Read Online By The Sea, Book Three: Laura by Antoinette Stockenberg - Free Book Online Page A

meant to
have the best she could find. She could afford it. Mr. Angelina had
offered her a fabulous sum to deliver his client's cargo. Laura had
had to make all sorts of promises and give all kinds of warranties
(meanwhile omitting to say that her husband would not be aboard),
but she had a contract to show for her effort, and she was beside
herself with pride and joy. She had two weeks in which to staff and
prepare the Virginia. Plenty of time.
    That night Neil slept soundly, confident
once more that neither he nor his mother was going to be killed,
and Laura and Billy stayed up late drawing up a list of work to be
done to prepare the Virginia for her longest journey
yet.
    "Some of the starboard lanyards seem a touch
rotted," Laura said as she noted the problem on her growing list.
"And at least one of the deadeyes they're rove through is split
almost in two."
    "And the middle rudder pintle looks like it
might be pulling away from the transom," Billy added. "I seen it
when we was fishin' off the stern the other day."
    "We can't fix that in time!" cried Laura.
"Why didn't you tell me this before?"
    Billy shrugged. "Maybe it ain't
serious."
    And so it went, with every conceivable
repair item being added to a much-too-long list. After Billy
finally went off to bed, Laura stared at her list thoughtfully.
They had two weeks. She carefully tore the list into two: a primary
and a secondary.
    They had two weeks.
    Laura stared some more, then tore the
primary list into two and threw out the original secondary one.
Yes. They could be ready in time.
    Work began on Monday. Laura sent Billy up
the foremast to go over every linear inch of rigging, looking for
frayed or rotten sections. After he came down she had him hoist her
up in the bosun's seat to check his findings. That night they
huddled over the list in the lamplit galley, backs stiff, legs
aching, pelvic bones worn raw from sitting and bracing on the small
oak bosun's seat high above deck level. On Tuesday they tackled the
mainmast.
    Billy spent the next several days after that
underwater, scrubbing the Virginia's foul bottom. There were
patches of barnacles everywhere, and he hacked away at them the
best he could with the breath he possessed. When he climbed back
aboard at the end of the day wrinkled and exhausted, Laura winced
and turned away. It had to be done.
    "Mama!" begged Neil on the fourth day. "Can
I at least go for a little row around the harbor—before the sea
breeze makes up?"
    Laura was patching their old and very tired
gollywobbler, a light-weather sail that had seen better years. She
looked up at her son—eight years old, and doing the work of a grown
man—and said, "Do you think you've really fixed the leak above your
berth?"
    He nodded vigorously. "Oh yes. You could see
where the seam was split wide open."
    "Because we'll be taking seas across the bow
a lot more of the time, and if it leaks down into your bed, I don't
want you to come creeping aft into our berth, saying yours is too
wet."
    Neil thought about that. "But without Daddy
there will be room for me, won't there?" His eyes held hers in a
plaintive look.
    Laura put down her palm and needle and
sighed. "No, there won't be room for you there anymore, darling.
You're much too grown-up for that. You have your own berth now,
just like Billy, just like the new crew member will have. And some
day when you marry, you'll have a bigger berth like I do, and your
wife will stay in it with you. But for now, you get to sleep alone,
just like the rest of the grown-up crew."
    Laura never knew how to handle Neil's
frequent little forays for affection. He was a little too attached
to her, that she knew; it was one of the reasons she had begun to
think that sooner or later they would have to move ashore. But that
was tomorrow's problem.
    "Anyway, you've been very grown-up
about tackling your work list, and I think you've earned the
morning off. Don't you?"
    The crushed look of rejection began to fade
from Neil's face.