by Amanda Dykes
It’s like someone’s punched him in the gut. The last person to touch that chest had been their mother, the day she’d gathered all of Roy’s things—pulled shirts and pants from his boyhood dresser, books and mementos, treasures of rocks and clamshells. Bob had poked his head up into the attic and spotted her as she sat on the attic floor, a shaft from the window bathing her in warmth as her hands trembled, folding each garment with care. As if each finger knew this was the last time she’d ever fold her boy’s clothes, touch the clothes that touched him. He’d lingered briefly, watching her slender shoulders shake when the tears came, the way she wept silently into an old flannel shirt. The way her lips moved in prayer, with words he could not hear and a breaking heart he could feel across the room. She had tucked each item in as if laying it to rest, or storing it up for some miraculous someday.
And now here they are. Clothing pulled out and stacked neatly—but not in his mother’s fashion of folding. Jeans and button-down shirts, saltwater boots, and the brown corduroy jacket Roy had worn nearly to threads. His draft letter, crisp as the day it arrived, lying open.
There’s something else, too. Bob draws near to the shadowed pile beside the clothes. Two books are stacked squarely. He fingers their worn pages—Rob Roy and, on top, the Bible. He lets the edges of the pages flip against his thumb. Stuck between them is the picture from Roy’s sick bay wall, the thing he must’ve fixed his eyes on as his life drained away. His anchor. Beaming Jenny cradling smallest William.
It’s been years since Bob delivered this clutch of belongings home to Jenny—the night he’d held William and wished for all the world it could’ve been Roy’s arms, and not his own, wrapping around that baby.
Closing his eyes, his mind plays out what must have happened. Jenny, guarding these things for William, his birthright. Roy’s legacy.
William, penniless and with nothing but the clothes on his back, guarding them when life blew him cold and hard out on his own. Bringing them here, carrying them up the creaky old stairs, placing them among his father’s things. A homecoming . . . and something more.
A search. Right here in the attic. A kid on the brink of manhood, trying to find the dad he never knew up here in the dust. These are vestiges of a story Bob has lived and relived. He hadn’t considered it was also a story William was hungry for.
He gathers it all up, piling it until he can barely see over it, and heads downstairs. Some miraculous someday has come.
When William hits the bottom stair the next morning and rounds into the kitchen, where Eva is mashing blueberries and sugar and Bob is flipping buckwheat flapjacks on the griddle, he is wide-eyed and never looked more like a lost boy.
But it is the look of a lost boy who’s just found treasure. In his hands, carried open-palmed like a gift on Christmas, is a shirt of Roy’s. “I . . . found this. In my room,” William says tentatively.
He’s telling the truth. Bob had cranked those clothes through the wash bin yesterday and slung them over a railing behind the boathouse to dry. Eva had caught him and tried to do it for him, but this was something he had to do. When the wind and sun had dried them, he’d smuggled them into William’s room along with the rest of Roy’s attic belongings.
“You keep ’em,” Bob says.
“But . . .” William rubs a thumb over the flannel in his hands. “Aren’t they . . . weren’t they . . .” It’s clear he’s stumbling over what to call Roy.
“Your dad’s,” Bob finishes. “Yes, and now they’re yours.” He points the spatula in his hand at the shirt. “As it should be.”
Something changes in that moment. Some of the hardness around William drops away. “You sure?”
Bob takes a swig of water from the glass on the counter, nodding, punctuating the nod by planting the glass firmly back in its place. “Never more sure of anything. You ready?” He piles a stack of steaming flapjacks on a plate and passes them to Eva. She ladles on the fresh blueberry syrup and slides the plate in front of William.
He pulls out a chair, slips Roy’s shirt over his T-shirt, and sits down in the very chair Roy always used.
Eva steals a glimpse at Bob, and the pooling of water in her eyes matches the surge in his chest.
After that, the change goes deeper. The days get colder, but William, still as green as they come on the boat, keeps showing up. Keeps trying. Keeps almost-steering them into the rocks. If the streets did one thing for him when he was wandering for that year, it was to teach him to keep on keeping on. Until one day . . . he soars. It finds him. The magic of the sea, its rhythm, the dance of it.
Now, dressing mostly in his father’s clothes, he’s moving in perfect sync with the sea, as if he were born with whitecaps under his feet. And maybe he was. As winter passes, he wants to go out in the boat every chance he can. Even takes it solo some evenings, just to get out. He’s on the water more than he’s on land, and Bob can’t shake the feeling that he’s running. Leaving land—and all that he’s seen there—behind.
Until one day, in the midst of spring’s renewal, the land reaches out a hand as if in truce, offers him a place there once more. They’re headed to the Gables, a summer lodge straight across the bay from Sailor’s Rest, and one that’s seen better days. It’d been in the Flint family for three generations but during the war had fallen dormant, only to reopen around 1950. Abner Flint, who’d returned from the front in France with a prosthetic leg and a heap of tenacity, girded himself with a pile of plans to bring the old place “up to speed.” He’d been swinging a hammer and opening one room at a time ever since. The place had an old-world enchantment about it, dark wood and two wings of gabled rooms, tennis lawn and croquet, even a bowling green. In its heyday, it had played host to traveling troupes of performers, plays, orchestras—Ansel’s own little corner of big-city sophistication, right there backed by the pines. They’d even hosted a fancy ball every summer, once upon a time. Few of the locals attended. It had been more for the Summer People up from Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York, along with all their finery.
Abner had caught Bob in town yesterday, asked him to bring by the day’s catch if he could, as he had a family coming in for a pre-season visit, as well as a pair of honeymooners from New York City. He said the city’s name with button-busting pride, knowing the once-cobwebbed Gables had made a name for itself once again.
Bob and William had pulled plenty of lobsters from the traps, and they dock off starboard in the Gables’ private harbor. Rowboats are lined up like school kids bobbing their friendly hello, and William, at the helm, is careful not to knock up against any of them.
“Good on you,” Bob says. “You realize that passage you just brought us through is the same one you almost ran aground on the first day out?”
William’s sheepish grin says he remembers all too well.
“You’re an old hand at it now,” Bob says.
William thanks him, and Bob lugs the catch up the sloping knoll toward the kitchen of the Gables. He and Abner make the sale and then stand in the wind, Bob with his arms folded and Abner catching him up on projects around the place. Digging a new well, outfitting the place with clamming gear for a crowd, spiffing up the boats.
“What’s wrong with the boats?” Bob casts a glance at the rowboats, eyes drawn to where William’s bent over one pulled ashore, running his hands along it. He’s been reading through Roy’s old boat-working manuals at night, and the sparks going off in his head just now are nearly visible.
“Aw, you know how they get. Ocean beating up on them every which way, all day and all night.”
“You pulled ’em in for the winter, right?”
“I might’ve . . . not.”
“Ab.”
“I know. Wish I could get a hand around this place and catch up. I’ve got most of ’em back up and floating, but they all need fixin’ of some sort.” He swings his arms widely. “The whole place needs fixin’.”
He narrows his eyes at William, who’s on all fours now, tighteni
ng a bolt with bare hands. “That Roy’s boy, is it?” When Abner talks, he stretches questions as far as they can get.
“Ayuh.”
“Heard about that. He won’t be wantin’ a job, will he?”
“Can’t say one way or another. You can ask, though.”
And fifteen minutes later, William is learning that working for Abner might work out just fine. The man likes to talk, barely takes a breath, and William has no problem not talking. He’ll get to work on boats, help around the place, and stay mostly unseen when the guests arrive. Being around the people but not of them. On the land, but still stitched to the sea through his work. It’s perfect.
Abner’s talking about a family coming in a couple of weeks from New Hampshire, how they’ll be wanting the boats, and maybe a tennis lesson too, if William knows anything about the sport.
William grows a little green around the gills at this, but he’s beaming as they ride home. The days that follow, Bob drops him at the Gables before sunup, and stops in after the day’s work to bring him home. And every afternoon, the person who boards his boat is less boy, more man. He walks a little taller. There’s color on his face, tan from mending boats and teaching lessons. Not tennis, as it turns out. He couldn’t—or won’t—hit a ball if his life depended on it. But he’s found that some of the kids among the visitors find boat fixing to be fascinating.
He started explaining what he was doing, sometimes letting them try their hand at it, and when Abner witnesses it, he declares, “You’ve been holding out on me, have you? This is where all the kids are instead of the bowling green, is it?” And he headlines Boatmaster Classes for the Young as one of the lodge’s new activities.
“Boatmaster classes.” William laughs, steering them home and relaying the tale to Bob. “Fancy way of saying ‘fixing broken things.’” They have a good laugh, and William slows the engine.
There’s a gravity about him. Bob leans forward in his seat, listening. His silence, he hopes, inviting.
“Uncle Bob, uh . . .” He scratches his head.
“Yeah?”
“I wonder if I could . . . I mean . . . could I borrow the boat tonight? Just for an hour, maybe two.”
The kid is trying not to show it, but he’s a tower of nerves. Won’t look at Bob, eyes fixed on the very calm water with a concentration deserved more by a fierce storm. Bob is tossed back to an image of himself just a few years younger than William, all tongue-tied and clumsy in his own skin around a certain girl. He knows what this is about.
“You got it,” he says, and William relaxes. When he leaves that night, he ducks his tall form quickly out the door, but not before Bob sees the hair combed and shiny with hair tonic, no doubt from the bottle of Vitalis that has shown up in the medicine cabinet.
This continues for several nights. On the fourth night Bob waits up for him in the library. The night’s gone dark around him and he’s watching the sky out the window. Stars blinking and moving, great infernos set far enough away to fill mankind with wonder, make him feel small. “When I consider your heavens . . .”
He’s lost in these musings, the world having grown dark without him noticing and without him flipping on any lights. He’s dangerously close to ripping out another paper from the old family tablet and penning more words when the door opens and William enters, a spring in his step.
“So, what’s her name?” Bob’s voice is gravelly from silence, coming out eerie and threatening from this dark abyss of a room.
William jumps as if he’s been ambushed by a panther, and Bob barely keeps himself from laughing. He pulls the chain on the desk lamp beside him, clears his throat so he sounds human again. “I’m not gonna throttle you, son.”
And William relaxes. Night and day different from the first time that word—son—slipped out. Bob nudges the chair opposite him with his foot, invitation for the boy to come on in.
“You scared me,” William admits. “I thought you’d be in bed.”
“Not me. There’s a story I’ve got to hear.” William sits, his lanky form dwarfing the cane-back chair as he slaps his hands onto his knees.
“So,” Bob repeats, “what’s her name?”
William looks longingly toward the door. Escape. Then he looks back at Bob and pulls in a breath. “Anneliese.”
Bob nods, approving. And waits.
“I . . . met her at the Gables. She’s there with her family—they have some connection with Ansel.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, but I don’t know how.”
Bob shrugs a shoulder. “A lot of people have ties to this place. You’d be surprised. The Gables has been around long enough to pull people in from all over creation, and people like to come see where their grandparents vacationed or where their great-grandparents summered, that sort of thing. It gets inside people, this place does.”
William looks around the room as if it’s the place Bob’s referring to. “Yeah,” he says.
“So, Anneliese,” Bob says. “When are you bringing her around?”
William goes ten shades of red, and Bob relishes it. He hasn’t razzed someone like this since Roy was around.
“I . . . well, see, they’re leaving soon, and—”
Bob’s laugh comes out easy, and he waves away William’s protests. “You bring her if you want. And if not, maybe next summer, eh?”
William’s face goes somber, his eyes direct on Bob. “Next summer?”
“If she’s back. If you want to.”
But William has moved on. It’s not Anneliese he’s latching onto in this moment, but this “next summer” notion. “You mean if I come back next summer?”
Good gravy, did the kid not yet realize that this place felt more like a home with him in it than it had since Roy had been gone? Sailor’s Rest was as good as his. His birthright, even.
Bob leans forward, elbows to knees, locking eyes with his nephew. “I mean if you stay. This place is as much yours as it is Eva’s and mine,” he says. “Maybe not on the deed, but by rights.” He shakes his head. “Stay as long as you want. I hope you never leave. You’re family.”
William stutters his thanks, taking himself off to bed before the moment has a chance to turn to mush. And Bob follows suit a few minutes later, climbing the stairs with a fullness swelling inside.
He’s sure that come morning, William will see that this is right, and good, and that he’s not staying with Bob and Eva just because he needs protection. He’s here because he belongs.
thirty
Sitting in the pew, William is agitated. He hasn’t been like this for ages. Bob’s watched him since their first Sunday here in the creekside church between Sailor’s Rest and town. Over the months he’s gone from staring at his shoes the entire duration of the first service to, little by little, coming alive. Sitting a little taller, inclining an ear or, later, his whole self, as the pastor speaks on.
But today? He’s like a caged beast. Still on the outside, but a battle waging within. Jaw clenched, hands curled tightly around the edge of the pew. He doesn’t open his mouth during the closing hymn and strides out as soon as the Amen is spoken.
Bob follows, slowing only to thank the pastor. Turning a full circle, he doesn’t spot the boy anywhere. He follows the trail around back—the stream snakes one way around the church, the trail the other, making a sort of island out of the white-steepled building. Behind it, the mountain rises quick and steep, barnacled with mossy boulders and speared with pine-tree growth, making it the favorite haunt of kids during church picnics—the perfect place for hide-and-seek.
Or for a man afire within.
He finally spots William muttering to himself where the stream bends sharp. Bob knows what it is to have it out with the Maker. Is this what’s happening? A Jacob-wrestling-with-God moment? He’d best leave them be, then. A man and his God have got to wrestle out the big things. Better than shoving them underground, never addressed.
But William spots him. He hurls a single word at him, voice cracki
ng right down the middle. “Why?”
Bob tries to close the distance, but William’s hand is up, gesturing a stop.
“That’s a big question, son.” Smallest word, biggest question. An age-old paradox.
William shakes his head, eyes wider. A silent reiteration. “You loved your brother,” he says, and waits. It’s a question, but he isn’t sure what the boy is asking.
“Never stopped.”
“And then he dies and that’s . . . that’s just it? You stick his clothes in the attic and just forget? Write off his wife and son? You’re just . . . done with them?”
Ice pick to heart—that’s what his words are. They pummel him, sending him reeling back to those raw days of bare survival. The battle to let them go, find a life again. The pain of seeing Jenny unable to look at him for the pain it brings her. She’d been a walking skeleton, desperate for change, for breath.
“I was never done with you, William.”
He scoffs, breath visible in the cold. “Yeah. I guess that’s why you were at my mom’s funeral. That’s why you knew exactly where I was, what I was going through, after she died, and who I was when I showed up.”
Unseeing is he. Blind to all but the only truth he knows—the very real truth of being alone. Forgotten. Abandoned. Passed off. His words rile up anger in Bob—flesh-level anger that hears only his assumptions. But deeper than that, his words are pieces of shrapnel. Splayed across a wasteland, barren and alone—and aching to be gathered up. Why had William waited so long to bring up the question at the root of his struggles? Maybe it’s because he is only now ready to hear the truth.
Pain this deep . . . it needs more than words.
“You’d best come with me,” Bob says. “There’s something you ought to see.”
thirty-one
An hour later there’s a canyon of silence between them, and a tower of stacked and mortared rocks before them. Bob tries to see it through William’s eyes, watching on as the young man circles it, stopping to examine a few of the rocks along the way. The deep rust-colored one, sent from Sedona. A chunk of white marble pulled from a mine in Georgia. Gray in every intensity, from coast to coast and beyond. Bob traces them with his eyes, remembering faces. Stories.