Big Water Read online

  Copyright © 2018 Andrea Curtis

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Curtis, Andrea, author

  Big water / Andrea Curtis.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-1571-1 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1572-8 (pdf).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1573-5 (epub)

  I. Title.

  PS8605.U777B54 2018 jC813'.6 C2017-904534-2

  C2017-904535-0

  First Published in the United States, 2018

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017949697

  Summary: In this historical fiction for teens, Christina and Daniel struggle to survive when the steamship Asia goes down in a violent storm.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover illustration by Jacqui Oakley

  Edited by Tanya Trafford

  Design by Rachel Page

  Author photo by Joanna Haughton

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  www.orcabook.com

  21 20 19 18 • 4 3 2 1

  For Flo

  Orca Book Publishers is proud of the hard work our authors do and of the important stories they create. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it or did not check it out from a library provider, then the author has not received royalties for this book. The ebook you are reading is licensed for single use only and may not be copied, printed, resold or given away. If you are interested in using this book in a classroom setting, we have digital subscriptions that feature multiuser, simultaneous access to our books that are easy for your students to read. For more information, please contact [email protected].

  On September 14, 1882, the steamship Asia sank in a violent storm on Georgian Bay, killing some 140 passengers and crew. It is considered one of the worst disasters in Great Lakes history. The only survivors were two teenagers.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  An Excerpt from Rodent

  One

  One

  The wind blasts my face. It’s hard, like pebbles kicked up behind a wagon taking off at full tilt. It hurts a bit, but it’s also satisfying. Bracing. Like I’m facing my fate head on. I know that sounds romantic. Or maybe just silly. But after everything I’ve been through, don’t I have the right to be dramatic?

  What I should be, really, is frightened. Everything about this situation is alarming. I can almost hear the opening strains of one of those melancholy operas Father likes to listen to with the door to his study closed. All the ominous parts are here—dark sky, turbulent lake, waves rising, my cousin Peter, the ship’s first mate though he’s barely older than me, insisting I get a life preserver and put it on.

  I dig my nose into my collar and turn to the side. The wind still tears at my skin, but I’m not going to leave this spot at the front of the ship if I can help it. Even though the sky is getting darker by the second. Even though it’s only midmorning, and I can barely see the horizon. The lake is murky too, almost black, indistinguishable from the sky. At least here I don’t have to listen to the others. At least here I can be alone.

  I can see the animals are restless, tied up on the nearby deck. Chained to the ship and each other, they have no choice but to face their fate. The horses are wild-eyed, ears pointy. One nips the other in the neck. The mare kicks her hind legs at the bite, and it sets off a chain reaction, like when someone cuts in line at the bank or the church Christmas bazaar, and everyone is outraged.

  That definitely sounds silly, comparing frightened horses to old people at the bank or buying shortbreads and sour-cherry jelly. I know nothing here is funny. It isn’t silly. But ever since Jonathan died, I find it more difficult than ever to react properly. The worst was when I had a laughing fit at the funeral. I tried to disguise it as sobs, but Mother knew. So did Ally. She always knows.

  I should go right now to the spot under the stairs where they keep the life preservers. I know I should. Peter sounded serious. And he knows the lake. He’s been working on the water since he was twelve. He’s been through more storms than I can count, even a wreck or two.

  But I’ve spent too much time on Georgian Bay to put too much weight on warnings in the sky or even the shouts of harried crewmen. The weather comes and goes like the hourly train. You don’t like it? Wait a minute and it’ll change. Just as soon as you think you know what’s what, the barometer goes up, it goes down, thunder rolls through with hardly a drop of rain. I’ve heard those old sailors who hang around the dock at Owen Sound say they have a weather eye. They claim to read the future in the patterns of the clouds, the color of the sunset or sunrise. But as far as I can see, they’re wrong as often as right.

  Anyway, it’s hard to know where a sailor’s worry ends and a cousin’s anger begins. Peter was furious when I turned up unannounced at the dock in Owen Sound last night. He nearly lost his top when I told him I was running away from home. He said it was his duty to inform Captain Savage, and that he himself would tear up my ticket to Sault Ste. Marie. I could practically read his mind: As if I don’t have enough to do without Christina to watch out for.

  But I don’t need a chaperone. I’m practically a grown woman, for goodness’ sake. Seventeen just last week. My first birthday without Jonathan to share it. But Mother and Father have barely noticed that I don’t need someone holding my hand. Mother speaks to me as if I’m a fool or an imbecile, as if I need to be told how to behave. As if it’s her job to map my life out for me. Isn’t that the thing about growing up? You get to live your own life. Make your own decisions.

  Mother and Father apparently have other ideas. I left before they had a chance to send me away, to farm me out to be a nursemaid or country teacher or worse. They think I don’t know they want to be rid of me. Mother doesn’t say it. Not in words anyway. But I see that expectant look flicker across her face when she hears someone at the door, and the pained, disappointed expression when it’s me instead of Jonathan who comes into the room. I know she’s lost patience with my wandering and my dark moods. I even see her grimace when I smile, a smile everyone says is exactly the same as his. She can’t stand the sight of my face. It’s a reminder of all that she’s lost.

  Frankly, I’m still not sure why Peter didn’t do as he threatened and kick me off the steamer or have the constabulary take me home. Maybe he could see the determination I’d first arranged on my face when I walked out the door of our house and over to the train station in Parkdale. I refused to look anyone in the eye—not the barrow boy or the newspaper agent I’ve known all my life, not the milkman or any of the delivery men with their wagons piled high. On Queen Street, I even passed our old Sunday schoolteacher and the kind neighbor with her new baby in a pram. I ignored them all, picking up my skirt to keep it out of the mud. I didn’t look anywhere but straight ahead until I got on the train and collapsed in a heap.

  Or maybe Peter just felt sorry for me. I promised him I’d let my parents know I’m fine once I’ve put the lake and several hundred miles between us. I told him I needed to get away. The Soo first, then who knows? Maybe just for now. Maybe forever.

  A wave splashes over the deck, and I have to lift my feet to keep my boots dry. I can see the whitecaps now. The waves are growing bigger, their furious tops glowing white against the gray. The bow pitches down low, and I have to grip the guardrail to keep from falling forward. The wave is so deep, the water is right beside me. So close it looks as if it’s going to fall over top of me like a heavy velvet curtain. I take a deep breath and squeeze my eyes shut.

  But the wave passes. The boat emerges. I open my eyes. My hair is wet, my boots sopping now. The horses are making a racket, neighing and whinnying. The cows have gotten into the act too. They’re making such an unholy noise, I’m going to have to find another place to face my fate.

  More people have arrived on the upper deck, negotiating the cargo strapped here—barrels and stacks of goods wrapped in canvas, a few red-hulled rowboats, a canoe leaning up against the rail, some luggage too. There’s a businessman in a fine suit and hat who’s striding around like he thinks he’s in charge. He bellows at a trio of rough-looking lumbermen headed up to the camps, but his voice is lost in the wind. Or maybe they’re ignoring him. All three are talking at once, growing more animated with every word. Two crewmen rush by, cabin boys barely out of short pants, going in and out of doors, doing who knows what. I feel invisible here, as if I am watching it all from the other side of glass. I am removed. Apart.

  A young mother with her small child comes up to the railing behind me, the boy’s legs wrapped tightly around her waist, arms circling her neck. The woman looks as frightened as the horses. I stare at her faded canvas-colored life preserver, wo
ndering what she’s heard. I’m about to ask her, to break through the invisible glass that divides me from the rest of the passengers, when the child throws up all down her back.

  I gulp and turn away. I’ve never been one of those people who can help sick people. I can’t imagine why Mother would think I’d be a good governess or nursemaid for anyone. There was this girl I used to play with when we were small who was always nursing small animals back to health and insisting on playing doctor and patient. She tried to get me to go along with it, tried to get me to make bandages and poultices for dolls and the smaller children on our street, but I could never participate in the way she wanted. I didn’t show adequate enthusiasm for her caregiving games, and she eventually moved on to other girls. It’s not that I don’t care about other people. I’m not cruel, not selfish, no matter what Mother says. But I just can’t seem to be helpful. It was the same when Jonathan was sick. Seeing that child throw up all over his mother just makes me want to throw up too.

  I hold the railing tightly as I move sternward along the promenade deck that encircles the boat. My boots slide on the slippery surface. All but one of the oil lamps that swing from the walls along the walkway have gone out.

  The Asia is a tall ship, taller than most of the steamers I’ve seen at dock in Collingwood or Owen Sound. Even here at midship I’m high above the waterline. She’s a riverboat, Peter told me, built tall to fit through narrow canals.

  Without warning, the Asia pitches to the side, and I lose my balance, falling into a door that opens with my weight. An old woman, her gray hair loose and stringy around her shoulders, screams and pulls a blanket up to her neck. There’s another, much-younger woman on the double berth down low, and she looks at me with saucer eyes.

  “Sorry!” I mumble and scramble to my feet, trying to get out as quickly as possible. The room is nearly as small as the bedroom closet at our house in the city. The woman with the long hair reminds me of a ghoul, her face hollow and gray. I grab the doorframe and hoist myself upright. The boat lurches the other way, and I stagger onto the deck, the door slamming closed behind me. I see more people coming out of rooms, holding their stomachs, racing to the side to lose their breakfast overboard.

  I’ve got to find my cousin. Ask him where I can stay out of the way of all these seasick people. I can’t go back to my own tiny stateroom on the other side of the boat. The two women I’m sharing it with have been groaning and heaving in their double berth since I got on board in the middle of the night.

  My last trip up to the Soo couldn’t have been more different. It was a few summers ago—Mother had sent us off to spend the summer with her sister. Jonathan and I were so excited. We’d never taken such a long trip alone. I’d convinced myself that it was the beginning of the rest of my life. Another overly dramatic view of things, I know. But the trip was deathly dull, the water still as glass for the entire voyage. It’s hard to believe now, as we’re being tossed around like a wooden raft, that I actually wished for some waves just to break up the monotony.

  The first mate was kind to us on that journey. We were children traveling alone, but I still think he went beyond the call of duty. He gave us a tour of the pilothouse and showed us where the wheelsman stands to cushion the blow of the captain’s shouts. He took us down into the engine room, where men with faces blackened by coal feed the hungry boiler. But what I remember most vividly was how in the middle of Georgian Bay, on the big open water, you couldn’t see land in any direction, just water everywhere. It felt as if we were on the ocean. I’m not sure why Georgian Bay is called a bay at all, since it’s vast, nearly as big as some of the other Great Lakes. Standing in the small wooden pilothouse looking over the endless water made me dizzy. I wondered how the ship’s captain could possibly know where he was without land or rocks or a lighthouse to mark his passage. There’s talk every day in the papers about building new lighthouses, putting in buoys and markers for this route, but until then, the mate told us, the steamer captains steer by ear, by nose and by God.

  Land finally appeared on the other side of the bay in the morning. It looked to me like a landscape drawn by a child. All craggy rock islands, tiny wizened cedars. The ports we stopped in on the eastern edge—Parry Sound, French River, Killarney—places sailors like my cousin Peter talk about as if they’re the bustling centers of the known world, are actually hardscrabble little villages. Shanties instead of houses. Barely a properly dressed person to be seen, though I saw lots of men who looked desperate, untamed, with shaggy beards and no hats. Lumbermen, trappers, fishermen. Sault Ste. Marie isn’t much to speak of either. More churches than people, as far as I could tell. Not even a real town, not officially. My aunt told us that in winter the snowdrifts sometimes climb over the doorframes, and people get lost trying to reach the loo behind their home. Others are locked inside for weeks on end, eating canned meat and old potatoes. She didn’t stay up there for long.

  I hope I can bear it. I’ve never liked the cold, but the Soo is the only place I can think of to disappear to. Surely anything is better than rotting away at home without Jonathan, the stench of despair thick as fog in our house.

  I sometimes think if I ran into myself now—if I met the girl I was on that summer voyage, or even a few months ago, before everything happened—I’d want to slap her across her silly little mug, tell her to get a grip on herself, tell her that life isn’t what happens in books. Life isn’t a bowl of ice cream, as Mother never fails to remind me. I used to think it was cruel of her to say this, as if she wanted to ruin things for me so I’d be more like her: tired and disappointed and old. But now I know it to be true.

  I move forward toward an open area and down another set of stairs. The boat lists to port, and a huge traveling trunk painted blue with a metal frame breaks free of its tether and slides in front, nearly knocking me off my feet. The trunk bashes against the side of the boat, then, as the ship stabilizes, slides back to center and stops. I lean down to shove it back toward the wall, grab and retie the rope that was holding it, then sit on top. May as well. It might be the only place where I can get away from everyone.

  I can smell something cooking, but it’s the last thing I want. I’m starting to feel sick myself now. I’ve always been the one with the iron-clad stomach. It was Jonathan who got seasick. Even on that calm summer trip up to the Soo, he was doubled over every time the boat heeled gently to one side. It sounds unkind, but it struck me as kind of funny, considering how much he loved to sail and fish. I teased that he had the belly of a landlubber whenever I had a chance.

  I shake my head. I don’t want to think about Jonathan. I don’t want to think about how mean I could be. How he tolerated me—loved me—despite what I said, what I did. How he would look, in fact, as if he pitied me when I said something especially unkind. I don’t want to think about it now. I rub my face and lean against the wall of the boat.

  We’re not rolling so much anymore, and I settle in. Feeling the buzzing of the steam engine against my temple, I have that heavy, comforting feeling I get on a train, as if my body is moving in time with the rhythm of the engine. I close my eyes and drift away on a dream.

  Two

  The steamer heels heavily to port, and my head slams against the wall. I see stars. A group of women and children huddle on the deck nearby. They look like a flock of birds, four clucking mothers and their hungry, crying babies. I blink a few times, rub my face with my hands. The women are all young but have the haggard, lined faces of people who’ve spent their lives outside. Two of them look especially ill, their skin almost yellow.

  I don’t have to move. They’re gypsies, travelers. No one would ask me to give up my seat on the trunk. Still, I think of Jonathan. He was always looking out for the unfortunate. I straighten my hat and hair, pat down my stiff black mourning dress and get up. I can’t sit here any longer anyway. And I don’t want to be around squalling children. The women look at me dolefully and nod but don’t say anything. One of them stumbles when she tries to stand up. She gives up altogether and crawls on her hands and knees over to the trunk; then, instead of getting up on top of it, collapses with her back against the metal.