..:S...P...I...D...E...R...B...I...T...E...S:..

Saturday, January 10, 2004

" When suppertime came the old cook came on deck sayin' "fellas it's too rough to feed ya. . ."
at seven p.m. a main hatchway caved in, he said "fellas it's been good to know ya."
- "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" - Gordon Lightfoot



FICTION:



Sword Fighting (part 1)



"It's too hot out for night."

That's what the little boy said when they walked up on the shipwreck in the grass. The boy's small round head was framed in the one window on the boat where the glass was still intact. Even though he was hiding inside a boat in his yard, and even though he was just a little boy, his voice was huge and startling, echoing out of the other busted windows frames like they were stereo speakers.

"You can't come aboard. It's too bad ‘cause you know what happens when it’s too hot out for night? It means a storm’s comin’. Big waves. You'll all drown out there. . ."

James actually glanced down at the grass before he caught himself. It made him angry, as if the boy had lied to him about his shoe being untied when actually his zipper was down.

"Listen you little punk, we're miles from water.” Steven said, looking to the house for grown-ups. “Where's your daddy? It’s his lucky day. We want to buy this pile of shit."

The boy disappeared, then popped up out of one of the broken cabin windows. He pointed at James and looked to Steven for help.

"Tell him that you can drown in water out there,” the boy said. “In any amount of water." The boy grinned. Front teeth gone. "Tell him that he could drown in a frisbee full of water. Tell him that's all you'd need!"

Steve nodded at this and turned to James.

"He's got a poi-"

A huge silver disc suddenly cracked Steven upside the head. It came hard with a splash that, for an instant, Steven mistook for blood. He wiped his mouth. Just water. He looked for the object, it was too heavy and hard to be a frisbee.

"You little fucker!" He sputtered. "Go get your fucking dad!" He rubbed his head and picked up the boy’s weapon. It was a hubcap. Steven turned it over and angled it to catch the moonlight. A pirate's skull and bones were drawn on it in black.

"Do we really want to buy this thing?" Steven was suddenly uneasy. For some reason he was disturbed with the boy's first words to them.

Too hot for night?

The words suddenly took Steven back to when he was little and worried about everything. For some reason, he always thought that any record high temperature in the summer meant the end of the world. He smiled at the thought and walked towards James, shaking his head and trying to spin the hubcab on his finger like a basketball.

"Seriously dude. I mean, we'll never get it in the water. It would sink sooooo fast if we did. And aren't we too old for a clubhouse?"

"No." James snatched the hubcap away, shook out the rest of the water, and side-armed it as hard as he could. James was going for the one window on the boat, but it didn't catch enough air and it went straight down, hitting the ground at his feet then rolled back past him. His bad throw seemed to change his mind about something.

"Fuck this shit.” James mumbled. Then, to the ship, “Yo kid! Just wait, I'm going to get real bored sometime, then I'm gonna come back here and burn your boat down. . ."

He trailed off, the reflection of something metal and new and gold catching his eye from somewhere on the ship. Steven followed James’ slack-jawed stare and blinked when he saw what he was looking at.

A brass flag pole. Catching the last of the sun. Bright, gold and burning in the twilight. And something was climbing to the top. Something black and boiling on the end of a rope. Something twitching to fly. All three boys knew what it was before the wind finally unrolled it with a snap.

The boy was raising a flag. A skull and bones, of course, except this version was more bizarre than the grin on the hubcap. The boy had spent more time on his pirate flag. There were more than five crossed bones behind the skull, and too many eyes to count. And the skull wasn’t human. It was a drawing based on the bones of some crazy animal and it make Steven wonder if the boy had peeled the head on some creature to use it for a model.

What kind of beast had a head like that? He thought as he checked the horizon for smoke stacks or power lines or cooling towers. Mutation? What is that boy hiding in there? Finally another boy besides me that actually hides things worth hiding. . .

Steven and James stared at the skull for several seconds, listening to the sounds of it whip-lashing in the wind. It reminded him of the time he tried to pitch a tent in his backyard. He snapped the tent over and over, trying to unroll it, and every time he did, his neighbor’s cat pounced on top, or ran under it to hide and he’d have to start over. He remembered how he sneaked back inside as soon as it got dark, how he ended up sleeping on the floor next to his father’s bed after he’d planned to sleep in the yard for weeks. He smiled and locked eyes with the boy. He was leaning against the brass pole, arms crossed, still daring them to climb aboard.

Steven turned to James and watched the anger drain from his face as the hubcap dropped to the grass. He knew what he was thinking. Together they started walking towards the house.

The boy screamed in protest. His flag had backfired. The flag was strange and beautiful and perfect and it was enough for Steven and James to change their minds right there on the spot. They weren’t too old to sail a pirate ship. Never too old to raise a pirate's flag.


* * *


The shipwreck in the grass had no engine, no wiring, five shattered windows, an advanced case of dry rot and a sag like an injured athlete in triple overtime. The hull looked like it had been constructed with a bug-infested forest dryfall. The boat moaned even when no one was touching it.

They didn’t care. All they wanted to do, even if it was just for one day, was to get their ship on the water. James decided that their “one mission” was to spend the night on it. Wake up on it. On the water. Just one time. Steven corrected him and said that was actually “three missions” if you thought about it.

The day after they got the money together (pooling cash that would have been wasted on bills, selling some books, movies and music) Steven had his uncle follow them out to the boat with his trailer and slide-track to haul it to a garage or dock for repairs. The boat had been sinking into the soft ground for years, and it took the last gear on his uncle’s truck and five dollar's worth of gas to wrestle it out of its grave. While the truck struggled, Steven could hear the boy crying somewhere in the trees. Steven cracked his knuckles nervously, half expecting the
boat to disintegrate at any moment.

Or explode.

The boy had stopped crying. Steven studied the trees and saw nothing.

Steven waited until James went inside the house, paying someone for the boat, before he grabbed the lines on the pole and brought the boy's flag down. As soon as he started to pull, he caught a glimpse of a small rock skipping across the deck. Then another. Then one clipped his ear. He ducked and spun around to look. Nothing. He finished bringing it down to untie the jumble of knots, then whistled as he threw the flag over his shoulder in an exaggerated motion.

He felt eyes on him. Hatred on the back of his neck like a hot driver’s seat in the summer.

Steven opened his mouth to curse or apologize or challenge the boy to show himself...

Then James came out of the house, smiling when he saw Steven waving the flag triumphantly around his head like a giant party favor. Suddenly Steven saw something and stopped twirling to let the flag float down over his head. James turned around to see what is was.

A boy was watching them from the roof of the house. Arms crossed, half as tall as the chimney, wind tugging on his clothes, pulling his shirt forward on his small frame.

“Is that the same. . .” Steven started to ask.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Steven muttered as his uncle came around to motion him off the boat with two thumbs over his shoulders.

“Quick,” Steven said as he pulled the flag off his head. “Help me with this, dude.”

James climbed aboard and held the corners as Steven slowly walked towards him, folding the flag with each step. He carefully folded it into tight triangles, as if it was a military funeral. James lost his patience and snatched it away before he was done. He rolled it into a ball and threw it threw a broken cabin window. Steven waited until he was climbing down, then leaned into the hole to retrieve it.

For the first time, his head was inside and he could smell everything. The sweat and rot and burn of a little boy’s hiding place. He breathed deep, nostrils flaring, and wished he had a squadron of electronic flies-on-the-wall to dispatch into secret hiding places to record the activities of every boy in the world.

Not every boy though, he thought. They ain’t all that interesting. Under ten years old. That would be the age. Otherwise they’re thinking about girls. And one parent. More solitude, more creativity. And no sports. The boy should be weak or missing a finger, or have a problem with bloody noses. . .

As Steven got in his car, he told himself that he shouldn’t feel guilty, that a boy that could create a pirate flag like that would have other places to hide, other places to play, other places to plant flags. He told himself that this old boat wouldn't be that boy’s only clubhouse. Maybe there’s another one in those woods. He told himself that they must have at least two sons, maybe three. That would explain the boy on the roof. He told himself that there were boys all over that neighborhood. Under cars, sleeping in satellite dishes, hiding in stacks of tires in the junkyard, even crying in every tree.

Fuck that kid. That's why flags go up and down on those poles . All pirates eventually lose their ship. Time for the boy to grow the fuck up.

Steven watched the boat turn the corner, swaying alarmingly with every bump. He started his car to follow his uncle. Then he stopped and leaned out his driver’s side window with the boy’s flag in his fist. He pulled the broken end of his radio antenna towards him and pieced the flag three times along it’s edge. He sat back hard and put the car into gear.

The wind straightened it as he drove away, the flag beating a satisfying rhythm against his windshield. He swerved to avoid a small piece of their shipwreck on the road and stabbed the gas to catch up. He couldn’t wait to start working on it. Couldn’t wait to get back inside. He hoped the boy had forgotten some of his toys. Or treasure.



-© 2003 david james keaton

::: david - 7:16 PM [+] :::
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