Harold’s hand in Pam’s was small, curled around her, gripping tight as if he was afraid she’d slip away from him at any given moment.  He tugged at her wrist and obediently she followed until she found herself inside his house, the front door swinging closed with a dramatic sounding whoosh.  Harold pressed a finger to his lips and she nodded because wanting quiet was a thing she understood.  She felt nervousness tighten inside of her stomach as she looked around, blatantly curious.   

The entranceway was open and spotless, long oak floorboards coaxing them toward the carpeted staircase beside the kitchen, uninterrupted by clutter or dust.  Pam trailed behind Harold, taking in the manner in which sunlight lounged on the windowsills in the back of the house.   

There were photos stuck to the refrigerator and she noticed one of a younger-looking Harold beside an old-seeming man who she figured must have been the one that Jim had described as a general or a sergeant or some other sort of militaristic authority figure.  She also briefly noticed other photos of other people, but she didn’t have the time to take them in because Harold was impatient, heading up the stairs with a blind kind of determination.   

He’d been this way since she had asked him about the yard, pulling her to follow him, watching her carefully as they waited to cross the street.  It seemed that, if he had had words, Harold would have assured her there was something she had to see.  It seemed he had been waiting for someone to ask him the question that had fallen from her lips and it seemed that he had the answer prepared somewhere inside, upstairs, somewhere secret and safe from prying eyes.  She climbed behind him quickly and felt the plush of the navy blue carpet dip slightly beneath her pale pink sneakers, her head swiveling to be sure she was paying close attention to Harold’s every move.  He ducked into a room on the left and she trailed in behind him, noticing the small sized bed and the pale blue painted walls, assuming this had to be his bedroom.   

Once she’d let her eyes roam across the chest of drawers and the little plastic sailboats on top of it she turned and took in the child-sized rocking chair in the corner, a weathered teddy bear sitting on the seat and not bearing enough weight or intention to truly get the chair to rock.  She grinned to herself because it was exactly the way she’d always imagined a boy’s childhood room should look and Harold was standing at the window, his head tipped in curiosity, most likely wondering what had drawn a smile.   

“Is this your room?” she asked him, still smiling because she couldn’t help herself.  Harold nodded and reached a small hand out toward the arm of the chair she had noticed, tapping it just enough to get it to sway on the carpet like a ship upon waves.  The bear sat emotionless and unaffected.  After watching it for a second Harold looked away, his attention back on Pam and his hand outstretched, waving her forward, indicating that she should stand beside him. She stepped toward him, her gaze following his out the streaked glass of the window to the view across the street.   

She could see the Boys and Girls club and Jim in the field, clapping his hands and waving his arms.  She could see the maple tree in Mrs. Clement’s front yard and she could see the slope of the telephone wire caught in its branches.   

Then Harold pointed his finger and she refocused her attention. 

Looking down, it was as if the hackneyed and overused phrases she’d hardly ever understood rang clear and true to her for the first time.  Things like being unable to believe one’s eyes or wondering if one is dreaming made sudden sense and she blinked hard four times in succession before grounding herself and looking again.  She had seen correctly and she glanced down at Harold with a mixture of puzzlement and concern because she had a very clear aerial view of the house’s front yard and Harold’s design was almost impossible to conceive without the evidence there in front of her. 

S.O.S. 

Carved out at least fifty times in the mud. 

Pam’s brow furrowed and she shook her head, a thousand things floating through her mind not the least of which was something to do with social services.  She knelt down next to him and she planted her hands on his shoulders, serious, careful, her eyes locking solid onto the pure blue of his seven-year-old stare. 

“Harold where did you learn that?” 

He bent down to pull a book from beneath his bed and he shoved it into her hands, one of the pages blatantly dog-eared and flipping open without any effort at all.  The particular page was full of a large photo of a man standing beside the letters S.O.S. carved into the sand, oversized and most likely meant for a helicopter or rescue plane. 

Pam swallowed and wished that Harold would speak just this once, to explain to her why he had chosen this particular photo, this distress signal, to carve into the ground of his childhood yard.  She glanced down at him and felt her head shake once again in confusion.  He was simply earnest.  He was earnest and heartfelt and adamant and silent and she wished he would just say something, this once. 

“Why?  Who showed this to you?” she wanted to know, her voice a heated whisper.  He stood, stoic, and she watched as tears started to fill up his careful gaze.  “Harold, do you know what S.O.S. means?” she wondered and she watched as he nodded his head.  “Why are you doing this?” 

“I told him to,” a voice interrupted and Pam leapt to her feet, guilty for some reason, turning to the doorway and finding herself face to face with a largely built general or sergeant or some other militaristic authority figure.  Thinking of S.O.S. she felt her face go pale and she wondered how quickly she could grab Harold and run for the door.  “Relax,” The Captain instructed, and somehow almost beyond her will she found herself obeying, “it isn’t what you think.”    

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It had been a Thursday.   

It had been the fifth day of the week and the thought had crossed The Captain's mind that the worst days usually fell that way, on Thursdays.  They usually fell just past the halfway mark, but not quite far enough that the entire week could roll by, survived.  It had been a Thursday, and he had seen it coming, strolling past the white walls and the clinical beeping, steady, sure as if life didn’t hang by a thread, ready to drift off toward the horizon. 

He’d grown old and he’d lived to see plenty of things.  He’d cried his way through plenty of days, but that particular Thursday had been a different sort of terrible. 

If only, he had thought, his wife had still been alive to hold his hand and explain in that certain way she had how this sort of thing happened, how the world was a mystery, how nothing was meant to make sense.  At the same time, though, he’d been glad she had passed away long before, because that was how he thought that things were supposed to be. 

Parents died first and left grown, wise children behind.  Parents handed off the reins and the wheel and the compass to the younger captains and they moved on to other times and places, certain it would all turn out alright.  Parents, he had thought, shouldn’t sit at the bedsides of their children, staring at the compass, confused. 

His daughter had been twenty eight and the single mother of a six year old boy.

Tragedy had pushed them and pulled them like the ebb and flow of the moon-driven tide.  There’d been nothing any doctor or priest or parent could do, so the wake had been crowded and the sympathy cards had been careful and people had tried to say the perfect sort of thing. He and Harold had sat together in Saint Margaret’s church, both struck mute with the gravity of the world around them, one old and weathered from the salt of the sea and one young and cautious from the way his youth had been carelessly stripped away.  

Once it had been established by the fates that for these two men nothing would ever be the same again, The Captain had confidently taken Harold home to Scranton as if there wasn’t fear inside of him.  He’d wondered how his wife had raised their daughter when she was six and seven and eight, sure that if he'd been there to help he would remember it better, now, when he needed it so desperately. 

He needed it, because Harold never spoke. 

And Harold haunted doorways. 

And Harold cried instead of sleeping until one late Thursday night when The Captain sat down on Harold’s child-sized bed and opened up a book he’d gotten once as an anniversary gift.  A book with big pictures and very little writing, meant to chronicle some kind of picturesque life at sea to which The Captain couldn’t quite relate.  He’d flipped it open and he’d pointed to a particular picture. 

Sand carved out to spell S.O.S. 

And he’d said “Harold, this is what you write when you want someone who’s far away to know that you miss them.” 

The next day Harold had searched through the back yard and found himself a solid looking stick, and he’d begun ripping up The Captain’s grass, tearing into it diligently, with a great amount of concentration.  He’d spent his days silently writing oversized letters and he’d spent his nights sleeping instead of crying, so The Captain figured he must’ve done something almost right.    

This is what a person wrote when they wanted someone who was far away to know that they missed them. 

S.O.S., The Captain told Harold.   

Save Our Ship.

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