Allegiance and Betrayal: Stories

A Perfect Time

117 A Perfect Time From the living room window in the rental cottage, Hank studied the ocean. It was sunny and blue, but still too windy, whitecaps all the way to a freighter that rode the horizon. On the beach, waves were tall and broke far from shore, giving long rides to the kids on boogie boards. A perfect day—except for boating, at least for launching through the surf. Part of him wished he didn’t have the boat; it altered his way of looking at the ocean, where winds, tides, and currents had never much mattered. The first year they rented a house on the island, they didn’t even fish. The second year, they dug for clams in the flats of the sound, discovered oyster beds in the marshes. Third year they caught sea mullet, spots, and pompano out of the surf. In following years came the crab traps, flounder gigs, pier fishing, live bait, and lures. Now the boat, a small inflatable Zodiac with a Suzuki outboard. Not quite right for catching kingfish, blues, or Spanish mackerel. Possibly a mistake altogether. Without the kid present, Hank would be able to put the boat out of mind, but there he was, a lanky teenager , stretched on the sofa in wet red surfer trunks, staring at a TV greed show: buzzers, flashing lights, hysterical contestants. Hank wished the kid would go down for a swim with the others. Jim, his father, came up the boardwalk, shaking the stilted house, and opened the door. “Joey, c’mon, we’re gonna play some ball.” “Nah, I’m gonna stay,” the kid said. “In case Uncle Hank needs some help with the outboard.” 118 | Allegiance and Betrayal Hank said the outboard was going to stay put for a while. “Joey,” Jim said, turning his voice to a growl, “take a break, take a break.” The kid moaned, and Jim gave out with that hoarse barrel-chested laugh, an eruption of delight. From the shady porch, Hank watched Jim and the kid cross the dunes and vanish behind the glisten of dune grass. Arms and heads of a few swimmers poked from the big glassy rollers. In no time, Jim would have children from other cottages playing baseball too. Forty-five now, with salt-and-pepper hair on his chest, a square cleft chin, Jim was in love with sports, Cleveland teams in particular. He had a gift for the moment, cared not a thing about politics, and lived with a steady deep level of cheer that to Hank was a disturbing mystery. Slumped in a hammock of white cord with varnished oak spreaders , Hank rocked himself with a mop handle, pushed off the porch wall. Years ago at their lake rental, his father had strung a canvas navy hammock between two oaks. The old photos showed uncles and aunts in the hammock asleep, or posed in front of their new postwar Fords or Buicks. Arms around each other, always a beer bottle in hand, squinting, laughing, they seemed to be having a perfect time. Hank wondered if he and his cousins had pestered them much. Of course, the lake had no giant waterslide, miniature golf, or raceway. But Uncle Jake had a Harley, and Uncle Bat had an Indian, and the kids always begged for rides. And got them. The hammock rocked slightly. The cover of Time showed a terrorist with a gun to the head of a pilot. Hank didn’t feel like reading . His mind was held hostage by something else—that feeling just before the wave gathered and rose toward the bow of the Zodiac, when he yanked the starter cord frantically, and the kid rowed, trying to get them past the worst of the breakers. He never quite saw the wave, or the kid jump clear. Hank remembered a sudden bottom of shiny black cobbles from the top of the curl, then falling, the boat tumbling over him in the surf, the motor striking him A Perfect Time | 119 between the shoulder blades. When he finally got free, came up for air, the boat was already in the shallows, bottom up in the foam, the prop like a glossy black pinwheel. Jim and his wife, Connie, were right there and, with the help of the boys, quickly righted the boat and retrieved the red gas tank. But one of the fishing rods was broken in...