or walked the deck with summer’s expectations ahead of them. First Mate Hibbert was in the wheelhouse overlooking the serene scene, his pride solid beneath his starched blue uniform.”
Papa settled back in his chair, lit his pipe slowly, knowing we were leaning into the story just as we were pressing into his legs.
“It was late, eleven at night, and one woman remained on the promenade deck, strolling and then reclining on a settee, and from the wheelhouse, First Mate Hibbert smiled at the sight. The wind picked up, and clouds covered the sky like a diaphanous curtain, blurring the moon and obliterating the stars. Peace reigned, and for this he was grateful. Yet . . .”
“Below,” I said.
“Unseen,” Allyn said.
Papa laughed and bent his head toward us. “Yet below, unseen, in the belly of the fine steamboat, a boiler emptied and the second engineer poured cold water into its copper belly. Steam was needed to power this ship and sweep it across the ocean into Baltimore. And while the passengers, all flowers of the South, slept in their cabins in the middle of the night . . .” His voice lowered as we held our breath and then fell for it every time, the quiet and then Papa standing and hollering, “BOOM!”
We squealed and grabbed on to his legs; he laughed as he sat down, his weight molding the leather to his shape.
“It blew up,” I said.
“Caught on fire,” Allyn almost hollered.
“When the engineer poured water into the boiler, its hidden strength erupted with the violence of a lit cannonball. A fierce explosion fragmented the peace—a concussion to the night, a violence to the wooden steamboat. Hull planks popped, lamps were extinguished, children wailed and women screamed. Chamber pots rattled to spill their contents across the floor, and berths rolled to block the exits from cabins. First Mate Hibbert was thrown from the wheelhouse to the wooden deck. China shattered and fire flashed. Steam filled the galleys. The passengers awakened, all of them, and the fight for their lives began.”
“Then what?” I asked every single time because the answer changed every single time.
“Then the story gets really good.” Papa’s eyes twinkled and he leaned down, smelling of tobacco and mints. “Because now comes the story of how they survived.”
The beginning of the tale was always the same, but his stories of the ship’s passengers’ survival changed with his moods—each different but as vivid as the next. Some survived by riding a whale to shore; others swam underwater and grew gills. Occasionally, passengers were rescued by great flying birds that swooped down and carried them home. This time, he used his deepest voice. “When the Kraken heard the explosion from the very bottom of the sea, he rose to the sound and found people thrashing in the water—men, women and children.”
“Did he eat them?” Allyn was the most afraid of the wild Norse octopus-creature who terrorized sailors.
Papa shook his head as if in despair. “He swooped them up into each of his twenty squishy arms. The little suckers on the inside of his tentacles kept them high above the waters. They screamed in fear and panic because they knew a Kraken was the most evil creature of the sea.”
“But not this time,” I said. “Right? Not this time.”
I needed the evil to become good. I needed the dark to become light. I needed the stories to end in triumph or what was the point? I hated the stories where the sad ending left me feeling an ache in the middle of my tummy, the same place where I felt the emptiness left by losing my father the year before. I wanted—no, I needed—the stories to make sense, for the world to be restored at the end.
“Yes,” Papa said. “The Kraken was there to save them. And one woman . . .”
“Lilly Forsyth,” I interrupted, eager for more about the woman who according to Papa had survived in a thousand different ways. The story always came back to Lilly Forsyth; she was the heroine in every tale, the woman who had all the adventures while the ship sank to the bottom of the sea.
“Tell us what happened to her.” Allyn pulled at Papa’s pant leg.
“The Kraken carried her to shore and offered her the treasures of the sea if she would come with him to the far ends of India.”
“He took her!” I squealed. “That’s what happened to her. She went to India.”
At that moment Mom wandered into the library, her bottle-bleach-blonde