“Too pure for me,” he said.
He led her down into the cabin and they sat across from each other at the teak table, an electric heater keeping out the frost and damp. She spoke in a low, soothing voice, as if she were visiting a sick friend in the hospital. She touched the top of his hand and the swollen joints of his fingers. The warmth of her skin astonished him. She went on about her plans for college and made a passing reference to her new boyfriend. The part of him that felt fatherly pushed for taking a little interest in the guy, but the larger part, the not-so-fatherly side, argued for writing the kid off. As always, he skirted the issue, choosing to avoid questions that showed him up as defensive or absurdly jealous.
Heather reached into her bag. “I bought you a present,” she said, pulling out a CD. “I know you don’t listen to music anymore, but I heard this and thought of you.”
Maybe a year ago, when they were looking at his old LPs, he’d made the mistake of telling her that he’d stopped listening to music. Since then she’d bought him a dozen or so albums, an attempt, no doubt, to stave off his precipitous decline.
“And the next time we’re at the house,” she said, “would you play me a song? Something ancient and slow.”
“It’s hard to do,” he said, rubbing the heel of his left hand.
“You’re lying,” she said.
“Maybe. I haven’t changed the strings in a while.”
“You told me old strings are bad for a guitar.”
“That’s right.”
“And rough on the ears, too.”
“I guess no one listens better than you.”
She smiled. “That’s what you always say.”
Too much talk about music, he thought. He longed to give her some useful advice, a few words she could save for later. “As for college,” he said, “you’ll figure out the right move. Don’t worry about me or your mother. Take yourself as far from here as you want – as far as you can. Don’t look back.”
“NOT SO fast,” says the sandpaper voice. “There’s more to it than speed. When I say attack, it isn’t about fighting. It’s about feeling.”
He plays the phrase again, slower this time, alert only to the sensation of strings beneath his fingers. For a moment, the sound flows from him like water. When he starts pushing the tempo, Otis shakes his head.
“You’re like those boys in the Big Apple,” says Otis. “In a hurry. You think you got somewhere to go.”
He wonders how Otis could live in a place like New York and then give it up and settle here. Why would you do that? he thinks. If I ever get to a city, I’ll stay there. There’s no place to play in a little town.
After collecting his sheet music and closing his guitar case, he points to a picture on the wall. “Is that New York?”
Otis rubs the gray stubble on his face, his hand a little unsteady. “That’s Grand Circus Park,” he says. “Detroit.”
“Why don’t you live there?”
“I would – I was born just a few blocks away. But I left when I was your age, and when I finally went back, it was gone.”
He looks at Otis looking at the picture.
“You have to find a safe haven,” says Otis. “If you can’t find a real place, then you have to make one, up here.” He taps his temple with a long finger.
“See you next week, Mr. Young – I mean – ” The screen door of the studio slams. “I appreciate your time.”
On this day, like all the others, he stops and glances back to see Otis standing at the door in his crisp white shirt and black pants. The silence is awkward. He wants to fill up the space, say something to ease the tension, but always in that moment the old man turns and disappears.
LATER, three of his classmates surround him in the school lavatory.
“We saw you,” says one of the boys. The others look on with suspicion.
“So what?”
“You’re supposed to be cuttin’ grass.”
“So what?”
“Cuttin’ his grass is bad enough. Now you’re goin’ inside.”
He dries his hands and steps toward the door but can’t get by the others, big boys with strong Midwestern shoulders.
“Are you that nigger’s nigger?” says the tall one.
The boys laugh.
“What do you do in there?”
“Nothing.”
“Does he take you out to his little shack?”
“No.”
Putting his head down, he tries to squeeze between two of the boys, but sharp fingers dig into his arms.
“For Christ’s sake, Jason, we know you’re lying. I suppose when you’re out there on the edge of town you think we can’t see you. But we can. We’ve all seen you, even when you said you weren’t going.” The boy pretends to be thinking hard. “I know, maybe you can clear up a little rumor we’ve heard. Is that man your real daddy?”
The lavatory rings with laughter.
“No.”
“You can’t deny everything,” says the first boy who spoke. “How do you expect to stay in our good graces if you don’t tell us the truth?”
He struggles against their grip. “He’s a teacher,” he says, staring at the floor, one arm pinned to his side, the other twisted and cramped. “He’s teaching me to play guitar.”
“That coon’s a picker?”
He nods slowly.
“Well. All right then. The man’s an entertainer. You should’ve said so in the first place.”
“I’m taking lessons.” He looks at the faces of the three boys. “But only until I can afford someone better.”
The fingers let go. The boys nod approval.
Two of them disappear into stalls and urinate while the third waits. The boys flush, zip, and check themselves in the mirror; then the one waiting opens the door and the three leave together.
HE BRINGS the vodka to his lips. No wind tonight but something in the air sounds like a muffled voice. Heather won’t be here anytime soon. He thinks of her now, sleeping in her mother’s house, dreaming the dreams of the young.
He remembers his first leave-taking, turning away from his father, driving to the East Coast in a rusty Dodge and looking for a place off campus.
He arrives late for orientation and sits beside a woman wearing a white jacket. “I’m Jennifer,” she says. Her long straight hair is black, swept to one side, and secured with a silver clip.
They meet for coffee and later she listens to him play. After a while, she offers a corner room, a single bed that’s been pushed against the wall and covered with thick pillows.
He sleeps with her and cooks oatmeal in the morning, smells the sweetness of her body in his own clothes, and they stay in the tiny room for days at a stretch, especially in winter, lighting candles while the snow swirls and drifts in the street below.
The rhythm of her body, her movement, stirs in him new sounds and he composes with perfect ease, ignoring the changing light, making melodies that tumble and turn like clear water.
She comes through the door with a bag of groceries, unpacks the fruit and vegetables, and puts a small bottle of vodka on the table. He pours a shot into a short glass, feels the bite on his tongue.
There’s no memory as sharp as this, he thinks. She will not go away, even in the face of inexplicable years.
His frigid legs rest heavy on the fiberglass seat. The chill seeping into every inch of the boat and into his bones is familiar. He lifts one foot and then the other to keep his blood moving and pictures again how their love affair begins in winter and ends in winter, the cold streaming in under the door.
She walks with him to the station, hands in her pockets, shoulders hunched in the blowing snow. He carries his guitar and a tattered suitcase. She’s silent until they reach the bus.
“Can’t you postpone it?” she says. “Why should I spend the day apologizing for you? C’mon, Cole, I want you to be there with me.”
“I have to go,” he says.
“If they’re serious, they’ll wait
. It’s a tryout, not a job.”
“If I don’t show up for the audition, they’ll use somebody else.”
“But you’ll miss – ”
“Miss what? A lousy band?”
“Miss me.”
“Have fun at the wedding,” he says. “Tell your sister I’m sorry.”
Departures and arrivals echo through the station.
“I work here,” she says. “It isn’t so easy to leave.”
“I’m not asking you to quit,” he says. “It wouldn’t make sense anyway. This whole thing’s a long shot.”
“I know that,” she says.
Jen stands in front of the door, shivering in her thin jacket. She doesn’t say anything about the nausea or the test.
A blast of wind pushes him against the bus. “It’s time,” he says.
“Are you going?”
He’s struck dumb by her stubbornness. He kisses her on the mouth and then steps onto the bus. She begins to follow him, moving like a sleepwalker, but he turns and the shock of his turning startles her. She backs away from the door and another passenger rushes aboard.
The boat beneath him seems to lurch. Still no sound except for a vague whisper. “It’s bitter cold,” he says out loud. His words trail off and disappear. He slips the bottle of vodka into his pocket. “It’s bitter cold,” he says again.
The flashlight flickers, begins to fade. He picks it up and bangs it on his leg. It goes out. He unscrews it a little, setting off slow waves of pain in his fingers. He tightens it up and pushes the switch back and forth. “Jesus,” he says.
A faint glow creeps in where the boom tent is open. All the rest is darkness. In the absence of light, the canvas above him appears to recede; it becomes for him an immense black ceiling, a night sky without stars. He searches for a point of reference, peering at the empty heavens, unable to comprehend the meaning of his position. Something like this has happened before. He feels the familiar strain on his neck, knows that in looking up he will see nothing but a blank slate. A touch of vertigo washes over him then, spins him slowly at first. He’s aware of the deck rolling beneath his feet, the fixed objects of his world sliding away, and a weight on his body, not so much gravity now as water, as if he were drowning, caught in the vortices of a sinking ship.
HE SEES himself as a boy, as Jason, kneeling on the starboard seat of his father’s sloop, a stiff wind out of the northwest making him shiver.
His father says, “Prepare to come about – use the winch handle.”
He tries but turns it the wrong way. He knows where the edge of the lake should be, but he can’t distinguish between sky and water. There’s only one light in the distance.
“Jason,” says his father, “I don’t want you going below. Your grandfather’s not there.”
The galley’s dark. The mark to be fetched is Port Austin Reef. The boat leans and picks up speed.
He realizes that if not for his grandfather, he would still be in bed – no order to tumble out, no reason to set sail in the middle of the night. He feels anxious and out of sorts and hears his dad saying for the second time, “Your grandfather has no face.”
He looks up. No moon. Not a single star. Barely visible is a low ceiling of gray clouds. The sky shudders from one horizon to the other. No face, he thinks. Heaven has no face and my grandfather has no face. Dad says it’s so.
The eyes in the photograph, fixed on something outside the frame, are discerning and troubled. He likes the mustache and believes that in the future he’ll grow his own. Someone printed H.M. in the corner of the picture. Handkerchiefs and cuff links bear the same letters. So do the trophies in the glass case. On the trophy for the singlehander’s race is HAVELOCK MOORE. It’s a strong sound. He says to almost everyone he meets, “Havelock Moore is my grandfather’s name. My dad calls him H.M.” He suspects that H.M. is the only man his father fears.
“There’ll be no going below,” his father says again. “I need you to give a hand.”
He wants to get out of the wind, but with the weatherboards in place and the hood closed and latched, he’s stuck. He accepts the fact that Havelock’s not in the cabin. Havelock’s not in his berth – the old man’s sleeping somewhere else.
Over the wind, he hears his father say, “If you found H.M. on the street, you wouldn’t know it was him.”
He tries to understand, but the words create a white space in his mind. The whiteness scares him. Needing to fill it, he recalls the old photograph – first the initials, then the face, and finally the eyes, black pools touched by a spark of light.
“No stars tonight,” he says, looking up.
“Just as well,” says his father.
The face in the picture is full of deep sadness. How can it be that Havelock Moore has no face?
“It’s gone,” says his father.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it is.”
I’m sailing in a plastic tub, he thinks. It’s smaller than my grandfather’s ketch. He remembers going in headfirst when the big boat rose and fell. He’d like to do it all over again – prove to everyone, once and for all, that he’s no longer a boy.
HE SEES himself on the ketch and his grandfather’s face unworried.
“This is an old man’s ship,” says Havelock. “It isn’t for racing. She’s made of wood and she’s proud. Fiberglass is cheap. You can’t call it a boat when it’s built of such stuff.” He scratches his nose and smiles. “Your dad’s sloop is a white whale. I’d call it a plastic tub.”
Havelock looms overhead, trying to explain the vagaries of wind. “You must keep your canvas on the verge of luffing,” he says. “It’s easy to pull in a sail too far by mistake. If you do, the boat’ll stall.”
They watch the forward edge of the jib.
“A Moore never sinks,” says Havelock.
He smiles at the old man and nods.
Havelock says, “Be proud of your name. A good name guarantees success. Jason was a great hero. He sailed the world looking for the Golden Fleece.” The jib begins to ripple. In the next instant, Havelock makes the correction. “Mind the telltales, too.”
He follows his grandfather’s order and worries that his eyes aren’t big enough. He can watch only one part at a time. He has to know about wind and where he’s going. And somewhere there’s a Golden Fleece. He wonders what it is and whether or not he should be looking for it. On the ketch there’s too much to do, too much to think about.
On land, his grandfather doesn’t do everything at once. He sits at the kitchen table and sorts the mail into three piles: letters, bills, and solicitations. If it’s personal, he holds it in his hand for a while, examines the return address and the stamp. Finally, he opens it with his pocketknife, careful not to damage the envelope. On the water, though, his actions overlap. He trims and steers and checks his bearing all in the same breath.
Conditions on the lake change quickly. There’s no rocking in a steady wind. But in calm, the swells come up and the ketch rolls and the sails flap and jerk. He stumbles and grabs a lifeline.
“Enough noise,” says Havelock. “Lower the sails and let go the anchor.”
He knows he’s too small to help. He’s been out many times, but the sun still hurts his eyes. It’s hot on the water with no wind, he thinks. He enjoys the ketch rising and falling, the deck slanting like a floor in a fun house. He wants to jump when the deck lifts him up to see how high he can spring. On his shoulder, he feels his grandfather’s hand. He turns and finds suddenly that there’s nothing either behind him or below.
He soars spread-eagled through the air and then plummets, all the heat and glare collapsing into cold and dark. He doesn’t thrash or kick. He falls through water, the lake filling him until he is deaf, until he is mute, and then his body stops, suspended between two worlds. Though it’s impossible to explain later, something here takes hold of him, buoying him up, so that slowly at first, through no effort of his own, he starts to climb. An ache for breath, for speech, sw
ells in his throat. He begins to think. He breaks the surface, arms and legs moving, and sees his grandfather’s face.
“Sink or swim is the only way,” says Havelock. “You can scuttle the boat, but a Moore never sinks.”
I’M ON a white whale, he thinks. One hour out and searching for deep water. Havelock’s not in the cabin. Havelock’s not in his berth. He sees his father looking up, navigating without stars. The wind drives the sloop on a broad reach.
“There’s no turning back,” says his father. “It won’t keep. He’d want it this way.”
After the reef, the bottom yawns. The water is deep and goes deeper still. He wonders what depth his father is hoping for. He dreams bright gardens of fish and then a circle of sailboats – red, yellow, and blue – floating on the air. He listens to the hull slicing the lake, to the steady sigh. My grandfather had a face, he thinks. He journeyed upriver, through the narrows, to sail on an inland sea. Huron was the lake he loved.
The boat turns into the wind. It stalls and they douse the sails.
Now the hood slides back and the weatherboards come out. He follows his father down into the cabin. In the berth is a long canvas bag lashed with line and weighted with heavy stones. They haul it up the companionway. They let it rest in the cockpit, catching their breath. Facing each other, they lift it over the starboard winch and balance it on the gunwale. The boat rocks like a cradle. He knows why he is here. He puts one knee on the starboard seat. His father holds the bag with both hands. “I’m sorry,” he says. “You were disheartened on this boat. It should’ve been the ketch that carried you.” And then his father lets go and the bag rolls over into darkness.
HUMBUG feels colder than before. Snowflakes shimmer in the gap of pale light. He shudders. He senses a subtle shift, a change. The refuge he seeks is not to be found. Perhaps he’s come here too late on too many nights. Perhaps he’s used it up, overstayed his welcome. Somehow, he’s ill at ease. The marina’s empty, he knows. No cars in the parking lot when he arrived. Not a soul stopping by to check on covers or equipment.
Of Song and Water Page 2