey (2 page)

I was nervous myself. Were we really about to see a ghost?

“How did you know there was one here?” I asked.

“I can just tell. It’s a feeling. It wakes me up.”

Sheba’s island was probably one of the tiniest in all of Newfoundland. It rose only fifty feet above the tide at its highest point and had a circumference only a little bigger than a soccer field. But her cottage was well protected by rock and its foundation had recently been fortified by Ziegfried. The “point” was the most easterly corner of the island, where the rocks dropped like steps into the sea. Sheba said it was a favourite stopping spot for seals, seabirds, mermaids and ghosts.

I followed her down the path. The fog had mostly lifted. It was a good thing I was walking with her and didn’t just stumble into her, because, being a whole head taller than me, with her long flowing hair and flowing skirts, and the forward-leaning gait she had when she walked, she’d be kind of scary to run into in the dark.

We came around a corner of the rock and she grabbed my elbow. I stopped.

“There!” she said in a whisper.

I looked. And I saw it!

The ghost was smaller than me. At first, I thought it was just a ball of light, like a reflection of a whole bunch of fragments of light in a mist, but the longer I stared, the more I saw that it had the shape of a man. I didn’t see arms or a face but it stood with the posture of a person, as if it were deep in thought. My foot made a sound on the rocks and the figure turned. It appeared to be looking at us and that frightened me. Who knew what a ghost would do?

“Don’t go,” Sheba said softly.

She wasn’t speaking to me. The ghost bent down over the edge of the water. Was it injured? I wanted to ask Sheba if she thought it was injured but she held her finger in front of her mouth. The ghost was shaking. Was it hurt? Was it crying? I turned to Sheba and saw a tear run down her cheek. I looked at the ghost. It was just a ball of light, really, and yet it looked so much like it was crying. I turned to Sheba again; her eyes welled up with tears. When I looked back, the ghost was gone. I never saw it enter the water. I never saw it leave at all. It was there one moment, gone the next. I felt a lump in my throat. The air was so heavy.

“Will it come back?” I asked.

“No,” Sheba said. “Not tonight.”

THE FLOOR SHOOK
beneath my head and I knew that Ziegfried had arrived. He must have driven his truck through the night and taken the motorboat across from the mainland as the sun was coming up. Either that or I had slept in. The next thing I needed to know was whether I had just dreamt I saw a ghost or had really seen one. I remembered the figure crying over the water like a lost soul at the very edge of the world.

No. It hadn’t been a dream.

I dressed, rolled up my bag and went to the kitchen. Ziegfried was standing there as tall as a giant, his eyes wide—the look he got when he knew something had happened but didn’t want to talk about it in front of Sheba. She must have told him something already. Sheba was the sparkle in Ziegfried’s life. He believed she was the reason he had been put on this earth—for her, and to fix things, fiddle with things and invent things. Even so, I knew he would prefer to question me about ghosts when we were alone.

He hung up his jacket, washed his hands and sat at the table. He always brought the smell of outdoors in with him: the smell of wood, oil, metal and earth, a little like a bear. The animals shifted nervously when he came in, even though in Sheba’s world the animals were treated like people. The cockatiels flew to his head and chirped loudly, to show they were not afraid, although Ziegfried kept a house full of birds himself, and a bird knows a bird’s friend. All the same, when he reached over to pat Edgar’s head, the goat twitched nervously and seemed about half the size he was before. All the animals must have felt they were in the presence of a giant.

“How’s the sub, Al?”

“Perfect.”

“Good. The engine?”

“Singing.”

“Good. Your wake?”

“True as an arrow.”

“Good. Good.”

Ziegfried wrapped his hands around a cup of tea Sheba poured for him. As we sat down to breakfast she described her dream and what she thought I should do. He listened carefully and stole occasional glances at me. He knew I was geared up for the Pacific; we had prepared for it all winter. Still, I didn’t think he would ever contradict Sheba. But he surprised me.

“Well, I haven’t got much to say for a man who didn’t care enough to stay around after you came into the world.”

I raised my head. Sheba didn’t seem the least bit disturbed.

“Has he ever written to you, Al?” he continued.

“No.”

“Not a birthday present, not a Christmas card, ever?”

“No. Nothing.”

Ziegfried raised his bushy eyebrows. “What father doesn’t send even one letter to his own son?”

“Maybe a father who has made a mistake,” said Sheba. She spoke so gently it was as if she were speaking from another world. “Maybe a father who is ashamed. Or a man who has been deeply hurt.” She looked into my eyes.
“Everyone
makes mistakes.”

“That’s true,” Ziegfried agreed quickly.

I wondered what mistakes he ever made.

“It is unfinished business,” Sheba said. “Like the ghost who visited us last night. The poor thing died with unfinished business. Now it roams the world like a shadow.”

I watched Ziegfried’s face to see if he believed what she had just said. He listened to every word that came from her lips as if it were the gospel truth.

“You need to find your father, Alfred,” Sheba continued. “It doesn’t matter if you like him or not. It doesn’t matter if he likes you or not. You need to meet him, face to face, and speak with him. Then you will know what to do. Then you can let him go if you want to. Then it won’t haunt you.”

“It doesn’t haunt me. He’s not a ghost.”

“Not yet,” she said, with a certainty that cut right through both of us. You can’t argue with someone who is motivated only by love.

Ziegfried furrowed his brow. “Have you got any idea where he might be, Al?”

“My grandfather said he moved to Montreal and got a job there in the dockyards. He’s a machinist.”

“Montreal?”

“Yah, but that was a long time ago.”

“Sixteen years ago.”

“I guess so.”

Ziegfried shook his head. “Seems to me he’s not worth the trouble.”

“Maybe he isn’t,” said Sheba, and her eyes sparkled, “but Alfred is.”

“Sheba has a kind of intelligence you and I don’t have,” said Ziegfried. “If it were anybody else, talking about angels and ghosts… ”

We had stepped out to carry in supplies from the motor-boat. He had moored it to the sub, which was moored to the rock in Sheba’s tiny cove.

“You’ve
seen ghosts before,” I said.

“Nope. Never have.”

“What? But you told me you did, a couple of years ago.”

“No, Al. What I said was that I
believed
in ghosts. I never said I saw one.”

“Oh. Then why do you believe in them if you’ve never seen one?”

“Because so many people have. If you hear enough people talk about something, you kind of start to believe it yourself. I’ve never seen Australia but I believe it exists.”

“Oh.”

“What did you see, Al, a bright light?”

“Yah. It was a bright light. But it was something else too.”

“Really? What?”

I thought for a while. “It had … personality.”

“Personality? The ghost had personality?”

“I don’t know how else to describe it.”

“Did you see a face?”

“No.”

“Did you see clothes, or tools?”

“No. Nothing. It was just… its posture.”

“Its posture?”

“Yah. The way it was standing.”

“Did you see its legs?”

“No.”

“Its arms?”

“No. Nothing.”

“But you knew it was standing?”

“Yes. And then it bent over, and then it was gone. It was sad.
Really
sad.”

Ziegfried scratched his head.

“You should ask Sheba about it. She saw it too.”

“No, no, heavens, no! No, that’s enough. If you say you saw it, then I know it was there. You’re like me, Al, scientific minded. If you say you saw a ghost, then I believe you saw a ghost.”

I knew that would not be the end of it for him. In the afternoon, while Sheba was practising yoga in her room, I saw him scouting around on the point. He had his measuring tape out and was making sketches in his notepad. I had to smile. If a ghost like that was afraid of someone my size, Ziegfried was sure as heck never going to see one.

Everything was mixed up now and I hated that. I wanted to sail to the Pacific, not search for my father. But I didn’t want to disappoint Sheba, and she thought I should search for him. Disappointing Sheba would have bothered me more than anything else. But maybe I could convince her that I didn’t need to look for him, and things could straighten out again and we could continue preparing for the Pacific.

I wandered around mulling it over in my head until I found myself in front of her bedroom door. I hated to disturb her when she was practising yoga, but couldn’t help it; it was bugging me so much. I knocked.

“Yes?”

“Can I talk to you?”

“Come in.”

I opened the door. She was on a mat on the floor. Her arms and legs were twisted up like very smooth licorice. She moved slowly, limb over limb like a snake. Her hair fell down and covered her feet. She waited for me to speak.

“I’m sorry to bother you.”

“You’re not bothering me.”

“Umm … I don’t think I should look for my father.”

She raised her head, but not towards me. She looked like a turtle now, extending its head out of its shell. “I do.”

Shoot. I just wished she would give up. “I think I know why you think I should go.”

She stopped moving, turned and looked at me. “Why?”

“Because you were only twelve the last time you saw your own father.”

I hoped my words wouldn’t hurt her. I didn’t want to hurt her. Maybe they did. She reached her arms towards me. “Come here.”

I went over and sat down. She took my hands in hers and stared into my eyes. “Yes. It was the last time I saw him, Alfred. But there is something else you must know. Something I am ashamed to tell you. Something I think of every day of my life. How I wish I could go back and change it. I would do anything if I could. But I can’t.”

“What is it?”

“I had another chance to see him.”

“Who? Your father?”

“Yes. When I was fifteen. Some friends of mine were having a party. They weren’t really my friends; they were older than me and I wanted to be their friend. They had never invited me to a party before. I wanted to go so much. But my father was sick then. He sent a message that he wanted to see me. I should have gone. I could have taken a train to the town where he lived. I should have gone to see him. He asked for me.”

“But you didn’t?”

Her eyes fell onto the floor.

“No. I went to the party. My father died the next day. I wasn’t there. He died without me. He must have thought I didn’t care. I was just a silly fifteen-year-old girl who wanted to be popular. If I could change just one thing, Alfred, it would be that. How could I have been so selfish? What does a party mean when your father is dying?”

I didn’t know what to say.

“A time will come, Alfred, when you will be older than your father was when he left you. You will be wiser then than he was. You are probably wiser now. I promise you, a time will come when you will wish you had made the effort to see him. Perhaps he is too afraid to come seeking you. Perhaps he is not strong enough. But you are strong enough, and you are brave. You can go to him. If you choose not to now, later might be too late. I would spare you that if I could. Do you know that I love you?”

“Yes.”

Sheba’s eyes were filled with tears but she was smiling. I dropped my head and nodded. She was right. I wished she wasn’t but she was. “I’m sorry I interrupted you.”

She squeezed my hands again. “I’m glad that you did.”

I went down to the cove and threw the Frisbee with Hollie and Seaweed and thought it over. Throwing the Frisbee with a dog and seagull wasn’t easy. I would spin it over the water with all my might and Seaweed would fly over and pick it up. Then, he would fly to the sub, hover in the air above it and drop the Frisbee inside the portal. Sometimes it would go in but usually it would bounce off the hatch and land in the water. That’s when Hollie would jump in and retrieve it, which was a lot of work for him because he was no bigger than the Frisbee. And he wouldn’t give it to me unless I traded him something for it, like a stick or a dog biscuit. But sometimes Seaweed would suddenly lose interest and Hollie and I would have to climb into the motorboat and go out and get the Frisbee back. And sometimes, in the fog, we couldn’t find it. Still, it was better than playing alone.

“What do you think, Hollie? Do you want to sail to Montreal?”

Hollie wagged his tail and barked excitedly. He wanted to go everywhere.

“How about you, Seaweed?”

Seaweed turned his beak sideways, giving his questioning look. That was all I was going to get out of him. But I knew the truth already: both would follow me anywhere without question or complaint. They were the most loyal crew in the world.