To Build A Shipt - Don Berry

by Don Berry

  It occurred to me that I had probably less to offer than any other creature in the world. This in itself was a sort of distinction, though it did not much cheer me. I resolved that on my next trip to Paradise I would search out the dry season. At that moment I would have preferred Hell by far, as I understood it was warmer and dryer than I had been recently.

  This will roughly sketch my mood and condition when I first saw the bay. I had dreamed of, it seemed, all my life. Any pleasure I might have found in reaching the end of my road was water-logged and soggy. Achievement is always so, I've found. By the time you is either too late, or you are tired, cold, and wet. The sharp joy you might have felt — that you in fact anticipated eagerly at the beginning — has foundered in the process of attaining your goal.

  So I gazed stupidly at the Promised Land, wondering vaguely what I was going to do now, as Eden appeared to be as wet as the rest of the world. There was a cluster of five or six Indian houses near the outlet of a river, and I made for this village, fascinated by the prospect of a roof as a moth by candle flame.

  The rain beat down so heavily that the outlines of the lodges were obscured by a fog of bursting droplets, but I could see that the construction was typical of these coast people. Split cedar planks two or three inches thick and up to thirty feet long formed the roof and low outside walls. The interior would be dug out some feet below the surface of the ground, a sort of pit, which made these lodges more spacious than they appeared from outside. There was a small oval opening in the end wall, covered by a flap of elkskin which, at the moment, was cascading water from its dangling bottom edge.

  I approached the first lodge, and for want of anything better, rapped loudly on the wall beside the door. After a few moments the flap was lifted, and the wrinkled face of an ancient Indian woman appeared around the edge. She looked at me.

  "Klahowya," I said.

  She continued to stare, then blinked suddenly and disappeared, dropping the flap behind her. I looked around at the other lodges. Where I was standing there was a steady near-torrent running from the roof peak, and I didn't know what to do. A moment later the flap lifted again, and the face of a man appeared, equally old.

  "Klahowya," I. said.

  He scratched his cheek absently and disappeared.

  This interested scrutiny occurred twice more, in descending order of age. We had worked down to a young man of about twenty. This one emerged completely from the door and stood facing me. He was wholly naked, and carried no weapons. He looked me up and down, then suddenly lifted the elkskin flap and motioned me through.

  I stooped through the door and almost stumbled down the three steps carved in the earth itself. The long dark room was full of the steady clattering roar of the rain. There were three fires and a place for a fourth, one near each corner. A sort of continuous step had been carved in the earth along each wall, about three feet above the level of the floor. On this sleeping-bench a ragtag collection of Indians lounged or sat in various attitudes of repose. They were silent briefly when I came in, but quickly returned to their chattering conversations. The area around each fire appeared to be occupied by a family, as each area had its share of all ages, from the ancient crones to pudgy naked babies.

  The young man who had finally permitted me to enter motioned me to the fire at the right-hand side of the door, which was apparently that of his family. I recognized the old woman and man who had first examined me at the door.

  "Klahowya," I said again, feeling very foolish.

  The old man nodded and moved over a bit to make room for me on the bench. My eyes were smarting from the smoke that filled the lodge. One of the roof planks had been raised and supported with a long pole to serve as a smoke vent, but there was still a good deal in the air. Below this vent, of course, there was a long wet streak on the white sand that covered the earthen floor. Ventilation was obviously a question of inadequate compromise, as are most adjustments with the world. The more smoke you let out, the more rain you let in. While I did not understand their language, I gathered from the pointing and gesticulating that one family was ill-temperedly debating this very question.

  Looking back, I believe I would have been frightened, had I not been so thoroughly miserable. After all, I did not know these people, and the Tillamooks, or Killamooks, had a rather bad reputation. They spoke a language related to the Nez Percé far to the east, rather than the Chinook dialect which was common among the other coastal tribes. This tended to keep them slightly apart from the other tribes, which in itself would have been sufficient to give them a nasty reputation, of course.

  In any case, I was not frightened, because there was certainly nothing they could do to me that would have made me any more miserable than I already was. Here was the fire, beginning to warm my clammy carcass, and here was my clammy carcass, beginning to be warmed. If they chose to eat me later, so much the worse. I could not have cared less.

  ‘My' Tillamook family was discussing me in their language when two young men pushed the flap aside and came in. They wore flat, conical hats like those of the Chinamen, and short capes that reached to their hips. Hat and cape alike were made of a finely woven grass or reed of some sort. Whether this rain equipment was effective or not, I had no way of knowing. But as they, too, were entirely naked underneath, I knew they would be warm and dry before I was.

  The young man of my family called them over, pointed to me, and chattered at them. They regarded me solemnly. One of them muttered something that sounded uncomplimentary and went off to the vacant corner. Borrowing a burning faggot from the neighboring fire, he began to kindle his own. The second was apparently more interested in the problem I posed, and squatted by the fire, stripping off his rain-cape and hat and putting them in a neat stack beside him. He and my young man then discussed me in a series of wholly incomprehensible guttural noises and grunts.

  At last my young man turned to me. Leaning forward intently he said, "Mika klatawa. You go." He pointed to the door, but his eyes remained on me. At least he spoke the Jargon, which was a beginning.

  I was highly reluctant to leave the first warmth I had seen in so many days, and tried to put him off by smiling.

  "Kah klatawa?" I said. "Go where?" All the time smiling faintly as though it were a little joke between the two of us. I wasn't going anyplace unless they dragged me.

  "Tenasam. Tenasam."

  It was a word I did not know. I tried to equivocate, being very friendly and ambiguous, but it was difficult. While I spoke the ]argon, I did not speak it fluently, nor did he. And in any case it is not a language it is possible to speak fluently. I found it more than a little difficult, moreover, to compose a convincing argument against going tenansam when I didn't grasp the subject of the conversation. In the end it was all quite useless, as my friend was insistent that I go.

  Further, it seemed that the newcomer was to take me. He put on his broad coolie hat, though he left the cape behind. Regretfully I left the lovely fire with its warm, choking aura of smoke. We set off again in the rain, which was now being whipped about viciously by a spasmodic wind from the sea.

  Ahead of me my guide marched firmly, stark naked in a tube of rain that poured down from the brim of his broad hat. It was more than absurd, the parasol-like canopy above the brown body with its buttocks jogging up and down as he walked. I didn't know which was the more ridiculous, he with his hat or myself, dragging behind with the vivacity and spirit of a drowned slug, faithfully lugging my pack of flour-paste and weak coffee. But that was how it was when the Tillamook and I went tenasam.

  4

  The Indian set a good two-forty pace, and it was about half an hour later that we rounded a small point of the Bay. The Indian stopped and pointed ahead. Some distance off, and obscured by whipping veils of rain, there was a squarish stack of weathered lumber. It perched on a tiny bluff just at the Bay's edge, as close to the water as it could get without being taken out by the tide.

  "Tenasam," the Tillamook said, pointing. "Tenasam.
" He turned abruptly and started back the way we come.

  I peered through the rain at the pile, grayish against the dark of the forest behind. Suddenly I saw ‘a window in the middle of it, and realized it was not, after all, at random stack of boards left out to weather, but a shanty of sorts.

  In fact, as I approached, my opinion wavered back and forth several times between woodpile and cabin. Finally I was certain it was a more or less conscious construction of man's intelligence; a woodpile would have been more sturdy. In the gusts of wind that whipped off the Bay the little structure seemed to shake itself like a wet dog. It shuddered alarmingly, and I wondered if I had arrived just at the critical moment when it would collapse into the sea and be washed out in the tide.

  It stood, however, and continued to stand in defiance of what we laughingly call the laws of nature. I approached the window. As I leaned forward to look inside I was suddenly confronted by a ghostly visage hanging just a few inches from my own, on the other side of the salt-frosted glass. I had just time to observe a shock of blond hair, a startled expression, and a face that seemed drawn from a fairy tale, something about gnomes and elves. Then the apparition darted suddenly out of sight, leaving me with my heart thudding ponderously from

  the shock.

  After a moment I walked around the back; the front was perched so close to the edge of the little bluff I was afraid of falling off. However, there was neither door nor window in any of the other walls. Through a crack between two boards an eye watched my tour. It was not a

  comforting sensation.

  In perfect frankness, I was getting angry. I had been traveling for nine days. I had been inspected for fleas, soaked by rain, frozen and hungry, examined by disembodied heads for god knows what serious defects, surveyed by naked savages in smoke-filled lodges and finally dragged out into the howling tempest by a walking nudity of a parasol man. I am not demanding by nature, but I sincerely felt I deserved something better of the world.

  I was circling the cabin immersed in thoughts of this general nature, and I believe I was working myself up to the point of unreasonable violence, such as kicking the whole damned contraption into the sea and going home. But on the opposite side from the window there was a stick-and-mud-plastered chimney, and from the chimney there emerged a faint vapor of blue smoke that was quickly whipped off into nothingness by the wind. That changed everything. There was a fire in that cabin. If it was dry enough for a fire to burn, it was certainly dry enough for me.

  I went to the front and knocked very politely on the door, as I had at the Indian lodge. A gust of wind , knocked at the same moment, and the little structure wavered badly. I didn't care. Let it fall, I thought illogically, just as long as I get inside.

  The door opened a bit, and the gnomelike pale face appeared again like a frightened shrew at its hole.

  "Hello there," I said my friendliest way. "My name's Ben Thaler. I'm from the Valley and I've been traveling nine days and I'm soaked clear through to the other side and I wonder if I could come in for a bit and get dry I don't want to bother you or any—"

  The door opened a little wider, perhaps inadvertently. I made for it, getting my shoulders inside and catching a glimpse of the warm and cherry light of the fire.

  The little man backed away apprehensively and said, "Yus," very softly.

  I stripped off my pack and squatted in front of the fire, smiling my most ingratiating smile at my reluctant host. He cleared his throat.

  "Yes?" I encouraged.

  "Uh — uh, the pack. Maybe you could—"

  I looked at the pack, and saw what he meant. The bottom was a gooey mess of flour-paste and coffee stain, and was oozing all over the floor like an open wound. I jumped up quickly and stuck the pack outside. "Sorry," I said, hurrying back to the fire.

  He cleared his throat again. "You're wet, man," he said.

  "Noticed that myself," I said cheerily. I suddenly thought I was going to cry, I was so damned wet and cold and miserable.

  "'Wel, uh—take off them clothes, you'll—you'll catch your death." He shipped a blanket off the bed and handed it to me. I got rid of my soggy clothes and huddled up in the blanket.

  "I'm sorry I—pushed in like that," I said. "But I really had to get dry. I thought I was going to die or something if I didn't get dry. I was scared you weren't going to let me in.

  He frowned worriedly down at the floor. "Yus," he said finally. "You—you had a awful kind of a look out there." He blinked uncertainly at me and returned his attention to the floor.

  I wasn't surprised any, but the warmth of the fire soothed me and the utterly miraculous dryness of the blanket was like the touch of an angel's wing on my skin. I had the greatest luxury known to man, a dry blanket when you're wet and cold. It didn't seem important that I also had an awful kind of a look.

  "Uh—name's Same Howard," he said. "Sam. People call me Little Sam. I don't mind much."

  This was the solution, then. He was tenasam, or rather, Tenas Sam, Little Sam in the Jargon.

  "Well, Sam." I told him. "I don't care what people call me, long as they call me for supper." I was beginning to cheer up.

  "You want some supper?" he said, a little bewildered since it was still the middle of the afternoon.

  I didn't know whether I was more disappointed that he didn't appreciate my wit, or pleased at the prospect of food. I settled for the food. It was getting to be a habit. For nine days I had methodically sacrificed my self-esteem for the welfare of my body, putting up with all sorts of humiliations for a little comfort. In thinking it over I could not say I regretted it, and it is a policy I have scrupulously followed ever since.

  Physically, Little Sam Howard was not so abnormal as my first startled glimpse had led me to believe. At least not quite. He was very small and his head—with a huge halo of blond hair and tiny pointed chin—seemed large out of all proportion to his body, as though there had been a mistake made in assembling him. But that was nearly all, and surely no more than a reasonable departure from the image of God.

  However, I discovered in the next few hours that he was the most monstrously shy human being I had ever met. As I ate, I tried to make conversation, so as not to give the impression of an exaggerated eagerness. It was virtually impossible. Little Sam sat staring worriedly into the fire with his hands clasped tightly between his knees.

  "Looks like we may get a late spring," I said, between bites of the good elk steak he had nervously prepared for me.

  He bobbed his head, horribly embarrassed by the lateness of the spring.

  "Probably mean a nice fall, though," I added.

  Sam ducked, as though I had thrown something. You could tell he hoped he would not be held responsible for the character of the fall, good or bad. His timidity was almost overwhelming, and I became embarrassed and tongue-tied myself, out of sympathy. I soon learned to avoid direct questions, as they posed for Sam an almost unsolvable problem. Someone had deliberately made a demand on him; would he be able to satisfy it? did he want to? and—if he were wrong?

  The expenditure of energy in all this was enormous. He clenched his fists between his knees, he bit his lower lip, a vein on his forehead throbbed, had it been a little warmer he would have been drowned in nervous sweat.

  This timidity was in part a result of the fact that Sam Howard was more sensible to the presence of other human beings than anyone I have ever known. The simple presence of people in the same room drained energy from him like wringing a sponge. It was impossible not to make demands on him, for being there was already a demand.

  I later learned that before coming to live solitary at the Bay, Sam had been a builder, a shipwright. It was not only his trade, it was his life, but he had been forced to abandon it. As a shipwright he probably had few equals in the world. His skill was, by normal human terms, virtually without limit, as I was to discover. But for Sam—it was never enough. Imperfection tortured him, haunted him, made his life a constant long penitence. And a man who is wounded by im
perfection will spend much of his time hurting, as there is a good deal of it about.

  A piece of lumber with a tiny crack in one end was, for Sam, a source of anguish, and I speak perfectly literally when I say he would pass a haunted, sleepless night over it. A peg not driven perfectly flush was an agony; a crooked timber a direct accusation.

  In short, the world in Sam's eyes was intended to be perfect, and he himself could never live up to the image. His responsibility was universal, and he shouldered the burden of all the mistakes in this world. He was guiltier than anybody, for he was guilty of it all.

  Humanity was the sole error for which Sam did not entirely accept the blame. But that was Somebody Else's doing, and he once told me in perfect seriousness that he believed the human race had been invented to annoy him.

  Thus, in spite of his skill and love, shipbuilding had become intolerable for him, a mistress of whom he was unworthy. There was not only the demanded perfection of his trade, but the constant presence of humanity, which he could neither accept nor control.

  This description is the result of the reflection of years, many of them. I have had much cause to reflect on the character of Little Sam Howard. Like all descriptions of a man, it misrepresents him, because it is so simple. He was, after all, a man, and one dealt with him as a man like any other, so far as it was possible. He ate, slept, worked like the rest of us, and it is likely that another might simply find that he was unusually hard to talk to. I had no idea at the time how much Little Sam's peculiarities would affect my life, nor that in time I would come to share some of his guilt. I just shrugged to myself and thought, hell, we're all a little bit peculiar if it comes to that.

  I was too young to be concerned about such things, and found Sam's shyness a hindrance, no more, as it made it more difficult to get information out of him. And information was what I desperately wanted. I have always had an enormous hunger for information, which is quite inexplicable since more often than not I do not even use the information I already have.