Inflating a Dog (The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy) by Eric Kraft (novels to read for beginners .txt) 📗

seemed to hold the promise not only of a full and exciting day, but of a full and exciting summer, and even of a full and exciting life.

It was a pleasant trip. Arcinella purred. The captain guided her with a steady hand. The bay was calm and flat. Picturesque ducks swam beside us for a while. Before we entered the mouth of the Bolotomy River, Captain Mac said, addressing Arcinella, “Well, old girl, this seems as good a place as any to say good-bye and hand you over.” He throttled down, stepped away from the wheel, and let Arcinella drift.

My mother recognized her cue. She handed the captain a check for the balance due, and on the roof of the cabin over the engine room he signed a bill of sale and certificate of ownership. The boat was now Ella’s Arcinella.

“Who’s going to take her into her new slip?” he asked, folding the check and putting it into his shirt pocket. He turned a questioning look toward my mother, who turned it toward me. I looked to Patti, who rewarded me with an expression of confidence, even admiration, groundless, but probably based on some remarks I had let fall into one of our rambling afternoon conversations, reminiscences of nautical adventures I had never had.

“Would you like to take her in, Patti?” I asked, absurdly.

“I wouldn’t have any idea what I was doing,” she said, delivering the line that should have been mine. “I’d probably wreck everything.”

Clearly, I was going to have to be the one to wreck everything.

“Here we go, lad,” said the captain, taking a grip on my shoulder and steering me toward the wheel. “Let me show you how to bend her to your will.” I went to the wheelhouse as to the gallows.

“Take the wheel,” he commanded, and I did as he said with a muttered “Aye, Cap’.”

“This here’s the throttle,” he said, indicating a brass fixture shaped like the outline of a wedge of pie that was affixed to the bulkhead just to the right of the wheel. He nudged it counterclockwise a bit, and Arcinella began to move forward, toward the bridge across the bay, to the east of Babbington.

“Well, steer her toward town, lad,” he said. I did. It was easy. The wheel was a pleasure to turn. Its frame was brass, green and pitted, and from the frame radiated eight spokes with wooden handles worn smooth and stained dark with use. Turn the wheel to the left, and she went to the left. Turn it to the right, and she went to the right. Nothing to it. I recognized the mouth of the Bolotomy, and I headed toward it. The captain stood to one side, but left me to do what I could on my own, and I began to puff myself up with the thought that I was now the captain, and the old man beside me was just a deckhand, someone who might very well have to take orders from me.

“This lever,” he said, forgetting his place, “is your gearshift handle.” He lowered his voice to a confidential whisper, as if it were important that Arcinella not hear what he was about to say. “The old gal’s got a few peculiarities, and this here’s one of ’em.” Pointing to the metal pedal beside my right foot, he added, “That’s another of ’em. That’s her clutch.”

“Ah-ha,” I said. He made it sound like the kind of female detail we might be sniggering about in the locker room.

“When my father installed the Champion engine in her, he installed the transmission, too, so she drives her prop through first and reverse gears. When you bring her into the slip — you’re gonna want to bring her in bow first, I figure — ”

“That’s what I thought I’d do,” I said, and though I hadn’t given it any thought at all before the captain brought the matter up, when I thought about it now I found that very little thought was required to convince me that bringing her in bow first was likely to be a lot easier than turning her around and backing her in.

“Well, then what you’re going to need to do when you get a bit of a way out from the slip is set your throttle down so she’s just kind of chugging along — ”

I reached for the throttle.

“Of course you probably don’t want to do that now.”

“No, no. Of course not. I was just — um — checking the setting.”

“When the time comes, you’re going to want to have her just chugging along, but of course you won’t want to give her so little gas that she stalls.”

“Uh-uh,” I said, and chuckled along with the captain, imagining the fun that would ensue if some nameless nitwit were to give her so little gas that she stalled.

“Then when you’re at the slip, you’ll want to put in the clutch and shift into reverse.”

“Reverse?”

“To retard her forward motion.”

“Oh, sure. Of course.”

“Ideally,” he said, drawing it out so that I would understand that it implied a long life’s hard-won experience on the bay and on the boat, “you want to slow her down enough so she glides on into the slip sweet and easy and just barely kisses the bulkhead.”

He turned away for a moment. At the time, I thought he was gauging the distance to the slip and the kissable bulkhead, but if you were to ask me now I would say that he was hiding an irrepressible grin.

He turned toward me again, gave me a pat on the back, and said, “Treat her gentle,” and stepped aside.

I judged that I was near enough to the slip to throttle down, and so I did, turning the wedge of brass by degrees until the engine had reached a speed that seemed just this side of stalling. So far, so good, and a treacherous sense of confidence in my fledgling’s wings swelled my little chest. I didn’t dare turn away from my work for an