To Build A Shipt - Don Berry Read online

  "Listen, Joe," I said. "Tell me something. How's a man happen to get it in his head to live in a tree like that?"

  "Oh, it wasn't exactly I got it in my head," Joe said. "I come down here, you know, I was the first one here, an' I didn't have no place to live. So a Indian took me out there and showed me this tree and said I could stay there. So that's what I did, Ben. I wasn't sure I was going to be here long, so it didn't seem like it was worth the trouble to build nothin'. And after while I got used to it, sort of. You know, that's the way it is."

  "Yes sir," I said, "that's the way it is."

  "You know, a man gets used to about anything, Ben, after a little while. Then he likes it. A man likes what he's used to, and I'm used to my tree."

  "Don't you ever get dizzy?"

  "No, I never get dizzy, Ben,‘that's one thing about me. I'm real healthy, I never been sick a day in my life."

  "You never—I mean, in the night or something, you never fall out?"

  "Oh, sure," Joe said, a little embarrassed to be talking so much about himself. "I fall out of bed all the time. I twitch around a lot when I sleep, that's because I got what they call a nervous disposition, I guess. Then sometimes I fall out, you know, that's only natural, because it's so narrow. There ain't too much room."

  I stopped dead in the trail, staring at him. "And it don't bother you? You don't break anything, bones or anything?" I couldn't believe it.

  "Well, it wakes me up," Joe admitted. "But I ain't broke anything yet."

  I shook my head and started walking again. "Joe," I said, "you're a strange one, now. I couldn't stand that."

  "Don't that ever happen to you, Ben?"

  "We1l, sure," I laughed. "But I expect it's a bit different when a man lives in a tree."

  "Oh, sure. It's different all right, there's no doubt about that. But you know, Ben, a man gets used to about anything?

  If he could take a fall like that—it somehow convinced me absolutely that he hung from his knees and looked around. I don't know why, but I was dead certain. Maybe not all the time, but once in a while. By god, I'd ask him to do it for me.

  We switched off on a tiny, faintly marked trail about then, and I saw where I'd gone wrong before. It is amazing how small a trail a man needs when he travels alone. I began to scan the lower branches all around, trying not to be too obvious. I didn't think he would be too high, particularly when he fell out all the time. Ten feet, twenty feet maximum was what I figured, if the ground was soft.

  "Well, here we are," Joe said cheerfully.

  I stopped and looked all around. I couldn't see anything. I looked back down at Joe. Suddenly the realization piled up in my throat. I have never in my life been so close to tears out of sheer mean disappointment. Joe's tree was not a tree at all. It was a stump. It was the biggest cedar stump I had ever seen, almost nine feet across. The entire inside was hollowed out, probably burned out years ago by lightning. It made an almost perfect circular little room, with a tiny narrow cot and even a little table by the head of it. It stood maybe seven or eight feet tall, and over the top was a sort of roof of overlapping planks that would send the rain shooting down over the back. The quarter of the trunk facing us was broken out, making a perfect door, and there was even a blanket hooked at the top to use when the wind was blowing. Just in front of the door was a rock fire-pit and a couple of little racks.

  Joe had gone in, and was poking around under the cot. It was a nice normal cot, with a straw mattress and everything. "I don't have a hell of a lot," he said, his voice muffled. "Like I told you, Ben."

  He finally had to get down on his belly, and came out with a pair of pants and a shirt. "This here's about all I'll need," he said apologetically. "You got cooking gear at your place, haven't—Ben, what's the Matter?"

  "Nothing," I said. "Nothing." I couldn't move. I stared at the snug little house and thought I was going to cry.

  "Ben, you don't look so good. Are you going to throw up or anything?" Joe came and took hold of my arm, looking very concerned. "Listen, Ben, you better come in I and sit a bit. You look awful pale."

  "No, no, I'm all right," I said. He gently guided me inside, and I sat on the edge of the bed, looking out the door at the forest, where all the rest of the trees stretched up a hundred feet or more. At that moment I believe I was the most terribly disillusioned man the world had ever seen, since the Beginning. The one thing I really wanted out of life had been . . . I couldn't bear to think about it.

  "Honest to god, Ben, you don't look good," Joe said worriedly. "Are you dizzy? Or what?"

  It infuriated me that he should be so concerned about me. After all, it was his fault. After what he had done to me, the idiot insisted on babbling and being friendly.

  "Its all right, it's all right, just never mind, Joe," I said, trying not to sound enraged in my voice. There was an injustice about it all that hurt me deep, like a gut wound.

  "I guess—I guess I just had it in my mind wrong."

  "Yeah," Joe said. "It's funny the way that happens, ain't it. What'd you have in your mind wrong, Ben?"

  "Never mind. Just never mind. I can't explain it."

  "I get things wrong in my mind, too," he said sympathetically. "Lots of times I do that."

  I finally began to gather my feelings up, like poking through the wreckage of an explosion. I looked around at the roof, and the table, and the cot. It was as good as a cabin. And when he fell out of bed, he had about a foot and a half to drop, just like everybody else.

  Joe laughed, self-consciously. "Tell you what, Ben," he said. "I'll carry the pants, and you can carry the shirt if you want to."

  I said nothing.

  "I mean, that ain't fixed or nothing," he said anxiously. "You could carry the pants if you wanted to. Ben?"

  3

  I remember that evening at Joe Champion's tree very clearly. It was probably one of the major events of my life, but possibly it is also because it is one of the last things I remember clearly of that summer. The next month, the next two months, are like a fevered dream in my mind. The forms shift when I try to think about them, everything merges and swirls and drifts crazily. Days slid into nights and then it was day again. Full moons came and miraculously thinned down into blackness and time darted by like fish rushing upstream. Each day was a sharp and flashing splinter, glimpsed briefly, dazzling, and then gone.

  The fever, the burning, closed around us like a fist. We worked until we could not stand, and then found something to do sitting down. Sam had already warned us that after the framing it would slow down. But even warned, I was not prepared. It seemed to go so slowly that it was almost unbearable. A day flickered past, and she looked the same as she had looked the night before. It tore the guts out of us all to have given everything we had, and to see no change for it, no result.

  But the rail stringers went up, and the rail, and the rider keelson was bolted down on top of the keelson. The deck knees were fixed to the clamps—somehow—I don't even remember it—and then, miraculously, the first deck beams stretched across the space that had seemed normal before, but now seemed terribly empty.

  The whipsaw rasped in our ears, and our hearts pounded to the slow swinging rhythm of the adze and the ax. We reached the ultimate, final limit of our strength every day. We reached the point we could not drive any more; forced beyond ourselves and drove again. Each night it was clear to me that I was finished, I could not possibly work again. I had to rest. And each morning I was drawn back to her, relentlessly, hopelessly. Time itself became something meaningless, there was no sense of it passing. There was only urgency, drive, work.

  When a man could not take it any more, it seemed perfectly normal that he should drop where he stood and sleep for an hour in the hold, or by the whipsaw, or in the shadow of the hull. If he was in the way the others simply carried him off where he would not be stepped on. In an hour, or two hours, he would be back on the job. How he felt was his own business, and nobody asked him. As long as he worked everything was r
ight.

  In all this time we did not permanently lose one man, and there were no serious accidents and no serious mistakes. Tired as we were, we did not make errors. We even found that the terrible blinding faugue was useful; we had skills we had never before realized. We were able to do things because we were too tired to realize we couldn't do them. We were not responsible, since we were far beyond the point of safety or accuracy, but we no longer seemed subject to human feebleness. The image herself was more real, more strong, more important than our weaknesses; she compensated for our mortality. She had taken us fully now,. she had set us afire to get herself built, and she saw to it that things went right. We did not think about it, any more than a saw thinks about cutting. We were the tools; we worked.

  Peter Morgan set up a rope machine a hundred yards from the ways. He had worked in a rope factory in his native country, and knew the business. It was a great help to us, but no one thought to thank him. After all, had he not known, we would have found some way to do it. We found some way to do anything that needed doing. Three of us worked the rope machine for three days, winding the heart yarns of the cordage we had salvaged from the Netarts Bay wreck. The hearts were not too badly rotted, and from them we wove the long coils of line, seemingly endless, that we would need.

  Peter had originally set up the rope walk pointing inland, and we spent the first day working in that direction. That night, talking around the fire, we discovered that for some reason it made us all nervous to have the rope walk running off in that direction. It had to be changed. We didn't know why, but it had to be changed, and it was. I later figured out the reason: the rope walk was pointing away from Her, and none of us could stand it. We had to work too far away. It was insane, but it was normal and right.

  In these days I tasted for the first time the deepest pride a man can feel: the knowledge that he will endure. He will survive, he will endure, and no matter what demands are made on his body and mind, he can meet them. At base all life is a question of endurance, and all work. Beyond a certain point work becomes a question of surviving, of enduring what the work requires. Those who burn hottest are those who are most certain of their ability to endure, who can afford to spend their energy wildly, knowing they will endure. They are, I suppose, madmen. They are the men who drive themselves beyond all reason. So be it; they are the madmen, but they get the work done.

  The first two weeks after the raid by the Klickitats, we did not sleep by the Ship. Reluctantly we wandered off at nightfall to Vaughn's, which was nearest, or to my place, stacking ourselves on cabin floors wherever we could find space, and often enough where they was no space. But now we had night work as well, and it was unpleasant inside.

  We were picking oakum at night, and the smell of tar was viciously strong in the little rooms. We took vast lengths of the tarred rope we had salvaged, and cut it into six-inch lengths. It was stiff as rock, but we soaked it—all in boiling water, until it was soft enough to pick. Then we went at it until our fingers were raw and hurting from the heat and tar, picking the fibers into tiny shreds for caulking the seams. Even with the door open, the smell of salt and tar was so oppressive we had to go out for air from time to time.

  After two weeks, the urgency in our minds about the attacks had diminished. I decided to go back to sleeping by the Ship, and to set up a tar-softening kettle down there. Eb Thomas was with me, but I had the idea. He was too butt-headed to admit I was braver than he was, so he came along. I had no idea of bravery; I was just tired. Too tired to walk all that way home at night, wasting valuable energy, too tired to sit in a tar-smelly room and pick oakum with a bunch of skeletons no more alive that I was. If I had to pick oakum—and I had to—was going to do it outside, and be in sight of the Ship, at least.

  Being outside again, we could hear the occasional rifle shots that echoed over the Bay in the middle of the night. We heard from time to time that such and such a bunch had gotten hold of some alcohol, gotten excited, and come in to get us. The guards always seemed to catch them. At least they never got to us. After Eb and I went down all the regulars started sleeping by her again, the only difference being that we had our own guns with us now. They were never used. It was probably useless, anyway. We were so exhausted and hurting when we finally got to sleep that they could have had our heads with never a protest from anybody. The only thing that could make us move was the invitation to work. Being killed didn't even seem very serious, except that it would have a very bad effect on your work.

  But I will admit that, at this time, I considered myself immortal, genuinely immortal. At least temporarily. I had a conviction I never admitted to anyone. I was absolutely certain nothing could happen to me while I was working on Her. I was convinced She was protecting me. She needed me. She needed me to build Her, and I didn't think She would let anything happen. And She. didn't. At least, not to us.

  To us, the gunshots in the night were only a kind of whiplash. They didn't happen every night; perhaps every other, even every third. There was no pattern. But they always seemed to come when we needed them for a spur. just when we were lowest, just when we had finally drained the last of our energy, just when we could see no possible way to face the morning—there would be a raid. And the first clatter of rifle fire would pierce our dulled minds like a knife. The sense of urgency would be back again, as strong as ever. There was no reasonable explanation for this—no connection between the sound of rifles in the night and the building. But we were far beyond the point of reason, and the firing said, Hurry, hurry, there is not much time.

  To others, those sharp explosions that ripped the silence of the night meant other things. Two Killamooks were shot one night, two of the guards. The raids had been going on so long that we had ceased to think of them as danger. But that night two guards scuffled with a group of Yaquina come up from the south, and they were killed. Then there was wailing in the nights, and the women sang at the village.

  The worst news was brought to us by Indian Jim one night. A bunch of us were sitting around the nauseous steaming kettle, picking oakum. I suppose from a distance it would have looked like a feast, the cheery fire, the kettle, the little group of men. None of us felt feast-like, we ached too much.

  Indian Jim came silently around the hull. We looked up as he came near. It occurred to me later that nobody had even thought of reaching for a gun. If it had been a pack from Outside we would all have been dead. But the guards were so effective we didn't even think about it any more. And, for me at least, the protection of the goddess was absolute.

  "Klahowya, Jim," I said. "No muckamuck, no food. Just oakum."

  "You come," Jim said to me.

  I walked over to him, standing a few yards away, just at the edge of the Ere circle. "What is it, Jim?"

  "Kilchis chako kokshut," he said.

  "Hurt! How hurt?"

  "Sukwalal kokshut. Mika mitlite Boston metsin?"

  "What is it, Ben?" Eb Thomas called.

  "He says Kilchis is hurt. He wants to know if we've got any white man's medicine."

  "How'd he get hurt?" Thomas said.

  "Jim says he's gun-hurt. Figure it out for yourself." I turned back to ]im. "No, Jim," I told him. "We don't have a damn thing."

  He looked at the ground, and I couldn't read his expression. Finally, without saying another word, he turned and went off, disappearing silently into the darkness that was all around. I went back to the fire, worried.

  "How'd he get hurt?" Thomas said.

  "I don't know. He didn't say."

  "Maybe somebody ought to go find out."

  "Yes," I said, trying to think. "Yes, I'll go in the morning."

  Jim's words echoed in my dreams the rest of the night, the guttural rhythms of the jargon making me twist in my sleep. Sukwalal kokshut sukwalal. Gun-hurt, shot.

  ELEVEN

  1

  I genuinely intended to go see the old tyee in the morning, but the work stacked up so that it was impossible. Thomas and Vaughn had to leave, which w
e had not expected. The one thing we had been unable to improvise was the running gear. We had not been able to salvage enough from the wrecks to do the job. We also needed fresh tar for the caulking, when the time came. All this material had to be bought in Astoria, and Vaughn and Thomas took the horses all the way up and back. They were gone nearly a week, leaving us two men short. To make up for their absence, the rest of us had to work so much the harder.

  As always, when we needed a fresh spur to drive us on, we got it. Every time we entered a new phase, the enthusiasm piled up in us as strong as it had been on the first day. And every time the new phase seemed the most important of all; this was great, all the rest was merely leading up to this superb, fine moment. How had we been able to get so excited about framing, when it was obviously planking that was the best part of shipbuilding?

  And I noticed another thing about this time, which I have never been able to explain to my own satisfaction. At least ten million times since the first day—a hundred thousand the first day itself—we had been hammered down with the undeniable realization that we knew nothing. We were blocks of wood, we were stones, we were cows and fish and clouds and trees. We were anything, except shipwrights. But in spite of it all, by christ, we felt like shipwrights. We had the image of ourselves as shipwrights, and no matter how many times it was proved differently, it did not deeply affect us. Throughout the entire process, we never understood how pitifully little we understood. I suppose this deliberate ignoring of our ignorance was necessary; in some sort of measure of survival. Had we known how stupid we were, we would have died. Or worse, been afraid to build her.

  I remember this very clearly on the first day of planking. As always, there was a sort of conference before the day's work, in which Sam explained what had to be done, and what the rules were, and how to do it. I will admit now that after the first forty-five minutes of explanation, I had still not caught the subject. I got more nervous, more and more embarrassed as Sam went on and on with terms I had never heard and operations I didn't believe possible to materials that didn't exist. After the framing I felt pretty cocky and shipwrighty. I was surprised and, I suppose, a little bit wounded in my pride that I couldn't even figure out what he was talking about. It was, in fact, this way each time the activity changed, but each time I forgot about it and approached the next step in the full confidence that I would understand it all immediately. I felt a little better when I observed the hazy, distant looks of the others.