To Build A Shipt - Don Berry

by Don Berry

  When Sam came he was pale. He said nothing to anyone, and we all watched him anxiously. We didn't know what the new pattern was to be. After Sam's—recent actions, there was no way to predict how he would be with her.

  He stood off at a little distance, looking her over from bow to stern. I tried to see through his eyes, but she overwhelmed me with her beauty, and I could not know if there was anything that might dissatisfy Sam. Finally he walked slowly all around her, dragging the palm of his hand absently along the frames, sometimes stopping to check a bevel from floor futtock to top timber. He was almost somnolent, letting the rhythms of her body absorb him, creep into his veins and nerves. I noticed him glance quickly at Number Twelve, where I had replaced the treenail. He said nothing, but I was relieved to see a faint smile on his lips. At Fourteen he let his fingertips rest on the nick I had stupidly caused with the dropped adze. He rubbed it gently, as though he could make it right with the simple power of his desire that it be perfect.

  "Maybe we can plane it out," I said.

  He didn't answer me. He continued on around, touching gently, looking, evaluating. Finally he stepped off a little distance from the bow, and looked at her head on.

  I couldn't stand it any longer. "Well, Sam?" I said.

  He was silent for another moment, and said at last, "Well. Seems as how she's going up pretty fair, anyway."

  There was another silence, until Eb Thomas threw back his head and howled at the sky. "Hooraw, boys! Let's move!"

  Everybody grinned at each other and Vaughn said authoritatively, "All right, all right, come on! Let's have Twenty-two over here! Come on, move!"

  We broke up like a flock of startled, happy quail. We were back to work. We were ourselves again.

  It felt as though we had come home after a ten-year journey. Suddenly everything was familiar, and absurdly nostalgic. Hendrickson and Peter Morgan got the whip-saw running hot, and I never knew a man could miss a sound as much as I had missed that rasping whipsaw. I suppose a man born by the sea will never lose the necessity of the sound of breakers, and it was that way for me with the whipsaw. Life did not seem normal without that constant background to every act, every thought, every word.

  We worked as though we could see a wick burning down to a keg of powder. In five days we had the framing absolutely completed. Not a little left to do here and a few touches there, but finished. Cant-timbers and all. The keelson went in, fairing sweetly up against the deadwoods at either end and lying atop the floor futtocks. We tied her all together inside with the long and incredibly graceful strips of the bilge strakes and, up high, the deck clamps. That was more tricky, and we had to hold ourselves down a little. The exact deck height had to be measured on each frame, making allowance for the thickness of the deck itself and the beams. The deck beams would rest on the clamps, hooked with the iron knees we'd salvaged from the Shark. So the clamp, a long strip running all the way around, had to be absolutely perfect at each frame. Everything had to be perfect so, I suppose it was no more trouble than anything else. But, god! how we hated to go slow. We wanted to push, we wanted to dive, we wanted to run and jump and fly and get her done.

  It was the seventh day after we restarted, the day we finished the deck clamps, that the wick burned all the way down.

  I did not know how long I had been asleep when I felt someone shaking my shoulder. Blearily I looked up, trying to adjust the real shape of the Ship that loomed up beside me in the night with the image of her I had been dreaming.

  Eb Thomas stood over me, looking worried.

  "Thomas, what the hell's the matter with you? You're going to be too tired to work tomorrow."

  "I heard something, Ben," he said.

  I glanced at my fire, and there were still a lot of good coals, so I had not been asleep too long. Vaguely I could hear a little rustling as the other men sleeping by the Ship shifted under their blankets.

  "I don't hear nothing," I said. "Thomas, go back to sleep. For god's sake don't be butt-headed in the middle of the night."

  "No, Ben, I heard—"

  And just then I heard it, too. The sound of a rifle. I came awake faster than ever in my life and bolted up, getting tangled in my blanket.

  "You hear it?" Thomas said.

  "Yes. What's going on?"

  "I don't know," Thomas said. "That' s what worries me."

  Three more shots came, spaced irregularly. Then nothing.

  "It sounds like it's down by the end of the Bay," I said. "Down the other side of Kilchis' village."

  "Maybe them Indians got drunk and are shootin' up the place," Thomas said.

  "They get happy-drunk, not shootin'-drunk," I said.

  "Anyways, I don't think there's any liquor in the Bay except at Vaughn's. And he don't give none to the Indians, Kilchis don't like it."

  "What should we do?" Thomas said worriedly.

  "I don't know. Anyway we better wake up the rest of them. If it gets any closer we might better go up to Vaughn's."

  We went around to the other blankets, shaking up those who were still asleep. We built up my fire again and sat around it, listening to the darkness. After the isolated cluster of shots that woke me, there was nothing.

  The night sounds continued normally; the rumbling mutter of the breakers at the bar, the soft brushing sounds as fir tops moved in the light breeze. Nothing.

  After about two hours of tense listening and low talk, we all went back to bed again. I was tired enough to go to sleep, but it was not a restful night.

  The next morning we were due to start on the rail stringers. They had been cut to size, and there was little to do but mount them, and all of us could not work at once.

  "Say, Ben," Vaughn said. "Did you hear guns last night?"

  "Yes."

  "What was it all about, do you know?"

  "No. Sounded like it was down past the village. I don't think it's any of our business." I didn't want to think about it, in fact, and was willing to let the whole thing pass. I was afraid to find out something that might stop work again.

  Vaughn frowned. "I don't like it, anyhow," he said. "I think somebody better find out what it was."

  I looked at the rail stringers waiting to go up. I didn't think I wanted to know about the shooting bad enough to leave her, even though there wasn't much I could do today.

  "Why don't we run down and see what Kilchis has to say?" Vaughn said.

  "Go ahead."

  "You come on, too, Ben."

  "There's nothing I can—oh, hell, all right. I suppose we best find out. Sam! Hey, Sam!" I told him what we had in mind. His cabin was much farther away from the village than the ways, and he had heard nothing. He frowned when I told him about the shooting, but quickly lost all interest when somebody dropped a stringer.

  "Break it!" he shouted. "Go on, break it all! I don't give a damn." He was his old self again these days, his old working self, which was all that mattered. The real man is the man that works; the rest is a masquerade.

  "So Vaughn and I thought we'd go down and see if Kilchis knows anything?

  "Yus. Yus, I don't need you for a while. Go ahead." He wasn't very interested in the problem, which was normal. I suppose there isn't much interesting about a gunshot, unless you happen to hear it yourself in the middle of the night.

  We didn't even get to the village. About halfway there, Vaughn and I met Kilchis, heading up toward the Ship.

  "Kilchis," I said, "we heard shots last night. Did anything happen?"

  "I come to tell you," Kilchis said. "Is not—serious. Some of the Klickitat people come here last night. We send them home."

  "Klickitats? From clear in the Valley?"

  "There is much talk in the Valley," Kilchis said. "The Klickitats and Kalapuya are angry. Also the Clackamas. They say if the Killamooks do not rise to kill the Bostons, they will do it. They are sullics."

  "What was the shooting?"

  "My guards caught them coming into the Bay. They shoot to tell them to go home again." />
  "What guards?" Vaughn said.

  "Since those others killed Cockshaten, there are guards. There are some of the young men on the trail from the Valley. Others on the beach road. They will stay until the trouble is over."

  Vaughn looked at me. We had heard nothing about guards.

  "When will the trouble be over?" I said.

  "In time. In time they will forget about it. Now they are angry, but they do not want trouble with us. They will try to sneak in to find the Bostons alone. We will keep them out. I was there last night, I talk to them, I explain. They are satisfied now, but there will be others. Now they go back into the Valley, they say they will kill the Yam Hill Bostons."

  "Wouldn't mind if they did," Vaughn muttered. "That big bastard with the beard is behind all of this."

  "How many of the Klickitats were there?" I said. "Many, many," Kilchis said, frowning. "I did not expect so many."

  "How many? In numbers."

  "Ten, maybe."

  "That—that doesn't seem like so many," I said. I wondered if he had the figure right, or was just picking one at random. I have never understood the way Indians think about numbers.

  "You do not understand about this thing," Kilchis said.

  "There is no war, the tyees of the other bands will not permit a war over this thing. Between us, perhaps. But not with the Bostons, the Bostons kill too many people in a war. We would all die, then. This is a thing for the young men to get excited over. It will be small groups of young men who are excited and wish to show they are brave."

  "That's what it was last night? Young men, excited?"

  "Yes. No tyee would let his band be risked for such a thing. There are too many Boston soldiers in the country. I do not understand how you can have so many soldiers and still have people."

  ‘There's—a lot of us, Kilchis."

  "Yes," he nodded. "Like the salmon in the rivers. I do not understand where all the Bostons come from. It must be a very big country, much bigger than mine. Some of my young men, they have been to Astoria. They say they see all the people in the world walking toward them. And when they turn around, there are just as many going in the other direction. Is that true?"

  "Just about, Kilchis."

  He frowned, and finally lifted his great shoulders in a shrug. "I do not understand where the salmon come from, either," he said at last. "They come, and that is enough. So it is with the Boston. I did not know there were so many people in the world. It must be very big."

  "I'm afraid the salmon are a lot more use to you than we are," I said stupidly.

  "Yes," Kilchis said. "Yes, that is true. We eat the salmon, and trade."

  This was not a flattering comparison of value, but I suppose it was my own fault for bringing it out.

  "Well," Vaughn said. "Then you don't think there's any great danger from the other tribes?"

  "There is always danger when men are excited and angry. There will be shooting in the night. Your people who are far out should come in, for safety. The man who lives in the tree should come in, he is all alone. We will try to keep them out of the Bay, but we may not catch them all."

  "All right," I said. "We'll bring him in. He can stay with me."

  "Hyas Kloshe," Kilchis nodded satisfied. "Klahowya."

  "Klahowya, Kilchis."

  He turned and started back toward his village.

  "God, what's he doin' out there in the middle of the night?" Vaughn said. "That's dangerous."

  "He knows his trade pretty well. That's what being a tyee means, I guess. He's responsible? My mind wasn't on what I was saying. I had just had a glimpse of something that drove the attacking bands right out of my mind.

  "I suppose I'll go help Champion move his kit in," Vaughn said.

  "The hell you will!" I blurted out.

  "What's the matter?"

  "I will," I said. "I'll do it, and nobody else. He'll stay with me."

  "Hell, you don't have to—"

  "Listen, Vaughn, I'll do it. I been here better than two years now. I had a picture in my mind of the man that lives in the tree for three years, and I never seen it. I tried a thousand ways to get Joe to invite me up in his tree, but he never did, the stupid bastard. He's a butt-head, just like Thomas. Now I got the perfect chance, and I'm going to see it."

  "Hell, Ben," Vaughn said. "There ain't all that much to it. It's just—"

  "Don't tell me," I said. "For christ's sake don't spoil it now."

  "My god, I never knew you was so interested in Joe's tree. I'd of took you up a dozen times if I'd knowed you was so—listen, why didn't you ever say something about it?"

  "I figured it would just happen real natural like," I said. "An' other times I was too busy to think about it. Anyway," I admitted finally, "to tell you the truth, I was kind of embarrassed to be so interested about that damn tree."

  "By god, Ben," Vaughn laughed. "You're a strange case. You really are. Hell, it's just a—"

  "Don't tell me, don't tell me! Vaughn, don't you ever listen? I don't want to hear about it, I want to see it with my very own eyes. I had that in my mind for three years, now I'm going to see it."

  "All right," Vaughn said, real fast so I couldn't stop him. "But it ain't going to be like you got it in your mind."

  He always had to have the last word, Vaughn. But I didn't care. For three years—not all the time, but regular enough—I'd had that damned picture in my mind of Joe Champion hanging by his knees up in his tree and looking around. After knowing Joe it even seemed probable. And if he didn't do it while I was there—by christ I'd ask him. It's not often a man gets a chance to compare the reality with his image of it. I intended to profit fully from the opportunity. It might never happen again in my life.

  2

  "So that's about how she stands," Vaughn said.

  "Chances are we ain't going to have too much trouble, but there's no point takin' too many chances, neither. Ever'body living far out better bunk up down here." He was standing on the big fir butt by the ways, his feet dangerously close to the model. Little Sam was watching him suspiciously, afraid he was going to break something. He didn't care about any of it, Sam. While Vaughn talked he glanced from the model to the Ship and back again, wanting it to be over so he could get back to her.

  The crew had listened in silence to Vaughn's explanation of last night's shooting. Now there was a little shifting of feet and muttering, as they talked it over among themselves. I was apprehensive that someone might even say he was not going to work with the Indians rising, and I waited impatiently for the first definite reaction. I had half a notion that the first one would swing the rest.

  Finally Eb Thomas cleared his throat. He had been frowning down at the ground. Now he looked around him at all the others, his expression half worried, half puzzled. "Well," he said. Everyone turned to look at him. I was panic stricken. It was just my luck to have a notorious coward like Eb Thomas be the first to speak. I think I'd have thrown an ax at him if I'd had one in my hands.

  "Well?" he said again. "Let's get back to work. We been standin' around with our hands in our pockets for ten minutes."

  I think I'd have kissed him if I'd been a little nearer. Or maybe not, but I was sure damned happy to see everybody getting back to their jobs, even if they dragged—a little. It would be all right. When we were working everything was all right, we were full and happy. It was those tiny moments in between that were dangerous, when we had a chance to think.

  Joe was standing near me, his hands on his head and his mouth half open, staring at the sky. I went over to him.

  "Well, Joe," I said, friendly. "You can bunk up with me."

  "That's real nice of you, Ben," he said gratefully. "I guess I best do that. I mean, I wouldn't want to get killed or anything like that."

  "No, take no chances," I said heartily. "Tell you what. After work I'll just run up to your—place with you, and give you a little hand to bring your kit down."

  "Oh, you don't have todo that," Joe said, embarrasse
d by my gesture. "There ain't that much to bring down."

  "It's nothin', Joe, think nothing of it. It'll go easier with two, anyway, I mean, you can lower the stuff down to me, and I'll stand on the ground and catch it."

  "Yeah," he said, looking at me funny, "but—there ain't all that much, Ben, I mean—"

  I took him very gently by the shoulder. "Joe," I said, like a father, "don't argue with me. I'm going to help you whether you like it or not. just don't argue with me about it."

  "Oh," he said anxiously, "I ain't a arguin' man, Ben, you know that. But I just—"

  "Fine," I said. "That's it, then. We'll go up right after work, all right?"

  And that's just what we did.

  I knew the general direction of his tree, just from comments I'd picked up in two years, but that was all. Once or twice the first year, when it was still hot in my mind, I'd gone out for little constitutional walks in that direction, just sort of looking around casually. All I ever got out of it was a crick in the neck from peering up into the branches to see if I could spot any sign that a man lived up there. I think I had never before realized that the whole damn forest was individual trees, and that a man could easily spend a lifetime looking up into the branches of each one. I'd finally given up that approach as hopeless. But the doubt and anxiety were almost over now and I was cheerful as a squirrel as we trudged up toward the foothills.

  "By god," I said. "You know, Joe, it ain't every man that lives in a tree, I'll say that."

  "No," Joe said thoughtfully. "No, that's right. I'm the only one I guess." He walked along like a mountain, his huge long legs eating up the trail like a brush fire. I almost had to trot to keep up. I could see how he'd be able to shinny up damn near any tree, even without a ladder. Even every night. After a while, I supposed a man got used to it.