Homecoming (29 page)

“It’s a genoa,” Tom answered. He seemed to be enjoying himself. His eyes squinted
into the sunlight, and his smile showed big, square teeth.

The wind blew firmly against the sails. The water jostled the boat, wave after wave.
When Dicey looked at the water, they seemed to be traveling quite fast. But when she
looked at the shore, now falling away beside them, they seemed to be going very slowly.

Under the protection of the shore, the boat heeled only slightly. Jerry brought the
boat about, and Dicey and James had to do no more than protect themselves from the
genoa as it
flapped across the bow in front of them. Dicey saw a shadow of shoreline, across the
bay.

She also saw three huge tankers, moored one behind the other, lying across their path,
like tall buildings. Jerry approached them, then passed between two, where there was
much more room than there had first seemed to be. The metal walls soared up above
the little boat. Some crewmen waved down at them, and Dicey waved back. The tanker
came from Athens, from Athens across the Atlantic and down the length of the Mediterranean
Sea.

Dicey looked up the bay to where Baltimore was. Two bridges, twin spans, crossed the
bay in long arcs. They looked like something from the future, slender silver ropes
flung over the broad water, beautiful and strong.

Dicey’s eyes moved out, across again. Jerry brought the boat about, and—after shifting
her weight to compensate for the heel—she found she could no longer see the far shore,
for which they were headed. They had left most of the other boats behind, and now
passed only an occasional fishing boat, rocking at the end of its anchor line.

The wind hummed in her ears, the sun poured over her face and arms and legs, the waves
knocked against the keel, and the boat pulled forward. Like everything else in Annapolis,
the movement was both lazy and fast, at once. She turned back and saw Sammy staring
at Tom. Jerry sat with the long wooden tiller in his hand, his eyes on the sails.

Dicey slid down onto the deck and leaned her back against the cabin. The sky was clear,
the sails shone white against it. She closed her eyes.

In the darkness behind her eyelids, Dicey felt part of the boat itself, riding the
wind over the water. It was easy work, this. It was silent and serene. Her thoughts
loosed themselves from their
everyday moorings and wandered. Nothing mattered out here. Nobody talked and nobody
listened. The waves went past them, maybe each different, maybe the same wave over
and over again. Who knew which? Who cared?

Dicey opened her eyes. They had never sailed in Provincetown. They had never been
asked. She had rowed in dinghies and been out once or twice on large fishing boats.
But they were nothing like this quiet harnessing of wind and the sharp keel cutting
through silken water.

Out here, there was salt on the wind itself that fell on your skin like rain. You
could taste it. Out here the sun heated and the wind cooled, and the waves sang their
constant song.

Dicey wished she could stop breathing and give herself entirely over to the movement
and the being still. Maybe she could learn to sail. Maybe she could go to sea, somehow.
A boat could be a home. The perfect home that could move around, a home that didn’t
close you in or tie you down: and a sailor would always be at home if he was on the
sea.

Maybe life was like a sea, and all the people were like boats. There were big, important
yachts and little rafts and motorboats and sailboats and working boats and pleasure
boats. And some really big boats like ocean liners or tankers—those would be rich
or powerful people, whose lives engulfed many other lives and carried them along.
Or maybe each boat was a kind of family. Then what kind of boat would the Tillermans
be? A little one, bobbling about, with the mast fallen off? A grubby, worn-down workboat,
with Dicey hanging on to the rudder for dear life.

Everybody who was born was cast onto the sea. Winds would blow them in all directions.
Tides would rise and turn, in their own rhythm. And the boats—they just went along
as best they could, trying to find a harbor.

Dicey didn’t feel like finding a harbor. She knew she needed
one, and they needed one, but she would rather just sail along, dreaming, not caring
where they were going or when they would get there or what they would do there.

Couldn’t you live your whole life without going into harbor? The land would catch
you at the end.
Home is the sailor.
But until then, you could keep free. And even then, even when you died, you could
die at sea and your body would roll with the underwater currents until your flesh
peeled off and you were white bones rocking in the waves on the sandy bottom of the
ocean. Always part of the changing.

Dicey smiled to herself. The ocean at Provincetown had always sung at her too. As
long as I’m near the water, she thought, that’ll be enough, even if I’m on land. Because
life wasn’t really an ocean, and she wasn’t really a little boat bobbling about on
it. There were James and Maybeth and Sammy, for one thing. But for now, she was content
to sit still and silent.

The sun beat down hotter, and her skin started to run with sweat. She was getting
sticky, uncomfortable. The sails fell lifeless and quiet, flapping morosely. The boat
no longer thrust ahead, slicing the waves; now it rolled from side to side. She crawled
back over the cabin.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

The two boys were leaning back, drinking beer from cans. “Wind’s died down,” Tom said.

“That happens,” Jerry added. “Especially in the middle of the bay. No worry. The only
deadline we have is I’ve got to be back in Annapolis by dark.”

“Yeah, or the ghosties and boogies will get him.”

Jerry frowned, but ignored his friend. “We can always let you off and head right back.”

“I’ve got some friends in St. Mikes,” Tom said.

“We know about your friends in St. Mikes,” Jerry answered.

“It beats sitting around watching TV,” Tom answered. “Doesn’t it? Your mom’s not here,
Jer, you can tell the truth.”

Dicey interrupted. “Could I steer? I mean, we’re not going anywhere—”

“We are, but not far,” Jerry corrected.

“Go ahead, let her,” Tom urged. Jerry agreed.

Jerry slid down toward Sammy and put Dicey’s hand on the long tiller. The wood was
smooth and warm. It responded to every vibration in the hull and every flapping of
the sails. Dicey’s hand seesawed gently back and forth. The tiller let her feel the
boat under her hand. She grinned at Jerry. “I like it,” she said.

He grinned back at her and taught her how to head up, into the wind, and point down,
away from it. He showed her what changes in the mainsail to watch for. He pointed
to the glassy water just ahead of them and then to a patch far ahead where little
ripples danced in the sunlight. “There’s wind up there,” he said. He leaned back and
drank from his can of beer.

“I’m going below for a snooze,” Tom announced. He climbed down the ladder and disappeared.

Sammy went up to sit with James.

Jerry moved over to Tom’s seat. “He doesn’t like sailing,” he said.

“Who, Sammy? I didn’t notice.”

“No, Tom.”

“But—”

“He’s got nothing better to do.” Jerry shrugged, then smiled a little. “And he likes
getting me in trouble.”

“What about you?” Dicey asked.

“I need some help getting in trouble. I’d never dare do it on my own. You know? Rebellion
is necessary for the development of character.”

Dicey wondered about that.

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation,” Jerry said. “Somebody
said that. He was right. So—I get in trouble, now and then—so I won’t be like most
men.”

“You’re going to lead a life of noisy desperation?” Dicey asked.

He laughed at that. He gave himself over to laughter and enjoyed it. Dicey decided
she liked him after all.

“At least that much,” he said. “More if I can, but at least that.”

They sailed on, if this odd, rolling progress could be called sailing. Then, under
her hand, Dicey felt the boat stir. She looked at the water and the sails. They had
reached the ripply patch of water. The sails bellied out.

Jerry was watching her. She offered him the tiller, but he shook his head. His smile
teased her. He pulled in on the genoa line and held it. The long sail lay nearly flat.
The mainsail line he had already cleated down. “Watch the genoa,” he instructed.

Dicey did. She watched the sail and the water ahead. She rested her hand lightly on
the tiller, letting the boat tell her where it wanted to go. She sat alert, her body
tuned to that gentle pull on the tiller.

Boat, waves, water and wind: through the wood she felt them working for her. She was
not directing, but accompanying them, turning them to her use. She didn’t work against
them, but with them; and she made the boat do that too. It wasn’t power she felt,
guiding the tiller, but purpose. She could not stop smiling.

The wind built up, and Jerry took back the tiller, giving Dicey the genoa line. She
played it, without being told, letting it out a fraction, pulling it in two fractions,
responding to the pull of the wind in the sail.

They didn’t talk, sailing the boat. They didn’t talk at all until Jerry pointed out
the land approaching. Dicey saw short, narrow beaches, a few trees, some big houses.

“Another hour,” Jerry said.

Dicey nodded.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Thirteen,” Dicey answered. “I turned thirteen in June.”

“That’s too bad,” Jerry said. “If you were fifteen, or even fourteen . . . You really
take to it, don’t you? I’ve never seen anybody take to it like that. I never thought
a girl could. You’ve got good hands, Dicey. And you’re not scared.”

“Thirteen isn’t too young to sail,” Dicey pointed out.

“No, it isn’t,” he agreed. He leaned his head down and called Tom awake. “We’ve got
to come about and make the approach to St. Mikes.”

Dicey nodded to show she understood, and she thought she did understand what he had
said. She was too young to be a girlfriend. Her cheeks grew warm with the thought.
Of course she was, much too young, and besides, she had more important things to do.
She was surprised at herself, though, for the nice feeling it gave her. Maybe because
she’d been so often taken for a boy.

She joined James and Sammy. Maybeth said she didn’t want to move from her seat nestled
up against the cabin wall, where she had sat silent for the whole trip. So Dicey returned
to the foredeck. The boat heeled a little now, in the afternoon wind. She and James
kept Sammy sitting between them. “I sailed it,” Dicey said.

“I saw,” James answered. “What was it like?”

Dicey couldn’t explain. “Great,” she said.

They watched the shoreline close them in as Jerry negotiated the channel into St.
Mikes. This was low land, with large houses standing on bright green lawns. Buoys
slipped by.

Jerry let down the mainsail and gathered it in, wrapping it around the boom and looping
a line around it to hold it. Tom turned on the motor. Jerry loosed the genoa halyard
and showed Dicey how to pull it down and hold it in at the same time. Great armloads
of material surrounded her. She couldn’t see anything.
Jerry’s voice, muffled by the sail he was packing into a sail bag, assured her that
she was doing just fine.

They pulled into the front of a long dock, and Tom took a line from the bow and wrapped
it around one of the posts. Jerry tied the stern. He held the boat close to the dock
while the Tillermans climbed out.

The steadiness of the land under her feet felt strange to Dicey. She felt as if everything
was reversed. On the boat, the deck had been unsteady and her leg muscles had worked
to keep her balanced. On land, the ground was so steady that her leg muscles took
up the motion of the boat. It was crazy.

Her family stood back while she thanked Jerry. Tom was talking to him about calling
some people. “We got beer on the boat,” he was saying.

Jerry hesitated.

“Just an hour. You can call your old lady and tell her where you are, if you’re worried.
Or better yet, call her and tell her you’re here and can’t get back before dark. She’ll
be mad at you for sailing over, but glad you called, so it’ll be all right. Jerry?
You wanna? Man, we’re over here with the boat and beer—we can really have a party.”

Jerry laughed, a light, high sound. He turned the idea over in his mind. “I don’t
know,” he said.

Dicey knew. She knew also what he would decide. “We gotta find a bus,” she said. “Thanks
an awful lot.”

“That’s okay, kid,” Tom answered.

Dicey waited for Jerry to say something. Finally he noticed. “It was fun,” he said.

“Yeah, it was. It really was.”

“See you around, yeah?” he said.

“Probably not,” Dicey said. She held out her hand and he shook it.

“Yeah,” he said, but he wasn’t paying attention to her. He was looking at Tom, and
a smile was creeping over his mouth. Dicey picked up her bag, slung it over her shoulder,
took a last look at the boat and walked off fast.

St. Michael’s was a small town huddled around its waterfront. It was like Annapolis,
but without the hurrying quality of the city across the bay. It was pretty, but Dicey
was not cheered by that as they walked out of town on the one main street. She felt
vaguely sad. To make herself feel better, she vowed that she would sail again, and
often, if she could. Crisfield was on the water. People there must sail.

The midafternoon sun pounded down on them. They walked two abreast on the side of
the road, Dicey with Maybeth, James with Sammy. Dicey carried her bag over her shoulder.

Little town houses, with handkerchief lawns, gave way to fields where corn and soybeans
grew. Driveways led off the highway. Sometimes you could see the roofs of houses back
among the trees that began at the far ends of the fields. Some of the mailboxes had
the names of houses on them, Windward, Petersons Landing, Oakwood, Second Chance.