The Boatmaker

by John Benditt

  Inside, she takes off her coat, hangs it behind the door, puts the envelope in the drawer of the table the man made for her. She has to press it flat to get the drawer closed. Why, she wonders, would a carpenter who has never been out on the ocean decide to build a boat and sail away from Small Island? Especially one who has been frightened of the sea since his only brother drowned.

  The answer must lie somewhere in the story of his family, she thinks. But where? It’s such a tangle. After the man’s brother died, their mother, the best seamstress on Small Island, raged, drank and beat her husband and anyone who tried to pull them apart. One night in Harbortown it took three men to get her off him and drag her back to her house, where she passed out. The husband followed, yelling the whole time, then passed out next to her with his arms around her. No one could understand why he stayed. Finally she threw him out, and he built a house on a bleak finger of land called Gallagher’s Point, where the wind is so steady and strong that there are very few houses among the pines, stunted and twisted, that cling to the cliff. People say he has a woman up there, but no one goes to visit.

  When the mother isn’t drunk, she is still a seamstress who can sew anything. She makes embroidery more elegant than anything else on Small Island, a tradition passed down to her from her mother and her mother’s mother. Even when she drinks, her hand is steady, but ultimately she reaches a point where the work blurs and she blacks out. After his brother died, she shunned the boy. People on the island felt pity, but they didn’t want to have much to do with him. He was bad luck. Despite her shunning him, he is much like his mother in one way: He has hands that can make anything.

  When the package arrives, the woman is working in the general store. The bell over the door rings, and the postman steps in. They get a lot of mail in the store addressed to General Delivery, Harbortown, Small Island. Only the well-to-do, like Valter, have their own postal address. Mail comes on the steamer from Big Island once a week, except in the dead of winter, when the ice is too thick to cut through. The steamer anchors in the harbor and a lighter is rowed to the stony beach carrying mail for the shop and orders for customers, things not found on Small Island. Many on the island cannot read or write, and she helps them with their letters. It has always surprised her how well the man who was sick can read. It was something his mother taught him.

  “Here’s one for you,” says Finnarson. The postman has the Small Island look: narrow and wiry, drooping mustache. He holds out a package along with a pile of letters. The package is small and square, tied with twine. It has come all the way from another world: the Mainland, near the capital. For a moment, the sight of the package freezes her.

  “One for you, I said.”

  “I hear you, Finnarson. There’s no reason to shout.”

  “I wasn’t shouting.”

  Finnarson is sweet on her. She is even-tempered, accepting Finnarson’s timid advances in good humor. When she and Valter were living together, she was invisible to men. Now they seem alert to the slightest change in her, as if they can smell it, the way dogs do. It tires her.

  Normally she would stop and chat for a while with Finnarson. Not today. She takes the letters and package without a word, sets them down and turns back to what she was doing before the postman entered.

  Finnarson stands still, startled by her rudeness, then turns and clumps out and down the wooden sidewalk, the bell ringing behind him as he wonders: What in the hell is wrong with her?

  She takes the package home in her coat. It stretches the pocket, but she doesn’t want it in her hands as she walks through Harbortown, doesn’t want anyone asking slyly: “A package from the Mainland, eh?”

  She leaves her coat unbuttoned, almost doesn’t need it. The spring air smells of mud. His boots will be wet. He is working again. She hears of him from time to time but pretends not to notice. He’s stopped drinking. But he’s stopped before; she doesn’t expect it to last. This boat is nothing more than foolishness. He won’t finish it. He’ll give up and go back to what he always did before: drink and work, drink and work. And even if he does, by some miracle, finish his ridiculous boat, he’ll never actually leave. Sailing to Big Island. What nonsense. She is afraid. But part of her cannot help but admire.

  CHAPTER 4

  In his shed the man of Small Island works on his boat without thinking. When he is sober, he can always find work. After he got well, he took the jobs he found until he had enough money to repay her, with something left over for his journey. Now that the debt is paid, he can work far into the night, as quickly or as slowly as he wishes. No one expects this boat; no one is paying for it. No one even knows about it, except the woman. As spring deepens, the boat grows and takes shape under the maples, whose leaves, now fully open, make shadows like hands on the white canvas extending out into the woods.

  After laying the keel and joining the ribs to it, he fills in the hull, steaming and bending cedar planks into shape. Although he is afraid of the ocean, he has been fascinated by boats since his brother was taken by the sea. He has watched how the boatbuilder families assemble the parts in time-tested ways. But as he works in the shed, he is not exactly imitating: He is making something that is his own. And the boat is teaching him how to build it, showing him at each step what needs doing next.

  He squats on the dirt floor, smoking a cigarette and examining the hull. Cedar planking is now three-quarters of the way up to the gunwales. Spring is almost full. The beginning of summer will be a good time to put the boat in the water. As he looks over his work, he considers how he will get his boat over the bluff and down through the woods to the beach below Harbortown. But before that can happen, there are things to be fashioned, including the sail. And a visit he needs to make.

  At the woman’s house, things are moving easily. She hasn’t seen the man in a while, and when she doesn’t see him, her life takes its own pace, like the pansies coming up in her window box, the crocuses blooming in the woods, the mud drying on the plank sidewalk in Harbortown, sending up showers of dust as heavy boots come down. She goes to work, leaves the store, collects the girl, comes home, makes dinner. She hears Valter has a new woman in Harbortown, which doesn’t surprise—or even particularly interest—her.

  Occasionally her husband comes to her door and knocks his familiar knock: two soft and one loud. Sometimes she lets him come in and take her upstairs. Valter has a violent temper and it wouldn’t be good for things to get any worse than they are now. But it isn’t just to keep the peace that she lets Valter have his way with her. She isn’t strong enough to say no every time. If the other man would claim her—really claim her—perhaps she could. But he doesn’t. He stays in his shed in the woods, working on the sea monster growing up from the dirt floor.

  The package from the Mainland, addressed to her at the general store in a blue clerical hand, sits on the table he left her. The girl asks what is in the package, hoping it’s for her, a birthday present, even though her birthday isn’t until October. The woman doesn’t answer. The days are warmer, and they don’t race toward sunset; they dawdle. Spring has come forward and possessed Small Island. Now in its turn it is beginning to give way to a new invader: summer. The maple leaves in the grove above his shed will be large and green. She knows that the thing she has ordered for him, all the way from the Mainland, must be delivered.

  In the woods, he works into the night, leaving the door open and letting smoke from his cigarette drift out. Almost every day the boat teaches him something new, and he pauses to think: I didn’t know that. This doesn’t happen when he builds houses or does carpentry jobs. When he’s doing those things, he knows exactly what will happen, even before the job starts. Not with this.

  He has wrapped cedar planking around the oak ribs. The hull is now formed all the way to the gunwales, and he has begun putting in decking made of seasoned maple from trees nearby. The centerboard well has risen from the keel. The place where the mast will be stepped is visible. Less and less imagination is needed to see what this
boat will be when it is finished: a classic Small Island double-ender, gaff-rigged, the mast stepped well forward. Made for fishing and transport. Sturdy, and capable of surviving the storms off Small Island. He stands in the doorway of his shed, smoking and waiting for the boat to show him what to do next.

  He flicks his cigarette through the doorway into the dark, orange sparks pinwheeling as they fall. He follows the pinwheel out into the darkness, crushes the end of the cigarette under his boot, buttons his jacket and sets off for his mother’s house. As he walks, he begins to envision how he will get the boat down the bluff and into the water. He will make a set of rollers, made of pine logs stripped of their bark. He will tie the boat to trees at each stage to prevent it from overpowering him and shooting down the slope. As he lets the boat slide down the bluff, he’ll take each roller out from under the stern and move it to the bow. Done alone, it will be a long, hard piece of work.

  The door of his mother’s house hangs open. Around the house is the smell of wet earth. He walks up the path to the front door and climbs three wooden steps.

  Inside, a kerosene lamp hangs from a beam. His mother sits in a circle of yellow light under the lamp, round embroidery frame in one hand, needle in the other. The smell of whiskey greets him like an old friend. She looks up, her face and nose broad, gray hair pulled back. Her round metal spectacles are tilted on her nose; one of the earpieces is missing. In spite of the fact that he hasn’t been here for more than a year, she doesn’t look surprised to see him. On the floor, outside the circle of yellow light, he can make out flat empty bottles lying on their sides.

  “You’re still sewing.”

  “Of course I’m still sewing. How do you think I live? You think I get money from your father? Or from you?”

  She lists to her left, spits and pushes the needle into the fabric. Holding the hoop carefully in her right hand, she reaches down with her left, brings a bottle up into the light and takes a pull without offering a drink to her son. He has been staying away from alcohol while he builds his boat, and it’s hard for him to smell it without wanting some. He isn’t usually a man who can have one drink and easily stop. If he takes one, he’s likely to be drunk for weeks, never finishing his boat and missing the summer winds favorable for Big Island.

  “Where is he?”

  “Who?” She sets the bottle down in the same place on the floor so she can reach it without looking, pulls the needle out and resumes her work.

  “You know who I mean.”

  “Where do you think? Up to Gallagher’s Point with his whore.” She spits again on the same spot. The needle, poised above the embroidery, dives down and in. For all the anger, her hands are sure.

  He stands foolish and awkward, feeling shamed by her brutal lack of interest in him. Her face is fleshy, cracked and reddened. After all that has happened, after every blow she has delivered, psychic or physical, he needs her love exactly as he did when he was a boy. When his brother died, he wanted to save her. He knew he could never take his brother’s place, but he thought he could save her from darkness and drink. He couldn’t. When he reached out to hold and comfort her, she pushed him away, more roughly each time. His boat will make her see him differently. He is sure that in her eyes he will never be as good as his brother, but perhaps he can be better than his father—better than he feels at this moment, shamed in yellow light. His mother works methodically, her jaw clenching and unclenching as the needle passes through and out of cream-colored fabric.

  “Why don’t you ever talk about how he died?”

  “Who?” She looks up, her face flushing a deeper red. His guts turn to water, and he wants to run, but he makes himself hold his ground.

  “My brother.” His breath is tight. He can’t believe his audacity in mentioning his brother. He is sure she will explode. But she doesn’t. Her tone is low and even. It feels worse than an explosion, if that is possible.

  “You know what happened. Everyone on this nasty spittle of an island knows it. You can hear them whispering in the dark.”

  “I want to hear it from you.”

  For a moment, she just looks at him, then says, in a deep, raspy voice: “Your father killed him. You know that.”

  “I don’t know it. You never talk about it. All I know is what people say.”

  Her face darkens until the red seems black. “There’s no mystery. Your father took him into the sea and drowned him. He knew how much I loved that boy. He did it because he hates me. And because he’s a weakling.” She leans over for her bottle, brings it up and drinks.

  He is getting what he came for, and that is important. But it is harder to bear than if she had exploded and beaten him.

  She looks straight ahead, away from him, in her own thoughts. “He was the one,” she says quietly, as if to herself. “He was so beautiful. What a man he would have been. He could have been anything he wanted. He could have left this spitfleck of an island and gone anywhere. Big Island. The Mainland. Europe, even. He could have been anything. Not like his father—that half-man. Or the other one—another weakling. Crying and wanting what I don’t have.”

  Tears run down her face. She wipes her nose on her sleeve, takes another pull on the bottle. As she swallows, she looks up at him as if she is surprised to see someone standing in her house. He knows that when he leaves this house, he will want a drink—badly.

  “I’m leaving.”

  “You left before.”

  “I’m leaving Small Island.”

  “And how would the likes of you leave Small Island? You have money for passage on the steamer? I doubt it.” She spits.

  “I’m building a boat.”

  “A boat? How do you know how to build one? On this island, only the boatbuilder families do that.”

  “I know.”

  “When are you doing this?”

  “Soon.”

  She looks at him long and hard, sets the bottle down and gets up, leaving her embroidery on the chair. The floorboards creak under her bare feet, which look as large and tough as tree roots. She leans over, opens the top drawer of her sideboard and takes something out. She closes the drawer, turns and comes toward him holding what she removed from the drawer. When she is close to him, her head is level with his shoulder. He wants to touch her, but he’s sure that if he does, she will slap his hand away.

  She takes his hand, lifts it up and puts something made of linen into it. “Take this. It’s all I have. Now leave me.”

  He turns and walks down the wooden steps, leaving the door open. The boards are loose. He should come back and fix them. He doesn’t want her to fall. His boots find their way along the path, which is invisible in the dark. The grass catches at his feet and tries to trip him, but he pushes through into the woods. When he gets home, he falls to the floor next to his boat and sleeps.

  He wakes up in his clothes, cold and sore. It comes back to him slowly: going to his mother’s house, her not seeming to know he was there some of the time, telling her about the boat, being given the handkerchief. He rolls out from under the hull, stands up, goes to the pitcher in the corner, drinks some of the water and pours the rest over his head. Takes off his corduroy jacket, hangs it on a peg near the door. Reaches into the jacket pocket and pulls out the handkerchief. It’s creamy yellow-white linen, decorated with his mother’s needlework in green. He would know her work anywhere.

  The embroidery shows the harbor of Small Island. On the bluffs above are a few tiny houses; below is the curving shoreline. In the foreground are three harbor seals, their heads sleek and pointed, nosing above the surface. One is nearby, on the right, the other two farther away, toward the land, facing each other. He folds the handkerchief carefully and replaces it in his jacket pocket. No matter how far from Small Island he goes, he must never lose the thing his mother has given him.

  He turns to look at his work. The boat is almost finished. He has filled in maple decking between the gunwales and completed the centerboard well. In the town, he has purchased the few p
ieces of hardware he needs, avoiding the woman while he was there.

  Now that the boat is almost done, he can indulge himself. He goes outside and sits, smoking and thinking, enjoying the warmth. Sitting with his back against the shed, he sees her come up the path carrying a parcel. She stops in front of him, the toes of her boots almost touching his.

  She sits down beside him without saying anything. The silence excites him. He feels the excitement rising in his chest, arms, legs. He waits until his cigarette burns to a glowing nub, then crushes it into the earth. He takes hold of her, rough and tender at the same time, feeling the thing that always joins them, regardless of how long it has been.

  He gets up, leans over, puts one arm around her back, the other under her legs. He lifts and carries her into the shed, then lays her down in the shadow of the boat. He pulls at her clothes, then at his, and enters her, quick and sharp. Her legs are raised, his overalls falling around him, his buttocks white in the darkness of the shed. She feels herself flow around and into him. As always, she loses her sense of where she is.

  When he is done, the first thing she’s aware of is the coolness of the air on her body. She straightens her clothing, gets up, brushes herself off and walks out the door. He watches her without moving from the floor.

  The package is where she left it. She picks it up, brushes off a few pine needles and some crumbs of dirt. She goes back into the shed, holding the parcel out, her hands trembling. He stands and gets a folding knife, cuts the twine, which falls twirling to the dirt. He slices the paper, removes it and sees a light blue box with dark blue lettering raised from its surface. The name of the famous maker of nautical equipment means nothing to him.

  He squats next to her on the dirt floor. What’s inside the box is heavy, wrapped in tissue paper. He unwraps the tissue and lets it fall. What’s left is a marine compass, designed for big ships but scaled down to the proportions of a small boat. It has a solidity and precision beyond anything he is familiar with. The black dial is lettered in red and gold. The needle moves slightly, as if eager to show him his course away from Small Island. He knows this compass must have cost every one of the bills he left her with the table—and perhaps more. He sets the compass back in the box, puts the box on the dirt floor and lies down, curling into her.