Zanes bent to his work. He paddled on the right side and kept on course by turning the blade inward as he was finishing his stroke. But he needed no course, he aimed at a brown duck with a white circle around her eye, then at jazz music coming from the south cove, a thump and groan, a wail and persistent intimacy which would have drawn him and his leakless yellow fiberglass onward had not Zanes shipped his paddle on the floor in front of him. Straddling his gunwales he let the water cool his feet. An outboard passed containing the Mayor and a blond, very tanned, glowering fellow.
Seemyon Vladimirovich was pulling beans for a market gardener who permitted him to camp on her land. He had “a thing” about firm ground, he was respectful of boats and saw their use value but had no use for them himself. Zanes scanned the shore. His wife was shaking hands at great length with a man.
Zanes stood up and the bow of his canoe jutted out of the water. Why should that happen when his weight remained the same? He crouched and made his way forward. He heard the drone of an outboard; it did not seem to be closing on him. He stood up and put a foot on a gunwale and rocked his canoe. Equilibrium stubborn as a gyro seemed built into the seamless molded material, and he applied himself and rocked the gunwale lower. Now with both feet he brought the gunwale down into the water but, meaning to jump, he lost his footing. His heels slipped out from under him, and as the other gunwale rolled up behind him the canoe went over. Zanes sat down hard on the capsized bottom and, his arms circling for balance, he slid backwards into the lake. To the north, he heard a voice laughing.
Treading water, my hand upon the overturned canoe, I heard laughter to the north and recalled my paddle. Despairing very generally of my life, I went under and came up in the familiar darkness of the boat. It is as if the day has capsized and not you. A canoe is one boat you can find privacy under. You could adapt a boat for just this purpose. The fiberglass bottom sealed out the light of the sun but not the music from the cove — had it risen in volume? Was the sun graining its way through the fibers of my roof? Why should I not stay here? I could always work on my time device. A wind was coming up, and I heard a breathing sound of paddling.
He treaded water and in his mind smelled fish scales. A wind came up. Zanes felt a wash against his dome. A regular plash and churn approached, and, on a distressing day of smashed plate glass and the invasion of the TV people, he felt in the presence of some second reason he had come to be here — not habit, not comfort, not escape — a future voice that needed no words and was a return.
One bright mid-September afternoon, alerted to what he saw entering his woods, Zanes was not ignorant of the black man and what he brought. The canoe visibly shifting upon the diminutive roof of the silver sports car and overshadowing it, the black man had no right to drive in through the woods like that on a September afternoon. How do you drive with the front end of a canoe over your windshield? The bow like a beak closing down over the hood over-slung it a good three feet. The single length of clothesline securing the bow to the middle of the front bumper went taut and slack as one tire hit a pothole, and the back end of the canoe was raked by a dangling, half-split pine bough. If the red blanket protecting the car roof wasn’t actually slipping, a corner of it hung unevenly half over a window, and the clothesline around the broad belly of the canoe that passed through the windows was working loose so he was going to lose that canoe. The black man had no right even to ask to leave it “for the time being”—getting out of his car, its weird long load between them, and sauntering around the bow so he and Zanes could see each other. Not a tall man, he had a round African face. The bow had two yellow-green leaves stuck to it.
Mr. Zanes? the man asked, as if the name wasn’t on the mailbox out on the road; I believe you operate the laundromat in the village? What a lovely spot, how much frontage do you have? He was getting around to what he really had in mind, which was incredible coming from summer people who were practically complete strangers.
He treaded water. He heard the wind faraway. Zanes felt a wash against his dome. A regular plash and churn approached, and, on a distressing day of smashed plate glass and the invasion of the TV people, he felt in the presence of some second voice.
Did he hear it?
The voice said, Is anybody home? Alive inside the power of his pantings, he laughed out loud and felt his long dome bumped and a scratching as of sandpaper.
The Zanes’s fiberglass canoe had been rammed more than once. By a slow-moving outboard Chris Craft piloted by a priest and carrying a group of elderly Catholic ladies, and again by an inboard Chris Craft when its operator had become fascinated by two girls he was pulling each on one water ski and had seen Zanes in time to steer off, just shaving Zanes’s bow though putting Zanes himself in the path of the tow rope. Sideswiped also by an aluminum canoe swinging around on a tow rope behind an outboard; attacked twice by visiting freshwater wind surfers yelling commands at him right up to impact; and once, during an eclipse of the moon, rammed by his own dock. Almost imperceptibly nicked, the fiberglass hull kept its finish.
I knew the voice after all and ducked under the gunwale to come up and show myself to Conrad Clear’s brother. Oh, you’re all right, the black man said peering down as if my identity had not been at issue. I thought you might be — the black man did not finish. Balanced large-scale and old above me, the bark canoe up close seemed to touch my eyes.
He treaded water and felt the rusty drip-stain and snake mottle over the hull. Along the gunwale every few inches were bindings of some woody material. The birch had aged, it was interesting to examine, a mottled pale brown. Which side of the bark was the outside of the tree? On the outside a flap of bark the length of the canoe came down below the gunwale. The word “outwale” came to him. The outwale’s come loose in a couple of places, he said, and the black man said, The outwale? That’s not good. He leaned over to look and the canoe tipped with him.
You know these powerboats, they start polluting the environment around this time on a Friday, Clear said. Aren’t boats crazy? Swinging about, he backpaddled to say, Well, back to work. It was a joke. Work, I thought. What if my time device already exists? It might still need to be repaired from time to time.
Store a canoe complete with paddles and cushions “for the time being”? Now how would that be possible when at this point in time the Zanes’s garage was out of the question? — and as for the barn…
At least have a look at it, the black man said. He worked on his knots at the back bumper. He ran the clothesline out from stern to stem, where the slender bow thwart it was lashed to could have snapped considering how the bow had been bucking. You could feel his duty, he almost loved the canoe; it did not seem to be his. At last he and Zanes raised the canoe off the top of the silver car, gripping the gunwales at each tapering end of the canoe, feeling it try to turn over. Grass brushed against the bottom like a drum when they laid it down. The canoe creaked somewhere in the length and give of its gunwales, its ribs and grain and pegs. The men stood near each other, looking into the canoe. Its grand lines flared to a beam so wide it seemed low and was. Which end was which? Ribs curved with a beautiful singleness up to the gunwales, and, out of the bent tension in which they seemed to grip and bow the ribs, as you ran your eyes over it and felt it the canoe developed a force of tightness and actual lift, as if the noble forcing of the ribs into the oval narrow form turned the weight inward into lightness. Zanes ran his fingers along a carved rib that tapered just below the gunwale. I think the ribs are cedar, the black man said. He breathed and Zanes knew he was watching him. Yes, the man said. I suppose the thwarts are, too. Zanes knelt and drew his palm along the outside of the canoe, the weather-rusted, raw but not raw bark. The outwale, did you say? the man said. I guess I did, Zanes said. Seams, evidently covering vertical splits in the bark every couple of feet, were sealed or reinforced (if they were seams) with ridges of some hardened, pitchy-looking gum. Zanes went inside and ran his fingers down a rib to the floor where a damp green leaf was stuck. He stood up and the black man lowered his eyes to the canoe and nodded. You could take a trip in it, he said.