Part of the Ghost Stories of The Great Lakes Series
The art of silence? Do not hide, for when you are among siblings, out of sight does not mean out of mind, especially when an order is easily delegated. Prepare to be busy, not look busy. This is essential to survival. Plan your day, but do not hope for the best. I had several chores, the major one being the gathering of driftwood–no matter what the weather–I became the driftwood gatherer, and I planned my days around the search for driftwood.
The weather made me, I’m sure; great gusts of wind, cutting sleet, rain in deluges, and heat that baked the sand to an almost dead white kept me in one piece. Never once did I ever hear an anxious voice from the house as I drug the driftwood from the shore to the door.
This was my job. The others had theirs.
No one wanted driftwood gathering.
Annie, bless her heart, wasn’t up too much. She was always sickly and kept close to Mother. We harried mother and busied her. She spent most of her life it seemed scolding my brothers and clucking over Annie, who stood still to have her tears wiped away in a rough but tender way.
I hated school but loved to read–as most readers discover. School distracts.
They shunned me for the books I read, but I read them anyway. I was the driftwood gatherer, I could face the disdain of any long nosed librarian. When we went once a week to the library (my classmates in purgatory), I felt she only pretended to put on her worst face for me.
As driftwood gatherer I felt it incumbent upon me to be observant. There were several old Bibles in the library–thus and so Bible donated by the family Captain Daniel McGuire, a Catholic and thus and so Bible, a Protestant, donated in the memory of Captain Joseph Fenton. When the Librarian had her back to me I touched their leather bindings and sometimes gilded edges and wondered where the families of these old captains were now.
Selecting books by George Elliot, Jane Austen, or any of the Bronte sisters and ignoring the looks of disdain from the Librarian, I went back to the line of Bibles awaiting my class mates. A donated Bible meant shipwreck. It also meant leaving the big lakes that took down their loved ones and frankly being sickened by the whole idea of setting sail. They left the Bibles in memory of someone who wouldn’t see dry land until God’s kingdom came to this leaking earth. I felt that I was connecting to the driftwood I found along our shores by touching those Bibles.
I was young when I was first sent out to gather driftwood. The shoreline to Huron was close to our house, and it was cold in the morning, any time of year. The mist was often low to the ground.
One October morning lost for some time, trying to find my way back with driftwood, I despaired of seeing my house and mother again. The driftwood was water logged and worn smooth by the roughness of the fresh water waves. So many don’t understand that fresh water has no plashy, saltwater softness to it–ever. The ships wooden and even the new long boats take a beating within the sharp and hardened waves of Huron, Superior, Michigan, Erie, and Ontario.
My father found me first.
“Well, at last I find my daughter hard at her chore. What has become of you?”
“Huron was in every direction,” I sniffed a little hardened in attitude because of the heaviness of my load and the ache in my shoulders. “Even on shore Huron mists up and hides shelter.”
“Nah, not true. Huron is only along the east here. She sent the mist to confuse you. She didn’t want you to leave. There is no harm in her.”
“Why doesn’t she want me to leave?” I felt little regard for her at the moment, and I felt myself struggling not to pee.
“Well, Huron loves all lovely young maidens.”
I looked up in hope at my father. His hair was gray and his eyes a sharp sky blue. He seemed tall but not so tall among other men at church. Until that moment, I was not sure father noticed me — ever. I could feel a thin mucus crust along the edge of my nose and my eyes felt swollen and my shoulders ached with pulling the driftwood beside me, in what seemed to be all day.
“Now let’s see what you have here.” My father pulled up the driftwood I had gathered; gray and black, heavy and long. “Yes, yes, I knew you had it in you. This is from my ship, I’m sure. Don’t you see pretty girl, Huron loves you and wants to keep you near, and has given you a piece of what I worked so long and hard for.”
“I think I should find Mother.” I told him. His fine blue eyes stared long and hard at the driftwood I had drug along behind me; he said nothing. So I started off again, away from Huron’s shore, my shoulder’s aching and my legs dragging deep within the sand. When I looked up again, the house was in view and I fought the urge to weep openly; a sure sign of weakness.
“Where have you been, you dolt, looking at rocks again?” asked my Mother.
“No,” I said, “looking for driftwood like you said.”
“I’ve told you not to be so long — what would your father say if he could see you?”
I thought of the Bibles in the Library and how ours remained on the shelf at home; mother wouldn’t leave him, you see. I shrugged and went into the warm kitchen.
Nearly every day, I look for driftwood and wonder which sailors clung to the edges and then let slip away and which Bibles are donated, which remain.