John Casey - Compass Rose

Phoebe didn’t seem to notice that May pulled back some. “Boats,” Phoebe said. “There’s something to do with boats I wanted to tell you. It’ll come to me. Did you hear about the smugglers? That’s not it, but it does have a boat. They were bringing in bales of marijuana and they stacked them in a hayfield and stacked real hay bales on top. But a bird-watcher who was up before dawn saw them in her nightscope. I love it — the little old lady in tennis shoes. Oh. I remember. The smugglers used a Zodiac to come in from the mother ship. It was near the oceanography school, so they probably thought people would think their Zodiac had something to do with the Trident . Anyway, I met the captain of the Trident , and he’s just crazy about Charlie. He said a lot of the researchers he takes out aren’t very handy with small boats. What he actually said was, ‘Some of them are piss-to-windward sailors.’ It took me a minute to figure it out. Have you ever heard that?”

“Yes. Often enough. What’d he say about Charlie?”

“He said Charlie’s the only scientist he trusts to handle the boat. One time the motor in the other Zodiac stopped working, and it was getting pushed onto some rocks, and Charlie drove his Zodiac right in next to them and towed the other boat. I’m not sure I understood everything the captain said, but apparently it was hard to do, what with the rocks and big waves. So Charlie’s a bit of a hero, like his father.”

Phoebe looked pleased. May shook her head. She’d been worrying about Charlie keeping away on account of his pain and anger at Dick, and Phoebe had added the possibility that Charlie was mad at Tom as well. May’d been thinking of Charlie as more or less safe on the Trident , but now there he was tearing around in a small boat. He might have done the right thing, but he was most likely driven to it just to get even with his father. Men. Men wanting more … Now she had another man out at sea to worry about, thanks to Phoebe’s chirping.

It helped to blame Phoebe. Vain, flibbertigibbet Phoebe. May tried to be fair. Phoebe wanted to be her friend, came in to brighten the day, had no idea how she’d made it darker. All right, then — poor, fluttering Phoebe.

But what was she up to with Mr. Salviatti? Didn’t people ever get done with all that?

Mary had become the person everyone told things to. Or had she always been that person? Come to think of it, yes, God help her. Rose told her about May and Tom, and how her uncle Jack fussed over her but then ignored her if a pretty woman came along. Eddie, God love him, was always a beat or two behind the rest of the band, at least when it came to that sort of tune. May hadn’t so much told Mary about Phoebe’s visits to Mr. Salviatti’s as asked , wanting to be reassured that her friend Phoebe wasn’t a bad person. May hoped that Mary could offer, from what everyone seemed to think was Mary’s large store of worldliness, an assessment of possibilities ranging from completely innocent to dangerously but not wickedly flirtatious.

As May questioned her, Mary had two trains of thought. The first was about May herself. Mary had always liked May, thought she was long-suffering — God knows Dick was a hard man to put up with, even to himself — but also that May had something in her that matched Dick’s fierceness, that he could live with. But listening to May worry about Phoebe, Mary heard a tone that made her wonder if May wasn’t so much thinking of sexual urges with disapproval as thinking them not worth all that fuss.

Lord knows it could come to that.

The second train of thought was that Mary wondered just what Phoebe was doing up there in Mr. Salviatti’s grand house and walled garden all set about with Italian statues and fig trees. She’d pooh-poohed it to May by saying that Mr. Salviatti was a mysterious figure and that Phoebe was just the kind of person who couldn’t leave a mystery alone. Not so much actual mystery, which was much less his doing than the fact that he’d spent too much money setting himself up on his hill, above most of the county but not to the taste of the gentry. But they all still talked, and what Phoebe probably found irresistible was being one up on all the talk. And then, looking at Phoebe from Mr. Salviatti’s perspective, why wouldn’t an older man look forward to Phoebe’s pretty face and figure? Wasn’t there always a man or two lingering by the tennis court whenever Phoebe was playing? Just to take in the way she bent over to pick up a ball, not scooping it up with the edge of her racket but giving the ball a little pat to start it bouncing. “She knows how to add an ornament,” Mary said. “And what’s going on up there on the hill is most likely just ornamental.”

May narrowed her eyes and tightened her lips. Mary couldn’t tell if May was satisfied. Then May sighed and changed the subject. To Rose, of course. The subject of Rose softened May’s face, and the softening made her surprisingly beautiful, though not, Mary thought, in a way a man would notice.

A pulling boat. Sixteen feet length overall, with a four-foot beam, narrow and fast. A bit tender. Two sets of oars. Dick said to Rose, “It’s not just because you never know. You can set her up to have two rowing stations. The middle thwart slides aft like so … and then you put the pegs in and she’s still trim with two rowers. Or you can row from the bow and take a passenger in the stern sheets.”

The hull was all curves — the gunwales flaring from the stem to the middle rowing station, then tucking back in to the wineglass transom.

Dick said, “You learn to row, then I’ll add a little lug rig. She’s got a pretty long skeg under her stern, but there’s a well for a dagger-board. But first you learn to row.”

On either side of the bow there was a compass rose and, in red lettering, “Rose.”

“And this here’s something Eddie made.” Dick held up a long canvas tube inflated to a sausage shape. “You could use that as a life preserver, but it’s mainly a beach roller, so you don’t scratch her bottom if you haul her up.” Dick lifted the lid of the stern seat. “In here you got a little toolbox with some extra screws and such. A water bottle. A waterproof chart. A storm whistle — you can hear it a mile away. You know SOS, right? And here’s a little binnacle—”

“Dick,” Mary said. “Not everything at once.”

“Just one more thing. You see there’s a place for an oarlock in the stern. In a real narrow creek you can scull her along with one oar. You waggle it back and forth. It takes some practice, but it’s a handy thing to know. The basic principle is—”

Elsie and May laughed. Dick frowned. Rose said, “It’s really neat.”

“ She , not it,” Dick said. “You row her an hour a day, four, five times a week, you’ll be as trim as she is.”

Mary followed Rose as she stomped off.

May and Elsie both said, “Oh, Dick.”

Dick said, “Well, God damn it — she’s awful touchy.” Then he drooped. He opened his hands and looked at them. He looked at the boat and said, “I might as well take an ax to her.”

“Forget the boat for now,” May said. She gave him a shove. “Go see to your daughter.” Dick left. May sat on a log and put her face in her hands.

Elsie looked at the boat, at the reflection in the creek, motionless at high tide. The boat sat lightly. A beautiful boat. A patient gift undone by one slip of the tongue. Elsie said, “I don’t know which of them I feel more sorry for.”

May said sharply, “You don’t?”

Elsie could no more unsay her words than Dick could. She knew she owed it to May to turn around. May stood up. Elsie had feared what May would look like, but May looked purely reflective. May said, “I don’t guess you do.”