| The collection of pine shavings on
the floor grew as another set of perfect curls fell with each
rhythmic pass of the plane. Each pass added more and more, some
wide, some narrow, some as thin as hair; and they crunched under
foot, although Charles Aaron tried to avoid stepping on any of
them lest they be crushed out of perfection. Each pass of the
plane brought forth the metamorphosis, coaxing the roundness of
the oar's shaft out of the square pine 2 x 2. A square peg made
to fit a round hole, he thought -one of the few thoughts entering
his head as he focused on the grip and pressure of the hand plane,
sliding its razor edge along the wood, coaxing the tool to do
his bidding, as others before him have done using a tool that
has essentially remained unchanged since Noah laid up the keel
on the ark.
This particular oar was the second of a pair he was making and
its shape was more uniform than the first. The first had been
a lesson on how to make an oar, this second one an attempt to
perfect the craft. The pair, once completed, would finish the
boat project. Like carving the oars, he had no experience in building
a boat, but now, within sight of the oar's taking shape, his boat
lay completed, painted and overturned showing its hull unembarrassed
to the world as the world, in the form of neighborhood passers-by,
to see. I've build a boat, he reminded himself for the fifth or
sixth time that hour, still amazed at his success as if the universe
had turned its favor towards him and his attempt. As far as boats
go, it was quite small not quite as long as he was tall and designed
to carry two people at most, provided they were slightly less
than average height and weight. But still, it was a boat with
a properly pointed bow and regular transom.
A ridiculous project, some might say considering the circumstances
under which it was built - so far from a lake and with no means
of getting it to one. Charles Aaron didn't own a trailer and his
compact car was too small to tow one if he had indeed possessed
one. He wasn't about to let the facts get in the way of his creation
for he had wanted a boat since he had been a boy. Even then the
idea of a boat was preposterous for the same reasons as now- no
lake and no means of readily getting to one. That didn't mean
he couldn't fantasize about the boat he would never have. That
is until now. He had his boat and his oars and only lacked a lake.
While Charles Aaron lived far from a lake, he didn't lack water
for three rivers ran through the city where he lived. Fort Wayne
had nearly forgotten about the rivers that once gave it life.
Once, long before the coming of railroads and asphalt the rivers
carried the people and goods into the city, but now bridges and
viaducts hid the rivers and while they continued to run through
the city they no longer were seen as the life-blood carrying goods
and hope, connecting it to the rest of the world. The rivers were
abandoned as a relics of the past, allowed to go derelict and
become littered with the decay of other abandoned enterprises
like the paint factory, the old Stroh's brewery, the iron mill,
all of which oozed the pus of their open sores into the river
making them problem children bequeathed to a later generation
to be cleaned and made whole. To one of these rivers, the St.
Joe, Charles Aaron would carry his boat when she was ready for
her maiden voyage.
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The night before her launch, Charles Aaron tucked her in for
her last night of purity, pure because she had never been touched
by the water, never wetted, as they say. She was his virgin boat
on the night before her wedding. He ran his hands over her hull,
caressing the wood and feeling for blemishes. Pride ran through
his fingers for she was smooth as glass, her sides and bottom
polished. The years of waiting slipped away during his inspection
for he had fulfilled an old promise with her creation. Thirty
plus years of dreaming over boating magazines, of wistful wanderings
through boat shows, of envious glances at Sunday morning fishermen
pulling their boats to water's edge vanished. He had made a thing
of beauty and that accomplishment blessed him while he looked
her over. Then, when admiring the transom, he felt the unease
of something not quite right, of something overlooked, of a crucial
element missing. The chines were faired, the gunnels looked right.
He took his tape measure and again checked the distance from the
bow to each of the transom's corners and she proved to be square.
Physically, she was a perfect as he could have made her but still
his heart kept telling him all was not well with her. His heart
took his eyes once more to the transom and he looked at the polished
green surface, clean and empty. She has no name!, he exclaimed
aloud, shattering the midnight silence. I never named her. Without
a name his boat had no identity, no soul. Without a name she was
little more than an artifact, the expression of a hobbyist who
wasting time on an empty trinket, a collection of cut up pieces
of wood all glued together and painted, a large decoration but
little more than that. How could he dream of putting her into
the water without a name, letting her join all the other nameless
boats floated in countless ponds, lakes, and rivers, like those
soul-less jon-boats the Department of Natural Resources rents
at the Indiana State Parks, those dull, battered, aluminum boxes
barely worthy of the title boat, dispensed by teenagers who passed
out damaged oars and sodden life-jackets? How could he violate
her, sending her without a name into a river filled with nameless
junk? It would be as bad as taking an infant nameless from the
hospital. No, she would have a name, a proper and noble name,
a name declaring that an old self-made promise was now fulfilled
and at the same time embracing future voyages. Without pondering,
he instantly knew her name, the name he would elegantly paint
across her transom.
Shrugging off his sleep, Charles Aaron gathered the materials
he needed to set her name for the world to see: a ruler to set
the guidelines, a pencil to outline the letters, a narrow artist's
brush to carefully fill in the letters, and, from an abandoned
hobby, a set of oil paints. He was more tired than he had thought
for once the first rush of excitement wore off he had to shake
his head many times to keep his eyes clear; he had to clench and
unclench his hand again and again to keep the ache from interfering
with the delicate work. He wished he had thought of naming her
sooner but in time, he finished, and while not as perfect as it
could have been had he done it when he was fresher, he had written
her name neatly across her transom: Dawn's Horizon.
Had he been a few years younger, Charles Aaron would have greeting
the following morning with greater excitement. While his heart
yearned to get Dawn's Horizon into the water, his body wanted
to remain under the sheets and blanket a while longer. Then he
heard the noise from the garage, a subtle sort of rustling or
a groan. Then the crash. He rushed out of bed, down the stairs,
through the kitchen and into the garage. The boat was fine, still
resting on the saw horses where he had left her but the oars had
fallen and had crashed against the workbench, scattering a coffee
can of woodscrews. He gathered the screws back into the can and
then he saw her anew out of the corner of his eye. The time had
come and he could no longer delay. Their moment together was here.
He hurriedly dressed and returned to the garage without bothering
to wash, shave, or brush his teeth. Since she was small, he could
carry her on his back and because the morning was very young,
few saw him carrying the boat on his back down the three blocks
to the river's edge, like an enormous turtle heading home. He
knew of a spot where the riverbank gently sloped down to the water's
edge, where the spring floods rushed ashore, scouring the banks
of any plants that had attempted to grow between floods and leaving
its sandy silt to form a sort of beach nestled under the overgrowth.
The overgrowth of wild grape vines grew thickly and it jealously
guarded the riverbank so that he had to set Dawn's Horizon down
on the ground and first force his body through, tearing the vines
to make a hole wide enough to ease her through without fear of
scratching her sides. One broken branch speared through his shirt
and grazed his side. Better me than her, he thought. There would
be enough scratches once she hit the water, he thought, but those
would be proper water-gained marks, marks of honor, and not the
faint scratches of broken sticks and branches that vainly tried
to keep her from her rightful domain.
Charles Aaron cradled her over the water the best he could, with
the port gunnel rubbing against his hip and grabbing the starboard
with his hand. His plan was to gently place her in the water like
Miriam must have placed Moses' basket, but then the muddy bank
conspired against him and his feet slipped out from under him
against and down she fell, splashing gracelessly into the river.
When she went down, so did he, headlong into her embrace, banging
his head against the knee brace. Stunned, he lay splayed out in
the bottom, feet over the transom, looking up at the sky and watching
the clouds shift and turn, framed by the tree branches which soon
moved out of sight. Then he realized the river was pulling him
downstream. She's afloat! He pulled himself up, struggling to
find his place in the tiny craft. She floats! and not a leak in
sight, he said eyeing all the seams, searching for errant drops.
The current pulled Dawn's Horizon wherever it wanted to, like
a leaf carelessly dropped into the river. Charles Aaron took the
oars, set them in their locks, and pulled against them. In his
mind he saw the map. From the St. Joe to the Maumee, along the
Maumee to Toledo and Lake Erie, from Lake Erie to the St. Lawrence
Seaway and out into the Atlantic, and with the Atlantic, he had
gained the world.
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