As soon as his father dismissed him, Ray picked a book off her mother’s shelf and, after changing clothes and getting filthy, rushed to the shipyard. Nobody was there, the zone was practically sealed off the city and the harbour, but a rusty fence is not much of a safe seal. Ray checked twice and ran to the boat with the log and the saw. Once inside, he took off his dirty clothes and stood there in his underwear. He could somehow stand the horrible heat, but all the dirt stopped him from working comfortably.
Once he felt like getting into the job, he opened the book, entitled “Bows of Medieval England”. He would have preferred a book on more modern ranged armament, but this is all he had and everything he could do. He kept a photo of a modern bow between the first two pages of the book, and he also had a strip of plastic tape measure (metric) in one of his trouser’s pockets. He took it out and began to take measures of himself and of the log, which he marked on the log by hitting it with the saw’s blade. He was basically making the log into a piece proportionate to him.
It was 3 o’clock in the afternoon when he departed for the docks. At 5 he had finished with all his measurements and had cut the expendable parts of the log. In the next hour he carved it into a thin arc in the limbs, of about 1 cm thick. The central part, which he hadn’t carved, was still nearly intact, whereas the general appearance was that of a bow. When he had finished carving the limbs, he cut the central part into a rectangular-shaped trapezoid of about 5 cm wide, as the rest of the bow, and a varying length of 10-15 cm. He wanted to shape it as a modern bow is, so he cut a somehow smooth grip. After making the general shape, he took out a piece of sandpaper he had found under the hull. It was possibly being used by the workers of the shipyards to take out algae and crusts of biological detritus off it.
At a quarter to 7 he had a decurved bow with a modern handle and a trapezoid block. He left it there, and after handling it several times, he didn’t like the grip. Although he had made it as smooth as it could be, something was missing. In his eyes,you could see nothing, not even a reflexion of his surroundings. His focus was so clear that is seemed like if he wasn’t in this world anymore. Suddenly, looking at the white hulls through an open trapdoor while holding the bow with his left hand, he jumped in understanding: he needed to varnish it. So he went out and looked in every ship and hangar, until he found a tin can half full of varnish in the only hangar that didn’t look abandoned for 20 years. It was already 8 o’clock. Within a quarter of an hour, he had varnished the handle and the limbs, and left for home.
He arrived at five to 9 in the evening, and it was already dark. He was half naked and had brought back only the book and his pocket knife, which had been his grandfather’s and which he had used to carve the handle. His uncle slapped him in the face for missing mass, and his father had already eaten his portion of food. Hungry, dirty, and suddenly worried for the carelessness with which he had left, Ray went to bed and tried to have some sleep.