Of Song and Water (14 page)

“Will you run down?”

“Yes. We all do.”

“I'll never run down.”

“You've got a long time to go, that's true. It must seem like forever.”

“Can we stay on the boat forever?”

“We can if the weather holds. We can stay as long as you want.”

 

HE'S BEEN told that his grandmother feels weak. She's been confined to her bed in the house with the spiral staircase. She rarely ventures downstairs. The family doctor can't find a thing that's wrong, but the fatigue, the tiredness, won't go away.

Time drags or runs like water.

Now, more often than before, he visits with his mom and dad. They bring flowers and fresh bread.

His grandmother puts on a good face, tries rising to the occasion, but she looks entirely wrung out by the time the visit is over and they close the bedroom door.

The frequent trips are monotonous. He complains about always having to go. Now that he's older, he wants to stay home on his own. He needs to practice. He'd rather hang out and play records or make a few bucks cutting grass.

To tell the truth, he likes staying in Port Austin because it's the place where his grandfather keeps the ketch. He feels good being near the big boat. He rides his bike to the water and sits with the ketch when H.M. isn't there. He knows that smaller boats, the ones with single masts, the ones good for racing and sailing alone, get old and worn-out. He's seen snapshots of the boats that aren't around anymore. But the ketch is tireless. He believes it'll never wear out. “It's built of wood,” says his grandfather. “It takes hard work to keep her Bristol, but with foresight and care she'll last a lifetime.”

H.M. doesn't believe in new boats. “Your dad's sloop, I'm telling you, is a plastic tub. It's a white whale.”

He wonders what his grandfather means. “But both the ketch and the sloop are white,” he says.

“It's a matter of substance,” says H.M. “A boat is a living thing because it's made of living things. There's no life in plastic. It's empty. It's blank – like a white whale.”

 

SCHOOLMATES in bright white T-shirts come tearing down the street shouting and laughing. He can feel them gaining and knows that if he looks over his shoulder he'll lose speed, but he can't resist and his head begins turning and he sees a boy almost at his heels. He rounds the corner and spots the familiar fence and jumps over the closed gate but catches his foot and goes sprawling on the tiny front lawn – on the thick grass that should've been cut before now except that the rain made it impossible. He starts to get up when a boy pounces on his back and holds his face to the ground, cursing in his ear. He hears the voices of the other boys closing in and they fall on him, too, their fists pounding his rib cage and the back of his head, and all the boys yelling or screaming, “Nigger pile. Nigger pile.”

At the bottom, he can't breathe, already breathless from running, and he believes that he'll suffocate, drown in the watery grass, and he feels a hot pressure
building behind his eyes, his arms and legs pinned to the ground, when suddenly a tremendous blast, an explosion, blows everything into silence.

He looks up. The weight rolls off his body. On the porch steps is Otis with a shotgun aimed at heaven.

“You boys got no business here,” he says. “You best run on home before I come down there and get mean.”

Like ghosts disappearing on the air, the boys scatter and slip away.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Young.” He manages to pick himself up. “I looked back and really didn't think – ”

“There you go again with your Mr. Young,” says Otis. “What else are you sorry for?”

“I don't know,” he says. “I didn't mean to start something.”

“Well, we already have. You see, everybody's left their dinner on the table. They don't care if it gets cold.” Otis smiles at the scared faces. “It's all right,” he says. “Nobody's been shot.”

The woman next door says to her husband, “That's the white boy who always comes 'round – I think his name's Jason.”

He hears the edge in her voice and brushes himself off and starts for the gate.

“Slow down,” says Otis. “You got somewhere to be?”

He shakes his head.

“Then get yourself in here. We'll have some lemonade.”

He walks slowly toward the house and, climbing the four porch steps, notices that his knees are weak, that his whole body feels shaky.

After they're inside, Otis tucks the shotgun under his arm, opens the breech, and removes the spent shell. “Take my reading chair. It's more comfortable than the front lawn.”

He falls into the chair and sinks into the soft cushion, his heart still pounding. He suddenly feels heavy and wants to sleep for a long time.

Otis goes into the kitchen and soon returns with two lemonades. “Try some of this,” he says, handing off the glass.

“Thanks.” He wraps his fingers around the drink but can't keep his hand from shaking. He spills lemonade on his shirt before he can get the glass to his lips.

“Careful,” says Otis. “I was thinking we could have your lesson today, now that you're here and all, but – ”

“I didn't bring my guitar,” he says.

“I realize that,” says Otis. “I figured you could use mine, but with hands like that, there's no use.” He sips his lemonade. “What did those boys want with you anyway?”

“They don't like me.”

“Really?”

“Something happened at school.”

“You mean those boys got after you on the playground and then chased you all the way out here?”

He nods.

“Did you sock one of 'em in the eye?”

He shakes his head.

“Did you call 'em names?”

“No.” He raises the glass of lemonade to his lips and this time he doesn't spill, though his hand is still trembling.

“Let me guess,” says Otis. “Those boys don't like the fact that I pay you to cut my grass. They don't like the fact that you come here for lessons. They're scared that you know something they don't.”

He'd been trying not to cry since he sat down but now he can't help it. He starts to sob and spills more lemonade as he sets the glass on the table beside the chair.

“It's all right,” says Otis. “But you should've told me.”

“I thought you'd get mad,” he says, trying to breathe.

“So what? What if I did get mad? What if it hurt my feelings? Do you think you're old enough and wise enough and powerful enough to protect me?”

“No.”

“Then you should've just told me. Told me flat out.”

He nods, wiping away tears with the back of his hand.

“I've seen some things,” says Otis. “You will, too. Things you shouldn't keep to yourself.” Otis grinds an ice cube between his teeth. “I've gotta make some calls and pay a few bills. You can stay here as long as you want. I'll be out back if you need me.”

He sees Otis pick up a stack of envelopes and an address book and then hears him go down the hall and out the back door. He settles deeper into the chair and closes his eyes.

He remembers that when he finally woke up the room was dusky and silent. After a while, he heard a clock ticking, its white face glowing through the shadows, and knew that his parents, if they hadn't already, would soon call the police. He decided it didn't matter. The chair felt better than his bed at home and the sweet smell of the leather made him feel safe. He thinks now that he slept there, that somehow he never left.

 

“FAYA'S much worse,” says a doctor. “Bed rest by itself isn't working.”

These words, spoken with routine precision, give way to a hospital, a white gown, and a team of well-meaning specialists. Despite the nurses and the additional care, she gradually declines, baffling the physicians who order test after test but fail to put forward a convincing theory. Eventually, they abandon all hope for a diagnosis.

Time drags or runs like water.

It's repeated in whispers that the old man abhors his helplessness. He speaks to no one – no one will know his story for now – and he tries to ignore a new
worry, a cramp in his abdomen, a sensation that grows from bothersome to chronic to debilitating in a period of weeks.

When the pain makes him sweat, he tells a young doctor, who performs an examination and wants him admitted without delay. He says he'll give himself up, but only if the hospital agrees to put him nowhere near Faya.

The young doctor makes a swift and precise diagnosis, cancer of the spleen.

For several days, Havelock occupies a private room on the second floor. When visiting hours begin, he removes his robe and puts on his suit and tie, descends by elevator to the lobby gift shop, buys a bouquet of flowers, nothing extravagant, and then takes the elevator up to the fourth floor and sits with Faya, as if he'd just arrived from home.

Eventually, a surgeon stops by and prods him and decides quickly, having already studied the X-rays, that the cancer is inoperable.

“There's no other course?” says Havelock.

“No,” says the surgeon. “No other course.”

Havelock looks in the mirror. His gray beard is bushy. He sees weathered skin and dark recesses under his eyes. He lifts both hands and touches his face. “I can't feel it,” he says.

He turns and glances around the room. The surgeon is gone. He rubs his hands as if his fingers were cold. He touches his face and again feels nothing. “I'll be damned,” he says.

 

THE YOUNG doctor processes Havelock's discharge, walks the old man to the front door, and hands him a bottle of painkillers.

There's relief in the smell of fresh air. He'd like to go out on Lake Huron, run with the singlehanders for the last time. Instead, he continues his routine, visiting Faya each day, always dressed in his suit and tie, stopping first at the lobby gift shop for flowers.

Through the end of winter and into the spring, the young doctor, in awe of
Havelock's constitution, rewrites the prescription again and again, increasing both strength and dosage over time.

Havelock swallows the pills. He checks the wind and sky each morning but keeps himself close to home and steers clear of Saginaw Bay. Lake Huron falls away like a broken dream.

 

ON A morning in late June, just before sunrise, Faya stops breathing.

When the nurse arrives with Faya's pills, she finds Havelock dressed in his suit and tie sitting near the bed, a small bouquet of flowers in his hand.

He signs the necessary papers and pays the bill.

After that, he drives to Port Austin. He makes one turn after another until the old summer cottage comes into view. He stops at the curb, staying a safe distance away, and sees a line of fresh linens in the midmorning sun, the bedsheets billowing in the wind like sails.

He parks his car near the water and walks down to the ketch, his eyes tracing the lovely lines of her hull. He boards and goes below.

He opens a locked storage compartment and takes out a sawed-off shotgun, a souvenir from his days in bootlegging. He opens the breech, tucks the gun under his left arm, and reaches for a shell. The warning on the thin cardboard box is faded. He shoves in the shell and locks the breech. He puts the muzzle under his chin and fires.

 

“JASON,” says his father, “stay close.”

They push their way through a small gathering of gawkers, gossips, and policemen.

His father boards and goes below while an officer waits on deck. He emerges a minute or two later, visibly shaken, unable to step off the ketch without assistance.

“Your grandfather's not there,” he says.

“Where is he then?”

His father looks back at the ketch. “Down below. But you can't go aboard.”

“If he's there, then I want to see him.”

“You can't. It's not possible.”

He feels the grip of his father's hands. “Why not? Why can't I see him?”

“There's nothing to see.”

He tries to twist out of his father's arms. “Let me go,” he says. “Did he say he won't see me? Why won't you let me – ?”

“I'm telling you, there's nothing to see. There's no face. Your grandfather has no face.”

THE BOAT rests easy in its cradle. Humbug Marina, thawing in the April sun, smells like a spring meadow, a second chance, as if the brittle ground, despite wood shavings and rusty debris, had opened itself like a flower. Now, thinks Coleman, I'll make a go of it. She'll be ready by June. I'll take her upriver, through the narrows, to sail on an inland sea, the clouds swelling in the sky like waves.

A breeze comes up from the water. He feels light on his feet, almost buoyant. He breathes.

The scent of damp soil carries him back to a waning spring, to warm nights thick with humidity, the fast but narrow roads between Detroit and Port Austin, sad songs on the radio, the darkness of Lake Huron on one side and a blur of trees on the other.

“A full-throttle weekend,” says a voice over the airwaves. And so he goes, anxious for the end of high school, driving with the windows open and the
radio turned up, hoping to see Otis and the light at Port Austin Reef. Needling him is the inescapable fact that he's in his father's car. He fiddles with the tuning knob, annoyed by static and the fading signal.

He glances in the rearview mirror, feels a shot of adrenaline. “You made the decision. And you finished it,” he says, seeing his father in the backseat. “You tore the guts out of Halyard & Mast. We'd barely gotten H.M. over the side and already the plan was in motion.”