IN THE BOAT SHED

By Jerry Donaldson

500 words

In the summer of 1981 he lived in a tiny loft at the boatworks and life was perfect.  High up in the big boat shed, right out over the water, he had one room with a bathroom.  On warm June nights he could hear the sea lions barking from the rocks near the lighthouse, out at the mouth of the harbor.

Celeste was a summer girl.  She worked at the national park a few miles up the coast.  She had long black hair and dark brown eyes. They’d known each other for a month.

She’d stay over at his place on weekends and they’d sleep late, ignoring the early morning grinding of the haul-out winch pulling yet another wooden fishboat up the marine ways and into the big shed for service.  During the fishing season fishboat repairs went on seven days a week.

While a fishboat was in the big shed the deckhands would drink and carouse in the dockside bar a hundred yards further up the harbor.  He and Celeste would go there on Friday evenings.  Friends, hers and his, would join them.  They played the jukebox, danced, bought each other drinks and told mighty tales of summers past, some of them mostly true.  One night they watched a tall, blond young deckhand guzzle draft beer from a gumboot belonging to one of the cannery girls, while she giggled and his colleagues cheered.

When the lights came up at closing time they all spilled out onto the deserted street.  Sometimes the deckhands fought, other times they didn’t.  Couples slipped away into the warm night, arms around each other and heads close together. Skiffs were “borrowed” off the wharf by locals from across the harbor who’d missed their rides home.

He and Celeste would return to his place.  He’d pull off his comfy old Frye boots and put Zenyatta Mondatta into the tape deck.  They loved listening to the Police that summer.  He’d put a match to a candle and kill the lights.  Then they’d tear off each other’s clothing and jump into his bed, a double mattress on the floor.  One time he suggested they go to her room at the parks employees’ bunkhouse. But she pointed out to him she only had a single bed.

Making love with Celeste was a breath-taking event.  She liked to be on top, which was fine with him.  He’d watch her astride him, bathed in moonlight, rocking back and forth with her eyes closed and her black hair sweeping his chest. She was perfect.

One night in the throes of passion she leaned back and cried out “I just want to fuck, fuck, fuck!” And then they came together, something that had not happened for him before or since, and for an instant he wondered what a lifetime with Celeste would look like. But they barely knew each other and the future was far away. They made beautiful music together and when the summer ended Celeste returned to Manitoba.