Page 52 of The Wild Beneath

“Henry says I can rebuild it.” Walker digs around the workbench and returns with a metal scraper in one hand and a palm sander in the other.

Annie puts her hand against the boat. It’s rough but feels good. She has a sudden childhood memory of jumping offAmphitriteinto the cold salt water and Evan cannonballing in beside her.

“You know how to repair boats?” She looks at the thing, then toes a cardboard box at her feet, full of metal wires, batteries, odds and ends.

“I can use parts off the other boats in the yard.” Walker runs the scraper over the bottom and unlatches dried barnacles. They hardly make a sound as they fall to the floor. Annie hoists herself up an aluminum ladder onto the deck. She pulls against the lifeline as strands break, releasing powdery rust particles and leaving her fingertips orange.

“Want to look inside?” he asks from below.

She does.

Walker climbs up and unlatches the doors of the companionway. They descend into the dark interior, lit by the portholes and the large open hatch in the v-berth.

The galley has cherry cabinetry and a stainless-steel sink clogged with sand. On the port side, next to a fold-up dinette, is a rusty two-burner kerosene stove. The faded fabric on the bench may have been blue once. Everything is coated in dust.

“Come in here.” He crawls into the v-berth and lies sideways on the mattress. On the two shelves in the space above him are a few beat-up magazines and a flashlight, the battery end missing.

Annie hesitates; the space is so small, and Walker’s sound is so close.

“I want to show you what the view would be like.” He points up at the hatch above him. Annie’s ears flush with heat as she climbs in and lies down a few inches from him.

He rests his head on his elbow and looks at her.

Annie rolls onto her back and stares up at the hatch.

“Do you think you’re ready to sail?” he asks.

She closes her eyes. She can almost feel herself rock out and back like the sea. “Maybe.”

“You started looking at the water again.” His arm brushes her skin. “You know, Annie. You could leave on this thing one day. Pack it up, sail away. It could be yours.”

“Mine?” She opens her eyes.

He’s quiet, still looking at her.

“What would I do?” She turns to look at him. Since the coast guard’s visit, Walker hasn’t talked about leaving. She doesn’t think he wants to go, either. “Where would I go?”

“Somewhere else.”

Annie imagines another place, secret, where no one would find her; where time would slow down and space would open up. The vast ocean could make her feel alive again—­less like a caged animal.

“Your heart’s beating fast,” he says.

“How do you know?”

“I can hear it.”

“What else do you hear?” she whispers.

“Most things.”

Her hands are sweaty. She wipes them against her shirt. Thisintense proximity is getting hard to contain. The way he can hear her? She feels drunk with it and wants to get even closer. An overpowering urge that scares her.

Annie shimmies out of the berth, across the galley, and back up the companionway. She rests her hands on the helm, relieved by the cool, solid metal under her fingertips.

She tries to make her brain work again.

Walker arrives beside her in the cockpit.