Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work (26 page)

Jacob raised the jib and tied down the sheet; his father held the tiller and the main sheet, so there was nothing for Jacob to do except watch the skiff at the mooring become smaller as they tacked back and forth in the narrow space between the island and the
mainland. As they came through the Gut around the end of the island and faced the bay, the sails braced against the wind coming off the ocean. His father loosened the main, leaned back, and eyed the telltales. The telltales had been his father's addition, after his grandfather's death, and Jacob knew they weren't right. He never looked at them when he sailed, but felt the boat's movement under him to find the wind. If the breeze was stiff but he felt no tension on the tiller and little heel, he was off the wind. His grandfather had taught him to rely as little as possible on sight. Eyes were no good in fog or darkness.

“I bet we can make the lighthouse in one tack,” his father said. Jacob tried to gauge how the wind and tide would take them over the three quarters of a nautical mile. The wind was shifting around to the southwest, so they could head farther out, but then Jacob wondered how long it would take for them to get back. If the wind stayed southerly, or even if it moved completely westerly, they would have no problem on a broad reach plowing straight across the bay. Jacob looked around for the coast guard, but the bay was empty except for a few lobster boats and a trawler. They often sailed across the bay without the boat bag—the
Sassanoa
could handle any kind of rough weather that might come up unexpectedly. But the coast guard had fined them twice for not having life jackets; his father had tried to argue out of the ticket each time.

Jacob looked back at the granite face of Heron Island, jutting south like the prow of a ship. His mother was working beside the house on the island, taking the laundry in off the line. Inside the cabin his dead grandfather stared down with cold eyes at the dining-room table from the framed photo on the wall. Jacob assumed it was the circumstances of the time that had made him hard. Jacob remembered when he had rowed over to the island with his grandfather in the winter to cut down a Christmas tree; the steam had risen from the water in white patches like ghosts and blown with the wind across the bay. The scene had seemed medieval; the cracked brown knuckles of his grandfather's hands moved toward him and away, rowing. Jacob had removed his glove and dipped his hand in the water, which felt warm, like a bath, compared with the air.

Even now, Jacob thought, the year could have been 1878 on the island—nothing about the kerosene lamps or cast-iron pots suggested that people elsewhere had ever seen electricity, and in the weeks they spent on the island each summer, Jacob forgot about the appliances of their house in Vaughn, where his father rose and dressed in a suit each morning before driving off to his small office on Water Street.

“Haul in the jib,” his father snapped, and Jacob obeyed even though he knew the jib would not come in any farther without spilling air and losing some of
what his father wanted, which was to point higher so they could reach the lighthouse in one tack. His father pulled in the main sheet, running the line down around the cleat. The
Sassanoa
heeled over in response. Rollers from a storm that had never reached shore pitched them up. Jacob did not worry. He and his grandfather had been out in fifty-knot winds. The ribs and planks creaked but nothing gave, not even the old hand-sewn sails. But the boat was weaker now, since his grandfather's death.

As they approached the lighthouse, Jacob saw tourists standing on the rocks raise their binoculars to examine them. The
Sassanoa
was an unusual sight, with its mahogany bright work on deck, its white hull and blood-red sails, the spars themselves varnished spruce, cut from the forest on the mainland less than a mile from the island. Jacob saw a boy about his age borrow binoculars from his father and look out, and Jacob envied the boy for looking at the boat, though he would rather be where he was, sailing her. She sailed very nicely, not fast like these new fiberglass boats built with long fin keels and flat bottoms. Those were good for speed, but not for rollers and sudden winds. Jacob would take the
Sassanoa
in any bad weather over one of those ugly boats. The
Sassanoa
rolled over the swells and did not slap the spray back into the cockpit. A powerful, curling swell could punch a hole in the side of a glass hull, but the
Sassanoa
's thick oak planks
absorbed each blow like a prizefighter feeling for his opponent's strength.

“Let's sail over to Mauldin,” his father said. “From there it'll be a straight shot back in.”

Jacob looked down at his watch. “I don't know if you'll have time to make it into town if we don't head back now.”

“It won't make much difference,” his father called, looking up at the sail. “We can't miss a wind like this.”

“I don't think we'll have enough time,” Jacob said again, staring at the floorboards.

Instead of getting angry, as Jacob expected, his father smiled as he looked up at the sail. “A wind like this will take us anywhere.” Jacob looked at his father and saw his crooked yellow teeth and bumpy nose, the swell of fat girdling his jaw. For the first time, he saw his father as he imagined a woman might see him, in the clear, unforgiving sunlight.

Jacob glanced up toward the southwestern sky at a line of thick dark clouds moving toward them with the freshening wind. Already his father had to ease off on the main sheet to accommodate the extra force. Thunderheads. “Head for shore when you see those,” his grandfather had said.

After a long track they came up on the high granite side of Mauldin Island. Some people in a house above sat on their porch looking in the direction of the thunderheads, probably discussing if they should secure the
shutters. It was hard to predict what the weather would do, even when they could see it coming, but finally Jacob mentioned it.

“What about those thunderheads?”

“Those are thunderheads,” his father said matter-of-factly. No smile this time. Suddenly, as a small cloud shaded the sun, his father looked down into the green water at the small ripples curling into the windward side of the hull. He seemed to be concentrating on a difficult decision.

The bow of the
Sassanoa
ploughed through the water toward the rocks. The shallows dropped off immediately, but they were closing fast, fifteen yards, twelve, and his father still looked over the windward side. Jacob determined not to say anything and almost found himself hoping the boat would crash into the granite. He shook his head at the thought. Five yards away his father casually swung the tiller across and brought them about. Jacob unhitched the jib and cleated it on the starboard side. He readied himself to let the sail out for heading downwind, but his father kept them headed out of the bay, straight for New Wagon harbor.

“I thought we were going to head in,” Jacob said, trying not to sound anxious.

“I thought we would head out and sail through the ‘trickiest bit of sailing in the East,'” his father said, quoting Jacob's grandfather. His father gave a quick nod in the direction they were heading, and Jacob saw
the corner of his mouth rise as he leaned down to pull in the mainsheet.

“What about your client and signing those papers?”

“Fuck it. Just fuck it.”

Jacob waited for him to say more, but his father studied the luff in the canvas where the main joined the mast. “Winds like this don't come around every day.” He narrowed his eyes, pulling in on the sheet and carefully adjusting the tiller. Jacob had never seen him look so determined, not even when he worked. “We can make New Wagon harbor in one tack.”

Jacob wondered about his father's work, if people would be left waiting in town and if they would be angry at his father. Jacob had heard conversations over the last months between his mother and father about his father's practice, and Jacob was not sure everything was going well.

New Wagon harbor, on the southern tip of a peninsula, was formed by three small, burly islands nestled close into shore. They sailed within ten yards of the mainland on the port side, trying to edge into the harbor without tacking again. Jacob could see the pale, sharp rocks below the tidal line, and the red keel that edged up toward the surface as they heeled over.

“How much room we got?” his father asked.

“You got it,” Jacob answered.

“One tack.”

They were inside the harbor, the mainland and dock to the left, the three islands to the right, and Jacob felt relieved. As if a hand had released its pressure on the mast, they tilted upright as the wind diminished behind the islands.

That wasn't the trickiest bit of sailing, though. Now they were going to sail between the northern and eastern islands, where unmarked rocks spiked up from the bottom. Jacob thought the tide was too low, which was the only thing that had made his grandfather describe this ledge as tricky. They simply needed to know where the rocks were and to go at the right tide.

“Our momentum will carry us until we can catch the wind again,” his father said. “And I'll steer us around the rocks.”

Jacob nodded, though he was doubtful. They couldn't see the rocks beneath the surface, but his father had sailed this many times before, with his father and alone. Jacob didn't know how shallow it would be. The rollers crashed into the windward side of the islands, but the water in the harbor was calm.

“Pull the jib in,” his father said. Wind would come around the island and they would heel, so they would draw less. That would help.

On his father's orders, Jacob uncleated the jib, tightened it, and recleated it, but there was no point—the jib had been lashed too tight to begin with.

“Good.” His father pulled in on the mainsheet, preparing for the wind. The tide was moving out, lowering
every minute now. Several families were eating lunch on the pier outside the Lobster Shack. They stopped cracking their lobsters for a moment to stare at the red sails of the
Sassanoa
gliding by from sheer momentum on the flat water. One of the youngest children leapt up when she saw the sails and raced toward the end of the pier. Her mother ran after, yelling the girl's name. The girl could have run off the end of the pier. She stopped at the last minute, though, and pointed at the red sails.

Jacob could see twelve, ten yards ahead, the line of blue water marking the wind. As they grew closer, the wind receded and the shallow rocks appeared, yellow and white beneath the surface. Jacob watched the blue patch of wind on the water draw back like a snake into its hole and vanish. Now they were drifting straight toward the rocks with no wind coming around the island to make them heel. His father knew and only had a few seconds to decide what they would do. He could gradually steer them to port, but without wind there was no point in throwing the tiller over. They would still drift forward. Before either could act or speak Jacob saw just behind his father's head a patch of dark blue water, a stiff gust, advancing from the north. Jacob barely had time to release the jib, though he realized later that it was the wrong thing to do. The wind caught inside the loose jib and lurched them straight forward at no heel. His father lowered his jaw and put
his hands out to the side as if some enormous creature had lifted him off the ground and was preparing to swallow him whole. Jacob waited for the sound, but halfway through the passage none had come, and he thought maybe they would make it all the way through. Then came the thud that seemed distant, lurching the
Sassanoa
's bow down and her stern into the air. The wind caught the trimmed mainsail and pulled them sideways off the rock. When broadside to the wind and going over, Jacob finally unleashed the mainsail and let the boom fly. The wind spilled out; they were off the rock. His father leaned over the side of the boat to check for damage.

“No harm done,” he said and grabbed the tiller. There had only been a thud, Jacob thought. His father steered them toward the channel. Jacob trimmed the jib, and they sped along with the wind and rocks behind them. The collision seemed never to have happened, and Jacob knew they would not talk about it—as if it were a secret they would have to keep from his dead grandfather.

Outside the harbor the wind blew twice as strong and the swells rose high into the air. The hull planed. Jacob sat on the rail and adjusted the jib sheet while his father sat on the transom so he could see over the bow. When they rose to the top of a swell, they could see out to sea as if from the top of a mountain. The bow sliced up one side of the wave and the stern coasted down the
other side just as his great grandfather had designed her to do, and Jacob was immensely proud in that moment, thinking of his great grandfather's mind and hands creating such an efficient and worthy craft. More than that: the
Sassanoa
was a work of art, perfectly balanced between the wind and the ocean, that sat at her mooring in the morning as calmly as a sleeping dove.

Jacob looked back at his father, who grinned like a child, his open mouth and bright wide eyes pointed up at the blood-red sail as if the very idea of the wind moving a boat over water at such a speed was a discovery he had just made for the world.

As they coasted down a swell, Jacob leaned over and placed his hand on the side of the hull. He did not think of turning around even as they passed Damirscove Island. He could see in the windows of the old coast guard station there; at a certain height he could see in one window and out another. Europeans had settled on the treeless island, he knew, before Plymouth or Jamestown. They had fished there, and lived in cold shacks. Several hundred years later the coast guard had come, and now they were gone, too, and the island was empty except for the terns, gulls, herons, and snowy egrets that swarmed over the grass.