Daniel Gumbiner - The Boatbuilder

“I’m just tired,” Berg said.

“Just tired,” Uffa nodded.

“Yeah, we were working on Coleman’s boat for such long hours and I feel like I still haven’t caught up on sleep.”

“Oh, okay. Well go get some rest then.”

“I will.”

“It’s good to see you, Berg.”

Before going up into the cubby he stopped in the shop bathroom. He turned on the light and examined himself in the mirror, something he hadn’t done since the day of the Oysters game. The eggplant-colored depressions under his eyes had returned and he had lost weight. This part was strange, because it seemed like he was eating three square meals a day with the family. He had no explanation for it. Maybe he had a tapeworm, or maybe he wasn’t eating as much as he thought he was.

When Berg got to the cubby he lifted up his mattress and examined his dwindling stash. Maybe fifteen Oxys and twenty Perc 30s. Lots of Adderall. When the opioids ran out it was over, he told himself. This time it was finally over. He could deal with the headaches. They probably wouldn’t even be that bad anymore. It had been months since the second concussion.

BERG’S FAVORITE TIME TO be in the shop was mid-afternoon, a couple of hours after they took their lunch. Around that time Alejandro would disappear and return with espressos for Uffa, Berg, and himself. The three of them would sit around the work-table and drink the espressos and talk and the air would smell like cedar or pepperwood or whatever they’d been cutting.

By the time they returned to work, Berg felt light, energetic. He always did his best work during these hours. He would be at the bench, working the wood, teasing it into the shape he needed, and maybe Uffa would be cutting a joint for the cabin top or riveting a plank, and Alejandro would be up on the loft floor, corroborating the arc of a new diagonal, humming some Mexican folk song. On occasion you would hear the roar of a sports car speeding down the 1 or the shouts of the oystermen out on the bay. Perhaps Swallow would wander into the shop for a drink of water, before resuming her harassment of the local squirrel population. If she did, they rarely noticed her. It was mid-afternoon, and they were absorbed in their work.

One of these afternoons found them resawing pepperwood for the planking of Celia’s boat. The stem for the boat had been cut, along with the grown knees. Alejandro had finished the transom and attached it to the sternpost. It stuck up in the air in the center of the shop like the fluke of a whale.

The tree they’d found that day on Al Garther’s property was very large and would provide them with more than enough wood for Celia’s boat. It had a beautiful marbled quality, and resawing it felt like cutting into a fresh side of beef. When they were almost done with the work, Alejandro asked Berg to go into town to pick up some plywood. They’d need it for tomorrow, when they would begin spiling the first planks.

Birds called from all sides as he walked to the truck, bright sky, bright sun, a fine warm day. The road to town was the same as it ever was: winding, mostly empty, the bay on his left, the green hills on his right, smooth and rolling, punctuated on occasion by an oak tree or a ragged cypress. And below it all, he thought, the trap door of geologic plates, likely to slip at some point, but for now holding their own.

Before picking up the plywood, Berg decided he would stop in at the bakery for a cookie. The bakery was run by Leonora Spinetta, an older woman who lived near Bear’s Landing. She was generally a nice person but she had a temper. Berg had seen her brandish a bread knife at three boys who had allegedly kicked their soccer ball into the bakery’s screen door. Some people said she was descended from the Lanza crime family in the city, but Berg had no idea if this was true.

At the bakery, Berg found himself in line with Freddie Moltisanti. He recognized Berg and said hello.

“You’re the new guy at Vega’s place, right?”

“Yeah, Freddie, right?”

“That’s right. Hey, he still making those soaps?”

“Soaps?”

“Yeah, the shampoos and stuff. Him and his boys used to sell them in town.”

“Oh, no… not anymore,” Berg said.

“Damn,” Freddie said. “Those were good soaps, man. I liked those soaps.”

Berg thought about Alejandro’s new schemes. He wondered if they were in any way viable, or if they’d die off like his cosmetics enterprise. It was hard to say, but in the end, he trusted Alejandro. His mind seemed to be always on the border of madness, but it never fully went over the edge. Or maybe it did. Maybe it could. Berg didn’t really know.

As Berg left the coffee shop, he heard someone calling his name. He assumed it was Freddie, but when he looked to his right, he was surprised to see Dennis Lapley, the addict he used to sit next to at the Tavern.

“Berg, hey, Berg.”

He was sitting at a picnic table, drinking a beer.

“Come over here, man,” Lapley said. “I haven’t seen you in forever.”

Berg walked over to him and Lapley extended his hand.

“Berg, my buddy. Take a seat, man. Take a seat.”

“I’m good,” Berg said. “Need to stop in the hardware store.”

“C’mon man, take a seat. What’s the rush? Haven’t seen you in forever.”

Berg obliged him. Lapley sniffed, began talking about how he ran into Billy White the other day. Lapley said White had bitched for hours about Garrett and Fernwood, how they had narced on him and wrecked his charter business.

“I thought of you,” Lapley said. “You still work at Fernwood, right?”

“Sometimes,” Berg said.

“Man, well don’t tell Billy that. Dude is pissed.”

“Don’t know why I would,” Berg said. “Never see him.”

There was a pause, then Lapley said,

“Hey, I’ve been meaning to run into you. I got a bunch of this new stuff that I’m trying to deal off.”

He took a big pill bottle out of his backpack and poured a few of the pills into his hand. They were round and dark blue, bruise-colored.

“Now, you know me,” he said. “I don’t usually take pills. But this shit is good, man. I love this shit.”

“It’s fentanyl,” Berg said.

“Oh, you know it? Yeah, I forgot the name, but yeah, that’s what the dude said…”

Berg stared at the pills, felt the dragon breathing inside him.

“I’ll take the whole thing,” Berg said.

“What? The whole thing? I don’t even know if I want to sell all of this off…”

“Well, I’ll take however much you want to sell off.”

“Okay, for sure,” Lapley said. “You’re gonna dig this shit.”

“Let me go to the ATM,” Berg said. “I’ll be back in a second.”

On the drive home, he thought about throwing the pills out the window, but he could not bring himself to do it. It was a vague thought, uncentered, and rooted in nothing. He felt totally disconnected from his emotions, from any sense of responsibility to himself or to others. All he wanted to do was take the pills. And that was what he was going to do.

Later that evening, alone in the cubby, he poured out several of the pills on his bedside table. As he leaned back, waiting for the rush to hit him, he thought about how he had broken into Alejandro’s house when he first moved to Talinas. He had tried to forget this fact, but it had not disappeared. It had moved from his mind to his body, where it remained, tightly coiled, one of those trapped thoughts that expressed itself only on rare occasions in the form of an eye twitch or a watery stomachache.

He thought about what would happen if Alejandro learned the truth. As he imagined this, something released in him, and the extent of his duplicity became clear. It was everywhere, impossible to separate, like flour mixed with salt. A deep, black panic welled in his chest. He wanted the fentanyl to kick in but it wasn’t hitting him. Maybe it was extended-release, he thought.