Stone

Chapter 41 – Waiting

Stone woke early the next morning, hearing a buzz of noise from outside the house. Looking out the window, he saw that the street was clogged with people. There was a steady stream of children in front of the new house, standing in a queue and slowly coming into that house to get a bowl of oatmeal. Stone went to the washroom, and opening the door, heard squeals of outrage from the three young girls inside.

“That is the girls’ room now,” Rayla told him as he stood stunned outside the room. The one in the other house is for boys. Can you go there?”

“I guess,” he said as he walked down the stairs, across the yard, and to the schoolhouse, where he let out a roar to tell the boys waiting in line there that he was next. The short trip had one good facet. Cass, hard at work in the kitchen, had seen him pass, and started his breakfast. He arrived to a plate with three eggs, bacon and toast waiting for him. He sat at the kitchen table to eat, managing to rap a passing Jason on the knuckles as the boy tried to filch a rasher of bacon as he passed by to get his own breakfast. Like all the other children, Jason and Emily ate oatmeal, but didn’t have to line up to get it from the breakfast workers. They, and Rayla were served from one of Cass’s large pots. Sissy joined them at the table, and then everyone went off to their tasks for the day.

Stone joined Kalosun on the steps of the porch. The man was organizing the men standing there into teams. There were four men with wagons and each wagon was assigned six men, most of whom had axes, although some held two-man saws. Five more men were assigned to the rear of the houses, so they could split wood as it came in. Of course there would not be much work for them until the first wagons returned, so they were told to tidy up the yard and clear space for the wood to be piled.

Soon the wagons left, carrying the men. By then the children were all gone into the houses, which were teeming with students in the various rooms. Stone let out a gasp: the noise from within was still overpowering. He turned to Kalo and suggested that they head down to the docks to see how the ship was coming.

Stone was amazed at the progress in about a month. The spine was up, as well as a skeleton of timbers reaching skyward. Men were at the bottom of the ship, starting to place planks between the timbers. You could see the decks, starting with the bilge deck at the bottom where the steering ropes and chains would be: the steerage.

Next up was a deck midships, and above it another, followed by the surface decks, which were not yet started. At either end of the vessel there would be higher decks in the forecastle and aft castle.

“What do you think of her?” the shipbuilder said as he approached his customer. “She’s the biggest ship I’ve ever built. I noticed you stooping in my office, so I decided to make the decks 9 foot high rather than the normal six or seven. It’ll cost me a bit more for the wood, but at least you won’t have to stoop during the entire trip. Even your big horse will enjoy not being cramped.”

“It will cost you nothing,” Stone said. “I can’t have you losing money for implementing a good idea. Work out the extra cost, plus a profit, and let me know. We’ll add it to the bill. Now, when do you think it will be ready to sail. I need to arrange a crew.”

“Two months to 10 weeks, if the weather stays nice. Hurricane season starts in seven weeks, but we should be closed in by then. Sails won’t be ready much before then anyway. But you should line up a crew soon. It won’t be easy finding officers willing to sail across the ocean.”

“We won’t make that trip for a couple more years,” Stone said. “Until then we will just cruise up to Lakeport and back on trade trips.”

“Good idea,” the man said. “That will give you time to shake the ship down. There are usually leaks and other things that need to be looked after. If they aren’t serious, bring the ship in here and we’ll fix them up: no charge. A lot easier for my men to do it than your crew while at sea.”

Stone spent another 15 minutes looking over his ship, and then led Kalo out to the main street. They walked along, talking about needs for the ships crew. They saw a group of boys playing stickball on the beach, and Stone noted his surprise that there were any Kithren boys in the town not at the school.

“Those boys go to the afternoon classes,” Kalo said. “Some of them are in my culture class.” He waved one of the boys over, and all of them came. Kalo asked them to run a favor for him, and rapidly sang out a list of names. The boys ran off in different directions.

He then led Stone to a Kithren bar. There was a destitute white man sitting in rags outside the bar, with his hat open on the ground. Stone dropped a silver into the hat. “He’ll use that for a meal, and then get himself drunk on the rest,” Kalo said. “He is a sad tale. He was captain of a whaler once, but the ship went down. The coward left on the first boat out, rather than the last, as is traditional for a captain. As a result, no one will sail with him, and no one will hire him.”

Inside the bar, which was low ceilinged, requiring Stone to stoop, Kalo found a man, one of those he thought could man Stone’s ship. Stone talked to the man for a half hour, and was impressed, finally giving the man three silvers. It was traditional for a captain or shipowner to pay one silver to commit a man to sail for him, but Stone felt that since it would be weeks before the ship sailed, he should pay a little more.

During the half hour, the boys had returned, along with another dozen or so men. Kalo paid each boy a penny, and then started bringing more men to talk to Stone.

Stone was even more impressed by the second man, who had an air of command about him. “Can you read and write?” he asked. “Do sums?”

“No sir,” the man said sadly. “There was no place to learn, until that new school opened up. My kids all go there, and are learning to read. The oldest, Koon, can read now. He brings home a book from the school library most nights. It is The Whaler’s Tale, and he reads aloud from after supper until dark. The whole family, and my brother next door, ring around him. It is quite an exciting story, all about whalers chasing a rogue whale. The younger children read too, with him helping them along. It gives his voice a rest, and helps the youngsters improve, but mostly he does the reading. I wish I had the skill.”

“Perhaps you could,” Stone said. “What if you started to take lessons in the evenings? My wife taught him, she could teach you.”

“Everyone knows that Kithrens are too stupid to learn,” the man said. “And I would miss out on Koon’s readings.”

“Well, it looks like Koon is proof that Kithrens can learn,” Stone said. “And after a little while you would be able to read the book yourself. I think you are a smart man, just uneducated. If you learn to read and write, and do sums, you could wind up a mate on my ship, maybe even a captain one day.”

The man sat back in amazement. All his life people had told him he was stupid, and he had started to believe them. Now this big white man said he was smart, and could be a captain or a mate. Unbelievable. And the man had pressed three silvers into his hand. Silvers that were much needed to stock the family larder.

Stone and Kalo continued to interview men through the morning. At noon Kalo said he would have to leave in a half hour to go teach his classes. Just then the old white captain came in and sat down to eat. Stone and Kalo joined him as he was showing the waiter his silver, to prove he could pay for a meal.

“I’ll pay for all three of us,” Stone told the waiter, who went off to get three bowls of stew.

“Much appreciated,” the old captain said.

“Not a problem,” Stone replied. “I have heard of your story.”

The man turned red. “Stupidest thing I’ve done in my life,” the old man said.

“Well, I happen to believe in second chances,” Stone said. “Would you like to be a captain again?”

“More than anything,” the old man said. “But I’ve heard your story too. You plan to sail across the ocean in that big ship they are building down in the shipyards. I’ve no desire to die in the middle of the ocean.”

“Well, I plan to sail the coastal trade route to Lakeport and back for a few years to train a crew,” Stone said. “Would you be my captain for that?”

“A coastal route? Hardly ever out of sight of land? Aye, I could do that.”

“It would be a fully Kithren crew,” Stone said. “I’m going to train them to read and write: the mates at least. And do sums.”

“Sums is the hard part: sailing, as mate or captain, means learning to do much more than that: casting routes, navigating, reading the stars. Way too much for a dumb Kithren to learn?”

“What about a smart Kithren?” Stone said. “We have a school, and Kithren children are learning just as well as whites do. We plan to start teaching their fathers soon. In fact we could start you off as a teacher. You could start by teaching them the stars and such.”

“I sold off my sextant a few months back,” the captain said. “And you are right. I’ve had a few darkies on board the whalers who were right smart. If they had their letters and numbers, I bet they would wind up as good as my mates.”

Kalo stood up to leave. Before he left, he borrowed a pencil and scrap of paper from the waiter, and scratched something out on it. He handed it to the captain. It read: “A Kithren can write,” in childish block letters. Stone was amazed. He didn’t know the man could read and write, and only later learned that Emily had been teaching him what Rayla had taught the girl on the wagon trips. The captain was also amazed.

“Is he one of those who will be mates?” the captain asked as Kalo stooped through the door.

“No. Maybe,” Stone dithered. “I didn’t know he could write, although I knew he could handle money. But he has no experience on ships. I think. He will probably be on the crew of the vessel though.”

Stone continued: “But I want you to start teaching some men, probably six. The best three will be mates, and the others will be some other title on the ship.”

“Masters,” the captain suggested.”

“Right, masters then,” Stone continued. “I want you in two days. You will need to have some better clothes, and have bathed and trimmed that beard down. I know captains often wear a beard, but that one is a mess. If you can’t get a place to clean up, then go to the Kithren school and Rayla will let you use the shower there. And I want you to be sober for at least 24-hours before. Here is a gold to buy meals, clothes and what you need. I’ll get your sextant from the pawnshop. This is your second chance: don’t mess it up.”

The captain left, and Stone resumed interviewing the men that the boys had gathered. He found four more who seemed to have potential, and told them to come to the evening school in two days.

He had just finished with the last man when he saw Kalo come into the bar. “You better come quick, captain. Rayla finished supper an hour ago, and that was after waiting a half hour for you. If you don’t hurry, Cass will have fed your pork chitterlings to the dogs and you’ll only get the left over porridge from lunch. And they were some good chitterlings.”

Stone left the bar. It was still light out, but most of the stores on main street were closed, including the pawn shop that held the sextants. Just as well. Stone knew it would take him an hour to get through a place like that, and his mouth was watering at the thought of pork. He managed to get home in time. Emily ran up to hug him when he entered the living room, while Rayla just turned her back to him. He crept wordlessly into the kitchen, where Cass still had a small helping of pork. The cook apologized at not having as many as she felt Stone would need, noting that Jason had plucked two extras out of the pile. But the broad black cook did have sufficient potatoes and sides to fill the big man up.

Stone considered himself a brave man, but once he had taken his dishes to the sink to be washed, he snuck out the back door. He found the yard covered in scrub brush. There was over a quarter cord of wood chopped up beside the house, and other logs left where the men were working on them. Their tools were neatly stacked at the back of the shed. Stone felt five cords of the oak would keep the fires going through the winter in the two houses. The smaller branches were in a pile. Stone would have Kalo send out the word that these would be free for the taking to the people in town. Perhaps this could keep some of the widows and injured seamen warm through the winter. At the last Stone noticed one twig, and snapped it from the branch it was on.

He carried it into the house, and went to the living room, where Rayla was ready to let him have a blast for holding up dinner. He stood and took it for nearly ten minutes as Sissy and Emily cowered in the corner. Finally as she started to wind down, he took the twig and bent it back, so that it formed the shape of a heart. He accompanied that with a silly grin, and at last Rayla melted, and she ran up to him: “I can’t stay angry at you, you miserable lunk.” The girls in the corner jumped for glee at the end of their parents’ argument.

“But next time you are late, let me know,” she said.

“Time just slipped away,” Stone confessed. “I should have sent a boy to tell you. And speaking of boys, I learned that one of your students named Koon reads to his whole family each night. They all gather round and he reads a book from the school. His siblings take turns to give him a rest, but the whole family, and the neighbors gather around to listen. It’s like the radio in the old days.”

“Koon is probably my best male reader,” Rayla said. “He is better than Jason. When he took that book I thought it was too hard for him. I love that he is enjoying it. And that explains why his sister and brothers are improving as well.”

“Well, his dad wants to learn to read as well. Is there any chance of night classes? There will only be six or eight in the group I need taught.”

“Of course. There is no reason why the adults can’t learn. We have four teachers other than myself. We can each take a night. But you better get working on that new school for me.”

“Tomorrow I have to make a visit to the pawn shop in the morning. Then I’ll spend the whole afternoon on your building. Kalo thinks he knows a man to lead the work.