Free The Sea is a Thief by David Parmelee Page B

to Sam.  Perhaps there was no harm done, as he kept insisting.  Perhaps no one would ever put two and two together.  Or perhaps they would both end up in the brig.  All Ethan knew was that Sam Dreher was not taking no for an answer.  He meant to go and see this girl every day, and Ethan was left with no choice but to cover his tracks.
    It wasn't easy.  While Sam was nowhere to be found, Ethan had to be in all places at once.  Wherever Sam Dreher should have been, Ethan Platt somehow managed to be.  He always did more than his share of the work.  For all his labors, Ethan had Sam's sincere thanks, if nothing else.  In a moment of solitude, Sam would clap him on the back and swear his undying gratitude.  “I can't tell you what this means to me, friend,” Sam would say, and indeed he could not.  It meant far more than anything had ever meant.
    Ethan knew there was no getting out of the spot he was in. And so it continued, day after day.  The launch would come ashore. The crew would disperse to their tasks.  Sam would disappear to meet Anna, and Ethan would hasten from place to place, making up for the missing man, while Sam rebuilt the little boat.   
    Like many things that men make with their own hands for use in their own work, the skiff was intricate and beautiful.  It was proving difficult to repair.  William Daisey had constructed it without plans, according to a time-honored pattern.  Sam had learned his trade on boats that were big hulking things, constructed fast and cheaply.  Their timbers and planking were heavy.  They were slow and hard to steer.
    This was another kind of boat altogether: She was sharp at the bow and tapered at the stern like an Indian arrowhead, with gunwales low to the water and the shallowest of drafts.  Sam could picture her slipping through the tall marsh grasses like a grey cedar ghost, appearing out of nowhere and disappearing as quickly as she came.  
    She was small and light, built to carry one man.  Two could fit in a pinch if one knelt far forward in the tiny cockpit and another perched on the deck behind it, but the boat wouldn't be happy. She was built for speed and stealth.  Every part of her said so.
    She was in a sorry state, but all the materials Sam needed to make her whole again were right there on the Louisiana where a ship’s carpenter had ready access. Each night Sam would wrap cedar planking in canvas and stow it in the stern of the launch where no would take notice.  A few handfuls of tacks and nails from the ship's hardware supplies would happen to fall into his sea bag, and he was ready for his day's work. Once he got to the Daisey home he would plane the planks down until they were thin and smooth.  The finished boards could be no thicker than the sole of his boot.  
    Anna Daisey knew when Sam would arrive.  She would leave her mother at her sewing machine and slip quietly out to her father's workshop to join him.  He might present her with a bunch of purple coneflowers he had picked along the lane.  She would bring him something to eat.  Often they would work silently together, but more often they would talk, more freely each day.  After they parted, they could not always remember what they had spoken about, but they were eager to resume when morning arrived.  When Sam would plane a long spiral of cedar from a plank, he would tuck it into Anna's hair.  She would laugh and pluck it out, laying it on the workbench, but later she would return for it, saving it with others in a wooden box beneath her dresser.  She made him a drawing one afternoon, a green-winged teal floating near a clump of saltmeadow hay, and it seemed so real that it might launch into flight. He carried it back carefully in his tunic and pressed it in the pages of his Bible.   
    Rebuilding the skiff was a puzzle they solved together.  Gradually the boat gave up her secrets.