The Young Man and the Sea: Chapters 1–8

I been bailing Rose for months, getting up before dawn to pump out the bilge and keep her floating.

Down the town wharf they used to call my dad Big Skiff and me Little Skiff, to tell us apart, but my dad don’t go down the wharf no more.

He rolls to one side and puts a bleary eye on me.

His beard is all matted because he ain’t combed it in months, and it makes him look old and scruffy.

But my dad turns his face to the back of the couch and won’t hear me, so I run outside and skid down the steps to our rickety old dock, but there ain’t nothing I can do.

Once a boat has gone under, you can’t bail it no more. There’s nothin’ to do but wait until the tide goes out and then somehow winch it onto the cradle before it sinks again.

I been hearing variations on that stupid song since Tyler Croft was old enough to talk, so it don’t mean nothin’.

There’s nothing close to hand but an old chunk of wood. I heave it and miss. Tyler laughs and then screams away on his bike.

She always said we all came from the same place, if you go back far enough, and what did it really matter what names they put on the headstones?

When I was nine, my dad nailed up a little skiff for me out of plywood, and put an old five-horse Evinrude motor on the back, and give it to me for my birthday, which was really cool.

“Okay then,” he says. “I’m too old to be raising sunk boats. I can’t hardly lift a hammer, let alone a thirty-six-foot hull.”

“Four drums will lift two thousand pounds, approximate. That should be just enough to shift the keel,” Mr. Woodwell told me. “You put that rig in place and then let the tide do the work.”

“Four drums will lift two thousand pounds, approximate. That should be just enough to shift the keel,” Mr. Woodwell told me. “You put that rig in place and then let the tide do the work.”

Finally I give up trying to rouse him and concentrate on rigging the barrels like Mr. Woodwell told me.

In the dream I’m adrift on the current in a leaky boat in the dark of night and can’t find my oars and can’t see the shore and can’t do nothing to save myself.

Pancakes ain’t supposed to make you look like you want to cry. Me, I’m feeling fine and dandy; I won’t let no blubbery looks ruin what I got in mind for the morning, which is fix the boat, have lunch, then go fishing.

Pancakes ain’t supposed to make you look like you want to cry. Me, I’m feeling fine and dandy; I won’t let no blubbery looks ruin what I got in mind for the morning, which is fix the boat, have lunch, then go fishing.

He’s standing by the tool bench but not working on nothing. Just smoking on his corncob pipe and looking kind of wistful.

Those cool gray eyes of his kind of soak me up as he thinks about it. When he speaks it comes out deliberate and careful, like always.

“Does he now? He was a quick study, Big Skiff was, and a hard worker. By which I mean he worked hard to get it right, whatever he did. Could have been a fine boatbuilder if he’d had a mind to. But the sea drew him. Wanted that open sky around him. Finest kind of fisherman, your father. Best man with a harpoon in Spinney Cove, no doubt about it.”

He touches every part of her with his skinny bone-looking old hands, from the bow all the way along the keel to the stern.

It’s drippy under there because the planks are still weeping and you got to be careful of barnacles.

“Mr. Woodwell says I got to pry off these two planks, Rose. I hope you don’t mind.”

Just my luck. Tyler and a couple of his rich-kid buds from up the cove.

One of the best things about Mr. Woodwell’s boat shed is the clean smell of wood shavings and varnish.

“That was your father’s,” Mr. Woodwell says, when he sees me looking. “Shaped it himself, that year he worked with me. Last thing he ever made in this shop. Left it here as a memento.”

When I’m in a mood I get all sulky and just want to be miserable.

Ain’t thick enough to be a proper fog, mind you, just a thin, wispy mist that leaves everything kind of blurred.

When the water’s lapping around the high marks on the pilings, I give the winch a couple of cranks until the line goes tight.

Mike shakes his head. “No charge for a consultation. Hope you aren’t expecting good news on an engine that’s been submerged in salt water.”