46. Bompie at the Ocean. Cody writes another entry about one of Sophie’s Bompie stories, which she told to Cody while they were trying to fall asleep in their bunks. When Bompie was young, he hitchhiked from Kentucky to the shoreline of Virginia to see the ocean, which he’d never seen before. He fell in love with the water, and decided to wade into the ocean. Soon, he was neck-deep, and began floating on his back. Then, he realized that he had actually seen the ocean before—back in England, where he was born. He had an epiphany: he was in the same exact ocean, and all its water stretched thousands of miles, and perhaps the water he was currently floating in had touched the coast of England. When Bompie went to let his feet downward, he couldn’t touch the bottom; looking at the shoreline, he realized he’d been pulled farther out than he thought by the current. Struggling to get back, Bompie eventually made it on shore. When he got back home, his father whipped him and his mother gave him some pie.
Here we get yet another story about one of Bompie’s dangerous encounters with water. However, this story is unique, in that it addresses more of Bompie’s own thoughts than the others have; not just his actions.Bompie has an epiphany out on the water—he comes to understand the vastness of the ocean, and how all the water which composes it is one, interconnected substance. Even though he’s on the coast of North America, he is still somehow connected with the waters that embrace the shores of England. However, this feeling of interconnection and vastness proves dangerous, as it’s distracted him from staying close to the shore. In a way, Sophie’s “push-pull” relation with water is embodied here, as Bompie must push away from water’s pull in order to survive.