Mitchell steered the old sloop out of forest shadows that lay across the channel into ferocious sunlight glaring suddenly off the long white decks and the cabin top. He reached for his hat brim, thumb and fingers bending weakly in the everyday failure to grasp. "Twenty years," he said, his face tightening against the sharp light and the gut-anxiety clawing at his muscles and his breathing. He flopped his hand on the brim to push it down. "Christ, I could use a cigarette."
A highway bridge passed high above the aluminum mast. Then a railroad bridge, its rusting black ironwork stark against an azure sky as the river pulled Mitchell under the tracks above, away from the land and the nothingness that was the past.
"Magnificent," he said.
"What, the bridge?" Andy stepped barefoot off the starboard deck onto the bench and down into the cockpit.
My cousin the ball-breaker, Mitchell thought. What it’s like to have a kid brother.
He found respite in the calm of his right hand, lashed to the unvarnished teakwood tiller with one of his grasping gloves. His right boot was planted down on the cockpit sole above the engine vibration. Breeze roaming the decks lifted his spirit toward believing again, then expired. He shoved his weight backward and arched his shoulders over the top of the helmchair to convince himself the bolts would hold in rough seas. He had tried using the seat cushion from his wheelchair but it raised him above the back support he needed. Forget the hardness he told himself and looked over his shoulder to check the dinghy, an old wooden pram nodding eagerly in tow. It was something to keep his thoughts from the unforgiving seat of a year ago, and the thousands of hard, useless miles. But Mexico was still there, too strong really. Water in a wooden bowl to wash the dust from his face. Children climbing unafraid into his lap.
"Hey! Hey, there!"
"Yeah?" Mitchell turned to a red-metallic powerboat flashing sunlight as it cruised alongside.
"You need to get back in the channel," the tough-faced skipper called from behind the windshield. "Get back in the channel. There are rocks out here."
"Good point. Thanks," Mitchell nodded, renewing his attention and steering back into the channel. The skipper looked him over then hard-throttled the powerboat ahead. "Wrecking the boat in the river on a clear day would be bad form."
Ignoring Mitchell’s sarcasm Andy reached for the certainty of the cabin top. "There it is," he said and climbed on deck to starboard to keep himself out of Mitchell’s line of sight to Long Island Sound, silver and sparkling beyond the prow. Amidship between the cabin top and the shroud cables stabilizing the mast, Andy reached for a shroud and stood in the mirage of safety that preceded the foredeck with his dark eyes fixed, a pilgrim come to pay homage to this blue distance.