Worldly Goods

Illustration by GOSIA HERBA

It was a beautiful little motorboat; Henry didn’t need anyone to tell him that. There it was, rocking gently in its marina slip, a 1955 Penn Yan wood-and-canvas Trailboat, fourteen feet, brass fittings, a short-planked deck, three gunwale-to-gunwale benches. Seeing it for the first time in nearly five years, Henry had a crisp vision of his dad sitting in the stern on a flotation cushion, his hand on the little two-stroke Mercury outboard—ordering him to the bow to get it to plane. As a boy Henry had liked to crawl onto a bed of life preservers beneath the deck and let the hard smack of the waves lull him to sleep.

“She’s a beautiful little boat,” the marina man said again—the third time.

“Yep,” Henry said.

“In fact, I know some guys’d give their left, uh—” The plump, fiftyish man, the name “Ben” embroidered on his work shirt, glanced at Sophie, who was staring at the rack of new water-skis inside the shop as if trying to divine their purpose. “Their left leg to buy it off you.”

“Is that right?”

“I could get you a tidy little bidding war.”

“It’s all set?”

“Like to have a day or two warning, but yeah. We got it ready.”

Henry nodded. He’d called the marina from the road only hours before. They’d been at a gas station in New Hampshire.

“Fifty-fives in good condition are extremely rare, Mr. Garfield.”

Henry liked that—the Mr. Garfield bit. He recalled this man addressing his father that way, with the same intonation, the same head-dip of deference.

“Shame to have it in storage all summer, I guess,” Henry said, feeling like he was offering the man a concession. His father’s prized possession was now owned by a twenty-six-year-old in $200 jeans who hadn’t been to Maine in half a decade.

“Dunno. Priceless boat like that gets knocked to pieces you run it too much.” They both squinted out through the open service bay. The breeze had kicked up. Beside the Penn Yan, a pair of Boston Whalers emblazoned with the name of the marina rocked in unison, and beyond the breakwater, the lake looked dark and rough, frosted with chop. The August sun was low. 6:20 p.m.

“My dad ran it all summer when he was up here, though, right?”

“Your father was careful with her. Knew what he had.” The man—Ben—turned a steady gaze on him and Henry did his best to meet it. He wore suspenders, adorned with small anchors, and work boots. Rosy cheeks, a kind light in his eye, but Henry knew better. All these guys up here were hard-asses, especially to out-of-towners.

The sound of ice sluicing out of a bucket made Henry turn around. “Happy hour,” said a young mechanic in coveralls as he set the empty bucket on the concrete floor beside a Coleman cooler. “Almost. We like to knock off a little early on Fridays.”

Knock off what? No visible work was being done. The shop with its boat supplies, water-skis, and tourist T-shirts was deserted except for Sophie, and, here in the service area, only a single boat was up on a sling: a MasterCraft with a fiberglass patch like a skin graft on its hull. A couple of outboard engines, their casings off, were bolted to the side of a large steel tub; in the corner, a battered boom box played the Rolling Stones. The air was thick with the fumes of caulk and varnish and gasoline.

The mechanic nestled bottles of Budweiser into the ice; Henry desperately wanted one. Long drive, long day. The trip to the island could wait.

Sophie’s tour of the shop had resulted in a pair of neon koozies. Henry saw both men take her in: dark, blunt bangs, silver nail polish, Jackie O. sunglasses, thin Sonic Youth T-shirt, her nipple rings knobbing through the soft...