Numbly, he moved to the prow. Suddenly, he knew that if he reached his hands down and touched he would find the name of the boat, fresh-painted.
Why had the season changed? Why had the warm weather come back?
The answer was simple.
The name of the boat was Farewell Summer.
And it had come back just for him.
‘Doug…’ the voices faded. ‘Oh, good-by…oh so long…so long…?’
‘Skip, Grandma, Grandpa, Bill, Mr Wyneski, no, no, no, oh Skip, oh Grandma, Grandpa, save me!’
But the shore was empty, the dock lost, the parade gone home and the ship blew its horn a final time and broke his heart so it fell out of his eyes in tears and he wept saying all the names of the ones on shore, and it all ran together into one immense and terrifying word that shook his soul and sneezed forth his heart’s blood in one convulsive shout:
‘Grandpa grandma skip bill mr wyneski help!’
And sat up in bed, hot, cold, and weeping.
He lay there with the tears running down into his ears and he wept, feeling the bed, wept feeling the good sunlight on the fingers of his twitching hands and on the patchwork quilt. Sunset put a quiet supply of lemonade colors through all the air of his room.
His crying ceased.
He got up and went to the mirror to see what sadness looked like and there it was, colored all through his face and in his eyes where it could never be got out now, where it would never go away, and he reached out to touch that other face beyond the glass, and that other hand inside the glass touched back, and it was cold.
Below, bread baked and filled the house with its late afternoon perfume. He walked slowly down the stairs to watch Grandma pull the lovely guts out of a chicken and then pause at a window to see Skip far up in his favorite tree trying to see beyond the sky, and then he strolled out to the porch where the smell of baking bread followed him as if it knew where he was and would not let him go.
Someone stood on the porch, smoking his next-to-last pipe of the day.
‘Gramps, you’re here!’
‘Why, sure, Doug.’
‘Boy. Boy, oh, boy. You’re here. The house is here. The town’s here!’
‘It seems you’re here, too, boy.’
‘Yeah, oh, yeah.’
Grandpa nodded, gazed at the sky, took a deep breath, started to speak when a sudden panic made Doug cry: ‘Don’t!’
‘Don’t what, boy?!’
Don’t, thought Doug, don’t say what you were going to say.
Grandpa waited.
The trees leaned their shadows on the lawn and took on colors of autumn even as they watched. Somewhere, the last lawnmower of summer shaved and cut the years and left them in sweet mounds.
‘Gramps, is—’
‘Is what, Doug?’
Douglas swallowed, closed his eyes, and in self-imposed darkness, got rid of it all in a rush:
‘Is death being on a boat alone and it sailing off and taking you with it and all your folks left back on the shore!?’
Grandpa chewed it over, read a few clouds in the sky, nodded.
‘That’s about it, Doug. Why do you ask?’
‘Just wanted to know.’
Douglas eyed a high cloud passing that had never been that shape before and would never be that way again.
‘Say what you were just about to say, Gramps.’
‘Well, now, let me see. Farewell summer?’
‘Yes, sir,’ whispered Douglas, and leaned against the tall man there and took the old man’s hand and held it hard against his cheek and then placed it to rest on top of his head, like a crown for a young king.
Farewell summer.
The end
