acquired habits demanded he try to minimize the damage.
The Old Man was waiting for him, sitting on the overturned boat like some
stately sea-bird sleeping off a full belly. The knife in his hand caressed the
stray piece of wood he held with a slow, rhythmic cadence. With each pass of the
blade a long curl of wood fell to join the pile at his feet. The size of the
pile was mute testament to how long the Old Man had been waiting.
Strange, but Hort had always thought of him as the Old Man, never as Father.
Even the men who had fished these waters with him since their shared boyhoods
called him Old Man rather than Panit. He wasn’t really old, though his face was
deceptive. Wrinkled and crisscrossed by weather lines, the Old Man’s face
looked like one of those red clay riverbeds one saw in the desert beyond
Sanctuary: parched, cracked, waiting for rain that would never fall.
No, that was wrong. The Old Man didn’t look like the desert. The Old Man would
have nothing in common with such a large accumulation of dirt. He was a
fisherman, a creature of the sea and as much a part of the sea as one of those
weathered rocks that punctuated the harbour.
The old man looked up at his son’s approach then tet his attention settle back
on the whittling.
‘I’m here,’ Hort announced unnecessarily, adding, ‘sorry I’m late.’
He cursed himself silently when that remark slipped out. He had been determined
not to apologize, no matter what the Old Man said, but when the Old Man said
nothing…
His father rose to his feet unhurriedly, replacing his knife in its sheath with