He got his son to help sling it from two beams. But then Zanes had to examine the inside again, and they lifted it out of the slings and laid it down out on the grass. The boy had to meet his friends. A college girl from the hang gliders came and picked him up, it was her last day.
Zanes knelt and smelled the bark strips that bound each end of the tapered bow thwart to a gunwale. Five thwarts — shorter at bow and stern, longer amidships. How did you tell bow from stern? He sniffed the stitches, the lashings. What did cedar smell like? A cedar closet. But cedar? He didn’t think he had a cedar tree. One hairy, fraying lashing has loosened. He pulled at the loose binding and found he could unwrap and unthread it. Would the mid-gunwales spring if a short thwart at bow or stern gave way? He tried to understand how the bark flap along the outside of the canoe was attached. All this sort of at the same time. He turned the canoe over on the grass. It was clouding up. The canoe could be left where it was. It was a boat that liked cool weather. Not a living thing at all, so why was it alive? A red squirrel appeared on the overturned bottom and was sitting upright, looking like it was getting ready to chew on the canoe.
The hoodlum window-smashing energy-spenders who according to me had gotten the date of Halloween wrong, had been traced to the college town nine miles away through the license plate of a girl’s now unregistered but recently spottily repainted Toyota sedan in the trunk of which was found a paint brush wrapped in plastic wrap that smelled of thinner and betrayed specks of pink on the metal casing in which the bristles were fixed. The plot thickens, Seemyon Vladimirovich said. Why didn’t I care?
These youths were regular spectators at Glyph Cliffs. And had been pointed out to the police there by Seemyon as having hassled the black man and the blond woman at the laundromat. The evidence remained inconclusive. When I came to unlock the coin boxes that evening, Semyon pointed out the Mayor, Lung, and a California-looking fellow in the group on the pavement outside as if I had not seen them. Something in me had not. It was the canoe. It was racism pure and simple against the black man who had come in with the white woman, Seemyon said, pure and simple. He reached for his military pack, he was leaving. I believed he might one day soon break into a run and depart for the state capital. I said if they knew the black man was the brother of a well-known jazz player, they would feel different. They do know that, said Seemyon to my surprise. Who is this California-looking fellow? I said. They come and go — and the swastika? said Seemyon, staring into my face. I think they just don’t have enough to do, I said. Then hire them, said Seemyon, glancing at his watch. This place pretty much runs itself, I said. Tomorrow is another day, said Seemyon, you should visit Glyph Cliffs and check out the hang gliding technology, he said. The lumberyard owner who was also a contractor had obtained for me a four-foot cedar board. It had a soft, less sweet hue, a wood tinctured with a rose or purple shadow compared to the simpler brown of varnished plywood; and it was rippled with creamy, narrow white lengthways shapes of grain knotted with ovals tilted like galaxies. The canoe spent the night outside, and like a sleepwalker I went out once to touch it and saw a split of light in the cove across the lake. The next morning I noticed a thwart-lashing loose at one end.
His son paddled stern and they took the bark canoe over to the south cove. Zanes did not tell him where to go. The two summer houses were boarded up. We ought to take that overnight trip we always talked about, said Zanes. He didn’t know what his son was thinking. They swung around and in the October woods Zanes saw someone move. Yet this need not be unusual. He turned to speak to his son and got a look at someone whose head had a fleeting Indian look to it. He glanced back not quite far enough to meet his son’s eyes. You want to get your own hang gliding equipment, I want you to have it, he said. I have to pay for it, his son said. Well, I think you should pay for some of it, but it’s going to cost a few hundred dollars before you’re done.
His son held his paddle steering and Zanes scarcely looked again at the fellow watching them from the shore. He thought the head had been shaved, it caught the forest light. I’m going to pay for all of it, Zanes’s son said, if you can loan me the money. I was thinking that you might need someone to help run the other laundromat if you decide you want it. A twinkle of water appeared between the planks in front of Zanes’s knee — had he dripped the water in with his paddle? It came to him like common sense remembered that you patched a leak on the outside, and you would have to find it first. He would buy a hunk of roofing tar. His shoulder ached and he lifted his paddle blade over the bowstem to the left side. He dug in hard and the bow moved its knowing focus. Maybe his son had not even wanted to paddle stern. I’m not going to acquire a new operation just to give you a part-time job, Zanes said. The shaved Indian head in the south cove had not been the Mayor’s, at large and trespassing where nothing much was at risk, it hadn’t even been shaved but it had given off a light. Is there somebody over there? Zanes said. Probably, his son said.
All but one of the machines were in use that evening. A half-gallon milk container was on fire on the sidewalk and three youths watched it burn down. I adjusted the station band of my transistor to get the President’s eight o’clock message to the nation. I had been looking forward to listening to it with Seemyon. Semyon had already told me what the President would say. Seemyon was ruddy and thoughtful. He had heard the press release broadcast on the 4:00 P.M. news while taking a break with his employer. A woman came and I gave her two dollars in quarters, the change machine had broken down.
No one among the machine users seemed to be waiting for the President’s speech.
Seemyon glanced at his large, complex wristwatch. Zanes wanted to get home to the canoe. Zanes was both here and at the lake. What if space was time? Your ideas are ringing a bell, he told Seemyon, shall we listen to the President even though we know what he is going to say? Zanes turned up the volume. Yet he had had an idea that he really wished to broach with the Russian and now it was gone, and in its place was a split of light between the green boards upon a window of the rental house. Zanes had seen it when he had slipped out in the middle of the night to touch the bark canoe. How did the maker get the cedar strips to bend into ribs? He soaked them.
I had known since the city that the source of a leak is often not at the point where the leak is experienced. Used for his own purposes, the laundromat and village and I would soon be left by Seemyon, who was moving on.
But to conclude my point, said Seemyon: Your laundromat — these look-alike, top-loading, electrically linked machines — is engaging actually in automated thought, I believe. And—Seemyon glanced at his watch — you will be glad to know that I saw a jalopy with a pink swastika at the Glyph Cliffs an hour ago. I recognized the hooligans and I have their license plate by heart. You have helped me; I try to help you now.
The bark was turning darker; what happens to a tree with its bark peeled off, does it grow new skin? But of course! — the maker had cut down the birch tree first. I saw the rings, I felt the decades and felt for them.
The gunwales had been lashed to the bark hull through threading holes. These had evidently been made with an awl, they had widened and you could see the daylight through them. So in the unlikely event that you were that low in the water you would have almost a natural leak. Zanes looked for marks of birds’ beaks. The ribs held the bark, and the gunwales held the ribs — almost forty ribs. A body was what it was. Zanes got himself under the thwarts and lay down in the canoe. His wife called from no doubt the kitchen.