Read Online Joe Speedboat by Tommy Wieringa - Free Book Online Page A

Graad Huisman of Bethlehem Asphalt known the real purpose of their activities in the shed, he would definitely have kept the boys from coming there. But they talked about their plans to no one else, and no one ever asked me a thing.
    The hangar floor was littered with sketches, blueprints and manuals. Dunhill in the corner of his mouth and one eye squeezed shut against the smoke, Engel pored over sheets of paper covered in calculations. For shock absorbers they had pulled the suspension springs off an old Opel Kadett at the Hermans & Sons junkyard and welded them between the fuselage and the wheels. Then the plane was hoisted on a rope a metre and a half off the ground and Joe climbed into it. We held our breath. Joe yanked on the rope, the knot slipped and theplane crashed to the ground. Everything remained intact, except for Joe, who climbed out with a ‘goddamn sore back’. Thereby demonstrating that the plane would not fall apart during the landing.
    â€˜OK,’ Engel said, ‘now we can put the canvas on it.’
    Each new phase in construction was preceded by a rash of thievery. What was needed now was tarpaulin.
    â€˜Blue tarp, and nothing but blue,’ emphasized Engel, who was in charge of the plane’s aesthetics. ‘Sky blue or nothing at all.’
    The stands for the Friday street market were always set up the night before, the tarps laid in readiness on the tables where the stallholders could find them the next morning. But one Friday morning in October the market superintendent found himself besieged by a group of unhappy vendors. Where were their tarps? How were they supposed to set up their stands? Was this what they paid stallage for? That day they were given last year’s ratty old tarps, and that week’s
Lomarker Weekly
ran a little article about the theft.
    Meanwhile, at a secret location, the tarps were sewn together with angelic patience. Engel was the right man for the job; his father, the last of the Lomark eel fishers, had taught him how to mend fish traps and tie knots that would never come loose. Engel cursed regularly as he worked, but the final result was stunning. Using tie-rips, he stretched the tarps over the fuselage until they were tight as the head of a drum.
    Joe was in charge of the wings. The frames were made from fourteen aluminium strips attached to the main girder of each wing, which presented the difficult task of bending twenty-eight ribs into exactly the same silhouette. Without being asked, I took over right away; a strong hand that knows its own strength is a more delicate instrument than any bench-vice or pair of tongs. Taking each rib between thumb and fingers, Ibent them to the right curvature. Twenty-seven and one for good luck makes twenty-eight, there you go, sir.
    They were flabbergasted.
    â€˜Jesus, talk about a vice-grip,’ Engel mumbled.
    â€˜Frank the Arm,’ said Joe.
    From then on I was called on more often when it was time to bend things or to tighten them so they’d never move again.
    At Pa’s yard they tore an aluminium engine out of a pleated Subaru and installed it in the nose of the plane. The fuel tank was the kind used in small boats. The plane, they had calculated, needed to produce 130 kilos of pull in order to get off the ground. A weigh beam was attached to the wall and linked to the tail with a steel cable. Joe climbed in and started the engine. Holy Toledo, it ran like a dream. The cable went taut, the pointer on the weigh beam shot up to eighty kilos, then ninety. The propeller flailed, one hundred, the motor roared and papers flew through the shed. Wednesday left my shoulder with a panicky caw-caw, at a hundred and ten Engel put his hands over his ears, the engine was approaching 5500 rpm and making a horrible racket.
    â€˜HUNDRED TWENTY!’ Christof screamed.
    The pointer kept crawling along, Joe gave it a tad more throttle and Engel shouted, ‘STOP!’
    A hundred and thirty kilos of