77. Remembering. In Cody’s last journal entry, he says that it was difficult saying goodbye to Uncle Dock and Bompie, but that it was incredible to fly over the ocean back to the U.S., and to realize that he and the rest of the crew had sailed across it. He adds that Sophie is staying with him for a week before returning to Kentucky, and that they went walking along the beach and couldn’t stop rehashing the details of their trip.
Cody then writes that, while walking on the beach, he tried to suggest that the grandfather Sophie mentioned going clamming with on Block Island when she was little was actually her “first Bompie,” and that maybe she was with her first parents, too. This confuses Sophie, but Cody encourages her that such a memory would be a good thing to remember—that the “little kid” Sophie talks about might like to remember something like that. Sophie just replies: “That little kid is bigger now.” Cody then writes that he thinks the little kid one day arrived at a place where it was all right to forget the past—and once it was okay to not remember, the little kid actually started remembering things. Along with the good came the bad, he speculates, and he thinks maybe that the little kid thought she’d discovered some things lost to her.
Cody adds that Dock called and said that The Wanderer had been repaired and that he’d found a job charting the ocean floor. And his father, Mo, Cody says, has enrolled in art classes at night. He concludes by saying that next week he, Sophie, and Brian are going to get together at Sophie’s place in Kentucky and explore the Ohio river. They’re going to build a raft and try to find the train bridge that Bompie jumped off, where he was baptized, and the place he lost the car to the current.
Flying back home over the ocean, Cody realizes the profound distance he and the rest of the crew traversed—this must feel like an incredible, life-changing achievement. He and Sophie already feel nostalgic about their trip; life back home, on land, will never be the same.
Here Cody is trying to help Sophie remember her past by talking about what the little kid might like to remember about her past. In this way, instead of directly assaulting Sophie with her painful past—which would probably make Sophie just try to change the subject—Cody speaks Sophie’s own language by playing into her own, coded stories about the “little kid.” By getting Sophie to think about the little kid more and more, Cody might get Sophie to realize that the memories of the little kid are actually her own. Perhaps, Cody tries to suggest, the little kid can reach a point where it’s okay to remember the good things.
The cousins—Sophie, Brian, and Cody—are now a more tight-knit group, it seems. Whereas before Brian had been an annoyance to Sophie and Cody, the latter pair seem to have accepted him more, and vice-versa. Their nostalgia for their experiences on The Wanderer is further revealed by their desire to almost relive Bompie’s stories.