by Tyler Keevil
‘Oh, man,’ Hamed said.
The actor was lying still, one arm folded under him. From somewhere outside a horn sounded – just a little comic toot to punctuate the end of the performance. The two of them hurried down there, and crouched next to him, moving as guiltily and furtively as footpads.
‘Don’t move him,’ Seb said.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘His neck might be broken.’
Seb checked for a pulse, pressing his middle finger and forefinger against the actor’s throat, on the jugular. He had never done this before, and didn’t know how to do it, but it was what they always did in movies, didn’t they? You checked for a pulse. He couldn’t feel much of anything, but at his touch the actor groaned and turned his head.
‘Thank fuck,’ Seb said.
He and Hamed looked at each other, with the actor sprawled between them.
Hamed said, ‘We’ve got to get him out of here.’
‘We can’t just dump him outside.’
‘The Metropolitan, right? You said he’s staying at the Metropolitan.’
‘Call a cab.’
While Hamed hustled back upstairs to get his cellphone, Seb hoisted the actor by his armpits, like they did with bodies, and dragged him through the front doors. A wide wooden walkway connected the restaurant to shore, and on it were some Yucca plants in big ceramic pots. Seb propped the actor up against one, and squatted down beside him. The movement and fresh air seemed to be reviving him: he was moaning now, and muttering incoherencies.
‘Repercussions,’ he said. ‘There’ll be repercussions.’
Hamed came back, breathing hard, and announced a cab was on its way. While they waited they worked out their story, in tense and conspiratorial tones: the actor had drunk a bit too much, and tripped coming down the stairs, and bumped his head a little. That was all.
‘We were helping him out.’
‘That’s right. We were just helping.’
The actor mumbled belligerently, as if to contradict them, and they both went quiet, the lie hanging uneasily between them.
‘Anyways,’ Hamed said, scuffing his shoe on the deck, ‘he deserved it.’
‘He could have died, man.’
‘He didn’t deserve to die, but he deserved something.’
Seb shrugged and didn’t argue. He was thinking back to when it happened, and how there’d been that moment, just before, that he maybe could have done something to prevent the actor from falling. But he’d stood there, watching. Knowing what was coming.
‘What’s up?’ Hamed asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘You worried he’ll remember?’
‘I don’t know.’
There was no way he could explain it, that sense of foresight and anticipation. So they waited for the cab in silence, while the actor muttered something about the communists, and the Muslims, and them all being in it together. And in the bay the waters churned, and in the city a siren droned, and above the inlet Seb noticed a plane coming in to land, flying low, so close that he could see not only the running lights but the landing lights and some of the cabin lights, too. He watched as it slid towards the skyscrapers downtown, moving in slow-motion, and seemed to collide with an office tower, before emerging, miraculously, on the other side.
The Art of Shipbuilding
I ease forward on the throttle and spin the wheel, steering one-handed. Real lazy. My bow swings from port to starboard and back again, like a wayward weathervane trying to suss the wind. I’m chugging around the Westco marina in my garbage tug, going from boat to boat in the hope that the union guys will have a job for me – some junk or scrap to clear. There’s not much. A couple of dead batteries on the Western Tomahawk, some cabinets from the galley in the Cape Breton. That’s not even a full load. But there’s nothing else to do today so I keep making my slow circuit of the shipyard, sometimes actually going in circles, pretending I’m in search of something. And maybe I am.
I drift on over to the east side of the marina, where Frank’s working. He’s the contractor who’s been hired to fix up the Chief Seattle, one of Westco’s fishing boats, before the start of salmon season in August. In the lunchroom there’s always a lot of talk about Frank. The union guys, they say he lives up near Grand Forks, in a cabin he built by hand. It’s totally off the grid. Powered by a generator, with a gray water system and septic tank. He’s got a cabinet full of hunting rifles, a shed packed with snares and leg-traps. He kills and grows his own food, up there. He claims the Russians are still a threat and thinks the internet is alive. The guys, they make jokes about all this stuff. They say Frank’s gonna go postal one day. They say he murdered his wife. They say he’s crazy as a shithouse rat. But they don’t say any of it to his face, and so far me and Frank have gotten along just fine. Just fine.
As I approach, I see him working on the dock next to the Seattle. He’s a lean, limber guy who can’t weigh more than one-fifty or one-sixty, soaking wet. His grey coveralls hang off him in these big baggy folds, like some kind of smock. He’s hunched over a couple of sawhorses. I putt to within twenty feet and holler to him across the water.
‘You got anything needs doing, Frank?’
The way I ask, it sounds a bit desperate. Pathetic, even.
Frank looks up. ‘What do you know? It’s Liam, the scholar. Got more dead strakes. That’s a job, if you want it, scholar.’
‘I want it, all right.’
I steer closer and Frank shuffles down the dock to meet me. His coveralls are all spattered with pitch and glue and tar and paint. He’s even got gobs of the stuff in his hair. He looks like Pollock or Picasso, some kind of eccentric artist.
I loop my tie line into a lasso and toss it to him, letting it uncoil in the air. He snags it deftly and lashes it to a cleat. As I step on dock he nods at me, but he doesn’t say anything, and I don’t either. We just walk back towards the Seattle, where he’s working. She’s an eighty-six-foot seine boat, over a hundred years old, with a timber frame and carvel hull. She’s really something. I don’t know a thing about boats and even I can see that. But lack of upkeep in recent years means she’s all shot through with dryrot. Frank’s already rebuilt the bridge and cabin, and over the past few days he’s started work on the hull. Today, from the starboard side, he’s pulled out half a dozen rotten strakes – the wooden planks that make-up the shell of the hull, keeping the vessel afloat. The gaps stand out starkly: narrow strips of shadow running horizontally along the hull, revealing the frame beneath. They’re an odd sight, those gaps. Something that should be there, but isn’t. Like missing teeth.
I say, ‘You been busy.’
‘One of my favourite jobs, replacing strakes.’
‘Easy work?’
‘Hard. Real skill involved.’
The three strakes he’s removed this morning are piled up on one side of the dock. They’re huge pieces of timber – each one at least twenty feet long.
‘Well,’ I say, ‘guess I’ll get started on this mess.’
‘Should give you a load, at least.’
With a handsaw I cut the strakes into manageable pieces, which I carry down to my tug and transfer onto the deck. Then I start sweeping up the rest of the refuse: mostly old caulking cotton and oakum and lead putty, raked out from the seams between the strakes. It’s mindless work. My kind of work. As a temp without a trade, I don’t do much except clean up the messes left by the union guys or the contractors like Frank.
While I sweep, I’m also watching him. I try to do this real subtle-like, without staring or looking directly at him. He’s preparing the first of the replacement strakes. He has it laid across the two sawhorses as he scallops out the back and fairs up the sides, using both hands to push the planer along the wood. He’s got to do this because the planks on an old carvel boat like the Seattle aren’t straight; they’re all curve
d to hug the frame, and each one can be bent at a different angle, and in different places, depending on its location in the hull.
I say, ‘Can I ask you something?’
He takes his time in answering. He doesn’t like to be disturbed, Frank.
‘Go ahead.’
‘How do you know how much to plane off?’
‘You mark it out, some,’ he says, without looking up. ‘And work by feel, too. It’s less like carpentry, more like dressmaking. Nothing’s flush or square. You got to take into account the shape of the old girl’s body, the way she’ll move in the water.’
I nod, as if this makes sense to me, as if we’re on the same wavelength, me and Frank. Then I go back to my cleaning. When I’m finished I stand and watch, holding my garbage bag in one hand and my dustpan in the other. As he shapes the plank, shavings of wood – wide and delicate as ribbons – curl up before the blade of the planer. Every so often Frank gently brushes one of these aside, letting it drop to the dock. His movements are confident and certain, like a sculptor carving soapstone. Eventually he notices me gawking at him.
‘After lunch,’ he says, ‘you want to help me fit this?’
‘If you don’t think I’ll get in the way.’
‘You’ll be fine. Long as you’re ready to work.’
‘I can handle it.’
By this point it’s closing in on noon, and the union guys are already plodding up the dock, all dressed in the same blue coveralls. They always punch in and out on the dot, and count the seconds of their breaks like misers counting money. Not Frank. As a contractor, he’s free to do what he wants. He doesn’t take coffee breaks, and he eats his lunch on the boat. Some nights he even sleeps on the damned boat, in the cabin he’s rebuilt. Says it saves him money on the costs of a hotel, and that he gets a better sleep on the water, anyways.
Today, instead of going in, I stay out on the Seattle to eat with Frank. I don’t ask him if it’s okay, but he doesn’t seem to mind. We just clamber up on deck and sit perched on the starboard gunnel. For a while we chew our sandwiches in silence, the only sound the slurp of water beneath the docks and the barking croak of seagulls.
Then I ask, ‘You got another job lined up after this?’
‘A few. Gonna head up to my cabin, first. City’s making me squirrelly.’
Frank takes a long swig of water, and I figure that’s the end of our conversation. But after he swallows he adds, ‘Got work out in Steveston. Doing the bridge on this old trawler. Then an engine repair on some rich prick’s yacht. A few other commercial jobs, too.’
‘Lots of work, eh?’
‘Too much.’
Frank stands up, taking his sandwich with him. He can never sit still for long, Frank. He’s noticed something on the gunnel – a bit of bubble in the paint job. He picks up a steel spatula and scrapes the paint away, revealing the crayola-orange primer beneath.
‘Partly why I became a contractor in the first place. I make a killing because there’s not enough hands to go around. Not enough good hands, anyway.’
‘How’s that?’
He hasn’t sat back down. He’s padding around the deck, now, restless as a hound, the sandwich hanging forgotten in one hand as he sniffs out unseen deficiencies in his girl. ‘Unions are being strangled, for one. So all that work’s being contracted out.’
‘That why the union guys don’t like you?’
‘They don’t like me for a lot of reasons,’ he says, as if it’s not important. ‘On top of that, though, there’s no new blood coming up. Nobody learning trades. All these young fellows your age want to be suits or desk-jockeys or pencil pushers.’
I smile. ‘Or starving artists.’
‘But none wanting to take the time to study a craft.’
‘I hear you.’ I look down at my hands, resting palm-up across my knees, like I’m wearing shackles. The palms are all sore and peeling with blisters, but in places the blisters have started to turn into calluses. ‘We all got big ideas for ourselves, I guess.’
‘You going back to school in the fall?’ Frank asks.
‘Guess so. Don’t know what else I’m gonna do.’
‘Well, if you need some money give me a call. I could use the help.’
He tosses the rest of his sandwich overboard and it lands with a plop in the water. As the seagulls descend to squawk and bicker over it, Frank vaults the gunnel and drops down to the dock. Lunch is finished, apparently. For him, at least. It’s like the guy doesn’t need to eat. I’m still famished. I shove the rest of my own sandwich in my mouth and twist open a bottle of Sprite, swigging from it to help me swallow.
By the time I clamber down to join Frank, he’s already gotten started on the next job: applying a layer of varnish – or what looks like varnish – to the inside of the strake. It’s still laid out there on the sawhorses, like an offering on an altar, and it’s really something to see: this huge length of butter-pale wood, sawn into a bow-shaped bend, the edges bevelled and the sides sanded. I just want to reach out and touch it, stroke it, so I do. Under my palm the surface feels smooth and polished as a piece of ivory.
‘Is this pine?’
‘Oak. They wanted me to use pine, and I said no-way, no-how. Not in the Seattle.’
He shakes his head, as if the very idea of using pine is crazy, unthinkable, and dips his brush into the pot of varnish. I stand back and watch, with my hands clasped before me, like an attendant at some religious ceremony. He applies the varnish in gentle strokes, tender as a lover. I ask him about the stuff, and he explains that it’s penta-phenol – a wood preservative.
‘Keeps that rot from creeping back in.’
‘I get you.’
‘Some cowboys will tell you to use creosote – but it’s toxic as hell.’
When he’s finished with the preservative, he adds a layer of linseed oil to the edges of the strake, to act as lubricant. Then we’re ready. Frank takes the front end of the strake, I take the back, and we lift it off the sawhorses and carry it over to the hull. The gap we’re fitting it into sits at about head height, so I cradle the strake on my shoulder while Frank aligns his end with the stem-post at the bow. He explains that it’s best to start with the end of the strake that has the most bend. Something to do with the plank acting as a lever.
‘Raise it up, there.’
His tone is terse, impatient. I adjust my position, standing taller.
‘Sorry,’ I say.
‘That’s better.’ After checking the angle, he adds, ‘Normally I’d lash it to the gunnel with a length of rope, but you’ll do fine.’
He uses shores and wedges to fit his end in place, and then drills a series of pilot holes through the strake and into the frame beneath. Next he changes his drill bit to countersink the holes. I’m still standing at attention, watching all this from about twenty feet away. He’s got himself a carriage bolt, now. He lines it up with his left hand, hefts a mallet with his right, and swings it to strike the bolt once, twice, three times – driving it into the pilot hole. The sound of the impact – metal on metal – is rich and dolourous as a church bell, ringing out across the shipyard.
‘Just hold her steady, scholar,’ he calls.
He begins to work his way towards me, repeating the ritual every few feet: lining up the strake, positioning it with shores and wedges, drilling his holes, countersinking them, and then pounding the carriage bolts home. He develops a steady rhythm, doing this. It’s tough work, physical work, and every so often he pauses to take a breather and backhand the sweat from his forehead. During one of these breaks he looks my way and, as if we’ve already been talking about it, asks me, ‘Can you believe they wanted me to short-plank this old girl?’
I don’t know what that means, and I guess he sees it in my face. He tells me short-planking is a cheap way to replace a strake. Instead of using one long piece of wood, you use t
wo shorter ones and scarf them together. It saves money on timber since you don’t need so much width to accommodate the bend. He tells me it’s also called a Dutchman. I don’t know if this is because the Dutch invented it, or because they’re known for their frugality, or what.
‘I told them to go to hell. No way I’m doing a Dutchman on this job.’
‘Why not?’
He peers at me suspiciously. As if he thinks I’m asking on behalf of the company. As if he thinks I’m some kind of spy, advocating the use of short-planking. He’s got that mallet in one hand and he looks about ready to take a swing at me with it.
‘I mean, what’s wrong with short-planking?’
‘What’s wrong with it?’ he says. ‘Christ, what’s wrong with it?’
He leaves those words hanging there, and turns back to the strake, shoring up the next section and reaching for his drill. As he pushes in the pilot holes, coils of wood wind their way up the drill bit and fall off, spiralling to the dock like exotic leaves. He raises his voice over the whine of the drill.
‘Weakens the hull, for one. And increases the chance you’ll spring a butt. But it’s more than that. You don’t short-plank a boat like the Seattle.’ He drops the drill, and reaches for his mallet and bolts. He keep talking as he hammers the bolts home, emphasising his points with each stroke. ‘You don’t do no goddamn Dutchman. Not on a boat that’s older than this damn city. I thought you were doing some schooling. You ought to know that. A thing was built a certain way. You don’t change that just to save a few bucks. If you change the way it’s built, then you change its form, and it ain’t the same thing, no more.’ He stops and turns to stare at me. He’s panting and sweating and one of his eyes is twitching. It’s the most worked up I’ve ever seen him. ‘It’s about the essence of the thing. Do you know what that is? The essence?’