Evan Connell - Mr. Bridge

He decided not to tease his son any further. “If you are concerned about finishing it,” he said, “maybe you should spend some time working on it after school.”

Douglas answered seriously that he had been thinking about this, but he was afraid to ask Mr. Teale’s permission.

“Are you afraid he would laugh at you?”

“I thought he might get mad.”

“I doubt it,” Mr. Bridge said. “Why don’t you ask?”

Douglas said he might.

“Do any of the other boys stay after school to work on their boats?”

“No,” he said. “They don’t care what they’re doing. They clear out as soon as the bell rings.”

“If you expect to have a first-class product you must be willing to pay the price. Good merchandise isn’t found in a bargain basement. Cheap goods are cheap because the workman did just enough to get by. There’s nothing criminal about that, in fact it happens to be the way a majority of people live their lives — doing just enough to get by. Just enough to get by, that’s all.

“Yeh,” Douglas said.

“I’m not urging you to work after school, understand. If you want to play marbles or basketball or whatever, that’s your privilege. So long as your grades are satisfactory I ask nothing more. Do as you please.”

No more was said about it, but Mr. Bridge listened, and later that week Douglas hinted that he was staying after school to do some work on the boat. His parents knew it was nearly finished when he bought a piece of white cloth in the dime store and borrowed his mother’s shears to cut the sails. She offered to hem the sails on her sewing machine, but he refused. He said he would do it by hand, which he did, and he managed to sew on the brass curtain rings which would hold the sail to the boom. Harriet instructed him in the use of the flatiron so that he was able to iron out the wrinkles and flatten the puckered stitches. And then very carefully he rolled up the finished sails and took them to school.

“He’s dying to win that race,” Mrs. Bridge said.

Mr. Bridge had not thought much about the race. Douglas was hoping to win, of course. That was taken for granted. But he had not talked about it, he talked mostly about the boat. This began to seem rather strange.

“Oh, he’s talked to me about it,” Mrs. Bridge said. “He’s obsessed with the idea of a blue ribbon. Really, Walter, I’m beginning to get alarmed. There will be so many boats, and I just don’t know what might happen if he doesn’t win.”

“Well,” Mr. Bridge said, jingling the coins in his pocket, “Abraham Lincoln observed that in this sad world of ours sorrow comes to all, and to the young it comes with bitterest agony because it takes them unawares, whereas the older have learned to expect it. If Douglas is defeated in that race he must accept his defeat with grace and with dignity.”

“I suppose,” she replied; but he did not think she had been listening.

On the afternoon of the race Ruth and Carolyn had better things to do, so Mr. and Mrs. Bridge together with Douglas, who was carrying his boat in his arms, got into the Chrysler and drove along Ward Parkway to the pond. There they found an unexpectedly large crowd made up almost entirely of boys with their parents. The pond was dotted with boats. Other boats lay on the grass like captive pelicans. More boats arrived every minute.

“I didn’t think there’d be this many,” Douglas said with an expression of dismay.

“I just know you’re going to win,” his mother said, but she did not sound convincing. There were too many boats.

Mr. Bridge said, “I don’t see how they expect to hold a race with all these things. Great Scott, they’ll bump into each other.”

Douglas nodded. “Yeh. Especially with this wind.”

“Isn’t that Bob Tipton?” Mrs. Bridge asked.

“Yeh, I saw him. That’s him.”

“That is ‘he.’ ”

“Okay, okay,” Douglas said, and looked down at the boat in his arms.

Bob Tipton walked over. He was chewing a wad of pink bubble gum.

“You entering?” Douglas asked.

“Might as well,” Tipton said.

“Where’s your boat?”

“My folks have got an eye on it. There sure are a lot. Jeez, Doug, I never figured there’d be this many, did you?”

“Nope,” Douglas said. “Is Boggs entered?”

Tipton nodded and blew a balloon of gum that exploded and clung to his upper lip.

“I bet Boggs sinks,” Douglas remarked thoughtfully.

“Could be,” Tipton said. He pulled the gum off his lip and stuffed it into his mouth. “Some guy on the other side has got a real beaut.”

“What school?”

“Don’t know,” Tipton said. “I think he got help. No kid our age could get the deck as perfect as that. I guess his manual training teacher worked on it for him. Sure looks that way.”

“Did he try it out yet?”

“Don’t think so,” Tipton said.

“Maybe it only looks good. Those boats that look so hot don’t always sail fast.”

“Could be.”

“They’re awarding twelve ribbons, so we got a chance.”

“They ought to award about fifty,” Tipton said.

A few minutes later Douglas said to his parents, “Me and Tipton are going around on the other side and get ready. I’ll meet you here afterwards. Maybe if you get closer to the bank you can see better.”

Mrs. Bridge answered that they could see well enough from where they were, but Mr. Bridge took her by the arm. “Good idea. We’ll move up.” And as Douglas and his friend were disappearing into the crowd he called after them, “Good luck to you both!”

The race did not start for another half-hour. Then not many of the spectators were certain it had started, but more or less all at once the flotilla was drifting away from the opposite bank. The breeze had grown stronger. The little boats nudged each other and began floating in different directions, rocking and listing, except for a few which locked sails and clung together with sodden desperation. Here and there one fell over and lay on its side while others flopped upside down like feeding swans so that only the hull and the keel could be seen above the water. But out of this wallowing armada sailed several stout boats — firm on their course with sails billowing, cheered by the crowd. Onward they sailed, dipping their bowsprits as if headed for the New World. Among them the boat Douglas had built could not be found.

The boat Douglas built was eventually located in the exact center of the pond where it stood as solemn and motionless as a stork. Occasionally its sails trembled, the brass curtain rings knocked delicately against the boom, and the boat listed a few degrees, as though contemplating the race and perhaps wondering whether or not it ought to compete. But then with a little shudder it would resume its stance.

Over a period of minutes the boat was observed to drift, but it refused to sail. It leaned and it rocked against the waves and it quivered, and once it turned completely around. But that was all. Whether it had sailed by itself to this point in the middle of the pond, or whether it had been pushed or towed or merely followed another boat, nobody could say, because of the confusion at the start. But there it was, no matter how it had gotten there, and there it evidently planned to remain, possibly forever. On the shore stood its maker with a green felt button-studded crown set somewhat crookedly on his head, standing there alone in corduroy knickers, a new sweatshirt showing a flag and the triumphant legend ALL AMERICA, and frayed tennis shoes and no socks, with his arms dangling at his sides as though they were broken, staring out to sea.

The great race did not end with much more finality than it had begun. It disintegrated. There were rumors of disagreement about the winner because several boats touched shore at the same time. But none of this concerned Mr. and Mrs. Bridge. They walked around the pond and they stood on either side of their son, who acknowledged their presence without a word and continued to stare at the fruit of his hands, which by now had again turned around and seemed to be contemplating the perils of a return voyage.