Sailing with Commodore Stockton Excerpt
Rio Nueces
February 2, 1846
His mother caught up and threw her arms around him from behind. She pointed to a skiff tied to a beached log and then across to the other side of the river. Winded, she sank in the sand.
Sven peered through the feeble sunlight. On the opposite bank, a white boy not much taller and a bit older stared back at him. Sven spotted no weapon. The boy turned as if to reverse his path. Then he pivoted back and disappeared into a clump of bushes and fog.
“Warriors rest, too,” said his mother, and she scoured through a tumble of driftwood, dried algae, feathers and moss. Triumphant, she clutched two short sticks in the air.
Sven ignored her as he studied the currents of the river.
His mother dropped one writing implement. With the other stick, she drew swirls and letters and words in the sand.
“Sit,” she said, and patted a place for him beside her.
Sven snatched up the stick. Grasping it like a quill pen, he copied the English words his mother wrote. Slowly, fear loosened its grip on him.
His mother’s love of letters and writing had transferred to Sven and, in an odd way, from him to the people he knew. Everyone appeared to him first as a letter and then as a person. His mother was a capital “L”, rounded loops and swirls and whirls.
“Change is coming, mijo,” she said.
“No podrá modificarse en,” he cried.
“No more Spanish,” his mother hissed. “Your English must be perfect.”
As a kid, Sven started out speaking mostly Swedish. When his father died, Sven’s mother took Sven to live with her family along the Rio Nueces where Spanish was the rule. Now, she demanded English. He stabbed the stick in the sand.
“Please, mama,” he said in English, doing as he was told. “No more change.”
His mother coughed into a handkerchief of embroidered roses. Rather than watch blood spread across the fabric, Sven copied her letters. When his grandfather’s doctor informed him she was dying, Sven had crossed his fingers for a miracle.
“You will not be safe here when I am gone,” she said.
“Where will I go?” he asked, trying to be strong and brave like she had taught him.
“Your papa had a saying,” she started.
Through a thick throat and blurry eyes, Sven recited the words he knew his mother was about to say.
“Don’t let your sorrow come higher than your knees.”
Sadness had grown so tall it was all Sven could see anymore.
His mother drew a bright sun in the sand with long rays poking out. Under the sun, she added two stick figures, one of him and one of her. She drew a line that became the river. Several more lines revealed a tall ship.
“Nothing beneath the sun is lasting,” she said softly.
She scribbled herself out of the picture.