Eco Warrior (12 page)

He lived in Claremont, about eight miles upriver from the centre of Hobart. I had to buy a map to find it. Hobart’s harbour was fed by a river that quickly narrowed, as in Perth, but the city was much hillier, the roads were winding, and it was not as dry. It sat beneath Mount Wellington, a mountain with snow on its peak. It was the first time we had seen snow since sailing through the Arctic almost a year ago. The snow didn’t make me feel homesick.

Now that our bellies were full, the walk felt miraculous, and I didn’t mind if we didn’t return to sea for a whole month. Hobart was friendly, welcoming, and beautiful, and there was a feeling of magic in the air, or maybe inside my head, I wasn’t really sure, I was just so happy. I felt it strongest when we reached Merwin’s house, and stood in front of the mailbox. It was fashioned in the shape of a man’s head, cut and welded from rusty iron, with stars and crescent moons cut out of it, and a tall, bent, wizard’s hat welded on top. It looked magical and ghastly at the same time. Rust has a way of doing that to metal.

The front of the house was low, and the back stretched down the hill, as if the whole thing were slipping slowly into the bay. There were trees on his property, and in between the trees were metal sculptures—finished ones, and partly finished ones. There were dinosaur-like creatures, animal-like creatures, lizards, and indescribable shapes that might have been just junk. It was hard for me to tell. On the side of the house, beneath a long tarp suspended between four trees, three old Volkswagen camper vans stood side by side like old friends from an earlier time—the “hippy” generation. With the sculpture, vans, odds and ends, Merwin’s property stood out from all of his neighbours by a virtue I could relate to: it was really messy.

I went up to the door and knocked. Hollie was asleep in the tool bag but the knock woke him up. No one answered, so I knocked again. Still no one answered. I waited. Then, I figured there must be a workshop out back, and maybe he was in there. So, I went around the side, squeezed between the campers, stepped over a bit of junk, and found the back of the house. Sure enough, there was a large workshop tucked in behind the house, and there was a light on. It was part way down the hill towards the water. At the bottom was a boatshed.

I could hear an electric tool running. It was the shrill sound of metal cutting metal, a sound I knew well from the building of the sub. I went to the door, poked my head inside, and got a surprise. The shop was filled with strange creatures and machines, all cut and welded from metal. Some looked functional, and some looked scary, like monsters from a horror movie. At the very back, lying the length of the building, about twenty-five feet long, was a dragon. It had hinges and pulleys attached to its wings, and looked as though it was just sleeping, waiting for someone to walk in front of its mouth and wake it up. It looked so real I could imagine fire pouring from its nostrils. I was amazed.

I stood at the door, mesmerized by the dragon, until the cutter was shut off and the shop grew quiet. Then I heard a gentle but curious voice say “G’day? Can I help you?” I turned to see a short, middle-aged man standing in brown overalls and old-fashioned welder’s goggles. He was almost bald, but the hair he had left was white and stiff with dust, and stuck out from his head like tinsel. He stood perfectly still, waiting for a response. At his feet, a large, bright orange cat suddenly appeared.

“Hi! My name is Alfred. Brian Bennett told me to look you up. He said he would call you about it.”

He pulled off his goggles, lifted a pair of spectacles out of his pocket, and put them on. He frowned and shook his head. “No.…I don’t think…wait now; he might have called. I haven’t checked my messages for weeks. What did you say your name was?”

“Alfred.”

“And why are you here?”

“I’m visiting Tasmania.”

“From where?”

“Canada.”

“That’s a long way. And you’re a friend of Brian’s?”

“Sort of. We just met.”

“Well, you must be friends if he told you to drop in on me. Come into the house and have some French toast. I was just about to make some. Do you like French toast?”

“Yes, but I don’t want to impose.”

“It’s no imposition. We’ll be glad to have company.” He reached down and patted the cat. “This is Fritzi, the wonder cat.”

I looked at the cat and wondered what made him a wonder cat. “Your dragon is very cool. It looks like it really flies.”

Merwin turned around to look at the dragon, as if he didn’t even remember it was there. “Nope. The motors flap the wings, throw the tail around, raise the head, open and shut the mouth, but that’s it. It would take about a dozen rocket engines to get that thing into the air.” He stared at the dragon as if he were considering the possibility.

“Do any of your sculptures actually work?”

He sighed. “A few of them do. I wish they all did. I started out making sculptures, and then was asked to design monsters for film, for special effects. I build them here, and ship them off to studios in Sydney. It’s not a bad job, but I’m more interested in inventions that really work. My masterpiece is sitting down in the boathouse. Would you like to see it?”

“I would love to see it.”

“Come on, I’ll show you. Fritzi! My hat!”

Fritzi leapt onto a workbench, stretched up and grabbed Merwin’s cap off a hook, and brought it back in his mouth. Merwin took it from him and put it on his head. It was a sandy-coloured hat with a faded golden dragon on the front. Now I knew why Fritzi was a wonder cat.

“He doesn’t know he’s a cat,” said Merwin, patting Fritzi. “He thinks he’s a dog.”

“That’s funny, I have a seagull who thinks he’s an eagle,” I said.

Merwin stared, bewildered, and I didn’t think he believed me. He reached down and fed Fritzi a treat from his pocket, then patted him on the head again.

We followed him down to the boathouse. I kept Hollie in the tool bag the whole time because he was nervous around big cats. Merwin walked ahead, with Fritzi beside him. The boathouse was about the same size as the workshop, but sat on top of the water. We entered from one end, Merwin clicked on a light, and there, suspended in the air by cables, was an invention roughly the size of the dragon. At first glance I thought it
was
another dragon, except that it wasn’t cut into moveable parts, it was just one piece. Yet it had what looked like wings, or fins. They were wide, webbed appendages attached to bendable hydraulic arms. It had a tail made of discs, like a dinosaur spine, and one large moveable fin at the very back, as on a whale. There were several bubble windows, and it was hollow inside, with enough room for maybe two people. I would definitely want to see whatever film this creature was going to end up in. It was very, very cool.

“What is it?”

“What
is
it?” Merwin looked at me strangely, as if I should know what it was. “It’s a submarine!”

Chapter Fifteen

IT WASN’T LIKE ANYTHING I had ever seen before. The fins resembled enormous duck feet on either side of a skinny whale. They looked funny, yet oddly seaworthy. I was dying to know if they really worked. “Do they work?”

“Of course.
Everything
works. That’s the beauty of it. The fins are hydraulic, and they’re made from titanium. They’re hellishly strong, but lightweight. Come inside and I’ll show you.”

I followed Merwin up a stepladder and squeezed through a narrow portal hidden inside a dorsal fin. That was cool. I had to pull Hollie off my back to get inside. The sub swung side to side as we climbed in. Then we had to crouch down because there wasn’t enough room to stand. The hull was made of steel, which Merwin had cut and welded expertly, but hadn’t painted, insulated, or lined with wood, so it was pretty rough. It really felt like we were inside the stomach of a sea monster.

“You sit here, put your feet there, and pull back on the levers the way you’d row a boat. The webbed paddles open up against the water on the backstroke, then fold together like bat wings and rush to the front on the forward stroke, then open again on the backstroke. The hydraulic arms give you a powerful stroke.”

“It looks awesome. Have you tested it in the water yet?”

“No.”

“I see you have an engine, too.”

“Yeah.”

“Does it burn vegetable fat?”

“It does.”

“Is there a propeller?” I didn’t see one.

“It’s underneath the tail. It’s just a small one.”

I stared all around. There was nothing as fascinating to me as a submarine, especially one with mechanical invention. I couldn’t help wondering what this thing would look like cutting through the water. What would whales and dolphins think? What would the coast guard think? “What will you use it for?”

Merwin rubbed his hands together anxiously. “My dream is to join the Sea Shepherd Society, and help save whales, but I know that’s probably unrealistic in a vessel this size. If this proves seaworthy, I’ll make a bigger one.”

“Cool. Where are your air compressors?”

Merwin looked surprised that I asked that. “It’s here.” He pointed to a blue tank. It was pretty small.

“Is there only one?”

“Yeah. Why would you need more than one?” He looked a little confused.

“For safety. Do you have a heating system?”

“A heater? No, I didn’t think to put in a heater. I figured I’d just dress warmly. I suppose a heater’s not a bad idea.” He took a notepad out of his pocket and scribbled it down.

“The ocean gets really cold. What about an air-conditioner?”

“An
air-conditioner
? Why on earth would you need an airconditioner inside a submarine?”

“Because of the sun, and the heat of the engine, and to circulate the air.”

Merwin looked at me strangely, then wrote it down in his notepad. I looked around some more. “Where are your batteries?”

“There aren’t any. That’s why I have the hydraulic paddles. I’ll use the engine on the surface, and the paddles when I submerge. I don’t see the need to complicate things with batteries. I don’t like the idea of running electricity inside a submarine.”

That meant that the sub could only move under water when he rowed. But what if he broke his arm when he was at sea? Or what if he got sick, or ran out of food, like we had, and had no energy? And I guess he wasn’t concerned about speed. The duck fins looked pretty cool, but they’d be awfully slow. He hadn’t tested them in the water yet anyway, so he didn’t even know if they worked.

“What about your casings? These ones are just temporary, are they?” Everywhere that he had cut holes in the hull—for windows, paddle arms, and valves—were casings that might have been suitable for a machine on land, to keep the dust and rain out, but none of them would hold up against water pressure for more than a few seconds. They looked really neat, like out of a spaceship movie, but if he ever went to sea in this submarine, he would drown before he got out of sight of his boathouse.

“What’s wrong with my casings?” He looked a little wounded.

“They won’t keep the sea out. You’ll drown.” I hated to be so critical, but he didn’t appear to realize how dangerous it actually was to go under the water in a machine. The sea doesn’t care if you are sincere, and it doesn’t care what your submarine looks like. It only cares if it’s watertight.

Merwin stared at me intensely: partly curious, partly defensive. “How come you know so much about submarines, Alfred?”

I hesitated. “Because I live in one.”

“You’re kidding.”

I shook my head. “Did you hear about an incident in Perth a couple of weeks ago, where a tanker was sabotaged, and everyone thought it was someone in a submarine?”

“Yeah, of course. Everybody has seen that. It was big news.”

“Well, the guy they’re looking for is me.”

His mouth dropped. “No.”

“Yes, but I didn’t do it. Honestly. Somebody else did; but I don’t know who.”

“But…you travel in a submarine?”

“Yes. I’ve been living in one for a couple of years now. It’s my home.”

Merwin looked stunned. Then he drifted off in a trance, probably lost in his imagination, and it took him quite a while to come back. I leaned against the inside of the hull with one arm, and held Hollie in the tool bag with the other. The sharp, biting odour of metal reminded me of Ziegfried’s workshop back in Newfoundland, where we had built the sub. Then Hollie sneezed, and Merwin snapped out of his trance. “Boy, have we got things to talk about, Alfred. Please come in and have French toast with me.”

“Okay.” That sounded pretty good to me.

So we climbed out and followed him back up the hill to his house, which was even messier inside than out. But it was cosy. And Merwin made probably the best French toast in the world. He bought the bread from an organic bakery, the eggs from an organic farm where the hens had the run of the place; the milk from cows that were grass fed; the salt, cinnamon, butter, and yogurt from a local organic store. Everything was organic, and grown or made in Tasmania, except the brown sugar, which was imported, but was organic, too. I had never had yogurt on French toast before, and was kind of doubtful, until I tried it. Then, I couldn’t stop eating it. While we ate, Merwin asked me a lot of questions about my experiences in the sub, and I answered them, including telling him how I was hoping he might be able to convert the engine to burn vegetable fat.