Hull 212

The thermometer on the shed door said thirty-four at seven, and there was frost on the launch-way where the sun had not reached it. By nine the frost had gone. The maples on the hill above the church had turned red, the harbor was a hard bright blue, and the cottages on the point were shuttered until May.

Win stood at the door end of Thibodeau Boat Works with his back to the second stove.

He had helped put it in on a Saturday in September. It had taken forty feet of pipe and one long day. He had held the ladder throughout, and Rémy had told him eleven times that he was holding it wrong. The stove drew well. Jesse Carver could feel his hands at three o’clock now.

Behind him the router wound down. Jesse lifted the last part off the table and stood it in the rack with five others. They were one-piece frames, with the bracket swept down out of each in a long curve to a round nose. Marker on every one said LS hull 3.

“That’s six for Monday’s truck,” Rémy said. He shut off the vacuum pump. “Nobody touches that machine again today. I mean it, Jesse. Go and put on a clean shirt.”

The floor had been swept. The wheelhouse jig stood empty, with its next module due to start on Tuesday. Through the big doors, on the cradle at the head of the launch-way, the Odette sat with her bow to the shed and her stern to the water.

She was painted. Her hull was black and her house was a pale grey, and the heavy rail around it was bare polished pipe. Across her transom, in white, it said ODETTE and under that BATH. Win had watched her go from eight bottom plates under a tarp to this, one weekend at a time. He still could not have said whether she was beautiful. He knew there was nothing on her that was there to flatter anybody.

The town had begun to come down the hill. He could see Marge Staples, and Arlene from the store, and Gary Michaud from Down East Metals with his wife. Five men in pilots’ jackets stood at the foot of the cradle with their hands in their pockets, looking up.

A truck with a Lathrop Shipbuilding plate parked beside the Volvo. Toby Keegan got out of it in the tight blue suit, and Maureen with him. Aggie Pruitt climbed down from the back seat in her good wool coat.

“Ninety-two miles,” Aggie said, “and he talked about a goaltender for eighty of them.”

“She shut out Merrimack last night,” Toby said. “Twenty-nine saves. It’s her senior year.”

“Is Vermont at home this season?”

“The fifth of November.”

“Take the Friday. I’m asking this time. I’m not telling you.”

“I know the difference now.” Toby looked past him into the shed, at the rack by the router. “Those my frames?”

“Six on Monday. Ask Rémy, though. It’s his floor on Saturdays.”

“I’ll do that.” He rubbed his jaw. “Hull 2 gets her house on the tenth of next month. Keel’s down for 3. Baptiste rang Thursday to ask when she can have a date for number four. And I’ve got nineteen back on nights out of the sixty. Tierney started Monday.”

“How was he?”

“He said the coffee’s got no better. He said to tell you he’d have shut the door in June, and his wife wouldn’t let him.”

“Tell him I asked.”

“I will.”

Aggie had gone round to the back of the truck. She came back with Toby behind her, carrying a wooden case.

“Your uncle put this in my trunk himself yesterday,” she said. “He was at the board Tuesday. He voted against you on the dividend and for you on the night shift, and he was perfectly pleasant about both. There’s a card.”

The card was in Prescott’s hand. For the Odette. I am told the Thibodeaus do not break bottles, so you had better drink it. Marian asks when Eleanor will come to dinner. This is the second time she has asked. P.

“He’s counting,” Aggie said.

“He always could.” Win put the card in his pocket. “Have you eaten?”

“Don’t you start on me, Winslow Lathrop.”

Nell came out of the office then.

She had on the green wool dress and her yard boots. Her braid lay over one shoulder. She had the cigar box under her arm, and Leon was behind her on his cane, in the dark suit.

“Dad’s ready,” she said. “He wants you at the bench.”

The round of bronze had lain on the office windowsill since the fourth of January. It was in the vise on Cy’s bench now, with a rag around it to save the rim. The bar hung in its cradle on the wall above. Leon opened the cigar box. The steel punches lay in it in a row, each with a number on its shank worn nearly smooth.

Rémy had made a guide for him in September, a block of aluminium with a square hole through it. It clamped over the plate and held a punch upright. Leon set it with his left hand. The hand had come back a good deal over the summer. It was slow, but it closed.

“Light,” he said.

Nell held the drop light. Leon slid the 2 into the block and picked up the hammer in his right hand. He looked at the plate for a moment.

“Nine months,” he said. “On a sill.”

“I was looking for a customer,” Nell said.

“You found one.”

He struck once, squarely. He moved the block a finger’s width and put in the 1, and struck. He put the 2 in again. The third blow rang off the shed roof. He lifted the guide away and blew on the bronze.

212. The figures stood in a level row, a little above the centre.

“Square?” he asked his daughter.

“Square.”

“I had a good teacher,” Leon said. He jerked his head at the bar on the wall. “Him.”

He took the plate out of the vise and held it in his good hand. Then he looked at Win.

“You,” he said. “Come up. Bring the driver.”

There was a set of steps against the cradle. Leon climbed them one at a time, and Win went behind him with a screwdriver, four bronze screws and a nylon gasket that Nell had cut on Thursday. He did not put a hand out to help. He had learned that over a deck of cards.

The wheelhouse smelled of new paint. It had three seats and a helm, and a second small panel beside the engine gauges for the battery bank. On the bulkhead by the helm, four holes were drilled and tapped inside a pencilled circle.

Leon laid the gasket in the circle and the plate on top of it. He held it there with his right palm.

“You drive,” he said. “By hand. Go slow.”

Win started the first screw with his fingers and turned it in. He was aware that his own hand was not perfectly steady. He set the second.

“Not tight yet. All four first.”

“Yes, sir.”

He ran in the third and the fourth. Leon shifted the plate a hair with his thumb and nodded, and Win took each screw down in turn, a quarter at a time.

“Stop. That’s enough. You’ll strip it.”

Win stopped. Leon took his hand away. The plate sat flat against the bulkhead, with the old turned rim of the bar around it and the three new figures in the middle.

The old man looked at it for some time. His jaw worked.

“Odette would like you,” he said. “She liked a man who listened.” He drew a breath and went after one more. “You didn’t, at first. You do now.”

“I had four people teaching me.”

“Five,” Leon said. He tapped the name on the engine panel, where a small plate said Design: N. Thibodeau. He meant, Win supposed, the woman it was called for. Then he took his cane and went down the steps by himself.

Nell had come up while they were at the screws. She stood in the wheelhouse door until her father was on the ground. She had a plain white envelope in her hand. It was the kind the yard used for invoices.

“This is for you,” she said. “I wanted to do it before the other thing, and I wanted to do it on the boat.”

He opened it. There was a cheque inside, drawn on an account at Rockland whose name was printed as Thibodeau Boat Works — The note. It was for twenty-three thousand nine hundred dollars. It was signed twice, by Leon and by her, and dated that morning.

It was not due until the first of February. He knew that, and so did she. He knew what the pilots’ second progress payment had been, and what three wheelhouse modules cleared. He could have said that the freeze had three and a half months to run, and that she was giving up the use of the money for nothing.

He looked at her. She had her chin up, and she was watching him as she watched a panel under a straightedge.

“Thank you,” Win said.

Her shoulders came down.

“That’s all I wanted,” she said. “That’s the whole of it. You’ve no idea how long I’ve wanted to hand you that and have you just take it.”

“Since the back of an envelope in April.”

“Since January.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist, impatiently. “You owe me a receipt. Not on cream paper.”

“Lend me your pen.”

She took it from behind her ear. He turned the white envelope over and wrote on the back of it, against the bulkhead, under the bronze.

Received of Thibodeau Boat Works, Skerry Harbor, October 16, 2027, $23,900, the first payment on its note. W. E. Lathrop.

He gave it to her. She read it and buttoned it into the pocket of her dress.

“That goes in the second drawer,” she said. “With the other one.”

“Nell! Portland!” Faye Tibbetts was at the foot of the cradle with her red hair pinned up and a folder under her arm. “High water’s at ten past eleven and I’ve got a poem if you make me wait.”

They went down.

The crowd had filled the yard on both sides of the ways. Faye walked the two of them a few yards down the concrete, to the place where Leon always stood, and turned them round so that the bow of the Odette stood over them and the water was at their backs. Leon came down and stood on Nell’s left. Rémy stood behind him. There was a fair-haired young woman at his elbow, and he had not introduced her to anybody.

“That’s Carrie,” Nell said under her breath. “I told you I’d like her.”

“You’ve met her?”

“For four minutes. She called him pigheaded to his face.”

Faye opened her folder.

“I married these two in January, across my counter, with the short version,” she told the yard. “It was legal. It was also the worst wedding I ever saw. They shook hands.” There was a laugh from the back, where the Skerry Harbor people stood. “This one doesn’t count for the State of Maine. It’s just nice. They’ve written their own, so I’ve nothing to read. Mr. Lathrop.”

He had four sentences and a fifth. He had not written them down.

“Nell. I’ll ask you before I touch anything that’s yours, and I’ll go on asking when I’m sure I’m right. I’ll tell you the true thing on the day I know it, and I won’t arrange it first. I’ll be in the room. I’ll take your cheque on the first of every month and say thank you.” He had to stop for a second. “I love you. There’s no term on that.”

Her eyes were very bright. She cleared her throat.

“Win. I’ll show you the drawing before she’s faired. I’ll tell you when you’re wrong, the same day, and I won’t soften it. I’ll let you stand next to me, on my floor and on yours, and I won’t go home to fight by myself again.” She glanced at her father and back. “I’ll take what I can’t count. I’m learning that part. I’m keeping my name, and you can have everything else.”

“Rings,” Faye said. “The same ones, I’m told. Take them off and do it right.”

His came over the knuckle with a turn. He laid it in Nell’s palm and she laid hers in his. The small one was bright still. The other was scratched, with a flat place on one side. She slid it back onto his finger and it seated. He put hers on. Her hand was warm and square, and this time he did not let go of it.

“That’s it,” Faye said. “You were married before, and you’re married now. Mr. Lathrop, you may kiss the bride. Nell Thibodeau, don’t you dare.”

Nell had put out her right hand, level, with her chin up. He took it. She used it to pull him down.

He kissed her in front of the whole town. Her mouth was cold from the wind and warm under that, and she had her fist in the front of his coat. He heard the yard go up around them. Bilge was barking. Somebody had found the horn on the yard truck.

“Better,” Leon said clearly, when it was over.

Faye had a sheet of paper on her folder and a pen. “I made up a certificate. It’s worth nothing. Witnesses sign anyway. Leon. Miss Pruitt.”

Leon signed, his whole name. Aggie signed under him and looked at Win for about two seconds.

“I’ve no questions left,” she said. “I told you.”

“There’s room on the line for a third,” Faye said. She did not look at anyone in particular. “It’s not required.”

Rémy scowled at her. He scowled at Win. Then he took the pen out of her hand and wrote Rémy Thibodeau under Aggie’s name, pressing hard.

“You still grind like a banker,” he said.

“Three hundred and eighty last Saturday.”

“Three hundred and seventy-eight. Two weren’t flush.” He gave the pen back and went up the ways to the winch.

The pilots went aboard. Harry Soule took the helm. He was a grey, quiet man who had not said twenty words all morning. Jesse rowed the skiff out and held it off the end of the ways. Nell walked back up to the shed door, where the bronze bar hung, and stood beside it. Win went with her.

“No bottle,” he said.

“She’s got her plate. That’s ours.” She raised her voice. “Dad. It’s yours to say.”

Leon stood at the head of the launch-way with both hands on his cane. He looked at the boat, bow on, from where the land was.

“She’s a good boat,” he said. “Let her go.”

Rémy eased the winch. The cradle began to move, with a low grinding of wheels, and the Odette went down the slope stern first. The water took her transom and climbed the black hull. Nell was not watching the boat. She was watching the white figures at the bow.

The cradle sank from under her. She lifted and swung a little, and was still.

“Forward, three feet nine, both sides,” Jesse called from the skiff. “Aft, four foot one. Both sides.”

“On her marks,” Nell said. She let out her breath. “Twenty-six hundred pounds of battery, eighteen inches forward. She’s level, Win.”

The cheer came then, but it was short, because something odd had happened. The Odette had begun to move. She backed away from the ways and turned her bow toward the ledges, and there was no engine to be heard. There was only the water along her side. On the town float a child asked loudly what was pushing her.

“That’s the battery,” Nell said. “He can’t help himself. He’s been waiting four months to do that.” She was laughing. “Listen to her. You could hear a man shout from a ladder.”

Toby was opening Prescott’s case with a claw hammer, and Aggie was handing out paper cups. Nell did not go toward them. She turned into the shed.

She lifted the bronze bar down out of its cradle with both arms. There was less than a foot of it. She carried it to the vise, clamped it with a quarter inch showing and checked that with the steel rule. She took the hacksaw off its nail.

Rémy had come in behind them, smelling of winch grease.

“There’s no 213,” he said. “Nobody’s ordered a 213.”

“There wasn’t a 212.”

“Huh,” Rémy said. He went back out to find Carrie.

Nell set the blade on the bronze and drew the first stroke toward herself to make the groove. Then she looked over her shoulder.

“It still drops when it comes free. Will you catch it?”

“Yes.”

He stood at the end of the vise with his hands cupped. She leaned into the saw. The filings came off bright on the grey steel. Outside he could hear the town, and her father’s voice saying something short to Harry Soule’s engineer, and the dog. It was a long cut by hand. He did not count the strokes.

The slice came free and fell into his palms, warm from the blade. It was rough on the sawn face and had no number on it.

“Windowsill,” Nell said, and hung up the saw.

He carried it into the office and set it down in the sun, on the place where the other one had waited.