Back in the stern, Catta chose not to look at the mainland, which was off to his left. If you looked at the mainland, the kids said, the end of your trip came quicker. He focused on the woods instead. The woods had the power to slow time and expand space. When he was hiking off the trails, the idea that a forest might ever end seemed like a mistake or a lie, even when he could see the ocean through the trees.
His father walked back and sat next to him. He was quiet for so long that Catta assumed he was intending to be silent, which he sometimes did. At home his father would come into Catta’s room and sit without speaking for long stretches of time, as if he were debating inwardly, or the two of them were somehow engaged in a collective meditation, like Quakers.
“We’re going to Baffin,” his father said.
“Do you think we’ll see eagles?” Catta said.
It was obvious to Hillsinger that Catta was hoping for an answer that was not maybe. He had already asked the same question three times. Catta looked up and smiled, seemingly alive to his own absurdity, and that flicker of self-awareness made Hillsinger hope that the boy might be so instinctively farsighted, so intuitive, that without being told he would see the deeper underpinnings of what was about to happen. It was not fair, he knew, but Hillsinger let himself hope that his son was a freak of nature, or a magician.
“Do you know how to tell time without a watch?” Hillsinger said.
“No.”
“First thing—determine south.”
“Spain is there, so that’s east,” Catta said, rotating forty-five degrees. “South is there.”
The Old Man had told him that, allowing for the curvature of the earth, Spain lay on a straight line across the Atlantic from Seven Island.
“Spain is there,” Hillsinger said. “Zero degree, directly overhead, is noon. Now we divide the sky into eight pieces on each side if it’s summer, for the hours of daylight, at this latitude. Then see where the sun falls.”
None of this was what Hillsinger wanted to say. He was not even sure it was true. He wanted to say, with Douglass, It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. He wanted Catta to know why this was happening to him, both tactically and in theory, and how it corresponded to desperate things that existed in the world. He wanted him to know the Crito in its entirety, the importance of coal production, all of Livy, certain passages in the Federalist Papers, and the tactical logic of submarines. A child said what is the grass. Let the dead bury the dead.
Hillsinger, whose training demanded that one must interrogate oneself first, especially in moments of stress, realized that he was rambling, failing massively at what he could only imagine was an effort to rationalize the irrational parts of his thinking. He found himself clear in the basic decision, but unsure whether there should be some apparatus to it, some key to the experience to tell Catta first. How ridiculous, Hillsinger thought—if we are teaching endurance, then he does not need poetry. Let Baffin be the teacher.
30
The Heron made the turn to starboard along the rim of the open sea, and Hillsinger could now see the outer islands of the archipelago. There was North Island with its two green hills, aberrations in the gray Atlantic. On the near side, the wastes of Pulpit and Sisters sat below North, and behind those two, with only its treetops now visible, lay the wilderness of Baffin. Sitting in the stern, Hillsinger turned toward Catta. He was committed: his logic was sound.
“Tell me what time it is,” Hillsinger said.
Catta looked up, divided the sky, and counted.
“Four o’clock.”
Hillsinger looked at his watch.
“It’s just after three—note the position of the sun. You’ll disembark at Baffin when we get there.”
That’s strange, Catta thought. No one ever got off the boat at Baffin. Some kids held their breath when they passed, as if it were a graveyard.
“Is the eagles’ nest inland?” Catta said.
Cyrus had told him that no one ever walked past the tree line on Baffin, that the woods were too dense for walking or even picnicking. There were not even shellheaps, buildings, or any kind of ruins. It’s a wasteland, Cyrus had said. He said the whole island was absolutely bad luck.
“James and your grandfather and I are going back to Seven,” Hillsinger said, “and you will spend tonight on Baffin on your own.”
“Would you repeat that, please?” Catta said.
“No.”
There was no remarkable change in his father: his face and his expression were the same as always—thoughtful, curious, apparently serene. It was as if what he was saying was completely normal. That made Catta afraid.
His father had told him facts, figures, and history about a thousand places in the world, including most islands in the Seven archipelago—but never Baffin.
“We’ll pick you up right here, right where we drop you off,” his father said, “at exactly this time tomorrow afternoon.”
“Why?” Catta said.
When their parents had parties on Avon Place in Georgetown, Catta and James were often led out into the living room to shake hands; James would leave immediately, but Catta would make himself small somewhere near his father, and listen to him talk in that definitive, lilting way about zinc or radar or inflation in Brazil (when his father said inflation, Catta thought of a hundred balloons all let go at once). For Catta, that tone was the only authentic seal of any statement’s truth. And yet no one he knew had ever been past the Baffin beach. No one talked about it. The island was a void—a name without a body.
“What do I eat?” Catta said.
“You’ll eat what you catch or find.”
“What I find where?”
“The ocean is here,” his father said, pointing to the ocean. “And the woods are there.”
His father left him; he went up to the wheel and said something to Cyrus.
Catta saw four seagulls off the port side, although only two of them seemed to be traveling together. He wanted to stay on the boat. He wanted to circle these same islands on the Heron with this same configuration of wind and birds and this same light, at this same speed, until the end of time.
Now they were close. Baffin disappeared behind the North Island hills. Penny was up in the bow still, her ponytail exploding in all directions. Her pink shirt was dark; she was soaked and did not care. Unlike him, for her there was no moment when outrageous demands came due. Her day would unfold the way that days normally unfold on Seven or anywhere else. Light fades, the moon rises, day becomes night. The mind considers sleep. Penny would never believe what was happening here, just behind her.
They passed the small channel dividing North and Baffin, and then a pronounced headland. Soon Cyrus turned directly toward the beach.
“Are you ready?” his father said.
Hillsinger noted that Catta, when spoken to directly, did not look at him, nor at Cyrus or the Old Man or at James. He appeared to be studying the trees. Hillsinger smiled.
Let him be fierce, he thought.
Cyrus cut the motor and the Heron floated in silence toward the slope of Baffin’s rocky beach. Catta could hear small waves underneath the hull, and then at last the crush of wet stones. He took off Cyrus’s battered white hat and handed it back to him.
“You keep that,” Cyrus said.