The Promise (6 page)

I turned off the light and stood very still. In the abrupt, total darkness of the night the odor of moist decay was suddenly overpowering.

I snapped the light back on and continued walking. The shoreline straightened, curved sharply, and straightened again, forming a tiny inlet. The smooth surface of the lake reflected the stars, stone-speckled with tiny quivering pinpoints of light. I stepped over dead trees and thick branches. Then the path angled sharply away from the lake and I was in the woods again, walking very quickly between thick-trunked trees, and there was the maple and the back lawn and the cottage, dark except for the single yellow light that burned over the door of the screened-in porch. My father was asleep.

I lay awake in my bed and listened to the trees outside the open window. I lay awake a long time and saw myself staring out the window at the black asphalt-paved street that was Bedford Avenue and listening to a short, intense, thick-shouldered, black-bearded man explain a passage of Talmud. I lay very still in the darkness.

The wind woke me. It blew through the open window and stirred the curtains. I could feel it cool and moist on my face. I lay in the bed and remembered the night.

When I came out to the screened-in porch I saw my father already there, praying the Morning Service, the fringes of his long tallith reaching nearly to the floor, the straps of his tefillin wound carefully around his arm and head. The porch faced eastward and the sun shone above the trees of the woods and came through the screening, and my father stood facing the sun, praying from memory, his eyes closed behind their steel-rimmed spectacles, the sun bright on his thin features and gray hair. I put on my tefillin and prayed quietly and afterward I prepared a light breakfast and we sat in the kitchen and ate. The branches on the maple near the edge of the woods swayed heavily in the wind. But it was a warm wind now and would not keep me from the lake.

I told my father about last night. “He scares me a little,” I said when I was done. “I’ve never seen anyone so angry.”

“He had reason to be angry. You are certain that old man deliberately cheated you?”

“That old man was the vilest person I’ve ever met.”

Later, I went into the living room and dialed the phone. I heard it ring for quite some time before it was answered.

“Hello,” I said.

“Reuven?” Rachel said.

“Where’s Michael?”

“He’s around somewhere.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Very, very fragile.”

I asked her if she was working on her paper. She was spending her mornings that summer writing a long paper on the Ithaca section of James Joyce’s
Ulysses
for an English honors course.

Yes, she was working on the paper, she said.

“Would Michael want to go sailing?”

She hesitated. I could feel her hesitating.

“Ask your father if it’s okay.”

The phone went silent. She had evidently cupped her hand over it. I waited for what seemed to me to be a long time.

“My father thinks it’s all right,” she said finally.

“Give a yell for Michael.”

She cupped her hand over the phone again.

“Yes?” Michael said after another long pause. His voice sounded thin and distant.

“Hello,” I said. “How are you?”

“All right.”

“Would you like to go sailing?”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. It’s very windy.”

“It’s the best time for it.”

There was a brief silence. “All right,” he said. “But I don’t know too much about sailing.”

“I’ll teach you. Find yourself a piece of string and tie it to the earpieces of your glasses and put it tight around your head so the glasses won’t fall off. And wear a bathing suit and some kind of shirt. Okay?”

“Yes,” he said, very hesitantly.

“I’ll see you soon.”

I changed into swim trunks, a T shirt, and thongs, went into the kitchen, found some string, and tied my glasses tightly to my head. Through the screen door of the kitchen I saw my father seated at the wooden table on the back porch, working on his book. I told him I was going over to Rachel and would be back in time for lunch. He nodded vaguely, without looking up. I went
out to the street and walked quickly beneath the trees to the beach.

Some early bathers were lounging about on the sand and splashing in the water. The wind blew stiffly across the lake. I walked across the beach to the boat-rental concession, which was operated by a white-haired man in his early sixties and his seventeen-year-old son. The man was not there. The boy was sitting on the edge of the dock, his legs dangling in the water, his eyes closed. He turned when he heard me coming up the dock and gave me a sleepy look.

“Rough night?” I said, to make conversation.

“Yeah,” he said, and grinned.

I wondered for a moment if I ought to take a sailboat instead of a Sailfish, then decided against it. A Sailfish was less complicated, despite the possibility of its turning over, and I did not think I wanted to trust Michael with the jib sheet of a sailboat. Serving as ballast for a Sailfish would be enough for him.

I asked for a Sailfish.

He stared sleepily at the boats tied to the dock and bobbing in the waves. “Take any one you want.” He yawned noisily.

I took off my thongs and handed them to him, then pulled a Sailfish parallel to the dock, climbed on board, and put up the mainsail. The Sailfish was painted red and the mainsail was white with narrow red stripes. I let the sheet hang loose and the sail flapped noisily in the wind.

“Where’s the center board?” I asked.

He looked at the boat, grinned sheepishly, then went with the thongs to the shed on the beach near the dock and came back with the board. I balanced myself carefully on the Sailfish and inserted the board. It went in with difficulty.

“Is this the right board?”

“They’re all the same. How long you going to be gone?”

“About two hours.”

“You got a great wind,” he said with obvious uninterest, and yawned again.

“Untie me,” I said.

He loosened the rope from the metal ring on the dock and dropped it into the water. I worked the mainsail sheet with my right hand and the tiller with my left. The sail caught the wind. I hauled in on the sheet and the sail billowed out and went taut. The Sailfish moved swiftly away from the dock. I tacked toward the middle of the lake, bouncing on the waves and sliding into troughs. The wind blew steadily and the waves were big and dark and crested with foam. There were clouds in the sky now but they were nowhere near the sun. I felt the Sailfish begin to slide and I put the sheet between my teeth and pushed the center board all the way down. The Sailfish lurched to starboard in a gust of wind, the port side lifting up out of the water. I transferred the sheet to my hand and leaned out backward over the edge, feeling the exhilaration of fighting the wind and riding the waves. The Sailfish raced across the water, leaving behind a white foamy wake, and for a long time I forgot about the old man and the carnival and Michael waiting for me in the house on the other side of the lake, and felt only the wind and the sun and the spraying of the water and the sheet tight in my hand against the gusting air.

The dock was deserted. I pulled up alongside it and tied the Sailfish to a support beam and climbed up the ladder. The planks were hot beneath my bare feet. I shouted Michael’s name. A moment later, the door at the head of the wooden stairway opened and Michael came outside. Behind him came Sarah and Joseph Gordon, and Rachel. They followed him down the stairway. Michael wore a dark swimsuit and a T shirt. He had tied his glasses to his head with a piece of string. He looked a little nervous.

They came up to the edge of the dock and stared down at the bobbing Sailfish. The water surged against the support beams of the dock and rolled onto the shore. On the other side of the dock, the rowboat bounced on the waves.

Michael was looking at the Sailfish.

“I’ve never been out in one of those,” he said.

“They’re a lot of fun.”

“You’ve got a rough wind for a Sailfish,” Joseph Gordon said.

“It goes like a motorboat.” I was trying to sound cheerful.

“I thought you would bring a boat,” Sarah Gordon said. She wore a light-green summer dress that blew out behind her in the wind.

“The Sailfish is simpler.”

“Please be careful,” Rachel said. She had on her reading glasses and was holding her hands against the sides of her head to keep her hair from blowing about.

They stood there, hovering protectively around Michael.

I climbed down onto the Sailfish and, balancing myself carefully, helped Michael aboard and sat him down alongside the center board. I untied the rope and pushed us off and scrambled for the sheet. I hauled in on the sheet and the sail billowed out with a sudden puffing sound, and the Sailfish responded to the rudder and slid swiftly away from the dock. I looked over my shoulder. Rachel and her parents stood stiffly on the dock, looking as though they were witnessing a departure for an ocean voyage.

I looked at Michael. He sat near the center board, gripping the rail behind him with both hands, tense, tight, wide-eyed. The Sailfish lurched to port in a sudden gust of wind and Michael gasped as the starboard side tilted up out of the water.

“Lean back,” I told him. “All the way back. That’s right.” The Sailfish straightened, responding immediately to Michael’s weight. “Good. Very good. Now come in slowly toward the center.” He wriggled forward a little, his hands pushing on the flat surface of the boat. “That’s right,” I said, and gave him an encouraging smile. “You’ll balance the boat with your weight. Okay?” He nodded hesitantly. “You move back and forth to keep us straight in the water. But move slowly.” We lurched again to port. “Now!” I said. “That’s right. Move back. Slowly. All the way back. Lean out as far as you can.” The boat straightened and Michael slid forward again toward the center. “Very good. You’re doing fine. Just fine.” He gave me a brief, tentative smile.

We sailed toward the middle of the lake. There were many
clouds now in the sky but they were off in the west and not blocking the sun. Far off in the distance there was a sheen of gold across the water and beyond it was the blue line of the horizon. We sailed swiftly in the wind, and the waves were dark and choppy and the troughs were deep and we dropped into them and came steeply up, crashing into the waves and sliding somewhat despite the center board. The mainsail sheet was around my hand and I felt it biting into the flesh but I held it tight and the sail held the wind and we moved like a motorboat across the water. We sailed for a very long time and I watched Michael moving his body back and forth and he had the feel of it now and at one point he leaned way out across the rail in response to a wild gust of wind, half his body over the side, arching tightly, grasping the rail and leaning out backward, and suddenly he laughed and it was the same laugh I had heard from him on the roller coaster the night before. Then he looked at me and there was spray on his face and a brightness in his eyes. There were many boats on the lake now and veering away from one of them we took a strong gust of wind and the boom went down toward the water and Michael leaned way out over the rail, throwing his head and shoulders back. We tilted sharply to port and the boom skimmed the water and I braced myself and felt spray on my face and hands, and the boom went under and then the sail, and we came to a dead stop. Michael was sitting on the upended edge of the Sailfish and I saw him let go of the rail and slide slowly into the water and disappear. I slid off the Sailfish. The water was warm. I did not go under. Michael reappeared alongside me, still wearing his glasses. He shook water from his face. His dark-brown hair looked pasted to his head. I heard him laugh and watched him tread water.

“Too much wind,” I told him, and grinned.

“I wasn’t scared,” he said. “I went in and wasn’t scared at all.”

“You were okay.”

“What do we do?”

“I’ll show you.”

He helped me right the Sailfish. Then we were back on it and I was tacking toward the house and the dock. Michael lay near the center board, his eyes closed now, his wet face to the sun. He was smiling to himself. His lips smiled and then went straight and then they smiled again and then went straight again. He kept smiling on and off as he shifted his weight on the Sailfish. He lay like that a long time, and then he opened his eyes and raised his head and looked around.

“Are we going back?”

“No.”

“There’s the dock. Why are we going toward the dock?”

“There’s a cove beyond the house.”

He looked at me.

“There won’t be the wind there. We can tie up the boat. It’ll be shallow but the water will be smooth.”

He looked at me and his eyes narrowed with suspicion.

“We can lie around and relax and swim. It’s a very nice cove.”

He lay back on the Sailfish and closed his eyes.

“We can do some more sailing later on if you want.”

He did not say anything. We sailed toward the cove.

“I’ll need you to raise the center board soon.”

He opened his eyes. We were coming in very fast. He sat up and put his hands on top of the board.

We were about fifty yards from the shoreline, the water deep and dark and very choppy. We sailed past the house. The dock was deserted. There were huge boulders along the shore, and tall trees and dense brush. I could see the trees swaying in the wind. A few hundred yards beyond the house was the cove, a shallow inlet protected from the wind by steep banks and towering trees. I tacked toward the cove and we moved along a zigzag course, and then the water was suddenly shallow and I saw the lake bed, and I said, “Okay. Raise it halfway.”

Michael pulled up on the center board. It did not move.

“Pull up hard,” I said.

He was on his knees alongside it, pulling, and it would not
move and I felt it scrape against the bottom of the lake and the Sailfish bucked.

“Pull!” I yelled.

He pulled with all his strength, the muscles of his thin arms bulging. I felt the center board scrape again along the lake bed. I put the mainsail sheet between my teeth and leaned forward and put my right hand on the center board. Michael looked at me. His hair lay across his forehead. His face was tight. He pried my hand from the board. I felt his thin fingers prying my hand from the board. He pulled furiously on the board. The wind gusted against the sail and the sheet tugged hard on my teeth. I transferred the sheet to my hand and held the sail taut. The center board moved up slowly.