He put two hands on the bow and pulled sideways, dragging it around, and faced the nose to the water. He slipped the rudder into the locking pins. He had never sailed a sailboat before and he lifted the mast, staggering under its weight, and guided it into its hole, the metal on metal making a sliding, secure, locking sound. He experimented with the sail, lifting it a bit. The wind felt smoother but still strong. There was only a single line, running along the boom, to manipulate, its operation easy to understand — pulling on it lifted the sail. He eased out the rudder extension. He waded into the water, his legs disappearing in the surging green, debris tickling his thighs, and pulled. The rain spattered the surface into a kind of electric life. The boat resisted, then relented, sliding forward to hit the waves with a slap, the bow buoyed high, the stern lifting free of the land and spinning with the wind. He remained alongside, waist-deep, then chest-deep, and lifted himself aboard, the boat sweeping rapidly along the shore while he scrabbled around freeing the boom and hoisting the sail line, turning the rudder. With the sail halfway up, the rudder found the right angle and the boat jumped away from the shore, rocking him backward.
The rapidity of his progress unnerved him, as did the receding, darkening shoreline. He was cutting a swift diagonal away from the beach, the spray from the bow distinguishable in its warmth and saltiness from the rain. A motorboat, its canvas covers down, turtled by, waves lashing at its sides. The possible power of the storm began to frighten him, and he felt uncertain of his ability to bring the boat about but knew he could not pursue a diagonal course the whole way across. He paused, amazed at himself, wondering what he really hoped to do. He had to bring the boat about one way or the other, he realized, and he held the sail, jerked the rudder, and the boat spun right, cutting a wide arc through the water, and the sail collapsed with a ruffle and a bang on his head. It bounced to his shoulders and then to the hull, slipping off into the swell. The shroud filled with dark Sound and he was suddenly dead in the water, waves breaking over the hull in sheets and draping seaweed across his knees, and the faint drone of the motorboat was returning, and the boat showed on his stern, chuffing through the waves as if on a watery treadmill. It turned, its side bumping his long hull gently, and its engines idled down, still fighting the current. A bit of canvas flap unsnapped, water splaying and dancing from its corner, and a hand and face appeared.
“You all right, son?” a voice called. “We’ll get you a towline.”
The shore was visible. The wind was beating them onto the beach.
“I’m okay,” he called. “I live right here. We’re almost on the beach.” He pointed.
There was some rapid movement under the canvas, and the engines throttled up. They shouted something he couldn’t make out. The boat slipped away, farther out, and turned and edged back in. Its bow rose against the side of the sailboat, the prow leaning out of the rain alongside him over the sailboat’s hull, and the engine roared briefly, surging them forward. They were giving him a push. He pulled the rudder around, spinning the nose into the shore, and waved. The little motorboat gave a blast of its air horn and disappeared into the darkness.
He was off the hull, shoulder-deep in the warm water, wading in. The boat was hard to control, his feet braced against barnacled rocks. He struggled and pulled, and when the hull slipped onto shore the water rushed from the downed sails with a torrential noise. He pulled the boat higher and higher and sat down after the final pull exhausted and wet, shaking. Lightning illuminated the sky to the east now, having passed without coming very near. The mast stood outlined against the sky and the sail flapped resolutely as it lost water, flapped as if in response to what had just occurred, and continued to flap, behind him, as he walked up the beach, heavy-legged, and stooped to dig up his towel, water-soaked and sandy, before continuing up the stone steps for home.
Drawing the Walk
He’s a good kid: there’s no reason to foam at the mouth over all of this. We have to keep some kind of perspective.
You watch this kid day to day and you’ll see what I mean. He gets up, he enjoys things, he gets along with his sister, he’s got lots of friends, he does well in school. We’re talking about a kid who’s got a lot going for him here. Sure he’s quiet; he’s sensitive. Okay, he’s sensitive. You don’t have to be Kreskin to figure that out. Maybe he gets hurt easier than most kids. But the thing to remember here is not to overreact. If the kid doesn’t have a serious problem we may give him one before we’re through.
Most of the time we don’t even know what’s going on. We can’t protect him from everything that might upset him. Things stay with him. Whether it’s one thing or another. Everything at home might be all smiles and he might spot a dog outside dragging by on three legs. What are you going to do? How much can you insulate him? For instance: we drove to Florida a few years ago and got off 95 in Georgia because of construction. We took a back road and in the middle of it in front of a gas station we came across this wolfhound or something. It was a big white dog, like a sled dog, really a beautiful animal — dead, on its back, twisted around with its paws in the air. Stiff. Cars were going around it. The guys in the gas station just left it out there. Well, that was it for Biddy’s vacation. We might as well have taken the dog to the beach with us. And I had to go back that way, on the way home, to show him the goddamn thing wasn’t still out there, paws in the air.
I’m not trying to gloss over anything or say there’s no cause for concern. I’m just saying let’s look at the whole picture here; let’s try and put these things into some kind of context.
Kristi sat in the bright sunlight by an anthill, scraping a spoon on the pavement, back and forth, back and forth. The sound produced was not in any way musical or pleasant.
Biddy was at her bedroom window, looking down at her in the middle of the driveway. He looked down without opening the screen, his forehead bumping it a bit. “What’re you doing?” he finally said.
“Nothing.”
The sky was bright blue over the houses opposite him and he could feel the heat and smell the morning through the screen. “Listen. I’m going to take some paper from your desk, okay?”
“No. Get outta there.”
“I need it.”
“No.”
“I’m going to take some old homework, okay?”
His sister scraped, legs facing the sun. The pavement was cracked and dry around her.
“Okay?”
“Don’t take any of my pictures.”
“I won’t.” He opened the bottom drawer stuffed with dittoed sheets filled with Kristi’s handwriting. She made blocky, different-sized letters, an “a” bigger than the “t” next to it, an occasional letter capitalized, the words and sentences climbing or descending heedless of any lines provided.
He was looking for something with ample margin so that he could use the front as well as the back; he preferred not to scatter games in a series over different pieces of paper.
He stopped at a folded piece of brown scrap paper with a drawing of a crying flower on it. Over the flower Kristi had written, “Now This is a Story you’ll never For Get.” He opened it. Inside was a drawing of a huge rabbit, expressionless, seemingly without any legs. “Ones there was a Bunny and the Bunny was so happy That He fell and hurt Him self, But he got Back up and hurt Him self agen and when he got in the house The Mother lookt at Him and He had a fefer and that was the end of the Bunny and that is the end of my Story.”