To Build A Shipt - Don Berry

by Don Berry

"Well, hell," he said, getting his back up. "Don't get nasty. I was just asking is all."

  "Well, I'm just telling you No I got no extra blanket. I don't know why you should expect me to keep an inventory of blankets around, Thomas."

  "I don't expect anythin' of you," he snapped, losing his temper the way he always did. He never really forgave me for not believing his lies and for not telling him my principle of nature about the sand dollars.

  "Well, you sure act like it," I told him plain. "Coming around asking for blankets just like you expected it."

  He saw he wasn't getting anyplace like that, losing his temper, so he put on real friendly. "Don't get mad, Ben, I didn't mean nothin'."

  "Wel1, am I right or not?" I asked him. "I mean, why should I have blankets around just like that?"

  "Sure Ben, you're right," Thomas said, "but you don't have to be nasty about it."

  "What do you want a blanket for?" I said, even though I knew just exactly what he was getting at.

  "I'm too tired to go home," Thomas said. "I thought I'd just stretch out down here."

  "It's cold and wet," I told him flat. "You'd catch your death, particularly without no blanket."

  "You been sleepin' here a week or better."

  "I want to."

  "Well, maybe I want to, too," he said.

  I guess it must have sounded like we were arguing or something, because Vaughn came over from the other side of the hull.

  "Listen, can't you guys even talk to each other without getting in a fight every damn time? What's it about?"

  `"It's about the blanket," I told him.

  "What blanket?"

  "The blanket Thomas hasn't got."

  "What do you want a blanket for, Eb? You got blankets."

  "I want tp sleep here because I'm tired, is all," Thomas said. "I just asked Ben polite if he had another blanket and he got nasty."

  "Listen, Vaughn," I said. "Am I running a hotel here? Did I ever say that? I mean, who the hell would expect me to have a blanket except him?"

  "`You just don't want anybody else to sleep down here is all," Thomas said. "You think you can keep her all to yourself?

  "Who's getting nasty now?" I asked him.

  "Well, is it true or not? Is it?"

  "You're mad because I thought of it first, that's your trouble."

  "That ain't the point. You don't want anybody else to sleep down here, is that true or not, just tell me."

  "I thought of it first."

  "We're all workin' just as hard as you, Ben. We got just as much right to sleep down here as you have. You ain't God or anything, you know."

  "Now, listen," Vaughn said in a reasonable tone.

  "Every time you two get within twenty feet of each other you get in an argument. We can't have that all the time. If Eb wants to sleep here he can sleep here."

  "Ben wants to keep her all to himself, he thinks he's God or something."

  "Listen, I never said anything about that. I don't give a good/god damn where you sleep, Thomas. You can sleep out on the breakers for all I care about it. All I ever said was very simple, that I didn't have no blanket."

  "Who needs your blanket?" Thomas said, jumping up. "I got blankets, I can get a blanket any time I want it."

  "Listen," Vaughn said. "If you're both going to sleep down here you got to sleep on opposite sides of the Ship, all right? And you got to promise me you won't talk to each other. Will you promise me that?"

  "I thought you was too tired to go home, Thomas."

  "Don't you worry about me, Ben Thaler," he snapped.

  He turned around and started fast for his place, which was better than three miles back.

  Vaughn sighed. "Jesus. You guys. I never saw anything like You two."

  "He's going to get hisself so tired out he won't be fit to work."

  "No, but listen, Ben. You know he's right. If him or any of the other fellows want to sleep down here, they got a perfect right to do it. Even if you did think of it first. The Ship belongs to all of us. Now you got to admit that's only fair."

  There was nothing I could say without looking as stubborn as that Thomas, so I didn't say anything at all. Vaughn sighed again and went away.

  'Thomas came back about two hours later. It was pitch dark, and he made himself a little fire on the other side.

  It was actually to my advantage, for the shadows of the frame were silhouetted against the fire in a way I hadn't seen before, and seemed to move. by themselves when the fire flickered. It put me in such a peaceable mood I took him over a piece of meat I had left, so he could have something to eat. He'd been so furious mad he'd forgotten to bring anything, and of course he was too butt-head to ask.

  2

  Within a few days there were half a dozen men sleeping down at the Ship. After my first disappointment I didn't mind, and I even took a certain satisfaction in it. With us all there we started working earlier in the morning; that much more work accomplished for which I was, in a way, responsible. I missed that lovely morning time when I could just sort of wander around her all alone, but that was the way it was, and I got used to it. The evenings were quite pleasant, usually at least two or three fires going, lighting her from different angles, and men moving from one to another visiting. It was a companionable little society, and since Thomas and I had other people to talk to we didn't argue. We never had any disagreements except when we were talking to each other.

  Everyone was dead tired after the day's work, and there was a peaceful atmosphere of somnolence and fatigue, like the last few moments before you drop off to sleep, while your mind is wandering aimless and free, without strain. I myself had found that it was easier to relax with the Ship near, and I think everyone felt that way.

  Neither Vaughn nor Little Sam slept by the Ship. Vaughn's cabin was the nearest of any, so it was practically the same. He said he could see her out his window with the fires and all, and he liked it that way. Sam, though, I couldn't figure Sam out. He had been so strange for the last little while that nobody could figure him out. I guess no one tried very hard to find explanations for Sam. He was one of the unpredictables of the world. It did no good to think about it, and made me nervous into the bargain. So I didn't, and neither did anybody else. He had a right to do anything he wanted as long as it didn't hurt the Ship.

  It was quite late one night when I heard someone coming up to my fire. I had rolled up to go to sleep, and the fire itself was burning down. I watched sleepily as my visitor threw another stick on, and when the yellow flames licked up the sides I saw it was Vaughn.

  "You awake, Ben?" he said quietly.

  "Yeah, I guess so." I rubbed my eyes. "What time is it?"

  "I don't know. 'Bout midnight, I guess." He poked at the fire absently.

  "What the hell you doing up?" I said. "You're not going to be fit to work tomorrow. Why ain't you asleep?"

  "I was," he said. "I got woke up."

  His voice was funny, and I was by now awake enough to see the expression on his face. I sat up suddenly.

  "What's the matter, Vaughn?"

  "Listen, Ben, we got trouble and I don't know what to do about it."

  I glanced over at her, but in the light of the fire I could see nothing wrong. "Trouble? What trouble?"

  "It ain't with the Ship."

  I relaxed. It couldn't be very important. "What, then?"

  "Listen, Ben," he said. "You remember old man Cornwall's cabin that burnt down?"

  "Sure, we had to hold off on the keel for a day."

  "It wasn't a chimney fire. I mean, it wasn't an accident.

  It was an Indian that done it."

  "An Indian? You mean that woman and boy was killed by—Vaughn, that ain't reasonable."

  "That's what happened?"

  "How do you know for sure? And why the hell didn't you speak up then?"

  "Hell, Ben," he said. "I didn't know till tonight myself. And keep your voice down anyways. Kilchis come tonight. It was one of his people. He just found out, to
o."

  "God, Vaughn. What are we going to do?"

  "I wish to hell I'd never found out," Vaughn said miserably.

  "You and me." I was suddenly aware of our position here, in a way I'd never even thought of. Twenty or thirty white men and a few families; that was all there was on the whole coast between Clatsop Plains and California. And a good dozen bands of Indians, maybe two dozen. I suddenly felt very small. As long as there was no trouble, it didn't matter, we just got along as well as we could. But now there was trouble and it had to be straightened out one way or another.

  "We'll never catch him now," I said hopefully. "That was almost a month ago, we hadn't even got the keel laid."

  "We don't have to catch hirn," Vaughn said, twisting his mouth unhappily. "Kilchis picked him up as soon as he found out."

  "What does Kilchis say?"

  Vaughn shrugged. "Says he wants peace and order in the Bay. Says he agreed that crimes against the whites would be punished by white law and crimes against his people would be punished by his people."

  "My god, does he want this man hung or something?"

  Vaughn shrugged again. "He wants peace, that's all he says. He says he's done his part, he'll give us the man. Then it's up to us."

  "Fine, god, that's just fine. And the framing's almost done."

  "Listen, Ben," Vaughn said. "Come along, will you? Kilchis says we have to come get this guy. And he wants to make a bargain."

  "All right. But Jesus, Vaughn, I don't know what I can do. Can't we just let it go? Anyway, until she's done?"

  "No, you know we can't."

  And we couldn't. Once it had come up we were stuck with it, and the choices open were not encouraging. If we hung this man, what kind of effect would it have on the surrounding tribes? That was unpredictable. If we didn't hang him—that effect was predictable, we had the experience of the first Valley people to go on. It meant simply that if one man could kill the whites and get away with it, so could everyone else. We were one tiny bubble in a sea of Indians, the Nehalems and Clatsops up the coast, the Yaquina and Alsea south, the Kalapuya inland, the Klackamas and Kelawatset and god knows who else. The bubble could be broken in one night, and if our revenge came later, in the form of the Army or whatever, it would be of very little interest to us. We would all be dead, and the Ship lying half-finished on the ways. The Indians would chop her up for firewood.

  It was a thought that made me physically sick.

  No matter what we did, we were wrong. I think I was more resentful than afraid. The Cornwalls had meant nothing to us, nothing at all, we scarcely knew them. We had no interest in avenging their deaths, or in justice or anything else of the world. Not when it meant risking the work.

  None of us had even seen the preacher since that terrible scene at the graves. Probably he had wandered blindly back into the Valley, carrying his burdens of guilt and punishment, and we were just as happy to have it that way. The sole thing we demanded of the world was to be left alone to work on the Ship, and now even that was cast in doubt. I would have given a hundred dollars never to have heard of this thing.

  As we trudged gloomily through the night toward Kilchis' lodge, Vaughn explained to me how it had come about. The Indian, whose name was Estacuga, had been on his. way north to trade off some blankets with the Clatsops. He had stopped at the Cornwall cabin for water just at nightfall. Inside, he noticed a barrel of vinegar, which he took to be whisky, and asked for some.

  This was refused and he was asked to leave. He made camp a little distance away, but in the middle of the night he sneaked back into the cabin. This was not difficult, as there was only a blanket for a door. While he was trying to get the barrel open the old woman woke up and attacked him with a frying pan. He got panicky and killed her with his knife. He killed the boy too, stabbing him and crushing his skull with the frying pan. In this scuffle Estacuga himself was hurt pretty badly, being hit with the heavy cast-iron pan on the face and head.

  He was badly frightened when it was all over and set fire to the cabin to cover the traces of the murder. He then went on up to Clatsop Plains and traded with the people up there. When he returned his wounds had not yet healed, and he went to a man we called Indian Jim, a sort of doctor, or tamanawis as they call them. Estacuga made up some story of falling down a hill.

  Indian Jim treated him for a long time, but the wounds did not heal. Finally Jim decided that his patient had a Boston sick, a white man's illness over which his magic had no power. He told Estacuga that the only way it could be made right was if he told everything that had happened. Estacuga told him the whole story, hoping to get well. Kilchis heard it from Indian Jim, had the man brought to his own lodge, and then told Vaughn.

  So now he was ours, and we had to decide which risk to take.

  3

  There were five or six lodges of Kilchis' band clustered on a point by one of the rivers that ran into the Bay. The long squat shapes were almost indistinguishable in the night, the flatness of the roof line being the only sign to distinguish them from the blocky, dark silhouettes of the Coast Range hills. The lodge of the tyee himself was set off a little distance from the others.

  A slave woman let us through the door-hole and motioned us to the fire that burned toward a back corner. The smell of smoke and dried fish was heavy in the obscurity. Above our heads the drying racks were crammed with strips of salmon and some jerked deer. The customary sleeping bench ran around three sides of the lodge, but the tyee's was made of cedar planks rather than earth, and the space beneath was used for storage. Hundreds of bundles, neatly wrapped in skins or reed mats, testified to Kilchis' wealth.

  Kilchis himself was waiting for us near the back, sitting on the sleeping bench with his legs drawn up beneath him. He was a ponderous and frightening figure, like something carved of rain-dark slate. He was utterly motionless as we approached, but the flickering of the fire across the planes of his face gave an illusion of constantly fleeting expression.

  "Klahowya," he said, and motioned us to sit by the fire.

  The old slave woman who had let us in brought a Wooden platter and put it before us. There was a large wooden bowl in the center, full of nearly rancid whale oil, and two individual platters containing strips of dried salmon. We dipped the salmon in the oil and got a strip down somehow.

  "Nika ricky howh katsuk nika tillicums," Kilchis said. "I want peace among my people."

  "The Bostons want peace, too," Vaughn said.

  "The Bostons are my people now," Kilchis said. "I am tyee in this Bay."

  I looked at Vaughn to make sure I had understood. It was the first time it had ever occurred to me that Kilchis might feel responsible for us, simply because we lived on his land. Questions of responsibility had never entered my head; we just tried to get along and didn't think much about it.

  Kilchis leaned forward. "Your ways are not ours. Your law is a law of animals. One is killed, you kill another. You do not pay blood money or blankets to the family, which is right."

  "It is a very old law with us," Vaughn said, embarrassed.

  "Our law is old also," Kilchis said quietly. "Our law is to stop the killing."

  He leaned back again and waited a long time before he spoke. "You will kill this man Estacuga?" he asked, gesturing with his hand.

  For the first time I noticed a blankebwrapped bundle on the sleeping bench a few feet away. It was so completely motionless I could not believe there was a living man beneath it.

  "There must be—a trial," Vaughn said. "That is where people talk and decide what is to be done."

  Kilchis nodded. "And then you will kill him?"

  "If the trial decides he has done this thing he will be punished, yes."

  "He has told me with his own tongue he did it," Kilchis said.

  "In our law there must be the talking first, to decide," Vaughn said obstinately.

  Kilchis shook his head with puzzlement, then lifted his massive shoulders in a gesture of resignation. "You follow your law. I ha
ve brought the man to you."

  "Kilchis," I said. "What will happen if the man is punished?"

  He looked at me, not understanding.

  "What will your people do?" I said.

  "Listen, Ben," Vaughn said to me in English. "Don't bring this up."

  "It's better to know, isn't it? Better than wondering?"

  Vaughn thought about it a moment and sighed. "I suppose so," he said discouragedly. I turned back to Kilchis.

  "If this man Estacuga is hanged, will your people make war on us?"

  "War? I want peace here," he repeated slowly. "There is no war when a crime is punished?"

  "But our—law, our punishment is more hard than your people's. If by our law he must die with the rope, what will your people say?"

  "I am tyee here," Kilchis said. "It is not for the people to say, but for me. I agreed with the other Boston who was here before, he who had tupso, the beard, that crimes against your people would be punished by your law. I agreed that. I am tyee here."

  Vaughn looked at me. It was better than we had any reason to expect. It did not solve the problem of the other tribes, but it was better than nothing.

  "Was the man alone?" Vaughn said.

  "No. There were two women with him. One of my wives." He pointed to the slave woman.

  "They have done nothing. You will punish only him who did the thing. "If they were there, can we—

  Kilchis leaned forward again intently. "This thing I will say. The man who did the crime will be punished, and that is justice. But you cannot punish one who has done nothing. Then there would be trouble. There would be anger, and the other bands would not listen to me. Punish the guilty, that is justice. Punish the not-guilty is war. You must understand this."

  "No one will be punished who has done nothing, Kilchis. But—can this woman tell what she saw there? That is part of our law."

  Kilchis thought about it. "Yes. She can do that."

  Vaughn nodded. "Then we are agreed."

  "Kloshe, hyas kloshe," Kilchis said. He looked at us closely before he continued. "Now I give you this man to keep peace. In return I ask you a thing to keep peace."

  "Ask us?"

  "You must keep Tenas Sam away from my people."