A gentle snow is starting to bury the orange extension cord that leads to Gerry Adamson. The cord begins at a plug on a post in a boatyard by a quiet, black little river that swallows the snowflakes before the sea swallows it. The river is starting to freeze along the banks.
The cord runs past a dark, boarded-up clubhouse, around and under cradled boats, their summer personalities mummified in plastic tarpaulins, netting and old tires on ropes. Back by the dark spruce trees at the corner of the yard, the cord comes to a boat that has had its tarp cocoon partially peeled back. A ladder is tied to the rail and a snow shovel stands in the corner of the cockpit. Like scat or new-dug earth around a burrow, they proclaim that this boat is inhabited.
The cord leaves the snow and snakes upward and onto the boat. Secured to a cleat with a bit of line, it dives through a tape-muffled notch in a hatch. Inside, it is joined by three other cords. One leads to a small ceramic heater that looks like a hot radio. Another powers a small table lamp. The third, with an adaptor, is hooked to a laptop computer on the tiny galley table. Sitting on his sleeping bag with a cup of sweet tea beside him, Gerry Adamson pokes the keys.
The boat’s cabin is small and Gerry can reach out and touch most of what he thinks he needs just now. The kettle on the galley alcohol stove is close enough beside him that he’s aware of its heat. His bed is one of the cabin seats. He has piled one gym bag of clothes and another of papers and small red and black notebooks in the V-berth. A shit, a shower or a telephone call is an outing, an excursion down the ladder, through the wintry yard and into the silent clubhouse with the ghostly notices of last summer’s barbecues gibbeted on the bulletin board.
Gerry shuffles through the notebooks or scrolls through the electronic guts of the laptop. He wonders and tries to write down how, in the last year or so, he’s managed to get his world this small.