The Boatmaker

by John Benditt

  Stop hating you? You’re asking me to forgive? Forgive you? You half-man. Quarter-man. Less than that. You—nothing.

  Everyone on Small Island has lost someone to the sea. Many families have lost more than one. You’re lucky. You have another son.

  That sniveler? He’s a little too much like you for my taste.

  He’s a good boy. Or he would be—if he had a mother who said a kind word to him now and then.

  He’s a weakling. Weaker than you—if such a thing is possible. He’ll grow up to be a sack of whiskey just like you. The other one was beautiful. He could have been anything in this world, if he hadn’t gone in your filthy boat, stinking of seaweed, and never come back. You killed him. And you know it. I hear it in your voice every time you speak. You’re guilty. You’re weak. You’re hollowed out with dry rot. And nothing you do can ever change that.

  The boy hears silence and then an explosion. His mother has thrown her bottle, and it’s missed, smashing and making another mark on a wall that already has many marks. He knows what will happen now. They will fall on each other, hitting each other with anything within reach, couple like beasts, then pass out in a heap of clothes smelling of sweat, salt water, fish and alcohol.

  The door of his parents’ bedroom is partly open. He makes his way across the boards of the living room floor, laid down by his father and his father’s father when his parents were newlyweds, before they lost his brother and wound up sodden on the floor, clawing each other in rage.

  Against the far wall is a huge sideboard: dark, solid and heavy, with glass doors under an arching top. Inside are the few pieces of his mother’s china that have survived the years of throwing. When he was little, nothing in this sideboard was ever used. Like everyone else on Small Island his family ate off simple plates and wiped their hands on rags.

  The sideboard was made from hardwoods by a famous company on the Mainland. No metal was used in making it, aside from the hinges, lock and key. Every piece is attached by its own shape or by pegs of the same wood. It could be taken apart, piece by piece, and put back together without a single tool. Even on Small Island, where many are good with tools and wood, this piece has always seemed exceptional.

  The sideboard has been in the boy’s life from the beginning. And it was often talked about. People made fun of his mother for it. To her face, they were not eager to make her angry. Even before his brother’s death, her anger was nothing to trifle with. But behind her back they mocked her for the airs she gave herself for owning the finest piece of furniture on Small Island.

  The boy knows the drawers by heart; he began opening them when he was small. At first he pulled himself up by the handles. When he could stand up on his own, he opened the lowest of the three drawers. The stages of his childhood were marked by when he was able to reach the second drawer and look inside, then the third, always careful to slide them back with everything just as it was before the drawer was opened.

  He slides the second drawer open with care. There is little light in the house, but he knows everything in the drawer by touch. There are three stacks. In the center, he feels the thing he has been asked to bring. Its texture brings the creamy white linen into his mind’s eye.

  He pushes the drawer back slowly, even though he’s sure his parents have passed out on the floor. He backs away from the sideboard and passes the open door to their bedroom without looking in.

  The man wakes clutching the covers, drenched in sweat, the sheet twisted in his hand where the napkin was in the dream. For a moment dream and waking life are wrestling, neither one strong enough to pin the other to the ground. Then he hears footsteps coming up the stairs: heavy, definitive and male. He leans his head back against the pillow, not knowing who is coming, too weak to fight.

  CHAPTER 2

  Downstairs the woman is waiting, having left her child and gone out into the winter night to fetch the doctor.

  When she fell in love with the man upstairs in her bed, she didn’t intend to change her world. But her world has changed. When she lived with Valter, the outer world was orderly. The people of Small Island were welcoming and respectful: She was the wife of a big man. But inside her, everything was like a dammed river. Now the river has broken the dam and overflowed, foaming and surging downstream. Inside she has been freed, but the outer world does not give her the respect it once did. Going to fetch the doctor was not easy. Now she waits in her overcoat, snow melting on the green lodencloth and soaking her dark hair, for the doctor to come down the stairs and say words she is afraid to hear.

  He descends a segment at a time, like a roundworm emerging from the damp earth in spring. First come black boots. Then trousers, the part below the knees tucked into the boots. Then the bottom of a fur coat, like Valter’s, though not as grand. A gloved hand holding a black bag. A belly snug in dark fur. Chest, shoulders. Finally, a round face with pale blue eyes and white hair. The doctor is vain about his full head of hair. He comes out to see people, even late at night in winter, without a hat. He has seen everything—from birth to death and everything in between—many times. None of it has changed him very much. He is the only doctor on Small Island.

  The doctor stops at the bottom of the stairs. His look is controlled, but the woman feels his condescension. She is Valter’s wife—and yet she is not. Another man is upstairs in her bed, sick with fever.

  “Nothing can be done.”

  “Nothing?”

  “It’s in God’s hands now.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Good night.”

  He walks past her without a word. She feels her anger rising. Small as she is, she isn’t afraid to hit the doctor. If Valter was up there sweating in the bed, she thinks, he wouldn’t say that. It would not be in God’s hands. At this moment, he would be scurrying to do something. Anything. Not nothing.

  He hesitates at the door. She realizes that in her anger she has forgotten the money. She takes folded bills out of the pocket of her coat, slides them into the pocket of the doctor’s, between warm fur and fat.

  “My best to you and your daughter.”

  “And to you.”

  She closes the door and leans her forehead against the wood. The anger recedes, and she feels as if she might cry. Although the door is closed, she knows exactly how the doctor looks as he walks away in the moonlight. Despite his roundness and his white hair, he looks as if he might rise, click his heels and waltz away on the snow, which is as hard and smooth as a dance floor.

  She takes her forehead from the door. Ribbons of light drip down her cheeks. After a few minutes, she takes off her overcoat, hangs it on a peg on the back of the door, leaves her boots in a corner, pads up the steps in stocking feet. She falls into bed beside her daughter, still wearing her clothes.

  In the morning he is singing. She hears him and thinks she is dreaming, then realizes she is awake. Her daughter is curled into her mother’s body, still asleep. She untangles herself from the sleeping child, gets up, crosses the landing and stands in the open door. He is sitting up, his brown eyes open, purple half-moons under his eyes. She knows he is not seeing her—or anything in the waking world.

  Oh, on land the duck is a clumsy thing

  A clumsy thing like a pregnant woman

  Waddling from side to side when it walks

  Not made for land, not made for land

  He sings as if he were in a choir, head up and shoulders squared. There is only one church on Small Island, a little wooden building in Harbortown with a small congregation, mostly old women. In the days leading up to Easter, the women congregate to hear the broken-down pastor preach the eternal guilt of the Jews for crucifying Our Lord.

  Small Island is a far-flung possession of the Mainland. The Mainland has been a Christian kingdom for almost a thousand years, since a peasant boy named Vashad converted the king from his pagan gods to faith in Jesus Christ. Vashad had been urged to journey to the capital and convert the king by a flock of shrieking blackbirds whose message only he could und
erstand.

  Every child in the kingdom—from the capital all the way to Small Island—knows the story of Vashad. But the woman can’t imagine this man has ever been inside the church in Harbortown. And yet here he is, just as though he were in the choir, singing at the top of his lungs. She can’t imagine how the girl can sleep through it.

  He has a finer voice than she would have thought, rough from smoking and drinking, but clear and tuneful.

  In the water, when the duck is swimming

  He’s a little less clumsy than on the land

  But not much better, really, not much better

  Bobbing on the water like a child’s toy

  It’s a folk song from the part of the Mainland where his father’s people come from. She knows the song, though her people come from a completely different part of the Mainland.

  But, oh, when he takes to the sky

  Then the duck is filled with grace, filled with grace

  Because the duck was made for the sky

  And when he flies, there’s none more graceful

  The verse about the duck taking to the sky, being a thing of grace, comes back again and again. There are many other verses that tell how the duck learns his nature, who he learns it from and many other things. It is the kind of song that can be made to last for a whole evening—accompanied by fiddle, guitar and bottles. The man sings several verses, his voice growing louder and firmer. She watches, as surprised as if her little girl had suddenly been changed into a beautiful golden dog, barking and licking her leg, asking to be taken out for a run.

  Then his voice begins to slide down and away from good clear singing. It blurs until he is mumbling. His eyes close, and he topples over into fever sleep, his head missing the pillow. She lifts him and slides the pillow under his head. Her hand comes away wet. She tucks the covers under his chin, hoping they aren’t drenched, that he won’t freeze in bed. She doesn’t have the strength to get him up and change the sheets one more time.

  After this strange burst of singing, she begins to feel that despite her anger the doctor was probably right. Nothing can be done. All of this is beyond her: his fever, sweats, talking in his sleep and now his singing. Nature must find its course and take it, whether it is the will of God or not. It is time for her to go back to her life. She works at the general store in Harbortown. Her boss has given her time off. He has been understanding—because Valter’s family owns the store—but it is time to go back to work.

  She dresses herself, gets the child up and dressed. They walk out over the frozen snow, the girl rubbing blond hair out of her eyes. As they walk, warmth flows through their mittens, reconnecting them, and it feels the way it did before the man with the mustache and the bald spot entered their life.

  By the time they leave the house, he is back in his dream. He has accomplished the first task the wolf gave him. Now he must go back to the oak, where he knows the wolf will be waiting. He holds the linen napkin with care. As he approaches the tree and puts his foot on the patch of grass darker than the rest, the wolf comes out from behind the oak, stepping so lightly the grass does not bend. The green eyes take in the napkin, and the boy thinks he sees approval in them.

  The wolf steps closer on its long white forelegs. The boy knows the wolf will ask much of him, and he wonders whether he will be strong enough to do what is asked. He knows that if he shows fear, the wolf will leave in a blink of its green eyes and never return. The boy takes a step forward, holding the napkin. He knows that he must fasten the napkin around the wolf’s neck and then hold on. He twines and knots the ends. Like all males of Small Island, the boy has spent his life near the water and on the water, tying and untying lines. The knot is firm.

  He stands shoulder to shoulder with the wolf, holding the napkin, which circles the wolf’s neck like a priest’s white collar. Their shoulders are the same height. The boy’s head is higher than the wolf’s, which extends forward, with its white stripe down the muzzle. They stand for a moment, linked by the napkin. Then the wolf pads forward, slowly at first, then faster and faster, with a power unlike anything the boy has ever felt. All he can do is hold on and try to keep up. Amazingly, he can.

  They trot across the familiar surface of Small Island: grass, trees and rocks spilling down, gray on broken gray, to the ocean. They pass Harbortown, go down the bluff overlooking the harbor, the wolf picking up speed with every step, the boy holding the napkin as tightly as he can. As they descend the bluff toward the water, the boy closes his eyes. He isn’t afraid. He doesn’t want to know the way back.

  Then, the boy’s eyes still closed, they’re on the water. In the coldest part of winter, Small Island is held in a ring of ice that reaches out toward Big Island. They move across the water as if it were midwinter ice: solid as a church floor. Holding the napkin, the boy keeps pace with the wolf. When he needs more speed, he has it. He’s there, stride for stride, even though they are moving faster and faster, loping over an ocean that is strangely solid under their six flying feet.

  They run for what seems like hours, the boy holding the linen napkin, afraid to let go. After a time, he feels a message come through the napkin into his hand and travel up his arm like a shock: He must open his eyes. There, coming up before them as they move across the ocean, is a body of land bigger than anything he has ever seen. They approach a rocky beach, move swiftly over it and up a bluff to the headland beyond. The land is covered in long grass, bent low in the steady wind off the ocean.

  If the ocean they crossed seemed frozen solid, on this land it is summer: hot and still. Wolf and boy run, legs in rhythm, over grass, through meadows, across streams, up and down hills, into a forest so dense the boy can’t see the sky. Then out onto a plain with farms bigger than any the boy has seen. Cows, goats, sheep and hogs, fat and peaceful, are settled in the pastures. Smoke curls from farmhouse chimneys.

  They keep running, across another plain, this one drier, not farmed, covered in a stubble of grass. The fields are parched, the trees stunted. The wolf slows to a trot, then to a walk. They stop in the arid landscape, with its sandy hills descending to streams shriveling from lack of water.

  The boy looks around. He releases his grip on the napkin. His left arm feels so heavy that it might drop to the ground. Instead, it falls to his side, his hand holding a linen ring. The wolf is gone. The boy lifts the napkin and examines his mother’s careful green stitching and the emptiness at the center, where the wolf was. He is alone among stunted trees in a landscape dying of thirst.

  This must be the Mainland, he thinks. It is the only place that could possibly be as big as this, the only place that has as many landscapes as this place does, the only place he’s ever heard of where the sea is not always close by. He’s seen pictures of the Mainland in books. All the people of Small Island came from there centuries ago. Their ancestors were sailors, pagan warriors.

  The man’s eyes open slowly, crusted with sleep and fever. He feels as if he’s been unconscious forever, as if he’s not just waking up, but being born again. He has to think hard to know where he is, who he is, what his name is, how he came to be in this bed. Then it comes back—his waking life and his dream. He can feel the place where he held the napkin that was looped around the wolf’s neck. It feels as if there should be a place rubbed raw on his palm, as there is after you work a rope without gloves. But he feels his palm and finds nothing but smooth skin.

  When the woman gets home he’s sitting up in bed. He is thin and pale, but the red spots on his cheeks are gone. He still has dark half-moons under his eyes, but the sheets are dry. So is his undershirt, which he hasn’t taken off the entire time he’s been in her house. She tried once or twice to get it off him, but he wouldn’t give it up, wrestling with her even in sleep.

  “You’re awake,” she says. What she means is: You’re alive. After the doctor’s visit, she had tried to let him go. She hadn’t known what else to do. She feels guilty that she tried to do that. Guilty and overjoyed, overflowing with gratitude. He is al
ive and on the mend.

  “Awake,” he mumbles, his voice raspy. Even when he is healthy, he is not a man of many words. He seems to believe words are precious, to be doled out a little at a time. Perhaps he believes each man is given only a certain number for a lifetime and, when he speaks the allotted number, must die.

  She goes downstairs, still wearing her coat, makes a fire in the stove, heats soup. Comes back up the stairs, sits on the edge of the bed and spoons broth into his mouth. The broth is made from the salmon Valter left behind in his bootprints. They were beautiful fish, and they made a rich broth to which she added carrots and turnips. She and the girl have been living on this broth, and the fish in it, for days. He accepts the soup gratefully and cautiously.

  Awake now, his head clearing, his first thought is concern that he has been a burden to her. He feels clumsy and unused to his body. Soup drips from the corner of his mouth. She lifts the napkin she has fastened around his neck and pats the clear drops. He doesn’t enjoy being touched, except at certain moments, but he wills himself to allow her touch.

  “How long have I been here?”

  “Not long.”

  “Have you been working?”

  “Yes, I went back to the store.”

  “That’s good.”

  “The doctor wasn’t sure you would get better.”

  “The doctor?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I think I don’t remember much until today.”

  “You’re cooler. It looks like the fever is gone.”

  “I’ll take myself off your hands.”

  “That isn’t what I mean. You’re not a burden. And you don’t have to leave right away. You’re still weak. Wait until you’ve got your strength back. Then you can go.”

  Still wearing her coat, she spoons more soup into him, asking him without speaking to stay and take care of himself until he is fully recovered. She knows better than to try to make him stay. If she is careful, and doesn’t say anything, perhaps he will do what’s best for him. She will bring him back, gently, from where he was when he was dreaming, talking in his sleep, singing about the duck. After all, she thinks, she had him when he was unconscious and burning with fever. Shouldn’t she have him in her house when he is awake and mending? Why does he need to go right back to his cold shed?