A Simple Introduction

A wrinkled piece of printing paper lives among my files.  Simple, but splashed with color.  Smudged, but painstaking.  In ballooning stenciled letters, marker strokes march tilting across the page.  "Nat Bowditch and Evan Bates are friends," it proudly proclaims.  It's right.  She's right.

"It was just a joke!" she protested months after she gave it to me, it standing proud on my cork board.

"I know," I shrug, "But it's true.  I like it."

I'm eleven now.  Awkward and girl-tongue-tied.  And still thoughtful.  Third time through Carry On, Mr. Bowditch.  I had introduced it to my best friend and my other best friend, his sister, so now my fantasies materialized as cloaks and hats and dress-up plays.

Let me introduce the characters.  But be warned: I'm a spoiler.  I give endings before beginnings.  After all, it's how we reach the end that matters.

That boy, there, in the three-cornered hat and whittled-feather pen.  His name (I'm sure you've guessed) is Nat.  He'll change the world with a book.  A book of not words, but numbers.  The focus-eyed sailors use the 78th edition today.  Book sailing.

But right now he's charting his education.  He's becalmed.  Indentured to a merchant until 20-something years.  No time for school.  For joy.  For numbers.  And to live, he must row.  Sail by the ash breeze of old tree oars and bulging mental biceps.  He teaches himself.

Math, science, Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, fall under his diligent gaze.  Fall, winter, spring, summer, love.

Enter the dimpled, swishing gown.  That one, over there, of the pink satin and trailing the floor.  Elizabeth Boardman.  She has dark hair, dark eyes.  Quiet and observant, some might suggest timid.

She has eyes in the back of her heart, they say.

20-something comes.  Freedom.  Sail with us, they ask, you'll ship as supercargo.  Waves and numbers.  Letters and, I'll have to remember that to her when I get back.

Harvest moon rises and a kiss.  "Come, let's ask your mother."

Another sailing comes and goes, this time as ship's clerk.  "You should tell your wife about the pirates.  That way she won't learn from someone else.  You can tell it like you want her to hear it."

He never got the chance.


To be continued.