HAWES ESCAPES

He took his time with the adze, setting it against the wood with relaxed precision and drawing it across the grain as though floating a scarf through the air.

The bright curls of oak drifted down onto the toes of his boots.

He set the adze aside and ran his hand along the smooth board, smiling beneath his mustache. “Like that,” he said.

“You make it look easy.”

“It is easy,” he said. “It’s we who are hard. I’d take that coffee now.”

Sitting outside with our steaming mugs, he lit his pipe and looked over the harbor. “My great-great-great-grandfather arrived here on a Nantucket whaler. We’ve been here ever since.”

I wrote 5th generation in my notebook.

“A rootless people are disconnected,” he said. ” Is it any wonder they no longer care about the earth?  They are so busy that they never get a chance to know it.”

What Pegman Saw: Newfoundland

I came across this great website and was inspired by the way these boatbuilders approach their craft.

I learn this from Bonifatius Mbwale.

He is known to lie, but to tell a proper story both truth and lies are often employed.

Bonifatius is a man of such power that it is better to believe him than not, for to contradict him can lead to many evils.

Bonifatius tell me, “You walk around Benguela and see a white beach, a casino, a stretch of lawn green as seaweed. But I see a fleet of slave ships, a row of log cages in the sand, a mother weeping as her child is tied to a tree and whipped.”

Bonifatius tell me the ghosts cannot abide the blindness of those who walk through them. He say they compel him to make the witch magic as he does, to sicken these people and remind them of the suffering they ignore.

Bonifatius tell me that all ghosts must have their blood tribute.

What Pegman Saw: Angola

Young Nor is not listening. He stares into his phone,  rubbing it with an index finger, the old man notes, the way one might stroke a parrot’s head.

Old Nor tips his wicker chair to take advantage of the shade cast by the broad-leaf elephant ear plant that has been next to the doorway for a hundred years.

“When the Royal Navy was in port,” says the old man, “this alley was as lively as any place in the entire city.  It was called Barber Street. One would always see cobblers at their benches, fortune-tellers sitting on their Arabian carpets, ice-ball vendors and kachang puteh sellers, opera singers, and of course the monkeys.”

The boy looks up. “Monkeys, Grandfather?”

“Certainly. Monkeys made the finest thieves. A thiefmaster would set them to the crowd, where they would dart among the people and snatch whatever valuables they could before fleeing to the rooftops.”

“No!” says the boy.

“Oh yes.”

The boy smiles.

What Pegman Saw: Singapore

A small blue Ford stood with all its doors open. A little man in a white shirt and sunglasses stood by with crossed arms, smiling as we approached.  We got in.

He stomped on the gas, caroming into the flow of traffic with utter disregard. Joe covered his face with his hands and groaned. The driver ignored this, jerking the wheel this way and that, narrowly avoiding collisions as he sped through the streets.

I focused on the scenery. A column of shaved-head monks in orange robes walked along the road, some carrying black umbrellas to shield themselves from the sun. Three-wheeled bicycle taxis hurdled alongside the traffic, oblivious of the danger.

We skidded to a stop in front of a two-story building with a pagoda roof of red tiles. The driver flipped his wrist and checked his watch, grinning like a lunatic. “Twelve minute!” he said to Joe. “New record!”

What Pegman Saw: Laos