Glimmering

It took them two weeks. Every evening they had to set the cracked blue tarps on a wooden frame above the boat, in case of rain. Geese flew overhead, honking. There was the nightly confusion of phoebes and chickadees in the white pines by the boathouse, trying to decide if it was really time to roost. One afternoon Martin walked up to the Beach Store, more exhausted than he could have imagined possible by the additional effort, and asked Doug to bring by a case of beer if and when they got some in. A few days later beer arrived. After that, Martin and Trip would sit on the ladders and each have two, sometimes talking, usually not. Watching amethyst-colored lightning play over the bay, the occasional passing of a lobster boat; once the huge silhouette of a Russian factory ship, merging into the darkness far away. In the extreme humidity it took a long time for the paint to dry, several days between coats, so they started on the interior. Cleaning out the bulkheads. Putting bunk cushions on deck to air, and the sails, smelling of mildew but, happily, undamaged. Checking out the engine. Martin cannibalized furniture and machinery in the boathouse and cottage for screws, nails, shims. He collected unopened and nearly empty pints of oil, carefully cleaned old filters because there were no new ones, and finally went to the big old plastic gas tanks he had stored the diesel in over two years before.

“Shit,” he said. “Water.” So there was the task of getting water out of the fuel, and then filling the tank, and starting the engine in a cloud of foul smoke while Trip cheered, and then praying that when the time came, the engine would remember what it had to do.

“This is a beautiful boat, Martin,” said Trip one afternoon. The Wendameen was almost ready, as ready as boats get, and they were having lunch in her shadow, eating mealy tomatoes from Diana’s garden. Martin swallowed them all, even the rough nub where the stem had been. Trip fastidiously ate around the soft core as though it were an apple. He leaned happily against a jack stand, flushed and pearled with sweat, his blond hair capped by a red bandanna that had been John’s, every inch of him speckled with white and red paint. His face was sunburned, which worried Martin; but Trip shrugged it off. “A really beautiful boat. You took good care of it.”

“Not really.”

“Someone did. Some cunnin’, this boat.” Trip’s voice roughened easily into the broad northern accent, and he grinned. “Ayah. She’ll do, Martin. She’ll do.”

Martin laughed. “She’ll have to do pretty goddamn good, if we’re going to get to New York before hurricane season.”

Trip tossed his head back, staring at the sky. His eyes flashed a deeper blue, and for an instant Martin saw him lying on the beach, weeds snarled upon his breast, eyelids parting to reveal that same distant flame. “I never been sailing. Just once, over to Jonesport, when I was a kid. I threw up.”

“Yeah, well. I’ve thrown up, too.” His brow furrowed. “You sure you want to do this, Trip? I mean are you sure you’re up to it? We could—we could wait a little while.”

But it would not be a little while. It was September now, it would be eight or nine months of waiting out the long Maine winter, almost another year. The boy here for that long… Martin’s heart pounded at the thought.

Trip shook his head. “Might as well go now,” he said cheerfully, Martin could hear what was underneath the brightness. He wants to go. He knows and he wants to go…

“Right,” Martin said, finishing another tomato. He grimaced, his stomach thrashed inside him like a snake—that was what happened when he ate, these days—and thought how Trip never wondered how he was; never commented on how Martin looked flushed, pretended not to notice when he was sick in the middle of the night, said nothing when they stripped off their shirts to race into the cold water of the bay and Martin stood there, ribs like the fingers of an immense hand pushing out from within his chest.

He’s afraid, thought Martin. But also perhaps he was being polite, the way Mainers were when they were uncomfortable, or embarrassed, or just plain shy. Talking to you with eyes averted, you right there beside them and them focusing several feet away in front of the woodstove.

“Well,” Martin said, wiping his hands. “Let’s get going, then.”

That night he got the charts out, and the Coast Guard light list, and the Coast Pilots showing the Atlantic from Eastport to Cape Cod, Cape Cod southeast to King’s Point.

All hopelessly out of date—the most recent one read 1988—but there was nothing to be done, except maybe visit the Graffams and see if they had anything to offer in the way of advice. They piled the charts on the dining-room table, and the faded pilots, stiff and cumbersome from age and water. Trip was enthralled, and spent an hour exclaiming over the chart that showed Moody’s Island, but Martin was puzzling over something else.