The Boatbuilder

by Daniel Gumbiner

  “You know,” Uffa said. “I first came to Talinas because I had read about Alejandro in Szerbiak’s books.”

  “He’s in Szerbiak’s books? Which ones?”

  “The first two. I mean, he doesn’t feature prominently, but he’s in there. He’s the anthropologist they meet up with in Mexico.”

  “Oh yeah, I think I remember him. I’ve only ever read the second one.”

  “In one interview Szerbiak acknowledges that the character is based on Alejandro,” Uffa said. “Most of his characters were based on real people. And in that same interview, Szerbiak describes Alejandro as the most brilliant person he ever met.”

  “Damn,” Berg said, impressed.

  “Does that surprise you?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” Uffa said. “Anyway, I had read about Alejandro in Szerbiak’s books and in that interview and I heard he was in Talinas and, you know, I was a sixteen-year-old journeyman-poet-loose-cannon… I thought I’d go pay him a visit. He ended up taking me in, teaching me how to build boats. This was back when he was still working with his old partner at Dillon Beach. Before he moved across the bay to this newer property.”

  Behind them the swinging doors creaked. You always knew when someone was entering the Western because of its noisy doors. Berg and Uffa glanced over their shoulders to see who had arrived. It was a young ranch hand that neither of them recognized.

  “I didn’t know it then,” Uffa continued, “but Alejandro and Szerbiak had fallen out of friendship years before Szerbiak’s death. Mostly because Alejandro was tired of taking part in Szerbiak’s bohemian shenanigans. He wanted to have a family and land and Szerbiak wanted to keep taking drugs and drinking and driving around in cars.”

  “It’s hard to imagine Ale as a hedonistic young man, doing drugs in cars,” Berg said.

  “But that’s what they did. And eventually, Ale got tired of it. I’ve heard him go off on that tangent about poetry being a dead end. I think it’s just fear. You know, he once told me that he’d never be able to write every day. ‘I’d never be able to do that, Uffa,’ he said. ‘I’d die.’ And I believe him. I think he’s terrified of it. I think he believes it destroyed his friend and I think it terrifies him. And then I have to stand there and listen to him shred poetry to pieces from some ideological high horse as though the two things are not remotely related.”

  Uffa took a sip of his chi chi.

  “Sometimes Alejandro can be so stubborn,” he said. “Especially when he gets into one of his states. You haven’t seen that before. He gets obsessed with a thing and then he just spirals downward.”

  “I remember when he was into those lutes,” Berg said.

  “Yeah, that was a minor version of what I’m talking about. He kept that under control. What I’m talking about is when he really loses it. I’ve gotten calls from Rebecca twice where she asked me to drive up from Oakland to speak to him, calm him down. He gets trapped in his own mind, can’t stop agonizing over things. You heard about the pigeons, right?”

  The whole episode started, Uffa explained, when Alejandro saw a pigeon tumble from the sky to escape a hawk. This was not an uncommon thing for pigeons to do: to fake a fall to escape a hawk and then continue flying. But this bird did not continue flying. It fell and crashed into the earth. The same thing happened a month later and then again a few weeks after that. Alejandro read everything he could about tumbler pigeons but he was unable to find anything that accurately explained this phenomenon. So he began to breed pigeons himself, to try to figure out what made some of them skilled tumblers and what made others fall to their death. He built over ten cages, bred hundreds of pigeons.

  “By the time I got up here,” Uffa said, “he looked terrible. He hadn’t been eating well. He smelled bad. Like a pigeon, honestly. He smelled like a pigeon.”

  “What did you do?” Berg asked.

  “I just talked to him about the pigeons. I listened. That’s the only thing you can do.”

  On the television, the game had ended. The Mississippi quarterback was giving a post-game interview, stating obvious things. Berg was almost done with his beer.

  “So are you going to start the MFA next fall?” he asked.

  “Oh, no, not that soon,” Uffa said. “Can’t afford it. That was more like a five-year plan. I was just throwing it out there.”

  CHAPTER 23

  DEMETER WORE LARGE SWEATSHIRTS and tights. Her teeth were ragged and serrated, but this somehow only added to her fierce beauty. She’d moved to Talinas with her mother in high school and the two of them now ran a Pilates studio in town. Recently, it had been revealed that Demeter’s mother disapproved of her relationship with Uffa, whom she saw as a bad influence.

  “I know the type,” she had reportedly told Demeter. “Rolls into town with a school bus and lots of talk about free expression.”

  But Leanne’s indictment of Uffa did not seem to deter Demeter. Berg saw her around the bus more and more. She said she was saving up money to move to New York City and become an actor. Earlier that year she’d had a role in a Talinas Community College student film, which Uffa had screened on the bus with a projector. It was not good. This was not Demeter’s fault. The finest of actors could not have rescued the script, which was about a young man who was upset that his girlfriend didn’t take his band seriously enough. Uffa was particularly frustrated by the main male character.

  “If he wants someone to care about his band,” Uffa had said, “he’s just gotta be his special regular self. He’s all up in his head, man. No time for that.”

  One Saturday evening found Demeter, Berg, and Uffa hanging out on the bus, about to head down to the farmhouse for dinner. Demeter was sitting at the desk, drawing something Berg couldn’t see. Uffa was taking shirts out of his milk crates and smelling them, trying to find a clean one.

  Uffa wanted to have another bus show but he was tired of hosting them at Alejandro’s house. The two of them were on better terms since their argument that day on Estero, but Berg could tell that Uffa didn’t feel like asking Alejandro for any favors.

  “How do we get into the Oysters stadium?” Uffa asked, pulling another shirt out of his milk crate. “That’s what I really want to do. Have a show in the stadium.”

  “You’d have to ask Walt Weir,” Demeter said, without looking up. “He’s the basketball coach, but he also manages events at the stadium. He was coaching the girls team when I was in high school but now he coaches the boys.”

  “Coach man,” Uffa said. “Okay, we can do that.”

  “I played on his team for a year in high school,” Demeter said. “He’s a cool guy. You’ll like him. He’s kind of a legend around here. He was an amazing athlete in his time and people still revere him. Tell him you know me.” Demeter set down her pencil. “I gotta go,” she said. She stood up and kissed Uffa on the cheek.

  “You’re not coming to dinner?” he asked.

  “Nah, mom wants to have dinner,” she called as she stepped off the bus.

  After she was gone, Uffa turned to Berg.

  “Gotta keep Mama Shark fed,” he said.

  Berg and Uffa drove over to the high school the following day to see Walt. They listened to the radio as they drove. Morty Weisenstein was on the air. His show featured ambient music, calypso, and Afro-Cuban music, and he was always shifting in and out of different DJ personas. Today, for example, he was hosting the show as the rabbi and musicologist Dr. Baruch Baruch, and he was making the argument that calypso had Hebraic roots.

  “There is a similar lyric about bananas in the Mishnah,” he said. “Although obviously it does not reference bananas. They had no bananas in Jerusalem, lamentably. But the connection goes very deep, you see. It’s very profound and it has international implications.”

  Inside the gym, Walt Weir was pacing up and down the sidelines, wearing a tie-dye shirt and green sweatpants. Berg thought he looked a little bit like an older Uffa, but he didn’t say that. The gym smel
led like sweaty polyester and old wood and rubber. Berg and Uffa took a seat on the bleachers and watched the scrimmage. One of the bigger players drove to the hoop from the right side and was fouled as he went for a layup.

  “Take it strong, Jaylen,” Walt said. “Throw it down, big man. Throw it down once for me.”

  “I can’t dunk, coach,” Jaylen said as he was running back on defense.

  “Then finish strong and fluid, Jaylen,” Walt called after him. “Stay loose. This is basketball. This is poetry. This is a dance. You should be dancing up and down the floor.”

  Jaylen nodded and picked up his man on defense. The other team set a series of off-ball screens and then their point guard drove to the hoop. He attacked the right side and attempted a floater but Jaylen had cycled over to help and swatted the shot out of bounds.

  “Yes, Jaylen!” Walt shouted. “That is leadership. That is courage. That is basketball. That is poetry. This is what I am talking about.”

  When the scrimmage was over Walt gathered the players together and ran over the coming week’s schedule. They would have strength and conditioning every day and another open gym that Sunday.

  “We are improving,” Walt said. “We’re getting better every day, but we’ve got to play with confidence. ‘He who hesitates is lost.’ Who said that? That was Pete Harrison, one of the greatest basketball coaches in the history of California. Perhaps one of the greatest coaches in the history of Western civilization. I had the privilege of going to his big man camp when I was younger. A wonderful, wonderful man. You know what else he said? ‘Balance is the building block of good basketball.’ We’ve got to stay grounded, we’ve got to stay composed. Run our offense, get our looks. The shots will drop. That’s straight out of the mouth of the great Pete Harrison. Being with Pete on the court was like walking through Yosemite with John Muir, like traveling the Missouri River with Sacagawea, like hanging out on the beach with Eddie Aikau. Are you picking up what I’m putting down? Okay, bring it in. ‘Seals’ on three. One, two, three: Seals! See you tomorrow.”

  The team dispersed throughout the gym, looking a little dazed. Uffa and Berg stood up from the bleachers and headed over to Walt. They said hello and introduced themselves as Demeter’s friends.

  “Demeter!” he said. “An angel. An angel of mercy.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “I’m wonderful. What did you say your name was? Uffa? What an interesting name. Things are wonderful, Uffa. Nothing I’d rather be doing. I’m coaching basketball. I’m healthy. I can think. I can write. I can move. I can ride my bike. I can dream. I’ve got it all.”

  “You guys have a good team this year?”

  “We’ve got some players. We’ve got some players. They need to get hip to certain fundamental things, but the passion is there. The creativity is there. The celebration, the dance, the vision. These things are there and growing stronger every day.” Walt grinned. “Anyway, what can I do for you?” he said.

  “We were wondering if you could help us book the Oysters stadium for a concert,” Uffa said.

  “A concert? Oh man, it’s been so long since we’ve had a good show around here. We used to have great music here all the time. Gosh, I’d love to have a show over there. You want to do it on a weekend?”

  “Yes.”

  “On a weekend the fee would be five hundred dollars for the entire day.”

  “Is there anyway you could bump that down?” Berg asked. “We both work as boatbuilders and we’re very poor.”

  “With Alejandro?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ale! What a man. A good great man. Tell him I say hello. I’ll look into knocking down the price. You know, it’s a concert, and we need concerts here, and now I know that you guys are with Ale… I’ll look into it. I’ll definitely look into it.”

  “Thanks, Walt.”

  They exited the gym through the swinging doors and Walt knelt down to unlock his yellow bicycle. “You guys coming to the Dance Palace banquet next week?” he asked. “They’re honoring the Sharkman.”

  “Not sure yet,” Uffa said.

  “Well, get your tickets soon. I hear it’s going to sell out. They’re going to have a live band. There’s going to be an art exhibit, too. Jim Herald is showing fifty years of his bobcat photography.”

  “Sounds cool,” Uffa said.

  “Not to be missed, guys. Not to be missed.”

  “Okay, Walt,” they said.

  “Take it easy,” Walt called, and then he hopped on his bike and rode off into the evening.

  CHAPTER 24

  SHARKMAN CRIED WHEN HE was honored at the Dance Palace event. He gave a brief speech, in which he thanked all of the elasmobranchologists who came before him and paved the way for his own work. He was wearing a dress shirt and khakis and a pair of polarized sunglasses hung around his neck. Many things in the town were up for debate, but Sharkman’s work, it seemed, was universally respected. Everyone from Daryl Shapton to Sharon Lopez to Uffa wanted to shake his hand. There were rumors swirling that he was going to enter the race for District Assemblyman. Uffa believed he would win if he did.

  “He appeals to so many different demographics,” he explained.

  After the award ceremony, there was a raffle. Among the things raffled off were casks of wine from the Shapton Ranch, a three-course meal at Gary’s Oysters, and an introductory package at the Korvers’ Pilates studio. One of the better prizes was a dory that Alejandro had built. Freddie Moltisanti came away with it.

  The money from the raffle would be donated to the Talinas Humane Society and, at the end of the night, Tom Nunes, the organization’s director, got up and gave a speech thanking everyone for their contributions. He also let them know about the ongoing animal registration project that the organization was working on.

  “We ‘re looking to register animals in the event of a disaster,” he said. “We are talking about large animals here, horses or other companion animals. I had a call last week from a woman asking about the tule elk out by Dillon Ranch. This is not for tule elk. We cannot register elk.”

  During dinner, Walt approached their table and told Uffa and Berg that he could knock down the price of the stadium. As long as they cleaned up everything afterwards, he was willing to rent it to them for a hundred dollars. He felt the town wasn’t doing enough to help support its young people, and he wanted to do what he could. After he told them this, he stuck around for a few more minutes to speak to Demeter.

  “I’ve gotta get you and your mom to come do some Pilates with the team,” Walt said.

  “Oh yeah,” Demeter said. “It would be great for their balance.”

  “I saw that film you acted in with little Petey Johnson,” he said. “What a heartrending tale. I felt the emotion, the hurt, the hope to keep the relationship together, despite your character’s lack of interest in the Pepper Kings’ music. When I saw your mother the other day I told her, I said, ‘Demeter’s going to be a star.’”

  “I don’t really want to be a star,” Demeter said. “I just want to act and make enough money to survive.”

  “You’re going to be a star,” Walt said. “I’m sure of it. Get ready to be a star.”

  A few days after the Dance Palace event, Berg went out on a Horse Island charter with Garrett and Woody. Woody had picked up most of Berg’s shifts by that point. Berg rarely went out on the boat anymore and it was even rarer that he went out with Woody. Berg was still considered a second mate, like Woody, and he was usually paired with someone who was considered a first mate: Simon or Shawnecee, for example. But on occasion they assigned Berg to a charter as a first mate, and that was the case today. He was proud of this, proud of how much he’d learned from Alejandro and Uffa and all of the Fernwood people. He had known nothing when he got there and now he was a first mate.

  The client that day was a wealthy man from Denmark named Rasmus. He came with his wife, his thirteen-year-old daughter, and the daughter’s best friend. They were on vacation, staying
at a bed and breakfast in Five Brooks for the weekend. On the trip over to Horse Island, the two girls posed on the bow, taking selfies and posting them online. Their internet identities and their real lives appeared to have meshed: everything they did was captured for social media and, in many cases, done for the sole purpose of being represented on social media.

  “Give me strength,” Woody said, shaking his head.

  It was around 2:30 p.m. when they left Horse Island and headed back toward Fernwood. The wind was blowing a consistent twenty knots with gusts up to thirty. The tide was ebbing, and the boat bounced across the small, choppy waves. All four passengers were on the foredeck but the girls were no longer taking selfies. In fact, one of them seemed to be feeling sick. She was sitting on the windward side of the boat looking pale and uncomfortable. Then, suddenly, she lurched forward and vomited all over the deck.

  “Motherfuck,” Garrett said, peering over the dodger with a look of disgust on his face.

  This had happened before and Berg knew what to do. He took the fire bucket and dragged it off the stern of the boat, picking up salt water. He would use this water to wash the vomit off the deck and into the bay. But after he’d hauled the bucket up, he turned around to see Woody struggling to furl the jib. The furling line had somehow been released and the jib sheets were whipping around on deck. Garrett was reaching for the sheets, yelling at Woody, and the Danish couple and the two girls were huddled on the foredeck, covering their heads, trying to protect themselves. Berg tied off the fire bucket on a stanchion and rushed over to help Woody with the furling line. As he did so, he jumped up on the cabin top and, moments later, Garrett accidentally jibed.

  Berg had not been struck by the boom itself, they all agreed after the fact. If he’d been struck by the boom, he would have been in the water and probably knocked out. And he hadn’t been knocked out. He had never lost consciousness. He’d stumbled backward, dazed, and then continued to help Woody furl the jib. Only afterward did he realize how out of it he was. He tried to do some arithmetic in his brain but he felt slow. The water looked strange to him, chaotic in its movements, extra reflective. He must have been struck by the block or the mainsheet, they concluded.