“Do I need to wash?”
“Not if you’re running out again. But if you’re staying in, then march to the mudroom and use plenty of hot water and soap.”
Dorian downs a glass of milk and goes out the way he came in, the screen door slamming.
Faya smiles. “Time goes fast,” she says.
“I can’t imagine this kitchen without you,” he says.
She moves away from the chopped onion, smiling, blinking back tears. “The kitchen is just the kitchen, with or without me,” she says. “We’re getting old. And you’re getting sentimental.”
HE WAITS in the shadows, in absolute silence, between a stack of crates and a large downspout. He listens for any change in the landlord’s step.
He watches the man walk by, looks at the face without seeing it, and glances at the back of the head – at the hairline just above the fur collar.
He steps out of the shadows and hooks his arm around the landlord’s neck.
With the accuracy of a surgeon, using a quick upward motion, he thrusts the blade of his bayonet between the top of the spine and the base of the skull. The kill is immediate and without sound.
AT THE height of the season, with sailboats dotting the bay, he enlists Dorian to do some dusting, sweeping, and window washing at Halyard & Mast.
An old woman and her son walk into the store not long after opening. They nose up the aisles as if they were taking inventory and then stand like sentinels in front of the cash register. They insist that the store’s merchandise is the property of Uncle Sam.
“Roosevelt needs metal and rubber,” says the sturdy young man. He wears a scar that starts at the corner of his eye and runs down his cheek. “You should do your part.”
Glaring at the young man, he says, “I did that before you were born.”
The woman grunts and takes her son’s arm to steady herself and the two of them march out in a show of consternation.
That evening, having closed the store, but waiting for a truck to pick up a downstate order, he notices – and Dorian does, too – a faint scratching sound at the front door. He investigates. He expects to find a trucker waiting for a package. Instead, he catches by surprise the scar-faced young man, down on one knee, attempting to break in with a crowbar.
He curses at the young man and grabs him by the collar and yanks him into the store, the boy pulling and jerking like a snagged fish. “So you’re a thief,” he says, gripping the crowbar, wrenching it free, and tossing it aside. “You’d steal from me.”
“It’s for the war effort,” says the young man, clenching his fist and swinging.
“You’re no patriot – you’re a punk.” He catches the boy’s fist in his hand and slaps him three or four times across the face.
“And you’re giving aid to the enemy,” says the young man, the scar on his cheek pulsing with blood. “You’re a coward. You’re afraid to fight.”
Like a trigger, the words set off an explosion – a knocking down of partitions and doors. He squeezes the boy’s hand. “There’s no shame in being afraid,” he scowls. Then he pummels the kid’s face until the kid collapses on a coil of rope. Using the side of his foot, he kicks him once in the stomach.
The boy groans and wheezes – his windpipe closing.
Finally, in a last surge of fury, he raises the kid up from the floor and throws him belly-down into the street.
He closes and locks the door. He glares at Dorian, who hasn’t moved a muscle. “Look at you,” he says. “You’re a pillar of salt.”
Dorian is tongue-tied.
“Find your feet, boy. It’s late – and your mother’s waiting.”
HE CHECKS the alley in both directions. Time to go, he thinks. He leaves the landlord facedown, blood flowing from his ears and nose, blood running between the bricks, trickling through the vents of a manhole cover.
The military taught him this manner of killing. They made him practice and perfect the technique using pumpkins mounted on poles. They taught other young men the same thing.
He cleans the blade. He will live outside of time until he’s able to sleep, to dream, until the clock wakes him the next morning and he hears the sound of his mother making coffee.
ON THE way home, he tries to get Dorian to say something but the effort proves tiresome. They stop at the greengrocery and see nothing unusual on their way into the store, but as they depart, each carrying a full bag, they run into an unshaved man who, with a miniature flag in his left hand and a Bible in his right, appears to be preaching to patrons and passersby. “You must shun all forms of passion,” says the man.
A woman in a white coat with a little boy at her side puts a coin on top of the man’s Bible.
“A big stick starts early,” says the man. “It breeds contempt and indifference.”
From behind his bag of groceries, Dorian peeks at the man’s face. No one coming or going stops to listen, but the man continues as if he were addressing a loyal congregation.
“The miseries of a lifetime live in your body,” he says. “They grow, waxing and burgeoning, roiling in your guts and chest, gathering in lethal concentrations just under the skin.”
The rest of the drive home is uncomfortably warm and silent. Insects splatter on the windshield. In the air is the smell of approaching rain. The transmission thumps, then the engine hesitates and whirs.
HE SEES the light in his mother’s face, the rush of hope, when the landlord fails to knock at the usual hour. He watches the newspapers and listens on the street for rumors. Weeks pass and the landlord leaves no evidence of his life except a house filled with antique furniture and a closet stuffed with fine clothes.
The apartment building falls to auction and the new landlord turns out to be a woman. She often comes by for tea. A touch of confidence returns to his mother’s eyes. She smiles.
IN THE newspaper is a picture of Winston Churchill drinking tea. Faya clips it out and tapes it to the icebox. Dorian seems to like it. He mentions it each time he grabs a snack.
“How Dorian goes on about Mr. Churchill,” says Faya. “He thinks he’s a great man.”
“Dorian thinks too much. I catch him staring.”
“Staring?” says Faya.
“Yes,” he says. “When I catch his eye, he turns away.”
“A boy studies his father,” says Faya.
He agrees but neglects to mention that whenever he arrives home, even as he takes off his hat, gloves, and coat, Dorian gives him the once-over. And then it’s the scraped and swollen knuckle, the split lip just under the mustache, or the bruised and puffy cheek that his son scrutinizes with particular interest. He makes excuses, blaming the injuries on clumsiness, on a box or a piece of equipment that tumbled from a dolly or the hand truck.
Dorian seems nervous and vigilant, watching for the dark expression and listening for the heavy stride.
He tries to reason with his son. “The current is changing,” he says. “Business is good.”
Dorian says nothing.
“There’s plenty to do. Enough for both of us.”
“I’m doing extra work at school.”
“Fight me if you must,” he says.
Dorian folds his arms. “I won’t.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he says.
Dorian wants to stay calm. “What do you mean it doesn’t matter?”
“Fight or not,” he says. “There’s no winning.”
After a long silence, he talks about Saginaw Bay and a lifetime of boats. “If you’re given a gift, use it,” he says. “But respect it, too. Don’t trade it for something cheap.” He thinks the boy should be happy, exhilarated at the prospect of inheriting a wealthy kingdom. “I built this business,” he says. “I made a life for myself, and for you, too.”
IN TIME, with the first money from Halyard & Mast, he buys a summer cottage in Port Austin.
He buys a powerboat but finds it noisy and unnerving. He trades it in for his first sailboat, a sleek hull with one mast that he rigs
for singlehanded racing.
When he isn’t competing, he takes out Faya and Dorian. They sail beyond the bay in clear weather, the blue water of Lake Huron stretching to the horizon.
Dorian will learn to sail, he thinks. He’ll see why it’s necessary, as a crewman or a singlehander, to keep everything in its place.
HE STARES at the luminous dial.
The station he’d been listening to has drifted into silence. He reaches for the tuning knob but hesitates and changes his mind. He clicks the radio off and the dial goes dark. That’s enough, he thinks, no more noise for a while.
He opens a window. The sun’ll be rising soon. He starts making a list of chores but it doesn’t help.
In the first turning of most days, waking from sleep, or in the last moments before closing his eyes and drifting down, he thinks of his mother, the apartment, and the battered door with the dead bolt thrown. He couldn’t stay with her and at the same time live the life he’d imagined, but slipping away was impossible, unless he could guarantee her safety. His hope then was to leave her with a settled mind. He considers the problem again, the fact that he chose an available course, the only course that seemed possible. The effort now is to keep it buried. It takes discipline, a cold vigilance, to absorb and manage the cost. But he left her in the beauty of unbroken silence. Left her with the firm belief that the landlord had lost interest. At the end, she lived and died without worry. He gave her that.
chapter four
HE REMEMBERS the boat heeling, the light at Port Austin Reef, and a cold wind from the northwest making him shiver.
“There’s no face,” his father says again. “I’m telling you, it isn’t there.”
He remembers feeling sick, having turned out at midnight to set sail. He was called Jason then. He had no other name.
“Jason,” says his father. “I don’t want you going below. We’re nearly strapped, and I need you to give a hand.”
He knows that Havelock’s not in the cabin. Havelock’s not in his berth. No face, he thinks. How can it be that Havelock Moore has no face?
He looks up. Barely visible is a low ceiling of gray clouds. No moon. Not a single star. The sky shudders from one horizon to the other. He listens to the hull slicing the lake. On a run like this, time gets cranky. It slows down or speeds up. It ebbs and flows. The conditions – fair weather and a spanking breeze – make all the difference.
“I’m telling you,” says his father, “if you found H.M. on the street, you wouldn’t know it was him.”
The words drift and disappear, leaving a blank space. The emptiness makes him uneasy. Wanting to fill it, he opens the floodgate, calls to mind all the old pictures and songs, the old colors and conversations – almost everything that he’s seen and heard.
H.M. likes to say that there’s nothing to believe in but wood. He calls a boat made of plastic a white whale. When he returns after days on Lake Huron, he speaks of being in irons, of ghosting, and of sailing free.
One story gives way to the next.
“ON THE lake,” says Havelock, “there can be no dreaming about the man you’d like to be. Whoever you think you are, you lose.” He checks the telltales. “Wind and sun’ll wear you down until only the smallest part, the most essential, remains. But even that you leave behind, giving yourself to the boat – skin, hair, teeth, nails, the roots of the flesh – until the hull becomes your body.”
Dorian looks out across the port bow.
Havelock tells himself to stop preaching. The boy has become a man, he thinks. He’s grown up fast.
Dorian trims the main and it sets properly.
“That’s fine,” says Havelock. “You’re a natural. We named you right – Dorian means ‘from the sea.’ We may not be on salt water, but this lake’s as big as an ocean.”
Dorian nods and manages a smile.
“All right,” says Havelock. “Take the tiller.”
Dorian moves into position.
“Remember, you can scuttle the boat, but a Moore never sinks.”
The sails luff.
“For the love of Christ, don’t be so weak in the knees. Watch what you’re doing. You’re spilling wind.”
H.M. is too tall for the boat, thinks Dorian. He sticks up like a second mast. What keeps him planted on deck? What keeps him from going over?
Havelock leans on the taffrail. The sound of his voice follows the wind. It fills the sail’s belly. “You don’t know yourself or the boat until you’re a singlehander,” he says. “It isn’t done easily, but there’s freedom in it. The surface of things – wood, canvas, skin – falls away, and you can set yourself on a breeze, feel yourself moving through day and night, sound and silence. No person comes for you here. No one asks for your time or labor. You serve the boat and the weather. You choose your course or find a dark harbor. But it’s your choice. As much as you’ll ever have.”
Dorian has stopped listening. He feels comfortable on the water. Free of hard ground, almost free of his father, he moves with an easy rhythm. He believes in the heavens, knows that the stars will make themselves apparent through the mists overhead. He finds no fear in capes or haunting inlets. He steers by clouds and the hunches of birds, every slippery, gliding, breathing thing.
His feet grip the deck and the sloop stretches and yawns beneath his hand.
Nothing suits him but the lake. At home, he feels cramped, cowed by the heaviness of his father’s rooms. He hates the creaking floor and the cracked ceiling. He keeps to his bedroom and the kitchen, putters in the yard on nice days. Too long on land and he feels nauseous, a nervousness in his stomach and bowel that dissipates only when he casts off.
AT HALYARD & MAST, Dorian finds no relief. He takes inventory and prepares the store for new products, but he often fouls up, makes deliberate mistakes, a quiet protest that he hopes will disrupt business or at least break the monotony. If no mistake can be made, then he neglects his assigned duties, happy to put things off and slip away.
He follows the seawall until he has a good view of Saginaw Bay. The movement of boats and gulls calms his stomach. Still, he cannot escape the feeling that the store is built on quicksand, that the floor is dissolving, turning to fine gravel, and that the next step he makes will drag him silently down.
“Was your break long enough?” says Havelock.
Dorian doesn’t answer.
Havelock checks off several items on a list. “Finish the sorting,” he says.
“It’s done.”
“I saw it,” says Havelock. “It’s a mess. Hardware’s spilling from one bin to the next and you left different sizes in the same bins. Most of ’em are too full.”
“Do you want me to do it again?” says Dorian.
“If you’re not too busy.”
“Thought I’d go over and check the sloop. Clean up the topsides.”
“Do it later,” says Havelock.
Dorian walks down the long aisle and dumps a bin of washers on the floor. On top of that pile, he dumps a larger bin of nuts and bolts.
I’m a sailor, he thinks, and not much else. He can feel his father’s contempt when they’re together at Halyard & Mast. But on clear and blustery days when they leave the store behind and go sailing, he senses a change – a strange calm or satisfaction. When this happens, the preaching and the intimidation fall away. What remains is an old man talking mostly to himself. “Small craft live or die by their wits,” he says. “That’s our pride. The way we earn our solitude.”
DORIAN notices, perhaps for the first time, the gray in Havelock’s beard.
Faya rinses her hands at the sink. “It might rain,” she says.
The floor creaks as Havelock leans over the counter and looks out at the sky. Something in the kitchen shifts.
The bread can’t possibly rise, thinks Dorian. A hard weight, an undeniable pressure, fills the room. He imagines standing in a hole while a stranger fills it with gravel. At first, he can’t move his feet, then his legs. He feels buried up to the waist whe
n a hand drops on his shoulder.
“You okay?” says Havelock.
“Fine,” says Dorian. His father’s face is a cloudy and distorted mirror. He thinks of it as something quite separate from himself.
He looks forward to clear skies and the old man heading out on Lake Huron alone, disappearing for days at a time, running long races, practicing the duties, the religion, of a singlehander.
More than this, he anticipates the coming weeks when he’ll drive by himself to Bay City and park in H.M.’s space. In the interest of avoiding extra work, he’ll suspend all acts of sabotage and sort the mail, answer the phone, receive deliveries, and ring up customers with newfound precision. He’ll take less than an hour for lunch and spend most of it at the marina talking with likely customers. But none of this will happen until his father leaves, until the singlehanded sailing begins.
Faya, still at the sink, says again that it feels like rain.
“I wish this weather would move through in a hurry,” says Havelock. Nothing will calm him now except wind and sail, except running straight out from shore, alone on the water. A singlehander sleeps in short bursts, a necessity that leaves no time for dreaming, for the memories that persist in dreams.
When the time is right, he’ll lock all the windows and doors, hand over the keys, and repeat his directive to keep everything closed both day and night. “Don’t answer the door,” he’ll say. “If a stranger calls, let ’im rot.” No one asks why he despises and berates solicitors, why he runs off drummers when he can, all of them terrified as they scamper down the front walk dropping brushes, hair tonic, and Bibles.
Dorian worries that H.M. will never leave, that something will occur, an accident or an injury, that’ll tie his father to the house. Dorian’s plan is to get a sailboat of his own. He’ll go if his father stays. He’ll slip out quietly with or without a fair breeze.
Of Song and Water Page 8