PROLOGUE TO A BOATYARD TO BURN FOR
The boatyard is usually still at midnight, so the muffled noise tonight has drawn Jacob’s interest. He seldom sleeps at this hour, nor does his mother – not since his father abandoned them when Jacob was diagnosed autistic. This night Sissy has fallen fast asleep and hasn’t heard him crawl from his bed and slip out the back door to see what is causing the noise.
Suddenly Sissy comes full awake. Was it a dream or is Jacob gone? Frantic, she races to his bed in the next room. Empty. Grabbing at a pullover she dashes out the door that opens onto the parking lot of the boatyard next door.
In the moonlight she sees Jacob. He is crossing the lot toward what looks like a commercial fishing boat that swings gently in the slings of the Travelift. The aroma of marine growth already decaying in the night air reaches her as she nears the boat. Men are passing what appear in the pale light like trash bags down three ladders laid against the side of the boat to others on the ground, who in turn pack them in three grey vans that are parked alongside. It is an assembly line of sorts. The men work in silence, as if actors in a mime, making only hand gestures to communicate. Periodically one of the bags drops to the ground. It is the thump that has attracted Jacob. Sissy asks herself again if she is really awake. What she is watching is more a dream sequence than wide-awake reality.
Sissy rushes to Jacob, folds him to her body. He is babbling softly and pointing to the action. Her son cannot form the words, but she can tell he is asking what they are doing. Sissy is asking herself the same question. Jacob wants to get closer. To humor him, but careful not to get so close as to be seen, she lifts his 49 pounds onto her hip and approaches. She is just in time to see a fourth ladder land against the stern of the boat, away from the others, and another man climb onto the deck.
A voice she recognizes from hearing it carry up from the yard to her kitchen windows during the day now interrupts the night.
“Well look who’s here. What are you doing, old man? It’s too late for you to be out.” The voice turns to a cackle.
“No, you mutt, what are you doing. I threw you out of here last week.”
“Yes, you did, and now I’m doin the throwing, you old buzzard.” With that the ladder on which the older man is standing falls backward and crashes to the ground twenty feet below.
“Jesus, Dan, what have you done? You’ll kill the old man,” says the man in the Greek Sailors hat.
Sissy turns and scuttles back to her house struggling to hold Jacob on her hip. She feels his tears against her cheek.
Three days later when the weekly Painter’s Cove Gazette arrives Sissy reads the half page obituary about a tragic accident at Emmett Boat Works that has taken the life of the fourth generation Emmett to operate the yard. She knows the real truth, but it is none of her business. Life as a single mom with an autistic son is as much as she can handle.
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About Me
Welcome
About 10 years ago, after years in the boat building and repair business, I returned, at least part time, to my first love: writing fiction. Since that time I have written several short stories and three novels, one of which (A DA VINCI TO DIE FOR) was published in 2002 by a small press in New Mexico.
Following the recurrent advice, "write what you know," most all of my stories involve boats and the sea - at least as a background against which my characters in whom I am most interested, grow and deal with life in this milieu.
I hope you enjoy meeting them and "listening" to their stories.
Following the recurrent advice, "write what you know," most all of my stories involve boats and the sea - at least as a background against which my characters in whom I am most interested, grow and deal with life in this milieu.
I hope you enjoy meeting them and "listening" to their stories.
Tom H of Connecticut writes:
ReplyDelete"Like Holden Caulfield's adolescent ups and downs, this story tackles the next generation. It's the story of young man's journey from a teenager to adulthood. Seth Kane is an ordinary lad with typical pressures trying to shape his life. His mother tries to steer him into a religious vocation. His father, proprietor of a small business, urges Seth to contemplate his own future. And Seth, without a clear career goal, finds a future in the boating business he joined part time while attending college. It is an unlikely match. The even-tempered, good natured and gullible young Seth soon runs up against one of the less visible components of the rough and tumble boating business. While he is bright enough to master the ins and outs of the business perhaps quicker than most, his trusting nature -- which he never loses -- is the most important characteristic of his success. Seth weathers years of personal storms -- bringing him the gambit of emotions from enthusiasm to fear to love -- and taking the reader on a Nantucket sleigh ride of suspense and amusement."
That's how it strikes me. Tom
Skip,
ReplyDeleteI understand that they -- whoever they are -- always advise you to write about things you know. But whenever I see that, I always think, "Yeah, but how much do you really know?" However, when I read your "A Da Vinci To Die For" a few years ago, I thought how refreshing it was finally to read good fiction about the yachting industry written by someone who really does know what he's writing about. Although your first Seth Kane novel was, as they say, purely fictional, I personally found reflected in your characters and writing a plethora of snippets from personalities and situations I've known and encountered in real life around the docks through the years. Chilling, amusing, fascinating, and thoroughly enjoyable. Now, having read the prologue to your second Seth Kane novel, I'm looking forward to a second tour de force by an author who knows and understands the ins and outs of the marine and yacht business, and its always colorful, occasionally dark, sub-culture, so well. Keep the chapters coming!