The Boatmaker by John Benditt Read Free Book Online

beginning to give way to a new invader: summer. The maple leaves in the grove above his shed will be large and green. She knows that the thing she has ordered for him, all the way from the Mainland, must be delivered.
    In the woods, he works into the night, leaving the door open and letting smoke from his cigarette drift out. Almost every day the boat teaches him something new, and he pauses to think: I didn’t know that. This doesn’thappen when he builds houses or does carpentry jobs. When he’s doing those things, he knows exactly what will happen, even before the job starts. Not with this.
    He has wrapped cedar planking around the oak ribs. The hull is now formed all the way to the gunwales, and he has begun putting in decking made of seasoned maple from trees nearby. The centerboard well has risen from the keel. The place where the mast will be stepped is visible. Less and less imagination is needed to see what this boat will be when it is finished: a classic Small Island double-ender, gaff-rigged, the mast stepped well forward. Made for fishing and transport. Sturdy, and capable of surviving the storms off Small Island. He stands in the doorway of his shed, smoking and waiting for the boat to show him what to do next.
    He flicks his cigarette through the doorway into the dark, orange sparks pinwheeling as they fall. He follows the pinwheel out into the darkness, crushes the end of the cigarette under his boot, buttons his jacket and sets off for his mother’s house. As he walks, he begins to envision how he will get the boat down the bluff and into the water. He will make a set of rollers, made of pine logs stripped of their bark. He will tie the boat to trees at each stage to prevent it from overpowering him and shooting down the slope. As he lets the boat slide down the bluff,he’ll take each roller out from under the stern and move it to the bow. Done alone, it will be a long, hard piece of work.
    The door of his mother’s house hangs open. Around the house is the smell of wet earth. He walks up the path to the front door and climbs three wooden steps.
    Inside, a kerosene lamp hangs from a beam. His mother sits in a circle of yellow light under the lamp, round embroidery frame in one hand, needle in the other. The smell of whiskey greets him like an old friend. She looks up, her face and nose broad, gray hair pulled back. Her round metal spectacles are tilted on her nose; one of the earpieces is missing. In spite of the fact that he hasn’t been here for more than a year, she doesn’t look surprised to see him. On the floor, outside the circle of yellow light, he can make out flat empty bottles lying on their sides.
    â€œYou’re still sewing.”
    â€œ Of course I’m still sewing. How do you think I live? You think I get money from your father? Or from you?”
    She lists to her left, spits and pushes the needle into the fabric. Holding the hoop carefully in her right hand, she reaches down with her left, brings a bottle up into the light and takes a pull without offering a drink to her son. He has been staying away from alcohol while he builds his boat, and it’s hard for him to smell it without wantingsome. He isn’t usually a man who can have one drink and easily stop. If he takes one, he’s likely to be drunk for weeks, never finishing his boat and missing the summer winds favorable for Big Island.
    â€œWhere is he?”
    â€œWho?” She sets the bottle down in the same place on the floor so she can reach it without looking, pulls the needle out and resumes her work.
    â€œYou know who I mean.”
    â€œWhere do you think? Up to Gallagher’s Point with his whore. ” She spits again on the same spot. The needle, poised above the embroidery, dives down and in. For all the anger, her hands are sure.
    He stands foolish and awkward, feeling shamed by her brutal lack of interest in him. Her face is fleshy, cracked and reddened. After all