EIGHTEEN
She had seen it before, both bigger and smaller, not propped as this on a rack of crossed timbers, but hanging in the air as if in a dream, the dark wood burnished and curving to a high narrow prow, the stem sheer as a knife, higher maybe than this was, although the boat wasn't much longer.
"My Dad really made this?"
Her voice echoed in the tin building. Flynn was walking around her, around the boat, touching the seams and the places where the wood curved up from the bottom in a smooth slope that reminded you somehow of snakes.
"Make it? he said, "No..." But then he changed his mind just as he ducked under the bottom of the boat near the far timbers, crawling under and coming back toward her, his voice softer.
"I suppose you could say he did," he said, "She wasn't much but a promise til he started at her. Didn't know a damn thing about them either, though Lord knows he tried to act like it."
He turned to the old troll who had let them in the building.
"Isn't that so, Jess?"
The old man grinned and spat. "Expect so, Jackie," he said, cackling just like Willard, "Frenchy feller talked himself into bein a shipwright... Though it took a heap a talk to convince himself he knew 'bout beveled lapstrake..."
It made her mad how he laughed, although she knew what they meant about Yves. You never could catch him pretending he didn't know anything, no matter what. It was just his way, though, and probably part of what made him and Emma split. Emma just didn't like lies.
Molly was starting to believe that every old croaker got to the point where he did nothing but chew and spit and cackle, moving around on spooky silent feet like spiders. This one and Willard both, you'd think they were born with sneakers instead of feet.
Leave it to Flynn, she had thought when they got to Fisher's Landing, leave it to Flynn to find the ugliest place on the river to keep his boat. From outside, the tin building was washed with rust in big splashes coming down from the roof, another set working up from the ground like brown teeth. Most of the windows were replaced with white sheets of metal with red flying horses and the ones that weren't were so grundged up with dirt and grease that it didn't matter. Even the old dock where they tied up was half-way falling into the water; an old fashioned gas pump with no hose was rusting away next to the water and the deck boards were so rotten they chipped away and fell through some places where you walked.
"What happened to Floyd?" she asked the old man.
"How's that?" he said.
Flynn was crawling under the boat again, starting his second time around it.
"Floyd!" she said loud enough to blast his deaf, hairy ears.
If he cut out those little tufts of grey hair from his ears, maybe he would hear some shit now and again, she thought.
Just then he cackled again. They must think it's boss to cackle, Molly thought, real popular riff with the old codgers, cackling is.
"Nothing happened," the troll said, "He never was, so nothing could happen."
"Your name's Jess," she said, "the sign outside says Floyd's Marine".
"Yup," he said, like it explained everything.
Cackle again and you're dead, she thought. I'll drag you out there by your hairy ears and drive your head down through your crumbling, rotting dock.
For a minute she thought he was coming toward her, the way he looked at her and smiled.
Pat my head and you're really dead, you old fart!
Instead he crawled off after Flynn.
"She worthy?"
"What?" the troll yelled.
"She worthy?" Flynn repeated loudly.
Cackle. Choke. Spit. Then, "Thought you was asking 'sea worthy,'" he said, "Thought you had big plans, boy."
"Could," Flynn said, "Is she?"
"Prob'ly she is," Jesse said, "But she need a sweep for sure then, and fair weather, and a helluva lotta luck with you at the helm..."
He just about cackled enough to die then, just creaming his jeans about his lame joke. And there was Flynn laughing along with him, laughing at himself really, you'd think big people had no sense sometimes.
Still she had been surprised to see how neat the old man kept the place inside, how -- except for him spitting -- the floor was clean enough to eat off of, and how the whole place smelled like tar and oil and something else like cotton, but real clean, clean as the ropes coiled and hung on the pegs along the wall, clean as the beautiful, smooth boat high on its padded timbers, the soon to be setting sun flooding in upon it when the old man opened the big sliding door.
She had seen it before in the slides Mendel showed for mythology. There was a boat in Oslo that they used to bury a king, only it ended up on ice and so they saved it in this museum, hanging it in the air. Mendel showed it to show what it was like when the mighty Thor went fishing for the big serpent when he was a kid, and she had another slide that showed a picture of him fishing, part of the carving from an old stone cross somewhere in England. He held his hammer in the air and in the other hand he held this giant line to fish with. Under the boat big huge fish pushed against the bull's head he used for bait.
It was real eerie. Both Thor and this other guy who was also a giant, and whose bull it was before Thor twisted its head off, and who later chickened out and cut the line and let the monster get away, were bald, their heads exactly like eggs. Still, nobody much laughed, probably because there was a Superhero named Thor in the comics and so he went over real well, not near as bad as that faggot Apollo.
Mendel said the story about Thor fishing for the serpent showed the wisdom of the Norse, it meant that even the gods weren't ready to assume their powers when they were young.
"All young people wrestle against the elements," she had said, "And eventually, like Thor, they do win their struggles. It is just that you have to wait until the time is right."
Something about her saying that had seemed right at the time, though Molly got to wondering about whether Mendel wasn't being just a little bit of a bullshitter when she said they'd win for sure.
Besides showing that the carving on the stone cross was pretty realistic, Mendel said the real boat showed that the Norse weren't the dorks everybody thought they were, although she didn't put it quite like that. Then she asked if anybody saw some movie from a thousand years ago with Kirk Douglas or some other cretin getting burned up on a boat after he died.
He wouldn't, she thought, he wouldn't, would he?
Flynn and old Jesse Floyd were way in the back of the building up on a wooden balcony thing, above where the ropes hung on the wall. She shouted across at them.
"How long's this thing, Flynn?"
He was pulling something out of a big drawer built into the wall, and he paused and consulted with the troll before he answered.
"Twenty three feet exactly," he shouted, "Why?"
"The king's boats were twenty to thirty!"
"That's nice," he yelled and went back to helping Jesse.
They were hauling out sails from the drawer, letting them drape down over the rail of the balcony like big banners. Big jerk probably thought she meant someone named King, or maybe didn't hear her at all. She walked down the floor toward the balcony end.
"You think I'm gonna go out in this with you, you're nuts, Flynn."
"Yes," he said.
"I mean it," she said, "I'll call my mother right now and have her come get me."
Flynn poked his head over the rail.
"What will you call?" he asked, "Chippewa Bay dockside?"
He laughed then.
"Don't worry," he said, "The only sailing I'm gonna do now will be to see if I remember how to turn her. Then I thought we'd tow her back with us, that is, if you don't mind that..."
"You're not going to sail without me, are you?"
She heard the cackling come from behind the sailcloth, then saw the old man's head next to Flynn's.
"What are you staring at, Floyd-boy?"
For a minute she thought he was going to spit on her, the way he stared down at her.
"Looking at a natural woman, I expect," he said, his voice surprisingly nice, "Anybody who can jibe like that in short water, she got to be a woman... Wanted to check you out again, make sure my eyes ain't deceived me none about your age."
"What do you see?" she asked.
He ducked his head away and spit on the deck of the balcony.
"A woman fair enough..." he said, "But a girl yet in the hull."
She floated on air.
Wouldn't you just know, she thought, it's what comes of hanging around Flynn and his band of merry maniacs. Got so used to Willard's crap, never noticed the old man was flirting all the while. He really was sweet, when she thought back, not quite like her grandpere LaChaise, who she always remembered in his ridiculous swimming suit, his thing hanging down in a little nylon sack, spindly little legs and duck feet, a tight round belly and muscles in his arms, always smoothing back his black hair or fingering his pencil moustach. And not at all like Emma's father, changing from his black banker's vest to a green tartan vest on weekends, the shoes always polished so hard that the leather cracked, his sad blue eyes gleaming far away behind his face whenever, uneasily, he hugged her, the eyes watching her the same way they watched Emma.
But dead now, she thought, gone behind the grandmother she never met, but who seemed something like Bertie the way Emma talked about them.
And soon Esther will be dead too, Molly knew, and she'll know no more than I do now when she goes. Which isn't much, except probably there is a heaven, and it's something like a party where everybody's there but you can't go home. And there are friends in the air, if you believe Emma, and they shine on like the stars which aren't really there, only the light from them burning a million years ago.
Suddenly she felt real sad again and she wanted to go out. Flynn and Mr. Jesse were downstairs again, wheeling out a long wooden trailer thing and maneuvering it this way and that to steer it under the cross beams.
She slid the huge door open a crack and started to go.
"Take care on that dock, young woman," Mr. Jesse said, looking up at her, "Tis fair to rotted away by now, I'm afraid."
She nodded and left. Flynn was still wheeling the trailer thing under the boat.
She went way down to the end of the dock and, when that wasn't far enough, she got into the rental boat and sat way at the back looking down through the kaleidoscope skim of oil that floated out from the motor, watching the sunfish or pumpkin eyes or whatever you wanted to call them nip at the pieces of stale corn chips she crumbled into the water.
They took what you gave them, she thought, and the little ones got more because they were faster, although now and then a big fat one would shoot out from the shadows under the dock and spear a fat crumb, chasing away the the rest for a minute until they swirled back.
When you looked real close, you could see the tiniest little minnows swimming in and out of the sun eyes, so tiny and silver that you almost never noticed them, and yet all of them swimming in patterns, first one way then the other, flicking forward and back.
In this way she forgot.
Flynn brought the boat out with a big whoop that made her stand and clap her hands despite herself, as if this launching was a goddamn big deal she had been waiting all her life for. The boat rocked when she stood and she had to slip back down and grab the sides so she wouldn't fall out.
Out in the light the skiff was more beautiful than you could have imagined seeing it up on the timbers. There were two boss looking caned seats facing each other at the rear, with spindles on the woven chair backs like old antiques and the top of the back and the arms all one piece of bentwood like Emma's rocking chair. Another woven seat bottom sat on the middle of the front bench near the pins for the oars.
All around the seating compartment there was a raised rail of inlaid wood in a pattern of pegs and diamonds. The whole cockpit seemed held together with pegs, even the curved wooden straps that held the benches for the seats to the ribs of the sides. There was a little deck in back and a bigger one in front, closed off around the cockpit kind of like a kayak, both decks inlaid with thin fanning wedges of honey wood in a sunburst pattern. The pins for the oars and the rings for the ropes at the front and the sides were polished brass, as was the handle at the top of the centerboard.
It was varnished inside and out, the dark wood gleaming. On the face of the rail at the front of the cockpit, dim little inlaid wooden letters said "A. Bain --Clayton, NY," and under that in smaller but brighter inlaid letters, "Restoration : Y. LaChaise --Gananoque," then "J. Flynn, Capt."
"My father," Flynn explained when she touched the letters.
"Mine too," she said and laughed.
It was just like her father to lie even when he signed a boat; he never lived in Gananoque but he always liked that name.
Jesse wheeled another trailer out, this one loaded with the sail and mast and oars. He had a coil of the new rope over his shoulder, and he payed it out several times between his outstretched arms, measuring the painter. Tying the free end to the brass fitting at the bow, he cut to the measure with a huge folding knife from his pocket, then folded the blade back in and folded out a chromed spike which he used to splice off the loose strands of hemp at the cut end.
As he wove the rope back into itself, he talked softly to Flynn.
"When you want to bring her about, you rush foreward smackdab to the mast cone, remember. That'll bury her bow for certain and rise her stern up and into the wind. Be damn certain when she sail shakes out in the wind you get your butt aft and raise her up. You follow?"
Words, Flynn thought, all words, however wonderful. Can't see anything to follow til you feel the wind in your hand.
"Mostly," he said.
"You mess up, you use your sweeps," Jesse said, his eyes following the spike in and out of the hemp. "Want me to handle the stepping up?"
"No," Flynn said, and he went to step the mast, careful to place the brass partners.
My father did this, Flynn thought, stepped and unstepped, spliced lines and wove his own nets, carved plugs, hammered spoons, tied leader, replaced eyelets and ferrules, broke down reels and motors and put them back together again. I have done little in my life aside from throwing baseballs, driving cars, riding airplanes. Now am I asked to decide on someone's life.
The girl's father knew more about how life actually works, tapping his little wedges into place to fit a board to a predestined curve, carving and fitting the walnut letters of his inlaid name.
Jesse kept after him.
"You using the running block, Flynn?"
"No."
Jesse nodded his head without looking up from the rope.
"Have to splice off another line for you then," he said, "So's you don't lose her coming about...Better that way, nonetheless, guage the wind against your hand..."
"We don't have time to splice another," Flynn said, "Just wrap it for me and gunk it up with glue. You needn't worry that I'll drop her."
"Speaking of which, the young woman got a life vest?"
"Just cushions is all they give you, in the boat."
"Fix you both up then," Jesse looked up, tying it off, "Give the little lady a gift with my compliments. Vest and the whole doo, foul weather gear and sailing gloves and all. My pleasure," he said, cutting Flynn off, "When this one's gone won't be no more Floyd's..."
He smiled over at Molly when he said the name, it was a joke between them now.
"Flynn here's been my sole customer for years now, young lady. Made a mighty profit of him, didn't I, Flynn?"
No, Flynn thought, it was me who made the profit from this deal. You kept something alive for me, Jesse, and I owe you for that.
He had sailed her then, and not half bad in the smooth four knot breeze, a little slow hitting the bow on a tack, a little clumsy getting the centerboard up and down, but satisfactory generally, making her turn on the breeze, keeping clear of the boom, sailing slack but with a fair plane, a decent wakeline. Feeling good enough about it that he could spare an arm to wave at the child and the old man arm in arm on the far dock.
Took in water only twice. Once when he couldn't get enough purchase for hiking out on a leeward tack and took some water, a second time capsizing her on purpose to slow her at the dock, feeling her sink to slow like a huge waterski.
The capsize had them both laughing at him, but it served its purpose. Not going to sail her downriver, he thought, just tow her home.
"Hadn't meant it to be like this, you see," he told Emma on the phone, "Hadn't meant to sail her home."
He hadn't. It was maybe six o'clock by the time they left Jesse's with the skiff under tow, maybe twenty nautical miles down to Chippewa with the throttle open as far as she'd go, the skiff riding well with an oar lashed for a rudder. They'd have made good time if the rental boat rode as well as the skiff. As it was they had the Evinrude rattling and smoking, pushing against their own wake, settling her down when there was too much traffic so as not to have the skiff take on water from the chop. It was probably an unnecessary caution since she rode in good trim, down slightly by the stern, the bow high and buoyant in the calm of their wake, the weight of the mast and gear enough to hold her trim.
Flynn's arm ached only mildly from handling the line in the test sail. All in all he felt extravagently good, better than he ought to. It was kind of exciting. People waved from passing boats, saluting the skiff, and Molly was back to twenty questions again, sitting proudly, courtesy of Jesse, in her new ancient cork-filled life vest and her oilskin sou'wester, the slicker folded into a bundle on her lap.
What kind of things did he talk about with her father?
Did Yves tell fibs?
How long had he known Jesse?
Did he think there was a heaven?
Could fish smell things?
Had he ever tried to hurt someone throwing a baseball at their head?
Wasn't Boldt Castle really sappy?
Did stars ever die from the sky?
Why had he been so weird on the way upriver?
Could they sail it just once, if Emma said yes?
Then Emma wasn't there and he could see no reason not to, with the breeze picking up as night fell, and the sky still light, the water smooth lavender.
They stopped for a moment at the store where they had rented the boat, getting two pepsis and two hot dogs for four dollars, Flynn buying a couple of battery powered running lights, an aerosol horn, flares and an anchor on sort of a lark. A sad-eyed woman in a gardening apron waited on them, giving Molly a couple of chocolate bars and a single rose as gifts.
It was her day for gifts. Especially, Flynn thought, when the man she's with drops fifty bucks on impulse.
They didn't know then that Emma had been there and gone, sent away by mistake because the woman's husband had pulled the wrong ticket on a previous rental return, and then put her note to them in his pocket without telling his wife.
Flynn hadn't meant to sail her. But the skiff hissed lightly as she caught the wind, Molly crooning to herself and leaning sideways to let him pass foreward each time he had to bring her about; and Flynn began to catch himself in the rhythm of it, playing the sail out, hauling her tight, old lessons coming back to him, more recent lessons beginning to make sense.
Now and again he had to row her around when he missed a tack, but otherwise they ran easy, leaving a slight wake behind her as she ran on the fair southwestern breezes from the shore.
They had made Oak Point on the down leg when he knew he would have to bring her about for the way home, jibing across a stiff breeze to make the turn, running fore and aft for all the tacks to bring them back along the leeward side of Chippewa Point.
By then his arm and shoulder were aching like middle innings from the line and centerboard, and he was half afraid to jibe, and more afraid of the Chippewa lee. Anyway they were running well into the twilight, making maybe seven, eight knots, Flynn figured, and the girl was back in earnest to her twenty questions.
Seven knots would put them into Morristown by the time it was pitch dark, they could tie up there and call Emma, be back before midnight and greet Wolfman, wake early in the morning and attend to Esther.
It was a miscalculation, they were making only four knots at best in a fair breeze and a narrow river under a half moon, but they were running fair and he did not want to lose her now that he knew the feel of the wind in the sheet, the pause and dip as she slacked and lowered, the rush and tug as she climbed back on the wake. Flynn felt like they could sail forever, and he wasn't really sure if he could make her stop without swamping her again.
As night settled he set the forward running light, taking it forward in a slight hop on a mild tack, holding the sheet close as he bent to set it, dropping the centerboard again as he slid aft in the dark.
It made him grin to do this, by now it was all a dance in the dark, the thwarts and benches printed in his mind, Molly's form like some breathing dark. He set the aft light and sat, letting the sheet line extend his arm.
There were fishermen out tonight, you could see the lights up and down the line. With his free hand he fished through Jim's tacklebox, setting the light on its cover like his father used to. He grabbed the girl's rod and chewed off the leader, attaching a ten inch braided wire, tying the knot carefully with the free hand, holding it firm with the hand wrapped to the sheet. He hunted and found a number four gold spinner with what looked to be number two treble hooks trimmed in white bucktail, a good rig for muskie with an extra splitshot to make it run deep.
"Going after the white whale, Flynn?"
She had moved from the seat facing forward to the seat facing aft.
"Maybe," he said and laughed, "Maybe."
She told him the story of Thor and Midgard and what her teacher said. He let the line play out until the spinner ran deep and the set the drag and reached the rod up to her.
"See if she's right, your teacher," he said.
"I thought you could tell me..."
They were running free, the wake splashing off the freeboards, the sheet taut and everything in good trim. It was a sledding silence.
"Why did you think my mother would trick you?"
Flynn watched the silvery water slide by, the half moon there in its hollows, the whole shore sighing as they slid by.
"It's all too neat, isn't it?" he asked her, "Emma just happens to be on that road, just happens to work at what she does. I just happen to be unable to function."
"You're functioning fine now," she said, "You are weird, Flynn, you know that?"
"I suppose," he said.
"You ever think that it might have been you who planned it?"
"What?" he said, the bow dipped and then rose again, the breeze hesitating. He felt the sheet go taut again.
"All of it," she said, "You knew Emma from way back, she even helped your father. You're on your way home to see about your sister, and you see Emma on the highway, her dippy car broke down. It gives you an excuse to lose it..."
It was all a story, like Thor and the boat.
"Which is it?" he asked her, "Hardy Boys or young Sigmund Freud?"
"What?"
"Your questions, you sound like a bad detective."
He felt the skiff tip as she bent, then right as she scooped the water at his face, the silver flashing.
"You're so full of shit, Flynn!"
"Watch the potty-mouth, pre-pube," he said. They both laughed.
"She'll be pissed at you," Molly yawned, "We're not going back, are we, Flynn?"
He could tell from her voice she was getting tired, water did that, running in the damp air, the lulling sound of the hull racing on its plane.
Depends on what you mean as back, natural woman, depends on what you mean as back. There was truth in what she said, it was a plausible story. They were going downriver now on a long dark chute toward the ocean, now and then a long tack taking them over the line of the channel to Canada, another tack taking them back. Everything wound in and out. The stem cut the water under, the line ran on a deep angle to the spinner, the moon sailed eastward, already morning gained in the east over the ocean. Emma's fears wove with her daughter's, Flynn's with them both and with his sister. Bertie sat alone with Willard and Wolfman at her side, a sleepy nurse watched the green eye of the screen that was Esther's life. Flynn's child swam like a grotesque tadpole in whatever was heaven, persued by the tears of his mother like the diamond splash of wake wash over the gunwale. A woman floated on a rubber raft somewhere in the water; Jim's lights illuminated the river, sunfish swimming in and out of the light, bullheads lurking in the muck at its edges.
"Gonna marry her, Flynn? Gonna marry Emma?"
She was yawning deeply now, slumped over in the woven seat, the slicker tucked under her head as a pillow.
I can't, he thought, I've struck her, no woman can trust her life to a man who's hit her.
"No," he said softly, "No, it isn't right."
"Why not!" she said sharly and raised her head, "Why can't life be right once? Why can't it end happy and pretty and right?"
"Because..." he said, hearing the wind slap the sheet then let it go, the water splashing, the drag on the reel cranking slightly with the following swell.
"Because there is more to it than love," he said, "more than a series of however many days. There's knowing things, " he was trying to find the words, "There's days and weeks of knowing things involved in it. You see how someone walks and combs her hair, see what makes her laugh, witness her crying... It's very complicated.... groceries and music and laundry and stopped sinks and oil changes... turning the channels, walking up stairs, making the bed again in the morning, shaking the sheets out...watching them billow and then settle, smoothing them across the mattress... I'm used to maids, you see, hang a little plastic sign on the doorknob, wait in the lobby while someone carries your bags... I don't know things..."
I am a foolish man, Flynn thought, to say this to a girl. He listened to the wind and prayed she slept.
"Crap," she whispered, "You know them if you can say them..."
She knew he knew it was right.
It was that with with, Jim, he thought, when he came back, what killed him. Things. He wasn't used to things, took it off the road near Sparrowhawk Point, the car flying, sunk in water.
"Tell me about your brother," she said.
It was not a dream, he asked her to repeat it. She was nearly sleeping. "Jim," she said, protesting,
"Tell me about Jim."
"We are a great and beautiful family," Flynn said, "fortunate people, all in all. We have lived rich lives, even Esther, although we died young."
"You aren't dead, Flynn, you asshole. You didn't all die young."
And he knew then she was right. There was he thought she knew no doubt from the first, the road north and seeing her, the card about Esther in his hand. The child knew he knew.
She was right to say it. Jim had come home drunk, Mama was already dying though no one knew. She had a predisposition to it, you see, the vapors settling into her lungs bringing a mild case of pneumonia.
That wasn't right, it was a story, she died three years after Jim.
She was dying, each Spring unable to get her breath, and Jim came back drunk, the war was over and he was always drunk. Their father met him at the door, it made Nell cry. She didn't like them at each other's throats. You know things, Joey, she would say, Jim doesn't know them yet, none of them do, not even Jackie, not certainly poor Esther. His mother was dying like the sliding, dimming moon, the water turning darker.
It wasn't true, only how we remember.
Flynn held her hand, it was long and cool, the nails colored silver like the moon. There was a scuffle in the hallway, shouts.
Go to them, Jackie. Your father is worried to death about him, it makes him crazy to see him like this. He wants so much for everything to be all right.
He was too late. Their father had decked him. He stood looking at his bloody hand. One punch and he took all Jim really had to fall back on.
I remember sailing in, Jack. They made us jump into a firefight so's we would get the idea we were there for real. After however many hours in the air from Okinawa, the compartment steamy on account of the lousy ventilation system, we were ready for some night air. I got them all out and then I jumped and the chute popped with a giant whacking noise. It was all silence then, floating down into the jungle night. Come all the way from San Francisco on a single flight with refueling stops, then floating down into the silent night.
I saw the tracers before I heard them screaming. My kiddies hanging below me while they shot them from the air. I pissed my pants, Jack, I'm not afraid to tell you I pissed my pants. Here I was the jump master, head honcho, hot shit Ranger and they're shooting my babies below me, getting ready for me...
Next morning someone had some Asian sunshine, a little rush of grey powder, mix em up and smile... I started then, Jack, and ain't about to stop yet.
He heard the sheet pop, Flynn dead, felt the silence take them downwind, sliding along the night, the dark chute to the sea.
Saw him laying there and Pop crying over his bloody hand.
You fucking asshole, you're killing her. You're killing them.
You're killing you, Flynn thought, and I'm sorry.
For we are a beautiful family, a trail of silvery foam follows us as we glide through the water.
They made it somewhere near St. Lawrence Park by early morning. Flynn's arm and eyes were worn and he couldn't go any longer, couldn't find the energy to anchor then wade in and call her. The girl.... the young woman slept, her legs curled over the bentwood arms, her arm over her face to ward off the insects.
She couldn't sleep. She thought of Eric the Red, he was here once, here in America, left little copper coins the shape of the sun up somewhere near Maine. It was a long way to sea, like Eric the Red, like Jason and the Golden Fleece. There were mosquitoes everywhere and she couldn't sleep. Heard Flynn crying, heard him gather in the sail and tie it back, drop the anchor with a plooking splash, heard him crank the line in.
"Whatta ya know, a big old bullhead!"
Midgard. The stars rocking high above her, the water still rocking in her stomach when you stopped.
She said she wished there was a radio.
So Flynn sang to her.
It's only a paper moon shining over a cardboard sky.
"We'll meet you at the hospital," he told Emma on the phone, "Get everyone dressed and meet us for a celebration."
"Meet us at the ballfields," he said, "That will be better. We're all alright, Emma, we really are."
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