Daniel Gumbiner - The Boatbuilder

Alejandro had just pulled up in his truck and was headed toward the railway.

“Who ripped off the plank?” Vlasic said. He looked around and saw Alejandro approaching. “Did you do this?” he said.

“Mr. Vlasic,” Alejandro said. “We’ll have this finished in four days.”

“Not a chance.”

“We will.”

“You’re out of your mind. You think you can just bring my whole business to a stop?”

“I promise you,” Alejandro said.

“This what you do now?” Vlasic sneered. “Now that your whole criminal operation got shut down? You come over here and gum up my railways? I’m calling the Coast Guard to get this thing out of here.”

“It would be illegal to launch it now,” Alejandro said. “The boat would sink.”

“I’m calling the Coast Guard,” he repeated.

“Call them,” Alejandro said. “They won’t launch the boat. It would be illegal.”

Vlasic scowled. He knew he had no other options.

“Four days, Vega,” he said. “And your haul-out rate is doubled.”

“You can’t just double the price,” Alejandro said.

“Watch me!” Vlasic roared. Then he turned and disappeared into the shop’s office.

For the next few days they worked eighteen-hour days fixing Coleman’s boat. Coleman helped, running to the hardware store to pick up things they needed. The whole time they worked, Alejandro grumbled about Vlasic and his family.

“They are so small-minded,” he said to Berg. “Very parochial.”

Berg liked the pace of the labor, liked having boat work to do again. He upped his dose of Adderall and switched over to Oxys, which always gave him more energy. He made sure to keep his dose consistent and mild during the week. He didn’t want to get too high and chop his finger off with a circular saw. The only problem was the constipation: his stomach often felt bloated and his bowel movements were, once again, irregular and uncomfortable. He tried to make a note to drink extra water and eat fibrous things, but the problem persisted. He was going to quit soon anyway, he reasoned. Once this stash he’d bought from Eugene ran out, he wouldn’t re-up. Then it would just be a matter of dealing with the withdrawal, like last time.

After four days of work, they had replaced a long section of the keel and put on new garboard planks. When they relaunched the boat, Vlasic was in town picking up lunch. Berg had been waiting for the moment when Alejandro would say goodbye to Vlasic, when he’d point out that he’d been able to complete the work in four days. But Alejandro seemed uninterested in sticking around for this moment of righteous vindication. They packed up their stuff and headed toward the road. On their way out they bumped into Terry Strauss. He ran a construction company in town. Berg knew who he was because he worked with Dennis Lapley, the addict Berg used to hang out with at the Tavern.

“You guys did it,” Terry said. “Damn.”

“Yep, she’s back out there,” Alejandro said.

“And you did that for Coleman?” he said, laughing. “Good luck getting paid for that.”

BUT COLEMAN DID BEGIN to pay Alejandro back. That fall he brought weekly installments over to the house, along with a few fish from the day’s haul. Based on the wide variety of fish Coleman brought over, Alejandro assumed that the fish were being caught in a questionable manner. He suspected that Coleman was using a beach seine, a fishing method that Alejandro had practiced himself, back in the day, before it was deemed illegal. He asked Coleman if he was doing this, and Coleman denied it. In the end, Alejandro decided not to press the issue.

Shortly thereafter, Alejandro received a call from Celia, an old friend in Pine Gulch. She wanted to commission him to build a sloop. Alejandro considered turning down the job. He wanted to get started on the sea-farming project, but Celia was offering a lot of money, and she was a friend, so he decided to go ahead with it.

Celia wanted the boat to be capable of cruising but she also wanted to be able to put it on a trailer. Alejandro designed a twenty-eight-foot lapstrake, a double-ender, with a nine-and-a-half-foot beam and a six-foot draft. It would be a swift boat, Scandinavian in style and reminiscent of a Spidsgatter. He planned to use the leftover pepperwood from JC’s sloop for the planking and oak for the sawn frames.

When he was done with the design, Alejandro let Berg help him with the lofting.

“Most people hate lofting,” he told Berg. “But I’ve always loved it.”

Alejandro did all of his designing and lofting by hand, using long wooden battens to draw fair lines. It required a meticulous focus, but it rewarded you for that focus. There was nothing more satisfying than making a slight alteration and watching that alteration ripple through the rest of the design, relieving it of its imperfections.

When the lofting was finished, Alejandro called Uffa and asked him if he could move back to help them with the boat. He came clattering into Alejandro’s backyard the next day at 11 p.m.

“I drank three 5-hour Energy drinks to get here,” he said. “I was down in Joshua Tree.” Berg and Alejandro were in the living room, reading. Rebecca and the others had gone to bed a couple of hours ago.

“Why do you drink those?” Alejandro asked, standing up to hug him.

“It’s like Adderall,” he said, embracing Alejandro. “Makes everything easier. It’s basically just Adderall you can buy in a store.”

“I’ve never tried an Adderall,” Alejandro said.

“Don’t,” Uffa said. “You’re like eighty years old. You’d probably have a heart attack.”

Uffa walked into the kitchen and began rifling through the pantry. “You have any cereal? Or like a bagel or something?” he asked.

“There’s some leftover cheese and bread,” Alejandro said.

“Excellent.”

Uffa took a hunk of bread and cheese and came back into the living room.

“Where’s Demeter?” Berg asked.

“Dropped her at her mom’s before I came here,” he said. “You guys hear anything about Pat and JC?”

“The trial is dragging on,” Alejandro said. “But they’re looking at ten years.”

“Fuck. For real?” Uffa said. “That’s messed up.”

“It’s terrible. But they haven’t been convicted yet. I’m hoping they’ve got good lawyers.”

“What about Lammy?”

“She seems to be okay. And we haven’t heard anything from JC. He’s still in Mexico.”

“Damn, man. That drug is going to be legal in like two years, too.”

“But it’s not legal yet,” Alejandro said.

When Uffa finished his snack, Alejandro took out the sketch of the new boat. He talked about the kinds of wood he wanted to use and the amount of time he thought the project would take. Uffa examined the lines.

“So the cylinder’s tilted this way?” he asked.

“No, it’s tilted this way,” Alejandro said. “You’re looking straight down.”

“And this is the radius? Where does it cross the buttock lines? Ah, right here, I see.”

When they were done looking at the lines, Berg helped Uffa move the bus behind the shop. There was a slight incline and it was a delicate process, especially at night. As Uffa backed in, Berg held his cell phone light in the air, directing him like an air traffic controller. Once they were done, Uffa said he needed to go to sleep. Berg hugged him and said goodnight, but before he turned to leave, Uffa stopped him.

“You doing all right?” he said.

“You mean because of all the JC stuff?” Berg said. “Naw, I’m not worried about that.”

“No, I mean, how are you doing? You look a little… I don’t know, you look different.”