To Build A Shipt - Don Berry

by Don Berry

  The crew moved off in a bunch, sweeping Sam along irresistibly. As Vaughn passed us he said, "Say, Eb, tomorrow would you-"

  "Yeah," Eb said discouragedly. "Tomorrow I'll butcher a cow."

  "How's that for a omen, Vaughn?" I asked him.

  "Hell, who believes in omens?" he said. "‘Listen, Ben, don't be superstitious, it brings bad luck."

  I didn't say anything more, but I wasn't feeling lucky.

  "Don't be down about it," Vaughn said, clapping us both on the backs "She's official now, getting her in the water's just a formality. She's as good as launched."

  "In your head, maybe."

  "Listen, Eb," Vaughn said seriously. "Maybe the way you think about a thing is just as important as what is."

  "Yeah, you can think up your little dreams all day," Eb said bitterly. "Me, I got to butcher a cow."

  But Vaughn refused to be distracted by Eb's pessimism. "Well, Ben," he said, "what do you think of her? Where'd Sam get that name, anyway? She's real pretty, Morning Star of Tillamook?

  I stopped short. "You don't—you don't remember the wom—" I shivered involuntarily, and without my wishing it there came into my mind not the woman—I could not even remember what she looked like—but the sharp, clear image of Cockshaten writhing half-strangled on the ground in his own blood and vomit, and Sam's fever-eaten eyes as he lay rigid below the slowly swinging corpse.

  "Remember what?" Vaughn said curiously.

  "Nothing. Nothing. I guess he-made it up, or something. He must have made it up."

  "Well, it's real pretty anyway," Vaughn said admiringly. "Sort of—I don't know, sort of expresses her character like. Morning Star."

  "Yes," I said after a minute. "Yes, I guess maybe it does."

  "You look glum, Ben," Vaughn said. "By god, what you need's a party, and that's just what we've got."

  2

  And that was just what we had. Vaughn produced four bottles of Means' watered whisky and set them triumphantly in the middle of the table. It doesn't seem much for fifteen men, but I discovered that night how little difference the quantity makes; it's the mood that counts.

  How he did it I still don't know. Vaughn was on fire with his delight, and by the time we were packed into his cabin each of us was as thoroughly convinced as he that She had been launched—it was all over—it was finished. We had done it. We were already drunk on Her blood.

  "There she is, boys," he said, thumping the bottles down. "Your reward's in heaven, but have a little sip now.

  The corks came out like magic, and the first swallow almost did the job. The bottles whizzed through the crowd like deer through brush and were two-thirds empty by the time they got back to the table.

  "Don't worry about a thing, boys, there's more where that came from!" It was a damned lie, but we didn't worry; we couldn't.

  When we were all in the cabin there scarcely seemed room enough to move. But there was movement enough for any fifty cabins, a restless milling and pushing and turmoil. VVhat space was not filled solidly with men was filled with tension. I have never known, before or since, an atmosphere like that. I saw men sick on one swallow of whisky, I saw men crying on two and passed out on three. We had burned and burned, and now it was all over. All the energy that was left in us would go up in one huge explosion.

  Vaughn got a fiddle from someplace in back, and he started to play. He didn't fiddle very well, but he did it loud, and that's what we needed.

  "Hooraw, Vaughn! Go it, boys! Where the hell's Sam? Get Sam up here, it's his shoutin' day!"

  "Three or four of them dragged Sam mercilessly over, from the corner where he was trying to hide, and hoisted him up on their shoulders. He hung on to a couple of handfuls of hair and looked scared as they paraded him around the room three times. It was like moving through water; there was no space ahead of the triumphal procession and none behind. Still they moved, and the gap of their passing was quickly filled by the milling pack, boiling and surging like a wake behind them, reaching up to touch Sam or pat him on the back.

  After the third circuit they put him up on the table. He stood there looking around at the solid mass of humanity, blinking nervously, his shoulders low, saying nothing.

  "God damn, Vaughn! I can't hear you!"

  Vaughn scraped away at the fiddle, he raked the bow doggedly across the strings and they suffered from it, squeaking and wailing through the cabin with the nerve-shattering sound of breaking glass.

  There was a sharp and agonizing emptiness in us all, a hunger, a thirst, a loneliness we did not know how to appease. We tried to fill it with the noise and the music and the whisky and the shouting. But there is no filling the hot and anguished void that opens in a man's belly when the work is through. She had come to life and we were dying of Her beauty. We had burned for Her and we burned still and ‘we would always burn, but the work was through, the work was gonej She betrayed us like a woman and left us burning wildly in the night. She became the living goddess and we died, becoming men again. The terrible emptiness of being merely humanspun in our bellies like a firewheel.

  Only Sam did not seem tormented. He stood still and let the boiling ocean surge around him, seeming elsewhere. In time they let him down, forced a bottle in his hand, and he slipped off like a shrew, darting for the safety and obscurity of a corner.

  Somebody had the wonderful idea of having a traveling orchestra so everybody could hear. Two guys got behind Vaughn's chair and pushed him around the room, the chair legs screeching terribly on the plank floor. This was a lot of work, shoving him through the crowd, and they soon had to have a relief crew. Vaughn paid little attention, he didn't care if he traveled or not. He fiddled beatifically, smiling and scraping, smiling and scraping.

  They finally shoved him back into another corner and everybody clapped like the devil and Vaughn stood up and bowed deep, but he never stopped fiddling. He had found a way to fill his own emptiness and nobody was going to stop him.

  Eb Thomas had been glum through the first part, thinking about the cow, I suppose. I remember seeing him sitting by the fireplace with men shoving back and forth in front of him in a blur. When I could catch a glimpse of Eb himself, he was staring down at the floor, sucking absently on a bottle when it came around to him.

  Suddenly, without any warning, he leaped up like a madman and howled at the ceiling. Then he began to dance. It wasn't too much of a dance, and after a while he got tired of making up new figures. So he stood in one place and stomped with his boots, jumping and thundering and trying his damnedest to break through the floor.

  He climbed up on the table and began to jump with both feet at the same time, turning in circles and bellowing incomprehensibly. The noise was tremendous, like being inside a bass drum with a maniac pounding it. Or two maniacs. Then he stomped with alternate feet, lifting his knees high in the air and bringing the massive boots down with the force to crush rock. From time to time he threw his head back and gave a high, wild wail like a wolf, screaming out his loneliness to the ceiling. Then he got down on his knees and pounded on the table with his fists. The veins stood out on his forehead and his face was running with sweat. Somebody reached up and grabbed him by the shirtsleeve. He yanked away and the sleeve tore off at the shoulder.

  "HOORAW FOR EB!"

  A bunch began to drum with their feet on the floor just to keep him going, see how long he would last.

  Vaughn's Eddie got faster and faster. His face too was swollen and drenched with sweat. In the corner he played and played and his eyes bugged out and his hair fell down over his face.

  "Come on, Vaughn! Let's play that thing!"

  Vaughn's face was maniacal, obsessed, and the fiddle screeched like a dying bird. Thomas's feet pounded and roared on the table, shaking the whole cabin with thunder. I thought my ears would never hear anything but that steady roar of boots and the shrill crying of the fiddle.

  Peter Morgan jumped up on the bench and reached for Eb. "Get down out of there, Eh," he said fuzzily.
/>   Eb swung around at that moment, just as Peter reached for him, his arms whirling wildly. He caught Peter across the chest, knocking him clean back off the table. There were so many men around there was no question of him hitting the floor; he just knocked down a pile.

  "EB'S THE CHAMPION! EB'S THE CHAMPION!"

  "HOORAW! LET'S KNOCK DOWN EB!"

  Two or three grabbed for him at the same time, but it was like reaching for a rock in an avalanche, they couldn't get hold of him. They got his shirt, through, and it came tearing off in shreds. He was left with just the collar, attached around his neck like a necklace. Long threads and one tiny strip of cloth hung down, glued to his back with sweat.

  He pounded his feet and whirled around with his fists out like hammers. "HOORAW FOR EB THOMAS!" he shouted. "HOORAW FOR ME!"

  Peter Morgan struggled to his feet, stepping on the men he had knocked down. "Hooraw for me, t0o," he said, insulted.

  Then everybody started hollering hooraw for themselves. We were so damned gigantic nothing would do but we let our names be known. We would bring down the sky, just by telling it who we were. We were Her men.

  Then, almost suddenly, it was dark, without anybody having seen the night sneaking up on us.

  "God damn, I've gone blind from this rotten whisky!" somebody complained.

  "Listen, you guys," Vaughn said. But the roaring continued.

  "LISTEN! I'll get some lamps, but you got to promise not to bust them up or anything."

  Peter Morgan lurched through the pack and put his arm affectionately around Vaughn's shoulder. "Vauglm, hell," he said, with tears in his eyes. "We wouldn't bust your lamps, Vaughn. Would we bust your goddam lamps?" Peter was really hurt by Vaughn's lack of confidence.

  "You got—LISTEN, YOU GOT TO PROMISE!"

  "Hell," Peter said. "You're my pal, Vaughn. We built her, din' we? I'll promise anything. You jus' tell me what to promise and I'll promise her all right."

  "You got to promise not to bust my lamps."

  "I promise," Peter said. He smiled winningly at Vaughn and passed out, sliding down to the floor along Vaughn's body like a tree scraping another. Somebody grabbed his legs and dragged him quickly under the table where he wouldn't be trampled to death.

  "LOCOMOTIVE LOCOMOTIVE!" Eb Thomas hollered.

  I looked around, but I didn't see any locomotive.

  "What does that mean, locomotive?" Vaughn said.

  "Mean? Mean?" Thomas said, bewildered that anybody should ask him. "I'm a locomotive," he decided finally. "Cet the hell out o' my way! HOOOO-OO-OO-OO!" He began to charge around the room with his head down, butting anybody that got in his way and hooting. It was very realistic, all that butting and hooting.

  "You think he's a locomotive?" somebody asked me seriously.

  "I don't know," I said.

  "Well, I don't," the other confided. "I think he's a buffalo. What do you think?"

  Vaughn went and got a couple of camphine lamps and stood looking for some safe place to put them. The tide surged relentlessly around him as he studied strategic locations. It was hopeless. He finally stuck one of them above the fireplace and another on the window ledge, ' then went around making everybody promise individually not to break them. The one on the fireplace fell off by itself, I guess, or maybe from vibration.

  It was avery funny moment when that lamp fell off and the blue and yellow flames from the spilled camphine twisted around like snakes on the floor. Somebody poured the rest of the alcohol on it to put it out. The flames got paler, but I think they lasted longer. We finally threw a blanket over it and everybody took turns stomping it to death under the blanket. Vaughn swept the broken glass into the fireplace.

  While this was going on I saw William Hendrickson across the room, who'd been on the whipsaw from beginning to end. His eyes were wide and excited and he was waving at me with both arms, flailing desperately in the air to get my attention. He couldn't stand up. I shoved my way over to him, and it was like plunging into the breakers. The turmoil kept shoving me off? balance, but there was no room to fall down. I careened from one bunch to another, hearing scattered snatches of conversation.

  "I'm going to throw somebody in the water," came an enthusiastic voice.

  "Who?"

  "I don't know, but I'm going to do it. I just thought about it." He looked around gleefully, picking his victim. By this time the fire was out and Eb Thomas fell down. He wasn't unconscious, he just fell down.

  "EB'S PASSED OUT! OL' EB!"

  "No I ain't," Eb said. His voice was barely audible, raucous and hoarse from all the hollering he'd been doing. He had a little trouble getting up.

  "Yes, you are passed out. PUT EB UNDER THE TABLE!"

  So they put him under the table with Peter Morgan and wouldn't let him out. The whole bunch gathered around the table and wouldn't let him out. Eb started pounding around on all fours like a wild animal in a cage, snarling and snapping at the forest of legs that barred his passage.

  "Don't let him bite you," somebody hollered. "That's a mad dog under there!" It was a mistake, because it gave Eb the idea.

  He did bite somebody in the calf and almost lost his teeth when the other kicked at him instinctively. The bitten howled with rage and tried to get at him under the table. Eb hunched himself up small and laughed and laughed. He was sitting on Peter Morgan, but Peter didn't mind.

  I finally made it across the room to Hendrickson. His face was agonized and he grabbed my trouser leg, looking up at me, panicky. "Ben," he said desperately. "Ben, listen."

  "All right, all right. What's the matter?"

  "Ben, we did it, didn't we? We built her? We did it?"

  "Sure, Bill, sure we did. We all did it."

  He let go my trouser leg and stared up at me with that wild, panicky look for another second. Then he put his head back against the wall, turning sideways. "We did it," he mumbled "God, we did it." He began to vomit, falling over on his side on the floor.

  The guy Eb had bitten was still furiously trying to get at him under the table. The heavy legs scraped across the floor as he shoved at it, and finally the whole massive thing fell over with an enormous crash that shook the cabin. It was so funny to see Eb, sitting hunched up on top of Peter Morgan that the attacker forgot what he was doing and doubled over with laughter. Eb grinned at him.

  After getting the fire out Vaughn had gone back to his corner with his fiddle and was still scraping away. He looked dead, but he didn't look so crazy any more. He had a sort of peaceful smile on his face. The music wasn't so loud now because he had broken a string. He pushed and pulled at the bow, listening to it carefully, smiling and content in some other world I couldn't reach.

  As I moved away from Hendrickson a gleeful face pushed itself up to me and the same guy let me in on his secret. "Ben, I'm going to throw somebody in the water. By god, I am."

  "Good for you," I said. "Not me."

  "Oh," he said disappointed. "Oh." He turned away from me and looked at everybody, and gradually the inhuman joy of his idea transformed his face into radiance again as he contemplated a whole room packed solid to the rafters with victims.

  I had gradually been buffeted around after leaving Hendrickson; every time I stopped, to look at Vaughn or talk to the drowner, I got shoved a few steps by the bodies that seemed to be hurtling faster and faster. I felt something pluck at my shirtsleeve and turned around.

  It was Sam, still in the same corner to which he had sneaked in the beginning. I grinned at him. "Wel1, Sam. Real celebration, ain't it?"

  He smiled at me, very friendly, and looked square in my eyes. "Where is she, Ben?" he said, in a low and normal voice.

  It chilled me, the way he was so calm and smiling.

  "She's right down to the ways," I said. "We'll get her launched."

  He took hold of my shirt front. The smile was still on his face, but had disappeared from his eyes. They began to swim with the same wildness that had so frightened me before.

  "Where is she, Ben? Wher
e is she?"

  ' "Sam, don't—" I tried to make him loosen his grip.

  "Where is she, Ben?" He smiled.

  "She's gone," I said. "She's gone."

  He let go my shirt then. His face was pale and lifeless. Suddenly he dropped to . his knees in the corner and began to weep. His shoulders shook and throbbed, but I could hear no sound.

  The remaining camphine lamp flickered as the door blew open. I stumbled away from Sam, desperately glad of the excuse. I bounced back and forth through the crowd, making for the door, muttering "I'll get it, I'll get it."

  I got to the doorway and reached out into the darkness for the edge, when I saw that it had not blown open at all. A figure stood there, waiting quietly, almost invisible in the drizzling rain that had started again. It was Indian Jim.

  "Jim! By god, come on in."

  "Mika chako," Jim said. I could barely hear him for the roaring and shaking inside the cabin. They were dragging the overturned table all around the room, sweeping Eb and Peter Morgan with it.

  "I can't come now, Jim," I said reasonably. "There's a kind of a party, hyas sundy, big party—"

  "Kilchis memaloose," Jim said.

  I was suddenly sober. The noise behind me faded to a rumble like the steady sound of the brakers and my ears were ringing. I remember sticking my hand out to support myself on the door frame and feeling the cool wetness of it. I felt dizzy, and didn't know if it was the alcohol or not.

  "Kilchis memaloose," Jim said again. "You come." He turned and disappeared into the gray and black of the dripping night. I closed the door from the outside and followed him into the darkness. The rain was chill after the overheated room. I couldn't know exactly what Jim meant; the Jargon has no tenses. But memaloose is death. Past, present, or future; time is a detail.

  3

  It sometimes happens that a dream becomes nightmare, almost without transition. The sense does not change, but it is suddenly invested with a new and terrible significance. It was like that when I stooped through the skin flap and entered Kilchis' lodge.

  There was the same rhythmic thump, thump, thump of Thomas' boots—but it was not a dancing man. The same rasping shriek of Vaughn's untuned fiddle—but it was the scream of a woman. The same half-lit faces, twisted with tension and agony and wildness in the flickering light of the fire, the same bodies moving with a terrible, ungrasped significance.