The Boatmaker Read Free Page A

childhood were marked by when he was able to reach the second drawer and look inside, then the third, always careful to slide them back with everything just as it was before the drawer was opened.
    He slides the second drawer open with care. There is little light in the house, but he knows everything in the drawer by touch. There are three stacks. In the center, he feels the thing he has been asked to bring. Its texture brings the creamy white linen into his mind’s eye.
    He pushes the drawer back slowly, even though he’s sure his parents have passed out on the floor. He backs away from the sideboard and passes the open door to their bedroom without looking in.
    The man wakes clutching the covers, drenched in sweat, the sheet twisted in his hand where the napkin was in the dream. For a moment dream and waking life are wrestling, neither one strong enough to pin the other to the ground. Then he hears footsteps coming up the stairs: heavy, definitive and male. He leans his head back against the pillow, not knowing who is coming, too weak to fight.

CHAPTER 2
    Downstairs the woman is waiting, having left her child and gone out into the winter night to fetch the doctor.
    When she fell in love with the man upstairs in her bed, she didn’t intend to change her world. But her world has changed. When she lived with Valter, the outer world was orderly. The people of Small Island were welcoming and respectful: She was the wife of a big man. But inside her, everything was like a dammed river. Now the river has broken the dam and overflowed, foaming and surging downstream. Inside she has been freed, but the outer world does not give her the respect it once did. Going to fetch the doctor was not easy. Now she waits in her overcoat, snow melting on the green lodencloth and soaking her dark hair, for the doctor to come down the stairs and say words she is afraid to hear.
    He descends a segment at a time, like a roundworm emerging from the damp earth in spring. First come black boots. Then trousers, the part below the knees tucked into the boots. Then the bottom of a fur coat, like Valter’s, though not as grand. A gloved hand holding a black bag. A belly snug in dark fur. Chest, shoulders. Finally, a round face with pale blue eyes and white hair. The doctor is vain about his full head of hair. He comes out to see people, even late at night in winter, without a hat. He has seen everything—from birth to death and everything in between—many times. None of it has changed him very much. He is the only doctor on Small Island.
    The doctor stops at the bottom of the stairs. His look is controlled, but the woman feels his condescension. She is Valter’s wife—and yet she is not. Another man is upstairs in her bed, sick with fever.
    â€œNothing can be done.”
    â€œNothing?”
    â€œIt’s in God’s hands now.”
    â€œNothing?”
    â€œGood night.”
    He walks past her without a word. She feels her anger rising. Small as she is, she isn’t afraid to hit the doctor. If Valter was up there sweating in the bed, she thinks, he wouldn’t say that. It would not be in God’s hands . At thismoment, he would be scurrying to do something . Anything . Not nothing .
    He hesitates at the door. She realizes that in her anger she has forgotten the money. She takes folded bills out of the pocket of her coat, slides them into the pocket of the doctor’s, between warm fur and fat.
    â€œMy best to you and your daughter.”
    â€œAnd to you.”
    She closes the door and leans her forehead against the wood. The anger recedes, and she feels as if she might cry. Although the door is closed, she knows exactly how the doctor looks as he walks away in the moonlight. Despite his roundness and his white hair, he looks as if he might rise, click his heels and waltz away on the snow, which is as hard and smooth as a dance floor.
    She takes her forehead from the door. Ribbons of light drip down