Paul was in his sixties when he decided that it was time for him to build a boat. he felt certain that he would be capable since he’d been a carpenter all his life and knew how to put wood together. He spent a great deal of time building the model, and while he knew it would actually be more complicated, his instincts kept telling him that it would simply be a matter of building it to scale.
Of course, he was completely incorrect about how easy it would be. Even when it became clear that it was going to be a great deal more work than he’d anticipated, he kept going. Paul decided that it would become his hobby instead of just a project. He knew any number of men his age that obsessed about mechanical things, especially cars. Old men fiddling with motors was just the natural order of things.
He decided that the boat was simply his eccentric version of tinkering with cars. He’d always been a bit of an oddball, so it wasn’t shocking behaviour.
Paul was seventy-five by the time he was done, and while he felt a great deal of elation about finally getting it done, he also knew that he wasn’t going to sail it. When he’d first started, that had been the plan, but he’d been imagining it might take a couple of years rather than a decade. And he would need one partner, at least, and he didn’t know anyone else who could sail. He wasn’t really sure that he knew what he was doing on the water himself.
He kept it in his yard for years, decorating it extensively for Christmas and Halloween. His daughter, Susan, often tried to talk him into selling it, but he wasn’t interested. Paul took good care of the thing, and made sure that it was always painted and that any rotten timbers were quickly replaced.
He died at the age of eighty, and in his will he stipulated that he be buried at sea. In fact, what he wanted was an old-style Viking burial with someone setting the boat on fire with his body inside it.
His daughter wasn’t sure how she would do that, but she also didn’t want to ignore his wishes. He hadn’t asked much, but when he did, he had never been happy to be crossed. If burning in a boat was what he wanted, that’s what he ought to be able to get.
Susan couldn’t get it to the sea, so she took the boat to Lake Huron instead. She figured that any large body of water would do, so she felt pretty sure that he really wouldn’t have had any objections. The lake was only a couple of hours away, and it was no problem to rent a boat trailer to go behind her truck.
It took her a while to convince the coroner that she could take Paul’s body, but she had been looking into it and knew that she really could. So, the argument had been expected and she was prepared. She brought up the pertinent laws and the possibility of hiring a lawyer. The coroner reluctantly relented, got her to sign some sort of waiver and then let her take the body.
She wasn’t as confident about Paul’s abilities as he’d been, so when they got the boat to the water, her and her sons put it in slowly and carefully to make sure that it was actually going to float. It did and she felt a bit of surprise about that, as she’d always just kind of assumed that if it actually hit water, it would just sink. But apparently the old man had known enough to make sure that it would float.
Once it was in the water, they carried Paul’s body in it’s bag on board, and lay him out on a long trestle they’d set up in the bottom of the boat. It didn’t exactly seem dignified, but no one knew what the proper ritual was anyway, so they let it go.
In the old stories, they shoot a flaming arrow at the boat. Nobody knew how to do that, but Susan had a hunting rifle, so they soaked everything in gas, and then placed a jerry can full of gas on the back. When the boat was out in the water, Susan shot at the gas can a few times until she hit it and the boat burst into flames. Again, the whole thing felt kind of undignified, but she wasn’t sure what else she could do.
As she watched it float away with the fire climbing quickly up the mast, Susan felt an urge to salute. She repressed it, as her father had never been a military man, and he wouldn’t have liked the idea of her saluting in vain.