managed by a series of large oars. The mast and sail, then, would have had to be a later addition, made for the purpose of moving the boat out of the calm of some harbour and into the thick of an inexplicable journey. He could also see that whoever had planned thisjourney was absent, as were any passengers, that they had either been rescued at sea, or more likely had been swept overboard by the huge waves that had existed on the ocean for the last few days. Laying down his binoculars on his tanned thighs he relaxed his shoulders feeling functionless in this particular drama.
Within a half an hour the boat had ended its marine performance and had, with one last determined shove, buried its prow in the wet sand at the shoreline. There it rested, listing somewhat to the starboard side, its sail moving back and forth in the water with the motion of the waves. The children ran to it to peer inside. I, too, left my deck-chair, my Styrofoam cooler, my newspaper, to look at what the sea had brought in.
The children, of course, were most interested in the boat as an object. They responded instantly to the brightly coloured boards and twisted ropes. And they especially loved the broken parts of the boat where the flat planks had separated from the frame and tiny waterfalls appeared with each new wave. Small lakes had gathered at the bottom of the hull and beneath the prow was a perfect, enclosed, damp space where several small people might huddle together and giggle. Their hands automatically reached up to the gunwales in their desire to climb inside, to claim the boat as their own.
But I held them back. Sensing the blacker side, I knew that the boat called to my mind something I had forgotten so completely that I could not remember it even now with the fact of it rolling there in front of me at the edge of the ocean. And when I saw the open suitcase, the clothing, the portable baby’s bed, the toothbrush, the shoes, all of which littered the hull, I understood that whoever had set out to sea in such a craft had arrived in my world despite rescue or death.
The life-guard and I hauled the boat farther up onto the beach, beyond the tide line. Then, standing slightly back, we began to speculate about its origins. The astonishing lack of synthetic fibre suggested to us that the boat was most certainly foreign. I thought it might have come from one of the smaller, more obscure Caribbean islands. He suggested South America. Our conversation dwindled. It seemed futile to discuss the fate of the boat’s passengers, or even their reason for attempting to cross the sea in such a dangerous fashion. So we stood back and looked, our arms folded, feeling cheated, a bit, of the sensationalism that so often accompanies accidental death in our own country.
That night, tucked snugly away in our climate-controlled condominium, I dreamt a hundred dreams of the boat. In one dream I was building the boat, or at least working on part of it. Sometimes I pushed large sharp needles through tough canvas. Sometimes I wove ropes. In some far corner of my brain, where I remembered my father’s carpentry shop, I steamed and bent wood for the frame long into the night. Then I fitted the skeleton-like construction together in record time. My mother, whom I had all but forgotten, appeared in one of the dreams, saying over and over in a carping, critical fashion, “It looks like the ribcage of a dead elephant. It looks like the ribcage of a dead elephant,” until I shouted at her, in a way I never would have done in real life, “Well,
you
are elephant flesh; grey, loose and wrinkling!” Then I dreamt I was planking the frame—setting the thin bevelled boards higher and higher, fastening them with bright galvanized nails. I whispered to myself in an unfamiliar language. “Garboard, shutter, sheerstake,” Isaid quietly, but with amazing confidence. The work went well.
My wife, because she had been a mother, dreamt about mending the boat—caulking the seams
Within a half an hour the boat had ended its marine performance and had, with one last determined shove, buried its prow in the wet sand at the shoreline. There it rested, listing somewhat to the starboard side, its sail moving back and forth in the water with the motion of the waves. The children ran to it to peer inside. I, too, left my deck-chair, my Styrofoam cooler, my newspaper, to look at what the sea had brought in.
The children, of course, were most interested in the boat as an object. They responded instantly to the brightly coloured boards and twisted ropes. And they especially loved the broken parts of the boat where the flat planks had separated from the frame and tiny waterfalls appeared with each new wave. Small lakes had gathered at the bottom of the hull and beneath the prow was a perfect, enclosed, damp space where several small people might huddle together and giggle. Their hands automatically reached up to the gunwales in their desire to climb inside, to claim the boat as their own.
But I held them back. Sensing the blacker side, I knew that the boat called to my mind something I had forgotten so completely that I could not remember it even now with the fact of it rolling there in front of me at the edge of the ocean. And when I saw the open suitcase, the clothing, the portable baby’s bed, the toothbrush, the shoes, all of which littered the hull, I understood that whoever had set out to sea in such a craft had arrived in my world despite rescue or death.
The life-guard and I hauled the boat farther up onto the beach, beyond the tide line. Then, standing slightly back, we began to speculate about its origins. The astonishing lack of synthetic fibre suggested to us that the boat was most certainly foreign. I thought it might have come from one of the smaller, more obscure Caribbean islands. He suggested South America. Our conversation dwindled. It seemed futile to discuss the fate of the boat’s passengers, or even their reason for attempting to cross the sea in such a dangerous fashion. So we stood back and looked, our arms folded, feeling cheated, a bit, of the sensationalism that so often accompanies accidental death in our own country.
That night, tucked snugly away in our climate-controlled condominium, I dreamt a hundred dreams of the boat. In one dream I was building the boat, or at least working on part of it. Sometimes I pushed large sharp needles through tough canvas. Sometimes I wove ropes. In some far corner of my brain, where I remembered my father’s carpentry shop, I steamed and bent wood for the frame long into the night. Then I fitted the skeleton-like construction together in record time. My mother, whom I had all but forgotten, appeared in one of the dreams, saying over and over in a carping, critical fashion, “It looks like the ribcage of a dead elephant. It looks like the ribcage of a dead elephant,” until I shouted at her, in a way I never would have done in real life, “Well,
you
are elephant flesh; grey, loose and wrinkling!” Then I dreamt I was planking the frame—setting the thin bevelled boards higher and higher, fastening them with bright galvanized nails. I whispered to myself in an unfamiliar language. “Garboard, shutter, sheerstake,” Isaid quietly, but with amazing confidence. The work went well.
My wife, because she had been a mother, dreamt about mending the boat—caulking the seams
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