Navigating Early

Pi encounters sharks stalking him, followed by a swarm of stinging bugs. He is then battered by a storm and finally gives up and drifts out to sea. Caught between dreams and reality, Pi sees the eye of a white whale, which nudges him to safety onto yet another beach. However, when Pi wakes up, he sees a volcano erupting in the distance, and lava is headed his way.

On the morning of the race, Jack receives word that the race will begin earlier because of the worsening weather. He also receives a telegram from his father informing him his shore leave has been postponed due to the weather, and he will be unable to visit after all. An upset and angry Jack is teased by one of the other boys, who calls Early Jack’s babysitter. Because he is a beginner, Jack is the only boy allowed a coxswain; however, all riled up, Jack decides he doesn’t need Early after all. He decides not to tell Early about the changed time and takes the boat out by himself, removing the coxswain seat,

Jack begins the race alright, but once he reaches the buoy for the turnaround, he oversteers and crashes the boat into jagged rocks near the shore. Jack keeps rowing even as the boat grows waterlogged, hearing Early’s voice in his head calling out commands. Jack is the last to finish, crossing the line even as the boat keeps sinking. On the dock, he finds the brass nameplate for the boat that Early had meant to polish and affix before the race. Jack realizes he hadn’t imagined Early’s voice; the boy had been watching and calling out commands. Jack feels guilty, knowing he has hurt Early as surely as if he had punched him.

Alone at night in the dorm, Jack relives the day’s events, feeling especially “lost and unable to determine [his] course” (90). No one knows Jack has not left the school, as only he read his father’s telegram. Feeling adrift, Jack looks out his window and, through the rain, sees a light on in Early’s workshop. Knowing Early, like him, is alone, Jack heads over to join him.

Jack arrives to find Early packing supplies while Billie Holiday plays. He dumps out jellybeans, counting them instead of sorting them by color. Too ashamed to interrupt, Jack observes the room and notices that the newspaper clippings appear nonsensical, ranging from articles on D-Day and the Normandy invasion to news of the Great Bear. One article tells of its supposed killing, although authorities think the dead bear’s paws are too small to be the Great Bear. An accompanying picture shows the hunter standing beside his kill, with an amused lumberjack in the background.

Early suddenly speaks up, noting that Billie Holiday and Mozart might have been friends, and Billie Holiday would have never left Mozart behind on a boat. Jack apologizes, and when Early makes to set off, Jack insists on accompanying him. Early agrees, deciding to navigate while Jack rows. When Jack points out that the Sweetie Pie is damaged, Early reveals they will be taking the Maine.

A shocked Jack asserts that they cannot do so as the boat belonged to a legendary student, to which Early reveals that The Fish was his brother, Fisher; the boat belongs to both of them, as they built it together. Jack initially doesn’t believe Early, but Early shows him Fisher’s dog tags and the letter from the army informing Early of his brother’s death. Fisher’s squad of eight men was on a mission to destroy a bridge along a river in France, but an enemy tank took out their barn shelter with a direct hit, leaving no survivors.

Jack packs supplies in an extra backpack, and the boys take the Maine to the river. Jack rows while Early navigates and fills Jack in on how Pi got lost.

Pi is stranded on an island in the dark with lava headed toward him. He looks to the stars for direction, and the Great Bear points him out to sea, so he heads back out, using driftwood to float into the ocean.

Pi is picked up at sea by a pirate ship with all men aboard except for one woman, the “Haggard and Homely Wench” (105). The pirates revive him with rum, but when they realize he has nothing valuable to offer, they almost toss him back out again; however, Pi tells them of his travels and adventures, and Darius, the captain, keeps him on to hear the stories. In turn, Darius tells Pi about how he won the “Wench” from a witch doctor, who has put a curse on her that she will only appear the way others tell her she looks.

When the pirates are asleep, the girl tells Pi that her real name is Pauline; Pi begins to call her this, and over time she turns into a beautiful girl just for him. She also tells him the words that will break the spell, but they must be uttered by the person with a claim over her. Pi manages to trick Darius into steering the shop where Pi wants to go and breaking the spell by telling him stories of lands sprinkled with gold dust. Pi and Pauline escape the ship together; he leaves her in the care of a tavern owner, promising to return, and heads home. However, Pi discovers that while he was away, his village was attacked and destroyed; everyone is dead.

Pi finds the shell necklace his mother made for him and feels an immense sadness. He sets sail again in a fishing boat, drifting aimlessly. When he looks for the Great Bear, he cannot find her, and without anything to guide him, he disappears over the southern horizon and is lost.

The boys glide along in silence for hours. Early eventually breaks the silence, astutely divining that Jack is thinking about his mother. He asks about her, and Jack describes her, revealing how she died. She went to bed early one night with a headache, and died in her sleep of an aneurysm; Jack, who was sleeping in the barn that night, went in to find her chipped teacup with red flowers untouched, and his mother still in bed.

Early pulls out some provisions, explaining the tobacco is for ringworm and poison ivy and the lavender ointment for snakebites. To Jack’s question, he explains that there are very low odds that timber rattlesnakes aren’t found in Maine, based on their migratory patterns, the habitat they prefer, and how there were sightings last year of them in eastern New Hampshire and southern Canada.

Around dusk, the boys pull the Maine out of the water and hide her on the riverbank, while they set up a fire and eat. Jack expresses his condolences about Fisher, but Early asserts his brother is not dead, only lost, like Pi. He points out the similarities between Pi and Fisher’s journey, pulling out news articles to explain why he thinks Fisher is still alive. Early believes the war department’s letter is a mistake; Fisher is looking for the Great Bear, just like Pi.

Jack tries to explain that sometimes soldiers don’t come back, cutting off Early’s explanations and questioning Early’s assurance, and Early yells, “BECAUSE PI ISN’T DEAD, AND IF PI ISN’T DEAD, THEN NEITHER IS FISHER!” (120). Jack realizes this is why Early needs to prove that Pi is alive. Early us not creating the story, but translating what he can see in the numbers; he needs the story to continue, because he has conflated Pi and Fisher. Despite Jack’s doubts, he wants to stick around for the quest, both out of curiosity, and a fear of getting lost on his own.

The next morning, the boys set off again. Early applies some of his ointment to protect against bugs, as this is what happens next in Pi’s story; Jack initially scoffs at this but quickly asks for some when he gets bitten by mosquitoes and gnats.

Jack asks Early to tell him more of the story, but Early explains there are only a few numbers left that he knows, and he hasn’t memorized them; he needs to calculate more, then read them to figure out the story. Jack asks Early to teach him to read numbers too, but Early reveals he was born this way—he has always been able to see numbers like this.

As they row on, a barge appears from a side stream and pulls up alongside them. A large man with a scarred face and black eye patch calls out to them, offering to tether the boat to the barge and motor it upstream. Beside him, Jack hears a wide-eyed Early whisper, “Pirates!”

The boys are pulled aboard and deposited next to a pair of bloodhounds while their boat is tethered to the barge. The woodsmen help themselves to things from the boys’ backpacks, including food and Early’s compass. The boys doze off, waking up when the barge docks. They are put to work hauling barrels from the barge into a truck; Early tries to peek inside and see what they contain. When they ask for the Maine back, the men tell them to take it up with their boss, MacScott, who is up the hill at the Bear Knuckle Inn. The boys trudge up and find him, along with two other men, at the bar, manned by a “thin, pitiful-looking girl” (134).

Indicating a bear head mounted on the wall, Early asks if anyone has seen the one reported on in the newspaper, and Jack realizes Early, like Pi, is looking for the Great Bear. MacScott reveals he has met the bear, which mauled him and damaged his eye; MacScott killed its cub and is hunting it now to collect the bounty. The boys ask for their boat back, and MacScott refuses, asking his men to handle the boys; however, Early stops him by offering to tell him a story about someone else looking for the bear. He begins to narrate the part of Pi’s story where Pi gets lost but remembers an ancient burial ground with caves where people go “to bury their dark secrets and accidental treasures” (137-38).

Pi is lost at sea under stars he cannot recognize. He remembers a story he heard about the catacombs, an ancient burial ground where the dead are laid to rest, and souls burdened with the regrets of life also roam. The catacombs beckon Pi, and he resolves to find them. After many months of sailing, Pi lands on a rocky shore and walks inland. He begins to see translucent people around him going about their daily work. Pi sets up camp and takes his place among them until, one day, he realizes that he, too, is growing translucent in this “land of lost souls” (141).

Jake grows drowsy listening to the story, but MacScott remains alert, tracing his finger over the grain of his gun stock. Jack drifts into a daze and dreams that he is in the land of the lost with Pi, one of the translucent people himself. When he wakes up, MacScott and his men are asleep, and Early is asking the girl at the bar if her name is Pauline; it isn’t, but Early tells her she has a pretty smile.

An explosion wakes everyone up, and the men run outside to find that it has shot a stream of fire into the air, which is now creeping down the mountain in a trail. As they run to handle it, Jake asks Early what is in the barrels. Early describes black powder, which Jack realizes was gun powder, which must have leaked a trail out of the barrels. However, Early looks up at the mountain, awestruck, and says, “I’ve never seen a volcano before” (145).

The boys rush to free the Maine, but before they can, MacScott and his man get onto the barge and motor away with the boat still tethered to it. The boys have no choice but to begin walking; along the way, they trade facts about the Appalachian Trail. Once they are far enough from the inn, they stop to rest. Jack thinks Early has fallen asleep and tries to remember something comforting about his mother so he can, too; just as he drifts off, Jack hears Early say, “The numbers are running out” (150).