Dhaba:
The Wonderhouse

"The old man drank his coffee slowly. It was all he would have all day and he knew that he should take it. For a long time now eating had bored him and he never carried a lunch. He had a bottle of water in the bow of the skiff and that was all he needed for the day." – Old Man and the Sea






ch. 6

The grandfather rose up through rising depths of the strait and could feel much more strongly the swelling of the current which by now had started to chop at the surface.  This was the very moment that he had experienced the day before and it took him the rest of the night and inside his night's dream to conjure up the courage to come back to the same spot with Lily.  He had had enough the night before, for something comes up through the grandparent that is intensely protective and ancient.  He would not go back, not with Lily, again; it was too dangerous even with life jacket; if the grandmother knew it would be the very end of him; if his daughter knew, back home, it would be the double-end.  Yet it was Lily herself, perhaps a young adventurer, that had cautioned him to being too cautious. "It will be on the anchor and I have become a very good paddler. Here, let me show you." She had paddled herself along the shoreline of sunset beach with speed and accuracy. She followed the wake of a diving dolphin and when that was no longer in reach, she quickly turned around and scooped out the water with each paddle as if born for such things. The grandfather had reached the wreck sight quite easily again. Currant action had revealed one portion of the wooden contours of an outer edge by at least one more foot than the previous day.  He had followed the body of something large and like metal but it too, like all the rest, sunk deeper into the soft sand at an angle.  He kept one above him at all times and could see Lily's kayak bobbing.  He rose with another small piece of wood and handed it to Lily while extended his arm to the back of his own kayak for sip fun of fresh water.  "I think there is someone coming," she said, and pointed to a young man who was making his way quite slowly to a small promontory of sand that jutted out then made a very steep drop off where the two kayaks now sat bobbing. "Now, I wonder," the grandfather said out loud.  The boy swam sleek as a dolphin and made it to them before they could move or grandfather get back onto the kayak.