The Boatmaker

by John Benditt

  “Yes, there’s something here for you.”

  He leaves the store with the package balanced on his shoulder, whistling. Harbortown is the same; he is different.

  The bell rings again as he leaves. It may have been five minutes between the two times it rang. An hour later she feels as if she has not moved from the spot where she was standing when he entered the store. People have come into the store, she has served them, they have left. She has no idea what she said, though no one seemed shocked.

  The bell rings, and the boatmaker enters again, this time wearing a suit. A suit! It is beyond imagining. Valter has suits, yes. The doctor. A few others on the island. But none of them has a suit like this one: in a beautiful brown tweed with a matching vest, cut by someone who knows his body as well as she does. Above the vest is a white shirt with a stiff collar and dark tie. He is shaved and wearing elegant brown boots. Even more than the one who entered earlier, this is a man the woman of Small Island does not know. Perhaps that will lessen her guilt. Still, what she has to say won’t come easily.

  “Let’s take a walk,” says the stranger. “I want to show you something.”

  “I can’t leave. Gunnarson will be upset.”

  “He works for Valter, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it will be alright.”

  He takes her by the arm, guides her out of the store and stops to wait for her to pull the shade and lock the door. As they walk, he looks sideways to see how she has changed and how she has not. Mostly she is the same.

  Out where the sidewalk ends, not far from the top of the bluff, he takes her arm and they climb down over rocks and roots to the gravel beach where the longboat from the steamer puts in. The tide is far out among gray rocks, seawater swirling in the tidepools. He looks along the sweep of the harbor, sizing things up. He has had his plan in mind for a while; now he is sure of it.

  “How is the girl?”

  “She’s fine. A bigger girl. You wouldn’t recognize her.”

  “I would.”

  She knows she must tell him now. “We . . .” She starts to speak, then stops. “We . . .” The tears come again. He takes her by the shoulders.

  “What is it, Karin? What’s wrong?”

  She buries herself in his shoulder and speaks, her voice muffled by brown tweed. Between each phrase is a sob.

  “We’ve gone back to Valter. The girl and I. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know if you were coming back. I didn’t even know if you were alive. I never heard from you. It’s been three years.” She’s quiet. Then she looks up into his face and says: “Forgive me.”

  He pulls her closer. “Of course I forgive you. You never heard from me. You had to take care of yourself—and the girl. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

  So that’s why she looked stricken. He is relieved. All this can be easily addressed. There is no reason for her to feel guilty. He never intended to return to his life on Small Island as it was before. He decides not to tell her yet that he is married, his wife pregnant with their child. There will be time for that later.

  Now he wants her to move beyond her sorrow and guilt. He needs her attention for something more important.

  “Listen, Karin. I’m going to build something. Right here.”

  “What?” This is so far out of the train of her own thoughts that she isn’t sure she has heard him correctly.

  “I’m going to build something here.”

  “What are you going to build?”

  “A boatyard.”

  “A boatyard. What is that?”

  “A place where boats are built and repaired.”

  She steps back to take him in, this stranger with the sunburned face, the scar, the elegant suit, the Mainland manners. She hears him describe his plans for the thing he calls a boatyard and the business empire it will be a part of, which he is involved with in some way. But she isn’t paying much attention to his words. She is confused, her feelings shifting. All she hears is the steady, determined tone. As if he hadn’t heard anything she just told him—or it didn’t matter. She feels a first twinge of anger.

  “I’m going to build it right here. I’ll buy the land a parcel at a time. I’ll find men to work for me. If I can’t find them here, I’ll go to Big Island—all the way to the Mainland if I have to. I don’t care. I’ll find men who want to work and know how to work.”

  She says nothing, hugs her arms to her, feeling suddenly cold.

  “And I’m going to change my name.”

  “Change your name?”

  “Yes. I’m going to be called Boatmaker.”

  “Boatmaker. What kind of name is that?” She laughs.

  “It’s the name I will have.”

  “But you already have a name,” she says. “A perfectly good name. Vilem Lippsted. The same as your father. Everyone here knows what your name is.”

  “Was. They know what my name was. Now it’s Boatmaker. Vilem, they can take or leave. Boatmaker is my name now. And there will be a boatyard on this beach. Called The Three Seals.”

  What nonsense this man talks. If he stays on Small Island, she may run into him on the sidewalk in Harbortown. But it will be easy enough to ignore him, with his talk of boatyards and a new name. No one on Small Island will understand him. They will laugh at him. Call him crazy. The boatbuilder families will fight him with all their strength. No one will work for him. It is all a fantasy, some dream he dreamed on the Mainland. He is bound to fail. Small Island does not take kindly to change.

  She will leave the stranger right here, have no more to do with him. But before she walks away, she has one more task.

  “There’s another thing I need to tell you.”

  He says nothing, lost in his plans for The Three Seals Boatyard.

  “Your mother.”

  “How is she?”

  “She’s gone. A year ago, at the end of the winter. That winter was long and hard. They found her at her house. Pneumonia. She’d been dead a week. She’s next to your brother.”

  They turn and go back over rocks, under branches, over the roots of gnarled trees to the top of the bluff. He leaves her at the general store and turns off into the woods. He isn’t interested in meeting anyone he knows or answering any questions. In time he will reintroduce himself, buy the parcels of land he needs, explain the idea of a boatyard and begin hiring. He knows he will meet resistance. As he walks along in his suit and boots, he thinks of Sven Eriksson, who seems equal to anything. He will try to be like that. He is no longer a drunken young man with a feeling for wood. He is a force—a force backed by money.

  He finds the path as if he had walked it the day before. It’s sunny, the wind rising and dying in a nervous rhythm. The smell of pine is strong. The woods open, and he is in the clearing leading to the oak where his brother is buried. High above him, oak leaves rustle.

  His brother’s stone is in its familiar place. Someone has trimmed the grass around it. A few feet away, close to the roots of the oak, is another stone, with his mother’s name and dates. He kneels, runs his hand over his mother’s name incised in stone: a city man wearing a suit cut by a tailor who sews even better than his mother did. A man who has seen things no one on Small Island would understand or even believe. And is now back at the base of the tree whose roots go all the way down to where Small Island itself is anchored.

  As he runs his hand over the stone, the tears begin without will or permission. He feels that everything he has done has been for nothing. He has returned too late. His mother will never see him in his suit and boots, never know the man he has become. He will never be able to show her that he is as good a man as his brother would have been. His body shakes with loss, tears staining his face and new shirt. She is gone. He will never have the love he sailed so far for.

  He finds himself lying in the grass, sobbing. Cheek against his mother’s stone, he sees tiny flowers peering at him between the green stalks of grass. The flowers have six petals, each the blue of the blue wolf. He doesn�
�t recognize them. Rachel will know their name, in Latin and in the language of the Mainland. He pulls two flowers, rubs them against his face, finds they have no smell. His tears begin to dry. Looking into the tiny flowers, he feels his mother present, but in a different way, not smelling of drink, tearing with fists and words. Instead she is smiling at him, shining silently through the blue petals. It is not too late, after all. What he has received is not as he imagined it would be, but it is much more than nothing. Even in this first moment of understanding, he knows it will take years to know just what it is that he has been given.

  The boatmaker rolls over. Above him oak leaves move back and forth, allowing the fleeting Small Island sunshine to pass through. He shields his eyes, holding a miniature bunch of blue flowers over his head, looking through them to the sky. He thinks about his other home, in the capital. Jacob Lippsted will rebuild. The men who were with them in the forest will again make the famous Lippsted furniture, using designs handed down from generation to generation. He will bring Rachel and his children—he knows there will be others after this first son—to Small Island. Rachel will spend time here, to be with him and see where he comes from. They will build a house in Harbortown, facing the wooden sidewalk, with a view of the curving harbor and the sea. But he knows she will never permanently leave the rebuilt townhouse with its beautiful tapering façade. The boatmaker will begin a new life, lived between these two worlds, old and new. He will travel farther, even past the Mainland, to Europe and beyond. But he will always return to Small Island, where he began: a rock in the gray sea, the visible tip of an axis that reaches all the way to the center of the earth.

  GRATITUDE

  Getting The Boatmaker launched was not an individual task. My gratitude to those who contributed comes in layers and in depths. The guardian angel of this entire project has been Jeanne McCulloch. Jay was the first publishing professional who thought this book deserved to be published. And she backed up her opinions with action. She has become not only a mentor but also a wonderful friend. Jay introduced me to the remarkable folks at Tin House Books, beginning with Meg Storey, a deft and insightful editor. The boatmaker’s vessel is much sleeker and sturdier than it would have been without Meg’s touch. Nanci McCloskey’s enthusiasm and savvy about marketing have been instrumental in getting The Boatmaker down the ways. Jakob Vala’s fine eye has given the words a cover and interior design that bring out the best in them. Lauren Cerand has been much more than a very effective publicist. She has been the trusted guide every first-time author needs to the rich and rapidly changing world of book publishing. Every writer needs an inner circle of Old Believers who read his work before it is ready for the eyes of the world. I have been fortunate to have three: Alan Benditt, Nina Sernaker and Elisabeth King. With infinite care and love, they read an early draft of The Boatmaker. Their response made me feel there was something in this tale worth pursuing. Elisabeth deserves special mention for her selfless love and support. Deeper down is the family, which is the matrix from which everything comes. I am grateful to my other brothers, Joshua and Charles Benditt, for their enthusiasm on reading the manuscript in draft. Long ago my mother, Marcella Benditt, kindled my love of reading and writing. She taught us what a well-made thing looks like. Finally, all the way down, near the keel of the dream, where there are no images, this book is dedicated to the memory of my father, Earl Benditt, who was an original and a boatmaker. Godspeed, Skipper.

  PHOTO © WHITNEY LAWSON

  JOHN BENDITT had a distinguished career as a science journalist. He was an editor at Scientific American and at Science before serving as editor in chief of Technology Review. The Boatmaker is his debut novel.

  COLOPHON

  The text of this book is set in Adobe Jenson Pro, an old-style typeface designed by Robert Slimbach. It is based on the work of Nicolas Jenson, a fifteenth-century engraver and coin forger. The italics were inspired by those of Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi, a papal scribe in Renaissance Italy. Chapter headings and folio elements are set in SeriWood, as digitized by Terry Koppel from a collection of wood type.