For a while he swore at the rent timber. Then he flung it into the paperbarks and walked back to the oak stump, where he cut off another round. His previous efforts had lowered its height, and to free this third slab he had to lie flat on the ground, easing his saw back and forth, his shoulder and hip hard against the dirt. Again he turned the wheel of wood on its side. Again he rolled it to the boatshed.

He repeated the same process, this time taking it slower, taking more care. Guiding his tools with soft fear. He put down his chisel much earlier in the process this time, using sandpaper instead. Grinding it over bumps, exhausting his arm. Leaking sweat onto sawdust. When he thought it looked finished he used a hand drill to bore a hole in the spot where it would attach to the boat.

He worried that it wouldn’t fit, but when he lifted it to the stern it slid in well enough, and once he had fastened it with an old bolt it hung more or less like he had hoped it would. The swivelling mechanism was sound; the short tiller he’d attached it to was easy to grip. And despite his worry that it would stand out, that it would look poor and dull next to the Huon pine, its deeper colour contrasted neatly against the straw-gold boat planks. A dark exclamation in all that brightness.

Next he took a wider eye to the hull, looking for holes, searching for where the river would push through. He found no gaps, but didn’t trust his limited knowledge. He did not want to push the boat into the water and watch it dive to the sand, so he decided to seal the hull. The wood was rough after the scouring, anyway, in need of some kind of finishing agent. He was tempted to varnish the whole thing, to slop glossy oil all over it, as he’d seen his father do to wooden furniture. But he couldn’t bring himself to stain the Huon like that; it seemed like the sort of act a person would be arrested for. Instead he applied only a thin, colourless veneer of shellac. It gave the timber a light gleam under direct sunlight, a smoother touch and a sealed skin—nothing more. There were larger gaps, higher up the sides, which would not be under threat on a calm surface but might betray him during a storm. He patched them with tar—black winks of comfort.