To Build A Shipt - Don Berry

by Don Berry

  "I never knew such a bunch of—I don't know whats," Vaughn said impatiently. "Look. We plaster the bottom with good gooey mud, all right? Then we plaster the ways, too. That makes two coats of the slipperiest, greasiest, slidiest stuff in the world. You'll hardly be able to hold her with the chocks. Then Sam gets up with a bottle of wine, and he busts it over her bow. Even that bottle of wine makes her slide a little bit, because that mud's so terribly slippery. She wants to go! Everybody' s there, the guys are down by the chocks with sledges, and the crowd gives a cheer. A real cheer, I mean, When they hear that cheer the boys give one good swing with their sledges at the chocks and—BANG!"

  He slammed his hand down on the table. We jumped, startled, and the Ship began to move. Slowly at first, then picking up a little speed on that greasy, slippery, slidy mud. The stern plowed into the water, throwing a great wave to either side, she rolled a bit and settled square, riding like a duck. The wash moved slowly out away from the hull, and the crowd gave another hearty holler.

  "Won't work," Sam said again.

  "Listen," Vaughn said. "Suppose I prove it to you? Suppose I prove it to you with a demonstration that it'll I work. How about that?"

  "'Well, hell, it's worth a try," Thomas said.

  "You're just worried about one o' your cows," I said.

  "Listen, Ben Thaler," Thomas said. "Don't you worry about what I' m worried about. I don't have to have butt-head like you tell me what—"

  "All right, come on, you guys," Vaughn said. "You ain't argued for weeks. All right, listen, it's all settled. You come down to the ways in the morning, I'll prove my plan'll work, and we'll launch in the afternoon. All right?"

  "Don't see how you can prove what ain't true," Sam said.

  "I'll show you how, Sam, I'll give you a demonstration! What more can you ask than that?" Vaughn stood up at the table. He was so anxious to finish the conversation right there I thought he was going to walk out of his own house.

  "Al1 right, there's nothin' to lose, anyway. If it don't work, Eb can—"

  "Let's see what Vaughn's got in his mind afore your start figurin' what I can do, Ben Thaler," Eb said.

  So that was the way it was. We gathered down by the ways in the morning. Vaughn was standing there like a stage magician waiting for the hall to fill. He had a good audience. The fever was running high ever since the stepping of the mast, and there were a dozen Indians always hanging around in the drizzle, caught up by the excitement, but not knowing exactly what to expect.

  I couldn't take my eyes off Her. We have moved from one impossible beauty to the next, each more intense than the one before. Now She was finished and it was almost unbearable to look at Her. You thought you'd be blinded, you thought you'd explode, you forgot to breathe. As far as Vaughn was concerned, my preoccupation just annoyed him.

  "Listen, you got to pay attention to the demonstration," he said severely. "If you think she's pretty now, just wait until she's launched. Imagine what she'll look like riding out on the Bay under full canvas. Just imagine her comin' in from Astoria, ridin' across the bar with the sunset behind her, shinin' through the sails like fire . . ."

  I imagined. Jesus.

  "But we got to get her off the ways, first," Vaughn said conclusively. "Now pay attention to this there demonstration and I'm going to show you how we do it."

  He had brought up a bucket of bottom mud from the Bay, and had it beside him. He took two scrap planks, about two feet long and a foot wide.

  "This here's the Ship," he said. "And this here is the ways, all right?"

  Two of the Indians came over to look more closely at the boards. Vaughn turned them over for inspection, showing there was no trickery, I suppose. One of the Indians said something to the other in Salishan, the second just shrugged.

  "Now, just stand clear, boys," Vaughn said. He propped the end of one board up on a log, so it slanted down. "This is the ways," he muttered, almost to himself.

  "Now we plaster the ways with mud, like so . . ." He scooped up great gobbets of mud from the bucket and plastered the whole upper surface of the board an inch thick, like a woman frosting a cake. There was no doubt it was gooey, we could see that all right. It began to slide a little, he plastered it so thick.

  "Then we give a little dollop to the hull . . ." He scooped and smoothed mud on the other plank. Then, very carefully, he lowered the second plank on the first, muddy side down, so he had a sort of mud sandwich with one end propped up on the log. Little rivulets of water oozed out from the crack.

  "And she's ready," Vaughn said triumphantly.

  "So? She ain't movin'."

  "Then you knock the chocks out," Vaughn said. With terrifying suddenness he leaped up in the air and landed on the planks with both feet. The top one scooted out from under him like a greased pig. A flat spray of mud A squirted from between the planks. Vaughn was thrown over backwards when the top plank slid, and he almost seemed to hang suspended in the air for a brief moment before he descended like a falling tree, landing flat on his back.

  It knocked the breath clean out of him and he lay there flat, making awful gasping noises. We were all horrified by the abruptness of it, and stared down at him for a minute without doing anything. He was suffering trying to catch his breath, making grunting frog-like sounds in his throat and jerking around a little.

  The Indians looked at each other, then back at Vaughn. One of them rattled off something, and another contradicted him. They began a lively argument, pointing at Vaughn, at the boards, at the mud bucket and even out across the Bay, explaining it to each other.

  They began to get angry.

  "Vaughm, are you all right?" I said.

  "Guh—guh," he gasped. Finally he turned over on his side. Thomas squatted down beside him and began to pound him on the back.

  "Come on, come on, you just got the wind knocked out of you."

  One of the Indians shoved the other one.

  Vaughn finally got his breath back and stood up victoriously. He walked over where the top board had flown and picked it up. He waved it in the air, splattering droplets of mud all around. "All right," he said proudly.

  "Will it work or won't it? Is that a demonstration or is that a demonstration?

  " The other Indian shoved back, and they were separated by friends.

  "By god," Eb Thomas said. "She really flew all right, I'll say that."

  Sam stared glumly down at the planks. He knew it wouldn't work, but he also knew that nothing he could say would have one-tenth the dramatic force of Vaughn's demonstration.

  A third Indian came over and picked up the other board and showed it to the two who had been arguing. He chattered away in a confident tone, pointing at the board, the mud, then turning to point at Vaughn and the mud bucket and all the rest of us. The two original belligerents listened quietly for a few seconds, then their faces hardened menacingly. They both began to talk at once, impatient with the third man's stupidity. It was clear that if their own theories might be dubious, his was perfectly imbecilic.

  "Well, I think she'll work," Eb Thomas said. "I say go ahead."

  "How about it`?" Vaughn said. "Is that a demonstration or is that a dernonstration?"

  "Well," I said, "it was impressive, but. . ."

  The Indians had either settled their argument or abandoned it. The whole crowd pushed forward in a line and solemnly shook hands with Vaughn, one by one. Then they filed off home, thoughtful.

  "All right, hell," I said. "Let's try it."

  TWELVE

  1

  It may seem difficult to get excited over a bucket of mud, but we were like a bunch of young men going courting. Bucket after bucket of the gooey stuff we hauled out of the Bay bottom in the shallows. Vaughn had recently become an authority on the sliding qualities of mud, and he supervised with his customary capability. I think we all became fairly expert, sliding it between our fingers and considering it gravely. This was necessary because of the quantity needed; we had to shift our ‘mine' from time
to time as we got through the top layer of silt and discovered that beneath was sand, which would not work at all. And when we moved over even a few feet we found that the character of the mud viewed with a practiced and critical eye, was entirely different. There were ten thousand different kinds of mud on the Bay bottom, of which most were unacceptable by reason of grit or particles of shell or waterlogged sticks or simply wrong consistency. Ours had to be rich and butter-creamy, like the demonstration mud.

  The amount required was really remarkable; you have no idea how much mud it takes to cover the entire bottom of a ship with a thick and heavy coat, not to mention the ways. We stood in lines out into the water, hip-deep in the waves, scooping and passing. As a bucked chain it was inefficient because every man in the chain felt called upon to examine the consistency and give his opinion of the mud and the gatherer at the end. After a few repetitions of this the end man tended to get annoyed and there were arguments until we simply started rotating the scoopers and putting them back at the dry end of the chain.

  ‘Dry' is perhaps not the word, as the rain continued to drift down all day, and those who were spreading by the Ship were nearly as wet as those out in the Bay itself. The drizzle got heavier and heavier all afternoon until about four o'clock. Vaughn cheerfully suggested it was an advantage, as otherwise we would have the problem of the mud drying out.

  But about four o'clock the rain itself stopped, and the sky began to lighten in the west.

  "Look at that," Vaughn said, craning his neck. "It's going to clear."

  "Hell it is," Thomas muttered. He was already in his winter mood.

  "No, look over there," Vaughn said, pointing. "There's blue sky."

  And it was. A tiny patch, but it was growing.

  "It's going to clear for us to put her in the water!"

  Vaughn said, jubilant. "It's a omen!"

  Nobody agreed with him out loud, but nobody disagreed either. We all wanted to believe it. As the clear patch spread across the western horizon Vaughn became more and more exhilarated, as though he were sweeping away the overcast with simple enthusiasm.

  By five o'clock, practically the whole western sky was clear of cloud. You could see the horizon itself, a clean, flat line of joining between sea and sky. You had to admit it looked very auspicious.

  The Indians who had watched Vaughn's demonstration in the morning had apparently spread the word in the village. Small groups drifted around to watch us haul mud all afternoon. Obviously they had never before realized plain mud could be so interesting and useful. And when they saw the bucket after bucket loads we were bringing up, their attention was solidly fixed. After all, with one single bucket of mud Vaughn had provided the most amazing performance of the year for them; what would we not do with two hundred, or three hundred. The possibilities were endless, and by six o'clock, when the ways and Ship were thoroughly plastered, practically the entire village was there.

  I looked for Kilchis, and suddenly remembered he was hurt. I had figured it was nothing serious, or we certainly would have heard about it in the weeks since it had happened. The Ship was the biggest thing that had ever happened in the Bay, and it seemed fitting that he should watch her launched. But perhaps he was not interested. He had never understood exactly what it was about.

  "Where's Sam? He's got to bust the bottle, he's got to christen her."

  "He's around someplace. Hey, Sam!"

  Sam scurried around from the other side of the hull, looking worried.

  "Sam, you ready for her?"

  "Yus, yus," he nodded quickly. We knew he had the name all picked out, but he had refused to tell anybody what it was. No amount of cajoling would get it out of him; he'd just shake his head and say, "I ain't telling. You'd just argue with me and it ain't to be argued about. It's right. I tell you that, it's right, it's the only name she can have." So we had to let it go at that.

  There was a lot of speculation going around, of course, ranging from Oregon's Glory to The Seven Winds and passing by the Samuel Howard. I didn't engage in the argument because I had confidence in Sam. The name had to mean something, it had to express—somehow—everything that had gone into her, it had to sum up the whole process, the agony, the dreaming, the driving of the goddess when She got hold of us and threw us into

  the work. Sam knew; he knew what She was. It would be Right.

  "Holv god," Vaughn said suddenly. "I forgot the champagne!" He took off fast for his cabin, and in a few minutes reappeared atthe door with a bottle in his hand. It was only about a quarter full, the clear white diluted alcohol Means used to sell. Hastily Vaughn uncorked it and dipped it into the Bay, keeping the neck upright so the water could run in without the whisky running out.

  When it was full he swished it around and studied it with satisfaction before recorking it. There was only a little sediment, smokily floating.

  "Champagne's weaker'n whisky, anyway," he said, winking at me conspiratorially. "And I b'lieve we're going to need about all the whisky we got for the party."

  It was all right with me. As far as I was concerned pure Bay water would have been the best thing in the world to launch her with.

  There was a kitchen chair up at the bow for Sam to stand on when he broke the bottle on her. Sam was waiting beside it, wringing his hands nervously and casting apprehensive glances at the crowd. By this time every white man in the Bay was there and a good nine-tenths of the Indians. Never had so many people been collected in one spot in all the history of the Bay.

  Vaughn handed the bottle to Sam. Sam smiled a little and started to get up on the chair. Vaughn put his hand on the little man's shoulder and drew him back. Smiling genially at the poor bewildered Sam, Vaughn himself climbed up on the chair. He stood with his back to the

  Ship, holding both hands up in the air for silence.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," he said officially. "Ladies and gentlemen?"

  Gradually everybody quieted down. Eb Thomas sidled over to me and said, "I never heard nothin' about Vaughn givin' a speech?"

  "It has fallen to my lot to memorialize this vessel," Vaughn said.

  "That's sure god what he's going to do, though," I told Eb. "Listen, he's been practicin', you can tell."

  "This moment marks a historic—ah, moment, in the history of this Bay," Vaughn said. And this vessel takes the water, so our community takes wing."

  Little Sam was still standing beside him, looking alternately at the bottle he held in his hand and Vaughn. Finally he quit looking at Vaughn and stared intently into the bottle, turning it around and around in his hands with a worried expression.

  "She is our lifeline, our tie to the Outside, and prosperity rides in her hold!" Vaughn declaimed.

  He got applause from time to time as he went on. The Indians didn't understand any of it, but figured he had the right. When the whites applauded, so did they. In the end, I expect the Indians were better suited to listen to Vaughn than we, as they were accustomed to the interminable and often incomprehensible tribal speeches.

  When I thought it over I didn't even mind. It would have been kind of empty just to have Sam get up and bust the bottle on her. Vaughn's speech gave you a chance to work up some tension of anticipation, perhaps even more than was strictly necessary.

  Considering the temptation his speech was very moderate, not lasting over five minutes or so. Though I personally believed this was because he had not had time to memorize more than five minutes worth of mumble. Finally he paused, his hands upraised in a last gesture of pride and general noble feeling.

  "And to the man who is responsible has fallen the lot of christening this vessel. Without him, without his wisdom and skill, it would never have been possible. Good old Sam Howard! Come on up here, Sam."

  There was a great cheer from the crew, and people reached forward to pat Sam on the back. He didn't see any of them. He was looking at Her, the last time he would see Her before She took to the water. The curving, pregnant hull, the masts with their canvas tightly furled. He got up on
the chair, blinking, paying no attention to anyone but Her. He was silent for a long

  time up there, simply running his eyes over Her. Then he mumbled, "I christen thee—"

  "Speak up, Sam, louder!" Vaughn said.

  Sam didn't even glance at him. His voice was as firm as I had ever heard it when he started again. I suddenly realized I was holding my breath. It had to be right, it just had to be.

  "I christen thee—Morning Star of Tillamook."

  He swung the bottle and it shattered across her bow. The crowd roared, and I heard the solid ‘thunk' as the sledges smashed away the chocks. I watched Sam. He stared off beyond Her at the sea and his eyes were shining.

  She shivered once, and there was another heavy, dull sound, like the sound of the sledges magnified. Mud squirted out of the ways as she settled off the chocks, drenching the sledge-men from the waist down with a tidal wave of thick, gooey slime. The enormous weight of her hull squeezed water out of the muck remaining and trickles of almost clear liquid ran down the wood and into the bay. There was a moment's shocked silence as we watched her settle firmly, immovably on the ways. Then Vaughn said, "Let's give her three times three anyway, boys!"

  "HIP HIP HOORAW!"

  "HIP HIP HOORAW!"

  "HIP HIP HOORAW!"

  Even the Indians joined in, sensing the importance of the moment, howling and singing their own songs. Some of them looked disappointed, particularly those who had watched Vaughn's undeniably more interesting demonstration.

  Sam got down off the chair silently and started to walk away. Vaughn wouldn't let him go. He jumped up on the chair again and started a rousing good version of "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" in honor of Sam and everybody joined in, good-naturedly slapping Sam on the back and joshing him. He stood in the middle of the crowd, looking at the ground. After a few more songs and choruses Vaughn leaped energetically off the chair and hollered, "All right, everybody up to my place!"

  "Hooraw for Sam, hooraw for Vaughn!"

  "HOORAW F OR US ALL YOU SILLY BASTARD!"