Between the yards and the main house rose a screen of red-needled pine trees and rampant elm and dogwood thickets. There was a watchman who lived in a cottage just beyond the last of the boats. Once in the yards, we had only him to worry about. Roland said the old man’s name was Gribbs, but I’d yet to see him. By late afternoon, and from our secret vantage point, we’d see a dim yellow light burning steadily behind the dusty window of the cottage, but he never seemed to venture outside.
Crows roosted in the tall oaks that ran in a line behind the hangars, cawing endlessly at the barn swallows flitting like bats around the gaping hangar doorways. We came to the first line of boats and stopped. Roland moved a few yards forward, slipping into the shadow of a huge yacht. He cautiously edged around the boat for a clear view of Gribbs’s cottage, then he waved us forward.
I darted in front of Lynk. Heart thumping, I passed Roland. Thick rusted cables were stretched tight over the uneven ground. I stepped high to clear them. Rail tracks ran the length of the yards, all the way down into the river. Black-cowled winches flanked the rusty rails. I jumped the tracks and made my way between two hangars. The grey, riveted walls were high, blocking out most of the morning’s light and leaving the air chill.
At the back of the buildings a narrow trail ran down the length of the yards. To my right the trunks of the oaks crowded close. Somewhere in the branches above me the crows still complained, clattering their way through the leafless maze like monkeys. Beyond the trees I could see the black mud of a ploughed field, and the dark grey fringe of a forest following the river’s edge.
The sixth boat I came to was called Mistress Flight. It was old, the blue trim and white hull chipped and stained. Hadn’t been in the water in years. A forgotten member of the rich men’s fleet.
I laid my hand against its stern and gazed up at it, wondering who owned it, wondering why he’d left it here, neglected, like a dead dream.
‘See anyone?’ a voice beside me asked.
I glanced at Lynk, shook my head.
He pushed his long, dark hair away from his forehead. ‘That was fucking stupid, Owen. Roland leads the way.’ He had his hammer hanging in his belt. ‘Gribbs might’ve seen you.’
‘Nobody saw me.’
‘How do you know? He might be calling the cops right now.’
‘There’s no phone line going to that shack,’ I said.
‘How do you know, asshole?’ Lynk pushed past me and quickly climbed the scaffold’s ribs.
I watched him scramble into the aft deck as Roland and Carl joined me.
‘Anyone see you?’ Roland asked.
‘No.’
He grinned. ‘You go next.’
This was our second visit to Mistress Flight. The first time, a week past, we had boarded the boat on a whim, bored with our wanderings along the riverbank. Assailing the scaffolding and gaining the rail had made it seem like a capture, but I think now it was the other way around. Like us, Mistress Flight seemed lost here, a presence unremarked, a promise unheeded.
We’d claimed each other, then, and in this our second visit the four of us arrived with a mission. The idea had been mine, to make Mistress Flight ours, to merge something of our futures. I’d thought of a clubhouse, secret and forbidden – an idea to snare the imaginations of the others – but for some reason the image that rose in the back of my mind had nothing to do with a clubhouse. In fact, it had nothing to do with my friends. The image had been, inexplicably to me, that of my father’s machine in the driveway.
I slipped over the rail and crouched on the aft deck. Roland and then Carl climbed aboard, Carl licking his lips and breathing heavily through his mouth. Lynk had gone ahead, down into the cabin. I moved to the narrow doorway and leaned into the cabin’s dusty gloom. ‘This place stinks,’ I said over my shoulder to Roland. ‘Smells rotten. Let’s open the ports.’
Roland shrugged. ‘Smells like my father’s truck.’
‘It’s just old,’ Lynk said, emerging from the forward cabin.
I unlatched the nearest port and opened the small round window. The hinges were stiff. ‘We’ll need to oil these,’ I said.
We opened the rest of the cabin’s ports, letting in the cool breeze.
‘There’s fuckin’ beds up front,’ Lynk said. He swung to Carl. ‘I’d love to see your old man try sleeping in one of those!’
Roland set his backpack down and loosened the flap. He rummaged inside and withdrew a crescent wrench and a screwdriver with extra bits in its hollow handle.
‘I brought the soap and rags,’ Carl said.
I stared at his yellow-coated grin. ‘Why don’t you use them on your teeth?’ I pushed past him to return to the aft deck. Lynk’s laugh rattled behind me. I reached down and lifted the hatches covering the big engine. ‘If we clean this up and put in new plugs we might even get it started.’ I went down on my knees beside the opening.
‘What for?’ Lynk asked, dropping down beside me. ‘You plan to drive it over the ground and back into the river?’ He sneered. ‘We can throw confetti and cheer you on, and if the rich guys say so the cops will beat the shit out of you.’
Ignoring Carl’s snort, I reached down into the engine hold and tested the spring on the carburettor. ‘Yeah, right. If this boat’s going to be our secret fort, it’s gotta be in good shape. Besides, if we get caught we can show them all the good stuff we’ve done to it.’ As I stared down into the dark hold, I thought of rats. ‘You don’t want to live in a dump, do you?’
Roland said, ‘That’s a good idea.’ He looked at each of us and added in his usual measured pace, ‘I mean, about showing them all the work we done. So maybe they wouldn’t call the cops.’
‘Hand me that wrench,’ I said. I began removing the valve cover nuts.
Lynk said, ‘How the fuck do you know what you’re doing?’
‘My dad is a professional mechanic, jerk. Remember? I’ve helped him lots of times.’
‘Can you get parts?’ Roland asked, pausing to look over at Gribbs’s cabin, which was just visible behind another yacht.
‘Maybe.’ With a grunt I lifted one of the valve covers. ‘Look at that!’ Everyone bent close. ‘No rust! Still got oil in it, that’s fucking great.’
The others cleaned the cabin while I continued working on the engine. Bringing it back from the dead. They’d probably thank us if they ever found out. I made a list in my head of what I’d need: new gaskets, plugs, oil, a battery. As I worked I saw the oil staining my hands and forearms. Perfect. Just like Dad, and I’ll have to use that jelly soap to clean up, only I’ll have to do that in the garage, before anyone sees me.
‘Wait till school’s over,’ Lynk said from the cabin. ‘Then we’ll have tons of time. Sand these cupboards, get some marine paint.’
I smiled to myself.
II
The old tea kettle whistled a song of steam. Walter Gribbs rose from his chair and crossed the musty dimness of the room. The nightmares of the previous night remained only as the faintest residue in his mind. Now, the sunlight’s warmth coming in through the cabin’s single window suffused him, soothing his bones, calming his thoughts.
The black iron stove filled one corner of the room. The kitchen counter consisted of three warped six-by-two boards; a single shelf above it held his metal plates and cutlery. The sink was a galvanised washtub with a hole punched through its bottom, a rubber hose providing drainage to a sinkhole under the outhouse. His food came from cans, since he had no refrigerator. His furniture consisted of a narrow cot with squeaking springs, a wooden Coca-Cola box for a table where he ate and played Solitaire, two kerosene lanterns, and an adjustable russet-brown easy chair.
It was enough. Most of the time Gribbs believed in his own contentment. They’d put him here to watch the yards, and he’d been doing just that for twenty years. His grocery lists were always filled and there was a bank account in his name. When the time came to launch the yachts or haul them up, he showed his employers a benign smile and they we
re pleased at just how contented he was.
He placed two used tea bags into a chipped ceramic pot, then poured water from the kettle. The air was tinted grey with woodsmoke, stinging his eyes. He would have to do something about the stovepipe. He placed the teapot and a chipped china cup on the old STP Oil sign he used for a tray. He carried the tray back to his chair, set it down on the table and then resumed his seat.
The window fronting the shack was on his left: he faced the wall, which was covered with calendars. The most recent year was 1962. Some went back to the thirties. All the photographs and illustrations were of sailing ships, and he knew their every line.
Walter poured the tea. He raised the cup to his lips, blew gently, then sipped once and set the cup back down. He squinted at the ships on the wall, trying to clear the blur from his gaze. It was that damned smoke, he told himself, that made things so hard to see. He would have to do something about that. For now, he simply moved his chair closer to the wall.
For a moment he thought he heard voices outside. He listened, but there was nothing but the cawing of crows from the garbage dump. Walter leaned back and rubbed his large, veined nose, then sighed.
They had put him here to watch the yards. To mark the waxing tide grow, wave by wave. He smiled as the lines rolled through his thoughts. But that wasn’t why he stayed. He had his own reasons. While he knew and loved every yacht that wintered in his dry-docks, it had become a difficult thing to watch over them. Years of neglect had led to years of decay for some of the old boats. Some, like Mistress Flight, hadn’t been in the water for years. Watching meant seeing, and seeing meant feeling. That’s what made it difficult, these twenty years of standing guard. No, it wasn’t a sense of loyalty that kept him here. Nothing so noble.
Still and all, he mused, sipping his tea, not all beached whales die. To see the grand old yachts returning to the river each spring, to see them proudly ply the swirling currents on their way to the lake fifteen miles to the north – such moments were a true salute to those boats left behind.
Walter listened to the ice marching in disordered ranks down the river. The wall in front of him dimmed and blurred; it seemed that clouds filled the room now, obscuring everything, drawing darkness in from the edges. He shook his head, muttering.
Seventy-three years is a long life, he told himself. And most of those years had been hard ones, days of struggle, nights of restless undefined yearnings. Wave by wave, a ceaseless weariness. But a storm was building, somewhere ahead, some time in the future, and it was not a natural storm. The cracking of the ice was only the beginning. There were the nightmares that came night after night, leaving him feeling battered and somehow twisted inside his body upon awakening. He found it hard to recall the details; he knew only their aftermath in the chill mornings when he curled tight beneath his woollen blankets, waiting for the sun to dispel the night’s wintry air.
Walter let out a slow breath, wiped at his eyes. ‘The tide grows,’ he said to the wall in front of him, ‘and I’m still waiting.’ He closed his eyes, swung his face to the window and let the sunlight warm it. ‘Where are you, my lady?’ he whispered. ‘I need to talk to someone, you understand. And it’s always been you. So, where are you?’
III
Inland, the boat yards came to an end with a ragged windbreak and the Yacht Club’s garbage dump. The blackened mound of kitchen refuse and soot-stained broken machinery smudged my view of the tree trunks beyond. Oily smoke rose from the dump continuously, as if its fires were fuelled by the earth itself.
The mound disturbed me, conjured frightening images in my mind. It might have been a boat once, burned on its pyre in some unholy rite. Among the garbage were beams of wood, black and dusted grey with ash. Some rose from the heap, curving like ribs.
‘Hey, Owen! What the fuck are you doing?’
The voice – Lynk’s – came from below. I realised that I had stopped halfway through the forward hatch. The prow of Mistress Flight was pointed at the garbage dump.
‘Want somebody to see you, man?’
I felt a push from below, and began climbing down. The boat lurched. I careened to one side, hitting my ribs against the hatch edge. ‘Christ!’ I gasped. ‘What the fuck?’
Lynk pulled me back down into the cabin. In the shadows his eyes looked slick. ‘Just Roland,’ he said. ‘He slipped.’
Behind Lynk, Carl and Roland crouched low on the aft deck, both looking panicky.
I swore again, then drew a deep breath. The boat’s motion had been forward, as if Mistress Flight had come alive, as if it had set a course for the dump’s smouldering mound.
I pushed past Lynk, leaving the cabin, and went to the port side.
‘I don’t think anybody heard,’ I said quietly, looking out over the yards.
‘Maybe we should go,’ Carl said.
I sneered at him. ‘Scared?’
Mouth hanging open, Carl shook his head. But his eyes were wide.
‘Maybe Gribbs is calling the cops right now,’ I pressed, grinning. ‘They’re probably on their way. What would we do? Run in every direction, right? But what about you, Carl? Can you run fast? You’ll have to.’
His eyes were filling with tears, but he didn’t move from his crouch in Roland’s shadow. Glancing at the faces of Lynk and Roland, I saw frozen expressions and felt within me an eager flush.
‘Well, Carl?’ I asked in a hushed voice. ‘What’ll you do when they catch you? Give them our names?’ Tears rolled down his face, but again he shook his head. ‘They’ll call your dad to come get you. What’ll he do—’
Carl lunged, fists swinging. I caught a single, momentary flash of his face – the spit in the corner of his mouth spinning away as if on a thread – and then he was on me. We fell back, rolling down the three steps to the cabin deck. Fists pounded against my chest. A finger clawed across my jaw.
He was small. He was weak. Even enraged he struck poorly, and it was only moments before I had both of his wrists in my hands, pulling him to one side then pushing him down and straddling him. I grinned, gripping harder to still his wild thrashing, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. The shock was fading, and in its place came a wave of panic. I didn’t know what to do next, so I just held him until he stopped struggling. We were both gasping. I stared at the tears that streaked dirty trails from his eyes.
I’d been cruel. The realisation made me hate Carl all the more. I raised my right hand, closing it into a fist.
‘No,’ Roland said behind me.
He knelt at the top of the steps, his broad face – half in shadow – staring down at me. I hesitated, then laughed and moved off Carl.
Carl scrambled to his feet, pushed past Roland and rushed to the starboard rail. He disappeared over the edge.
Roland said, ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’
I studied his face, the steady gaze, the heavy frown.
‘You shouldn’t have said anything about his dad,’ Roland admonished in his quiet, measured voice.
I straightened my shirt, then looked away.
Lynk was at the rail. ‘Aw, fuck,’ he muttered. ‘He’s run off into the brush.’ He turned and exchanged a look with Roland. Whatever it was that passed between them made me feel empty inside.
My voice cracked when I said, ‘He’s run off?’
Lynk shrugged, a loose jumping of his narrow shoulders. ‘That’s what I said, isn’t it?’
I rose. ‘Well,’ I said quietly, ‘let’s go find him, then.’
Roland rubbed the back of his neck, a slow, strained gesture. Then he nodded.
* * *
In silence we pushed our way through the brush. Every now and then the river appeared in patches through the trees off to our right, its islands of ice keeping pace.
This was my first time downriver from the Yacht Club. The forest was deeper here, wilder. At times we skirted its edge; muddy fields stretched away on our left, broken only by section roads and narrow windrows. We had passed beyond the influences
of the city. Here, the flat country was motionless, as if waiting for something.
Roland led us, sure and confident, as if he knew where Carl had fled. I thought to ask him but I couldn’t break the silence. My thoughts ran in a jumble, pieces and fragments caught in a swirling current.
From the forest’s edge we entered a trail leading back to the river. Thin, clawed branches wove a net four feet above the path. Hunched over, we broke into a loping jog – half human, half something else, I imagined as I focused on Lynk’s back a few feet in front of me.
Carl sat on a log at the river’s edge, his back to us, a muddy stick in his hands with its end reaching down into the red-brown water. The log under him was gnawed blunt at one end; the other end disappeared under a mound of intertwined branches and dead saplings. It was a moment before I recognised the hump of sticks: a beaver lodge.
Roland slowly strode forward, stepping over the log and sitting down beside Carl. He began speaking to him in a low tone. I made a move to join them but Lynk gripped my arm and pulled me back. I twisted his hand from my arm and swung to study the beaver lodge. Most of it was under water, but the flood had been higher; tangled swamp-grass and mud hung in clumps from the highest sticks in the mound. I wondered if beavers could drown.
I moved closer and tried to pull a branch from the knotted pile. After a moment I stopped. ‘Any beavers left here?’ I asked Lynk, who’d followed behind me.
He shrugged. ‘Sure. Probably hibernating or something.’
There was no wind. The air smelled faintly of smoke, reminding me of bus exhaust. Looking down on the lodge, I wondered at the sudden reverence I felt for it, and for the animals inside. Still asleep, while the world melted around them, thick-furred and curled up and lying in the warm darkness, huddled together beneath the season that buried their home in snow. Waiting, easily waiting.
‘Everything’s waiting,’ I said.
‘What?’
I gazed at Lynk, met eyes that might have been a mirror of mine when I had baited Carl. I scowled against a sudden chill in the pit of my stomach. We’re all waiting.