Of Song and Water by Joseph Coulson Page B

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.
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    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.

    â€œWas your break long enough?” says Havelock.
    Dorian doesn’t answer.
    Havelock checks off several items on a list. “Finish the sorting,” he says.
    â€œIt’s done.”
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œDo you want me to do it again?” says Dorian.
    â€œIf you’re not too busy.”
    â€œThought I’d go over and check the sloop. Clean up the topsides.”
    â€œDo 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.”
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    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