Chapter 14 Samson
The canal is a narrow black mirror. I walk Amber, and clusters of stars float unmoving on the water’s surface.
She sniffs pigweed and crabgrass. Mr. Turner should be watching Roseanne about now.
He should be crossing off shows in his TV Guide, and there should be a small plate of chocolate chip cookies beside him, perhaps a Twinkie or a generous slice of pound cake from the corner grocery on Bakersfield Avenue.
Amber looks cold at the end of her gray leash. She stays close to my ankle.
We walk on and there is no artificial light in this direction whatsoever. No boats, no trucks, no bridges. I sense creatures in the banks peering back, but they are unmoving. Watching us trek slowly away from the two boats in the distance: one occupied, one empty. Two vessels on their own.
Nobody will have collected photocopies or printouts, or thought to let me know what the assignments are. I had chicken pox a few months ago and it was as if nobody noticed. I am invisible to the teachers, even.
We head back toward the smoke of the boat’s chimney.
From the air I can tell Dad’s moved from wood to coal.
He will be settling in now, flicking through one of his Hemingway novels, each copy littered with stickers and minuscule annotations, or else he will be reading from his own notebooks.
I have been observing him ever since I was little.
Other dads play arcade games with their sons or take them to Little League practice, but my father always has his head in his work.
Amber drinks from a puddle.
Mom will be in her bedroom keeping out of the way.
I’m going to talk to him again about running her a bath for her birthday in May.
He hates the thought of it; he even disapproves of long showers.
Tells us we’re to only ever use Irish Spring soap, as it doesn’t scum up and block the pipes too much, and never hang around mindlessly with the water running.
In and out, he says. But I know she craves a long soak.
He let her have baths all the time back in the bungalow.
Nanna Ruth installed a tub before I was born, a full-length one, not like ours in the boat, and Mom would take one most weekends, usually only a few inches deep.
I’m going to raise it with him. She hasn’t said she wants a bath because she doesn’t want to set him off, especially not with his new book, and now with Mr. Turner’s accident, but I’m going to bring it up when the moment’s right.
I know he can be better.
We reach Mr. Turner’s boat and I step up and Amber follows, but I have to pull her back.
His gray Velcro sneakers are neat inside the door.
She steps in but looks back at me and then she stands right next to my leg and won’t leave. She presses herself firmly against my shin.
“You’ll be all right, you’re safe in here. Look, you’ve got a nice blanket from Mr. Turner.” I squat down and pat her bed. “Come on, girl. Settle down and I’ll see you again in the morning. I’m only going over there.”
But she stands resolute by my ankle. Leaning into me. Is she shivering?
His Salvation Army Christmas dish towel hangs from the rail on the propane stove.
His captain’s hat rests on a side table.
His copy of The Fisherman’s Almanac sits on the same table, open to the contents page.
His fingerless wool mittens are stuffed down by the armchair.
His life, everywhere.
I say good night to him, my voice catching in my throat, and stroke Amber, rubbing under her wiry chin, and then I close the door, pushing her back inside against her will.
When I walk back to our boat I step around the area we laid him down.
“Bed,” says Dad.
I make my bed out of the dinette sofa and table and then I pull on my pajamas and brush my teeth. Dad is loading up the fire with coal and kindling packets when I emerge.
“Night, boy.” He lifts his jaw.
I walk to him and kiss his smooth, hard cheek and then he looks away.
After twenty minutes of Amber howling from the next boat he says, “You going to lay there and ignore it?”
I sprint to her and bring her back with me tight in my arms.
“Where should I…?”
“Keep it quiet. Strangle it or lay it on your pillow, boy, I don’t care which. I’ve got one shot at this opening act. Do you know how vital act one is?”
I bring her into my bed and lay her down and she settles and rests with her nose covered by her tail.
“It sets the tone for the whole thing.”
I can’t see his face from this angle. There is a glow from the far end of the boat, from the woodstove, and Amber’s heartbeat echoes my own.
Dad’s bare legs glow orange.
“Night,” I say.
He pulls off his shirt and begins to type.
I am late for school the next morning and have to run all the way from the bus.
“Look at it,” says Ballbag, as I pass him by the lockers. “Sweaty, guilty clown. Skinny little peasant. Look at the armpits on it, dripping they are. Filthy little ramen noodle-armed freak.”
I ignore him.
Filing into social studies they kick me in the back.
In American lit they throw glue sticks at my head and the teacher sends me outside together with Gunner and Blocko. He joins us in the corridor.
“He did it, sir,” they both say.
“I don’t care much who did it, you were all involved. I have a mind to send you to the principal.”
“He started it, sir,” says Blocko.
“You think I’m an idiot, Block?”
“No, sir.”
“Do I look like an idiot to you?”
“No, sir, I never…”
“I’ll see you all after class. Back inside.”
He never did talk to us after class. He was busy chatting with Miss King from chemistry, so we all left.
I hid in the boys’ bathroom. I took sanctuary in chess club and played Go with a friendly senior who shared his Fruit Roll-Ups with me.
He told me he’s going to study physics at Howard.
Nice guy. Reckon he’s been through some stuff.
You can just tell sometimes. Then I hid in the music room during lunch and didn’t eat.
They think I am weak for keeping out of their way but they, predictably, misinterpret the fundamental laws of nature.
A smart creature will win in the long term because it thinks strategically.
It is not about short-term wins, it is not even about battle victories, it is about the entire war.
Mom taught me that. Watch a beaver building a dam or a spider weave its web or a pack of wolves quietly stalk an elk.
It is not the easy wins, it is the end win.
They consider me a coward, but I have my eye on a prize their feeble minds cannot comprehend.
When I am eighteen, they will be at the train station spraying graffiti on the walls or in the men’s room stalls looking for a vein.
Whereas I will be on a train.
Leaving.