Wade in the Water, Children
Sunday July 22, 2057
Living in the Wampanoag ’s steerage doesn’t bother Marcus at all. In fact, while it would be ridiculous for him to say aloud that he enjoys it, he does. He can admit that it’s difficult.
For one thing, he’s not supposed to be there, and if anyone on the museum staff realized that he was, he’d be in trouble. He’s lucky that he already developed a habit for creeping around the ship after hours that Joe turns a blind eye to, and the museum staff in the regular building tend to leave the operations of the Wampanoag alone. Although they are very much part of the museum in name and mission and ticketing, the trust established for the ship that pays them to run tours and maintain the boat means that their financials are split out from the main museum’s funds, and they operate without as much oversight as they would if the museum needed to pay for their upkeep from its own foundation. But that gives Marcus the freedom to come and go as he wishes.
He keeps a few belongings in the staff lockers in the hold, but he doesn’t have much. He wears his costume all the time, except when he needs to wash it, which he does in the bathrooms of the nearby YMCA, where he also showers. He eats very little, since he has no way to cook food or keep it, so he stops at the grocery store daily and buys some readymade sandwiches and fruit. It probably will eventually grow tiring to do this, but it feels natural for now, this strange, self-induced privation.
He doesn’t have his phone or computer, since they are lost somewhere inside the house that he no longer is allowed to go to, and so he’s caught out of time, detached from his own life.
He sleeps soundly down below in the steerage, or sits out on the deck at night where it’s marginally cooler. He can spend hours doing very little: standing up on the mast and looking out at the sea, or sitting in the main cabin and flipping through Amos’s journal, which is the only thing that he has with him. He reads the sections he’s already gotten through over and over, not wanting to reach the end. Reaching the end of the journal shouldn’t matter to him— Amos has been dead for well over a century, even if he survived his journey unscathed. But there’s a sense of finality that comes from a journey ending, and Marcus wants to hold onto this piece of his own life for as long as he can, though he couldn’t explain why.
The whole experience is a kind of communion, he thinks, even though Amos never walked through this vessel.
Sometimes, after work but before he returns to the ship to sleep, he’ll walk around the town. These places, at least, are ones that Amos went. These streets, while changed over two hundred years, are the same streets.
It’s so hot out that most people are inside, and so the roads are empty, the whole city a ghost town, and Marcus the ghost haunting it. He can easily picture the past superimposing itself on the present. At the docks, rather than pleasurecraft, there are endless barrels of whale oil lining up, row after row, millions of dollars of product ready to be purified and loaded on trains and canal boats and sent to light the world.
During the day, he goes about his tours as usual, and he doesn’t think that anyone notices anything amis with him. His house’s partial collapse was in the local news, and when his coworkers ask, he jokes about it, and says that he’s staying with a friend. They have no reason not to believe him; he doesn’t have anything personal to leave around the ship that would indicate he’s living on board.
It’s lonely at night, but he pretends that everyone else has gone out on deck during the dinnertime dog watches, and he’s sitting below to get some privacy to write in his journal.
He misses Bryanne, but that sensation, too, seems like a natural continuation of things, and so he makes no attempt to leave the ship to seek her out. He sees her once, walking down the quay, and he waves at her while he gives his tour, but she looks at him for a moment, then heads off. He doesn’t know what it means.
This situation cannot hold. He will be found out, and even if he’s not, he will someday reach the end of the journal, and the summer tour season will end, and he’ll be no closer to moving on with the rest of his life. He knows this, and yet he continues.
Maybe he did get a concussion when he tumbled three stories to the ground. He certainly got enough bruises and scrapes to empty out the ship’s entire first aid kit’s worth of disposable alcohol wipes, in the process of cleaning out splinters from his arms and legs. But maybe it’s the injury (to his head or not), and the strange reminder of realness and physicality that pain brings, that makes him want to sink further down.
The situation comes to a head from an unexpected direction. At the end of his tours on Sunday, he is leaning on the railing of the ship, watching the world go by, when he sees his mother march down the street.
He almost doesn’t recognize her, in the way that when you’re not expecting to see someone, they can vanish into the background. She lives in Providence, and so it’s strange to see her all the way down here. His mother is a short, slender woman, but she has a round face like Marcus’s. She wears her hair braided, and has for Marcus’s entire life, but it has long gone white around the temples, though she’s only in her late fifties— it’s from stress, he thinks. Never once has she left the house in anything less formal than a blouse and slacks, and that’s what she’s wearing now. Today’s shirt is loose and green with little cap sleeves, and it reveals the gold necklace at her throat, and the jingle of bracelets on her arms.
Joe is still on board, cleaning up the remains of their props, so, to forestall a messy family reunion in front of his boss, as soon as he becomes cognizant of whose heels are clicking up the gangway, Marcus leaps the barrier and goes to meet her, holding his floppy hat in his hand.
She looks him over with an expression that first belies obvious relief, then immediately shifts into disapproval. “Marcus,” she says.
“Hi,” he replies. “What are you doing here? You didn’t need to come out all this way.”
“I’ve been trying to call you for a week, since your father’s birthday was yesterday, and we both wanted you to come to dinner,” she says, “and when you didn’t answer your phone, or your texts, or your email, I grew very concerned, and then I went to your apartment, and found that the whole thing had collapsed and was covered in police tape—”
“I’m alright,” he says, trying to stop the rising of her voice. “Let’s go get a coffee—”
She purses her lips, but acknowledges with a nod at Joe, who’s now watching the scene, that family business might be best conducted elsewhere. She looks at him carefully, and the mess of scratches both shallow and deep that cover his bare forearms and cheeks make it clear that he was in the house when it collapsed.
“You should have called me right away,” she says. A minute of walking has given her enough time to modulate her tone and choose her words carefully. “Even if you’re alright” — a fact that her tone indicates she disagrees with— “I would like to know when something happens to you.”
“I didn’t want you to worry,” he says. “I’m fine.”
They walk down the street, a funny pair with him in his costume and her in her business clothes. They head, not for the nearby coffee shop, but a park with benches. In the heat, it’s empty, but there’s enough of a breeze coming off the water that it’s not intolerable.
“I’m sorry for missing Dad’s birthday,” he says as they sit down. “I’ll make it up to him.”
“You’ll have to apologize to him, not to me.”
“Can you relay the message?” he asks. “The reason I didn’t call— and haven’t been answering my phone is that I think it was left in the apartment, and the fire department won’t let us in to get our stuff.”
“Bryanne told me as much, when I called her. You need a phone— either get it back or get a new one.”
“How did you call her? She’s out at sea.”
“I called the tour office, and they put me through the satellite phone.”
“Ah.”
“You need to exercise a little more willpower,” she says. “The fire department would let you in with an escort, I’m sure, or get someone to gather your belongings. Even if the house is condemned, which I’m sure it should have been years ago—”
She keeps talking. It’s an old lecture, one that Marcus has heard many times in his life. He’s too dreamy— he can’t apply himself— he needs to get on the phone with somebody about something for some reason to just get it done. He nods along, agreeable if nothing else.
“I know. I’ll get my stuff when I have a place to put it.”
“And Bryanne tells me you’re living on that ship? Please tell me that isn’t true.”
“No,” he lies. “The message got confused. One of her coworkers owns a sailboat, and she’s letting me stay on board that for now. It’s nice— a thirty footer. I just spend a lot of my time on the Wampanoag because I don’t want to be too much of a burden. And Bryanne is staying at work, since she has her own cabin there.”
“I see.” He isn’t sure if his mother believes him. But he does know that if his mother asks Bryanne to confirm this story, Bryanne will lie for him. “I’m very worried about you, Marcus.”
“I’m fine,” he says. “You don’t have to worry. I have everything under control.”
“Do you need me to find you a new apartment?”
“No,” he says hastily. “I can do it.”
She furrows her brow. “Is there a reason you haven’t yet?”
“I think Bryanne and I might be splitting up,” he says. “So it would be kinda weird to get an apartment until we figure that out.”
His mother looks out away from him. “I can’t say I’m unhappy to hear that.”
Marcus’s shoulders slump, and he stuffs his hands into his pockets. “Please, can we not talk about this?”
“Are you thinking about graduate school still?” she asks, which is twisting the knife, and his mother knows it.
Time passes, in a way that Marus is barely aware of. And then, one day, he stumbles headfirst into the thing that he was trying to avoid: he reads the last pages of Amos’s journal.
He’s sitting in the main cabin, at the table with its crossbeams of wood to stop dishes from sliding around, with the now extremely battered print copy of the journal in front of him. He reads the entry for the 626th day, and then turns the page, and it’s blank.
He flips another few pages, and then the journal picks up in someone else’s handwriting— a loopy, girlish style, not the careful but crawling penmanship that characterizes Amos’s hand. The girl doodles flowers and sketches butterflies and horses and ships, and copies out poems and recipes, or pastes them in from the newspaper. Marcus, growing increasingly alarmed, combs through these pages for any sign of who the writer is. One of the newspaper clippings has a fragment of a header attached to it— published on the Sandwich Islands— Hawai’i— eight years after the last dated entry in Amos’s journal.
He closes his eyes and leans back against the wall of the main cabin. Above him, the reproduction tintype of the master’s wife smiles out stiffly from her frame.
“Mrs. Williams,” Marcus says, tipping his head back. “Can you send a message for me—” he begins, but doesn’t know what to actually say. It feels strange to ask to speak to Amos. It feels like Amos should already be there with him.
“Mrs. Williams,” he tries again. “Can you ask—”
If there’s no possible answer, there’s no reason to ask the question. What he should do is look through the ship’s log, to find out what happened, but the idea of doing this makes him shiver. If it’s a mystery, he can pretend that Amos is still alive.
Sunday July 29, 2057
The hottest day of the summer arrives. It should be impossible to tell what the hottest of a group will be until that group is fully complete and tabulated, but everyone in New Bedford can feel the day settling down around them with a finality that does not allow any room for doubt. This will be the hottest day of the summer. By eight in the morning, it’s 97 degrees, and the humidity is climbing with the thermometer. Not a single breath of wind blows.
It’s Sunday, so Marcus should be running tours, but every employer in the city seems to cancel business under the pressure of the heat. Without his phone, he learns this in the early morning when he creeps out of hiding and goes to the YMCA to shower. They let him in, but they’re posting signs on the doors that they’ll be closing all facilities other than the basketball court— a cooling shelter for anyone who needs it.
The radio in the silent equipment room— no one on the ellipticals or treadmills— is turned to the weather, and every few minutes a warning tone chimes and reminds everyone that the temperature and humidity outside will be dangerous— too high to allow sweat to evaporate— and lists instructions and places to go if you live somewhere without air conditioning. Marcus doesn’t listen, or doesn’t care to listen. All that registers for him is that the museum will be closed, and tours will not be running, so he can spend the day as he pleases— an unexpected and welcome vacation.
Restaurants receive orders from the municipal government not to open; every business that is not designated as a public cooling shelter or housing is told to shut their building HVACs down, and their computer systems if they can. Schools, which have been closed, open their doors to the public, blast the air conditioners in their gymnasiums, and invite everyone inside.
Marcus has nowhere to go. He could stay at the YMCA, or go to the library, or the local elementary school turned cooling shelter, but he decides against it. He wets his towel and drapes it across his head and shoulders, and climbs the mast to try to snag some breeze.
The air is as still as the grave, even right off the water, so climbing provides no relief, and even exposes him more directly to the unrelenting glare of the sun. It is so hot that he cannot breathe, cannot even think. His wet towel refuses to dry.
The Thylacine is out on the water, he thinks. He wonders if Bryanne is as becalmed as he is, or if up in Cape Cod Bay her sail is rattling away.
Usually, when he’s up on the mast, he watches the birds: seagulls whirling and swooping over the water, diving for the open garbage cans along the streets and whatever fish they spot in the murky water of the river mouth. Today, there are no birds, not a one. If there are any, they’re in the water, clustered in the shade of the sailboats’ hulls, keeping themselves out of the sun’s watchful eye. The sky is cornflower blue, without a single streak of cloud, though when Marcus stares into the far distance, looking for sails, a haze of still vapor in the air makes everything far away appear grey and dim.
By noon, the temperature is 110 degrees. Marcus grows faint up on the mast, but he clings to it resolutely. The metal of the hoop scorches his hands whenever he shifts their position, and he takes off his wet towel and uses it as a mitt to stop the burning. None of the water is evaporating at all; it’s too humid, and it’s too hot. Marcus can feel his heartbeat in his tongue, sticky and swollen in his mouth.
The sky and the ground fade into and out of each other; he feels like he’s turning upside down, even though he’s standing still. There are no whales on the horizon, nor any sails. But he pictures them anyway, a heat-mirage, a phantom, shimmering in the air in front of him. A mirror ship. He sees the ghost ship in the sky, and raises his arm to greet the man standing on the other mast. The other man raises his arm as well.
Where are you going, Amos ? he calls to the mirror.
Amos points to something behind Marcus, very urgently. Marcus turns, clinging to the mast with hands that don’t work right, and he sees, in the gleaming, dark city, where all the lights have gone out, people leaving their houses in streams. They drape wet sheets over their bodies like they’re running through fire, but they stagger down the streets like pilgrims or refugees, heading down towards the water.
Those who can swim dive in the water off the docks; those who cannot swim walk further down, to the rocky river shoreline, and climb down into the water, fully clothed or casting off their clothes. They wade in the water to knee height, waist height, chest height, shoulder height, dip their heads in the brown water and come up gasping, tilting their faces to the sky.
Marcus turns back to the ghost ship. You know how to swim! Amos yells at him.
The world tilts beneath Marcus’s feet, and he nearly slips from his lookout position on the mast. He’s too hot, boiled alive in his own skin, and it takes all his strength not to fall from the mast, to keep his hands tight on the ropes as he descends.
He’s surprised to find that the people walking the streets are real, that they grow realer the closer to them he gets. He leaves the ship and joins them, the pathetic cries of children and the gasping breaths of adults as they walk the last stretch, half a mile, to the rocky part of the shore. He clambers across the boulders with them, shoved hither and thither by the crowd. None of them speak much; it’s too hot to waste energy on things that don’t matter.
The boulders themselves, when he brushes his hands against them, are burning hot.
He wades in the water, salty in the river mouth, cool against his legs, his costume clinging to him. He keeps walking until the water is too deep for him to continue, and then he stands there. The water pushes him towards the sea. He wants to let go, to lift up his feet and let it carry him out to the open ocean, to drift away.
There are too many people in the water. When he starts to lean forwards, swaying on his feet and letting the water cover his face, someone grabs him and pulls him upright, putting her hand on his face to check something— a tender touch of the back of her hand on his cheek and forehead— looking into his eyes to see his temperature and his expression.
He doesn’t understand what she’s saying when she asks if he’s alright, though surely that’s what she’s asking. He stares into her face; she looks like the picture hung above the table in the main cabin.
“Mrs Williams,” he says but she presses a plastic waterbottle into his hand, from a collection she’s carrying in a grocery bag, and then turns away from him, looking for someone else.