The next day my father puts the new boat in the water. We kids have been exchanging whispered speculation about whether it will actually float, and when my father backs the trailer into the lake at Webbs’ beach we’re horrified to see water flooding into the scuppers. Our new boat is sinking!
My father is unconcerned- He says that all wooden boats leak for the first couple of days until the wood joints swell up. The outboard motor, a io-horse Johnson, sits in the trunk of the car. My dad lifts the motor out of the car and climbs into the boat.
The combined weight of a motor and a two-hundred-pound man makes the boat tremble, but my dad steps lightly down the row of seats and lowers the motor onto the transom. Now comes the start-up procedure. He opens the air vent on the gas cap, clips the fuel line onto the motor, and squeezes the rubber bulb until it’s full. Then he flips out the choke and yanks the cord effortlessly, yanks it again, and again, with the engine coughing and sputtering as if in alarm. Then suddenly a concussive report detonates inside the motor and it bursts into life. He fiddles with some settings, closes the choke switch, adjusts the Lean-Rich dial, and a great cloud of delicious smoke pours out across the clean water. What excitement! My sisters are applauding. My brother and I are exchanging punches. And Spike the cocker spaniel, a local mutt who doesn’t really belong to us but hangs out at our cottage anyway, barks in agreement.
At my dad’s order, we all climb into the boat and grab a seat. My dad gives the motor some gas, and moments later we’re roaring down the lake with big waves unfurling off the transom. Spike stands wide-legged on the prow of the boat, with his chest puffed out and his ears flapping in the wind.
Since this is the boat’s maiden voyage, none of us have the nerve to ask my dad if we can drive it. But the following weekend my sisters start lobbying for permission. Soon enough, they’re moving the boat from one side of the dock to the other, using it to pick up a life jacket that has accidentally blown into the lake, or volunteering to take the boat to the store to pick up a quart of milk for my mother – an errand that seems to require the better part of an afternoon. By the beginning of summer holidays Danny and I have launched our own lobbying campaign, and my father is growing increasingly grumpy about the subject. He takes the position that he put a lot of effort into building the boat. And the more kids start using it, the more likely it is that someone will crash into a rock and wreck it.
It’s a good point. But this is a large family, with the kids spaced only two years apart, and the sheer number of siblings produces a random, ever-evolving fog of disinformation that works in our favour. My parents almost need a chart on the wall to keep track of curfew times, allowances, and the types of movies each of us is allowed to attend. This is complicated by the fact that my dad is a libertarian who doesn’t like rules and likes obeying them even less. So when he’s obliged to issue a decision, he assumes that we’ll respect the reasonableness of his point of view and conduct ourselves accordingly. He doesn’t realize that we’re going to come at him with one appeal after another. And when that happens, he can’t quite remember what he said in the first place.
After my older sisters have been driving the boat for a few weeks, Danny and I try appealing to the notion that it’s inherently unfair to let Sally drive it when she’s just a girl. This doesn’t sway him, so we try arguing that most of the kids our age are driving boats, which is hard to respond to when he doesn’t know if it’s true.
So he meets us halfway and permits me to drive, by myself, and Danny when he’s with his older sisters. After a couple of lessons, he decides I’m qualified to take the boat to Webbs’ for a carton of milk. It’s exciting to have such a powerful vessel under your personal control. But sometimes I wonder if my dad is right, and this is too dangerous for someone my age. When I walk to the dock and sit down to face the motor, my gut twists with apprehension. The green Johnson Sea Horse has a lurking, hostile quality. The muscular bulges of its cowling are smeared with grease. And its many mysterious dials carry labels that I don’t understand. What, for example, is the High Speed Mixture Adjustment? Does it make the boat go faster? I’m particularly shocked by the faded label stuck to the faceplate of the motor – Failure to Comply With Operational Guidelines May Result in Serious Injury or Death.
There’s no going back, so I take a deep breath and grasp the pull cord. Some people prefer to start the motor from a sitting position. My sister uses both arms and plants her foot against the motor. I prefer to stand wide-legged so that I can exert full body force. But when the motor backfires, the cord yanks so hard it almost pulls my arm off. After two or three unsuccessful pulls, my gut begins to fill with dread. What if I flood the motor? My father always cautions me against flooding it. I don’t know what flooding the motor means, but if the smell of gasoline begins to penetrate the air I know I’m in trouble. When you flood it, you have to unhook the fuel line and pull the cord fifty or sixty times, then hook up the gas line and start all over again. I’m strong enough for only a couple of dozen pulls. So the smell of gas is like the smell of fear.
If I screw up, I can always walk up the hill and get my dad to help. But when I’m at the store, flooding the motor would be a disaster. Girls my age are often suntanning on the dock there. They wear feline dark glasses and maintain an air of haughty scientific detachment as they watch the boats come and go. They’re in charge of determining who’s a loser and who isn’t. If the motor defeats me while they’re watching, I might as well go back to the cottage and spend the rest of the summer curled up on the couch sucking my thumb. So whenever I sit down like this to prepare the boat for a quick trip to the store, the fear inside me is not only fear of personal injury, but also fear of the total collapse of my worth as a human being.
Even if I manage to start the motor and get it running, dangerous things can happen. Once, when I was coming back from the store by myself, it suddenly issued a wild, terrifying roar, as if it had abruptly decided to destroy me in an act of ritual sacrifice. I frantically shut the motor off. And since the cottage was only a few hundred yards away, I paddled back to the dock where, thankfully, no one had witnessed the incident. It never happened again, and I had to assume it was just another one of those unexplained, bizarre things that machines do when you lower your guard for a moment.
One day at Webbs’ our friend Larry climbed into the boat to ‘give her a try’. For some reason Larry felt that his casual friendship with Danny and me entitled him to drive our dad’s boat. And for some reason we agreed with him. Untying the ropes, Larry got into the boat and neglected to check the throttle grip on the motor. It was set at full-speed, and as soon as he pulled the cord the boat lunged forward. This is the precise scenario by which numerous fishermen, every year, get thrown overboard and killed. It’s a curious fact that an empty boat will inscribe a near perfect circle. If the steering handle is tilted over at a gentle angle, the circle will be a large one. If the steering handle is tilted acutely, the circle will be tight and ferocious. But either way, the boat eventually comes back over the same spot and strikes the person in the water. The victim can sit there treading water for a full minute, watching the far-off boat go through the clubhouse turn, knowing that it’s coming back to get him. What’s the best thing to do? Ducking underwater at the last minute takes coolness and athletic coordination, two qualities that aren’t common to situations of primal terror. Fully dressed, in boots and maybe a life jacket, you won’t find it easy to get far enough underwater to avoid the charging propeller. So if you ever get thrown out of your boat, good luck. You probably have only a few moments to live.
In Larry’s case, the steering handle was tilted all the way over. So the boat slewed around and started cutting crazy tight circles with its bow pointed straight up and its engine roaring. Larry lay upside down in the back of the boat, his hands clawing for purchase, his eyes white with shock. The boat went around and around, making extraordinary gyrations. And although we were only a few steps away, standing on the dock, we were powerless to stop it. For perhaps twenty or thirty seconds the boat tore around in tight circles, flinging Larry back and forth like a kid strapped into a Tilt-o-Whirl. Then the boat suddenly straightened out and rammed into the shore, stalling the motor. We pushed it off the rocks and Larry climbed out, tearfully swearing. In situations of stress, Larry usually blamed his older brother (“That goddamn Brian…”). But we weren’t worried about him. We were worried about the boat.
Fortunately, my dad had built the boat with a hefty strip of brass on the prow, which absorbed most of the impact. We never mentioned it to him, but it was a good lesson anyway – preadolescent self-confidence getting to know billion-year-old granite.