Daniel Gumbiner - The Boatbuilder

“No,” he said.

And then he picked up the adze and went back to work. Berg returned to the bench and continued with his strokes. Twenty minutes later he walked back to Alejandro to show him the blade. He was pretty confident that he’d done it right and, if he hadn’t, he wanted Alejandro to show him what was wrong. He presented Alejandro with the blade and Alejandro showed him how, in the upper right corner, there was a slight difference of color, indicating that the blade was not ready. He put down his adze and looked at Berg.

“When was the last time you got lost in a thing?”

“What do you mean?”

“When was the last time you were working so hard that you forgot what you were doing?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re very punctual, aren’t you?”

It wasn’t easy to answer the question. Before he’d become an addict, yes, he was punctual.

Berg said nothing.

“You’re punctual because you’re always thinking about the next place you’re going to be.”

Berg bristled, but a part of him also knew Alejandro was right. Alejandro was meeting the non-stoned version of Berg, the tense, anxious, calculating version. This version was punctual, he was right. This version had risen through the ranks at Cleanr, always hungry, always looking to prove himself, hurtling toward eventual burnout. Of course, at Cleanr, he had been doing something that didn’t matter to him. Now he wanted to get it right.

“It’s not your fault,” Alejandro continued. “Stop thinking about the result. Stop wanting it to be over right away and I promise everything will go better.”

The key was not even sharpening the blade, he told Berg. The key was staying completely in the room with what he was doing. Berg said nothing, returned to the sharpening stone, irritated and hurt. He tried to sharpen again, but now he was even more distracted. His mind wandered back to what Alejandro had said, wandered away toward something else. He missed a few strokes and found himself once again with a rounded blade. Frustrated, he put down the chisel and took out his phone, checked his social media. Photo of a stack of art books. Photo of someone’s toast. Photo of Nell drinking coffee. Uffa noticed him on his phone and walked over.

“The sharpening takes a long time,” he said. “You’ll get it, though. When I started I didn’t know how to do any of this stuff. It’s good to learn it. Having sharp tools makes everything easier.”

“Thanks.”

“What are you doing after we finish?”

“I don’t know.”

“Want to come hang out on the bus?”

Uffa had bought the bus five years ago, from a river rafting company in Truckee. He had recently installed an atrium on the roof, he told Berg, because he was tired of hunching. The atrium ran down the center of the roof, like scales on the back of a dragon. Inside the bus he had added a pepperwood cabinet and a fir desk. There was a jar of weed on the floor and a VHS of Jurassic Park and two guitars. Beneath his bed were several milk crates full of clothes and a pile of notebooks.

“Trying to write one poem a day for all of September,” Uffa said.

Last summer, Uffa told Berg, he had taken the bus up to Washington with several musicians. They all lived in a warehouse in Oakland, along with a couple of poets and a filmmaker and a visual artist. Most of them worked in the service industry, waiting tables or bartending. Uffa moved in and out of a room in the warehouse and the bus, depending on how much money he had at the moment. When he was living on the bus, he usually posted up next to the dog park that was around the corner from the warehouse. The dog park was a thin strip of fenced-in land and, every Sunday, Uffa served coffee and hot chocolate to the people who used it. This was part of the ongoing public relations campaign that he hoped would prevent someone from reporting his illegal residence. For the past couple of months he’d been in Talinas, helping Alejandro. He usually worked with Alejandro for about half of the year.

“I come up here,” he said, “earn a few survival tickets, and then head back to the dog park.”

Alejandro had most recently called him up here because he was working on a big boat for a drug dealer named JC. This was the boat that was currently sitting on blocks in the center of the shop. It was called the Alma. Apparently JC commissioned a lot of boats from Alejandro. Uffa said he used them to pick up weed in Mexico. The boats were both a form of transportation and a decoy. Most DEA agents expected product to come up from Mexico in little fishing boats, not wooden sailboats.

“It’s not as sketchy as it sounds,” Uffa said. “I mean, JC is sketchy. That guy is certifiably sketchy. But me and Alejandro, we’re normal. Well, Alejandro is a genius, but he’s mostly normal. Here, come look at this.”

Uffa walked over to his desk and picked up a framed painting. It depicted a scene at some kind of Islamic palace, with men playing strange instruments and carrying bowls of fruit. The work was insanely detailed, full of bright, pure color.

“Alejandro taught himself how to do this,” Uffa said. “Persian miniature painting. Can you believe that? I mean, the skill here… it’s off the charts. He thought this painting was bad, though. He was going to throw it out. I convinced him to save it, to let me have it.”

Berg sat down at the desk and inspected the painting. The desk was covered with papers and magazine clippings and a few dirty glasses that seemed, at one point, to have contained green smoothies. Uffa lit a spliff and the room filled with sweet, skunky smoke. He continued to muse while Berg examined the painting.

“You know, you came here at a good time. Business has been strong recently. We’re getting more JC commissions than ever. And JC pays well. I mean, we’re not rich. You won’t get rich working here, that’s for sure. But you’ll learn a lot of skills. Some of Alejandro’s apprentices go on to become carpenters or cabinetmakers, and that can be okay money. Don’t get into chairs, though. No one makes money on chairs.”

The closer Berg looked at the painting, the more he saw. There was a cat curled up on a rug, a man weighing some kind of precious metal on a scale, herbs drying, tiny golden keys, and several donkeys. It was ambitious, accomplished, not the kind of thing you would just throw away.

“Last apprentice we had didn’t make it,” Uffa continued. “Oh, I told you about him, actually. Garrett asked about him. He ended up cutting his finger. John Pressey. I’m glad he quit. I mean, I’m sorry he cut his finger and all but I’m glad he quit. Didn’t really like hanging out with him. Had a stressy vibe. He was always talking about how he couldn’t balance his art life with his work life and going on about some existential crisis and I was just like, ‘Man, I don’t need any more of that shit in my life.’ Between myself and everyone at the warehouse… I’ve got plenty. We don’t need any more of that around here.”

Uffa opened a bag of walnuts, took a handful, and held out the bag to Berg.

“You want some of these?” he said. “Brain food.”

Berg set down the painting and took a few walnuts. He motioned to the donkeys in the painting.

“My grandfather was really interested in donkeys,” he said. “Well, donkeys as symbols in Jewish literature. He thought they represented yezerah, the aspect of our physical nature that separates us from God. All of the great Jewish leaders—Moses, Abraham—were depicted holding the reins of a donkey, and this, my grandfather said, was meant to symbolize their mastery over their own inner beasts. They could not practice tikun olam, the healing of the world, until they mastered their own yezerah .”