I was twenty-five when all the things that I valued were killed for me in an instant. I had just been married and we had gone to live in the country. After two days I had to go into town and when I came back, Ellen met me at the train in a cart and we drove toward the house. Ellen had trouble holding the horses, the train had frightened them. On the road we passed a yard where the laundry had been hung on a line to dry. A skirt fluttered in the breeze. The horse reared and threw the cart. It killed her. The flutter of a white skirt...and she was dead. (PAUSE) Nothing mattered much after that -- life was inviting and gay before and now there was nothing left, so I did the usual thing. I didn't know where to go, so I went everywhere. I even bought a sailing boat.
My crew was a man from Brooklyn who'd gone to sea when he was ten. Halvard his name was. I took him on when he was forty -- twelve years we were together and never a hard word. He knew when to scold and when to obey; sort of a cross between a father and a first mate -- twelve long years we kept our solitary way. And then one evening at dusk we sailed into a bay off the Georgia coast. Halvard was calling the soundings...
