I pedaled through the rusty street-side gate, clattered over potholes and lumps of coral rock. Boats loomed all around me in untidy rows, propped in cradles, suspended from canvas straps, resting precariously on spindly jacks. Maybe it was just my mood, but I found an awful pathos in those landlocked boats. They seemed defeated, punished with exile for their failures. Paint curled on their desiccated bottoms. Their waterline stripes looked futile in the unbuoyant air. Rudders waved at nothing; keels spiked downward to no effect.
I rode and looked around, and after a couple minutes I found Kenny Lukens' sailboat.
I was sure it was his, though I could not have recognized a Morgan forty-one. It was the name on the transom that made me certain—though Kenny had never mentioned the name. It was stamped in gold block letters framed in navy blue, and the honest truth is that it broke my heart. It was called Dream Chaser.
There was a fellow standing by the boat, working on it, fairing the hull with a small hand sander. He was spare and lean and his skin had tanned to a rosewood color; his hair was so blond it was white; it stood straight up. He wore flip- flops and a tiny orange bathing suit flecked with paint. I pedaled up to him and said hello.
"Your boat?" I asked.
"Oh yawh," he said happily. His eyes changed to slits when he smiled. His sun-bleached eyelashes all but disappeared.
"She's beautiful."
He beamed. "Oh yawh."
"Had 'er long?"
"Fife months. Buy her almost soon as I arrife." There was pride in his voice, wonder on his flat frank face.
"Where ya from?"
"Riga," he said. "Latvia. Latvian I am. My name is Andrus."
"I'm Pete. You're a long way from home."
"Denks God. Latvia, your ass it freezes off."
"The boat—you bought it here?"
"Right vere she is sitting," he said. "Good deal too. Only unpaid bills is vat I'm paying."
I smiled for the Latvian's good luck though this made me very sad. Why did it always seem that one guy's bargain was another guy's tragedy? I was suddenly troubled by how little was left of Kenny Lukens, how little anybody knew of him, how little it seemed to matter that he'd passed this way. "Know who owned it before?" I asked.
"I tink a local couple."
"Why you think that?"
"Clothes they leave behind," he told me. "Men's clothes, vimmen's clothes."
"Ah. Can I ask you something else? A couple days ago, were you out here working on the boat?"
Cheerfully, he said, "Every day I'm vorking on the boat."
"Did you happen to see a couple of guys hanging around in snorkels?"
"Shnorkels? On the land?"
"Right. Here around the yard."
"Vy shnorkels in the yard?"
"Like, you know, a disguise."
"Ah. Like Halloveen. Pumpkins. Vitches."
"Something like that."
Andrus rubbed the dusty white stubble on his cheek. "No," he murmured. "Shnorkels, no." Then he added, "Vait! Two, three days ago, a couple fellows come racing up on yetskies."
I wondered if he'd noticed that he'd lapsed into his native tongue. "Yetskies?"
"Yawh. You know." He made a motion like revving up a motorcycle.
"Oh. Jet Skis."
"Exectly. This is vat I'm saying. On yetskies they come racing up and shnorkels they are vearing. And I remember I am thinking, Vait, either you are going shnorkel or you are going vit the yetski. Vy both?"
"These guys—you remember what they looked like?"
The Latvian bit his lip, shook his head, lovingly patted the Morgan's hull. "I vas vorking," he said. "Making smooth. Really, I don't pay attention."
"You remember what they did?"
"Did? Nothing. Hang around. Look at boats. Then go. Vy you ask?"
I thought of saying that the former owner of Dream Chaser was a friend of mine. But that would lead to way too many questions. So I moved on to other business. "You know a woman, Maggie? Teaches yoga?"
The happy fellow smiled yet again. "Nice lady. Friendly. Nice. Over there she lives."
He pointed across the yard to a beamy trawler sitting on the ground, its only supports a series of chocks to hold it level. It looked less like a boat than like a children's-book rendition of a boat. Its bottom was painted pink. Its flanks were glossy burgundy. Blue window boxes had been rigged up on its gunwales; begonias and geraniums bloomed in unlikely splendor on its decks. I had to smile too. And I had to acknowledge a certain schoolboy thrill in learning where Maggie lived; there was a faint promise of intimacy in seeing her place as she'd seen mine.
The joyful Latvian had gone back to his sanding. Small knots of muscle stood out in his shoulders as he worked. "Well," I yelled above the scratching, "nice talking with you. Good luck with the boat."