Small Town

But it was in the nature of Providence to provide. Why, it was right there in the word itself! And, even as he lost the tire iron, he’d gained something even more useful.

It was a handgun, and Peter Shevlin had kept it on the top of the brassbound captain’s chest in the little cabin. A pair of clips held the gun in place, so that it wouldn’t come crashing to the deck when the boat pitched and rolled in high seas. The Carpenter wondered what high seas Shevlin had expected to encounter, and decided they were no less a likelihood than the need to repel pirates, which would seem the gun’s logical purpose.

A war souvenir? Shevlin was too young for World War II, too old for Vietnam, but he supposed he could have served in Korea.

The Carpenter considered the gun. He’d never owned one, wasn’t sure he’d ever held one aside from a BB gun at a carnival shooting gallery and the cap pistols he’d played with as a child. Handguns, he knew, were of two sorts. Revolvers had cylinders, which revolved; hence their name. The others were pistols, and had clips.

This one lacked a cylinder, so it was a pistol. And, yes, moving that little lever released the clip, which contained nine little bullets. Or did you call them cartridges? He rather thought you did.

A drawer in the captain’s chest held a box that contained more cartridges. The label proclaimed them to be .22 caliber, and they were identical to the ones in the clip. Surely military sidearms were of a higher caliber, weren’t they? And the gun looked too new, too modern in design, to be half a century old.

Shevlin, alone in the world, had bought the gun as a ticket out of the world. Then he’d bought the boat, and decided to live. But kept the gun on the boat, just in case he changed his mind.

He was pleased with his analysis of the gun’s history, pleased to have the weapon on the boat with him. He liked the way it fit his hand, noted how natural it felt to point it here and there, taking aim, his finger resting lightly on the trigger.

It might be a useful tool. And, if he needed it, it might serve for the final sacrifice.

The Carpenter had always assumed he would take to sailing like, well, a duck to water. He didn’t see how it could be terribly difficult. Oh, it might be tricky in an actual sailboat, where you had to know how to use the wind, but a boat powered by a gas engine couldn’t be all that difficult, could it? It wasn’t like flying a plane, where you had a third dimension to contend with. You just stayed on the water’s surface, and steered to the left or the right.

It was, he had learned, a little more complicated than that, but not prohibitively so. And it was his good fortune that boating was evidently a pursuit the late Peter Shevlin had come to in recent years. Perhaps he’d bought it for consolation after he’d been widowed, naming it the Nancy Dee for his late wife. The Dee might stand for either her middle name or her maiden name, he thought. Or for Darling, or even Deceased, if Shevlin had had an unhappy marriage and a savage sense of humor.

Or perhaps a previous owner had named the boat, and Shevlin hadn’t gotten around to changing it.

In any event, the man had equipped himself with several manuals on the art of handling small boats on open water, and one in particular the Carpenter found to be remarkably straightforward and easy to understand. He didn’t know that he emerged from it capable of passing a licensing exam, but he found he could take the boat out and make it do more or less what he wanted it to do. This gave him a sense of accomplishment, and was a source of real pleasure.

And there were charts, too. The Carpenter couldn’t read them, but he didn’t have to; someone, Shevlin or someone assisting him, had marked routes on the charts, letting one know just where to steer the vessel.

Shevlin was neat, probably a core requirement for the owner of a small boat, and kept the place shipshape. There was far less space than the Carpenter had enjoyed in Evelyn Crispin’s flat in Boerum Hill, but what space there was suited the Carpenter just fine. And, best of all, there was no goddamned cat to feed.

During the hours of darkness, the Nancy Dee sailed counterclockwise around the entire island of Manhattan.

This was the first time the Carpenter had circumnavigated the island. On each of his previous outings he’d ventured a little farther from home, then turned the boat around and gone back. But he knew it was possible to make the full trip. The Circle Line did so every day of the year.