Suzanna's Potential

 

Manny used the sharp, metal scraper to chip away at the rock-hard barnacles weighing down the boat’s hull and bow. The barnacles were thickly encrusted across the boat, like age spots on the face of a beautiful woman.   

She was a speedy little boat in her day. Swift and light, coasting through the sea as if on a beam of light. She hardly needed any work back then. A little paint job here and there, every few years, and she was good as the day she was made. She was spry and playful with just enough of an engine to get you where you needed to go.  She was made well and seemed like she could go on forever. 

Time is hardly so nice for long and after a few poor captains, shoddy crews, and what can only be described as painful ignorance, she was left in too deep water and was quickly crusted over with the hitch-hikers of the sea. 

Manny had her now. He’d salvaged her. She was now his to take care of. He was happy with her lines, her curves and even her age. She was his. He’d worked all his life to have a boat of his own. A boat to fish off of, to see the setting sun glisten and sparkle off the calm ripples of the ocean tides, a place of his own to hide from the weary land.  A place for her to have him. 

The barnacles were too thickly encrusted for a power washer to blast off. There were layers of them that needed to be chiseled and scrapped away. The boat, “Suzanna”, Manny named her; was painted white on her bow, keel and stern, with a long red stripe defining her edges. Her engine was gone, but Manny new he could replace it with relative ease. Suzanna was easy to work with as he was finding. 

The employees of salvage yard where Manny first saw Suzanna were skeptical at best when Manny pointed Suzanna out to them. They snorted at him, incredulous that he would want that boat. A barnacle Winnebago someone called it. Manny didn’t mind. He saw the beauty underneath it all. He knew there was magic under it. 

They hauled the boat to Manny’s special dock; another little part of the world he’d carved out with his own two hands. The salvager’s snickered as the boat dropped heavily down from the lift on to the support braces Manny had set up. Braces to keep the boat up off the ground so he could clean her and get her seaworthy. Manny felt the salvager’s sneers and heard their condescending jibes as they drove away.  It didn’t matter to Manny. It didn’t matter at all. Manny was about the potential of things and not about what they were. 

The metal scraper edge dug hard into the thick dead barnacle husks and sheared them off into a great craggy pile on the ground under the boat. Manny wiped the sweat from his face and rested his tired arms against Suzanna’s hull. He looked out towards the water, as the sun was setting, and could already see himself and Suzanna, lazily rocking on the clear blue waters. His eyes were wistful with memories of things to come. 

The sky started to darken with the setting sun and Manny knew that his time with Suzanna wouldn’t last long today. He pressed his hands on her hull and wiped away some lingering dirt. He smiled. He put his tools away for the day and was already dreaming of tomorrow.