Rain
There was so much rain it seemed that the seagulls flying overhead had grown gills.
Rain
Rain. All day, all night, rain.
Rain.
There’s nothing so wet as an all-day, continuous, drenching rain in the tropics.
Rain.
The only thing to read in Someday was last year’s Yachting Magazinewhich I had borrowed from the marina office. Yachting magazines concentrate on boats the average sailor could never afford, and outside of shows, never see. Oh, look! A boat in the Turkish Aegean that charters out at the low, low price of $45,000 a week! Wouldn’t it be a bummer to pay $45,000 for a seven-day charter to have it rain?
Rain.
It was raining so hard Nelson hadn’t come over to borrow anything.
Rain.
The curtains in the boat’s cabin swayed back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. A crab boat went puckata-puckata down the canal and kicked up a small wake. Now the curtains swayed back and forth and then up and down, back and forth and up and down, until the crab boat’s wake faded away.
Rain.
The rain hitting the cabin’s roof sizzled. The drops that collected on the mast and the folded sails shook themselves off and then they smacked the cabin’s roof in huge thudding drops. I turned the radio up.
Rain.
I heard Nelson screaming at Carlos. Nelson was mad that the job he thought he had was underbid by some Mexicans Nelson, a Cuban with fuzzy American citizenship, hated all Mexicans whom he assured us all had fuzzy American citizenships.
He yelled at Carlos. Carlos probably just wanted to lie in his damp bunk in their tiny trailer out of the rain. I turned the radio up some more.
Rain.
The topside of Someday was freshly painted. I had painted it last week and concentrated the paint in the corners and places that seemed to be more porous than the rest.
It worked.
New paint on the boat’s deck stopped a lot of weeps, seeps and oozes. Someday had now become a much drier boat. Earlier that morning, I had fixed the leaking of the front hatch. In desperation, after days of rain and wet, I took the dingy I had scrounged and turned it upside down over the front hatch. I couldn’t open the hatch now, but at least there was no more water seeping in.
I finished assembling the rudder and then poured epoxy into the spaces, cracks, crevices, and caves, between the rudder’s flanks and the new blade. This would take a lot more epoxy. Mistakes always seemed to take a lot extra to cover up than to avoid in the first place.
Inside the garage, out of the rain, I varnished for the fourth time the back cabin’s mahogany veneer. Re-stained a rub-rail for the second time and wiped it down. My experience with stain was limited. Tom happened to come down to see my new neighborhood.
“You know, once you apply the stain, it has to be wiped off.”
“News to me!”
“That’s why the cabin looks like it was brush coated and just left. You never wiped it down.”
“That’s exactly what happened.” I smiled. I didn’t beat myself up about it. If I didn’t want to make mistakes I wouldn’t get up in the morning.
Rain.
I gathered up the black garbage bag under the boat’s sink and held the rattling plastic over my head as I ran down the floating dock into the boatyard’s garage. I was hoping to have someone to talk to. Even though most times the garage was empty and dirty when it was raining like today, it was the gathering place for all of us. Our yard’s garage wasn’t always empty and dirty. Today it was just empty.
I nestled into one of the plastic lawn chairs thinking I’d sit there for a while, maybe light up the barbeque and just watch the fire. It beats going back to my boat and taking a nap on a damp pillow.
“Hey.”
I looked up from my reverie. Annie smiled down at me.
“What are you doing out in the rain?” I pointed to the overflowing drainpipe.
“Walking the dog. He’s been cooped up on the boat so long that all four legs were crossed.”
I studied Annie’s face.
“So you threw the poor dog out in the rain.”
“It’ll wash him down a bit. Kill two birds with one rainstorm. Besides, he doesn’t mind. As long as I towel him off once we get back to the boat.”
We both smiled. I glanced at her white teeth. Awkwardly I turned my glance away from her and looked out at the garage’s rain-spattered door. I had a fierce desire to keep her with me longer.
“You seen the cat?”
“Nope.”
“I’m down a cat.” Annie’s brow knitted. “Not much going on.”
She looked out the door. The yachts pulled against their lines like tethered horses.
“That, and its Wednesday. Even in the seaso,n it’s quiet mid-week.”
“Cross–eyed.” I smiled.
“Pardon?”
“Old Maine fisherman’s saying. ‘Cross-eyed. Born on a Wednesday, looking both ways for the week-end.’”
“Quaint.”
Once again, I was reminded that I had spent the last thirty years absorbing construction camp humour.
“Quaint.” I repeated back to Annie.
Rain splattered and rattled the tin roof of the garage. It was one of those moments when ignoring each other would make more of a statement than prattling. She caught me looking at her. An eyebrow lifted a millimeter. I made a vow that from now on when I stared at Miss Annie, I’d keep my eyes above her shoulders.
“Mind riffs.”
“Mmm.” Annie answered. “It’s a good day for it.”
“Yeah. Shoulda, coulda, wouldas.” I smiled.
Annie gave me a vague smile as she called for her dog and they made the walk back through the rain to her trawler. I watched her walk away. I wondered why we had never connected. She was cute, had an honest pleasant personality, and was a terrific actress.
Why hadn’t we gotten closer?
Maybe she just wasn’t interested. Naw. I’m a guy, and all guys think that every woman is interested. Women are especially interested in a 60-year-old penniless writer, whose standard of living is one up from a homeless derelict, camped out in his $2,000 boat that used to be a dog kennel.
What’s not to love?
The fire in the barbeque needed tending. Once it died a second time, I tried to decide whether to brave the wet and either sit forlornly inside my boat, or stay here and sit forlornly inside this garage waiting for Nelson to come and borrow something.
“How’s the boat coming?” Annie stood in front of me again.
“The project’s fine. That’s not the problem.”
“Problem?”
“Where you going?” I asked. Nodding to her change in clothes.
“Rehearsal.” Annie said.
I stared into the fire. I started to ramble. Like a steam boiler releasing its pressure, I spoke in a stream. Annie opened her mouth once but I just kept talking. I stared into the fire and talked. She leaned against the arm of the other chair with her fingers linked and her ankles crossed.
“I was always away. Two months here, three months there. One year I was away for eight months. Once, when I walked in the door after being away for months, even my dog barked at me.” I sat up in the suddenly uncomfortable chair. “I paid for that neglect, big time.”
“Karma.” Annie said flatly.
The silence was broken by a swell of sizzling on the garage’s tin roof. The warmth of the fading barbecue’s fire on my face contrasted with the clamminess of the cinderblock garage on my back.
I found myself trying to smell, not just the coffee she had brought, but Annie. From where I sat, her waist was eye level. I felt her warmth on my ear. I curled and uncurled my toes. I inhaled slow and deep. I tried to smell that mysterious clean aura of this beautiful woman. Her smell was light but random, coming and going, something that was just her, not some artificial add-on perfume, but her. It was her clean breath, her light hair, her…
“Is that why you bought the boat? To run away?”
I gave her a sharp look. That’s something I had a hard time admitting, even to myself.
She continued, “Around here, a boat is an acceptable escape vehicle. You can tell everyone you are going on this grand adventure but really? Really, you are just running away. And you always have the option of coming back, telling everybody that it was just a vacation.”
“You’ve put a whole lot more thought into this than you let on.” I shifted in my chair.
Annie smiled a thin smile. “When I first bought my boat, I sailed over to the Bahamas. I sailed up and down the Bahamas for a year and a half. I know.”
I looked at Annie. “I didn’t know about that.”
“Most people who have project boats don’t get as far as you have. They tinker. They nibble around the edges. Finally, they realize that the dream is turning out to be just their same miserable life, only now it’s cramped and wet. They give up. Every second boat out there….” She raised her hand to the rain. “If you wanted to escape, really escape, you’d just do it, boat or no boat. A boat just means you want the approval of the people you left behind. A boat means you want to come back.”
I suddenly hated that old plastic chair. Annie watched the rain. Slowly, she turned to face me.
“That’s what you really want to do? Fix a boat?”
“Yeah.”
“You have to watch out, though. You know what they call people who ignore everything else except only one thing?”
“What?”
“Assholes.”
I looked at my favorite actress.
“Look around. They laugh. You noticed that? You can always hear laughter here, on this dock. Even when they’re mad at each other.” She smiled. “Build your boat, but don’t ignore people, life.”
“I know what you’re saying!” I snapped. “What about you?”
“What about me?” Annie’s hand went to her throat.
“You’re smarter than any of us here. You got grace and class that they can’t teach in books. You’re beauti….”
“Why, thank you.”
“It’s not a compliment, it’s a question. Why are you here, in this dump, drinking coffee with all of us?” I spread my hands towards the line of our tired boats.
Annie’s chin nodded towards the boats. “It’s cheap!” She looked at me like she was a grade three teacher, and I, the eight-year-old student who had asked a very stupid question. “Do you know what an apartment goes for in Key West?”
“A lot?”
Annie looked away. “And there’s more to life than, just, money grubbing. That’s what I’m saying. There’s a joy here. Enjoy!” She looked at me. It wasn’t a pleasant look. “Live!”
With the noise like a clatter of hail, the huge wooden door to the garage opened and Nelson, wearing a garbage bag, bustled in shedding water like a black plastic mallard.
Annie leapt. “Want some coffee, Nelson?” She near shouted.
“Annie. You gotta have a, goal.” I spoke weakly to her back. “Or something.”
She walked towards Nelson, but even over the rain hissing on the garage’s tin roof, I knew she had heard.
I think that’s why Annie and I never got together. She liked her men intelligent.
Rick Ranson 