Wind From The Northeast

Samuelson turned toward Nat. "Did you know that while you were away this summer, Dyce crewed for a boy only two years older than you?" Dyce went on pumping. The inhale of the pump sounded like heavy breathing.

At that moment Nat was afraid. It couldn't have been because of his father's remarks—he was used to them and they were unusually obvious today, anyway—but suddenly he realized that the summer was almost over. He had never before regretted the passing of time, and he knew at once that this was the first step, not in growing up but in growing old. An era ago, in the spring, he had fought being sent away to camp, saying that he wanted to stay home and sail in the junior program, but he had fought feebly. Was it because he was afraid? He was going to die by drowning. He knew that as a fact—he could feel the salt water burning his throat—but he was afraid of something more imminent than drowning. Fear, Nat sensed, was something that his father had known and put behind him long ago, but never had forgotten, the way that you put behind you the problems of a race already won. You might scorn them, but you never forgot them. What was it his father said? On the morning of a race he could tell, the instant that his eyes were open, whether he would do well that day or not. Well, Nat's eyes were opening—but he couldn't tell.

"Who did he crew for?" Nat asked. The boy's name might break the spell.

"Steve Wolff. Good fellow, did well in the juniors. That's a thought. I may not be the first champion in the club after all. I'm telling you, that boy may beat me to it—in the Lightnings. Mark my words, he's one to watch."

Only an inch of water in the bilge, not enough for a pump. Dyce took the sponge and handed it to Nat, seated on deck, to wring over the side.

"Maybe it's not a bad idea to crew for him." Samuelson looked at his son. "Still, a younger boy.... Well, it's more than I could do."

Eight more trips for the sponge—careful, squeeze, don't wring, so the sponge will last longer. The bilge water felt surprisingly warm against their hands.

"Two boys, but no skipper." Samuelson was talking into the wind, and half his words were blown behind him. "Sailors, not skippers. That's worse."

Carefully, Dyce mopped up the last of the bilge water, replaced the empty sponge, replaced the floorboard, made sure the coil of the mainsheet ran free behind his father's feet, disappeared into the cabin for an instant and then returned with the spinnaker pole in his hand. It was a wooden pole eight feet long, and Dyce balanced it in one hand while he climbed onto the foredeck.

Nat saw him again, standing on the bow like a Viking with a spear in his hand, his forearm as rigid as the pole. Suddenly it occurred to Nat that his brother was the stranger—a stranger who had sprung from the merchant father behind him at the tiller, six inches shorter, 40 pounds lighter and somehow innocent of four thousand years of history. Words, deals—Dyce had nothing to do with them, nothing to do with the doubts that made up his family's history, nor with the suffering, either. No one who believed in suffering could walk along that foredeck in a force 5 sea without holding on to the rigging.