The Promise

  Some early bathers were lounging about on the sand and splashing in the water. The wind blew stiffly across the lake. I walked across the beach to the boat-rental concession, which was operated by a white-haired man in his early sixties and his seventeen-year-old son. The man was not there. The boy was sitting on the edge of the dock, his legs dangling in the water, his eyes closed. He turned when he heard me coming up the dock and gave me a sleepy look.

  “Rough night?” I said, to make conversation.

  “Yeah,” he said, and grinned.

  I wondered for a moment if I ought to take a sailboat instead of a Sailfish, then decided against it. A Sailfish was less complicated, despite the possibility of its turning over, and I did not think I wanted to trust Michael with the jib sheet of a sailboat. Serving as ballast for a Sailfish would be enough for him.

  I asked for a Sailfish.

  He stared sleepily at the boats tied to the dock and bobbing in the waves. “Take any one you want.” He yawned noisily.

  I took off my thongs and handed them to him, then pulled a Sailfish parallel to the dock, climbed on board, and put up the mainsail. The Sailfish was painted red and the mainsail was white with narrow red stripes. I let the sheet hang loose and the sail flapped noisily in the wind.

  “Where’s the center board?” I asked.

  He looked at the boat, grinned sheepishly, then went with the thongs to the shed on the beach near the dock and came back with the board. I balanced myself carefully on the Sailfish and inserted the board. It went in with difficulty.

  “Is this the right board?”

  “They’re all the same. How long you going to be gone?”

  “About two hours.”

  “You got a great wind,” he said with obvious uninterest, and yawned again.

  “Untie me,” I said.

  He loosened the rope from the metal ring on the dock and dropped it into the water. I worked the mainsail sheet with my right hand and the tiller with my left. The sail caught the wind. I hauled in on the sheet and the sail billowed out and went taut. The Sailfish moved swiftly away from the dock. I tacked toward the middle of the lake, bouncing on the waves and sliding into troughs. The wind blew steadily and the waves were big and dark and crested with foam. There were clouds in the sky now but they were nowhere near the sun. I felt the Sailfish begin to slide and I put the sheet between my teeth and pushed the center board all the way down. The Sailfish lurched to starboard in a gust of wind, the port side lifting up out of the water. I transferred the sheet to my hand and leaned out backward over the edge, feeling the exhilaration of fighting the wind and riding the waves. The Sailfish raced across the water, leaving behind a white foamy wake, and for a long time I forgot about the old man and the carnival and Michael waiting for me in the house on the other side of the lake, and felt only the wind and the sun and the spraying of the water and the sheet tight in my hand against the gusting air.

  The dock was deserted. I pulled up alongside it and tied the Sailfish to a support beam and climbed up the ladder. The planks were hot beneath my bare feet. I shouted Michael’s name. A moment later, the door at the head of the wooden stairway opened and Michael came outside. Behind him came Sarah and Joseph Gordon, and Rachel. They followed him down the stairway. Michael wore a dark swimsuit and a T shirt. He had tied his glasses to his head with a piece of string. He looked a little nervous.

  They came up to the edge of the dock and stared down at the bobbing Sailfish. The water surged against the support beams of the dock and rolled onto the shore. On the other side of the dock, the rowboat bounced on the waves.

  Michael was looking at the Sailfish.

  “I’ve never been out in one of those,” he said.

  “They’re a lot of fun.”

  “You’ve got a rough wind for a Sailfish,” Joseph Gordon said.

  “It goes like a motorboat.” I was trying to sound cheerful.

  “I thought you would bring a boat,” Sarah Gordon said. She wore a light-green summer dress that blew out behind her in the wind.

  “The Sailfish is simpler.”

  “Please be careful,” Rachel said. She had on her reading glasses and was holding her hands against the sides of her head to keep her hair from blowing about.

  They stood there, hovering protectively around Michael.

  I climbed down onto the Sailfish and, balancing myself carefully, helped Michael aboard and sat him down alongside the center board. I untied the rope and pushed us off and scrambled for the sheet. I hauled in on the sheet and the sail billowed out with a sudden puffing sound, and the Sailfish responded to the rudder and slid swiftly away from the dock. I looked over my shoulder. Rachel and her parents stood stiffly on the dock, looking as though they were witnessing a departure for an ocean voyage.

  I looked at Michael. He sat near the center board, gripping the rail behind him with both hands, tense, tight, wide-eyed. The Sailfish lurched to port in a sudden gust of wind and Michael gasped as the starboard side tilted up out of the water.

  “Lean back,” I told him. “All the way back. That’s right.” The Sailfish straightened, responding immediately to Michael’s weight. “Good. Very good. Now come in slowly toward the center.” He wriggled forward a little, his hands pushing on the flat surface of the boat. “That’s right,” I said, and gave him an encouraging smile. “You’ll balance the boat with your weight. Okay?” He nodded hesitantly. “You move back and forth to keep us straight in the water. But move slowly.” We lurched again to port. “Now!” I said. “That’s right. Move back. Slowly. All the way back. Lean out as far as you can.” The boat straightened and Michael slid forward again toward the center. “Very good. You’re doing fine. Just fine.” He gave me a brief, tentative smile.

  We sailed toward the middle of the lake. There were many clouds now in the sky but they were off in the west and not blocking the sun. Far off in the distance there was a sheen of gold across the water and beyond it was the blue line of the horizon. We sailed swiftly in the wind, and the waves were dark and choppy and the troughs were deep and we dropped into them and came steeply up, crashing into the waves and sliding somewhat despite the center board. The mainsail sheet was around my hand and I felt it biting into the flesh but I held it tight and the sail held the wind and we moved like a motorboat across the water. We sailed for a very long time and I watched Michael moving his body back and forth and he had the feel of it now and at one point he leaned way out across the rail in response to a wild gust of wind, half his body over the side, arching tightly, grasping the rail and leaning out backward, and suddenly he laughed and it was the same laugh I had heard from him on the roller coaster the night before. Then he looked at me and there was spray on his face and a brightness in his eyes. There were many boats on the lake now and veering away from one of them we took a strong gust of wind and the boom went down toward the water and Michael leaned way out over the rail, throwing his head and shoulders back. We tilted sharply to port and the boom skimmed the water and I braced myself and felt spray on my face and hands, and the boom went under and then the sail, and we came to a dead stop. Michael was sitting on the upended edge of the Sailfish and I saw him let go of the rail and slide slowly into the water and disappear. I slid off the Sailfish. The water was warm. I did not go under. Michael reappeared alongside me, still wearing his glasses. He shook water from his face. His dark-brown hair looked pasted to his head. I heard him laugh and watched him tread water.

  “Too much wind,” I told him, and grinned.

  “I wasn’t scared,” he said. “I went in and wasn’t scared at all.”

  “You were okay.”

  “What do we do?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  He helped me right the Sailfish. Then we were back on it and I was tacking toward the house and the dock. Michael lay near the center board, his eyes closed now, his wet face to the sun. He was smiling to himself. His lips smiled and then went straight and then they smiled again and then went straight again.
He kept smiling on and off as he shifted his weight on the Sailfish. He lay like that a long time, and then he opened his eyes and raised his head and looked around.

  “Are we going back?”

  “No.”

  “There’s the dock. Why are we going toward the dock?”

  “There’s a cove beyond the house.”

  He looked at me.

  “There won’t be the wind there. We can tie up the boat. It’ll be shallow but the water will be smooth.”

  He looked at me and his eyes narrowed with suspicion.

  “We can lie around and relax and swim. It’s a very nice cove.”

  He lay back on the Sailfish and closed his eyes.

  “We can do some more sailing later on if you want.”

  He did not say anything. We sailed toward the cove.

  “I’ll need you to raise the center board soon.”

  He opened his eyes. We were coming in very fast. He sat up and put his hands on top of the board.

  We were about fifty yards from the shoreline, the water deep and dark and very choppy. We sailed past the house. The dock was deserted. There were huge boulders along the shore, and tall trees and dense brush. I could see the trees swaying in the wind. A few hundred yards beyond the house was the cove, a shallow inlet protected from the wind by steep banks and towering trees. I tacked toward the cove and we moved along a zigzag course, and then the water was suddenly shallow and I saw the lake bed, and I said, “Okay. Raise it halfway.”

  Michael pulled up on the center board. It did not move.

  “Pull up hard,” I said.

  He was on his knees alongside it, pulling, and it would not move and I felt it scrape against the bottom of the lake and the Sailfish bucked.

  “Pull!” I yelled.

  He pulled with all his strength, the muscles of his thin arms bulging. I felt the center board scrape again along the lake bed. I put the mainsail sheet between my teeth and leaned forward and put my right hand on the center board. Michael looked at me. His hair lay across his forehead. His face was tight. He pried my hand from the board. I felt his thin fingers prying my hand from the board. He pulled furiously on the board. The wind gusted against the sail and the sheet tugged hard on my teeth. I transferred the sheet to my hand and held the sail taut. The center board moved up slowly.

  “Halfway,” I said. “Okay. Now leave it. We’ll need it up all the way in a minute. Wait. All right. Pull it up. Can you manage it?”

  The center board came up without difficulty. Michael sat back on the Sailfish. His face was pale.

  I collapsed the sail. The prow scraped against the bank. I tied up to the branch of a fallen tree that lay in the water.

  Michael sat stiffly near the center board.

  “It was stuck,” he said. “I couldn’t get it up.”

  “I had trouble with that board myself before.”

  “Why was it stuck?”

  “The water warps them sometimes.”

  “I got it up by myself though.”

  “You did all right.”

  A smile flickered across his face. He lay back on the Sailfish and closed his eyes.

  We were in about two feet of water. The cove was narrow, with tall banks of dark moist earth that broke the force of the wind and huge trees and water lilies that grew along the shoreline. The sun shone through the water to the bottom of the lake and I could see schools of small fish and the dark mud of the lake bed. Tiny waves lapped with soft sounds against the Sailfish and the shore.

  We lay on the Sailfish and rested. Then we swam for a while, stirring up the muddy bottom of the cove with our feet. Michael did the crawl and back stroke and side stroke and tried very hard to show me he was a good swimmer. With his glasses off, his eyes had a dreamy, distant look to them. We swam around and had a fine time and when we came back to the Sailfish I smiled at him and he smiled back tentatively and I said he was all right as a swimmer but he needed to put on some weight, he was too skinny. He put his glasses back on and lay on the Sailfish with his face to the sun.

  “I’m chronically underweight. My mother keeps taking me to doctors and they all say I’m chronically underweight.”

  “You’ll outgrow it. I used to be a little underweight.”

  “That’s what the doctors say about my nosebleeds. I have nosebleeds when I exert myself too much or get too excited. Did you used to have nosebleeds?”

  “No.”

  “I have them all the time.”

  “Like last night.”

  He opened his eyes and looked at me. He did not say anything. He looked away and placed the palms of his hands under his head and stared up at the sky. His arms formed sharp angles on each side of his head, the elbows jutting upward.

  “Your nose isn’t bleeding today. You did plenty of hard work out there on the lake and your nose didn’t bleed at all.”

  “That’s right,” he said.

  “How do you explain that?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t bleed every time.”

  “I’m glad it didn’t bleed out there.”

  He turned his head and looked at me. “Let’s not talk about that any more. Okay? Let’s just not talk about that.”

  “All right.”

  “I don’t like to talk about it.”

  “All right, Michael.”

  I lay back on the Sailfish. We were silent. I could hear the wind in the trees. The boat lay still in the water.

  “It’s very nice out here,” I heard Michael say quietly.

  “I’m glad you like it.”

  “I really enjoyed the sailing. I was a little afraid at the beginning. I had to get used to it.” He was silent for a long time. I saw him staring intently at the sky. Then he said, very quietly, “Can you read clouds?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “It’s a game I play sometimes.” He gave me a sidelong glance, then looked back up at the sky. “It shows you how you see things.”

  “How do you play it?”

  “You look at the clouds and you say what their shapes remind you of. See that big cloud over there? What does it look like?”

  He was pointing to a large fleecy cloud that lay above the high line of trees along the northern side of the shoreline.

  I told him it looked like a large fleecy cloud.

  He looked disappointed. “Don’t you want to play? It’s really a serious game, Reuven.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sometimes I feel better after I play if I tell myself the truth about how they look. You have to tell yourself the truth.”

  “All right. Let me try again.”

  I looked at the cloud. “It looks like a camel with a lot of humps on its back.”

  He was quiet for a moment, his face turned to the sky. “It looks like a roller coaster,” he said, very quietly.

  I looked up at the cloud and didn’t say anything.

  “The one near it, the one that’s a little above it and to the right, that one looks like the face of an old man.” He paused. “Does it look like that to you, Reuven?”

  “A little,” I said, still keeping my face turned to the sky.

  We lay on the Sailfish and were quiet. A flock of birds soared high overhead, heading west away from the sun. The Sailfish floated smoothly in the calm water of the cove.

  Michael broke the silence. “Look at how the roller coaster is changing shape,” he said, his voice very soft. “It’s becoming round. You see that? It looks round now. Does that remind you of anything?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “What does it remind you of?”

  “A ball.”

  He looked at me slowly.

  “A giant of a ball. Like the balls we played with last night multiplied thousands of times.”

  He looked at me and nodded and was silent.

  I scanned the sky. The cloud Michael had said resembled the old man was changing now, moving slowly along its edges, parts of it drifting off, other parts flowering and re-forming
.

  “The old man is smiling,” I said. “Can you see him smiling?”

  “Yes,” Michael said as if from very far away.

  “But he has a mean look. I don’t like him.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “He reminds me of the old man at the carnival.”

  Michael did not speak for a long time. He lay very still, staring up at the cloud. Then he said, in a low voice, “I like Rachel. I like her a lot.”

  I did not say anything.

  “Are you and Rachel in love?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you going to ask her to marry you?”

  “It isn’t anywhere near that yet.”

  “Do you and your father come here every summer?”

  “Yes. In August.”

  “It’s strange you didn’t meet her before. She’s been coming here every summer since the end of the war.”

  I did not respond. He was quiet again. Then he said, looking up at the cloud, “It reminds me of the old man too. The cloud, I mean. It reminds me of the old man at the carnival and of others like him.”

  “Which others?”

  He was silent.

  “Which others, Michael?”

  “You won’t be angry? I don’t want you to be angry.”

  “Why should I be angry? Which others?”

  “Some of the rabbis in your school.” He glanced at me, then looked quickly away.

  “Which rabbis?”

  “Rav Kalman.”

  “Why does it remind you of Rav Kalman?”

  “Because he’s vicious and deceitful like that old man.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he is.”

  “I don’t think he’s vicious and deceitful.”

  “Do you know Rav Kalman?”

  “I’m in his Talmud class.”

  He looked startled. “I didn’t know that,” he murmured. He sounded afraid and very apologetic. He was quiet for a moment. “Is he a good scholar?”