“Let’s face it, Hawk, we’re lost.”
Hawk frowned in disappointment at his friend. “You’re lost, maybe. I know right where I am.”
Squinting in the bright sunshine, Tim turned his head this way and that, searching the horizon. Nothing. Not another sail, not another boat anywhere in sight. Not even a bird. The only sounds he could hear were the soft gusting of the hot breeze and the splash of the gentle waves lapping against their stolen sailboat. The brilliant sky was cloudless, the sea stretched out all around them, and they were alone. Two teenaged runaways out in the middle of the empty sea.
“Yeah?” Tim challenged. “Then where are we?”
“Comin’ up to the Ozarks, just about,” said Hawk.
“How d’you know that?”
Hawk’s frown evolved into a serious, superior, knowing expression. He was almost a year older than Tim, lean and hard-muscled from back-breaking farm labor. But his round face was animated, with sparkling blue eyes that could convince his younger friend to join him on this wild adventure to escape from their parents, their village, their lives of endless drudgery.
Tim was almost as tall as Hawk, but pudgier, softer. His father was the village rememberer, and Tim was being groomed to take his place in the due course of time. The work he did was mostly mental, instead of physical, but it was pure drudgery just the same, remembering all the family lines and the history of the village all the way back to the Flood.
“So,” Tim repeated, “how d’you know where we’re at? I don’t see any signposts stickin’ up outta the water.”
“How long we been out?” Hawk asked sternly.
With a glance at the dwindling supply of salt beef and apples in the crate by the mast, Tim replied, “This is the fifth mornin’.”
“Uh-huh. And where’s the sun?”
Tim didn’t bother to answer, it was so obvious.
“So the sun’s behind your left shoulder, same’s it’s been every mornin’. Wind’s still comin’ up from the south, hot and strong. We’re near the Ozarks.”
“I still don’t see how you figure that.”
“My dad and my uncle been fishin’ in these waters all their lives,” Hawk said, matter-of-factly. “I learned from them.”
Tim thought that over for a moment, then asked, “So how long before we get to Colorado?”
“Oh, that’s weeks away,” Hawk answered.
“Weeks? We ain’t got enough food for weeks!”
“I know that. We’ll put in at the Ozark Islands and get us some more grub there.”
“How?”
“Huntin’,” said Hawk. “Or trappin’. Or stealin’, if we hafta.”
Tim’s dark eyes lit up. The thought of becoming robbers excited him.
The long lazy day wore on. Tim listened to the creak of the ropes and the flap of the heavy gray sail as he lay back in the boat’s prow. He dozed, and when he woke again the sun had crawled halfway down toward the western edge of the sea. Off to the north, though, ominous clouds were building up, gray and threatening.
“Think it’ll storm?” he asked Hawk.
“For sure,” Hawk replied.
They had gone through a thunderstorm their first afternoon out. The booming thunder had scared Tim halfway out of his wits. That and the waves that rose up like mountains, making his stomach turn itself inside out as the boat tossed up and down and sideways and all. And the lightning! Tim had no desire to go through that again.
“Don’t look so scared,” Hawk said, with a tight smile on his face.
“I ain’t scared!”
“Are too.”
Tim admitted it with a nod. “Ain’t you?”
“Not anymore.”
“How come?”
Hawk pointed off to the left. Turning, Tim saw a smudge on the horizon, something low and dark, with more clouds over it. But these clouds were white and soft-looking.
“Island,” Hawk said, pulling on the tiller and looping the rope around it to hold it in place. The boat swung around and the sail began flapping noisily.
Tim got up and helped Hawk swing the boom. The sail bellied out again, neat and taut. They skimmed toward the island while the storm clouds built up higher and darker every second, heading their way.
They won the race, barely, and pulled the boat up on a stony beach just as the first drops of rain began to spatter down on them, fat and heavy.
“Get the mast down, quick!” Hawk commanded. It was pouring rain by the time they got that done. Tim wanted to run for the shelter of the big trees, but Hawk said no, they’d use the boat’s hull for protection.
