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hull’s slide an overamplified sweep of sandpaper, and they dropped the mast and turned and ran for the boat ramp. They were not dressed for the rain. One stopped and called over, asking if Biddy was all right. “I wouldn’t stick around, kid,” he called, and they looked at each other when he didn’t respond, and shrugged, and were soon gone.
    The storm drove the waves before it, the crests surging through the high-water mark, and they crashed and rolled toward the tilted stern of the beached boat, edging the detached rudder backward. With a third great wave it began to slide, and Biddy got up, opening still-warm areas of his body to the cold and wet, and jogged down to the water’s edge, the water foaming no colder than the rain around his toes, the darkness otherworldly. He pulled the rudder across the hull and slipped it under the mast. The hull was a slick, light blue, wider than either a Sunfish or a Sailfish. On a fold in the sail he could make out a circle with an SK-8 inscribed in the center, and a plate near the mast explained the wordplay: “Skate.” He had never heard of one. Lightning flowered high above him, the thunder rolling softly in behind. The Sound was a deep green flecked with white in the darkness, and the boat was fully rigged, all the lines relaxed but still figure-eighted in the stanchions. The darkness seemed to cloak the soft edge of Long Island beyond.
    He put two hands on the bow and pulled sideways, dragging it around, and faced the nose to the water. He slipped the rudder into the locking pins. He had never sailed a sailboat before and he lifted the mast, staggering under its weight, and guided it into its hole, the metal on metal making a sliding, secure, locking sound. He experimented with the sail, lifting it a bit. The wind felt smoother but still strong. There was only a single line, running along the boom, to manipulate, its operation easy to understand—pulling on it lifted the sail. He eased out the rudder extension. He waded into the water, his legs disappearing in the surging green, debris tickling his thighs, and pulled. The rain spattered the surface into a kind of electric life. The boat resisted, then relented, sliding forward to hit the waves with a slap, the bow buoyed high, the stern lifting free of the land and spinning with the wind. He remained alongside, waist-deep, then chest-deep, and lifted himself aboard, the boat sweeping rapidly along the shore while he scrabbled around freeing the boom and hoisting the sail line, turning the rudder. With the sail halfway up, the rudder found the right angle and the boat jumped away from the shore, rocking him backward.
    The rapidity of his progress unnerved him, as did the receding, darkening shoreline. He was cutting a swift diagonal away from the beach, the spray from the bow distinguishable in its warmth and saltiness from the rain. A motorboat, its canvas covers down, turtled by, waves lashing at its sides. The possible power of the storm began to frighten him, and he felt uncertain of his ability to bring the boat about but knew he could not pursue a diagonal course the whole way across. He paused, amazed at himself, wondering what he really hoped to do. He had to bring the boat about one way or the other, he realized, and he held the sail, jerked the rudder, and the boat spun right, cutting a wide arc through the water, and the sail collapsed with a ruffle and a bang on his head. It bounced to his shoulders and then to the hull, slipping off into the swell. The shroud filled with dark Sound and he was suddenly dead in the water, waves breaking over the hull in sheets and draping seaweed across his knees, and the faint drone of the motorboat was returning, and the boat showed on his stern, chuffing through the waves as if on a watery treadmill. It turned, its side bumping his long hull gently, and its engines idled down, still fighting the current. A bit of canvas flap unsnapped, water splaying