Freddy and Dammepoortsluis Lock
Freddy the Fender had hung from the starboard bow of the Horizon 5 for three seasons, and in that time he had learned one thing above all others: the job was mostly waiting.
He was good at waiting. Fenders are.
He was cylindrical, the faded white of a veteran fender, with the particular dignity of something that has been squeezed hard many times and always returned to its original shape. The crew of the Horizon 5 took him somewhat for granted, which is the fate of anything truly reliable.
The other fenders — there were fourteen of them in total, a motley fleet of similarly sized and colored cylinders with one rather avant-garde panel fender on the stern named Gerald — respected Freddy quietly and from a distance. All except Felicity, a compact and firm port-side fender with unusually good posture, who had told Gerald once that she admired Freddy's "structural integrity." Gerald had not known what to do with this information and had since done nothing.
It was a Tuesday when the trouble came, as trouble often does.
The Horizon 5 was working through the Dammepoortsluis lock — a large lock, but there was a cargo barge filling it up which made matters tight. Partway through the lock procedure, a broad-bellied and wallowing barge called the Duchesse de Namur was struggling and asked to moor alongside Horizon 5. The crew, of course, consented. The big wench came alongside and moored against them to wait out the water level change together.
The Duchesse was not a small boat.
All of her weight came to rest, in the way these things go, precisely against Freddy.
The pressure was extraordinary. It was the kind of pressure that reshapes lesser fenders, that sends cracks through inferior polymers, that makes a boat's hull groan in sympathy. The crew appeared on deck almost immediately — nervous, hovering, the kind of hovering people do when they want to help but have nothing useful to do.
Freddy held.
He did not do this heroically. He did not grit his teeth, because he had none. He simply did what he was designed to do, and he did it without complaint, which is perhaps the most heroic thing of all.
The water rose. The Duchesse de Namur cast off. The pressure released.
Karin, the crewman who'd been watching Freddy most anxiously exhaled audibly, gave the fender a single approving pat, and went below for tea.
That night, after the Horizon 5 had moored in a lovely marina in Bruges and the crew had gone to bed, the fenders convened.
This was not unusual. Fenders convene most nights; it's just that no one is awake to notice.
The occasion, however, was unusual. Freddy was carried to the center of the dock line by common agreement, and even Gerald — who was difficult — made no objection. Felicity was there, bright-eyed and close to the bow cleat, and when the informal speeches were done, she said, simply, that Freddy was the reason the hull of the Horizon 5 had not collected a very expensive scar that afternoon.
"I know what I am," Freddy said.
"Yes," said Felicity. "But today you were more of it."
The other fenders agreed that this was well put.
In the morning, the crew found a fifteenth fender they could not explain.
It was small — barely the size of a human thumb — and pale, and it hung from the bow rail like it had always been there, which in some sense it had. It had a slightly starboard lean to it, and Felicity's unusually good posture.
The crewman who found it held it up, turned it over twice, and said, "Where did this come from?"
Nobody answered him. Nobody ever does.
After brief discussion, the crew decided to name it Pip.
Pip was, from the first, excellent under pressure.