CHOCOLATE MILK, SACRED FLUTES
AND V-DRIVES(From Magic Harbor by Don Berry)
Dead in the water. Again.
This time I was on my way to my troll gig at the crane barge on a Friday afternoon in mid-August. I got just outside the mouth of Eagle Harbor when I lost thrust. Turned around and started back into the harbor, and within a minute or two had lost power entirely. My old nemesis engine was running fine, but clearly the V-drive that transmits the power to the propeller shaft had given up the ghost.
The worst of this was that it was all occurring directly in the middle of the ferry lanes coming into Eagle Harbor, a channel only a couple of hundred feet wide. It does not take much imagination to realize that being adrift in the middle of the ferr y lanes is as close to a living nightmare as you can get. On top of which I'm bankrupt, and the way in which the power went sounds like a lot of money.
But Problem Number One is definitely getting someplace I'm not going to be run over by a vessel longer than a football field and carrying 300 automobiles.
The place I lost power completely was barely inside the corner of a right angle turn in Eagle Harbor's dogleg channel. The tide had just passed low slack, and was sluggishly beginning to flow into the harbor. That moved me slightly away from the ferry lanes. That's good.
The wind, however, was pushing me at right angles to that, deeper into the ferry lanes. That's bad.
The game at this point became one of balancing how long I dared let the tide carry me out of trouble before the adverse wind put me in worse trouble.
When I figured I'd gone as far as I could I dropped the anchor and prayed it wouldn't drag much before getting a bite on the bottom.
When the anchor had set, and my emotions settled down a little, I took stock. Not too bad. I was slightly off to the side of the path taken by the ferries approaching the dock, with plenty of room for the gigantic boats to get by. Hell, they'd probably think I was out there fishing or something. I seem often to be wishing people would think I was doing something other than I'm actually doing. Still, the only real hazard in the next few hours was the wake left by big powerboats moving into the harbor at high speed. O.K. I've lived with wakes before.
I called the Seattle Marine Operator on VHF Channel 25, and asked them to connect me by land telephone to my son David's office. I explained the situation, and David said he'd see if he could locate some assistance. At worst, his company's work skiff would be coming into Eagle Harbor at the end of the day, and if we couldn't get a tow any other way, they could pick me up. It would only be a few hour wait.
That was how it worked out. About five o'clock the work skiff came whizzing happily into the harbor, took me in tow, and deposited me illegally at the dock in Russell Trask's shipyard.
I chose Trask's place rather than going back on anchor for a very simple reason: My friend Gerome, engineer for David's company, was going to have to look at this damn thing, and Gerome (even though he's from the island of St Vincent in the Lesser Antilles) absolutely hates dinghies. If I'm going to get any help from Gerome, I'd damned well better be on a dock he can walk to.
Now it is a fact of water rat life that any disabled vessel being towed into the harbor gets noticed by everybody. So it was not a great surprise when, not more than five minutes after I'd tied off at Trask's dock, I saw a familiar dinghy coming up alongside. It was Julia of LEGACY.
"Hi," she grinned at me from the water. "Looked like you might need a little cheering up."
"Come on aboard," I said. "Whatever cheer there is, I'll take."
"I brought you some chocolate milk," Julia said, holding up a half gallon wax carton. "How 'bout that?"
"Sounds wonderful."
A few minutes later Jerry of TARUGA showed up at Trask's. He hadn't seen me come in, but knew perfectly well what it meant to see me tied at that particular dock.
"Hey, Chuck," he said cheerfully. "Pretty soon you're going to have a whole new engine, piece by piece."
Jerry hadn't come to comfort me, but to do some work of his own. Jerry is one of the new breed of shaman, working with a variety of traditional Indian medicine circles around the western part of the country. Much of his year is spent learning and practicing the songs, the lore, and the healing arts of the Indian spiritual renaissance.
Last year had been a particularly potent one for Jerry, partly because of his involvement with a Sacred Flute society in the Southwest. The society is widespread among western tribes, and has a number of different levels of initiation. Jerry had spent several previous years in apprenticeship with an Ojibway flute maker and medicine man in Arizona. On Jerry's trip to Arizona last winter, his teacher had granted him a grade of initiation that now gives Jerry the right and power to make and sell Prayer Flutes; to know the rituals that make them sacred; to pass the spirit knowledge through the breath of the flute.
He had come in from his boat to sit at the dock in the sunset and work on the flutes he was carving from aromatic yellow cedar.
In the late evening the waters of Eagle Harbor calm. Even the smallest ripples disappear, leaving only an iridescent plane reflecting the purpled sky of the setting sun like a mirror of polished platinum. In the dusk the wings of a blue heron sweeping past are the loudest sound.
The smoky red sun suffuses sky and water with a deep, brooding color like live coals. Serenity is like a tangible cloak that envelops us; stillness spreads great dark wings over the harbor.
After a day of struggle and uncertainty, three water rats sit on a rickety dock in a deserted shipyard under a red sky. Drinking warm chocolate milk from a wax carton, talking softly of broken V-drives, and the living spirit of the sacred flute, and crazy folks we have known. Trolls and shamans and wild women.
I think about friendships a lot. And sometimes, gratefully, I can see through the eye of friendship that these are the good old days before world's end.
end
Chocolate Milk, Sacred Flutes and V-Drives
©1995 Don Berry