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36: An Innovation

Big Tom, in a sense, had become a red-legger himself.

They had shackled him to an orange tree in his own walled garden, and he wanted to know what comedian had chosen the garroting tree with its rusted collar still in place. His wrists and ankles bore genuine circles of chapped red under the metal cuffs. At the base of the tree, between two large roots, was a worn spot where he habitually sat. A couple of feet away were two smaller holes where he propped his heels.

The manacle chains were mercifully long, not only allowing him to sit, but also to circle the tree and relieve himself on the other side. They hadn't even brought him a bucket to sit on.

For the last two weeks, his only visitor had been his son, Little Tom, meekly bearing trays of grilled fish or chicken soup. Never a vial of powder. Never a trace of bourbon. Little Tom, still dark skinned and presumably alone now in the mainhouse, was preparing the meals himself. His lack of kitchen expertise was very apparent.

He would appear on the white, pebbled path through the neglected shrubbery, eyes downcast. Wads of cotton were stuffed into his ears—the mutineer's technique. He could claim he had not heard the captain's ranted orders, and thus had disobeyed no one.

Little Tom would set the tray in the grass, and quickly retreat. For the first few days, Big Tom had screamed his throat bloody raw each time the young man appeared. Then he had tried to trick the lad—say, "Hey, Little Tom"—hoping he would hear through the cotton and instinctively lift his head. Proof that he was not deaf.

But now, his headaches and shakes had subsided, and he had taken to awkward, metal-clanking calisthenics to put his body into shape. He listened intently to the whitting and hammering wafting up from the shipyard and tried to guess at the new ship's progress. (How could it possibly be going well without him?) And when Little Tom arrived now with the food tray, Big Tom said nothing anymore—just gave him that wearing, fatherly scowl that eventually would force the captain's way through the pressure of guilt.

He could barely recall that evening two weeks ago. He'd had a faceful of powder, half a bottle of bourbon. He'd visited the garden shed and—gawd, it still wrenched his ample stomach—found Gregory and Moori bare assed in the peat moss, of all places.

The rest was a blur of violent images, and he imagined he had done quite a bit of damage to the interior of the mainhouse. Most of the veranda doors up there on the third floor were shattered and hanging at angles from their hinges. He recalled flying ashtrays and vases, smashed furniture and paintings and sculpture, and the clepsydra cartwheeling down the main stairway. Even now, Big Tom thought, his anger seemed intact and he might still be capable of the same destruction.

He recalled, too, a montage of powder-distorted faces swirling around him in the foyer: Bark scowling, and Bishop, Little Tom and that muscler from the mainland, Guinness. It took all of them to clap the cuffs on him and drag him shrieking and flailing to the garden. Chain the bastard to a tree—that was the best cure they could think of.

Big Tom heard the gate at the east wall rattle. He glanced at the sun's position and knew that it was not yet lunch time. Then Bishop came crunching up the stone path, drawstring pants nearly falling off of his skinnier-than-ever hips.

The little guy was smiling and had a manacle key in his hand.

 

Big Tom had dragged his drawing table over to the telescope in his office, where he could compare the skeletal scructure down in the shipyard to the blueprint tacked out in front of him. The inner hull planking was starting to edge its way up the framework of the new ship.

"Excellent, excellent," he said, moving his gaze from the eyepiece to the diagram and back again. "Bishop, you've checked the keelson assembly yourself?"

"Oh ya, Big Tom. . .. She's letter perfect. . .. To yer blueprint, anyway. The splinting is solid." The assistant, fearing some retribution for the captain's shackling, gave his words haltingly.

"Bishop, I'm going ta call her the Nina, after a mythical ship of the ancients. This is a dream, Bishop, the building of Merqua's largest ship—probably the entire world's."

Upon his release, Big Tom had gone first for a soak in the mainhouse tub, then slipped on a fresh tunic and marched straight down the mountain to his office. His eyes glinted and he swung his long, sopping hair merrily.

"Mmmm. Ya ever seen a fantail stern like this one?" the captain asked, peering through the telescope again.

"None that big, of course. Nothing like it."

"But the knee 'n' sternpost. . .."

"Solid, Big Tom."

Big Tom adjusted the focus, and his face fell grim. "Interior, now, Bishop," he said. "What is this with the framing?"

"Oh."

"What is it Bishop?" Big Tom gave the telescope a small push and it swiveled away. His eyes were narrowed and his jovial nature had vanished.

"Oh. Uh, Bark said ya warn't to be bothered in the garden—no questions, total isolation. But it was clear as Belle's Water that the framing wouldn't hold up. It's to specs, mostly, but I had it reinforced is all."

"With eight-by's, Bishop, stem ta stern? You know how much weight that would be?"

"She's got ta hold up, Big Tom. I don' get it," Bishop said, still speaking cautiously with his newly freed captain. "Five hunnerd feet. Even with the strength of those Douglas firs what the Government sent in, ya know the first storm would kick her in half. Ya going ta sprinkle fairy dust on her maybe—that'll hold her together?"

Big Tom glanced up from his work, smiling now sardonically. "Ya, Bishop. Fairy dust. You leave the fairy dust to me—and I'll sprinkle it on when we're done with tha inner planking."

Bishop wore that determined, narrow-eyed exasperation that persuaded Big Tom to relent. The trade master opened the drawer under the surface of the drafting table and selected a drawing lead. He whittled it in the sharpener four times and sketched light, erasable lines diagonally across the hull in the blueprint.

"Now's as good a time as any," Big Tom muttered, "but this must remain a trade secret—one our lives'll depend on. Look here. Between the early planking and the outer, we'll run steel strapping ta brace the structure—crosswise like this."

"Steel?"

"Ya, steel. Quarter inch thick, five inches wide—the stuff I ordered back with the quarry supplies. We can reinforce a mast with steel, why not a hull?"

"Don't seem right," Bishop huffed. "Steel in tha body of a ship."

"An' since when did I give a pig-poke about what seems right? Now, let's go down to the shipyard. Those eight-by's gotta come out. And then we gots lots more work—lots of fairy dust to sprinkle."

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Framed