Inflating a Dog (The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy) by Eric Kraft (novels to read for beginners .txt) 📗

is the fact that the future, which we dispose of to our liking, appears to us at the same time under a multitude of forms, equally attractive and equally possible. Even if the most coveted of these becomes realized, it will be necessary to give up the others, and we shall have lost a great deal. The idea of the future, pregnant with an infinity of possibilities, is thus more fruitful than the future itself, and this is why we find more charm in hope than in possession, in dreams than in reality.

    Henri Bergson

    Time and Free Will, “The Aesthetic Feelings”

Every dream remains one by virtue of the fact that too little has succeeded, become finished for it. That is why it cannot forget what is missing, why it holds the door open in all things. The door that is at least half-open, when it appears to open onto pleasant objects, is marked hope. Though . . . there is no hope without anxiety and no anxiety without hope, they keep each other hovering in the balance, no matter how far hope outweighs for the brave man, through the brave man. However, hope too, which can deceive with will-o’-the-wisp, must be of a knowing kind, one that is thought out in advance.

    Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope

Chapter 39

The Art of Starter-Whacking

IT MUST HAVE BEEN Thursday or Friday when I began to think that Ella’s Elegant Excursions really might be a success, and the shakedown cruise on Friday night convinced me.

My mother was full of confidence, and Patti and I caught it from her. That’s not quite right. I began by faking my confidence, to please my mother, and to please Patti, but like so many affectations, this one became real enough after a while for me to lose the distinction between confidence faked and confidence felt. When Patti and I caught each other’s eye, we exchanged no winks or secret smiles to indicate that either of us was indulging my mother in her folly. We were with her. Her folly was ours.

My mother emerged from my parents’ bedroom wearing a raincoat, said a quick good-bye to my father, asked him to wish us luck, waited a moment, accepted a grunt as good wishes, and hurried out to the car. When we stopped at Patti’s house, she was waiting on the porch, also wearing a raincoat, and she ran to the car and slid in beside me, breathless with anticipation. We exchanged looks, took a deep breath, drove to the dock, and boarded Arcinella.

Patti and my mother busied themselves abovedecks, and I took the bucket from the exhaust pipe and went into the wheelhouse to start the engine.

I pressed the starter button. From the engine room, I heard a dull metallic click, nothing more.

I pressed the button again. Another click.

“Third time’s the charm,” I said, as my grandmother would have in the circumstances, and pressed the button again. Not even a click.

I went below. I looked at the engine. What could I possibly do to make the thing start? I knew nothing about its innards, so I wiggled its wires and flexed its fan belt. I thought about giving it a good whack with something, and the hatchet that Captain Mac had left behind came immediately to mind, but I dismissed the impulse as childish and went back to the wheelhouse.

I pressed the starter button, and nothing happened, nothing at all. The sun was beginning to set, and I was beginning to sweat. Panic was setting in. I hurried below, not because I had any idea what I might do down there to get the engine running, but because I didn’t want my mother to see me in the wheelhouse and ask me if anything was wrong.

Squatting there, staring at Arcinella’s engine as if it might tell me what to do, I began to realize that Patti and my mother didn’t seem to be moving around much abovedecks. They must have finished whatever they had to do, and now they were just waiting for me to start the engine. The thought made me begin to wring my hands, and I had nearly decided to go above and confess that I couldn’t get the engine to start when I heard a deep male voice say from the quayside, “Good evening, ladies. Don’t you look nice.”

“Why, thank you, sir,” said my mother, coyly, in the manner of the Southern belles in movies.

I looked through one of the forward-facing portholes and saw that the man onshore was Mr. Lodkochnikov, Raskol’s father.

“Where’s young Peter?” he asked.

“He’s below,” said my mother, “getting the engine ready for our shakedown cruise.”

“I haven’t been aboard Arcinella for a very long time,” said Mr. Lodkochnikov. “Do you suppose I might have permission?”

“Oh,” said my mother, surprised by the fact that it was she who had the right to grant permission to board, “why, of course.”

Mr. Lodkochnikov, a short, thickset man, lumbered aboard.

“Very nice,” he said. “Very, very nice.”

Patti giggled; apparently he hadn’t been talking about Arcinella.

“Mind if I go below and get a gander at the old gal’s innards?” he asked.

“Not at all,” said my mother. “See if you can get Peter to hurry up. The sun’s already starting to set.”

Mr. Lodkochnikov made his way into the wheelhouse and through the little door, wheezing and grunting all the way, until he was beside me. Without any greeting, he asked in a whisper, “Want some help?”

“Yes,” I said, with a sigh of relief. I thought, for a moment, of apologizing to him, telling him that I had learned my lesson and felt the full weight of my error in not having sought his advice, the savvy of the entire Lodkochnikov clan, before my mother ever bought the boat, but he grinned, winked, and grunted, and I took that to mean that he understood everything, that he forgave me, and that he didn’t want me to embarrass myself by saying a single word about it, so I didn’t.

“Bat’ry’s dead,” he