A boy is sitting, windswept in the prow of a dinghy
It is late evening and a boy is sitting, windswept, in the prow of a dinghy. His father navigates across the sand pan, between moorings and markers. The sound of the engine makes it impossible to talk so the boy sits silent, facing outward, eyes lowered, his pale face bristling at the water’s occasional flecking. There is the faint smell of fuel and wet rope and the boy wriggles his bare feet which have begun to stiffen in the cold water that sloshes at the bottom of the boat. Looking out across the bay the boy notices light reflecting across the water which, just for a second, seems like the scales of some shimmering monstrous creature. The boy quickly wipes a wet hand on his trousers and tightly grips the gunwale. The boy’s father looks back at the trail of the boat frowning at his failure to negotiate a more direct course. As the small boat passes the last of the navigation markers the boy’s father turns the throttle accelerating into the bay. The boat raises against the thrust, leaping into the larger waves of deeper water and in an uncomfortable rhythm begins to shudder and slap across the bay. The boy’s weight can’t stop the prow from lifting and the father slows the boat sensing but not seeing the tightening grip his son maintains on the side and the way that his toes have curled and legs have braced to try and hold. So once again they slowly make their way across the water. The man watches his son. He watches him pause for a moment to pull his woollen cap tightly down over his head. The father’s cigarette has long been extinguished – the ember was blown brightly from the tip as he pushed the little boat out through the sand and silt – but it still hangs wetly from his lips, the end frayed with tobacco strands. The father gazes into the sky and even now, after so many years and so many journeys, is amazed at how vivid the stars appear. He locates Orion, the three bright stars that form the belt of The Hunter. Without knowing why it seems important the father wishes he knew other constellations, other names of things, so that he might tell his mute son. And as he looks again at the tight woollen cap and outline of the boy he is gripped by the sense that he doesn’t know enough at all.