Free The Doctor's Wife by Luis Jaramillo

them.”

Outboard
    He’s trying as hard as she is. The Doctor hammers flattened pieces of tire to the pilings where the boat will rest. He wants the kids to have fun. He didn’t have much of a childhood. When he was twelve, his father died of a heart attack. His mother died of grief a month later, then he and his twin brother were packed off to boarding school in Missouri. The Doctor’s Wife understands this and she understands the kids have to be taught that life goes on whether you like it or not. But she also imagines her children being chewed up by the propeller of the boat.
    â€œCome on in, Mom,” the kids urge.
    The Doctor’s Wife steps in to the boat, a fast looking red and white thing propelled by a not-so-strong 75 horsepower Johnson outboard. She perches uneasily on the edge of the front seat. The dogs stand on the end of the dock barking wildly. Bob is to be the first water skier. He is a big boy, already taller than six feet. He has to hang on for a long time before he pops up out of the water. There are certain people on the lake who have powerful inboard boats, pretty mahogany Chris-Crafts, but the Doctor’s Wife is not interested in having a particular boat. She is interested in living a productive life.

Boat Mechanic
    â€œI got a job,” Bob tells his mother after biking home from the marina. He takes cookies from Smiley, the ceramic pig cookie jar, and runs them under the water so that, for efficiency’s sake, they turn into a mush he can shove in his mouth. He’s bulking up for football.
    â€œThat’s so gross,” Chrissy says.
    â€œWhat kind of a job?” the Doctor’s Wife asks.
    â€œRoy Warnock hired me to be a boat mechanic.”
    â€œYou don’t know how to fix motors. What did you tell Roy?”
    â€œI told him I know how to fix outboards. I think I can learn,” Bob says, cramming another wad of soggy cookies into his mouth. “Do we have any manuals?”
    The Doctor’s Wife retrieves the outboard handbooks from her boat file, one for the Evinrude used on the fishing boat, another for the ski boat. Bob takes them to his room.
    A boat motor is fairly simple. Most outboards are two-stroke engines. The carburetor releases a fine spray of gasoline that mixes with the air in the chamber. Spark plugs ignite the mixture of gas and air. This explosion compresses the air, which leads to the movement of rotors and eventually the spinning of the propeller in the water. This much is clear to Bob already.
    He reads the chapter on how to troubleshoot. You start with the ignition switch, examining it to make sure the key clicks in place. Next, you make sure that there isn’t any corrosion and that the connections are made properly. If this is all functioning, you move on to inspecting the distributor. The distributor regulates the firing of the spark plugs by turning the rotor, touching the points of the lugs, which then connect to the spark plugs.
    This is a bit harder than he thought it would be. He holds the image of the figure in his head as he goes down to the dock, manual in hand, and looks at the boat. He takes the cover off the motor, examining the pieces until they become fairly familiar.
    The next day he bikes to the marina, taking with him a lunch packed by his mother, three sandwiches of buttered bread, ham, cheese and lettuce, a wax paper package of cookies, two apples.
    Roy Warnock sets Bob to work. He seems to believe that Bob knows what he’s doing.

Hurry Up
    â€œTell me about the time you slammed the car door on Mom’s hand.”
    â€œI’d been trying all morning to get everybody out of the house. I finally got everybody in the car and ready to go and your mother started crying. I thought, ‘What’s that brat screaming about now?’”
    â€œWhen was that? Was it when John was sick?”
    â€œI don’t know. I don’t remember dates.”
    â€œWell what happened