The Old Rowboat (Part 1)

Astrid had been in Garrykennedy for three days and had already read both of her books. The village had a harbor, a shop, a pub, and a lake that went on for twenty-five miles. Her cousin Ronan had a bicycle with no back brake. On Thursday, when the rain would not stop, they went into their grandfather’s barn to look for a pump.

They did not find the pump. Behind a stack of fence posts, under a green tarp that had gone hard and gray with age, they found a boat.

It took both of them to pull the tarp off. Underneath lay a wooden rowboat, four meters long, on its side. There were dead leaves in it, a wasp nest under one seat, and a smell of old rain. Somebody had painted a name across the back, but only three letters were left. Astrid put her hand flat on the wood. It was soft in one place and hard everywhere else.

“He rowed this out to the islands,” Ronan said. “Before my dad was born, I think.”

“Does it float?”

“It floated then.”

Neither of them said anything about their grandfather. He had not come down to the barn since the winter, and the house was full of quiet people talking about what should happen next.

That afternoon there was a poster in the shop window: the village regatta, one Sunday in July, races on the lake, and a line at the bottom saying that any boat from the village could enter. Six weeks. Astrid read it twice, and then she read it out loud to Ronan, who was buying an ice cream and not really listening until she got to the last line.

“We’d need paint,” he said.

“We’d need a lot more than paint.”

“So that’s a no.”

“That’s not a no,” Astrid said.

They shook hands outside the shop, which felt stupid and also serious. Then Ronan stopped on the step.

“One thing,” he said. “We have to turn it over first.”