In town, several soldiers drank coffee and smoked cigarettes outside a café. They were straight-backed, lock-kneed, clean-shaven men in khaki uniforms with long-sleeved leather jackets and tin helmets. They had unbuttoned their jackets to be able to fold their arms tighter around their chests to stay warm.
The town had been bombed, and several of the old buildings now stood in concave rubble mounds sliding into the streets. There was an open merchant’s store in the town center that I went inside and told the man behind the counter I needed new clothes. Inside there was an empty wine barrel full of walking sticks and carved canes. Ivory and bone handles with rosewood or ebony shafts. Some had faces for handles. Bearded Romans. Bespectacled royalty. Hooded Bedouins. I could imagine my face as Edwin drew it, carved into such a stick, then a hand palming it and covering the world in darkness.
With the pounds Uncle Martin had given me, I paid for a pair of gray flannel trousers, a tweed overcoat, leather boots, and a shirt. Then I went to the train station where cars and military jeeps lined the road. I hired one of the drivers to drive me west to Southampton, where Uncle Martin had written there was a good port to find a ship out of Europe. I had made it, but I still didn’t feel safe. The whole time walking through town, buying clothes, and even in the car driving away, I expected a hand to grab my shoulder and pull me back.
The car ride took two hours, during which I laid out my paperwork in the backseat. All I had left was my own Dutch ID. Jacob Koopman, of Delfzijl, Holland. The picture and the writing seemed like they belonged to a stranger.
As we drove, RAF bombers crossed the Channel.
In Southampton, the driver dropped me at the port. Europe was across the Channel, which was full of military vessels and submarines. Whatever boat left this port would do so at great risk, but I didn’t know of any other options. I wandered the docks, eyeing the sides of the docked freighters and cargo boats. If there were crewmen at the gangway, they told me the same thing. Their boats weren’t going anywhere, or that they didn’t have enough crew to make their next trip.
“Do you know Felix Courtier?” I asked one of the gangway watchmen.
“No.”
“Javier Méndez?” I had the letter from my uncle in my pocket, and by midafternoon I’d asked after each name. “Petrous Valspar? Michael McCollum?” No one in the harbor knew these men.
After I had inquired at almost every ship, a man with a black mustache and a slumped, heel-scraping gait walked up to me on the dock. He wore a grease-stained coverall with the sleeves rolled up, exposing the dark hair that covered his gorilla arms. The knuckles of both his hands were capped in gnarled scabs.
“You the one asking for folks?” he asked in a Irish accent.
“I am.”
“Mind if I ask what it is you’re interested in doing?”
“Find a friend of a friend.”
“Looking for work, are ya?” he shifted back on his heels, and his massive chest ballooned out.
“Looking for a ship overseas. I’d work for it if I could.”
“Is that so? Tell me, who are these people you’re looking for again?”
I listed the names Uncle Martin had given me.
“No. No. Don’t know any of those fellas, but I may be able to help you out. I know a boat bound for New York as soon as it can crew up. It’s outside of town at the old dock if you’re interested. Go ask around there this evening.”
Later that afternoon, I started walking out to the pier. More planes flew overhead crossing the Channel. I pictured the distant town those planes would sight and bomb, and then imagined the continent on fire. The raising orange glow I’d seen over Rotterdam and Delfzijl.
I walked to the old port where the man had told me I might find a ship. At the dock was a small lean-to covering a large corkboard that had messages in many different languages stuck to it. There were pictures with directions of where the person who left the note went, who they were looking for, what had happened to them. A whole board of hundreds of layered notes, letters, and pictures; it was a monument to the lost. A last hope for the living. The board made me feel sick, as I knew it would be miraculous if anyone found a note left by someone they knew.
To Neil Von Poppell,
We are going to my cousin’s in Halifax. Please send word of your safety. We waited for you as long as we could. May God Keep You. May we meet again for the Cherries.
Lucas.
* * *
To Margaret Margareta,
I have the kids, my love. Our hearts are full of your dreams and they keep us well. Rest if you have left this world, and rest well. If you have not, look for us. I will drop our name loudly everywhere on this earth that we go so people will remember, and you can follow the trail of my voice, follow the love it sings out to you.
Vincent Margareta.
* * *
To Bobolus Yakaveti,
Your Brother will put us up in his apartment in New York. His address is 1567 Franklin St, Apartment 12 B, Queens, NEW YORK. We will look for work to send money.
Your father, Sol.
There were pages upon pages of Dutch names too, and addresses for where they could be reached, stories from people who didn’t know where they would be as they had no money and nowhere to go. Many picked an arbitrary date to meet back at that very spot. That seemed to be a trend in the notes. These notes contained a fierce hope, as much for the writer as the written-to, that they would meet, and with any providence, they could have some control over the date, the place, the if, and the when.
Many of the dates on the letters had passed, some of the more deeply buried by over two years.
I had to stop reading, it was all too much, such glaring loss. When I turned away, I saw a dirty, old freighter ship docked at the end of the wooden pier. The Royal Crest, a small cargo ship flagged out of Liverpool. It was docked to this borderline-defunct pier with no lights on it and a dilapidated dock house. The ship looked empty except for someone standing watch on the gangway. When I got closer, I saw it was the fat Irish sailor.
“Still looking for a ship, are you then?” the man said.
“Is this your ship?”
“It’s the captain’s,” he said.
“Do you really need crew?” I asked.
“That’s right. You’ll need to talk to the captain, though.”
“Is he here?”
The man walked up the gangway to a radio by the open hatch and called for the captain. The old boat’s blue trim was in need of paint and covered in rust bubbles.
Several minutes later, the captain, an older Portuguese man, came down the gangway. He had tanned skin and a horseshoe of wispy gray hair over his ears. His lidded green eyes were pinched close together. A cigarette-stained, yellow mustache curved around his mouth and pointed at his loose, jowly cheeks.
“The kid says he’s looking to crew up,” the watchman said.
“He does, huh? And who is the kid?” the captain asked.
“My name is Jacob Koopman.”
“And where is Jacob Koopman from?”
“I’m from Delfzijl, in Holland.”
“In the northeast on the left bank of the Ems, across from Germany? Yes? What’d you do there?”
“Germans have been there for a few years now. They made me work in a local factory, and I worked on a fishing boat with my uncle.”