Curds and Whey Box Set

by G M Eppers

  “That seems ironic.”

  “Ironic?” Bobby stopped walking and looked at me.

  “It’s an aircraft carrier. There are no aircraft on it?”

  “Ah,” he said, ducking through a doorway and resuming his lecture. “Part of the decommissioning. Weapons were stripped and our purpose was reassigned. We have only one aircraft, a King Stallion cargo helicopter. It’s currently out retrieving supplies and will probably meet us on the open ocean.”

  “Got it.” I couldn’t wait to get the map. It was so cramped and we’d made so many tight turns I was already lost. I probably couldn’t find my way back to the deck at gunpoint.

  Finally, we reached a small room about the size of a cereal box. “This will be our quarters for the duration of Section Two. Would you like the top bunk or the bottom?”

  The two bunks folded out from the bulkhead one above the other, currently made up with white sheets and blue blankets with the Navy logo on them. The blankets were taut enough to center a bubble level. “Do you have a preference?” I asked. “I’m just a guest.”

  “I’m a Naval officer. We don’t do preferences.”

  “Bottom then.” I thought, I’ve never been on a boat overnight before. If it got rocky I might roll out. I’d rather only fall one foot than five. I tossed my bag on the bottom bunk and dug out my phone, handing it over to receive the map.

  Bobby took a phone in each hand, wiggled them around, then gave me back my phone. “The map is an app on your home page. Restricted areas are marked. Don’t go there.”

  I glanced at the map, which seemed to be mostly restricted areas. “Secret government stuff?” I joked. “I thought this ship was decommissioned.”

  Bobby shook his head. “There are training groups from the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard on board. We stay out of each other’s way. Even though it’s only about a thousand people on a ship built to house five thousand, it still feels crowded if we don’t respect some boundaries. Of course, that’s all below decks. Up top, the only thing out of bounds is over the edge. Hungry?”

  “Starved.”

  “Okay, let’s go get some grub. You lead.” He gave me a malevolent grin and pointed to my phone.

  I consulted the map and led us to the mess hall, taking several minutes longer than Bobby would have. “It’ll get easier,” he said as we entered the mess hall. We got in a buffet line manned by a string of servers dressed in white linen and took metal trays from a large stack. Tiny, clear drops of water beaded on the still warm surface. Because of my intolerance for lactose, I passed on the creamed corn, which seemed popular with others, including Bobby, but helped myself to sliced beef in gravy, baked beans, and a dinner roll. We took seats at a long dining table, one of four in the room that were welded in place with barely enough room between them to walk.

  By the time we turned in for the night, Bobby had me find two other mess halls, the bathroom, which he called the head, and at least six ways to get up on deck from our cabin. I guess this was the fifty cent tour the captain had talked about. As we settled in, Bobby explained that we would be starting with small craft in the morning. “Is that safe?” I asked him. During the night we would be sailing to a position about a hundred miles from shore, approximately halfway to Cuba. The smallest craft I’d seen was a kayak, which really wasn’t meant for Open Ocean.

  “The Coast Guard is going to rope off a training area for small craft and the cutter will be hanging around as a rescue ship throughout the training. Get a good night’s sleep. Kayaks are no picnic.” Bobby had stripped down to his plain white boxer shorts, not self-conscious at all. I was a little more hesitant. I didn’t mind around my usual team members, but I was not in familiar territory here. I set aside my CURDS jacket and sat down to take off my shoes.

  “Hey, how’d you get on board with that?” Bobby asked sleepily. “No weapons on board. Even the military is shooting blanks out here. Goes with the decommissioning thing.”

  He had noticed my under shoulder pack and mistaken it for a holster. As usual, I’d even forgotten I had it on, until I got around to taking it off for the night when I wrapped it discreetly in my shirt. “Oh, that’s not a weapon.”

  He didn’t believe me. It was personal, and I didn’t really want to share with everyone I met that I was carrying my mother’s ashes. Since I didn’t want him to make a fuss about it I decided to confide in him. After I explained what it was, I added, “Happened about a month ago. I’m still trying to decide where to, you know, put her.” I didn’t mention that two small bits had already been accidentally distributed.

  He gave me a stern, incredulous look, so I finally unzipped the top a little bit so he could take a visual inspection of the contents. “Sorry, Montana. There are some ship’s rules that apply even to guests. At ease.”

  “I understand.” That’s when my cell phone rang in my back pocket.

  I pulled it out and saw it was Avis calling. “Hi, honey!” I said excitedly. “Fiancée,” I told Bobby as I pointed to the phone. It was so good to hear her voice on the other end. Bobby, already lying on the top bunk, put an arm over his eyes. Worried that I would be disturbing him, I asked, “Hey, Bobby, is it all right if I go out on deck? I’d like to get some air anyway.”

  “Sure. Don’t fall off.” He rolled over.

  Quickly, I retied my shoe. With the phone to my ear, I crouched through doorways and climbed some ladders one-handed until I reached the deck, telling Avis all about it. The wind had died down, but I could see the massive ship cutting through the black water, and I could smell the salty air. A three-quarter moon hung in the sky with a scattering of stars from horizon to horizon. It was all reflected in the dark water, looking like a double sky. The ship had some running lights, but they were dimmed for the night, illuminating little more than the deck itself, though they would be easily visible to any approaching craft. I was very near the control tower, which Bobby called the Island. Just inboard of the Island sat the King Stallion helicopter, which had arrived with its cargo while we’d been on the fifty cent tour. Its silhouette in the darkness was both comforting and unnerving. Even though I couldn’t fly it, the helicopter made me feel less trapped, but in the darkness it was like an eerie shadow in the corner of the bedroom. Around the edge of the deck was a low railing, not like the usual waist high ship railing you see in movies. There was room enough to dangle my feet over the edge and rest my arms on top of it. With the Island on my right as a windbreak, I slid my feet through and sat down, feeling a little like a kid in a high chair. I looked down sixty feet to the water below. I could hear the lapping against the hull, but couldn’t really see the water.

  “I miss you so much,” I told Avis as a wave of melancholy swept over me. I was missing her, and missing the team, and missing the action. Nothing here had the easy familiarity of long term association and though I was busy, it was a different kind of busy. It didn’t feel the same. I had to keep reminding myself there was a purpose to all this.

  “I miss you, too,” said my purpose. “Where are you?”

  “Somewhere between Florida and Cuba. On the Dwight D. Eisenhower. You?”

  She sounded less than pleased. “Alabama. That smuggler we’ve been following is heading east again. We think he’s getting ready to make a drop, but we don’t know where. McGrone is the only one loving this. He thinks it’s going to be the biggest Uber haul in history. The rest of us are frustrated as hell. We’d rather trace the counterfeiter. Maybe if we had more time to focus on it we’d figure out a lead, but McGrone won’t let us. The counterfeiter feels more important somehow, even though that doesn’t make sense. It’s not Uber. It won’t even be illegal for two more weeks.”

  “I have to agree with that.” My brain had been playing around with what we had so far and it was like an itch somewhere in my cerebral cortex. There had to be some kind of connection other than the obvious, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Of course, I had a lot of other things on my mind trying to absorb all the info
rmation in an accelerated course. “Anything new on that?”

  Her voice took on a conspiratorial whisper, as if McGrone were lurking nearby. “No, but Badger is trying to get Miss Chiff to put us in the loop. I think Team B is on the case now. You know how she is with regulations, though.”

  Yeah, I thought, considering our postponed matrimony while I met the demands of CURDS regulations. I do. Okay, so postponed isn’t quite the right word. Even if I’d stayed with the team, we still wouldn’t be any closer to finding the time for even a simple ceremony, and the twins didn’t want that. They wanted, and deserved, a real wedding. Somehow, diverting me from everything to qualify for a whole new specialty still felt unfair. I was starting to think I should have just settled for combat and a pox on my permanent record. “Good luck on the watercraft, Billings!” Agnes and Avis both said at once. “We have to go. McGrone makes us do lights out at eleven unless we’re in an active pursuit,” finished Avis.

  I disconnected from Avis and slipped the phone in my front pants pocket, which was nice and deep. But I wasn’t ready to go back into the sardine can just yet. I sat there enjoying the scenery for a while.

  “Oh, my God, it’s beautiful out here!” said a familiar voice. I spun my head around to make sure I was still alone on the deck before I turned my attention to my mother, who sat cross-legged half way into the bulkhead of the Island. Seeing her didn’t help my melancholy. It only deepened it. A reminder of everything I’d lost in just a few weeks. Yet, I was happy to see her. Maybe I should sign up for therapy.

  “Mom!” I scolded her. “You need to give me some kind of warning or something. Someone might have seen you.”

  “Sorry. That would require interaction.” She waved her arms around and they slid in and out of the Island wall like it wasn’t there. “No can do.” She settled in again as close to me as possible, but that still left her right knee embedded in steel, and the tip of her head was lost in an overhang. “You okay?”

  Death had not changed her all that much. She could still tell when I was feeling down and needed to talk. I folded my arms over each other on top of the railing. “Am I doing the right thing?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All this training, going for a new specialty, being away from the team. Is this really what I’m supposed to do?” In the back of my mind, I was thinking of Norma Van Luxe. I was sure she was right to look elsewhere. But I wasn’t sure if I was right not to.

  “I don’t know,” Mom answered. That wasn’t the reply I was hoping for. “Being dead doesn’t give you all the answers, Billings. I wish it did. It does give you some really awesome skills, though,” she added, perking up a bit. “Like the instant travel thing –“ I almost put my hand out to hold her here. The last time she had mentioned travel she had vanished. But she seemed to have mastered it, for she didn’t disappear. “Plus, I can literally be the fly on the wall. Watch.”

  Without changing her cross-legged position, she shrunk down to the size of a bluebottle fly, moving in tiny circles in midair. “What do you think?” she asked, floating a couple of inches in front of my face.

  “Pretty impressive. Now yell, ‘Help me! Help me!’ in a tiny squeaky voice.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing,” I went back to my glum spot. “Just something I saw in an old movie I watched with Grandma a long time ago. I think it was while you and Dad were in divorce court and I stayed with her for about a week. She showed me this old movie where a guy turned into a fly and got caught in a spiderweb. He yelled for help until another guy, who was normal sized, smashed him with a rock. Grandma said it would be scary. I thought it was funny as hell.”

  She flew closer, almost perching on my nose, and looked at me disapprovingly. “You thought that was funny?”

  “I was twelve.”

  She floated back to her original spot, returning to her proper five foot one and three-quarters. “Anyway, being the size of a fly seems pretty useful. You know that McGrone guy? You should know. He’s henpecked.”

  “He has a hen?” I asked. “I mean, he has a wife?”

  “From the looks of it. He certainly has someone to call him a lazy good-for-nothing expletive I won’t repeat in a text.”

  “Mom, it’s just you and me. You can say it.”

  “Nope. I’m pretty sure you don’t know that one yet, and I don’t want you to learn it from me.”

  I doubted that, but I let it go. “Where were you that you saw this text?”

  “Sitting in his eyebrow. He never noticed. He didn’t even try to swat me.” Her expression sobered again. “Anyway, I can do a lot of things, but I can’t see the future. I know it’s hard. I know you miss everyone. They all miss you, too. If you want to give up, I can’t stop you. The reasons for and against this haven’t changed. I’ll be proud of you no matter what you decide.”

  We sat there next to each other, listening to the water lapping somewhere in the darkness below us, for several minutes. The night air was clearing my head, and I was beginning to feel a little better about this. I looked up at the sky as a cloud formation drifted across what little Moon we could see. I was learning some very useful things. Like when a yak feels threatened you don’t have to worry about leaping off to safety. They don’t run away. They lock down, so you aren’t going anywhere until the threat goes away, but you’re perfectly safe on their backs in the meantime. Good to know, if we’re ever in Tibet. And how to feather the fuel in a big rig to avoid spinning the wheels. And to keep your mouth shut when driving a dogsled because the dogs do their business on the run. Very important stuff.

  I was close to calling it a night when, quietly, she said, “Put some of me here.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve got the bag. I can see it.” She pointed it out as if I had no idea what she was talking about. “You haven’t been putting me anywhere. You just carry me around like a security blanket. Get on with it. Put some of me here.”

  “You mean, just throw you overboard. Like…like…” I hunted for the right word, but couldn’t find it.

  She said it for me. “Like a dead body? Billings, that’s what I am! It’s okay.” She looked out at the ocean again. “It’s nice out here. I want to be connected to this. It’s hard to explain. Just do it.”

  Slowly, I unzipped the bag just a little. “You’ll get eaten by fish.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Sometimes there are storms. You could get blown all the way to Timbuktu.”

  “I doubt that.” She tried to put a comforting hand on my shoulder, but it slid right through. “You don’t have to dump it all, Billings. Just some. You know the part that fell on the carpet and got sucked into the vacuum cleaner? It’s in a landfill now next to a banana peel and a used coffee filter. And there’s a little more getting ground into a hard dirt floor,” her face scrunched up as she tried to get more information. “I think it’s in a garage or something.”

  “Airplane hangar,” I said. “Being used as a holding facility for transport animals. They’re probably pooping on you.”

  She closed her eyes and focused, her brow furrowed. “Nope. I think the animals are gone.” She opened her eyes and shrugged. “I’ll probably get hosed off tomorrow. That should be interesting.”

  I gave her a sideways glance. The kind you give a guy on the subway who is wearing a belt around the top of his head and talking to a broken pencil.

  “See?” Again she tried to make contact by slapping the back of my head. I saw her hand come out the front of my head and thought, there’s something you don’t see every day. She looked at her hand, too. “Why do I keep trying? I should know better by now. Anyway, this place? It’s way better than those other places, and at the same time it’s exactly the same. A place is a place is a place is a place. The more the merrier, it seems.”

  I took out a little pinch of the ashes and rubbed my fingers together over the edge of the deck, letting it sprinkle down and vanish into the darkness. “Oh please,” she said
with a heavy sigh. No lungs, no air, how did that work exactly? It still came out a sigh. “You keep doing it that way you’ll be carrying me around until you’re fifty.”

  “But…” I wanted to tell her I was okay with that. I wouldn’t mind carrying her around until I was fifty. I was already used to the sub-shoulder pack. It went on in the morning and off at night like a wristwatch. If I imagined it not being there I almost had a panic attack. She may have been right about the security blanket analogy, but I was okay with that. What was so wrong about a little security? It’s an uncertain world.

  “A handful, Billings. You can do it.”

  I took another glance around the deck, almost hoping for an interruption, but we were still alone. My fingers reached back into the bag, digging down into the ash. “It hurts.”

  “Nothing hurts anymore, Billings.”

  “I didn’t mean you,” I said softly.

  She tried to give me a hug, but her arms went right through me. “Don’t worry about it.” Her eyes were closed as she savored sensations I couldn’t possibly imagine. I grabbed a loose handful like the scoop of a back hoe, brought it carefully out of the bag, and tried to ignore the lump in my throat that spread down into my chest as I tipped it over into open air.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a sudden change in my mother’s appearance. She wasn’t as solid looking as she had been just a few seconds ago. “Mom!” She had faded like a drawing left out in the sun. Not a lot, but enough to be noticeable.

  It didn’t look like she was aware of it, and I was going to tell her when she said quickly, “Someone’s coming,” and winked out of existence. What have I done? I thought. I wanted to jump overboard and get it back. I wished more fervently than I’ve ever wished anything before that I hadn’t done it. I didn’t have time for a lot of deliberation, though. I heard footsteps approaching and quickly dusted as much as I could off my hands into the bag and zipped it up.