Worldly Goods

embroidered on his work shirt, glanced at Sophie, who was staring at the rack of new waterskis inside the shop as if trying to divine their purpose. “Their left leg to buy it off you.” “Is that right?” “I could get you a tidy little bidding war.” “It’s all set?” “Like to have a day or two warning, but yeah. We got it ready.” Henry nodded. He’d called the marina from the road only hours before. They’d been at a gas station in New Hampshire. “Fifty-fives in good condition are extremely rare, Mr. Garfield.” Henry liked that—the Mr. Garfield bit. He recalled this man addressing his father that way, with the same intonation, the same headdip of deference. I t was a beautiful little motorboat; Henry didn’t need anyone to tell him that. There it was, rocking gently in its marina slip, a 1955 Penn Yan wood-and-canvas Trailboat, fourteen feet, brass fittings, a short-planked deck, three gunwale-to-gunwale benches. Seeing it for the first time in nearly five years, Henry had a crisp vision of his dad sitting in the stern on a flotation cushion, his hand on the little two-stroke Mercury outboard—ordering him to the bow to get it to plane. As a boy Henry had liked to crawl onto a bed of life preservers beneath the deck and let the hard smack of the waves lull him to sleep. “She’s a beautiful little boat,” the marina man said again—the third time. “Yep,” Henry said. “In fact, I know some guys’d give their left, uh—” The plump, fiftyish man, the name “Ben” Worldly Goods