Outlaw in India by Philip Roy Page A

don’t you just keep your boat outside like
     everybody else? And you look awfully young to have your own boat. Wherever are
     your parents?”
    “My mother died when I was born. My father lives in Montreal. I live on my
     boat.”
    “You do?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, something doesn’t add up here. I don’t know what it is. Why don’t you
     just keep your boat outside like everybody else?”
    I didn’t want to tell her why exactly. “I just don’t want anything to happen to
     it.”
    She frowned and shook her head. “No. There’s more to it than that.”
    I just stared at her. If she didn’t want to rent it that was okay.
    “I’ll tell you what, young man . . . what is your name?”
    “Alfred. And this is Radji.”
    She smiled at Radji and he smiled back, but it didn’t look like a real
     smile.
    “I’ll tell you what, Alfred. I’ll make you a deal.”
    “A deal?”
    “Yes. I’ll let you use my boathouse for as long as you like
     if you will go to Mumbai and bring my brother back to me.”
    “Why doesn’t he just come by himself?”
    “He can’t; he’s deceased.”
    I wondered what his disease was but didn’t want to ask. “How long has he been
     sick?”
    “Many years. I don’t know exactly. It doesn’t matter now. I never met
     him.”
    “You never met him?”
    “No. We had the same father but different mothers. I always meant to go and see
     him but . . . well, life just flows on, you know, like a river. But now it is
     time for him to come to me. There is nowhere else for him to go.”
    “Are you sure he wants to?”
    She looked at me strangely. “Well, that’s what he said he wanted. He wrote me a
     letter awhile back, when he first became ill.”
    “Oh. So . . . how would we pick him up? And why don’t you just go
     yourself?”
    “I never go to Mumbai. I once had a very bad experience there. I’ll never go
     back. I have an address where my brother has been kept for three years now. A
     Mr. Singh is keeping him. You could take the overnight train and be back in a
     day and a half.”
    “And if we do that you will let us use your boathouse?”
    “For as long as you like.”
    “How far upriver do you live?”
    “Oh . . . thirty-five miles or so. The roads are not too
     bad.”
    “Do you know how deep the river is?”
    “How deep the river is? Well it’s deep enough for a boat, that’s for sure. How
     big is your boat?”
    “It’s twenty feet long.”
    “Oh, that’s nothing. I’m sure you don’t need more than five or six feet for a
     boat of that size. The river is plenty deep for that.”
    I wasn’t so certain. But I sure would love to leave the sub inside a secure
     boathouse while we went to Varanasi. “Okay. I agree.”
    Melissa broke into a smile. I wondered what it would be like helping her
     brother onto the train. He must have been pretty sick if he couldn’t make the
     trip by himself. Or maybe he was just too old. I sure hoped his disease wasn’t
     contagious.
    Melissa said she would tie a red scarf to a post at the bottom of her property.
     We couldn’t miss it. I told her we liked to sail at night and would arrive early
     in the morning. She stared at me as if I were a creature from another planet.
     “You are a strange young man,” she said, then wished us good sailing and
     left.
    I took Radji’s queen with my knight, forced his king into a corner and
     checkmated him with a pawn. Radji took a deep breath, shook his head with
     disbelief, like a farmer whose field had been spoiled by rain, then put the
     pieces inside the folding board. We headed back to the sub. It was twilightwhen we came over the bank and saw two men fishing on the
     old wooden dock, directly above the sub. Rats. We were hungry and tired. We
     wanted to eat and catch some sleep before sailing upriver. But first we had to
     sit on the bank and watch them catch a couple of small fish and put them into a
     bucket. It felt like the twilight was going to last forever. They tied up