with cotton dresses she had thrown away years before and patching the holes with oilcloth and horse-hoof glue. She claimed she spent half the night untying the knots in the ropes and winding them up into well-organized, tidy coils. Then she carefully stitched the torn sail, sometimes with brightly coloured embroidery thread, sometimes with the more functional white variety. Later she repainted the simple geometric design, which had, in some places, been rubbed off the stern. And finally, she dreamt that she hauled the sail away from the place where it lay in the damp sand, put it through the wash cycle in an enormous machine, and hung it out to dry on a clothes-line strung between two telephone poles. And all the Lincolns, Chryslers and Cadillacs on Ocean Boulevard ground to a halt, amazed to see this expanse of canvas, like a brown flag with grommets, flap up towards the sky.
The children dreamt of sailing the boat, or of driving it, or flying it, depending on their personalities, just as it was—injured, wrecked—with sand and water spilling into its hull and its sail dragging behind it like long drowned hair. They were too young, too satisfied, to actively search for change in their dreams and so they dreamt of the fact of the boat and of access to that fact; of scaling the sides, leaping over the gunwales and sitting at the rudderless helm. In truth they dreamt of taking command of the boat as something the sea had arbitrarily given them.
When we arrived at the beach the following morning the boat looked more familiar, less foreign to us. I brought my little black camera with me and marched down the beach with it to capturethe image of the boat from all sides, forever. My wife fussed and clucked, almost affectionately, about the untidiness of the boat. Some of the clothing, which had earlier spilled from the hull, had been brought in by the waves and had formed a colourful strip at the tide line. She moved slowly towards this and, gingerly picking up the pieces of fabric, dropped them in a neat pile, hoping that the machine that came at night to bury seaweed would dispose, as well, of this reminder of the human factor.
The children began to play with the portable baby’s bed. Unnoticed behind the stern they constructed a sail from a large stick and a plaid cotton shirt. Borrowing the laces from an unmatched shoe that hung from the port gunwale, they were able to tie miniature ropes through the buttonholes and pull the fabric tight enough to catch the wind. They pounded the stick through the canvas bottom of the tiny bed and placed the youngest child inside as a navigator. Then, screaming with joy, they propelled their little craft out to sea where it turned slowly round a few times before being pushed under by the white froth of an incoming wave.
So all that day my stock market quotations and the children’s plastic pails lay untouched in the sand beside the deck-chairs as we all responded to the boat. Sometimes we just stood and stared at it. It was something that could not be interpreted but could not be turned away from either. Sometimes we commented to each other that it really was a strong boat and might, in fact, be made seaworthy once again. The children played around the edges of the boat, having been forbidden, since the incident of the baby’s bed, to touch either the vessel or its contents.
On the second night the dreams revisited us but in slightly different form. I, for instance, dreamt that I had discovered a miniature model of the boat. Walking through the streets of an unfamiliar city I had seen it in a junk shop window and had decided to purchase it though the price was much too high. When I placed it on the mantelpiece in my living-room, my wife had demanded: “Who told you I wanted a family portrait over the fireplace?” and I had replied, “You’ll never know till you light the fire.” I awakened with my heart pounding to discover that my wife, in the twin bed opposite, had been dreaming
The children dreamt of sailing the boat, or of driving it, or flying it, depending on their personalities, just as it was—injured, wrecked—with sand and water spilling into its hull and its sail dragging behind it like long drowned hair. They were too young, too satisfied, to actively search for change in their dreams and so they dreamt of the fact of the boat and of access to that fact; of scaling the sides, leaping over the gunwales and sitting at the rudderless helm. In truth they dreamt of taking command of the boat as something the sea had arbitrarily given them.
When we arrived at the beach the following morning the boat looked more familiar, less foreign to us. I brought my little black camera with me and marched down the beach with it to capturethe image of the boat from all sides, forever. My wife fussed and clucked, almost affectionately, about the untidiness of the boat. Some of the clothing, which had earlier spilled from the hull, had been brought in by the waves and had formed a colourful strip at the tide line. She moved slowly towards this and, gingerly picking up the pieces of fabric, dropped them in a neat pile, hoping that the machine that came at night to bury seaweed would dispose, as well, of this reminder of the human factor.
The children began to play with the portable baby’s bed. Unnoticed behind the stern they constructed a sail from a large stick and a plaid cotton shirt. Borrowing the laces from an unmatched shoe that hung from the port gunwale, they were able to tie miniature ropes through the buttonholes and pull the fabric tight enough to catch the wind. They pounded the stick through the canvas bottom of the tiny bed and placed the youngest child inside as a navigator. Then, screaming with joy, they propelled their little craft out to sea where it turned slowly round a few times before being pushed under by the white froth of an incoming wave.
So all that day my stock market quotations and the children’s plastic pails lay untouched in the sand beside the deck-chairs as we all responded to the boat. Sometimes we just stood and stared at it. It was something that could not be interpreted but could not be turned away from either. Sometimes we commented to each other that it really was a strong boat and might, in fact, be made seaworthy once again. The children played around the edges of the boat, having been forbidden, since the incident of the baby’s bed, to touch either the vessel or its contents.
On the second night the dreams revisited us but in slightly different form. I, for instance, dreamt that I had discovered a miniature model of the boat. Walking through the streets of an unfamiliar city I had seen it in a junk shop window and had decided to purchase it though the price was much too high. When I placed it on the mantelpiece in my living-room, my wife had demanded: “Who told you I wanted a family portrait over the fireplace?” and I had replied, “You’ll never know till you light the fire.” I awakened with my heart pounding to discover that my wife, in the twin bed opposite, had been dreaming
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