Morty folded his arms across his chest. “Aye.”
They sat on the edge of the wooden sidewalk for a few minutes in silence.
“You know I don’t like this friendship you have with Charlie.”
“Aye.”
“You know if you ever try anything with her, I’m going to kill you.”
Morty turned to face Jaxon. “Aye.” He looked back over the dusty road. “When Charlie was still a seaman, it was easy to ignore we were from different worlds. I mean, we dressed alike and did the same job basically so we were kind of equal. But when I saw her at your party all dressed up, I knew she was never going to be with me. She belongs in your world. I’m just the son of a tenant farmer. I barely passed the sixth grade. Barely. Charlie, she’s as smart as they come. You’re smart too. I can tell.”
Jaxon shrugged and nodded. He always did just enough to be better than Grayson, but if he had really applied himself, he could have been first in his class.
“I don’t pick up on things like other people. Letters get turned around and mixed up when I read. When I came on that ship, the men would show me a knot once and expect me to know it, but couldn’t remember them that fast. Charlie was patient and showed me the knots over and over until I picked them up. She taught me what each knot was called and when to use it. She’d spend a couple of hours on Sunday showing me different things on the ship and telling me what they were for and the proper way everything was supposed to be.”
“It sounds like she was a good friend to you.”
“Aye, the best. I don’t know if I could have learned it all without him-her. It’s so hard to think about Charlie back then and remember he was really a girl. It’s like my brain thinks of Charlie as two different people.”
Jaxon leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees. He knew Charlie wouldn’t like him asking Morty about her childhood, but he was curious about how others perceived her.
“What was Charlie like back when you first came on the ship?”
“Quiet mostly. She had a way of looking at the crew that really unnerved the men. She would look them in the eye and never say a word. I think they thought she was judging them or just memorizing the moment to use it against them later. I thought it was as if she wanted to say something and they were supposed to read her mind. Or even that she just wanted to join the conversation, but she didn’t know how or what she had to say would be unwelcomed. I don’t think she said a word the first week I was there, except maybe to Dr. Kirk or her father or to say aye-aye when she was given an order. ‘Course, I just saw her on watch and we weren’t supposed to talk while we were working. But she never talked in the galley either. She just sat at the end of the table with her head down.”
“No one liked Charlie?”
“I don’t think they ever tried. She was just a kid and the captain’s son. They thought Charlie was a little touched in the head, if you know what I mean. They told me stories about how she didn’t say a word for the first year or two she was aboard.”
“They said she didn’t start talking until she was eight years old?”
“No. She stopped talking after the fire for more than two years. She didn’t say a word to anyone.”
Jaxon shook his head. He knew just by the way she continued to have nightmares, she had been traumatized by the fire, but apparently it was worse than he imagined.
“Who can blame her,” Morty continued. “Getting burned and losing her mother in the fire like that while her father was out at sea. It was just too much for a little one to handle.”
Jaxon’s head jerked around and his eyes widened with surprise. Charlie had not told him that her mother died in the house fire. He felt sick. No wonder she still had nightmares about it. She had started the fire that killed her mother. “Has she ever talked to you about that fire? Do you know how it got started?”
“No, she won’t talk about it at all. I only knew because the crew told me. I’ve never heard anyone say how it started.”
Jaxon tried to remember what she said about the fire. She said she was responsible for the fire not that she set it. Was there a difference? He suspected, to her, there was not. No wonder she didn’t talk for two years.
“But after she started talking again, they still thought she was strange?”
“Not strange. Mad. They blamed her for every misfortune on the ship; hurricanes, broken ropes, injuries. I think if she had slept in the fo’c’sle, it might have been different because they would have gotten to know her. Of course, she couldn’t have done that,” Morty continued. “They all thought Charlie ran back and told her father everything they said or did.”