The Sea is a Thief by David Parmelee Read Free Book Online Page B

lantern, glassed all around.  A metal smokestack and a wire handle protruded from the top.  The thing was meant to be carried—but it was two feet high at least.  What on earth was it for?  Whoever built the lantern and the boat had a particular purpose in mind.
    A shadow fell on the cedar hull.  Sam turned to find Anna, a plate of biscuits in her hand.  “I saw the door to Father’s workshop open…” she began.  
    â€œI’m sorry, I was looking for lumber, and…”
    She interrupted him gently. “No need to apologize, Mr. Dreher.  Are you hungry?”  
    â€œA sailor is always hungry,” he replied.  She set the plate on the workbench.  
    â€œFor you, then.”  He took a biscuit.  It was still hot, and smelled of fresh butter.  
    â€œBless you, Miss Daisey,” he said, devouring it quickly.  Anna laughed.  
    â€œThe United States Navy doesn’t feed its carpenters?”
    â€œNot like this, Miss Daisey.”   Anna brought an empty cask from underneath the workbench and then pulled out the wooden stool.  
    â€œSit down,” she said.  They sat in silence. It was warm in the little building, and for Sam, warmer now.  
    â€œThis was your father’s workshop, then?” he asked.  
    â€œIt was.”
    â€œAnd this boat?”
    â€œAlso his.”
    â€œWhat work did he do, Miss Daisey?”
    Silence again.  He was afraid that the question was a poor one.
    â€œWhat did Reverend Carter tell you about my father, Mr. Dreher?”
    â€œHe told me very little, Miss Daisey; only that you lost him some time ago,” he replied. “I am sorry.”  She looked him straight in the eyes, measuring the sincerity of his words.  Her gaze shifted slowly to the boat.  She stood, resting her hands on the dusty hull.  Her fingers, long and slim like her mother’s, moved to the gap left by the shattered planks.  The cuff of white eyelet at her sleeve caught on a splinter, and she shook it loose.  
    â€œFather was a market gunner,” she told him.  His face told her that the words held no meaning for him.   “He hunted ducks and geese for the market.”  She indicated the decoys in the rafters. “These were the things he used.”  Sam began to make sense of it: Mary Daisey, a young widow; this broken small boat; the market gunner.  Anna’s father had been killed suddenly, then—an accident.  
    â€œPlease show me,” he asked.  
    â€œWait here,” she said, leaving him.
    Anna returned with an oilcloth pouch tucked under her arm.  Carefully, she laid it on the workbench, untying the cord and opening the oilcloth to reveal a stack of drawings, each a different size.  
    â€œThis was my father,” she said.  She brought out a pencil drawing of a young man with a mustache.  He recognized it as a copy of the photograph in Mary Daisey’s workroom.  It was remarkably well done.  
    â€œDid you draw this, Miss Daisey?’  She nodded.  He was astonished.  No one he knew could make drawings such as this.  She placed the sketch carefully behind the others in the bundle, revealing a scene of a man with a knife in his hand, carving a smooth, oval block of wood.  The man in this sketch resembled the other picture above the mantel, older and more somber.    
    â€œ He carved the decoys he used,” she explained.  “Here in the workshop, in good weather, or in the kitchen, where my brother works now. All the market gunners do, but his were more beautiful.”  
    She stood and stepped onto the cask, reaching into a familiar nook of the rafters for a particular decoy and handing it to Sam.  It was a canvasback drake.  Its russet-red head had been shaped to a soft peak by a practiced hand.  The bill with its delicate nostrils seemed ready to open; its