Daniel Gumbiner - The Boatbuilder

“And what do I do with the wounded chicken?”

“The wounded one? Where is she?”

“I put her in the dog crate.”

Ben looked like he was about to say something but thought better of it.

“How bad is she injured?” he asked.

“Pretty badly,” Berg said. “There’s a big gash near her neck.”

“From the coyote?”

“It seems like it. And the other chickens.”

“Well, I would just put her out of her misery then,” Ben said.

“Kill her?”

“Yeah, she’s just going to suffer otherwise.”

Berg thanked Ben for his help and walked back up to the house with a sick feeling in his stomach. This is what you have to do, he said to himself. You’re helping the chicken. This is life in the country. This is nature. Coyotes attack chicken coops and chickens get weird neck wounds and then you have to kill them.

He walked into the kitchen and picked out the largest blade. It suddenly seemed like a very small blade and he wondered whether Mimi had something larger he could use. He looked through the shed but the only potential substitute he found was a pair of garden shears, but this seemed cruel, medieval somehow.

Back in the kitchen, he opened the liquor cabinet and grabbed a bottle of whiskey. He took a long pull, winced, and then picked up the knife. When he turned around he noticed that Fish was several feet away, staring at him. What will this guy do next? he seemed to be saying. He is out of his mind. Berg gripped the knife tightly and walked over to the dog crate. He knelt by the crate and began cooing to the chicken as if she were a cat. Berg had only ever owned cats and all the noises he made toward animals were cat noises.

“Come on out, Lansing,” he said. “Come on, sweet girl.”

But the chicken did not want to come out. She had been attacked by a coyote and then attacked by her fellow chickens, whom, Berg imagined, she’d probably considered her friends, and now she was finally safe in this strange plastic box and there was no way she was going to come out. She scurried to the back of the crate where Berg could not reach her. It was a big crate. Fish was a big dog.

“Come on now,” Berg said, reaching for her with one hand and holding the knife with the other. “Come on out here.”

He thought about trying to kill the chicken while it was still inside the crate but this seemed difficult, physics-wise, and then there would be blood all over the crate and Fish would never forgive him. He set the knife down on the kitchen table and paced around the room thinking about what he should do. He could call Ben again and ask him for help. He could try tipping the crate upside down. Or he could let the chicken live. This option began to take hold of him. He had never wanted to kill the chicken in the first place, he thought. That was Ben’s idea. Why not let her live inside the crate?

He walked out to the coop and filled a bowl with chicken feed. The other two chickens were sitting silently on their straw, as though nothing important had happened that morning. “You’ve shown your true colors,” Berg said aloud to the chickens. “Pecking an injured friend. Kicking her when she was down. You guys are sick.”

Back at the house he placed the bowl of chicken feed in the dog crate along with a teacup of water. Then he read online about how to care for a wounded chicken. They recommended putting the chicken in a dark place with some kind of heating lamp, so he brought over an electric heater and he draped a blanket on top of the crate. Fish stood by the whole time, the permanence of the situation beginning to dawn on him.

When the crate was fixed up, Berg made himself a bowl of cereal, sat down at the kitchen table, and e-mailed Mimi to tell her what had happened. After he wrote the e-mail he began to look through his inbox. A newsletter from the hippie temple in the city he’d gone to once or twice for the High Holidays. A link to a basketball highlight from his brother. And, finally, an e-mail from Nell: the band was back in California now and she’d be home in a week.

He walked back over to the crate and looked at Lansing. Blood all over her feathers but no blood dripping. Outside, a light rain was falling. Morning calls of birds and the bark of a dog and, in the distance, the grind and rip of a circular saw. He picked up the teacup of water and held it to the chicken.

“Drink,” he said. “You need to drink.”

THE MORNING AFTER THE chicken attack Berg looked through job postings online. He was going to do what he’d come here to do in the first place. He’d find a permanent place to live in Talinas and he’d get a job. He’d do a seven-day taper and get clean by the time Nell returned. He didn’t need the Clonidine and the Gabapentin. He’d only relapsed for a few weeks and his withdrawal wouldn’t be that bad.

“A successful taper is like walking a razor’s edge,” he read online. “You’re trying to keep these two opposing forces at bay: the withdrawal and the addiction.”

But he’d do it. He had plenty of pills to taper with and he’d handle it himself and not have to return to rehab. By the time Nell got home he’d be fine and it would be as if this whole binge had never happened.

There were not many jobs listed in Talinas. An ad for a sous chef, a concierge at an inn, a registered dental assistant. The most intriguing posting said: “Sailboat Maintenance Worker: NO PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE NECESSARY.”

Berg had never been on a sailboat in his life. He’d always found the world of boats romantic, but intimidating. It seemed like the type of thing you only did if you’d grown up in some heavily ivied town in Connecticut. He called the number. A tired-sounding man picked up.

“Yes?”

“Hi, my name is Berg and I’m interested in the boat maintenance job.”

“The what?”

“The boat maintenance job?”

“Oh, that. You want to talk to Garrett.”

“Garrett?”

“Yeah, just come in later today.”

“What time?”

“I dunno. Can you come in now?”

“Sure,” Berg said.

“Yeah, just come in now then.”

Berg drove along the eastern edge of the bay. It was a long narrow bay and it lay directly on a fault line: the meeting of the North American plate and the Pacific plate. The western side of the bay was dry and smelled like granite and dust and pine. The eastern side was more swampy and smelled like swamp. The town was located at the northeast corner of the bay. It had a feed barn and a café and a bar and several gift shops that sold new-agey wares: mermaid art and Tibetan bowls and palo santo. There was also a library, a bakery, a tractor rental store, and a few restaurants. Berg figured he could probably get a job at the Tavern if all else failed, but hanging around that bar didn’t seem like the best idea. He wanted to do something physical, something that required an able body every morning.

When he reached the south end of the bay, he took a right and turned up a freshly paved drive. FERNWOOD, a sign said, A PEERLESS CLUB. He parked and walked up to the clubhouse, resume in hand. A family of five rushed past him, laughing and smiling, their hair shiny and blond. They were all wearing collared shirts, except for the mother, who was wearing fluorescent running clothes.

The clubhouse smelled like fresh laundry and sweat and chlorine. There was no one at the front desk so Berg rang the bell. While he waited, he picked up a pamphlet on the desk in front of him and began to read. “Being a Fernwood Member sure has its perks,” it said. “Find out about the valuable services and benefits available to all Fernwood Members—just because you’re you.”

“Can I help you?” Berg looked up and greeted the woman who had appeared behind the desk. She was wearing a white collared shirt and her face was freckled like a tortilla. He told her he was looking for Garrett.