Eight. That is the number Louie sees on the step, the water licking regularly at the base of the chalk mark, as if it were scoffing at the closed doors, which are powerless to stop anything.
There is no trace of step number seven. Louie sits at the level of number nine, his gaze weary, his chin on his crossed arms. They must have lost eight inches since yesterday. He can’t remember his father ever telling them the water had risen that much. Outside, the hazel bush he and Noah had clung to during the storm now has its roots in the water; taking long strides, he measures. Two yards, maybe even three. If the sea keeps encroaching at this rate, in six or seven days even the roof of the house will be underwater.
So he decides: they have to get ready to leave. His feet wet when he comes in from the garden, he tells his siblings.
Leave? murmurs Perrine.
To go where? asks Noah.
To look for higher ground. The only real puzzle is, how?
How? echoes Perrine.
Yes, how? agrees Noah.
“We’ll build a boat.”
Noah laughs, all excited. Louie frowns because he has already thought of a way, and he really can tell Noah that there’s nothing funny about it at all, it’s no laughing matter, because there is nothing there to build a boat with.
What if they remove the shutters and doors? The wall of the woodshed?
Louie doesn’t know how a boat floats. And anyway none of them would know how to fashion the curves or put a vessel together: he’s thinking of a simple raft.
And if there’s a storm?
Shush. Shush. Don’t even mention it. There won’t be.
But if ever…
There won’t.
He erases the thoughts from his mind.
“So, we’re going to build a raft.”
Ah, say the younger ones.
“But if there’s a storm, will a raft sink?” asks Perrine.
Shush, shush. Don’t even mention it. There won’t be.
Louie looks elsewhere.
“We’ll try, okay?”
No questions.
“Okay,” says Noah, conciliatory. “What do we need to build it?”
And Louie doesn’t answer right away because he’s looking for the words, and they’re not at all satisfactory, words that won’t frighten them, that won’t show how little he knows about what they have to accomplish, how to reply truthfully, not only what first springs to mind and which he tries to translate into something reassuring, but also something besides the obvious fact that spins round and round in his head and keeps him from thinking: We need something that floats.
What do you mean, float?
Things that float, I said.
Louie looks at Noah, who looks at him. He articulates, to convince himself.
“We’ll find something.”
-
But who would have thought it could be this complicated, this impossible, on an island without electricity, without supplies, without adults to help or show them how? Louie has his face in his hands.
“Can’t you do it?” Noah just asked.
And he was tempted, he had to confess, even if his mother would have scolded because it’s not nice—but Madie isn’t there to give her opinion or give orders or decide what’s right or wrong—yes, Louie was tempted to slap his little brother, hard, and scream a terrible insult at him, something which would have brought him some relief, would helped him ease his nerves, allowed him to forget that he doesn’t know how to build a raft, and that, indeed, he can’t do it.
The simplest thing would be to take the door they’d used to build the watchtower. The door would be the raft. Besides, there was nothing else, no boards they could have put together, other than a few pieces of shipwrecked boat, nothing at all, and yet they did look, because that damned door weighed at least eighty pounds and they would need plenty of imagination to keep not only the door afloat, but also themselves as passengers; it would take a miracle.
So there it was, they had a door, but no floats.
What floats?
Madie always kept her empty plastic bottles. She said you could use them for all sorts of things—watering plants, making iced tea, or dye, you could turn one into a funnel if you cut it, pots for the children to fill with paint, five or six of them, with screams of joy. Empty plastic bottles: there used to be dozens, on shelves and in the barn.
A carpet of bottles strung together under the raft.
But the parents had taken most of the bottles with them; they had left only thirty or so to last until Pata’s return.
Empty out the bottles to turn them into floats, and they’d have no more water. It’s either or.
Thirty bottles to sail a door?
Louie sighed and looked at the five-gallon jugs his father used to store all sorts of things, and which might have worked—yes, if they’d had the lids. With Perrine and Noah he turned the barn upside down looking for them—upending crates, digging in the drawers of moldy old wardrobes, in boxes of rusty nails, in vain, well, they did find just one, under a pile of newspapers, broken in three pieces; they gave up.
No jugs.
They threw three or four logs into the water, just to see. And they stayed afloat, but as soon as they put their hands on them they sank, and Louie shook his head—if they sink with the pressure of just one finger…
What floats, dammit?
The three of them are sitting in the grass in the sun. Before them lies the expanse of sea, without a wrinkle, blue as the sky. They dream of going swimming, of thinking about nothing, it’s just that there’s this goddamn water that keeps rising and spoiling all their fun, and the days on Perrine’s paper are crossed off too slowly, making the parents’ return seem improbable, or worse still, pointless. Louie doesn’t know whether his siblings realize this, if they too are afraid but don’t dare say so, or if it’s over their heads and he, Louie, is the only one who suspects the terrible future ahead—in the end, maybe it is better this way.
“And that?”
Noah points to the dozens of bits of wood the storm brought to shore and which are washing back and forth against the land. Louie sits up and looks. What could they do with those stupid dead branches—but now he remembers. Father used to call them driftwood.
Driftwood.
He is thinking out loud.
What if we make a mattress of branches all tied together, and we put the door on that?
“Yes!” shouts Noah.
So they hurry over, bend down, grab, pull. They go all around the island and bring back enough to make a huge pile, and they’re a little frightened at the thought they will have to put it all together, a gigantic mattress of gray, twisted wood, like some giant crown of thorns, they hesitate, wonder where to put their hands and how to interlace the branches, which catch and resist being brought together, a tangle of recalcitrant spiny pitchforks, refusing to be disciplined, ending up in a chaotic cluster. Perrine best expresses their bewilderment when she stands back to gaze at the vaguely rectangular mass, rubbing her chin:
“That?”
Louie bites his lips. But if he runs a rope through, here, here, and here… ? Try. It wobbles every which way, it comes together, it comes undone, but he pulls and winds, sends Noah to fetch every last rope, he’s making them a sausage, a roast so well trussed that they won’t even be able to get a finger in it, it takes time but he is rather proud of the job he’s done. The three of them set about tightening the last ropes, the last knots, and Louie wipes his brow, with a smile.