One•XXXIV•4

        Rennie’s father had shown him how to prime the model, once it was mostly completed, and had let the boy try his hand at varnishing and painting.
        ”All it takes,” John had told him, “is a concentrated gaze and a steady hand.”
        After varnishing the deck and mast, [...]

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One•XXXIV•3

     A few days into the project, Rennie’s sister had put on a record with the Beach Boys singing “Sloop John B.” Rennie and his father had gleefully sung along, altering the lyrics ad libitum (and so adding to the general, and atypical in their household, hilarity):
We come on the Sloop John A…
Each [...]

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One•XXXIV•2

     One Friday night, though, early in the autumn of their year Stateside, Rennie’s father had arrived home with a gift for him, a large, rectangular box wrapped in kraft paper.  This was notably uncharacteristic: his father wasn’t an impulsive man, he rarely gave presents (except for crisp bills tucked into Hallmark cards that [...]

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