The Silver Boat

by Luanne Rice

  There he was, her beloved dad. He had wanted to return home to her family. Sinking onto a bare wood settee, she held the photo and smiled at him. She loved him more than ever. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine him sitting right behind her. The Kinsale dockmaster had been right: she’d seen a ghost ship.

  She stood up, began to move through the cabin. Time fell away, and she swore she was exploring the boat with her father, just like the first time. She looked at the bookcases he’d built because she and her sisters loved to read so much, the galley now stripped of its compact stove and refrigerator box. Algae had marred every surface. She scratched her name on a porthole; the dry green organism felt like dust and stuck under her fingernail.

  Even the deck was covered with the stuff, in spite of the many people who must have tromped through over the years. She stared at the beautiful deck; her father had been so pleased with the teak and holly pattern he’d installed. And then she remembered: the tiny secret spot in the main saloon. She held her breath. Was it real? Had she dreamed up the hidden compartment for Dulse, for a story? She went straight to it—forward of the folding table, port side.

  Crouching down, Dar pressed a square the size of a Scrabble piece. It released a mechanism, and a foot-square section of the teak and holly flooring lifted out. She gazed into the watertight compartment, but it was too dark to see. Feeling around inside, she felt squeamish. There could be crabs or something worse hiding there. Her hand found something: a pouch. She pulled it out slowly, carefully.

  Made of rubber, wrapped in a plastic bag. Dar didn’t want to take the time to learn what it held. Tim had had the Irish Darling all these years. He could have searched and found it; but now it was Dar’s, and she slid it into the inside pocket of her jacket.

  When she climbed down, she caught the compassionate look on Tim’s face. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right away, when you first came.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Ah, it’s shitty. I hated you for years—not just you, but his whole family. I wanted you to meet my mother—not only for her, but so you could see she was real. We existed.”

  “You mattered to him,” Dar said.

  Tim shrugged. “He’d been with us barely a few months, but he took a big slice of us when he left. He raised our hopes, that’s how I think of it now. It was good to have him with us. But it hurt my mother to see him walk out to the end of the rock jetty, looking west every single night. As if he could see you, all he’d left behind.”

  “Hurt you, too,” Dar said.

  “Maybe,” Tim said. Dar looked down, not wanting to cry.

  “We’ll stay in touch,” she said, suddenly needing to get out of there, reaching into her pocket, giving him her card.

  “Yes,” he said, glancing at the bold charcoal print of a darkeyed girl swimming among the strands of a kelp forest. “What’s this?”

  “That’s Dulse,” Dar said. “She’s the main character in a series of graphic novels I do.”

  “Wow. My new friend’s super talented,” he said.

  She glanced at her watch, knowing Rory and Delia were probably packing, waiting for her to get back for dinner.

  “I want my sisters to see the boat,” she said. “I know it’s getting late, and you probably want to leave.”

  He shook his head. “I’ll wait here till you get back.”

  So Dar hurried down the quay, into the small bed-and-breakfast, found her sisters standing in the lobby, looking at menus for local restaurants.

  “Dar!” Delia said. “We exchanged our tickets, and we’re all set. I’m going to the Vineyard with you instead of back home right away. Is that okay?”

  “Where did you go?” Rory asked. “We were getting worried.”

  “I was at McCarthy Manufacturing,” Dar said. “And I want you to come there, too. There’s something you have to see.”

  The two of them stared at her, and she knew they could see the truth in her eyes, the smell of algae and the sea pouring off her. Her hands were dirty from touching their father’s boat, but she used them to ease her sisters down, into creaking lobby chairs.

  “I found out what happened to Dad,” she said.

  “What?” Rory asked, sounding afraid.

  “Is he alive?” Delia asked, gripping Dar’s hand.

  “No,” Dar said softly. She knelt down, her mouth dry. After so many years, all the hoping and wondering and giving up, she searched for the words. “He didn’t make it . . .”

  “He’s dead?” Rory asked.

  “He is,” Dar said. “He died trying to sail home to us. It was a clear night, the tide was with him, there was no reason . . .” She broke down, picturing her father sinking just offshore, wondering what must have gone through his head. Her sisters held her.

  “Did Tim tell you?” Delia asked after a while.

  “Yes,” Dar said. “He’s waiting for us, so you can see the boat. They salvaged her, kept her all this time.”

  So the three of them headed out. The wind blew straight off the harbor, tasting of salt. Tim was waiting just outside the shed door; Dar saw his cigarette glowing in the dark. He spotted them coming, came forward.

  “Hello,” he said. “You must be Rory and Delia.”

  “Hi, Tim,” Rory said.

  Delia gave him a hug. “Dar just told us.”

  “I’m very sorry,” Tim said. “Your father was a good man; we all knew how badly he wanted to get home to you . . .”

  Dar watched her sisters take in his words. They nodded, tearing up. Tim turned to lead them into the damp boathouse, over to the wreck of the Irish Darling. Rory went straight to the hole in her side, cried out as she touched the ragged splintery edges.

  Tim held the ladder so they could climb up. Again, he didn’t follow, but let them be alone together. There was no surface untouched by salt water, and the hold smelled of seaweed and barnacles. Dar stood back, letting her sisters make their way around the small space, doing the same thing she had: touching everything he might have touched.

  “He was on his way home,” Rory said. “Even though he didn’t get what he’d come for.”

  “Maybe he did,” Dar said.

  “But Cathleen made it seem he didn’t,” Delia said. “It’s horrible, but that means even more to me, thinking he’d decided to sail home no matter what. I hated thinking of him basing everything on that land grant.”

  “I think Cathleen was wrong, or meant something else. I think Dad did find what he was looking for” Dar said, reaching under her fleece.

  Her sisters gathered close, staring at the rubber pouch. The zipper had rusted out, so when Dar pulled on it, it ripped apart. She reached inside, pulled out a folded piece of parchment paper, the creases fragile and brown. They leaned over, gazing at impossibly fine writing, the black ink blotched and faded to almost nothing in spots. The pen’s imprint had been strong, however, and there was a thick, cracked red wax seal beside the signature line.

  “Is it?” Rory asked.

  “I think so,” Dar said.

  “He was right, then,” Rory said. “He was right all along . . .”

  “I wish Mom could have known,” Dar said. “She lived the rest of her life thinking he’d left her forever.”

  “Why couldn’t he have called?” Delia asked. “Do you think he’d gotten more involved with Cathleen than Tim said? Maybe he was torn about coming home.”

  “I think he was involved with Cathleen,” Dar said. “But I know he wasn’t torn. He was always coming home. The things he was most confident about were sailing and the sea. He’d made it to Ireland in terrible weather; I’m sure it never occurred to him he wouldn’t make it back to the Vineyard safely.”

  “He wanted to surprise her,” Delia said.

  “Or prove something to her,” Rory said. “But he still could have called, told her he’d tracked down the deed. Or whatever it is.”

  “How did he track it down?” Delia asked.

  Dar shook her head. She had no ide
a. They’d have lots of questions for their lawyer, Bart Packard, when they got home. But just then she and her sisters fell silent, thinking of their father, knowing they were in the place where he had died. The boat felt holy, just as the cemetery had when they’d surrounded their mother’s grave.

  Whatever their father had or hadn’t accomplished had never made them love him more or less. Standing in the cold, dank saloon of the sloop he had built with such love, they felt his loss more than ever, and held hands with tears running down their cheeks.

  PART IV

  Water in all its phases is at its best on Martha’s Vineyard.

  NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER , 1894

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The key was easy to find. It had always been hidden under the angel in the garden. During summer the chipped stone statue was covered by vines, surrounded by marsh grass, but in spring the grass was barely turning green and vines were a distant memory of summers gone by. Once Pete had asked Dar why they had an angel. No one was particularly religious. And she’d said, “Everyone needs a protector.”

  Pete thought of that now. When Granny got really sick, she allowed Dar to place a statue of the Buddha in the herb garden. But the angel predated the Buddha by a lot of years, and it had been keeper of the key all that time. He saw a small plastic doll sitting near the angel. A little girl had been around. His daughter.

  Most of the time the house was left unlocked. But right now the three sisters were in Ireland, and the house was basically sold, and Pete guessed Dar didn’t want any vultures entering without permission. She’d told him to go home to Maryland. He was a piece of shit who’d never even met his own kid, but he hoped his aunt would understand.

  Everyone needs a protector.

  Inserting the key into the lock, he thought of how ancient the metal seemed. Had the same lock been here since the house was built? He let himself in, and was instantly surrounded by Scup and the cats.

  “Hey, guys,” he said, petting them. “Good boy, Scup. Need to go out?” He opened the door and let the old Lab outside to do his business. Who was feeding the animals with Dar away? He saw almost-full bowls of kibble and water.

  Pete smelled the salty, damp-dog mustiness that let him know he was home. Or was it his home anymore? He had fucked things up so badly he was now kicked out by his father. Pete had borrowed money from his parents one time too many. Dropping out of college—mid-semester, just past the limit for getting even a fraction of their money back—had been bad. Sleeping with a girl one night, her getting pregnant, never even meeting his own daughter, had sealed it.

  Inside, he went to the refrigerator. He was starving, and found some smoked bluefish and horseradish cheese spread. A loaf of rye bread in the freezer made the meal, and he thawed the bread in the 1960s toaster oven, fixed a few sandwiches, and took them onto the porch to eat.

  The temperature was about sixty, balmy compared to Alaska. Being here made him reflective, made him think about what had happened there. Staring past the pond out to sea, he scanned the horizon for a sailboat. He knew it was coming, he just didn’t know when.

  Up in Bristol Bay beginning of last summer, seining for salmon, he’d pulled a dumb move. First light, groggy, up in the bow and operating the hydraulic winch to haul anchor, he had slipped and fallen overboard.

  The waves had swamped him, pulled him under the thirty-something-degree water. He was in particularly bad shape hangoverwise; his arms were too heavy and frozen to hold himself up. Trying to swim, he heard someone yell “Man overboard!” Someone had seen him go over, and the captain of the salmon boat, Helena Marie, drove in circles looking for him.

  Pete sank. His boots were dead weight, filling fast. Eyes open, he saw the peace of the underworld. Shimmering sun in the euphotic zone, that part of the sea where light penetrates. Off the west coast, the upwelling—the wave force that causes detritus to rise from the sea bottom—made the water murky and shrank the sunny part from two hundred meters to fifty.

  Pete was as one with the phytoplankton, first link in the food chain, moving down into serious darkness where he would encounter apex predators, large sharks prowling the depths. His waterlogged boots sped him downward, his lungs bursting with the last breath he’d ever take.

  Then, and here’s where it got weird, he felt arms surrounding him. Big strong arms lifting him up. Pete was not a religious man, and he wasn’t on hallucinogens. He wasn’t crazy. He didn’t think it was God.

  But glancing down as they rose back up through the hazy water’s light, he saw big hands gripping his chest, dark hair on forearms, a Claddagh ring facing in toward his savior’s heart. The man could swim as if with jet propulsion. As they rose, he gave Pete air. Not with a regulator, and not mouth-to-mouth, but somehow magically he transferred H2O to Pete’s bloodstream.

  When they broke the surface, Pete heard his shipmates shouting. “There he is!” “Hang on, Petey, we’re coming for you!” They threw the grappling hook, and although Pete was too weak to grab the line, his savior did, and he wrapped it once around Pete’s chest, hooking the line to hold it steady.

  When Pete turned around, no one was there. The crew hauled him over to the Helena Marie, and by the time they got Pete on board, he was puking up seawater, trying to see over the transom.

  “What’re you looking for?” Hank McDuff asked.

  “Nothing,” Pete said, because it would have sounded insane.

  Pete pulled himself up, stared into the bay. He saw a sailboat: small, pretty, white hull, gleaming brightwork. She shimmered like a mirage. He spit more seawater out of his lungs.

  “You see her?” he asked, pointing.

  “See what?” Catcher Langtry asked. “Come on, man, you gotta get off deck for a while.”

  Sailors and fishermen were superstitious about ghosts and their ships, and the notion of the sloop his grandfather had built, the Irish Darling—a legend to Pete, having been possessed by boats his whole life—filled his mind. He didn’t tell anyone, and he signed on for every trip the rest of the summer. Come winter, he worked in the cannery. He’d stand at the end of the wharf, watching for that sailboat.

  Now, finishing his lunch, he stared out at the calm blue sea off Squibnocket. After a few minutes he went inside, washed his dish, and headed upstairs. The house was rambling, with narrow hallways and unexpected wings and staircases. It unsettled him to see that most of the rooms were empty. Boxes were piled in corners, labeled Dar, Rory, and Delia—his mom.

  Pete made his way down the long second-floor hall to the room that had been his grandmother’s. She’d died last October; he hadn’t made it to the funeral. Entering her room, he felt pangs of love and guilt. For some reason, this room was the last to be completely packed away. It still looked as he remembered it from childhood, coming out to the Vineyard every summer.

  The white metal bed was no longer made up with her favorite linens from France. Her books had been taken down from the bookcase. But the brightly colored glass chandelier still hung overhead, catching the light. Her writing desk was still by the window. Beside it was the blue silk armchair he’d always loved because his grandmother would hold him on her lap while sitting in it, and they’d make up stories about the island, the sea, and a sailor who went wherever the wind took him.

  Pete stood by the writing desk. His hands were trembling. He hadn’t had a drink or drug in fourteen days, but he’d developed a real problem there, up in Alaska. After each trip, a lot of guys spent their shares in the bars. Pete had banked his for a while, but soon he found himself bellied up to the bar at the Cat’s Catch, an old cathouse turned into a tavern, scoring crystal and drinking shots till the ups and downs flipped him over and he couldn’t remember his own name.

  Hand tremors took him back to drinking and drugging times, but right now he was filled with fear and emotion. Was his memory correct? Not about being rescued by a ghost, but about something his grandmother had shown him when he was six. She’d taken him into her room, locked the door behind her.<
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  Pete remembered her short white hair and bright blue eyes. She always wore loose cotton dresses that went below her knees, bright colors she called coral, jade, periwinkle. The only jewelry she wore was a necklace with a silver knot pendant. She was strong, and she could walk fast, and she knew the batting averages of all the Red Sox. Smoking had given her a deep, gravelly voice, but to Pete it was also soft and full of love.

  “You’re my only grandson,” she said, long before Obadiah was born. “And I have only daughters, no sons.”

  They stood before her ebony desk. She pulled down the slanted panel that provided the writing surface. Inside were several cubbyholes filled with her stationery, stamps, a letter opener. The center compartment looked empty, but she reached in, and all the way back was a green velvet box. She took it out and handed it to Pete.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “A ring,” she said. “It was given to me by my only love. And when you find your only love, I shall give it to you to give her.”

  She gestured for Pete to open the box. Inside was a gold ring with a strange symbol on it: two hands holding a heart. Pete liked it because it seemed like a story. Whose hands, and whose heart, and who would hold a heart anyway? He asked his grandmother these questions.

  “The person holding the heart is you. Or me, or anyone. If you are alone, hoping for love, you wear it on your third finger with the heart facing out. But if you have found love, you wear the heart toward your own heart—facing in.”

  “Why don’t you wear it?” he had asked her.

  Her silence lasted a long time, and was full of sadness. “Because your grandfather sailed away from me.”

  Pete’s hands stopped shaking. He stood by the writing desk, reached into the center compartment. It was empty. What would he have done if he’d found the ring?

  His father was right; he was a druggie. He’d gotten into some bad stuff up in Dillingham, developed a meth habit, and sold his truck to pay for it. He’d asked his parents for money to repair a vehicle he no longer possessed—he’d sold it in Denver for booze and meth. Hitchhiked all the way home from Alaska, to cop along the way.