Andy was lashing the mainsail to the boom. "Too bad about Plum Island."

"Yeah, LaFleur never told me his mooring was in shallows. It’ll freeze like a block come winter." Mitchell shook his head sadly. "What the hell," he sighed. "He bought the place for the ambiance and the bird watching. No one ever accused LaFleur of being a sailor."

"Do you have any idea where we’re going to leave the boat?"

"Somewhere." Mitchell looked up at the sun. "Waking up is starting to feel like work. It’s after midday."

Andy checked his watch. "It’s almost three."

"We’ll make Portsmouth tonight."

"Maybe we can rest there for a couple of days."

"Why’s that?"

"My back is bothering me," Andy said. "I’m trying to stretch on my berth every morning but there isn’t much room."

"How the hell can you stretch in a disaster area? Listen, how does this sound? We’ll pick up the money then sail up to Portsmouth and lay low for a while. We’ll get ointment for your back and some hot food and we’ll hang out like fat cats. Can you make it to Portland?"

"I’ll make it. I just need some rest." Andy climbed below for his wallet.

Mitchell felt their plans becoming fragile. Like Mexico. He watched Andy row ashore and beach the dinghy then disappear over the point. Along the beach a few sun worshipers were basking on the sand, most of them mothers watching children play in the gentle reach of surf foam. Mitchell took his book from the cubbyhole and found his place and tried to read but he was surrounded by the day. I could use some conversation he thought. An exchange of ideas would be refreshing. It won’t happen with Andy. I know that now. He lives in the other world, that place I remember all too well, grown old before its time. It was a world of different interests, each independent of the other but belonging to the same heart. Like a thumb-worn strand of prayer beads, or a cracked old photograph. Locked somewhere deep inside. I have too many scars to be young again.

The sun wandered bright and hot through an azure sky. Mitchell drank from the jug and appreciated the breeze on his sun-burned skin. He searched for a place to rest his eyes and found some newness in the waters around the point where a host of muddy black rocks crowned with seaweed were emerging from the slow spell of tides. Gulls squawked and circled and lighted and lifted off again and again as the ebb showed more and more of the black rocks.

A brown gull glided low over the water past the hull and lighted easily among the other white-grey gulls stabbing at the mud and seaweed with long yellow hooked bills. Gulls were perched atop the briny rocks, their snowy breast feathers ruffling in the breeze, their onyx eyes detached and humorless. Wide-spread talons gleamed silver-black on the tips of prehistoric feet.

"I’m too close." Mitchell saw it suddenly. "Son of a bitch, I’m too close!"

He looked to find the anchor rode sagging on the surface water, nearly horizontal. The hull was backing on the ebb toward the bottom. He checked the sun. "Hell, the sun doesn’t care." He searched the shoreline expanding around the point and along the beach. More rocks. "If nature was a freight train I’d be standing like an idiot on the tracks. Andy if you stopped to eat –. For Christ’s sake hurry up and eat if you’re eating." The hull was descending on the retreating ebb.