The Artisan

   This is the oldest of all my stories, written in the late sixties some time.  I have tweaked it a few times over the years, but close readers will see the unevolved writing style.  I don't care. It is like a first-born offspring for me, and I still love it.  Whether it works or not, I am too close to it to say.

                                                  The Artisan

                                          by

                                      

                                                        Dick Morgan

            It was such a poor photograph of her.  He glanced at the frame by the telephone.  The brow of the woman was lowered, her eyes obscured by dark lashes below her yellow hair.  Well, another moment and he would fix that.

          Jacob Benton hunched over his workbench again and studied the pattern he had tooled into the leather on the board.  A five-point buck covered the face of a holster, a special order.  The deer stood before a grove of fir trees; its body was tan, smooth and muscular, its eyes a deep blue.  Jacob squinted at the deer and imagined the ground just so, and patches of ground, tufts of grass appeared beneath his awl and mallet.  Then he held the leather up to the two small bulbs hanging from the ceiling.  His hands, large and wrinkled and stained with oil, glistened as brightly as the deer’s haunches.

          It was good, yes, but he was tired of it now.  He lay it aside and wiped his workboard clean, then stretched to force the stiffness from his back.  A tea cup sat half full beside him, cold.  He thought of boiling a new pot in the back room where he lived, stretching out on his cot until the spout sang.  No.  He wanted to work on the photograph again.  Maybe he could finish it before Gavin arrived.  He lifted a small square of leather to the workboard.   A special order too; he smiled.  His own.  Almost done.

          She was so exquisite there, the curves of her face embossed on the leather.  As beautiful as that?  He glanced at the yellowed photograph.  How long had it sat there by the telephone?  The woman’s sun-lit face drew him into the picture again.  She was leaning forward, clasping the shoulders of a small boy seated on the giant harbor pier bollard, holding him erect for the camera.  The boy sat frozen in his squirming resistance, the sun reflecting deep blue from his eyes.  Like his mother’s, Jacob thought.  How he wished he had captured that sea-swell glint, but at the last instant, Gavin had tried to wriggle free of her embrace, and she had lowered her face to him.  But the lens had captured the laughter that spread her lips apart and revealed the tip of her tongue between the white of teeth.  Oh, he’s a stubborn one.  Like his father, she had said, and laughed after the click of the camera.  He remembered her voice, the lifting of her blonde hair, the warm, clear eyes. 

          His gaze settled still further into the picture, to the great iron hull behind her.  A cable larger that her arms stretched away from the bollard to a rust-stained eye in the flair of the bow.  Below the eye, a nameplate:  The Princess Liberty.  His ship, newly docked from the Orient.  Ah, home-coming had been such a joyous time; the presenting of gifts hand-made on lunch hours or purchased from the pole-boat merchants in Hong Kong, the three of them dining on fresh crab and chowder at Aliotos, watching as the streetlights and shop signs flickered to life with the setting of the sun.  And the stories, the revelations! The dockside brawl in Yokahama, Gavin struggling with his first word—“book!”  A political riot in Singapore, Gavin reading a children’s book of ancient civilizations, tracing ancient petroglyphs with a finger.  And then, when the talk became a whisper with their heads together, he remembered how they would catch up on their dreams.  How they would leave Gavin with the neighbor lady and tour the galleries, or take a bus to Carmel-By-The-Sea… 

          Gold: that had been an easy color to mix.  Jacob had had to compensate for the underlying hue of the leather.  But there she was, her hair aglow with sunset, her face, her smile, all captured at his fingertips.  But her eyes!  That startling deep blue he would have to remember without assistance.           

          He had changed the angle of her face to reveal her eyes.  He hoped Gavin would notice.  It was Friday afternoon; he should be by any time.  The boy was so buried in his college books these days that he would only stop in once a week now, and only for a short while.  And he would be somber, nervous, glancing often at his wristwatch.  Already there were lines under those young eyes.  Since his mother’s death, he had been withdrawn, as though guarding over his emotions with a stick.  Jacob couldn’t remember when the last time was that they had hugged one another, or even touched.  Was it Christmas?  Yes but not last year.  If only Gavin would laugh sometimes.  A little bit of laughter would lessen an old man’s concern for him.  And such a fine tall youth, too.  A full head of dark hair, like his father’s many years past.  She used to love my hair, he thought.  She would straighten rebel strands with her fingertips, then muss it into dark tangled spumes when she was done.  He gazed into the leather; the face of the woman glistened golden brown with oil, but her eyes were empty as a coloring book.

          Jacob laid a palette beside the picture and opened his tint-box.  Sky blue they were, he thought.  But only when she gazed at the sky.  Egyptian blue, royal blue.  No.  The horizon of the sea at sunset, with a touch of violet: sapphire.  He blew on the leather gently until the drops dried into convex orbs without facet, then cut a single hair from the brush and touched a dot of white into each pupil, holding his right hand steady with his left.  A few breaths more, and he smiled, his broad lips moving imperceptibly while his eyes gleamed half closed.

          The horizon of the sea at sunset, with a touch of violet: sapphire. 

          Jacob remembered the solitude of his time at sea, the slant of the deck, a briny taste to the wind.  He had left the chill and the slime of the tuna boats while still a young man, to become a deckhand in the Merchant Marine.  Then, striking for quartermaster, he had left even those steel decks behind and had stood high above the sound of the engines, peering through his sextant at the silent, fixed beauty of the stars. 

          He had not been lonely.  At sea since he was fifteen, he had seen his fortieth birthday come and pass as quietly as a tide, surrounded by a single horizon, a few close shipmates, a book or two cached beneath his hammock.  Old Gunnar, the Norwegian cook, used to save for him the best of the novels that passed from hand to hand through the bowels of the ship—the mystery thrillers, Jules Verne or Raymond Chandler.  And Jacob would spend calm, clear evenings with his charcoal and sketch-pad on the transom above the wake, drawing a sea bird or a stratus-laden sunset for Gunnar’s locker doors.  What other life was there?  Perhaps more books, more charcoal, perhaps some oil paints.  That was all anyone needed then.

          Agh.  Maybe he should go back to sea again now.  He still had his sextant tucked away in a box beneath his cot.  Just pull the shades, lock the door, and walk away.  The shop would remain.  Things always remain if they are left intact.  The sea was the same after all, wasn’t it?

          No, it was not the same.  Gavin would be by soon.  He would take the boy with him.  They would go down to the fishing docks and charter a boat…  No, they had done that once.  A stout pole in his hand, Jacob had felt years younger.  He had so wanted the boy to love the sea as he did.  But Gavin, his voice cracking with adolescence, had begged to return to shore as soon as they had passed under the Golden Gate.  No, Gavin would not join him.  Maybe he should go anyway, and just leave a note.  Who would miss him?  Gavin was always in a hurry to leave as soon as he arrived.  Why couldn’t they just visit like other fathers and sons, talk about sports, or whiskey, or women? 

          Because.  It seemed the more they spoke, the more was left unspoken.  A heaviness between them.  What was it?  He didn’t know, and wished he could just drop it away.  Cast it over the stern into the past.  That’s what they did at sea.  Maybe he should return.  He did once.  But it was not the same then, after he had seen those eyes.

          He remembered the first time he saw her.  Michaelson’s class.  Michaelson may have been famous for his neo-expressionist paintings, but he was such a heartless pedant.  The Princess Liberty in dry-dock, Jacob had come to Michaelson’s class to learn the use of color.  But from the beginning, the short, bald artist had insulted and railed at the young and eager students.  When Michaelson had sneered, “A true artist can never love anything but his work,” as though that were a well-known axiom, Jacob had almost walked out.  He had not because of Lissa.  She had sat beside him, rigid, a green sprig unable to bend.  A red glow of the setting sun through the window had reflected in the blue of her eyes, transforming them to a rich violet.  He remembered how uncomfortable he had felt in his torn jeans and rubber boots when she had asked to see his sketchbook. 

          It had been that which had attracted her first—his rough and smeared charcoal drawings of birds, clouds, and water.  So beautiful, she had said.  A solitude filled with the spirits of things.  She disliked Michaelson’s harsh laughter, she had said.  He, too.

          They began to share dinner after class in a quiet French restaurant near the studio.  They had spoken over crepes and Merlot of their art, and relaxing further, of their lives before.  His empty years at sea had passed like a single brush stroke; he had listened to her voice as a man marooned searches the horizon. 

          Her husband had had no time for her.  His life filled with appointments, incessant phone calls, and dinners with clients which he would schedule without regard for her.  Nearing thirty, childless, with maids to attend even those chores which made her feel useful, she had felt she owned nothing but her name, she had said.  And even that was his.  After much anguish, she had left her husband a note one afternoon, and had not been back to see if he had found it.  So much guilt, she said.  But she had been such a small part of his house-hold, she did not know whether he would miss her.  She had never known.  Since, attending classes for audit, working in a gallery on Hyde Street, near the wharf.

He remembered that even though she had laughed often, her suffering had shown through like shadows through a window.  She had had to leave, she said.  Her art—could he understand?  She had pleaded with him as though he were her confessor.  What else could he have said?  Pursue your dreams, he had told her.  Allow no interference, or they will fall away from you entirely.  She had taken his hand then.  Softer than he imagined!

On weekends they had packed their easels to Golden Gate Park or to Fisherman’s Wharf, and together, sometimes in silence, they had worked until sunset.  They had not spoken of love, but when the Princess Liberty had left the dry-dock and he had been called to duty once again, the boarding had not been the same.  Dream of me, she had whispered to him at the gangplank.  He had never stopped.  Ah, those blue-white days when the sea was a lover and the eyes of a woman made a man’s years fall away into it!

          Jacob found himself gazing without focus into the finished portrait long after the paint had dried.  He examined it again for a moment, this time as an artist.  Satisfied, he placed it into the picture frame, in front of the photograph.  He straightened his back and stretched again, then began to rub his right hip slowly.  Too much sitting makes me stiff, he thought.  Getting old.  The Doc says take more time out from work, Jacob.  Get some exercise, get some air.  Yap, yap.  When the hair turns thin and white, you don’t bend so smooth.  Hand shakes a little.  Hold it with the other hand and hope the two shakes cancel each other out.  He rubbed his eyes.  Too bad it doesn’t work for vision.  Ah, well.  Better to see dimly but aware of the detail than to see sharp as a searchlight and miss the subtleties of surface and hue.

          If only.  If only he could help Gavin catch a glimpse of that joy-- the humor, the almost roguish spirit behind what is merely seen.  The poor boy stuck on facts and figures like a living audit.  Not all there, somehow.  Was it Jacob’s fault?  He had done his best to be both father and mother since Gavin was ten.  Exhausted from his work, he had still made time for Gavin, taken him to the museums, the traveling circuses.  Bright lights and laughter!  And bedtime stories after.  Jacob had recounted as best he could remember the tales of the Grimm brothers, and Hans Christian Andersen, and later, the Iliad and Odyssey.  Jacob smiled.  The boy would correct him and prove his point with a library book from the horde beneath his bed.  By the time Gavin entered high school, there had been no more homework to check; Gavin wouldn’t let him.  How’s your school work, Gavin?  He would ask.  Fine, Pop.  Always fine, like a curtain lowering between them.  Maybe Gavin had chosen right.  Let him find his own way.  That’s best, his mother would say.  Well, he had done all he could.  And now that was all but done, too.  Like me, he thought.

          Jacob closed the tint-box and wiped the leather image clean with a cloth, then set it back on the long wood and glass cabinet top in front of him.  He closed his eyes and rubbed them, then turned his face toward the dim glow he knew would be the windows in the front of the shop.  There would be two windows there, with the backward lettering in flat red and yellow, spelling Nautilus Leather.  Gavin thought that Nautilus referred to the cold-water shell fish; Jacob actually had in mind the submarine from the Jules Verne novel.  And there would be two squares of sunlight on the floor.  It was mid-afternoon; they would be trapezoids and would reach halfway to the glass cabinet.  He could even describe that with his eyes closed.  On its dust covered top was a calendar sitting just there, a note pad, a pencil, the photograph, and the telephone.  He wondered, reached out with his eyes still closed.  Yes, the receiver was off the hook.  He picked it up and placed it down exactly into its cradle on the first try.  Maybe the doc was right.  Maybe he did spend too much time in the shop.  Maybe he’d wait until Gavin came by and then go for a walk down along the wharves and look at the boats.

          He sighed and shook his head.  Sometimes he missed his life at sea even though it was the sea he knew that took him from her then.  It was never the same after the dry-dock. 

          Again he was aboard the broad steel fantail, rising and falling in the swells, wind against his cheeks.  The very first time he had tacked down a fresh canvas to his easel after leaving her, he had known.  The first line had been a curve.  Not a sea swell, nor albatross.  He still remembered how it had surprised him when he recognized it: the edge of her face rising from deep beneath the duty logs and night watches, from where he drifted when he lay down to sleep.  A single curve, perhaps from her chin to the far side of her brow.  The rest he would fill in as natural as breathing with a swirl of soft colors.  How alive he had felt then, amid that flat blue plane that once had measured his whole life but then only interrupted it.

          She had brought him home that last night, a fellow artist, a friend, an old man about to go back to sea.  He remembered walking toward the green of the Presidio, the white stucco house-fronts that extended unbroken along Pacific Street for an entire block at a time, and turning toward one under flowering plum trees, a glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge through broken clouds.  Here? He had questioned her, and she had shrugged. ‘Til the end of the month, she had said, refusing to speak further of it.  They had sipped their tea in silent desperation, looking out over the roof-tops toward the bay.  She would lose her room soon, and he would lose her. 

          He remembered himself suddenly talking, heard the tidal wave of his words spewing forth, as astonished as she, and how her brow had tightened as she stared down into her tea cup. 

          Take it, he heard the words echo in his mind.

          I can’t, she had said then.  They had argued. 

          Please, for the rent.  It’s nothing to me, he had said, but it had been more than a month’s wages, and she had known it. 

          Why? She had said.  You know I can’t belong to anyone. 

          A dream, was all he could say then.  How could he have said an old man’s feelings of love, resurrected?  Impossible.  Just a dream of someone who would remember him, he had said. 

          He remembered calculating the time zones as he painted on the fantail.  Was she painting too?  No, sleeping, most likely.  He had tried to paint her, lying sideways upon her flat mildewed mattress on the floor, slack-mouthed, her arm askew, the blanket tucked into the curves of her body.  The darkness of that time covered his eyes too, blossoms beyond the window misting, blurring with the dew of her breathing.  But all that came was a single curved line. 

          Why, Jacob?

          They had lain together on the mattress, still wearing their painting coats, his lips parting to meet hers.  Even after more than twenty years, he still remembered that first kiss.  But we mustn’t, a voice had said then.  It had been his voice.

          Why, Jacob?

          He searched his mind for the answer he had believed in then.  Because if we do, I’ll never know.  Because a purchase is not as pure as a gift.  Because sometimes a dream for many nights is better than the truth of one. 

          He felt again the laughter ripple through her body, the continuous –aahh—vibrating into him through her breasts.  Dream on, she had said then.  Dream all you can, she had laughed.  You silly man!  Had she said it then?   He remembered she had said, dream of this, and free and clear.  She had pressed into him slowly, and again he could feel her roundness, nipples stiff against his chest, her hair like a curtain…

          You did what?  He remembered old Gunnar saying in the galley, over coffee.  For how much?  Gunnar had snorted violently, brown liquid dripping from his nose before he wiped it and walked away.  What a damn fish!  A fish on a hook, an’ that’s the truth of it! Gunnar had said.  He remembered sitting by his easel, still stinging from the laughter on the mess-deck.  Free and clear, she had said.  Free as the albatross hovering over the stern.  But there he sat, a prisoner of a single curve of her face. 

          Why, Jacob?

          To dream, only.  He remembered the emptiness then, the tearing loose of the paper, wadding it, and throwing it into the sea, the albatross diving at it, discarding it a second later. 

          And now: his hands, gnarled ancient, and empty, felt again the press of all the things he had let slide from them—paper and money, leather, and skin.  Years of things, exact yet fluid; almost palpable, yet sliding between his fingers like dust.

          Jacob opened his eyes.  Familiar angles and objects appeared exactly as his mental picture of them, except for a long, thin awl on the cabinet top.  He had missed that.  He picked it up, weighed it in his hand.  Such a useful little tool—the murder weapon in several of his favorite mystery novels.  He could use it now.  Just so, between the ribs… No.  Not today.  His mouth softened.  It was Spring, the sweet aroma of daphne giving way to the flowering plum. 

          Jacob’s mind filled with the silence of his shop.  Somewhere beyond the windows, a screech of brakes, the angry honk of a horn.  A pair of girls ran by in the sunlight, laughing, hand in hand.  He found himself holding the picture again, the awl discarded on the cabinet top.  He placed the frame back into its dust-free slot by the telephone, shifting his gaze through the glass beneath it.  How many times had he wanted her to see something new?

          Two men entered through the doorway and stood in the trapezoids, staring open-mouthed as if struck blind.

          “Dark, man,” one of them said.  Young, maybe twenty, with short stiff blond hair above a Levi jacket.  Jacob could see him as plain as if he were in a spot-light, and yet he had stood there himself, gazing into the shop to gauge the effect of it and knew that he was invisible.  “Let’s go,” the blond one said. 

          “No, I wanna look around, Vinnie.  You know I got a thing for leather.”  This one was older, greying at the temples a little.  Dressed like a biker, studded leathers, heavy boots. 

          The older man stepped up to the counter, rested on his elbows, and peered through the cabinet glass.  Studs in his leather jacket scraped on the glass.  Jacob pretended to ignore him; he opened the cabinet from the back and wiped away imaginary specks of dust from his designs, all the while moving the leather belts, wallets, and embossed wristbands out in front of the silver plates and vases.  There was no order to it, except that nothing was hidden.  A careful casualness, like the treasure hold of the Nautilus, he thought.

          “Hey, Vinnie, look at this,” the man in leather said.  Vinnie came up from behind and draped a familiar arm around the older man.  “That buckle there.”

          “Nice,” Vinnie said without looking. 

          “That real silver, old man?” 

          The name is Nemo, Jacob thought.  Captain Nemo.  “Yes,” he said.  Jacob searched out the buckle the man had pointed at, brought it up to the counter top.  A silver buckle with a tiny schooner engraved upon it, its billowed sails ragged and torn.  Jacob had made it for Gavin. 

          “Never seen nothing like that before.”  The man picked up the buckle and held it close to his eyes. 

          “Come on, Robert.  Put that down and let’s go.”

          “It’s kind of strange,” Robert said.  Exactly as Gavin had said it a week ago, on his last Friday visit.

          “You did the whole ship, keel and all,” Robert said. 

          “Hey, remember me?” Vinnie’s hand drifted down Robert’s back, to below the cabinet level.  A sudden surprised look spread over Robert’s face; then it darkened.

          “Not now, Vinnie,” Robert said.  “Nice detailing.  Torn sails, broken lines, but there isn’t any water.”

“It’s an imaginary ship,” Jacob said. 

          “And look at the flags on the masts—they’re flying backward.”

          “Imaginary wind, too,” Jacob answered.

          “Nice blue color in the pennants, though.”  Robert turned it over in his hand. 

          “Saphhire,” Jacob said.  “The color of… sapphire.”

          Gavin had liked the color, too.  But he already had a buckle, he had said.  Jacob had made him one last month, didn’t he remember?  Jacob had forgotten.  Well, here’s another one to go with it, he had told his son.  You can wear one on the front, and one on the back.  “I’ll put it on my bookcase, where people can see it,” Gavin had said.  But the buckle had been laid aside, and found its way beneath one of Gavin’s books.  They had spoken of Gavin’s studies, his work upon his thesis presentation, his chance to get it published. 

          “You’ll see,” Gavin had said.  “I’ll make a name for myself.”  They had spoken of the prices of things—books, gas, leather.  And of Jacob’s failing eyesight.

          “You ought to get more lights in here so you can see better,” Gavin had said, gathering his books.  When he had gone, Jacob had found the buckle still lying beside the telephone.

          “Oh, I get it.”  The wrinkles and creases around Robert’s eyes disappeared for a moment.  “Like a ship sailing across the mind.”

          Jacob nodded, tired.  So tired of this. 

          “Oh, yeah,” Vinnie said.  “Like a whadya call it.  A pinafore.”

          “A metaphor,” Robert said to Vinnie, the wrinkles reappearing.  Then, to Jacob.  “He’s an idiot, but he’s cute.  How much for the buckle?” 

          “Make an offer,” Jacob said.

          “Ten.  I’ll give you ten.”

          “Double it,” Jacob said.

          “Too much,” Robert said.

          “The silver alone is worth more than ten.  You’re saying my work on it is worth nothing.  Give it to me.  I’ll put it back.”  Jacob took the buckle, holding it with both hands as though it were sculpted jade.  He moved it slowly, patiently, toward the cabinet. 

          “No, wait, man.  I want it.”

          Jacob took the money, wrapped the buckle in tissue paper, and then the men were gone.

          He waved away a pair of flies trapped inside the cabinet and re-closed it, then sat back on his stool, gazing at the light from the front windows, massaging his hip.  The shop was dark except for the two trapezoids growing across the floor, and the yellowish pools that fell onto his workbench from the hanging bulbs.  Dust floating about the room resembled a slow swirl of bugs above the bright trapezoids.  The colors of a passing automobile drove through the backward lettering.  A cat nosed in the door, looked around and walked outside again. 

          Dust, he thought.  If I sit here like this long enough, I’ll be covered up by it too.  Save on burial costs.  God knows he’d have to start saving somewhere.  Gavin’s last study grant had finished the savings.  Maybe I’ll wait and see how deep it gets in a year, he thought.  What’s another year?  To Gavin, maybe graduation, maybe marriage, or travel.  No, Gavin didn’t like to travel.  Too much to do right here, he always answered.  Takes me away from myself, Gavin said.  Jacob always shrugged when he heard that; he always took himself with him wherever he went.  But Gavin had his own life, and was as stubborn about it as Jacob.  “Why don’t you come down to the University?  I’ll show you my office,” Gavin would say.  And Jacob would answer, “I will,” and “Why don’t you walk down to the waterfront with me, and I’ll show you my ship?”  But they seldom went anywhere with each other.

          In a year, I could sell everything, including the shop, and maybe travel a little.  Catch a tramp steamer.  Or, if no one wants to buy my art, I could just keep on working undisturbed, and fill the place to the ceiling.  Why keep on with it?  He looked through the glass at the silver plates and buckles.  What had Gavin called them once?  Little masterpieces of illusion.  He imagined all the pieces of leather, silverware, wood and paper upon which he had transferred his illusions piled in the center of the room and reflecting light from the windows like a giant crystal ball.  Why keep on?  Because they were his life, anybody could see that.  He smiled and looked again at the picture in the frame. 

          No, not dust, he thought.  They had been good years.  When he had returned from the sea, she had been waiting for him on the dock.  Each time he had come down the gangplank, she had been there.  A homecoming, a celebration, and then, a son! 

          How hard it was to leave her then for the pitching steel decks!  He knew she loved him too, the way she argued against his going, her face a tightened knot.  But when they finally bought the house on Pacific Street, there were the payments.  How could he not have gone?

          He thought briefly of those days at sea, longing to be home again, the greetings at the gangway, gifts and stories.  No, the sea was not a place for a man with too much to remember.  Memories made him slow, absent-minded.  There was bound to have been an accident. 

          A storm, sudden, black, and fierce.  He remembered the decks careening with the heavy seas, the exhaustion of all hands on the deck crew, trying in vain to trim the cargo, the snap of a winch cable, the searing pain as the shredded cable-end tore away flesh and bone from his hip.  Gunnar carrying him to sick bay, his white apron dripping with blood.  And then, with such a limp, the doc had held both his shoulders and said, there would be no more ship’s decks. 

          Jacob smiled.  He could have gone back as a navigator when the hip had healed.  He even placed his name in the active file at the Seaman’s hall.  But when the steward called, and the whistle of steam rose from the ship’s great horn, he could not leave her trembling arms.  Through with it, he had said then.

          It was after the accident that he had begun with the silver-smithing, and then the leather.  She was so alive then.  When he would arise at first light to walk to his rented garage and his artisan’s tools, she would already be at her easel in the center of the cold light from the bay windows, her hands touching color to an image moving through her mind.  So lost did she become in her work, he would bend to kiss the top of her head and she would not notice. 

          Later in the day, she often came by the garage to show him what she had done, and he would present her with some new dish, or vase, or a sleek leather garment too daring to place for view inside his glass counter.  She would gasp with delighted scandal and look about her as though people were staring.  Sometimes she would hold the garment against her body, canting her hips like a dancer.  Hey, sailor, she would wink and taunt him.  He would squint and frown, holding his awl as Michaelson used to hold a paint brush, eyeing the article over his thumb at arm’s length while she laughed, her tongue between her teeth.  Her laughter, and the fire-filled blue of those eyes!  No, nothing that had happened before or since could ever change the beauty of that time.  Days so pure, so transcendent as he thought back to them, that he judged them the masterpieces of his life.  He sighed and lowered his eyes.  He had thought their life together would last forever.  Perhaps it would have, and lasted this long too, if.  If he had not gone to sea that last time, when they needed the money so badly.  Lissa’s work was just beginning to sell, but not enough to pay the mortgage.  He couldn’t allow them to lose the house.  And when the steward called again… Just once more, he had promised.  How upset she had become!

          Then, while he had sailed into the tropic zone, a hard winter had gripped the city after his departure, with bone-cold winds lashing through the streets from the bay. Perhaps it had been pneumonia, or a sudden unknown fever.  Perhaps if he had been home, he could have cared for her, prevented it all.  But when he had returned from the sea that last time, she was already gone, and all traces of her scattered.  “It couldn’t be helped; it’s fate,” Mrs. Demitrie, Gavin’s godmother-- a nearby neighbor, had shaken her head slowly.  Gavin would not speak to him and had stayed with her almost a month.  Was he to blame?  Jacob could not see himself through Gavin’s eyes this way, for who would paint a masterpiece and then put a torch to it?  No, it was fate, as Mrs. Demitrie had said.  If only they could accept it.  If only.  Ah, well…

          The trapezoids disappeared for a moment, and Jacob lifted his gaze.  His son stood at the shop door.  He was always startled at how tall and straight Gavin was and how his strong, angular face seemed never to stop its searching, listening, jerking about.  Gavin blinked in the dim light and adjusted the shirt and tie beneath his Stanford sweater, while holding a large book under one arm. 

          “Pop, it’s me,” Gavin said, peering into darkness.

          “Hello, son.  So, it’s Friday again already.”

          “And here I am, regular as rain.”  Gavin pushed up the sleeves of his sweater and seated himself on the end of the cabinet, letting the book settle beside him.

          `”But not as often,” Jacob smiled.

          “Yes, that’s true.  But after all, this is San Francisco.  You know I can’t come by except when I come into the city.  The University is all the way down in Palo Alto, you know.  That’s just too far, except on week-ends.”

          “Oh I know that.  I was just making a joke,” Jacob said.

          Gavin stared intently at him, one hand resting on the cabinet, the other with a finger through a belt loop.  After a moment, the corners of his mouth curled upwards.  “A joke.  Yes.  You look tired.”

          “How was your trip?  Did you have to take the bus?”

          “No.  I caught a ride with a friend.”

          “A woman, perhaps?”

          “No, Pop.  Not a woman.”

          “Maybe one day, though, ay?”

          “Not until I’m through with my Master’s Degree.  Then there are the work hours.  Professor Hart has me grading all the freshman papers now.  I just don’t see when I could find the time for that kind of thing.”

          “Maybe not.  Maybe you don’t like women,” Jacob said.  “But then after all, this is San Francisco.”

          Gavin’s face grew duskier under the dim bulbs. Jacob laughed.  “Don’t worry about me,” Gavin muttered.  “I just have things to do first.”

          Jacob heard himself say, “Well, don’t let the fruit spoil on the vine.”  He glanced at the leather image.  She used to say that when the three of them walked along the boardwalks, Gavin pulling them persistently toward Girardelli’s.  While the boy finished his chocolate sundae, they would slip away for a moment onto the balcony that overlooked the wharves.  I’ve been growing a kiss, she’d whisper. and it’s best not to let fruit spoil on the vine, she’d whisper, so close a touch of lips would be remembered years later, soft as blossoms.  “You should be making grandchildren, Gavin,” Jacob added quickly.

          Gavin frowned and stood down from the counter top.  “It seems like we talk about this over and over again.  I have my studies, my thesis, and my assistantship.  You know how busy I am.  Or at least you would if you’d come down and visit me.  You didn’t come for my presentation last Wednesday, Pop.”

          “Yes, I’m sorry.  I wanted to come, but I felt poorly,” Jacob lied.  He had forgotten.  “How did it go?”

          “It went well, I think.  I read the first half of my thesis on the effects of the plague on sixteenth century literature to the freshman history classes, and fielded questions from the students.  Some of the questions were dumb, but some were quite observant.  Hart shook my hand and said he was impressed.  I think you would have enjoyed it, Pop.  At least you would have seen me in my element.”

          Jacob gazed at his son, now twenty-one and in his fourth year at Stanford.  “Little Gavin, all grown up, with a life of his own,” he said.

          “Quite,” Gavin answered, turning to stare out the lettered windows.  “I’m doing the best I can with it.  By myself,” he added, as though building something, and these words were extra nails.

          Like his mother.  Jacob watched his son’s shoulders; the muscles there tensed as though breathing by themselves.  He heard his mind form the words ahead of time.  They said, I know life has been difficult for you.  I know I haven’t been the best father—but he heard his voice say…

          “So you still like the history, ay?”

          “Yes, very much,” Gavin turned toward him.  “History has a way of continually surprising and amusing you the more you get involved with it.”

          Jacob chuckled.  “I thought I was involved in it.  At least everything in my life seems like ancient history now.”

          Gavin returned the smile briefly.  “Pop, as colorful as your past may be, a thesis entitled, ‘My Old Man’ probably would help my budding career.”

          “Sixteenth century, ay?”

          “Well, actually the fifteenth and sixteenth, as I explain in my introduction.  Did I tell you there’s a good chance this might be published in The American Scholar Magazine?”

          “That’s wonderful, Gavin.  Then maybe you can go on to studying the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.”

          “Pop, I already—“

          And then the nineteenth century.  And before you know it, you’ll catch right up to the present.”

          “Always ready to slip in the needle, ay, Pop?  Well, by studying things the way they actually were, I’m in a position to understand how things actually are.  Better than you.”  Gavin was looking straight into his eyes with those nails again. 

          Jacob looked away, into the dusty corners and dim surfaces of the shop.  His world was very small, at present.  “I suppose,” he answered, turning his eyes toward Gavin again. 

          Gavin looked away. “And how are you getting on these days, Pop?”

          “Oh, I keep busy.  Very busy.  Lots of orders,” Jacob lied.  “I can’t ever seem to catch up to the present either,” he grinned and shrugged.

          Gavin muttered something and shook his head. 

          “What was that?”

“Do you need anything?” Gavin said, as though that was what he had said before.

“More time,” Jacob answered.  More time before you are gone, he thought.  “How about you?  Do you need anything?”

“No.”  Gavin brightened. “I got another study grant, didn’t I tell you?  The grading job is enough for room and board, but I didn’t know how I was going to make tuition.  Suddenly out of the blue I get this anonymous grant.  For outstanding scholarship, the award said.  I was astonished.  I haven’t even finished my thesis.  Things are going exceptional for me, Pop.  I’m even in a position to help out, if there are no orders, I mean…”

          “Really, I’m fine.  I’m just finishing one up, actually.”  Jacob reached behind himself to the workbench.  The irregular strip of leather lay among his tools.  He placed it so that the image on its oiled surface stood upright under Gavin’s face.  “It’s for Brians, you know.  The western clothing store Brians over on Columbia.  He’s crazy about my work.  He has it all over his store,” Jacob lied.  Not a hard lie though.  Jacob had done a pair of boots for him once.  “Well, what do you think?”

Gavin felt the image with his fingertips, then wiped them with his handkerchief.  “You’ve colored the eyes blue.  Deer don’t have blue eyes.”

“They don’t come three inches high, either, for that matter.  But it’s a special deer.  A spirit deer.  Maybe it’s really a human in deer form…”

“It’s nice, Pop.  But, blue eyes?  You ought to change it.  Brians will notice.”

“No, then it would be just a deer.”

Gavin looked up from the holster and gave it a tiny shove.  “You’re a strange one, Pop.  Your work is full of peculiar little jokes.  Why do you do that?”

“Anybody can see ordinary designs.  You don’t like my work much, do you?”

“I do, I really do.  It’s very-- ”  Gavin searched for the proper word—“unique.  You live in a world all your own, Pop.  But I worry about you sometimes.”  

She had said it just that way, at the gangplank, with the focus on worry, as though there were many ways to worry, many things to consider.  A heaviness in her words that made her eyes puffy, her lips pressed tightly together.  I hate your leaving, she would say.  Each time, it’s forever. 

And the last time, after the injury, she had cried.  She had hidden her face in her hands, and nothing he would say could comfort her, nor make her look up.  He had watched from the high side of the ship, and the last he saw of her was the top of her golden head. 

“You what?” Jacob said.

“I worry about you.”

“How nice,” Jacob said.

Gavin turned in a slow circle with his arms outstretched, indicating something, or perhaps everything, about the shop.  “You ought to get more light in here.  I can’t even see your work when I first come in.”

“If people don’t stay long enough for their eyes to adjust, they’re in too much of a hurry to look at the details in my work anyway.”

“People never stay anyplace long enough for that,” Gavin said.  Then, so as to soften those words, he added, “Not anymore.”

“Ay, that’s the truth of it,” Jacob said quietly.  That was Gunnar’s phrase.  Agh, dead ten years, now. 

“But you’ll ruin your eyes the way you bend over that workbench with these sickly little lights.”

“No, I won’t.  When I get tired, I quit.”

“It’s not healthy, the way you work here.  Why don’t you get out and do more things, get involved with people, take up a hobby…”

“I take my walks down along the wharf,” Jacob said.

“That’s not enough,” Gavin answered quickly, his arms still moving, outstretched.

“It is for me.”

“Why don’t you enroll in an art course or something at the city college?”

Jacob frowned.  “No, I’m too old to learn someone else’s art.”

“But all you do is slave over that workbench, pounding lines into someone else’s holster or belt buckle, and you only stop for a quick walk by the waterfront, and then you come right back.”

“It’s what I like to do,” Jacob answered.

Gavin waved his hand, drawing circles in the air.  “But you’re not involved with anything on the outside.”

“I don’t need to be.”

“I mean, half the time you don’t even bother to vote.”

“I’ll leave that to you who study that sort of thing, history and politics.  Anyway, I used to vote.  Never seemed to do any good.”

“Pop, you ought to get more involved.  It’s for the best.”  Gavin’s hand descended to the cabinet and began to trace a random pattern on the glass.

It’s for the best.  After the Princess Liberty had passed into the western fog, she had said it, her words quick and hard, like punctuation.  Gavin needs his father, she had said.  He shouldn’t be a little orphan boy, farmed out to the neighbors.

He has you to care for him, he had said.  Not always, she had answered.

Jacob shook himself back to the present, then arched his back slowly, to stretch the stiffness from his hip.  “I am involved, son,” he answered.  “I’m involved in my work here, like this holster for Brians.”

“You know what I mean.”

She had said it just that way, too, when she was flustered, the accent so strong on the you that it carried the resonance of the sentence like the sound of a bell.  What do you mean, not always?  He had asked.  You know what I mean.  Her strength an ocean, her thoughts a whirlpool of mystery.  So like his mother.

“And I get involved on my walks, too,” Jacob said quickly.  “I visit the crab boats unloading their noon catch, and I say, ‘Your fender’s slipping up!’  And the young men hop to and say, ‘Thanks, old man!’  And I visit the tender at the museum ship, and we swap tales about the typhoons and geisha girls.  I visit the fish vendor on the boardwalk outside the Grotto, and he says, ‘Hello, Jacob!  How’s that boy of yours?  What does he do now?’  He has two daughters and five grandchildren.  What can I say?  ‘My son is still in school,’ I say.  ‘For some, it takes longer,’ I say.” Jacob grinned.

“If I’d wanted to be a fisherman, I’d have dropped out of high school,” Gavin said, his jaw set, his hands beginning its circles again.  “It’s difficult to become a teacher these days, you know.  But I’ve stuck with it all these years, without any support from anyone.  One day, I believe I’ll be able to teach students how things are, how things relate to one another.  I just feel a sort of responsibility to nurture others… Oh, I don’t think I get through to you, Pop.”

“Yes, some.”  Jacob exhaled, his body settling like sand in a bag.  The bud had blossomed into a bright and fertile flower in the wild; she would have understood it.

“But I need to be involved with people, not isolated, like a, a…” Gavin’s slow circles grew to cover the width of the glass cabinet.

“A sailor,” Jacob said.

Gavin was silent. 

“Tell me, teacher,” Jacob said, “When was George Washington born?”

“In 1732,” Gavin answered quickly, automatically.  “Why?”

“And Lincoln?”

“In 1809.”

“And me?”

Gavin was silent.

Jacob gazed at the boy in the picture.  “I can tell you the day, the hour, even the minute you were born.”

“That wasn’t fair, Pop.”

“I know I’m not the ideal citizen, Gavin.  I’m not so smart.  I only care about what I love.”  Jacob waited for more words to come.  A moth drifted between them in its wide arc around the light-bulbs.  When it passed in front of Gavin’s eyes, Jacob noticed them.  They were fixed upon him, and the hand circles had stopped.

“You weren’t even home when I was born,” Gavin said slowly, pounding each word home.  “I didn’t even know who you were until I was four or five.  You were never there.  At least until after Mom left.”

Jacob stared at Gavin, as though seeing him from beneath the surface of a turbulent sheen.  “I should have left the sea sooner,” he said.  “Curse the sea!  All I have to show for more than thirty years on it are my white hair, crow’s feet, and a bad hip.  And look at all it has taken from me!”

“It wasn’t taken from you, Pop.  Nothing is taken that isn’t given.”

“Maybe if I’d been home, I could have done something…”

“There was nothing you could have done except to be there,” Gavin said, his voice sour, like bad fruit.

Jacob turned away.  “Lissa,” he whispered.

Gavin followed Jacob’s gaze to the picture; he bent closer, then picked up the frame.  “You changed it.”

“No,” Jacob said.  “That’s how it should have been.”

“It’s beautiful.”  Gavin touched the face of the woman, a slight glisten of oil transferring to his fingertips.  Jacob watched his face, the intent squint of his eyes.  “It’s like, I don’t know.  Like after all these years, she suddenly looked up.”

“In my mind, she does sometimes.”

“Just a small detail like the tilt of the head.  Imagine.”

“Yes, imagine,” Jacob smiled and nodded.  Gavin set the picture down into its spot by the telephone.  His hand settled away from it to the counter, a leaf from a tree.  Jacob reached over to grasp it, but Gavin was moving again, and the hand was gone. 

“What happened to the photograph?” Gavin asked.

“It’s still there, behind.”

“May I have it?  I mean, you have this beautiful picture, but the photograph, well, it’s really her.” Jacob stared at Gavin, then nodded in silence. Gavin removed the photograph and examined it.  “You know, I have one like it on my book-case in my apartment.  It’s of mom and I in front of the old stucco place on Pacific Street.  You remember that house?”  Gavin smiled broadly, his face a sunrise.  “What a view from there, ay?”  I used to watch Mom painting in the bay window when I was little.  She worked so hard, morning ‘til night.  You never knew.  She’d get discouraged sometimes.  But she’s smile and say, ‘Well, at least we have a home to come back to.’  I was sure we always would have, too.”  Gavin shrugged.  “But, of course, you were gone a lot.  She was more attached to it.  I just never understood why you sold it.  Worth a fortune these days.”

“I just couldn’t live there, without her,” Jacob’s voice faltered.

“But she would have come back.”

“How could she have come back?  She was gone, I tell you!  Gone before my ship ever made port!”  Jacob’s hand curled into a fist where it lay upon the counter.

“She was gone, yes.  Gone to New York.  But her paintings were only scheduled for a three-month showing, Pop.  Then she was coming back.  It was her big chance, she said.  She left me with the neighbor lady a week before you arrived.  She wrote it all in the note.”

Jacob shook his head, pausing at the end of each arc.  “There was no note!” he shouted, eyes closed.  “She died a week before I made port!  Pneumonia, the doctor said.  I never saw her again after she left me at the gangplank!”  Jacob said, his head still moving from side to side.  Jacob, do you hear me? Lissa’s voice from long ago.  

“No, Pop!”  Gavin’s fist came down beside his so hard the cabinet glass shook.  “I swear, you make up your past like a… a piece of jewelry!  Mother packed all her things and then took me down to Mrs. Demitrie’s.   She left me there like I was a piece of furniture or something.  ‘I’ll hurry back as soon as I can,’ she said.  I thought I was going with her!  But the letter she left in the bay window was addressed to both of us.”  Gavin’s words seeped through clenched teeth.  “Do you know what it’s like to be abandoned by both your parents?  I can tell you.  You learn to take care of yourself!”

Jacob’s eyes, closed as tight as possible, saw her at the gangplank.  Jacob, Lissa’s voice came back to him, shaking with anger.  Jacob, you can’t leave me again, do you hear me?  “No,” Jacob’s voice quavered.  “She died.”

“Yes,” Gavin said.  “Of pneumonia, the doctors wrote.”

“Yes, pneumonia,” Jacob answered.

“When she wasn’t there to meet you, something happened to you.  Maybe your grief made you sort of crazy for awhile.  But somehow, the house got sold.  And then what was there for her to hurry back to?  So she stayed in New York for another month selling her paintings.  She died that next December, during the big snow storm,” Gavin said, his words sour, bitter, falling like old fruit from a withered vine.

“No!”  Jacob saw her teeth clench, her eyes aflame, violet flashes within the blue.  You can’t leave me alone, do you hear me?  I can’t take care of the boy and give myself to my art too.  You’ve made me a prisoner!  I have my own life to lead.  Free and clear, remember?  You leave, and I may not be here when you return!  Her voice tolling out of the past like a bell.

“There were letters, but you never opened them,” Gavin said.

“There were no letters!”  Jacob almost screamed it.  Lissa, small and fragile, turning to go, only the back of her head visible to him.  It’s for the house, Lissa, he said then.  Money to keep our house.  It’s not the house, she said.  It’s the sea.  No, he said then.  Try to understand.  She began walking.  Her last words to him were this:  Go then, you bastard.

“I still have some of them,” Gavin said. 

“No…”  Jacob’s voice became an “ohh”, prolonged by the pain, as sharp as any pain a cable end could tear from flesh.  His body convulsed with shudders, and he buried his face in his hands atop the cabinet.  “Ohh,” his voice pleaded.

Gavin slowly placed a hand on Jacob’s arm and began to rub it, as though applying ointment.  “It’s the truth,” he said.  “There’s no other way to look at it.”

“Why?”  Jacob whispered.  Lissa, walking away, her hair lifting like a sea swell in the wind.  “Why do you hurt me so?”  He called out to her again from where he sat, but she did not turn back.  Canvas cast into the sea.  Letters in her handwriting, headed only, “Jacob.”  Forget her, Gunnar had said.  She’s a damned artist.  Michaelson’s harsh laughter echoing through the endless steel corridors like the vibrations of an engine.

“I don’t mean to, Pop.  I’ve told you so many times about the letters, it’s old history to me.  Just a bunch of bad memories.  Let’s just let go of it.  She’s gone, the house is gone, a long time has passed.”

Yes, long ago, Jacob thought.  A lifetime.  A man’s age.  His love, a dot on the horizon.  Countries, harbors, faces passing like tiny islets.  Great orange towers reaching up among the pink blossoms.  An artist can never love, Michaelson had said.  Easels in the bay windows, empty.  The echoes of a great bell, fading.

His head still in his arms, Jacob opened his eyes.  Oiled leather and polished silver reflected the double bulbs above.  Gavin’s hand still rested on his shoulder, light as a brush of golden hair.  “You use the truth like a knife,” Jacob spoke as though the hand was around his throat.  “I had to sell the house, what could I do?” he said, his voice suddenly breaking free.  “I had no money.  I’d sent it all home to her.  I came up from the sea and found the bank account drained, and she was gone, and I… It was the money, don’t you see?  I had to sell, to take care of us all these years.  But it’s gone now, son.  This last expense was all that was left.”

“What expense?”

“You know what I mean,” Jacob said, his eyes half closed, the faintest smile playing across his lips.  Gavin’s hand took flight like a frightened bird, and his eyes dropped to his feet. 

“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” Gavin said quickly, as if that was all that Jacob could have meant.  “Are you going to be all right?”

“Yes,” Jacob answered.  “You’ve taught me how to take care of myself.”

“I only wanted you to understand.”

“Yes.  You’ll make a fine teacher.”

“Thank you,” Gavin said.  And then, quietly, his face a dusky color again, he added, “I mean, for everything.” Silence settled in like dust.

“I need to get some fresh air,” Jacob said.  “Will you walk with me? Down to the waterfront?”

Gavin glanced at his watch.  “Gosh, I’m late!  Look, next time, I promise.  Absolutely.  But really, I have to go.  Dinner meeting, then study.  You know how it is.”  Gavin picked up his book and pulled back his shoulders. 

Jacob saw the sweater stretch across his son’s broad chest.  His son—tall and straight, a ship under full sails, wake from it already washing in over Jacob’s life.  What could he call after it?  I love you, he thought.  “Study hard,” he said.

Gavin strode to the door.  “Take care, old man.”  He smiled, a bright morning sun.  Then he was gone.

Jacob sat on his stool and watched the trapezoids lengthen across the floor.  He had wanted to touch Gavin and to hold him, but always there were words between them, words which hurt and confused him-- elections and England, letters and leaving each other behind.  He wanted to understand them, but it was no use.  She had known it.  There is nothing to understand, she had written.  We all live as we must, to survive.  You have said so.  Had he said as much to her?  Words that have come back cold and empty-handed.  Jacob sat in the middle of his silence, empty of words.  A window rattled with the passing of a truck.  Next door, a furnace switched on.

What was left for him?  Nothing, almost.  Masterpieces of illusion.  Jacob swung around and picked up his awl, feeling the weight of it in his hand.  What had he but this, after all?  This was forgiveness; the emptiness of new leather, a few fragments of remembered blossoms, and an awl.

It was a beautiful house, Jacob thought.

The first line that appeared was the bold curve above the bay windows.  Of course he remembered.  A round door lintel, tile roof, plum tree just there.  I’ll draw the three of us returning, he thought.  Maybe after a day in Chinatown.  She’ll be here by the tree, and Gavin by the door, just so. And I’ll be just here.   Lines appeared swiftly with each turn of the wrist.  Jacob moved the square of leather closer to the light, which gleamed back from the blossoms and faces, the infinite brown sky, and his own dark fingers.  He smiled, his mouth barely moving, his eyes half closed.

“Yes,” he said slowly, his fingers moving over the figures walking up the path.  “This is the way it was,” he said, and the light gleamed from his hands.

                            *       *       *       *       *