Epitaph Read Free Page B

started back along the pier. “Maybe you don’t want so big like the Roanoke there, but for sure you want bigger than the Germanic. Now, look at this one.” He lifted his chin toward a middle-sized ship. “She’s the Hosea Higgins. Ships is always she, even if they got a man’s name. Ja , for sure . . . The Hosea Higgins . That’s the ship you want for a voyage around the Horn.”
    She thought he meant a horn that you could blow until a few days later, when he took her to a store that sold used books. The owner knew her father and asked, “How are you finding Mr. Darwin’s tale, Mr. Markuse?”
    Her father talked to the shopkeeper awhile. Then he asked to use the store’s globe so he could explain to Sadie about continents and how Cape Horn was a place down at the pointy end of South America.
    â€œNow, here is Posen, back in Europe. Who knows what country? Sometimes Poland, sometimes Prussia. That’s where your mutti and me was born. And here is Brooklyn in North America, where Nathan and you and Hattie was born.” With his finger, her father traced a line all over half the globe. “This is the voyage of the Beagle. ” It sounded important, the way he said it. “But a ship like the Higgins , she ain’t gonna go so far. She gonna go from Brooklyn here . . . south across the equator. Down the coast of Brazil and Argentina . . . around the Horn, then up-up-up past Chile . . . cross the equator again . . . up some more and then you step off in San Francisco. Four months, it takes. Well, six, maybe. If the weather is bad.”
    Twice more that week, they went back to watch the Higgins discharge her California cargo of wine, smoked salmon, and whale oil. When the ship began to take on westbound freight, her father scooped Sadie into his arms again. “Why not?” he said. “We just go introduce ourselves.”
    The ship’s captain was bearded and gruff. “This is no place for a child, sir! State your business!”
    Her father set Sadie down on the Higgins ’s deck and approached the captain alone. A few minutes later, he beckoned Sadie to come closer. “Captain,” he said, “I like to introduce you my daughter, Josephine Sarah. Sadie, say hello to the captain.”
    She dropped a little curtsy like a girl she saw in a penny play once. “I am very pleased to meet you, sir.”
    The captain’s eyes widened and warmed. A smile lifted his beard.
    I did that, she thought. I made him nicer.
    The two men moved off a few steps, speaking in low tones again. She craned her neck to watch the sailors up in the rigging and discovered that they were looking down at her, for little girls were rare as rubies in their world and Sadie was an arresting child: small, neat-bodied, with pale white skin and curly black hair and dark brown eyes, her new front teeth coming in nicely. She curtsied to each of the sailors, one after another, turning all around, until she staggered a little, dizzy. And the sailors didn’t just smile. They clapped for her and nudged each other and cheered.
    She was glad when her father took her back to the Higgins the next day.
    â€œOur secret,” he reminded her. “Mutti don’t gotta know. Just you and your old papa, eh?”
    This time she had to hang on to the hem of his coat. He couldn’t hold her hand because he was carrying big stacked trays loaded with samples. Rye, pumpernickel, and soft white bread. Yeast rolls and three kinds of muffins. Cream puffs. Almond macaroons. Crisp strudel. Seven-layer tortes.
    This bounty was presented to the captain of the Higgins , who shared it with his officers. Grinning, their lips white with powdered sugar, they moaned their admiration for Hyman Markuse’s excellence as a baker. Their eyes ate Sadie up, too.
    When the trays were empty, nested and tucked under one arm, her father took her hand and they walked,