Of Song and Water by Joseph Coulson Page A

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.
    â€œThere’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.
    â€œJason,” 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.
    â€œI’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.
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    â€œON 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.
    â€œThat’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.
    â€œAll right,” says Havelock. “Take the tiller.”
    Dorian moves into position.
    â€œRemember, you can scuttle the boat, but a Moore never sinks.”
    The sails luff.
    â€œFor 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