The Man Without a Soul by L. Grant Dodge
Sea St. Beach
24  Kim Peck’s Sail Plan
As I was saying, I left mother but didn’t walk directly to the bus station. Instead I headed down South Street toward Janey’s house. At the corner of South and Ocean I encountered Kim Peck, who was walking a little too steadily toward the docks.
“I thought you were gone,” he said.
“That theory presents difficulties.”
“I thought you were one of our ‘college-bound seniors,’ God damn it. This isn’t a good thing, you turning up like this. It’s bad luck. Your brother at least had the decency to sail over the horizon without a word to anyone. The next time I see him one of us will be a ghost. Ha! There’s a prophecy. I wish to God I hadn’t said it. A sailor needs luck, even if he’s only crossing the Sound three times a day. Go, lose yourself in the forest. Sleep on a rock and eat pinecones. If you’re going to go, get gone, or else stay here and mop the floor with your face like the rest of us.”
“How long have you been drinking?”
“Only since Sirius came up. I rolled in with the tide and I’m rolling out with the drunks. Buy me a beer?”
“With what?”
“Okay, let your girlfriend buy me a beer.” He glanced down South Street. “Looks like you’ve set your course.”
“We broke up.”
“Praise the saints of mercy. If I weren’t such a gentleman I would have asked you this a long time ago: don’t you think she was a little beyond her pull date?”
I looked at my shoes. Standard-issue late-nineteen-seventies deck shoes showing quite a bit of wear. We all had them, but not everyone was so good at finding time to study them.*
While I was looking at my shoes, Kim continued. “Not that I haven’t enjoyed the company of a few experienced ladies myself. In my youth. But listen, Gus. Fuck college. Stick around and I’ll bet you a night’s pay I can get you a Nantucket girl. You wouldn’t mind a freshman, would you? If you get her pregnant I don’t know you.”
“Just one problem,” He went on, standing very straight and still, looking askance at me, his prow pointing into the wind. “One little thing that shits up the whole works. You kinda look like a girl yourself.”
“I’m told some girls like that,” I said.
“Those are girls you want to keep far to leeward.” He belched. “Are you leaving for good now?”
“For good? What’s for good?”
“What am I, a dictionary? Forget it. Begone. Leave off haunting me, can’t you? I gotta work tonight. And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “There’s nothing you can do, Gus. Nothing. Do you understand me?”
“Not very well.”
“That can’t be helped either. Sail on, sail on.”
He patted my shoulder and stepped into the street.
*At this point Jake and I were visited by a solitary, austere little girl who stood and stared at me until I began to feel I was sitting in her chair. And so I was. Her name was Penepole (no typo that), and she was a regular customer. Several of Jake’s notebooks contain her stories about Lonely Bunny, which are really too depressing to contemplate. After a time she tired of staring and deadpanned “Trick or treat,” but we had no candy. I gave her a penny flattened on a railroad track, which she referred to as “smeared,” and which seemed to satisfy her. She went back out into the street, disappearing in the shadows between two streetlights. My inquiry to Jake regarding Penepole’s provenance resulted in the usual shrug.