Of Song and Water (2 page)

He remembers how his cheek kept stinging and his heart continued pounding and his breathing wouldn't slow down, having been caught off guard after Levina, a girl he barely knew and would never see again, had invited him in, and her mom had poured two glasses of milk and arranged fresh cookies on a plate. Levina had said, “This is Jason. He lives close to the water and has two sailboats, and he says that someday I might be able to go out on the big one with him and his grandfather.”

“Are you sure?” said Levina's mom. “Why would anyone need two boats?”

“One belongs to my dad,” he said. “The other one – the big one – belongs to my grandfather. He keeps it here but lives in Saginaw.”

“Oh, I see,” said Levina's mom. “But my baby girl can't swim.”

He gulped his milk and put down the glass. “I'll swim for both of us,” he said.

They finished their cookies and Levina walked him to the front door. In the hall were photographs filled with black faces, most with dark hair and others with white.

“See ya,” he said.

“When?” said Levina. “When school starts, you won't come around.”

“Why wouldn't I?” he said.

He was already on the front walk, having heard the door close behind him, when Levina's big brother, a muscular boy with a midnight face, decided to block the way.

“You're Jason Moore,” said Levina's brother. “What are you doing here? You slumming?” He narrowed his eyes. “My sister ain't for sale.”

He didn't like the smell of the older boy's breath. He didn't know what to do or say, so he stepped back and began to smile. That's when the boy slapped him, the open hand landing with enough force to turn the head of a statue.

 

THE VODKA warms the back of his throat. He considers the chores that need doing, but now, after the exertion of climbing aboard, he's lost his ambition.

He sits here two or three evenings a week, smelling the canvas and drinking vodka. He looks forward to it. He likes the boat resting in its cradle, no pitching or rolling. No immediate demands. With tanks cleared, engine drained, and compartments left open to the air, it's a good place to think, to hunker down. He likes being hard to find.

He comes to the marina straight from work in an effort to avoid the kids who collect signatures or sell magazine subscriptions, to escape the bow-tied Christians who, for the redemption of his soul, say that they'll provide a personal introduction to Jesus. There'd been no talk of solicitors, religious or otherwise, when he submitted his application for the house – a two-bedroom ranch with an attached garage – and the landlord, a woman anxious to reveal her spiritual fervor, had kept her ecstasy under wraps, kept things low-key until she had a signed lease and the first month's rent.

He'd lived in the house for forty days when, as a concerned proprietor, she made her first unannounced visit. She wore a white tank top over a deep,
coconut-oil tan. The slope of her breasts led to a book, a Bible, which she squeezed with both arms like a child. She created a place for the Bible on the kitchen table after brushing bread crumbs and granules of salt onto the floor.

Later, when she came by again, her tan darker and her hair shorter than before, she remarked that the Bible hadn't been moved. She put a sticker on the wall above the phone. “This is my number,” she said. “For emergencies.”

On her third visit, she wore tight shorts and a thin T-shirt and asked him if he'd accepted Jesus as his personal savior.

Now he tries to avoid her by leaving the house in darkness and going to the boat as often as obligations and weather allow. On some nights, he conjures up the scent she left behind and the moist warmth of her breathing, but in Humbug's yard, surrounded by snow, he drops the fantasy and sails high and dry. He keeps an almost perfect solitude.

 

HEATHER'S the only one who visits him here, and he suspects, though she'd hardly admit it, that duty is a large part of her devotion. What choice does she have? “You're my dad,” she's fond of saying, “for better or worse.”

He feels too often that she's trying to save him, if not from loneliness then from the bald realization that he's a middle-aged failure. Exactly when she became so wise and sophisticated is impossible to say.

His daughter, already seventeen, drives her own car and waits tables at the Lighthouse Diner, a young woman so blessed with her mom's best features that it makes him wonder what part he played in bringing her into the world. Her figure is Maureen's – only more so. She has her mother's red hair, her freckles, and her green eyes. Their smiles are the same too, but lately Maureen obscures this detail with a fixed expression, an artful mix of disappointment and disgust. Naturally, she reserves this face mostly for him – for terse meetings in coffee shops where they talk about parenting or money and where she stubbornly calls him Jason, as if Coleman had never been.

Heather, on the other hand, smiles easily. She's in the habit of stopping by on weekends. When she doesn't catch him at home, she drives over to Humbug and usually finds him on the boat.

He wants her to turn up now, despite it being the middle of the week, a school night, but he knows the notion would go against her better judgment. He moves his foot and knocks over a plastic bottle; it rolls across the floor of the cockpit. It's the one Heather brought up here on Saturday, he thinks.

She held out the bottle as soon as she came aboard. “Want some? It's spring water from a faraway mountain.”

“Too pure for me,” he said.

He led her down into the cabin and they sat across from each other at the teak table, an electric heater keeping out the frost and damp. She spoke in a low, soothing voice, as if she were visiting a sick friend in the hospital. She touched the top of his hand and the swollen joints of his fingers. The warmth of her skin astonished him. She went on about her plans for college and made a passing reference to her new boyfriend. The part of him that felt fatherly pushed for taking a little interest in the guy, but the larger part, the not-so-fatherly side, argued for writing the kid off. As always, he skirted the issue, choosing to avoid questions that showed him up as defensive or absurdly jealous.

Heather reached into her bag. “I bought you a present,” she said, pulling out a CD. “I know you don't listen to music anymore, but I heard this and thought of you.”

Maybe a year ago, when they were looking at his old LPs, he'd made the mistake of telling her that he'd stopped listening to music. Since then she'd bought him a dozen or so albums, an attempt, no doubt, to stave off his precipitous decline.

“And the next time we're at the house,” she said, “would you play me a song? Something ancient and slow.”

“It's hard to do,” he said, rubbing the heel of his left hand.

“You're lying,” she said.

“Maybe. I haven't changed the strings in a while.”

“You told me old strings are bad for a guitar.”

“That's right.”

“And rough on the ears, too.”

“I guess no one listens better than you.”

She smiled. “That's what you always say.”

Too much talk about music, he thought. He longed to give her some useful advice, a few words she could save for later. “As for college,” he said, “you'll figure out the right move. Don't worry about me or your mother. Take yourself as far from here as you want – as far as you can. Don't look back.”

 

“NOT SO fast,” says the sandpaper voice. “There's more to it than speed. When I say attack, it isn't about fighting. It's about feeling.”

He plays the phrase again, slower this time, alert only to the sensation of strings beneath his fingers. For a moment, the sound flows from him like water. When he starts pushing the tempo, Otis shakes his head.

“You're like those boys in the Big Apple,” says Otis. “In a hurry. You think you got somewhere to go.”

He wonders how Otis could live in a place like New York and then give it up and settle here. Why would you do that? he thinks. If I ever get to a city, I'll stay there. There's no place to play in a little town.

After collecting his sheet music and closing his guitar case, he points to a picture on the wall. “Is that New York?”

Otis rubs the gray stubble on his face, his hand a little unsteady. “That's Grand Circus Park,” he says. “Detroit.”

“Why don't you live there?”

“I would – I was born just a few blocks away. But I left when I was your age, and when I finally went back, it was gone.”

He looks at Otis looking at the picture.

“You have to find a safe haven,” says Otis. “If you can't find a real place, then you have to make one, up here.” He taps his temple with a long finger.

“See you next week, Mr. Young – I mean – ” The screen door of the studio slams. “I appreciate your time.”

On this day, like all the others, he stops and glances back to see Otis standing at the door in his crisp white shirt and black pants. The silence is awkward. He wants to fill up the space, say something to ease the tension, but always in that moment the old man turns and disappears.

 

LATER, three of his classmates surround him in the school lavatory.

“We saw you,” says one of the boys. The others look on with suspicion.

“So what?”

“You're supposed to be cuttin' grass.”

“So what?”

“Cuttin' his grass is bad enough. Now you're goin' inside.”

He dries his hands and steps toward the door but can't get by the others, big boys with strong Midwestern shoulders.

“Are you that nigger's nigger?” says the tall one.

The boys laugh.

“What do you do in there?”

“Nothing.”

“Does he take you out to his little shack?”

“No.”

Putting his head down, he tries to squeeze between two of the boys, but sharp fingers dig into his arms.

“For Christ's sake, Jason, we know you're lying. I suppose when you're out there on the edge of town you think we can't see you. But we can. We've all seen you, even when you said you weren't going.” The boy pretends to be
thinking hard. “I know, maybe you can clear up a little rumor we've heard. Is that man your real daddy?”

The lavatory rings with laughter.

“No.”

“You can't deny everything,” says the first boy who spoke. “How do you expect to stay in our good graces if you don't tell us the truth?”

He struggles against their grip. “He's a teacher,” he says, staring at the floor, one arm pinned to his side, the other twisted and cramped. “He's teaching me to play guitar.”

“That coon's a picker?”

He nods slowly.

“Well. All right then. The man's an entertainer. You should've said so in the first place.”

“I'm taking lessons.” He looks at the faces of the three boys. “But only until I can afford someone better.”

The fingers let go. The boys nod approval.

Two of them disappear into stalls and urinate while the third waits. The boys flush, zip, and check themselves in the mirror; then the one waiting opens the door and the three leave together.

 

HE BRINGS the vodka to his lips. No wind tonight but something in the air sounds like a muffled voice. Heather won't be here anytime soon. He thinks of her now, sleeping in her mother's house, dreaming the dreams of the young.

He remembers his first leave-taking, turning away from his father, driving to the East Coast in a rusty Dodge and looking for a place off campus.

He arrives late for orientation and sits beside a woman wearing a white jacket. “I'm Jennifer,” she says. Her long straight hair is black, swept to one side, and secured with a silver clip.

They meet for coffee and later she listens to him play. After a while, she
offers a corner room, a single bed that's been pushed against the wall and covered with thick pillows.

He sleeps with her and cooks oatmeal in the morning, smells the sweetness of her body in his own clothes, and they stay in the tiny room for days at a stretch, especially in winter, lighting candles while the snow swirls and drifts in the street below.

The rhythm of her body, her movement, stirs in him new sounds and he composes with perfect ease, ignoring the changing light, making melodies that tumble and turn like clear water.

She comes through the door with a bag of groceries, unpacks the fruit and vegetables, and puts a small bottle of vodka on the table. He pours a shot into a short glass, feels the bite on his tongue.

There's no memory as sharp as this, he thinks. She will not go away, even in the face of inexplicable years.

His frigid legs rest heavy on the fiberglass seat. The chill seeping into every inch of the boat and into his bones is familiar. He lifts one foot and then the other to keep his blood moving and pictures again how their love affair begins in winter and ends in winter, the cold streaming in under the door.

She walks with him to the station, hands in her pockets, shoulders hunched in the blowing snow. He carries his guitar and a tattered suitcase. She's silent until they reach the bus.

“Can't you postpone it?” she says. “Why should I spend the day apologizing for you? C'mon, Cole, I want you to be there with me.”

“I have to go,” he says.

“If they're serious, they'll wait. It's a tryout, not a job.”

“If I don't show up for the audition, they'll use somebody else.”