How big a boat? His hands approximate a model size, and then some. We will charge by the pound. No fuel cost with sails, completely green.
He is talking to himself because I am not listening. I am near enough to hear, even to squeeze after he's approximated, but it is my question about boat size. It is made in fear which doesn't allow for accurate answers, one of which he is trying out with his fuel cost talk, with all that green.
The two of them, father and son, will set sail up and down the coast with cargo in a boat just that size. Nevermind the fun of it or the fantasy—I see the wind pushing the boat flat with all its paid-for cargo. They will set out late and the tide will be sluggish, and the clouds come. The land will be nowhere, their load heavy, too heavy. The two of them are always teasing it heavier like people do with the amount of fuel in a car, less and less, they're already loading it.
Land stretches out under an empty car we've left while they eye the boat that they've built for all that water. The boy shares the wild eyes of his father—and they lighten at the least No. The boy is already talking of lifting a longshoreman's carton of scotch, dropping it on the deck to catch it in cups—he's heard that story. The boy nods watching his father's hands describe the load they'll be taking, not scotch but heavy.
The moon rises out of the water at the pier's end as if a ball held down. They move in silhouette against it into the trial boat. They're already loading it with bricks somebody says they want elsewhere or else they're trial bricks, and some scotch.
They leave under sail.
I will not walk the widow's walk or wait. He says his own father cast him adrift and he can't repeat that, no need to wait. He needs that boat and its heavy load with his son in it. The boy smirks where his father can't see, the boy has his hands in his pockets. It is only on a boat that the father and son can move, says the father. The boy doesn't say no.
So I'm standing on the dock when the bricks lower the boat until every wave threatens.
The boy removes his hands from his pockets.
How far do you think we can row? asks his father. The sails are already torn, the wind has been at them too long already. The man sweats at the oars, the boy bails.
The boat doesn't move.
The father says I'm the moon. I'm not.