Chapter 10 - The Saltwater Yard
The house on North Shirley Street wasn't grand.
It was an eighty-year-old cedar shingle cottage with a mossy roof, a porch that slanted two inches toward the garden, and three massive Douglas fir trees in the backyard that dropped brown needles onto the corrugated plastic shed where we kept the bicycles.
From the front porch, if you stood on your tiptoes between the neighbor’s garage and the telephone pole, you could see a two-inch strip of Commencement Bay—just enough to tell whether the water was gray or blue, just enough to see the big green-and-white Washington State ferries sliding across the channel toward Vashon Island like floating wedding cakes.
It was four o'clock on a Friday afternoon in late June.
The yard smelled of freshly mowed clover, cedar shavings, and the sweet, resinous tang of marine varnish drying in the sun.
In the center of the lawn, resting on two heavy oak blocks Dad had hauled up from the docks, sat the skiff.
It wasn't an aluminum boat this time. It was an eight-foot wooden pram Dad and Noah had spent the last seven weekends building from three sheets of marine plywood and two gallons of epoxy resin. It was painted a brilliant, defiant shade of yellow—the color Noah had chosen from the paint chips at the hardware store because he said it looked like "a happy bee."
Noah was six now. His dinosaur pajamas were packed away in a cedar chest in the attic, replaced by canvas work shorts with real pockets and a pair of small leather work boots that were already scuffed at the toes.
He was sitting on an upturned five-gallon bucket, a piece of 120-grit sandpaper wrapped around a wooden block, working on the curved edge of the transom with an expression of ferocious, squinting concentration.
"Keep it flat, buddy," Dad’s voice came from beneath the porch eaves.
Dad was sitting in an old wooden Adirondack chair he had repaired with three stainless steel carriage bolts. He had his Carhartt apron off, wearing just a clean chambray shirt with the sleeves rolled up past his tattooed forearms. A cup of black tea sat on the wide armrest of his chair, steaming faintly in the cool afternoon breeze.
"I am keeping it flat, Grandpa," Noah said, not stopping his rhythmic shhh-shhh-shhh against the cedar. "It’s gotta be smooth so the water doesn't stick to it."
"Water doesn't stick to wood, boy," Dad replied, his voice lazy and content. "Water just wants to go where the earth tells it to go. You’re just giving it a path."
I walked out the screen door, carrying a pitcher of cold lemonade and three heavy glass tumblers on a wooden tray.
My hair was loose around my shoulders, blowing across my face in the north wind. I wore an old denim shirt with the sleeves pushed up, my right arm moving freely, the scar on my cheekbone faded into a thin, pale crescent that only showed when the winter cold hit it.
I set the tray on the small picnic table Clara had helped me paint white two weeks ago.
"Lemonade," I announced.
Noah dropped his sanding block instantly, his boots thumping across the clover like small thunderclaps. He hit my hip with his usual enthusiasm, but he didn't bounce off; he planted his feet, hooked his arm around my thigh, and looked up with his wide, hazel eyes.
"Mommy, Grandpa said we can launch her at the public ramp on Sunday."
"Did he now?" I asked, looking over Noah’s head at the old man in the chair.
Dad took a slow sip of his tea, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "Tide’s high at ten-thirty. Slack water for forty minutes. Best time to see if his glue holds."
"My glue's gonna hold," Noah declared, grabbing his glass with both hands and taking three huge, gulping swallows that left a yellow mustache above his lip. "I used three whole tubes of the smelly stuff."
I picked up the second glass and walked across the grass to where my father sat.
I handed it to him, then leaned against the porch post, crossing my ankles, looking out between the houses toward the sliver of blue water in the distance.
A container ship was leaving the port, heading out toward the open Pacific. It was too far to hear its engines, but I could see the tiny white mustache of foam at its bow as it cut through the swell, steady, heavy, and unstoppable, carrying its cargo toward the wide, clean horizon where there were no fences, no locked doors, and no shouts in the dark.
My phone chimed from my apron pocket.
A year ago, that sound would have made my stomach hit the floor. It would have sent my pulse hammering into my throat, waiting for the demand, waiting for the accusation, waiting for the check on where I was and who was looking at me.
Now, I just pulled it out slowly, holding it with one hand in the sunlight.
It was an email notification from the Pierce County Superior Court registry:
Case No. 23-1-04412-9: State of Washington v. Evan Bradley Vance.
Notice of Transfer: Offender transferred from Reception Center to Cedar Creek Minimum Security Unit. Projected Release Date: 11/14/2027.
November of twenty-seven.
Three more years.
I looked at the date for three seconds. Then, without opening the attachment, without reading the docket notes or checking the transport log, I swiped the notification to the left until it disappeared into the archive bin with three hundred other pieces of paper I would never read again.
"Beth?" Dad asked, his voice low.
"Nothing," I said, slipping the phone back into my pocket. "Just the court."
Dad didn't ask what it said. He knew what it said; he had Higgins’s personal cell number taped to the sun visor of his truck, and Higgins checked the state corrections database every Monday morning before his first cup of coffee.
"Boat needs a name," Dad said, nodding toward the yellow pram sitting on the grass.
Noah ran back from the picnic table, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. "I know what it is! I know!"
"What is it, buddy?" I asked, dropping to one knee beside him, my hand resting naturally on his small, warm shoulder.
Noah looked at his grandfather, then at me, his chest puffing out beneath his canvas shirt until he looked like he was about to burst with the importance of his decision.
"The Seventy-Three," he said firmly.
Dad paused, his tea mug halfway to his mouth. He looked at me over the rim, his gray eyebrows twitching once.
"That's a funny name for a boat, Noah," Dad said. "Usually people name 'em after girls or birds or the town they were born in."
"No," Noah insisted, his small hand reaching out to pat the smooth, yellow plywood of the bow. "It's the Seventy-Three. Because that's how much money we had when Mommy and me went on the boat, and that's how many dollars it takes to buy the big glue."
I looked down at the grass.
A single tear—not the cold, greasy kind that tastes of iron on linoleum, but the warm, clean kind that comes when a heavy sea finally flattens out into a harbor—slipped down my cheek and dropped onto the clover between my feet.
I didn't wipe it away. I let the salt air take it.
"It's a good name," I said, looking up at my father, whose blue eyes were steady, calm, and clearer than the sky over Point Defiance. "It's the best name for a boat I ever heard."
Dad looked at the yellow pram, then down at his grandson, his hand reaching out to ruffle Noah’s hair with that broad, scarred thumb that had held the lines through forty years of tides.
"All right then," Dad said, rising slowly from his chair, his joints popping like dry kindling as he reached for his paint scraper. "Let's get the stencil out, boy. We got thirty-six hours before the water comes up, and you don't put a boat in the Sound without her numbers straight."
Noah cheered, grabbing his sandpaper block from the grass, and together they walked back toward the yellow hull, their boots leaving twin tracks through the clover toward the afternoon sun.
May you like
I stayed by the porch post for a long time, watching them work, listening to the rhythmic scrape of the sandpaper and the distant, low whistle of a tugboat rounding the headland.
The tide was all the way in. The water was blue. And the house was completely, beautifully quiet.
