Daddys Caliban | Page 8

great prison designed to confine the spirits of men and
exclude all of nature.
No wonder Daddy went to drink with the railroad men.
We came to the little gate close by to where the walls joined. There was
something carved in the stone arch over the door that I couldn't
understand, even if hadn't been badly weathered. "LASCIATE OGEN
SPERANZA," it read. Boott had a similar small gate just to the left that
also opened onto the broken concrete of Midsummer Avenue's
sidewalk. I imagined old man Caliban and old man Boott slinking out
here on a stormy day to share cigarettes and plot their business,
dividing competition and talking over which troublesome workers
should not be further employed in Mabton.
Daddy had a lot of work keys and it took me a nerve-wracking time to
find one that would fit the gate. The first I tried wasn't the right one and
I had to keep working through different keys. I was afraid of being
caught at any moment, a fear that multiplied whenever one of the
occasional trucks grumbled past behind me.
The whole time Cameron chattered on about the liberating power of
hard labor. As if he'd ever done any work in his life.
Finally we were inside Daddy's Caliban. We sprinted for the
powerhouse though I knew that would mark us as troublemakers to
anyone watching. Those banks of grimy windows had become too
much like blank eyes to me, and for some reason I feared the
ear-splitting shriek of a steam whistle.
All I heard besides the slap of my feet and the banging of my heart
within my chest was Cameron laughing like one of the loons that came
to the river in late autumn.
*

The boathouse was simple enough, a little shack between two piers of
the powerhouse. I could see where the old axles of the mill wheels
came out at the top of the foundation course. Before me were the brick
shoulders of the now-broken dam that had once held Caliban's waters
back. No need for the harness when the horse was gone.
Cameron applied himself to the boathouse lock, so I stared across the
water. The river dropped through several stages of rapids or falls here.
It was divided at the midpoint by a massive granite shoulder that was a
smaller imitation of the bluff separating the bulk of Mabton from the
water. That shoulder had allowed Caliban and Boott and the other mill
builders to extend their will outward without actually touching the
other bank and straying into the Lands of Promise with the dust of
work upon them and cold iron in their hands.
I studied the ruined stones of the dams and the odd outcroppings of
riverbed. Someone with determination and a good standing broad jump
could make it out there, halfway across. Which made me wonder
exactly what the river looked like on the other side of that big rock.
Had the men who built the dams simply stopped there and turned their
backs? Or had they looked onward with hope in their eyes?
Daddy might have been among them. Mommy had told me he'd worked
at Caliban since the mill's founding sometime early in the last century.
Proud as he was of being a shift supervisor, Daddy didn't talk about his
history.
The closet of glory had shown me that.
"Got it," called Cameron behind me.
I turned to see the boathouse door open. He was already stepping into
the shadows within. The lock lay upon the ground, hasp broken free
from the old wood.
I could have cursed him for a boggart. We would be discovered again. I
would be so deep in trouble there would never be another free day at
Sunday market for me in my life.

There was nothing for it but to follow him.
The boathouse went far back into the foundations. There were racks
like great wooden shelves empty of anything but dust. Cobwebbed
ropes and chains hung. A tiny rowboat sat right behind the doors on a
little sledge. Two oars stuck up from it like the skeleton of some very
simple creature.
"This is going to take us across the river?" I couldn't keep the quaver
from my voice.
"Solid as a rock," Cameron declared.
"Rocks don't float."
He grinned, grabbed an oar and banged it against the side of the boat.
"See, tight and riverworthy."
"You knocked a hole in it," I pointed out, my heart sinking.
"Oh."
I sat down, exhausted. We'd stolen Daddy's keys, made a mess at the
house and here at the mill. We were going to be caught, half a dozen
times over, and in more trouble than I could imagine.
And I wasn't any closer to the Old Tower.
"Oars are