They went alongside the tall house, through the front yard, and across the street toward the river. Mr. Jeansomme topped the levee and headed south, mounting the railroad embankment and toddling down the other side, stopping before a raft of idle boats: tugs, offshore supply vessels, and one fat-bellied shrimper, listing slightly, the nail heads in the hull streaking rust. There were no docks here and the boats were cinched off to willows. “Why are they all tied up?”

Paul had lagged behind, wanting to be invisible, just to see what he would do. Now he stepped up behind him. “There’s no more work for these boats.”

“That shrimper belongs to Lester Serpas. Why’s he letting it run down like that?”

Paul looked down the slope. “It’s an old wood boat. Maybe the bottom’s gone.” A trio of crows set up a racket high in a sycamore tree growing at the edge of an abandoned shipyard. Paul watched to see what they were fussing about, if there was a nest they were raiding. When he turned around, his breath caught. The old man was in the middle of a twelve-inch-wide gangplank that led from the bank to the shrimper. “Hold on, Pop.” He ran to catch up, but Colette’s father stepped on board and was waiting for him.

Mr. Jeansomme put his hand behind him on the blistered wood. “This is Serpas’s boat. He built it himself on the batture behind his house. Look at the sheer in this thing.” Mr. Jeansomme nodded to the deck and looked from bow to stern. He broke off a dirt dauber nest from the cabin overhang and sidearmed it into the river, where it skipped once.

“We better get off now,” Paul told him. “Come on.”

“This thing has hauled a lot of shrimp in its day.” He pushed open the cabin door and stepped into the varnished air, standing behind the wheel and looking through the cloudy windows. Paul looked around himself, opened a door, stepped down through the bunk room and into the engine room.

“The engine is still on her,” he said. He could see almost nothing and came back up out of the oily air. “Water’s not over the planks yet.”

Colette’s father was humming something, turning the wheel gently one way, then the other, taking a voyage in another lifetime. Then he spun it quickly hand over hand to port, going around some log in his memory. Paul looked astern and saw a watery comma drift away from the rudder.

He wanted to say something, but the old man’s eyes were vacant, and things had gone beyond words. Only touch was left, so he grabbed both shoulders and pushed him ahead deliberately, the way a little boat would shove a barge on a foggy night.

*   *   *