Inflating a Dog (The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy) Eric Kraft (beautiful books to read .TXT) 📖

Patti and I mumbled some weak protests, but quickly slipped away, leaving my mother to her plans.

Chapter 53

Selling Arcinella

I HAD THOUGHT that I would have to persuade my mother to stay away from the sale of Arcinella, but she was so completely occupied with the resurrection of Moderne Stylizing that she hardly noticed.

Patti and I were at the docks at dawn. We went over the boat from stem to stern, making shipshape everything that we could and hiding everything that we couldn’t. Then we waited.

It was a fine morning. The heat of summer had broken, and the air was lighter, the thin air of fall. (What is the scent of that autumnal air? Two parts chalk dust, one part pencil shavings, I think. Of all the things that I learned in the Babbington public schools, the most enduring is that hope never comes unadulterated by anxiety, but, to even the balance, anxiety is never pure either, but always sweetened at least a bit by hope, and I learned it just by starting a new grade every year, in the fall air, with its mixture of hope and anxiety.)

Patti and I paced the deck, awaiting the arrival of Mr. Yummy and his partners. When we heard the sound of motors, and wheels on pavement approaching, we tried not to look, lest we betray our eagerness, our schoolkids’ hope and anxiety, but we couldn’t keep ourselves from looking. We glanced quickly in the direction of the sound, then went back to our pretense of nonchalance, then glanced in the direction of the sound again. Then we glanced at each other. We raised our eyebrows. What we saw was not what we had expected.

Three vans pulled up in front of Arcinella’s slip. One was Mr. Yummy’s Yummy Good Baked Goods van, the second was an Immortal Hilarity Ice Cream van, and the third was a Dew-Kissed-Meadow Milk van. Mr. Yummy and his partners hopped out of their respective vans, eager and not even trying to hide it. They converged on the Immortal Hilarity van and from it extracted a huge cooler that two of them carried, with difficulty, aboard Arcinella.

“Welcome aboard,” I said when they had set the hefty cooler down.

“These are my partners,” said Mr. Yummy. “That’s Sam, and that’s Dave.”

“I’m Peter,” I said, shaking the hands of Sam and Dave in what I hoped was the manner of a straight-shooting guy who would never try to sell them a sinking boat.

“And I’m Patti,” said Patti, extending her hand.

“Oo-ee, Patti. Aren’t you something!” said Dave. “Gimme the full three-sixty.” He made a rotating gesture with his finger. Patti obliged by turning slowly around. “Yow!” he said, employing the technical terminology of a connoiseur.

Sam squatted beside the cooler, said, “We brought lunch,” and flipped the top open. The cooler was entirely full of beer, on ice. Sam laughed, took a can out, and opened it with an opener that he kept in a handsome leather holster on his belt. The opener was silver plated and engraved with “SAM” in a stately typeface of the kind used for chiseling Latin mottoes in the granite pediments above the imposing entrances to government buildings. Sam guzzled about half the can and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

“Are you the one who knows boats, Sam?” I asked, hopefully.

Sam, tossing the empty can into the Bolotomy and scooping another from the cooler in a single fluid motion, said, “That would be Dave.”

“Well, then, Dave,” I said, taking care not to permit myself a single note that might be considered ironic or patronizing, “I expect you’ll want to get into her.” I indicated the way to the wheelhouse with a be-my-guest gesture.

Dave shrugged and said, somewhat reluctantly, I thought, “Right.”

We all watched Dave as he made his way gingerly along the deck to the wheelhouse, fumbled with the latch, crouched to crawl through the opening that led below, and disappeared from our sight. Although we could no longer see Dave, I felt fairly certain that I knew what he was doing down in Arcinella’s hold. I think he spent some time running his hands over her engine and wiggling its wires and belts. Then, I imagine, he began inching forward, picking up whatever he found and putting it back down, making as much noise as he could to show that he was on the job. I may be wrong, but I very much doubt it.

After he had been gone for what seemed long enough for him to get greasy enough to be able to say that he’d given her a good going over, I called out, “What do you say, Dave?”

“Looks good to me,” he said, as if he knew.

Sam and Mr. Yummy slapped each other on the back and opened two more beers. I got behind the wheel and took Arcinella downriver, guiding her with a steady hand, heading toward the bay.

When we reached the open bay, rain began to fall. It fell straight down. It began gently but increased steadily. Sam, Dave, and Mr. Yummy responded to the rain with a beery version of a child’s version of an Indian rain dance, whooping and prancing around the deck. Suddenly, a bolt of lightning struck a channel marker just a few yards off Arcinella’s bow. Sam, Dave, and Mr. Yummy jumped about three feet straight up in the air and dashed into the wheelhouse, where Patti and I had already taken shelter.

In the crowded wheelhouse, Sam, Dave, and Mr. Yummy made repeated attempts to sing “The Wiffenpoof Song,” though they could agree on only a few words here and there. Patti and I added incongruous doo-wop flourishes. When they finished singing, or gave up trying, a silent moment passed. Then Mr. Yummy took a long pull at his can of beer and sighed. With a drunk’s deep seriousness, he said, “Y’know, we’re gonna