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do what I feel is right.” He stood staring at the bag with his hands on his hips. “I may not be cut out to be a soldier, but . . .”
    Simon glanced up and took in his father’s tall, lean frame, his strong profile and broad shoulders. “What d’you mean? You’re captain of the Lauralee .”
    “That’s right.” His father smiled at him. “But she isn’t a ship of the line, is she? I haven’t exactly been sailing under Nelson.” He sat down on the bed and put his hand on Simon’s knee as if he was going to say more. There was a long white scar that sucked the flesh down between his thumb and forefinger. He’d sliced it open freeing a line in a storm, bound it up in a rag, and never batted an eye. Even now, his father never spoke about it. Wallace was the one who filled Simon in, as he always did. “A right fine skipper,” Wallace and others who sailed with his father agreed. “ Right fine. Knows these waters like the back of his hand. Can find his way through the thick of fog and black of night like his father before him,” Putnam Pugsley always added.
    Sitting on the bed next to his father, breathing in the same air, resting comfortably in the same easy silence they shared when out on the water, Simon began to think about how much more empty the house would be with his father overseas than it was when he was up the coast. He asked what would happen to the Lauralee with his father gone, and would Wallace take her out.
    “Wallace is looking for other work. The Lauralee belongs to your grandfather, and he wants out of the coastal trade.” His father ran his hand through his hair again as he always did. A thick wave of it tumbled forward.
    “He’d never sell her . . . would he?” Simon whispered.
    His father’s gaze shifted to the window, where the predawn sky was filling in, slate gray. “Course not,” he said after a moment. “Who’d buy her?” But his smile was strained.
    “I won’t let him. I’ll see she’s hauled up proper at Mader’s ’til you get home.”
    “There’s my boy. My boy of big heart, sound mind and strong body . . .”
    Caught off guard by the familiar words spoken in so sad a tone, Simon felt tears well up. “Do you think Uncle Ebbin’s alive?” he whispered. “Will you come home if you find him?”
    His father stood abruptly. “Christ, Simon. Why do you think I enlisted? I’m going over there to do my part.” He rifled through some papers and stuffed them in his bag. “I can’t just walk away when I feel like it, and wouldn’t want to if I could.” He stopped himself. “Sorry, son,” he said. “Sorry. Forgot who I was talking to.” Then he patted Simon’s head, which made Simon feel small and useless, so he chose that moment to say, “Since the Lauralee isn’t going out, how about I go out on the Banks this summer? Carl Keddy, Martin Rafuse, Daryl Nauss and a bunch of others will be out there.” The Banks is where boys become men. Daryl repeated this line from his old man at every opportunity.
    His father’s dark eyes grew darker. “Fishing the Banks is a rough life for a boy. Backbreaking. Dangerous. Those boys have no choice. Their families need the money. Don’t romanticize it.”
    “I’m not. I just want to go.”
    His father nodded in appreciation. “Sure you do. Or think you do. But Banks fishing is not for you. You have other talents. You just haven’t found them yet. Besides, summer’s a long way off and right now, you’re needed here at home.” When Simon didn’t reply, his father said, “C’mon now. Chin up. I’ll write. You’ll write me back, right? Keep me posted on what you’re up to, and fill me in on Young Fred.”
    “Guess we’re stuck with him forever,” Simon said with exaggerated resignation.
    “Maybe. I doubt Cousin Turley is coming back anytime soon. You don’t mind, do you—sharing your room with him?”
    “Nah. Every night he tells me he’s ready to sleep in the spare room all by himself. At least he’s