The Boatmaker Read Free

pushed back and moonlight pours across the bed. She watches him silently, then goes down the narrow stairs to check the stove.
    The door to his parents’ house is open. He eases across the threshold into the darkness, making himself small as he listens to the voices from the bedroom where his parents sleep, fuck and tear into each other in their drunkenness.
    You killed him.
    I never would.
    You took him into the sea and he never came back.
    I couldn’t stop him. You know what he wanted. And he was good at it. The sea was in his nature. You can’t change that. Any more than you can change your nature—or I mine.
    He could have been anything. He didn’t have to be that. He could have left this godforsaken little island and gone anywhere.
    You’re dreaming. Nobody leaves Small Island.
    He could have. He was different. Better than you. Better than you can imagine.
    You know I didn’t do this. It’s no one’s fault. Why can’t you stop hating me? It won’t bring him back.
    Stop hating you? You’re asking me to forgive? Forgive you? You half-man. Quarter-man. Less than that. You—nothing.
    Everyone on Small Island has lost someone to the sea. Many families have lost more than one. You’re lucky. You have another son.
    That sniveler? He’s a little too much like you for my taste.
    He’s a good boy. Or he would be—if he had a mother who said a kind word to him now and then.
    He’s a weakling. Weaker than you—if such a thing is possible. He’ll grow up to be a sack of whiskey just like you. The other one was beautiful. He could have been anything in this world, if he hadn’t gone in your filthy boat, stinking of seaweed, and never come back. You killed him. And you know it. I hear it in your voice every time you speak. You’re guilty. You’re weak. You’re hollowed out with dry rot. And nothing you do can ever change that.
    The boy hears silence and then an explosion. His mother has thrown her bottle, and it’s missed, smashing and making another mark on a wall that already has many marks. He knows what will happen now. They will fall on each other, hitting each other with anything within reach, couple like beasts, then pass out in a heap of clothes smelling of sweat, salt water, fish and alcohol.
    The door of his parents’ bedroom is partly open. He makes his way across the boards of the living room floor, laid down by his father and his father’s father when his parents were newlyweds, before they lost his brotherand wound up sodden on the floor, clawing each other in rage.
    Against the far wall is a huge sideboard: dark, solid and heavy, with glass doors under an arching top. Inside are the few pieces of his mother’s china that have survived the years of throwing. When he was little, nothing in this sideboard was ever used. Like everyone else on Small Island his family ate off simple plates and wiped their hands on rags.
    The sideboard was made from hardwoods by a famous company on the Mainland. No metal was used in making it, aside from the hinges, lock and key. Every piece is attached by its own shape or by pegs of the same wood. It could be taken apart, piece by piece, and put back together without a single tool. Even on Small Island, where many are good with tools and wood, this piece has always seemed exceptional.
    The sideboard has been in the boy’s life from the beginning. And it was often talked about. People made fun of his mother for it. To her face, they were not eager to make her angry. Even before his brother’s death, her anger was nothing to trifle with. But behind her back they mocked her for the airs she gave herself for owning the finest piece of furniture on Small Island.
    The boy knows the drawers by heart; he began opening them when he was small. At first he pulled himselfup by the handles. When he could stand up on his own, he opened the lowest of the three drawers. The stages of his