Fiction by Samantha Vogt

Samantha Vogt is a writer from Louisiana. She has a BA in Humanities from Louisiana State University and an MA in English from the University of New Orleans, which shifted the focus of her stories onto the weird and forgotten corners of the South. When not writing, she can be found swimming, baking, and trying new coffee shops all around her current home of Austin, Texas.

Thank You Kindly

The storm shuffled the abandoned boats along the river again.

On his way through the water, Hays took his time to reorganize the map he kept in his mind of each of the derelict boats and their temporary resting places. There were no permanent graves in the water. Another storm would come by and move them a few yards farther down the river, or a few more feet into the trees where they ran up onto the cypress knots, or maybe a few inches farther down below the surface.

Hays knew them by heart, had them mapped out like the rooms of their house. It was a point of fascination for him. At night, on the way to school, whenever he was bored, he was mapping out the boats in his mind. He knew them by name, too, if they had one to memorize.

Personal fascination aside, it was good to know where the water couldn’t be trusted, which was the case whenever a new sailboat or cruiser was abandoned to founder and sink below the iced-tea water of the river. He felt a kind of embarrassment for the owners of the vessels that had been damaged by allision with another sunken boat. It was just bad boatmanship, Mr. Harris said, which is maybe the biggest word Hays had ever heard him use.

When they were younger, Hays and Hunter used to come up with elaborate, macabre explanations for the fate of each of the abandoned boats they passed. Alcohol, sex, murder, intrigue, tragedy. All the reasons people usually associate with a good story.

But these weren’t ships, or even the barge that had been holding all those extra, unused cement pieces for the bridge, which had sunk, cement and all, by the mouth of the river where it met the lake. An occasional houseboat could be found, sure. But more often than not, these were the boats of surgeons and personal injury lawyers. Sailboats and cruisers, and most of them didn’t even sink. 

In other waters -deeper waters- where anything that could float was destined for fishing or shrimping or tugging or towing, their lives would end only when they were well and truly wrecked. Craft like that sunk into the depths and out of sight. No, in this river, the boats were simply abandoned because a motor was broken, or the mast snapped, or it was unmoored during a storm, and the damn thing just became too expensive to maintain. More trouble than they were worth.

These were the abandoned debutantes who’d been so loved and paraded by the men who’d introduced them to this water.They ran their hands along that shiny new fiberglass or that glossy new wood and whispered sweet nothings about sailing to the Keys and retiring there. Just you and me. And then they’d have one too many beers and allide with a sunken tree and pull the identifications off of her and never return. How many of them cruised by on their friends’ pontoons and pretended not to see her, sitting, waiting, where her anchor had been dropped along the water’s edge?

Hays’d had plenty of time to create that map in his mind. It was a long journey from their rotting dock, past the development houses and the mansions on the water, under the interstate bridge, past more big houses and the restaurants and the boating club and marina and out to the lake. And it was all theirs to putter up and down as they pleased, which was often. Whenever their mother would pull into the driveway a little too fast, usually clipping the mailbox for the hundredth time, Hunter would spring up and ask Hays if he wanted to go out on the water. Hays would stop in the middle of the bite of food or page of his book he was working on and say, sure, why not?

Hunter was the only person who could tell when Hays was pretending not to know or understand something; he took advantage of adults’ perceptions of him. But, infuriatingly, Hunter knew when he was pretending. Almost always. But he never seemed to pick up on Hays picking up on this particular habit. He’d always just say, sure, Hunter, why not? And drop what he was doing even though he hated being interrupted in the middle of a task.

“Why don’t you go get the motor started. I’ll clean up here.”

He was always cleaning up here, and Hays was always walking down to the dock to climb into their well-worn Jon boat when he’d hear the car door slam on the other side of the leaning blue house. The longer it took Hunter to join him in the boat, the worse the night was. But on the other hand, it was usually a longer time that Hunter would let them stay out on the river.

Mr. Harris, who lived next store and was nice only to the two of them, let Hunter and Hays clean out his shed in exchange for a lunch and the right to keep anything they wanted out of it. They’d found some big lights that they’d attached to the Grace -that’s what Hunter had named their dad’s Jon boat, the Grace, after the girl he wanted to take to homecoming- so they could take it out after dark. The lights had long since died and every time he went out on the boat alone Hays made a mental note to replace them. But he never set out after dark, not since Hunter graduated high school, so he never really felt their absence. So he kept on forgetting.

This time the changes hadn’t been too bad. The Evangeline was still run up into the tree line, the twin houseboats were missing an extra screen off their windows here and there but were still where they’d been. The Route Canal was turned around from where he’d last seen it, and the Retirement Fund was especially swamped. The Still Got It was almost entirely submerged, and Hays had to look away because seeing only its little fiberglass bow sticking up out of the water made him feel sweaty and sick.

“Bad boatmanship,” he muttered to himself. Irresponsible. They ought to do something about those hazards, he thought. Nothing but wreckage looking to make more wreckage.

He always felt better once he turned into the slough where the Thank You Kindly was all hidden from the main traffic of the river. Hays ran his thumb along the grooves where Hunter had used his pocket knife to carve his crush’s name into the paint, right by the engine, eyes unblinking as he turned the corner of the slough, waiting to see any sign of damage to the Kindly.

The storm hadn’t touched her. Her anchor was still probably stuck, and the ropes, despite the algal growth that had decorated the fibers wherever it was submerged, were still tied fast to the trees. Whoever had left her behind knew their way around a knot.

The Grace cut through the algae, trailing a dark stripe where it sent the green swirling away. He felt the lightness he always felt when he got to the backwater. He’d been here a dozen times since he’d found the Thank You Kindly, the prettiest 25-foot sailboat he’d ever seen. She was in near-pristine condition. Except for the mast, of course, which was broken like a toothpick. The part that had broken off, taking any sign of the sail with it, was nowhere to be found, and Hays could only guess that it was under the water somewhere. He didn’t think much on her flaws, because the Kindly was beautiful and good to him.

Thank You Kindly was a nice name. Much better than the Route Canal, which Hays just knew had been the vanity boat of a dentist. He bet that dentist had a framed picture of the Route Canal still hanging in his office. Patients would gargle out some comment about the boat while the dentist’s tools were in their mouth, and he’d smile proudly and make some joke in poor taste about how they had paid for it by not flossing and brushing properly. He’d talk about all the fishing he did on it, and how one day he hoped to sail it around the world, and if anyone ever happened to ask where he docked it, it would incidentally be time to break out the water jet and suction tube.

No, the Thank You Kindly was a prettier boat, in a prettier part of the river. The trees rose up on either side, tall enough to create a canopy where the slough was narrow, just before it turned and opened up to a dead end. There the Kindly sat in all her glory, shining where the sun broke through the cypress and glowing amidst the green and gold afternoon. Like it had been made for this place instead of ending up in it.

This was the only one of these boats he’d ever climbed aboard. The first time, he’d tied up the Grace and hauled himself up onto the Kindly and had just walked around the deck, dizzy with the thrill. Not his, not his, not his, rattled around in his head until it was just his, his, his. The second time he’d tested the cabin door. It wasn’t locked. He left it there and didn’t throw it open until the third time, and then he closed it again and left. On the fourth time, he’d climbed down inside.

Every time after, he’d done a little more to make it comfy. He’d jettisoned the trash.

He spent an entire can of bug spray and practically fumigated the cabin, which had hurt his eyes and throat but had been worth it.

He’d been sitting on the deck, letting the chemicals from the bug spray settle, enjoying the sun that shone through the canopy of trees. In the water, the algal bloom parted at the swish of a small scaly tail. He didn’t see its owner before it, and the tail, disappeared beneath the surface. Hays sat on deck and watched a dragonfly flit across the water.

A laugh had ruined the quiet. A man’s laugh, from around the bend on the way out of the backwater and toward the flow of the river. Hays sat up straight and watched a couple in a brand new canoe slink their way into view. The woman in the back lifted her paddle out of the water and waggled it, trying to get a goopy trail of plant matter off of it.

The man laughed again.

Hays stood up, making to retreat back into the cabin of the Kindly before they could see him. But it was hard to miss him or the sailboat at the end of this sea of green and the man called out a “hey!” to Hays’ turned back. The one word was too loud in this place where Hays had only ever hummed to himself.

He considered pretending not to have heard the man. But the canoe was closer now. The man -in the front seat- had his paddle across his lap as they drifted in his direction.

“Hey,” the man said again. Not so loud this time.

“Hey.”

Hays recognized him. He’d played baseball with Hunter in high school. He remembered watching a younger version of this face miss a fly ball to the outfield. A real can of corn, and he’d missed it. Hays thought maybe the long stare might be because the man recognized him, too, from all the times Hays had watched their games, but he knew better. He couldn’t remember the guy’s name, though.

“Whatcha doin’ out here, little man?” the nameless man asked. Hays clenched his hand until his nails dug into his palms. He was too old to be called “little man” by about thirteen years.

“It’s my boat,” Hays explained.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Is it stuck? Do you need help?” The words suggested helpfulness, but the narrowed eyes and the smug smile very much did not. Hays got the sense that this was some kind of a test.

“Honey…” the woman nudged the man’s back with the grip of her paddle. The green goop was still on the end. “Leave him alone. Let’s go.”

Honey didn’t seem too interested in listening to the lady, and stared a little longer.

His lips twitched. Hays knew that face. It was the face his mom made when she thought she’d caught him doing something he oughtn’t. It was the face her last boyfriend had made whenever he was forced to acknowledge Hays’ presence. A knowing look that knew absolutely nothing. Hays stared back, expression blank, until the man cleared his throat.

“You know, you really shouldn’t-“

“A gator just swam by there,” Hays pointed down in the water between the Thank You Kindly and the canoe. “Six feet at least.”

This was enough to make the man forget whatever it was that he cared about as far as Hays was concerned. Whatever his problem was, it wasn’t bigger than a six-foot alligator. The ones that got that big didn’t hang out on this river, or even its sloughs, but if Honey didn’t know that, he didn’t need to know anything else, and he already had his paddle back in the water by the time the lady said, “let’s get out of here.”

He watched them go until they were out of the backwater and onto the main river and out of sight. They’d turned the canoe with enough force to make little waves that bumped the Grace against the Kindly. Hays’ mood had never been so bad in the backwater and he chewed on the inside of his cheek and watched the man go and wished that a six foot alligator would swamp their boat. But then he felt bad because the lady didn’t deserve that, and he took it back.

That was the guy who’d taken the real-life Grace to homecoming. Hunter had called the guy a shithead. Hays couldn’t help but agree.

When Honey and his friend were gone, Hays went into the now-clean and bugless cabin and ate a sandwich he’d tucked into his backpack. He didn’t track hours or days when he was on the Thank You Kindly, but he’d stayed longer that time than he ever had before. He slept onboard and stayed until it felt like his boat again before he climbed into the Grace and went home through the no-wake zone slower than he needed to.

His mom didn’t notice whenever he was gone, given she was usually gone herself.

Even when she did notice and made a fuss about it, and how he couldn’t go out alone, and asked the same where the hell did he go anyway? each time, he just sort of shrugged.

It didn’t work on Hunter but worked on Mrs. Richard every time. She’d sigh like he just couldn’t understand, which he hated because she was wrong, and then came up to him and put her arms around him like she had his whole life even though he was taller than her now.

“It makes me look bad if I don’t know where you are,” she’d explained too gently, pushing the hair back off his forehead, which was also done too gently but which he actually didn’t hate. When he didn’t answer she’d sigh again and go about making him a peanut butter sandwich and ask him to tell her about what he was reading, even when it was about shipwrecks, which frightened her.

He was out on the Kindly today, and had been every day this week, because she had a new boyfriend and Hays hated him. He had the same look on his face when he looked at Hays that Honey had. Hays had learned years ago to stare at their mom’s worst boyfriends, silently, until it freaked them out and they left the boys alone. Hunter loved it.

It only worked more now that Hays had finished growing and was taller than most of the men Mrs. Richard brought home. They usually skipped trying to make small talk—or condescending talk—altogether. His mom and the new one were gone most of the time, and Hays spent a lot of time at Mr. Harris’s house doing the odd jobs Hunter had done before he went off to school. He’d replaced Mr. Harris’s screen door and the old man had rewarded him with a microwave lasagna and let him sit in the living room and eat it while Mr. Harris watched the history channel. There was a program on about the Nazi U-boat that was sunk in the Gulf.

When the new screen was in place Mr. Harris had told Hays to put the old door on the street with the rest of the trash.

“Can I keep it?”

“Sure, kid, what the hell,” Mr. Harris took a swig of beer and didn’t tear his eyes away from the TV.

Seeing as his mother was due to be home soon and he tried to see as little as possible of her these days, Hays went into the house to fill his backpack with his water bottle and some more nonperishables. He stepped over the pile of mail the mailman had taken to leaving on their porch because their mailbox was never put back into place anymore and then loaded the broken screen door onto the Grace (it just barely fit) and took off. Which, after assessing the ways in which the weekend storm had rearranged the ghost fleet around with all the gracelessness of a child who didn’t know how to actually shuffle a deck of cards and assuring, with relief, that the Thank You Kindly wasn’t damaged, Hays was here in the sun, wedging the screen into the cabin doorframe so that he could keep it open and let the air flow with minimal insects to disturb him. He could just come and go through other hatch that opened up onto the deck when he needed to.

After sunbathing for a while, his skinny frame baking in the post-storm humidity,

Hays went down into the cabin. He took a swig of his water bottle and put it on the ledge over the bench that became a bed with the right cushions and a few blankets his mother wouldn’t notice that he’d taken from home. It made him think of the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse in Disney World, which they’d gotten to visit once with Hunter’s baseball team when they’d had a particularly good run. He thought of the mix of bamboo and pretty plates and everything a Swiss family would need to escape the Napoleonic Wars, like fine china and a heavy wooden writing desk. The Kindly couldn’t fit anything so fancy, but with the new flow of air and the snacks and books he’d brought it was better than any treehouse and he fell asleep thinking about how good it was and how he might just stay here until he turned eighteen.

He dreamt of floating alone on the river, in the Thank You Kindly, in the dead of night. Despite the dark he knew the Kindly was out of the backwater and on the river, drifting with no sail, drifting where the Still Got It was almost completel disappeared under the water. He hated the ones he couldn’t see. He hated envisioning a whole boat just a few feet directly beneath where the Thank You Kindly floated. He liked reading about the already-sunken ships, sure. But a boat just became something different and awful in the process between abandonment and submergence and it made him sick. In his dream there was a terrible grinding noise as the Kindly got close—too close—to the parts of the Still Got It that he knew must be there but couldn’t see in the dark. As though the Still Got It jealously needed the Kindly to join her, to be just as ugly and miserable as she was, the sunken cruiser scraped open the bottom of the sailboat with a violent jolt and Hays was sinking with it the way his brother’s lift boat had sunk after it capsized in the Gulf.

When he woke up and was as wet as he’d been in his dream he was sure for a good minute that the boat really was sinking. He felt in his lap where his water bottle had fallen over on the ledge and drenched him and the blankets. Hays ran a wet hand over his face and stood up, but fell and hit his head on the bench when a jolt like the one in his dream yanked the Kindly from the stationary position it had been in forever. Hays gripped the bench and hauled himself up and pushed through the screen he’d wedged into the cabin door and went blinking into the sun.

A barge was in the slough. Or at least, it was poking into the slough, a big cat’s head in a mouse hole. It looked exactly the way the sunken cement barge looked, with the exception of the big crane on the back, lowered to fit under the canopy of trees. Men in hard hats and high-vis vests shuffled around it. Chains and ties wrapped around the Thank You Kindly like so many vines and pulled her closer to the barge. The ropes mooring her to the trees were cut. The Grace drifted aimlessly in a circle nearby.

A man was standing on the deck of the Kindly. His vest had the words “Coastal Cleanup” on the back, which Hays could only see because the man was facing away from him, toward the barge, calling instructions. The barge had NOAA printed on the side.

At the sound of the breaking screen, the man turned around and stared wide-eyed at the sight of Hays bursting from the dark of the cabin. Funnily enough, that was the stare Hays gave his mother’s boyfriends.

“Jesus Christ, who the hell are you?”

Hays said nothing.

“Hey, squatting here is illegal, you know,” the man kept talking. “Where did you come from?”

Hays looked around, eyes still wild from his nightmare.

“Come on, kid, let’s—"

The man in the vest reached out but Hays yanked his arm away and backed up over the deck.

“Wait!”

He jumped into the water, ignoring the shouts of the man on the Thank You Kindly and the newer voices of the men on the barge calling for him to come back. Hays was under water for only a couple of seconds, blind as he was in the brown water and the algae and the confusion and his foot kicked off something hard that might have been the Kindly’s stuck anchor or it might have been another boat entirely and Hays kicked so it wouldn’t have a chance for whatever it was to grab him and drag him down.

He shot out of the algae looking like a creature from those black-and-white monster movies Mr. Harris liked to watch. The men were still calling for him but the Kindly had been so close to the water’s edge that Hays just had to thrash a little before he could grab a root and haul himself onto relatively dry land and bolt into the trees. The men didn’t go after him and once he was out of view he could hear the sounds of the workers shaking off the bizarre encounter and getting back to business. Hays poked his head out from behind the trees and stood watching his boat get chained up, creaking and exposed in a way unbecoming of such a lady. He watched as, with jolts and protests, the Thank You Kindly was towed away, out of the backwater and into the main flow of the river and out of sight.