2020-08-15 - Boat Painting and the Art of Zen

She’s in the water – and more importantly, the Vagabond seems determined to stay afloat, something which Ravn Abildgaard considers a strict advantage when it comes to boats. He likes her name, too. It’s almost similar in Danish, and it fits his drifter nature. Sure, he’s only renting her at this time – but the sail boat's owner rather strongly hinted that she might be for sale later on. A perfect deal for the owner; Ravn gets to get her seaworthy and then, quite likely, pay more because now she’s seaworthy. The fellow seemed quite obviously proud of himself as he laid out the deal. Cunning as a fox that graduated in cunning from the university of cunning at Oxbridge, or however that quote goes.

He doesn’t care. He can afford it. Not on the salary that he earns cleaning tables, washing glasses and fighting an endless war on the men’s room at the Two if By Sea beach bar; but on his savings that he usually prefers to not dip into because it’s cheating and he’s supposed to make his way on the money he earns along the way. She feels like home. And besides, it’s a bet I made with myself. I told no one about it. Who’s going to point out that I lost it?

In a town of mind readers, somebody might. But more likely, they will not because this is a town of mind readers who have so much manure hitting them at high speed velocity that they aren’t likely to invest their time poking around the heads of random drifters buying sail boats. On the sliding disaster scale of watching paint dry to call the National Guard, drifters buying sail boats ranks pretty low. Ravn is quite convinced that his personal finances are not an issue of general interest.

Cleaning the barnacles off the Vagabond’s hull had taken a full day, and then some because he let himself be interrupted by people passing by. Friendly people, who stuck around for a beer and a chat. Ravn enjoyed that. He feels rusty on the whole talking to people thing. Striking up a conversation with a stranger you’re never going to see again is easy. Talking to someone who may still be around tomorrow is a lot harder. They remember what you said, rather than just the smile and the accent and hey, that Danish guy last week, whatever became of him, oh well.

A couple of yachters from Seattle helped him get the sail boat into the water in exchange for beer and pizza. Ravn didn’t catch their names – Chad and Matt, no doubt, most wealthy white American boys are Chad and Matt, at least in boating circles. It wasn’t difficult; the Vagabond is a King’s Cruiser 33 – not a big and heavy boat compared to most of the yachts and catamarans at pier. She was made for cruising around the islets of the Finnish and Swedish skärgård; capable of crossing the Atlantic, obviously, but whoever did so on her no doubt spent the entire trip wet, cold, and miserable, regretting several life choices.

Chad and Matt were gone in the morning, sailed on to wherever they were headed; Ravn vaguely recalls one of them saying something about Olympia but he was not paying attention. He’s lived that way for three years now; meet people, talk to them a bit, forget about them tomorrow. Don’t get attached. Not to things, not to people. It’s better that way.

Definitely do not get attached to things that will depend on you.

Like cats. Specifically, like that skinny black cat that’s been sitting on the pier for an hour, watching the Dane get started on the Vagabond’s paint job above the waterline.

Ravn likes cats. The art gallery lady – Hera? Hera. She had a nice cat. Caramel coloured, name of Queso. Her dog, a watchful German Shepherd by name of Hans. Ravn always finds it easier to remember the name of animals than humans. Something about facial recognition which he’s not very good at but animals have colours and patterns, and that makes it a lot easier.

He slips the black cat a sandwich—goat cheese on rye. It’s all he’s got; the Vagabond has a kitchenette but he hasn’t gotten around to buying much food yet. Or much anything, really—the habit of never owning more stuff than you can carry is deeply ingrained after three years of wandering in whatever direction the wind took him. The hardest part was waiting in Valletta, for his visa to the US to go through. The Maltese are nice people but staying in one place took effort – more so given that Malta is a favourite holiday destination of the kind of Danish and British people who go abroad in order to catch sun, buy cheesy souvenirs, and smirk at how much better everything is at home.

“Nice to meet you,” Ravn tells the cat who shies away when he tries to pet her. “You should go find your owner and tell them to feed you more.”

The cat probably doesn’t have an owner. It’s too thin. Ravn knows, from his background as a folklorist and from the occasional temp work at some animal shelter or other along the way, that black cats struggle to find homes. For all it’s the 21st century, a lot of people still consider them unlucky. Black cats tend to get adopted last, if at all. Ironically, if I were to get a cat, it’d probably be a black, Ravn thinks and mentally nods to his habit of only ever dressing in, well, black. It’s easier. Everything matches when everything is black.

The sandwich is gone in a matter of minutes. The cat hops from the pier onto the deck and settles at the prow like she’s always belonged there.

Ravn shakes his head and gets to work painting. The Vagabond is from the 1970s. Its current owner doesn’t know much of her history but when Ravn took over the lease it was obvious that she was given a make-over sometime in the early 1980s. The kind of make-over that involved crushed velvet pillows, beaded curtains, and a permeating reek of pot and cheap perfume. He mentally re-named her the Floating Whorehouse, but after a few days of work, she’s a Vagabond again. He’s painting everything that used to be mint green or hot pink a nice, cool shade of blue, and the smell is almost out after he washed everything down—twice.

The idea of having one of Gray Harbor’s many psychics read her, find out a bit of her history was aired—and dismissed. Ravn is not going to inflict that horror on anyone. There are horror stories of substance abuse, teenaged party girls, and thumping disco music that deserve to stay buried in the past.

The cat curls up, becoming a small, black ball of contentedness.

Everything here is awful, Ravn thinks. And it is. People die; like that poor park ranger, found headless and decomposing inside a sand sculpture. Like that poor nurse at the coffee house, talking about how an ancient serial killer possessed her uncle. Like people turning up at places, beaten black and blue, arms in slings, strange scars, limping, bruising, bleeding—and acting like it’s just par for the course, welcome to Gray Harbor, everything is fine.

There’s a balance in all things. If everything is so awful to most people then, logically, there must be a maniac somewhere who likes it. I’m that guy, he thinks and drags the paintbrush slowly across the wood. Except I’m not really, because I don’t take pleasure in people getting hurt. It’s because here, everyone reaches out to each other because each other’s all they got.

Don’t get attached, move on, forget—or get dragged in, stay, and learn the truth. It’s not really a difficult choice to make, for a man who’s felt disconnected from the world for most of his life.

A man who, apparently, now has a cat.