Ancient Shores

Gi

It was mounted on a trailer. The mainmast, which was hinged, had been folded over. Several piles of white canvas were shelved along the wall. “Those are the sails,” Gi

A moist, animal smell alerted him to the presence of horses in stalls at the rear. He saw a lamp forward on the hull, long and teardrop-shaped, but it was not lit. Nor was any other part of the vessel lit. The keel was broad and deep and ran the length of the hull. A wheel was installed in the stern, and there was probably another in the pilothouse just forward of the cockpit. Black spidery characters unlike anything he had seen before were stenciled across the bow, below the lamp.

“Did you turn them off?” he asked. “The lights?”

“Not exactly,” said Gi

The barn went dark. It was a tangible dark, absolute, universal. The horses sounded uneasy.

“Gi

“Wait.”

Something began to glow. It reminded him of phosphorous, ambient and silver and amorphous, not unlike moonlight through thin clouds. As he watched, the effect brightened. It was green, the color of a lawn after a spring rain, of ocean water just below the surface when sunlight filters down. It penetrated the stalls, illuminated pitchforks and hoes, and threw shadows from the tractor and the feeding troughs across a side wall. He gaped at the light, suddenly aware why she had been spooked.

“There’s one on the other side,” said Gi

“Ru

“I don’t know.”

“Sure. Red to port, green to starboard.” He walked around and looked at other light. “White’s not even in the ballpark,” he said. He touched the hull. It felt good, the way carved mahogany feels good, or a leather chair. He turned back to her. “How old is this supposed to be?”

She threw up her hands in exasperation. “I don’t know.”

Max folded his arms and circled the boat. First things first: Why would anyone want to bury something like this? “No one’s called to claim it?”

“No.”

“This thing’s in showroom shape.” He stared at its gleaming bow, its polished masts, its color. He walked over to the shelves where the sails had been folded. They did not feel like canvas.

“We washed it,” Gi

“It can’t have been in the ground long.”

“I can’t believe anybody buried it while I was living here.”

He looked at her. That went back a few years. “What’s inside it? You find any bodies in there?”

“We thought the same thing. No, no bodies. And no drugs.”

“How about an identification number? There ought to be something that would allow you to trace the previous owner.”

“If there’s anything like that, we haven’t been able to find it.” She stayed close to him. “Max,” she said, “it also doesn’t have an engine.”

“That can’t be. It has a propeller.” He noticed that the shaft was broken off. “Or at least it had one.”

“I know. The propeller tied into a little green box. We can’t open the green box, but it doesn’t look much like an engine.”

She turned the lights back on. Max cupped his hand over the ru

“Scares me silly,” said Gi

It didn’t look like any boat that Max had seen before. “Let’s go back to the house,” he said.

He was happy to be away from the boat. Gi

The kids complied, and they all bunked together. Gi

4

…Glides through misty seas

With its cargo of time and space…

—Walter Asquith, Ancient Shores

Max did not sleep well. He had put on a show of good-natured amusement at Gi

It was not the presence in the barn, however, that caused his restlessness. It was rather the sense of home, of a family drawing together. He had known this kind of atmosphere as a child but never as an adult. Lasker occasionally joked about the assorted pleasures of Max’s social adventures. Never the same woman twice. And Max played along, because it was expected. But he would have traded it all to get a Gi

In the morning they located Tom. The previous evening’s alarms now seemed overblown, and if Gi

Lasker was on the speaker. He couldn’t believe that the lights had come on, and he kept asking whether she was sure. Finally he seemed satisfied, although Max knew he would not believe it until he’d seen it for himself. As for getting rid of it: “I don’t think we want to make any quick decisions,” he said. “Let’s find out what we’ve got first. We could throw some canvas over it, if you want. That way you wouldn’t be able to see the damn thing.”

Gi

“Max,” he said, “what do you think about this? Does it make any sense to you?”

“No,” said Max. “I have no idea. But I’ll tell you one thing—that boat hasn’t been in the ground any length of time at all.”

There was a long pause on the other end. “Okay,” Lasker said at last. “Look, I’m on later this morning. I’ll do my stuff and leave right after. Be home this afternoon.”

It was a cold, gray, dismal day, threatening rain or snow. During breakfast a few people arrived and banged on the front door. Could they see the boat? Gi

“Why do you bother?” asked Max, deeply engrossed in a plate of pancakes and bacon. “Leave it in the barn and all this will stop.”

“I’d do it in a minute,” she said. “But Tom thinks it would be u

“Then sell it.” He knew she could have her way with her husband.

“We will. But it’s going to take a while. I don’t even know whether we have a free claim to it.”

Max finished off his pancakes and reached for more. He usually tried to be careful about overeating, but Gi

She looked momentarily startled. “I hope not.”

Max was trying to piece together a scenario that would account for the facts. He kept thinking about the Mafia. Who else would do something this weird? Maybe the boat was a critical piece of evidence in a Chicago murder case.