A Good High Place

Chapter 2

c H A P T e R T W o 1911 Somethingidiscoveredearlyisthatboatnamesarenotparceled out willy-nilly but rather on a first-come, first-served basis: first daughter, first love, first original (or unoriginal) thought—those kinds of priorities. And names can be confusing. According to cap, Mabel the boat is 54 feet long, 14 feet across the beam, and draws 4 foot 4 inches of water. She is a passenger/light-freight steamer made of solid oak, built by George H. Notter co., Buffalo, New York, in the year 1893. She weighs nineteen gross register tons and has a single screw rig of fifty indicated horsepower, which might not mean anything to you, but believe me, it meant something to us. Mabel the person isn’t as broad across the beam and doesn’t weigh as much as Mabel the boat, but then Mabel the person never learned to buck the waves. Mabel the boat lists slightly starboard, as if she’s cocking her head, considering if you’re worth anything. She creaks and complains and demands much of both cap and me, but she can turn around and rock you gently in her lap, just when you’re sure you’ve had enough of her. i knew a lot about Mabel the boat back then and next to nothing about Mabel the person, my sister who was six years older than me. A GOOD HIGH PLACE 11 Today, as on most summer days, i’m leaning back in my wooden folding chair, short wide feet propped against the railing. i hear the easy slapping of waves against the side of the Mabel and the rustling of the reeds as we cut through parts of the narrows. The reeds bow to me as they always do, and i imagine myself as the queen of the lakes, the reeds my loyal and willing subjects. When i close my eyes, the smells ambush me. The musty smell of the old steamer mixes with the odor of the scrap wood we burn for fuel, and there’s that fish-fowl-fauna smell as well. i wonder if i’m starting to smell musty, and i figure i am from hours of sitting on these side berths. i’ll smell like this for the rest of my life, i imagine; i am in my realm here. it’s sunny, but like a polite smile, i don’t feel warmed by it. The wind is southwesterly at ten to fifteen knots. Waves today are less than a foot in Grand Traverse Bay, though we’re not in the bay. The Mabel runs only through the inland waterway, seventy-five miles of connecting lakes and rivers between the villages of elk Rapids at the south end of the chain and eastport or Bellaire at the north end. Right now we’re running up Torch River headed toward Spencer’s creek. Why you so lumpy? Keane, doc Mulcahey’s son, asks me. He’s said this to me often—i imagine because he liked the look he saw on my face the first time he said it. His voice isn’t distinctive, but it crawls inside me whether i like it or not. i don’t answer him, but it’s the damnedpocketsthatmakemelumpy,orratherthestuffinthepockets that forms cumbersome bulges at my hip joints and hard lumps under my backside. There can never be enough pockets in a pair of overalls, and mine are crammed full of an assortment of gear: fly line, a pair of small scissors for trimming knots, fabric tape measure, silk for tying flies, and rags for oiling line. i adjust the lump under my left cheek and ease back in my chair, which is sandwiched between two black trunks and a packing crate of bluing headed to eastport. When you leavin’? i ask Keane. i do my best to look through him, but he’s standing over me, and though i can’t articulate this quite yet, i can smell things leaking through his pores, something 12 L.E. Kimball like fast-approaching adolescence mixed with an inexplicable disappointment in something. do you mean leave the boat or leave you off to yourself? What kind of question is that anyway? he asks. You know, i say. When the heck you gettin’ off? i turn my back on him and see to my line. Fly line has always intrigued me—the fact that you...