* * * * Taming Uncle Beast
And then, like a a great whale rising from deep under the water, blowing spume and droplets everywhere, Trey surfaced. His back surfaced first. He took a great gulp of air and disappeared again. Beast, no Jake, went to the edge of the raft and seemed about to dive in, when Trey reapeared, gulped and disappeared, He was back in the inlet. After several more resurfacings, he came up at the edge of the raft, grabbed it with one hand, panting, and then slowly pulled up a parcel.
It was the beer, and his shirt was stretched tightly around it to keep the softened cardboard from disintegrating, I guess. The starnger ran to the side of the raft and he and jake hoisted the case of beer back onto the raft. Then they hoisted Trey up. He was, as my father would say, naked as a jack daw. (I am going to have to look up that expression, because I though jackdaws were birds and birds have feathers, don't they? or do they mean baby bird? What is it that Mr. Farnworth called baby birds that were born naked. Hatched naked, I mean? Altricial.) Anyway, Trey was buck naked and I couldn't help looking at that private spot and noticing that it was kind of bluish and shriveled so small I could ahrdly see it. I won't go into further details about my thoughts and curiosities they provoked.)
Trey seemed completely at ease with his nakedness. I would have been trying to get covered as fast as possible. (Footnbote: Ma and Pa, before you get excited, remember, Jake and the other guy were there; I was not alone with with a naked boy and he did not jump me or anything!) Trey calmly stood around a few minutes, then picked up his jeans and used one of the legs to dry himself off. Then he put his pants on and Jake gave him a shirt. Jake's not a big guy, as you know those he's strong in the shoulders, but the shirt was big on Trey. It made me think about how thin he was. Lean might be a better word.
"Harmon, this is my neice, Tiny Lee, and this is her friend Trey. Tiny, Trey, this is my friend Harmon. Harmon is a man of the cloth."
"Was a man of the cloth," Harmon said, "and will be again." I looked at the huge, hairy man. He looked more like Hagrid, the half giant in the Harry Potter movies, then any priest or minister I'd ever seen, not that I've been than many. But the ones you see in movies and on TV usually look somewhat distinguished and clean cut, the antithesis of Harmon. He looked like a garagantuan version of The Wild Man of Borneo, complete with the crazy eyes. ((112/70 at Beeai's))
He cracked open a beer and sucked it down in about 30 seconds. I was angry and upset. Fearful. Afraid Jake would start drinking. It seemed unkind to drink in front of someone who was trying not to drink and who could die if he did. He popped open a second, sucked that down in less than a minute and repeated it with a third and let out the loudest, longest belch I'd ever heard. And I've heard some seriously lod belches from Jake. But this was a super-belch, the king of belches. I hate to say I was awed by a belch, but I was, though not necessarily in a good way.
Then Harmon lay down on the raft, curled himslef and around the beer, which was still in Trey's shirt, put his arm over the case, and went to sleep.
"What do we do now?" I asked Jake. We had Trey and his canoe and Hamon and his little skiff. Rafting with two extra boats could be challenging.
Jake stood there scratching his head, looking at the boats and the raft.
Trey said, "stack them over the stern and extend the tiller."
"That might work," Jake said, smiling. Seeing Jake smile made me smile.
"But," I said, "what happens when Harmon wakes up and finds himself downriver? Won't he be upset?"
"Nah, he's headed that way anyway."
"But, how will he get home?"
"How will Trey get home? How will we get home? Tiny, you worry too much."
"Harmon doesn't seem like someone we ought to upset," I said.
"No, he's not a good person to cross. He could brea you in half without even trying. He's killed more than one person by accident when he was drunk."
I looked at the sleeping giant on the raft. "I thought you siad he was a man of the cloth. Maybe you'd better explain."
* * * *
"Let's get the show on the road, first, and then we can talk," Jake said.
While we were talking, Trey had cut a fairly sout branch from an overhanging tree, produced a stout folding knife from his packet, removed the side branches and shaped it as a tiller extension. He had even produced a spiece of thin rope from his packet and was busy lashing the extension onto the tiller.
Jake was eyeing the boats. The canoe was long and narrow and the skiff short and wide. They would not stack well. No matter which way I imagined stacking them, it would be pretty precarious.
"Could we attach the canoe to the bow?" I asked? "I don't see how we can stack them."
Trey and Jake stopped and studied the raft. The canoe was wider than the raft. The raft had a extra sets of logs across the bow and stern to stabilize it. It was longer from bow to stern than from left to right (words?). The logs that were in contact with the water ran lengthwise from bow to stern to make the raft more hydrodynamic. And there is a (one of those things you push in when it is deep enough to act as a stailizer) to stabilize the raft and hopefully keep it going shriaght. Between that and the tiller, Jake hoped to keep the raft, which is not very hydrodynamic, going fairly straight rather than whirling around.
I could see the gears turning in his headl Trey's too.
"If we got some more branches, we could make . . " Trey started
"a platform for it." Jake finsihed, and soon, they were cutting more branches.
Then the problem was how to attach them. Trey had one more length of thin rope in his pocket and set to work attaching the starboard side branches. Jake stood considering and then pulled s shirt from his bag and ripped some strips of cloth off the bottom and used those for ones on the port side.
It did not look very sturdy and I thought that we'd better not crash into anything, or the whole house of cards would collapse.
Then, Jake used the rest of the shirt to lash Harmon's skiff to the stern. It occurred me that with the canoe and the skiff, we could drop anchor and go ashore with those, rather tha trying to dock the clumsy raft. When I said that, Jake just grinned. My guess was that he's already thought of it.
One thing nobody thought about, which was really dumb, was how we would get the raft through the very narrow opening with canoe on it, making it wider. So the next thing that happened was untying the canoe. Trey got in it, paddled it out into the river, and Jake and I poled the raft out through the narrow opening. Then they heaved the canoe back onto the raft, tied it down again, and we were finally off.
Jake gave me the tiller and starting digging around in the icebox. "Voila," he said, pulling out a bowl with a dozen multicolored eggs.
Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.
C. S. Lewis
Mary
Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.
C. S. Lewis
Mary
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