Ancient Shores Read Online Free PDF

breast. “Max, what is this thing?”
    It didn’t look like any boat that Max had seen before. “Let’s go back to the house,” he said.
     
    He was happy to be away from the boat. Ginny insisted her two sons bring their bedding down to the living room. Jerry was delighted by the opportunity to camp downstairs, and anyhow he was jittery, too. Will didn’t really mind, although he pretended to be annoyed. “Humor your mother,” Max told him, adopting the just-us-guys mode from the airport.
    The kids complied, and they all bunked together. Ginny left lights on all over the house.

4
    …Glides through misty seas
    With its cargo of time and space …
    —Walter Asquith, Ancient Shores
    Max did not sleep well. He had put on a show of good-natured amusement at Ginny’s fears and her insistence they stay together, as if some demonic spirit had come in off the plains and invaded the barn. But it was he who suggested they leave a few lights on outside. Best that the glow leaking in through the windows be coming from GE sixty-watt bulbs rather than from the whatsis. But he felt a degree of pride that she had turned to him for support.
    It was not the presence in the barn, however, that caused his restlessness. It was rather the sense of home , of a family drawing together. He had known this kind of atmosphere as a child but never as an adult. Lasker occasionally joked about the assorted pleasures of Max’s social adventures. Never the same woman twice. And Max played along, because it was expected. But he would have traded it all to get a Ginny in his life.
    In the morning they located Tom. The previous evening’s alarms now seemed overblown, and if Ginny had a difficult time explaining why she had summoned help, Max felt uncomfortable at his presence in therambling farmhouse. “I wouldn’t want you to think I was nervous,” she told her husband over the phone. “But it was really spooky here. I’m in favor of getting rid of the damned thing.”
    Lasker was on the speaker. He couldn’t believe that the lights had come on, and he kept asking whether she was sure. Finally he seemed satisfied, although Max knew he would not believe it until he’d seen it for himself. As for getting rid of it: “I don’t think we want to make any quick decisions,” he said. “Let’s find out what we’ve got first. We could throw some canvas over it, if you want. That way you wouldn’t be able to see the damn thing.”
    Ginny looked at Max. “I don’t think that’s going to make me feel much better, Tom.”
    “Max,” he said, “what do you think about this? Does it make any sense to you?”
    “No,” said Max. “I have no idea. But I’ll tell you one thing—that boat hasn’t been in the ground any length of time at all.”
    There was a long pause on the other end. “Okay,” Lasker said at last. “Look, I’m on later this morning. I’ll do my stuff and leave right after. Be home this afternoon.”
    It was a cold, gray, dismal day, threatening rain or snow. During breakfast a few people arrived and banged on the front door. Could they see the boat? Ginny dutifully unlocked the barn, hitched the trailer to an old John Deere, and pulled it out into a gray morning. Signs posted on the trailer requested people not to touch anything.
    “Why do you bother?” asked Max, deeply engrossed in a plate of pancakes and bacon. “Leave it in the barn and all this will stop.”
    “I’d do it in a minute,” she said. “But Tom thinks it would be unneighborly. He thinks if people come all the way from Winnipeg or Fargo to see this thing, they should get to see it.” She shrugged. “I don’treally disagree with that, but it is getting to be a hassle.” More cars came while Max was finishing breakfast. “We figure they’ll get bored soon. Or frozen. Whichever.” Ginny’s cool blue eyes touched him. She was still frightened, even in the daylight. “Max, I’d like very much to be rid of it.”
    “Then sell it.” He knew