"He never said he was sorry."
"No."
"My daddy never did either."
"No. Your father came to my dock three times. I watched him from the window. Three times he turned around." Mr. Tran picked up his bowl again, though it was empty. "When he died, I went to the funeral. I stood in the back. I don't think anybody noticed."
"My mother noticed," Wade said. "She told me. She said there was a man in the back she didn't know, and she knew everybody." He took a breath. "Mr. Tran, I'm sorry. For my granddad. For what my daddy didn't—"
"No." It was gentle, and absolutely firm. Mr. Tran held up a hand. "No. You say sorry for you. You did that already, on the ramp, a good one. That's enough. Your grandfather has to do his own sorry. Your father has to do his own. Your cousin has to do his own. You cannot carry everybody's. It's too heavy, and also, it's not yours." He put his hand down on Wade's shoulder, briefly, and took it away. "You carry yours. You carry it good. That's the whole job."
Wade looked at the water for a while.
"Okay," he said.
"Okay." Mr. Tran stood up, knees cracking. "Now. You paint."
He handed Wade the brush.
* * *
The Blessing of the Fleet fell on the second Sunday in May, under a sky so blue and clean it looked rinsed. By ten in the morning the seawall along Front Street was crowded three deep: families on folding chairs that the Methodists and the Catholics had evidently made peace over, kids with snow cones, old men in lawn chairs with coolers at their feet, a brass band from the high school playing something that might have been "When the Saints Go Marching In" if you were generous. Out on the water, the boats lined up for the procession, shrimp trawlers and oyster luggers and charter boats and pleasure craft, every one of them strung bow to stern with flags and pennants and bunting and paper flowers, so that the whole harbor looked like a birthday party floating on the tide.
Father Broussard stood on the end of the city pier in his white vestments with a silver bucket of holy water, and as each boat came past, the captain slowing to a crawl, he dipped the aspergillum and flung a bright arc of water across the bow and said the old words.