by Amanda Dykes
Footsteps sound on the stairs, and Bob piles the sandwiches up with tomato, lettuce, hot sauce, and Ed’s famous spread. Peppery and savory with all kinds of tang to it.
William hovers in the kitchen doorway. In the light, his clothes show the extent of their wear and want for washing. Button-down shirt that was once sky-blue, now more like mottled clay. A khaki blazer with elbow patches, ripped right up the seam of the right arm. He grips the cuff with that hand, holding the frayed edges together, and Bob realizes his scrutiny is making the boy uncomfortable.
And that’s what he is, Bob realizes. Half man, half boy, standing there with his face freshly scrubbed in those soiled clothes, cheeks ruddy, eyes ice. This one’s been through the wringer.
Bob slides a plate onto the table, nods toward it. Plants a glass of water there, too, and joins William.
Bob folds his callused hands and bows his head, realizing he’ll have to offer his prayer aloud. He eyes the boy, who’s frozen with the sandwich halfway to his mouth. He quickly bows his head, as much to pray as to hide the flush of red across his face. He never releases his grip on that po’ boy.
“Lord, we thank you for this food. For the day’s fullness. And . . .” He opens one eye and sees William with head bent forward, hair falling unruly. “For family. Amen.”
William mutters an amen and they fall silent, consuming. Not knowing where to start, what to say. The food is the glue holding this hopeless fracture together, and Bob thinks for the hundredth time how God sure knew what He was doing when he made food and gave men stomachs. They need it, and not just bodily.
“You’re up from Boston?” Bob says at last. That’s where Jenny and Mr. Sawyer had settled, last he knew. There are a thousand questions pounding, but they feel too personal to ask someone who’s a near stranger. He has to earn the right, somehow. And he doesn’t know how.
William’s chewing slows, and he swallows. “A while ago.”
“I went there once. With your parents, matter of fact.” At the mention of those two people, William fixes his concentration hard on the table in front of him.
He’s a paradox. These fine clothes, tailored by the look of them, but bearing grime and wear. His hair, longer than what’s polished but not long enough for what’s rebellious. His face holds the spark of Jenny’s youth and the fervor of Roy’s spirit . . . but it is dull, lifeless, haunted. He looks like someone who’s been cut loose to drift and hasn’t found shore. Not for a long time.
William sets his half-eaten sandwich down, gulps down half the glass of water, and for the first time looks Bob in the eye.
“I . . . need a place to stay for a while,” he says at last.
Bob nods, considers. What would a parent do? He hasn’t the slightest idea but knows at least that he has to consult Jenny. No matter how long it’s been.
“We’d have to phone your mother to see, but we could do that from town tomorrow—”
“No.”
The single word is full of defeat and grief.
Bob lowers his sandwich, studies him. There’s an iron-strong conviction inside. You know this sorrow. You have been here.
Bob grabs a heaped dish towel from the table, wipes his hands on it. Clears his throat. “She’s . . . gone,” he offers. The last thing William needs is to be made to say it, if this is what’s happened.
A nod confirms it, and a pit opens in Bob. But he cinches it tight. Time for that later.
“A year ago,” William says, and there’s a softening of his voice. “She got sick. It was fast.”
A year. Where had the boy been since then? By the looks of things, he’s seen plenty in the time that’s passed.
“I’m sorry,” Bob says. Platitudes run through his head. She was a good woman. This is a great loss. And each one is sincere, but none is enough. “She was . . .” An image of Jenny flashes. Girl with wings for feet, weaving through shafts of sun, light on her freckles and dark hair flying. “That girl was life, all wrapped up in a person,” he says at last.
William raises his down-turned face, a deepening in his eyes. Unspoken thanks.
There’s much to know, still. Where he’s been. Where he’s headed. But by the look of things, these questions would be burdens to a kid who hardly knows where he is right now. Bob benches the questions, tunes his ear heavenward. What’s he need?
Two words slam him from opposite sides and collide into one single idea. Home. Hope. Maybe they’re the same thing, when it comes down to it. He also knows that a soul set adrift wants a task, a purpose. No matter how small. As it happens, he’s got three crates he can’t lift by himself for fear of shattering what’s inside. And he can’t help thinking there is a reason these two deliveries ended up on his front porch the same night. They’re tied to each other, the light and this boy.
“Well, you’ve got a place here, long as you want,” Bob says at last.
In a movement so miniscule Bob almost misses it, William shifts in his seat, shoulders dropping, like a burden’s been lifted. He has space—even just a little—to breathe. And Bob knows too well, when you’ve been without air so long you can’t remember another way of life, even a single breath of fresh air is a lifeline.
The next morning, Bob creeps downstairs before the sun, scribbles a note for William, rummages for what food he can—an apple, two biscuits, some cheese—and sets it out for him. Out in the frosty morning, he’s halfway down the dock when sudden movement sets his pulse racing. A lanky shadow springs from the dock post where he’d been leaning.
Muscles tense, Bob narrows his eyes, barely making out the man’s features. “William?”
He stuffs his hands in his jacket pockets, shoulders up. Sheepish. “I . . . thought I’d help.”
Bob tosses his sack on board the Savvy Mae. “Help?”
“Mom said you fished. For a living.”
“That’s right,” Bob says. “Lobster. You ever been?”
“No . . .” He shuffles his feet. Uncomfortable in his own skin. Seems there’s something more he wants to say but can’t.
Bob waits.
“I’ve never been on a boat before,” he admits at last.
Bob chuckles. “Well, that’s quick enough cured.” He slaps his nephew on the back and holds his hand out over the boat, gesturing him on board.
What follows is something akin to watching a newly foaled colt wobble toward its first steps. Bob clenches his jaw to keep back laughter, giving the kid space to find his sea legs. It is a rite of passage, one not to be scoffed at. He fires up the engine and takes the long way out of the harbor. Up into the Weg, out past Grindstone Neck. Slow and easy, until William’s grip on the railing becomes less white-knuckled.
He eases the throttle up once they’re out in the open, lifting his hand to Gus Packer as they pass him already working at his traps. Bob goes easy once he reaches his first trap. He chooses one closer in, hoping it’ll be a good ease-in for William. He slows alongside his buoy, which is tethered to the wooden trap on the ocean floor.
“How do you know which are yours?” William surveys the seascape, probably noticing other buoys bobbing in the not-too-far distance.
“Stripes,” Bob says, idling the boat and gripping the buoy. It drips as he pulls it on board showing the Bliss pattern—one thick blue stripe topped by two thin red stripes. “That’s our marker. Some will be other colors, other stripes. These ones are ours.”
“What happens if someone gets into your trap before you do?”
Bob laughs. “A man who’d do that had better hit the hills running, or the whole of Washington County will be after him. There’s honor in this job. Respect as deep as the sea for other men’s traps.”
As he explains, a hunger lights in William’s eyes. He is eager for this honor, for something good and true. Bob wonders what the boy has sacrificed in his time surviving on his own, and what price he is paying for it now. A steep one, by the slump of his shoulders.
Setting the buoy on deck, Bob pulls the rope, hand over fist, fo
rgoing the pulley in these shallower waters. He stops to fling off clumps of seaweed as he goes. The rope pools on the deck until finally the trap shows itself. Long wooden slats domed over a rectangular base, and he can see already the dark sheen of at least two lobsters. The netted opening sports a hole big enough for the creatures to crawl through.
William points to the hole. “What keeps them trapped?”
“Themselves,” Bob says. “They could get out any time if they just turn around and go back.”
William lets out a rueful laugh, like maybe he understands that more than he wants to say.
Bob pulls the first lobster out, and it waves its claws in protest. He flips it over to check for eggs. There they are, the future, nestled right beneath her. With a toss, he releases her back into the sea.
“What’d you do that for?” William bends over the edge, watching the ripples flow outward from where she’s disappeared.
“She’s got another job just now,” Bob says. “Eggs to hatch. Life to give.”
“And the other one?” William points at the trap.
“See for yourself.”
William, haltingly, reaches into the trap. Pulls out a starfish.
“Funny-looking lobster,” he says, face deadpan.
Bob narrows his eyes, trying to get a read. Is he joking?
The smallest upturn of one corner of the boy’s mouth gives an answer. And more than that—the first hint that there might be a door somewhere in the fortress William has around himself. Bob chuckles and tips his head toward the water, where William deposits the starfish.
Reaching in again, he pulls out the remaining lobster, holding him by the back as Bob had done. He flips the lobster over. No eggs.
“He’s a keeper,” Bob declares, grabbing a large tin bucket from the deck. He plugs the claws with wooden pegs, and William places the lobster inside.
Quickly Bob shows him how to rebait the trap and toss it back in once the boat’s on the move again. “Stay clear of the rope, whatever you do.”
The next trap, William takes the lead. It’s like the boy’s all thumbs. His fingers are long and strong, built for work like this, but unpracticed and blind.
A time or two, the frustration in William nearly bubbles to the surface. The boy has a long fuse, but Bob knows too well that the longer the fuse, the bigger the explosion. He’s the master of the big explosion himself. And for the first time, he wonders if there’s a bit of himself in William, too.
“You’re doing fine, son,” Bob says, not thinking. The stiffness in William says he should’ve chosen a different word. He’s not Bob’s son. “Just takes time.”
“That’s another way of saying I’m no good at this,” William says.
“Nope,” Bob says. “It just takes time.”
William pulls a lopsided grin, and Bob hopes it’s a sign the day will start looking up for him. They drop anchor for lunch, Bob splitting his egg sandwich with William. They’d best make this a short day. A half sandwich won’t sustain the kid long, not the way he’s working, making his hands raw. And though the bright sun is warming the day, the air is still mighty cold for a boy who has never worked on the water.
Bob ducks into the cabin and readies the boat. “Come on in, William.” His name feels strange to say. Flashes of the babe in arms come to mind at its utterance. “How about you steer.” He offers him the seat. It will keep his hands out of the wind and work for a while. “So what you do is, to steer it that way”—he points right—“you turn the wheel starboard. Nice and slow, and keep the engine down, too.”
William’s jaw is set, eyes fixed in concentration on the sea ahead. They’re retracing their path from this morning, Grindstone Neck coming up on their right. He’ll have to turn the boat to curve around the point and get them into the Weg. Bob stands back, watching the wheels turn in William, the way a vein carves his hand. But as they pass the point, his quick instincts kick in. Seeing they’re turning into the cliff, he turns the wheel port side, fast. Too fast. He tries to correct, lurching the wheel back center. In his panic he’s left the motor fast, and the bow is lifting, stern fishtailing.
They’re headed toward Everlea Island—and rocks submerged just far enough to be invisible and deadly to a boat. Sensing William’s stress spiraling, Bob takes the wheel, lowering the throttle, calming the engine, easing the boat’s direction back on course toward the Weg.
He eyes William, offering him the wheel again, but William gulps, shakes his head no. The kid’s shoulders are heaving as he tries to catch his breath.
“Happens to all of us at the start,” Bob says. “Your dad nearly busted this boat at least twice.” He chuckles as William leans forward. “I’m sure your mom told you enough of those stories, though.”
“Not really.” He shrugs. “Theodore, my stepfather, said it wasn’t good to live in the past.” The words fall flat and speak volumes.
Bob tilts his head side to side, weighing. “That might be,” he says. “Might not. Sometimes the past has a whole lot of treasure to mine. Might be he’s missing out, if you ask me.”
“Maybe.”
He knows he shouldn’t, but Bob asks it anyway. “Where is Theodore now?”
“Took a job in San Francisco,” he says. “After Mom.”
“And he didn’t take you with him?”
William shrugs again. “The firm had a penthouse for him. He said”—he presses his eyelids closed, pulling the words letter for letter from where they’re branded inside—“it would be no place for a ‘young man on the brink of manhood, ready for a life of his own.’”
Bob did the math. William would have barely been sixteen. Reeling in the wake of his own mother’s death.
“Like I said”—William’s words edge sharp—“he doesn’t like to live in the past. I guess I don’t blame him.” The flatness in his tone says otherwise. “I wasn’t really his kid.”
Mr. Penthouse is lucky he’s not standing in front of Bob. Molten iron springs deep within him, spreads through his veins until he’s the one white-knuckling the wheel. Thinking of Roy. Jenny. William. The nerve of the coward whom Jenny gave her life to.
“And like I said . . .” Bob schools the ire, looks William straight in the eye. “He’s missing out.”
twenty-nine
Days pass, the two men finding a rhythm, heading out before the sun, William dressed in a ragged work jacket and either the same threadbare shirt he’d showed up in or the spare he’d borrowed from Bob. They eat lunch out on the waves. Stories and bits of histories come in pieces. Choppy at first, like the waves beneath them. Each one a stitch binding the chasm of time between them, each one pulling that rift together—tighter, closer.
William is not eager to talk about himself, but Bob gathers up slivers of information as they come, pieces them together enough to know the kid has spent a year wherever he could. Sometimes in parks, sometimes in shelters, most recently spending cold nights tucked next to an old chimney in the New Hampshire woods, remnants of an old work camp from the thirties. The kid had gotten the old hearth going again, which turned out to be his salvation and his undoing. It saved him from freezing, but it also brought the authorities out to investigate. They insisted he was a minor still, needed a roof over his head and someone to take responsibility for him. They asked him where he’d gotten the can of beans cooking over the fire—an answer he was ashamed of.
Not waiting around to see what sort of home they had in mind for him, he’d hopped a train to Maine the next day.
Which brought them to now, their jolty routine taking on rhythm enough to keep this fledgling kinship going. Evenings mean a meal—meat and potatoes of some kind, usually over the campfire out back, the woods walling them in and the night sky their roof. Eva brings out warm apple cider. That cider, and the hands that made it, stitch them all together with their warmth. Bob doesn’t want to imagine what this reunion would be like without Eva, and he thanks God once again for creating her and bringing her to him. At night they retire and
all is quiet until dawn comes and they repeat it all again.
Until one night, Bob lays in his bed, sleep evading his chase. The old black alarm clock on his bedstand ticks on past midnight. And just as he’s about to sleep, lids heavy at last, something awakes him. A thud, then a shuffle.
William. But the sound isn’t coming from William’s room. It’s coming from above him. Up in the attic, where Bob hasn’t ventured for months. Maybe years. He gets up and steals across the hall, a low light coming from Roy’s old kerosene lamp on the bedstand. William’s bed is empty, sheets shoved back.
Footsteps cross the floor above him once, twice. He’s up there, no doubt about it. Bob returns to his own room, shutting the door. Should he go up? Stay down? Pound on the ceiling with a broomstick like Dad used to when he and Roy were making a ruckus up there? The memory brings a silent chuckle. They’d gotten up to all manner of shenanigans in that attic. Turning crates into cars, inventing a radio that would never work, taking apart the only radio in the house that did work.
Later it had become their finding ground, where Roy first tried his hand at sketching a boat design and brought it to Dad, seeing if it might work. That was when he’d moved his exploits out to the boathouse, and the brothers began to grow on their own paths.
Let the kid smash around the attic. Nothing up there could hurt him. Eventually the stairs creak, careful footsteps bringing William back to his own room, and all falls silent.
In the morning, William is out back chopping firewood—another skill new to the city boy. And while part of Bob wants to respect his nephew’s space, something stronger pulls him upstairs.
Everything is in order in the attic. The old mirror standing sheet-draped, ghost-like in the corner. The two boxcars the twins had labored over, sanded and painted, perched like two rusty relics reminiscing over their glory days. A coatrack, a few boxes . . . and in the center of all, the black trunk, brass-studded and all scratched up.
