“Well, there she is,” he said, indicating the boat. “What do you think?”
The boat rested on a wooden frame that stretched nearly the entire length of the room. The inner shell had only been partially fitted, so I could see into its still-unfinished interior. Hoisted upon the frame, without a mast, and with slats missing from its outer wrapping, it looked more like the skeleton of some ancient beast than a boat.
“As you can see,” Mr. Reed said, “there’s still a lot to do. But not as much as you might think. Toward the end, it all comes together rather suddenly.” He paused, gauging my response. Then he said, “We can start now, if you’re still interested.”
We set to work right away, Mr. Reed giving me my first basic lesson in boat-building, the patience it required, the precision of measurement. “You have to go slowly,” he said at one point. “Just let things fall into place.” He offered a wry smile. “It’s like a woman who can’t be rushed.”
As we continued to work that afternoon, it struck me that something had fallen away from Mr. Reed, some part of the impenetrable weariness I’d seen during all the years I’d known him, and which had served to cloak him in a melancholy that seemed inseparable from his character. A new and vital energy had begun to take its place. It was as if a fire were slowly burning off the detritus of his former life, making him more alert and animated than I’d ever seen him, a sense of buoyancy replacing the ponderousness that had so deeply marked him until men, and which I have since come to recognize not as the product of a dream already fulfilled, but only of a hope precariously revived.
We worked together all that afternoon, Mr. Reed more talkative than he’d ever been outside the classroom. He spoke of writers he admired, quoted lines from their works, though not so much in the manner of a teacher as simply of a man whose mind and heart had been informed and uplifted by his reading. He talked about his boat as well, its speed and durability, what its capacities were. “A boat this size, built this way,” he said at one point, “you could sail it around the world.” He thought a moment, as if considering such a possibility. “You’d have to sail along the coastline and skip from island to island,” he added. “But it could be done.”
Only once did the old melancholy appear to settle over him again. “Just one life, Henry,” he said, staring out the window of the boathouse, his eyes fixed on the bay, and, beyond it, the open sea. “Just one life, and no more chances after that.” He turned back to me “That’s the whole tragedy, right there.”
It seemed the perfect moment to add my own comment. “That’s what Miss Channing’s father says,” I told him. “In his book. He says that if you look back on your life and ask What did I do?, then it means that you didn’t do anything.”
Mr. Reed nodded thoughtfully, and I could tell he was turning the line over in his mind “Yes, that’s true. Do you think Miss Channing believes that?”
With no evidence whatsoever, I answered, “Yes, I do.”
He seemed pleased by my answer. “Well, it
I suppose that from then on I felt in league with Mr. Reed, willing to work on his boat every afternoon and weekend if mat’s what it took to finish it, willing to listen to him in all the weeks that followed, his tone bright and buoyant at first, then darkening steadily until, toward the end, he seemed mired in endless night.
It was nearly evening when I finally headed back toward home. And I remember that as I walked up the coastal road, the autumn drizzle felt more like a spring rain, the bare limbs not destined for a deeper chill, but on the very brink of budding.
The table had already been set for dinner by the time I reached home, my mother and father in their usual places at opposite ends of it, Sarah moving smoothly from one to the other, humming softly under her breath so my mother could not hear her.
My father glanced at his pocket watch as I took my seat. “Are you aware of the time, Henry?”
I wasn’t, but said I was, then gave him a reason that I knew would justify my tardiness. “I was down at the marina, helping Mr. Reed.”
“Helping Mr. Reed?” my mother asked doubtfully. “To do what?”
“He’s building a boat,” I answered. I glanced toward Sarah, saw her give me a quick conspiratorial smile. “He’s been working on it for a long time,” I added. “He wants to finish it by summer.”
My mother could not conceal her disapproval. “It’s his house over on the pond that could use a little work, if you ask me,” she sniffed. “More than some fool boat down at the marina.”
“Now, Mildred,” my father cautioned, always careful that teachers at Chatham School not be criticized in front of me. “What Mr. Reed does in his spare time is his own business. But being on time for dinner is your responsibility, Henry, and be sure you look to it from now on.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, glancing once again toward Sarah, her smile even broader now, her eyes gleaming with a quick, mischievous fire.
Her room was in the attic.
The tap at the door must have surprised her. “Who’s there?” she asked, a hint of apprehension in her voice.
“It’s me, Henry,” I said, standing in the utter darkness of the narrow stairway. “Miss Channing wanted me to give you a book.”
She opened the door slightly, her face in candlelight. “You shouldn’t be up here, Henry,” she whispered. “What if your …’
“They’re asleep,” I told her. I smiled mockingly. “I know they are. I can hear my mother snoring.”
She laughed sharply, and swiftly covered her mouth. “Be quick about it, then,” she urged as she opened the door.
The room was tiny, with a slanting ceiling, her bed pressed up against the far wall, a small desk and a chair at the other end, along with a short bureau with a porcelain wash basin and china pitcher on top. Now, when I recall that room, it seems smaller still, particularly compared to the aspirations of the girl who lived there, the life she yearned for.
“Miss Channing asked me to give you this,” I said, handing her Mr. Reed’s primer.
She stepped over to her bed and sat down upon it. I stood a few feet away, watching as she opened the book
