Navigating Early

When Jack is nine, his father leaves for the war in the European Theatre. When the war begins winding down, Jack and his mother, Elaine Gallagher Baker, anticipate John’s homecoming, but when he eventually returns, it is for Elaine’s funeral in July. Jack is 13 by then and not used to being around his father. John enrolls Jack in Morton Hill Academy, the nearest boarding school to where John is stationed in Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. As they approach the school, Jack reads the motto etched outside: “Semper Fidelis—’Always Faithful’” (5).

Headmaster Conrady gives father and son a tour before leaving them at the dorm, promising that Jack will be taken care of and will be a “new man” by the time John visits for the Fall Regatta. He encourages Jack to jump into life at the school, assuring him the other boys will welcome him. John helps Jack unpack and set up the room. The last few things Jack unpacks is a box with red and white china rattling inside, which he hides in his suitcase at the back of his closet.

After John leaves, Jack remembers the time he built a car for the annual soap box derby back home. He left the car out the day before, and it got waterlogged and warped. His father commented that Jack made his bed and must lie in it, but his mother encouraged him to make it right. Jack spent all night fixing the car and doesn’t even remember finishing it. The next day, he almost fell asleep at the wheel but came in second.

Needing fresh air, Jack walks down to the ocean but throws up at his first sight of the waves. He spots a boy filling bags with sand but doesn’t think the boy has seen him; Jack turns and walks away.

The next day, as the other boys are being dropped off by their mothers, Jack spends the day in the library, where the librarian introduces herself as “Miss B.” Jack looks at pictures and plaques in the trophy case in the corner of the library. One picture of a handsome, smiling boy wearing a jersey that reads “FISH-67” stands out to him; the picture is labeled “Morton Hill All-Team Captain, Rowing and Football, Class of 1943” (13-14).

On Monday, Jack is relieved to finally have a schedule, believing it will help him get his bearings. The teachers call roll call in all his classes, and everyone except one boy is present: Early Auden. Early finally turns up in math class, and Jack recognizes him as the boy from the beach. Eric Blane, the math teacher, begins the class by talking about the Holy Grail and the meaning of a quest and asserts the number pi, a never-ending, never-repeating number, to be the holy grail of math. A professor at Cambridge, Dr. Douglas Stanton, is on a quest to prove that pi is not, in fact, never-ending. As Mr. Blane says this, Jack notices Early leave the classroom.

Jack takes the principal’s advice and sits with a group of boys at lunch. He learns that Early’s father was on the school’s board of trustees and died of a heart attack, following which Early received a free ride at the school. Early turns up to whichever classes he wants and leaves if he disagrees with the teacher. The previous year, the biology teacher said there were no venomous snakes in Maine; Early insisted there were timber rattlesnakes in the north, then walked out. The other boys think Early is weird, as he has fits sometimes, which they speculate has affected his brain.

In physical education class, the boys are tasked with diving into the pool and pushing a weight underwater for as long as possible before coming up for air. When it is Jack’s turn, something shiny catches his eye near the drain. He thinks it is a navigator ring his father gave him, and although he knows this is impossible, he reaches for it anyway. The ring disappears, and after a minute underwater, Jack grows faint and needs to be pulled out of the pool. The coach sends him to the locker room to recover.

After hearing older boys inside, Jack avoids the locker room and goes down the stairs behind the first door he can find, which leads to a workroom. He remembers his Boy Scout survival outing in Kansas, where the leaders had led them down a route the scouts had to navigate back from using only landmarks. Jack knew all the stars, but the skies had been cloudy that night; nevertheless, he had been confident of making his way back. However, he chokes, and the scoutmaster has to find him late at night; the boys tease him relentlessly for his failure.

Jack looks around the room and notices a cot, bookshelves, chalkboards with equations and drawings of constellations, and a bulletin board with newspaper clippings about the largest black bear ever recorded on the Appalachian Trail. A record is spinning on a turntable but is only whispering noise. Suddenly, Early speaks up from a corner of the room.

Early reveals that he is playing white space on the record player; it usually calms him down, and Jack had seemed upset when he came down. Early hands Jack a fresh set of clothes that are too big for Jack. To Jack’s question, Early reveals this room is his workspace—his father didn’t let him have one at home. Early set this up here once his father passed away; his mother died in childbirth when he was born early. Early lives here now; he was in the dorm until last year but prefers it here because it is quieter. He listens to Mozart on Sundays, Louis Armstrong on Mondays, Frank Sinatra on Wednesdays, Glenn Miller on Fridays, and Billie Holiday whenever it is raining; all the other days are quiet.

Jack asks about the numbers on the board. Early explains it is the part where Pi gets lost in a hurricane, saved by a whale, and washes up on a tropical island before a volcano erupts. Jack is confused, so Early erases the numbers and starts again, writing 3.14, which Jack recognizes as the number pi. He remembers Mr. Blane talking about it, but Early insists that the math teacher is crazy; pi isn’t ending. Early circles the number one, explaining this is Pi; three is his mother, and four is his father. Pi was named “Polaris,” but his mother told him he would have to earn the name.

Before men learned to navigate the seas using stars, a boy named Polaris, nicknamed Pi, had many questions. His mother knew he would leave one day to find answers, and when Pi is old enough, he sets off in a boat. Before he does, mother and son bid each other a teary goodbye, and she tells him the stars will guide him. She points out the North Pole star within the Great Bear constellation as his guiding point, asserting the constellation will watch over him like a mother bear. Pi forgets to take the necklace of shells his mother makes for him but promises to return for it.

As Early writes out more numbers while narrating the story of Pi, Jack remembers the conversation with his mother after the disastrous scout outing. She tells him not only to focus on the names of stars and navigation but also to appreciate their beauty, asserting that they are connected in unexpected ways. She and John are an unexpected connection, too; they met on a chance encounter in California and were smitten with each other at first sight, marrying within just a month of meeting. John lived the life of a farmer for the first nine years of Jack’s life until the Second World War began, and he enlisted and shipped out. Jack dozes off and wakes up to Early tying a knot in the corner of the room. He thanks the boy for the clothes and leaves, and he doesn’t see him for another week.

One day at 5 o’clock in the morning, the boys are woken up by Mr. Blane to go rowing. Jack is the last to reach the shore and gets the last remaining boat, an old vessel called Sweetie Pie, which is a double, but Jack will have to row as a single. He lies that he knows how to row but struggles in the water, constantly veering off course; it takes him twice as long to finish as the other boys, and he upends the boat when approaching the dock. Mr. Blane assures Jack they will work on his rowing the next time, and an embarrassed Jack kicks the boat in frustration.

Jack takes Sweetie Pie back to the school boathouse. A boat named Maine stands in the center of the boathouse in what appears to be a place of honor. Jack notices Early in a corner, and Early tells Jack that he rows crooked; his shoulders are too tight, and he is working against the boat. Jack sarcastically suggests that Early sit with him and give him instructions next time, but Early takes this literally and agrees, though he suggests they wait a few days as Jack will be extremely sore the next day. He hands over a concoction of wax and vinegar to help Jack with the pain and new oars that are the right length for Jack’s height.

A frustrated Jack rejects Early’s help and curses the boat, to which Early suggests they take it apart and make it right. Jack leaves without taking the ointment; however, the next morning he wakes up painfully sore and discovers the ointment on his desk, which he decides to use after much deliberation.

In math class, one of the boys tells Mr. Blane that Dr. Stanton will be presenting his theory of pi ending at the Fall Mathematical Institute and wonders how he will do so. Mr. Blane explains that in the last 100 digits of the number’s most recent calculation, the number one no longer appears. Dr. Stanton theorizes that all the other numbers will eventually stop appearing, and pi will collapse into itself. Jack asks how someone could potentially disprove this, and Mr. Blane explains it will have to be through proof by contradiction—one will have to find one of the disappeared numbers.

That evening in the dormitory, Jack joins in on the other boys’ conversation. He learns that the boy from the picture in the trophy case, “The Fish,” was the greatest athlete Morton Hill has ever seen. His number was retired after his graduation, and Maine was his boat. He even won the Steeplechase, an annual race for senior boys that was discontinued because it was too dangerous; one of the boys slipped and nearly broke his neck at one point along the trail. The Fish never returned to Morton Hill after leaving; he enlisted after graduation, and his entire squad was killed in France.

Jack goes for a run on Saturday morning and passes by Dinosaur Log, the place where a boy slipped and almost broke his neck during the Steeplechase. Jack starts to cross the log, but it begins to rain, and when Jack looks down, he is unnerved by the water crashing against the rocks beneath him. He slowly inches back across and heads to the school, where he visits the library after a shower to look at the picture of The Fish.

While deliberating whether to go back to the dorm or not, Jack hears a woman’s voice singing from Early’s workshop; he remembers that Early always listens to Billie Holiday when it rains. Inside, Jack finds Early working on fixing up the Sweetie Pie.

Early asks Jack if he wants to hear the rest of Pi’s story, and Jack tells him what Mr. Blane said about the disappearing one. Early angrily asserts that Mr. Blane doesn’t know what he’s talking about and grabs a jar of jellybeans off the shelf, sorting them by color to calm himself down.

Early insists that he knows where Pi is; it is hard to find him for a while, but he always comes back. Early points out the numbers on the board and explains that they have colors and textures, even words, revealing Pi’s story to him. Jack believes that Early is making up the story, and Early gets offended, switching off the music and declaring that Jack doesn’t deserve to hear the rest of the story. Not wanting to return to the dorm just yet, an apologetic Jack asks to hear the rest.

Shortly after Pi sets off, the seas grow rough and the sky overcast. Pi is tossed back and forth, and his boat is dashed against rocks, leaving him stranded on a distant island. Pi is initially angry with the ocean, but once his anger subsides, he learns from it. He learns to find fresh water on the island, forage for food, build shelter, read the weather signs, and rebuild the boat. He eventually sets sail again, humbled and wiser.

Throughout August and early September, Jack works on the boat with Early after school and during crew practice hours; Early is far more skilled at woodworking than Jack. They listen to music and the radio together, the latter offering news of the great bear on the Appalachian Trail still terrorizing people, thus increasing the bounty on its head.

With the regatta four weeks away and the boat nearing completion, Jack feels a familiar sense of competition stirring within. He had given up all manner of sport and competition after Elaine’s death; his pent-up frustration led him to use his fists against a friend instead, something he now regrets. Now, unsure whether motivated by sadness, anger, or frustration, Jack feels a need to compete and win returning.

A couple of weeks before the regatta, the boys take the boat onto the water and begin practicing. Early suggests Jack needs a navigator and fits a coxswain seat inside for himself. Over time, Jack learns to understand and follow Early’s directions, which helps him stay on course. Whenever they row, once they reach the bay, Early gives the command to stop rowing, and the boys drift on the boat while Early narrates the rest of Pi’s story.

Pi continues his journey using the Great Bear to guide him. He visits many different lands, encountering and learning from people of different cultures. He never stays long in a place, though, as he is not looking for a home—he is a navigator and voyager, “still finding his way” (78).