Atu Ep.3 (3) “Fuck Carl! Jesus, why does everybody always – whatever, look I got us into this mess and I’m getting us out of it. You just keep your head down and don’t get in trouble with Bill.” “I don’t! It’s only when you-“ “Oh for Christ’s sake, Harlan, just shut up. Look, I need to get some help. Don’t think I’m not coming back, alright?” I started for the door, facing him the whole time – “I know that this is probably 83% my fault so I’m gonna fix it, alright?” I turned and quickly made my way up the stairs and as I was halfway up I heard him call out “What the hell are you talking about?” I stood at the starboard side of the boat staring out at the blackness. Somewhere past all that emptiness was the land – our land. I looked down at the hard, endless black sea waves come rushing up to rock at the ship as if testing it for spots of weakness, feeling it out, estimating what force it would take to turn it over and sink it once for all. I wanted to jump in and help – I felt that we had a common enemy, the sea and I: this Goddamned ship and all the people in it – we could take it apart, me, the ocean and all the fishes in it, wash this thing off the planet with those slow, calm waves, slow and unstoppable like fire or earth, eyeless, mindless, brainless, the birthplace of all life, to take it back, take it all back and turn it into something useful like food for the smallest bottom-feeding invertebrate which had more integrity and honestly in a single antennae than all of th- “I can only imagine what the inner monologue in your head must sound like right now.” Carl. I turned around to his voice, and there he was hidden in the shadows only two meters away from me, smoking a cigarette with no shirt on as usual, sitting high up on something covered in canvas. He laughed silently, letting the smoke steam out with the sound, and then he flicked the cigarette at me. “I imagine it’s pretty shit, but that’s only because I’ve heard you prosthelytize before.” “What do you want, Carl?” Carl. Always popping up where he’s not needed with his little remarks about this and that. Pointless. He jumped off his perch and landed on his feet with a thump on the deck, then slowly walked over to me, reached in his pocket and held out an open pack of cigarettes with one smoke extended more than the rest. I took it and he came in close to light it. While we were huddled together to light it in the wind he said in a low voice, “Seriously, what are you thinking, looking out there.” The smoke caught alight and I puffed it suspiciously. “What’s it to you, Seaman Carl?” Carl laughed facetiously and looked away into the night. We both stood there looking out at it, at what we both knew was there, somewhere – straight ahead in fact, couldn’t miss it. Carl took a breath in and turned back to me. “I look out there too you know.” I didn’t say anything back him. He continued, “You know what that is Rueben?” He walked right up close to the edge and leaned over the side. “That’s our patch. The whole thing.” “Right...” “It is Rueben: us, the cows, the birds, anything that gets lost there, we own it.” He took out another cigarette for himself, threw it in his mouth like I always practise but never get right and lit it. “It’s only here that we don’t own anything. Out there?” he pointed with his cigarette, “Every patch we stand on is our own.” He turned back and gave me a goofy Carl smile, so annoying I cannot tell you. “And the minute we lift our feet, it’s belongs to God again.” He took a drag and then blew it out between his teeth. “And you say my prosthelytizing is shit. What is this, the White ‘Roots’?” Carl just smiled at me again, his eyes glittering with something. Damn those eyes of his. Why do they do that? “You talked to Gabby?” “Sort of.” “Listen to me, Rueben. This whole thing is half your fault.” “What?” What the hell was he trying to – “You can’t blame Gabby and Bill entirely for how things have turned out. Gabby, as great as she is, has a number of deep-rooted mental issues that are just waiting for the right moment to spring up and take control. And as for Bill – you realize that that cow was the last thing on earth that he truly loved besides-” “Okay Carl, I realize that I fucked everything up. I realize that I’m shit at what I do and that-” “Wait, you idiot, shut up. Let me finish.” Carl flicked the barely-smoked cigarette out over the side of the boat and, extending his arms, clasped his hands firmly on my shoulders. “What?” “Except you, Rueben.” “Except me, what?” “Bill. Gabby. Everyone. You just don’t get it Rueben: Bill, Gabby, Harlan. More than anything else, they love you.” I blinked a few times and suddenly I felt the boat creaking all around me, the sea around that, pushing and pulling and again that thing was working its way up my throat, and then all of a sudden just Carl’s hands on my shoulders. I felt like I was floating, which technically I was but then we all were. I struggled for something to- “I…wh-…” “They all have talents and gifts of their own Rueben. Left to their own devices though, they become self-destructive and isolated. What they need is someone to draw them together to work together for a common goal, someone who truly believes in something. Something good, no matter how pointless and stupid a good it might appear.” He smiled again and took his hands off my shoulders. He looked at me for a second, poked me in the centre of my chest and said “And you are that person to them, Rueben.” He nodded to me and I realized that I had been staring at his face without knowing it, like I had been somewhere else. I had to look away. Carl let out a friendly laugh and gestured softly to me. “That’s your gift.” The reality of what he was saying began to sink in and I felt more pain than I had ever felt, but also like a huge heavy weight was being lifted off my chest. We stood there for a moment and then I turned up to him, still looking at me, beaming without showing it, and I asked “What about you?” to which he laughed loudly and clapped one big hand on my shoulder, pointed at me with his other hand and said “Ha ha ha, you need me!” Then he shook me in a friendly manner, turned and walked to where he was sitting before, pulled the large sheet of canvas away to reveal one of the yawls that the sailors used to row to shore. “I – wait, what are you –” “I know what you want to do Rueben. I do too. We have to get out of here, off this boat! We can’t help the others like this – the two of us are outnumbered Fifty to One. The only way to save them is to find a way to capture this God forsaken ship, and the best chance we have to do that is if we’re free – over there!” He pointed out to sea, to land, to where we knew the Terran Unit was. “If one of us goes alone he’d be captured before he even reaches the breakers. But the two of us – we could make it!” At that moment I realized that Carl was right, for the first time in his life he was right! “Christ, Carl – I never thought you’d be on my side – you’re right!” Carl gave me a funny but not unpleasant look that I couldn’t quite read and said “Rueben, I’ve always been on your side.” Bullshit. “Okay then,” I said, “So you know how to work that thing? Lower it into the water?” “Sure – it takes two men though, we have to push it over the side and then lower it by each of us turning one of these two pulleys. But we have to be quick – Gabby starts to get ratty about this time and it stops being fun for the sailors and they start wandering around. Quickly, let’s get going!” We pushed the boat out over the edge of the deck and started lowering it down. It was exhausting work but after about 5 minutes the yawl had settled down into the water where it rocked against the boat, pushed by the insistent waves, examining the new toy with relish. “We’ll have to dive in and unhook it from the bottom. Come on, let’s jump!” Carl dove head first into the black sea like an Olympian, piercing the water with knife-like precision then resurfaced with a wave of the hand then gestured at me to jump down. I shrugged, stood up on the edge of the deck and cannonballed into the sea, holding my knees up to my chest, blocking my nose with my free hand. It took less than a second to drop down into the ocean and all too eagerly the water enveloped me with its icy folds and held me blind, deaf and numb, curled up like a baby, suspended for a second between worlds then swept me up to the surface where I burst out into the air with flailing limbs and gasps, grasping for the side of the yawl with cold fingers where Carl was already busy working on detaching the ropes. “C-c-c JESUS that’s cold!” with animal desperation and mad panic I hauled myself onto the boat and gathered myself shivering on all fours. “Come on – get behind those oars!” instructed Carl, who had just untied the second rope, “The further we get out before they notice we’re gone the better chance we have of making it!” Carl has a way of stating the obvious in such a succinct and urgent way that for a few moments you interpret it as new and novel information. If he told you to breathe you’d be certain he saved your life for a few seconds. We began rowing athletically and forcefully, each stroke making our spirits soar higher and higher so that in a few minutes our exhalations were coloured with cautious laughter: make no mistake, escape is a thrilling business. As we rowed we watched the lights of the boat slowly slip further and further away, and soon its various lights’ reflections on the water became as prominent as the lights themselves. The invisible sound of the waves lapping at the bow that had surrounded us for all those months – those mad creatures demanding audience as we toiled on board – they were now a localized point of distant rabble demanding something from someone else; we were now the ones that sought audience with a far more welcoming shore: we could hear the breakers in the distance, slamming into rocks and beach sand, after a while we started to feel the pulsing swell of the water bulging and folding beneath itself as it rolled onto land – “It’s coming Rueben, we have to make sure to stay behind the big ones – if it was daylight we’d ride in on the tops but it’s too risky now that it’s dark.” “What if we end up just underneath one?” “I’m not sure, but it probably wouldn’t be nice.” “Let’s avoid that then.” Just then a flash, then a gunshot rang out from the ship. “Was that for us?” I asked, talking to the bullet more than anyone else. “Just row!” shouted Carl instantly increasing his stroke in speed and depth. I did as he said although matching his speed was difficult. The lights of the ship appeared to brighten and multiply. Two more lights flashed from the boat –then a shot rang out, then another. I heard voices and imagined the remaining yawls dropping into the water with the huge apes pelting into the water beside them like giant gannets and Bill and Leonard screaming like baboons from the deck. “Faster man! They’ve been doing this all their lives!” “I know that! They’re really good at it!” The rise and fall of the waves was more gut-churning now which was a mixed blessing: we were nearing the shore but that meant rocks and waves. We would need luck but let’s face it; we weren’t the luckiest posse on the prairie. We kept rowing although the strength in our arms was spent: By this point I was rowing with my back more than my arms – they were more like ropes that swivelled the oars forward through the water and feebly pushed them back into place after each stroke. I could see the lanterns that the men in the pursuing crafts carried coming closer, hear their murderous voices demanding speed from each other and demanding blood from us – it really didn’t take much for these chaps to want to kill someone – but more dangerous right now were the breakers: Our boat was being rocked upwards and downwards at more radical angles, and although we couldn’t see it – or anything – the shore was pulling us in by her own power now like a blind love-sick lover, determined to have us, dead or alive. “We’re really close now!” Shouted Carl, not rowing much anymore but resting his oars in the water like fins, his torso and head turned as far round towards the shore as possible as if he was trying to smell the way in. A huge swell signalled to us that we were about to learn what part of the beach we were to land on. “SHIT!” Carl screamed. “WHA-” Our craft was lifted high up on a wave then all at once brought down onto a jagged exposure of rocks by the sea’s giant fist which pulverized the yawl and broke it into pieces, sending us hurtling into the water and straight onto the razor sharp reef. Instantly we disappeared from the world into the black torrent and I felt a floor of coral claw at the entirety of the left side of my body dragging me along its teeth, ripping my flesh and clothes open and then a massive barrel of water rolled over me picking me up by my feet, turning me over in the deafening underwater darkness – for a moment was I lifted off the rocks and was toyed with by some gentler currents that in a second grew ominously silent and retreated back to sea – slowly at first but then quickly becoming a sickening, frightening backwards rush that left me half-emerged and fighting its powerful reverse surge away from land by holding onto a rocky black projection as hard I could – time enough to feel the slimy kelp on my fingers before hearing a towering hiss above me that both masked and warned of an impending wall of water that was rearing up to crush me against these angular teeth of the mouth of the earth. I closed my eyes and listened to the hiss turn into a roar and, while awaiting something that I had never felt before – possibly the last thing I would ever feel – by some miracle instead of being hit straight on by it I lost my grip and was sucked irresistibly back up into the tube of the giant churning wave, merged once again and encapsulated in the spearhead of the massive tide where I was spun and spun around in the dark and then brought down again onto the granite knives and coral blades, bashed and rolled and twisted, not knowing where the next strike would come from, up or down, or even which was which. I was a helpless tiny animal being mercilessly wrenched about, wordlessly begging an enormous insentient monster for the smallest gap of repentance to creep through but again and again having that hope crushed by this impersonal force of nature: I was reduced to an insignificant speck in a world outside of God’s influence. Then by what felt like a miracle the heel of my right foot touched sand before I was catapulted back out to sea – I was taken back for what felt like miles and miles and I grappled and fought with the intangible force that seeped like acid down my throat and burned into my eyes, pulling me like a wild animal back into the recesses of its innermost darkness, flipping and tossing me around with uncaring brutality, somersaulting me head over foot, cartwheeling me into the prehistoric shallows where trilobites once scoured the floors in a world heavy with dense oppressive heat – I felt my chest and stomach being ground against the grains of glass and enamel and my lungs suffocated by ice and fire: the world was my opponent and the battle had been lost. The beast smashed me down face first into the sand again and left me to make my peace. As I felt the waves crash against my back as I hugged the sand that the waves had to force themselves up to – I realized that I had found the beach: I had been spared death. Exhausted, I passed out, waiting for the manhandling apes to descend on me – I could take anything by this point. I was woken by a spongy, silky feeling on my face and mouth. It had an overwhelming rancid-sweet smell that roused my senses – a smell of flesh, hair, lung and gut-breath – at first I couldn’t move – I was paralyzed, helpless. In a panic I summoned all the strength I had to defend myself from this vile and evil stench – I broke free from the iron bars to confront the enemy, opening my eyes to fight my last fight – I pulled my dormant strength together as best I could and mumbled as loudly as I could muster “Come fuckin’…take me then, you…” The sound of the waves crashing rose up and the heat of the sun hit me all at once. And the licking. “Wha-” No enemies struck me. No man stood above me. But the licking continued. “What the fuck?” I shook my head and gained control of my body, propped myself up on my elbows and shoved the oppressive evil away – “What the – Muffy?!” I was on the beach and Muffy had been here all the time beside me! The horse stood back a bit as I got up, his big brown eye looking at me, dropping and raising his head with insistence. “Muffy!” I shouted. Muffy snorted and stomped a foot. “Hello boy!” I said, weaving about a little unsteadily, then after regaining my balance I turned to him and I held his beautiful giant face in my hands and gave him a kiss on his muscular cheek. “Oh my god!” I looked around. The beach was pure, empty and untouched. “I’m alive!” There was nothing but gorgeous sand and a bright blue sea. I scanned the horizon for the ship but could see only tranquil waves. “How long have you been here?” I asked the horse. Muffy snorted again and nudged my chest with his nose roughly. I felt fantastic. My clothes were ripped but somewhat intact: I was bruised and had some flesh wounds from the coral and rocks but was otherwise okay. But where the hell was Carl?
Copyright © 2011 Rube |