Daniel Gumbiner - The Boatbuilder

Apart from the quail situation, it was a normal spring. There were thick oak trees and alfalfa butterflies and yellow-breasted meadowlarks. There was morning fog and afternoon sun and cool nights. Ranch hands roamed the fields mending fences and children snorkeled in Sausal Creek, chasing minnows they’d never catch.

Alejandro was at work on his latest canoe, out on the beach, and Uffa was readying the bus for a drive to New York to see Demeter. He was planning to bring a few musicians with him on the trip and play shows across the country. In the shop, he would daydream about the different things they could do on the tour: play a show in an RV campground in Reno, give away pancakes every morning, record live sessions of the musicians in scenic mountain landscapes. But the organization involved seemed to stress him out, too. He had trouble prioritizing the work that needed to be done most urgently. One day, Berg walked onto the bus and found him looking down at a list, chewing on a pencil.

“Too much to do these days,” he said. “Too much to do. Gotta get new tires on the bus, plan this show in Denver, apply for residencies, write a letter to the editor, read these four books. What else? Go surfing, feed the cat, talk to ten different insurance companies… There’s a lot of moving pieces right now.”

Change was afoot in the barn, too. Rebecca had purchased new seeds, fifty chicks, and several sheep, and one of the geese had given birth to goslings. Alejandro and Rebecca had no room for these goslings, like last time, and they intended to sell them off, along with the goose and gander. Tess was devastated by this and she wrote her grandmother a very dramatic letter about the situation.

“Please save them,” it said. “This is too important and we are all counting on you.”

One Saturday morning, days before the goslings were to be sold, Alejandro and Tess let them out of their pen and brought them down to the pond. Berg was up early and decided to accompany them. He liked walking the geese down to the pond, cup of coffee in hand, and watching them eat bugs and bark and grass and all of the strange things that geese eat.

“There has to be a place we can put them,” Tess said.

“Where?” Alejandro asked.

“In the coop with the chickens?”

“The gander would kill the chickens,” Alejandro said.

“It would not,” Tess said.

“It would,” Alejandro insisted. “I’ve seen it happen.”

Tess looked horrified. The gander was floating in the pond. Tess stared at him.

“What if we just kept the goslings but sold the gander?” Tess said.

“I told you, Tess, we have to keep the gander, too. They’d need protection,” Alejandro said.

“From who?”

“Any number of things. But coyotes mostly.”

“What about that shack over in the meadow?” Berg said.

“It has no roof,” Alejandro replied, without looking at him.

The shack had been there when Alejandro bought the property and he hadn’t touched it. It was a ramshackle thing: inside there were ferns and nettle growing out of the floor and Berg wouldn’t be surprised if a few wild animals called it home. The whole thing appeared to be slowly composting back into the earth.

“The shack would be perfect,” Tess said. “It’s not even that far from the pond.”

“It’s farther than I want to walk,” Alejandro said.

“But I’ll do it,” Tess said. “I’ll be the one who does it. I’ll even sign a contract.”

“Will you build the roof?” Alejandro asked.

“I’ll do that,” Berg said.

“You sure?” Alejandro said, turning to him.

“Yeah,” Berg said. “I’ll take care of it.”

“How lucky for you, Tess,” Alejandro said.

And so, in the early days of spring, Berg found himself building a roof for several geese. He used pine for the rafters and gables and half-inch plywood for the roof decking. While he worked, Tess sat nearby, in a patch of nasturtium. She told him about her trips to Horse Island and how Ms. Gans, the teacher she would have for third grade next year, had a mouthful of fake teeth that she removed every night before bed, according to kids in the grade above her. She also liked to talk about stars and outer space.

“I’m a little bit of an expert on the solar system,” she confessed to Berg one day.

In accordance with her nature, she grilled him with questions. Sometimes Berg told her that he couldn’t answer. The problem was that, once you answered the first question, it usually set off a chain reaction of increasingly urgent follow-up questions, which all had to be dealt with. But other times he wandered into the murk with her.

“Why don’t you stay in the guest room anymore?” she said.

“I was recovering,” Berg said. “I was injured and I needed to be in a quiet place. But now I’m back in the shop.”

“Did you always know you were going to work in a boatbuilding shop?” she said.

“No,” Berg said. “I only started building boats when I met your grandfather.”

“He taught you?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“I thought you already knew it all,” Tess said.

“No, I learned everything from him,” Berg said.

They were silent for a moment, and then she said, “Did you go to college?”

“Yes, I did.”

“But you never built any boats in college?”

“No, they don’t really build boats in college.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. They should.”

“Are you going to be a boatbuilder forever?”

“It’s what I’m doing for now,” Berg said.

“But you don’t know whether you’ll do it forever?”

“No,” Berg said. “Do you know what you’re doing forever?”

“No, but I’m only eight.”

“Well I’m only twenty-eight.”

“Twenty-eight is old.”

“It’s not that old.”

“I don’t know,” Tess said, picking a nasturtium flower and inspecting it. “I hope I have things figured out by then.”

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Bob Darr, my friend and boatbuilding teacher, whose generous vision and exceptional artistry inspired this book. I am also deeply grateful to Dave Eggers, who understood what I was trying to do and showed me how to do it better. His support and guidance were crucial. Thanks also to my family: Jesse, David, Rich, and Ellen. To everyone at McSweeney’s: Sunra Thompson, Kristina Kearns, and Claire Boyle. To the Urmys, who gave me a place to begin writing. And to Mikayla, for reasons that are, of course, too numerous to list here.

Daniel Gumbiner was born and raised in Northern California. He graduated from UC Berkeley in 2011 and now lives in Southern Nevada. This is his first novel.

Copyright © 2018 Daniel Gumbiner

Cover by Sunra Thompson

All rights reserved, including right of reproduction in whole or in part, in any form.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint lyrics from the song “The Wire (Reprise) / Kicked Down the Road” by James Wallace and the Naked Light. Copyright © James Wallace, 2013, all rights reserved.

McSweeney’s and colophon are registered trademarks of McSweeney’s, an independent publisher based in San Francisco. McSweeney’s exists to champion ambitious and inspired new writing, and to challenge conventional expectations about where it’s found, how it looks, and who participates. McSweeney’s is a fiscally sponsored project of SOMArts, a nonprofit arts incubator in San Francisco.