Where Men Once Walked

by Mark L Watson

  “I think you’re good, I don’t think there’s anyone here to see you anyway”

  The kid nodded.

  He took hold of the greasy wet rope strung along the hull and pulled himself up and over the siderail and onto the deck. There was an Indian national flag tied to the front mast and a line running from it to the top of the cabin.

  He went to the back of the boat and peered in through the dirty plastic windows of the cabin. A black stool with a ripped cushion sat in front of the simple controls and dials and behind it the thin wooden stairs led down to the single room beneath.

  He pushed the tin door open and was greeted by the stench of rot from within. He put his hand to his face and held his breath and stepped inside and crept down the stairs to the bunk below, fearful of waking the inhabitants.

  He stopped in his tracks when he saw the man asleep on the bottom bunk and clattered backwards up a couple of steps. The man didn’t stir and the kid realised in that moment exactly what the smell was and why the boat was so quiet. He calmed himself for a moment and went back out onto the deck and leaned over the side to the others.

  “There’s someone down there”

  The soldier’s eyes widened.

  “Did they see you?” the American asked.

  The kid shook his head.

  “They didn’t see a thing”

  The American and the Dutchman tied the raft to the hull of the fishing boat and the Dutchman climbed up and helped the American over the side onto the deck. He was coated in blood though his sunburned skin was paler than it should have been and he looked weak. He flopped over the railing onto the wooden deck and sat slumped where he landed with his leg bent under him like a ragdoll dropped in a dirty puddle.

  The Dutchman followed the kid to the cabin and they stepped down the wooden stairs into the room below. The man on the bunk had not been dead long but he was swollen and dark and wrapped in the damp sheets.

  They stood and looked at him for a moment from the bottom of the steps.

  “You wanna move him?” the kid asked.

  The Dutchman looked at him. He bit on his bottom lip.

  “If we’re using the boat then we have to, we can’t leave him down here like this”

  They stood and looked at him and at each other for a moment.

  The Dutchman sighed.

  “Well he stinks, let’s be quick”

  He went to the end of the bunk to the man’s feet and took hold of the sheet and wrapped it around the man’s legs and spun him sideways so that he was holding them off the edge of the bed.

  “Get the other end”

  The kid looked at him.

  “What?” the Dutchman asked.

  “Why do I get the head end?”

  “Well why should I? I moved here first”

  The kid tentatively moved to the bed and recoiled at the sight of the man and then, watching through the corner of his eyes, took the pillow and pulled it to the edge of the mattress. The man was rigid and heavy and the pillow started to pull from under him.

  “Use the sheet, like this” the Dutchman said.

  He leaned across the man and took the sheet on the other side and pulled it under his head until it was wrapped around him like a mummy and pulled it to the edge of the bed. He put his arms underneath him and they lifted the man from the mattress to the bottom of the wooden steps.

  “Go up first” the Dutchman ordered and they spun the man so that the kid could go backwards and they fumbled up the wooden steps to the deck.

  They set the man down on the deck a few feet from where the American sat.

  The American looked over at the body but didn’t say anything. The kid and the Dutchman stood looking at the man.

  “We should bury him” said the kid.

  The Dutchman stood with his hands on his hips and frowned at the kid. He looked around them at the endless sea.

  “Did you have somewhere in mind?”

  In the distance another fishing vessel cast away and moved south, out through the water.

  “We bury him at sea then”

  “Just toss him overboard” the American coughed without looking up.

  He looked quite the sight, sitting there on the wet wooden planks coated in blood, both dry and fresh, painted down his bare chest and smeared across his face and beard. The child’s clothing was plastered hard to his shoulder.

  The kid shook his head.

  “We’re not just tossing him overboard, if we’re taking his boat and he died here, we should respect that”

  The American scoffed and coughed again and stayed where he sat.

  “Well we can’t cremate him on a wooden boat” the Dutchman said, pulling his dreadlocks up from his shoulders.

  The kid squinted at the horizon.

  “We should set sail. We head to sea until we’re sure we’re not over the land and we can cast him away there”

  The Dutchman nodded.

  The American looked at the kid and went to speak but didn’t.

  The kid went into the cabin and turned the key to the motor. It clicked but nothing more.

  He stood there for a moment looking at the array of controls and levers in front of him and then called to the others.

  “Do you know how to start this thing?”

  “No” the Dutchman called back from outside.

  The kid pushed the throttle lever forward slightly and turned the key again and again it clicked and the engine sounded closer to catching but again it fell silent. He pushed the lever slightly further and turned the key again and the engine coughed into life and the cabin started to vibrate very gently under the power of the motor and the boat edged slowly forward. There was a creaking from behind him and he heard the Dutchman’s voice bellow over the engine.

  “The anchor, idiot”

  The kid pulled the throttle back into neutral and the boat rested and the Dutchman ran to turn the anchor wheel and drew the rope out from the water until the weight was above the surface and locked the handle into place. The kid pushed the lever down again and the boat eased forwards. He gripped the wheel and looked out through the dirty glass.

  “Untie that raft from the side”

  The Dutchman saluted informally and unlatched the rope from the metal raft and it bobbed behind them in the gentle wake.

  To the east and to the west he could see the distant shadows of buildings on the coastlines against the charcoal grey sky and he turned the nose of the boat so that it aimed directly between the two. Far off ahead of them there glistened a single spot of sunlight in the heavens like a diamond guiding them to some place completely unknown.

  The Dutchman arrived behind him from below deck holding a rusty green metal tin. He clapped the kid on the back as he passed.

  “Good work cap’n”

  He went out onto the deck to the American and sat next to him and opened the tin. It was filled with dressings and a bottle of iodine and pins and a foil blanket. He carefully peeled the cloths from the American’s back as the blood had set around them and they were stuck to his skin and to the hair on his shoulders. The American clenched and thumped the deck with the side of his fist as his hairs plucked out. The Dutchman took a clean cloth and wiped some of the blood away from the wound and poured the iodine onto it and wiped it again and left the yellow smear across the wound. He unrolled a gauze and placed it across the bullethole and wrapped a long dressing around the American’s torso until it held the gauze in place and tied it off.

  “Here, put this on”

  He handed the American an old green shirt he had found.

  “What’s this?”

  “A shirt”

  “From where?”

  The Dutchman started putting the items back into the metal tin.

  “Where’d you get this?” the American asked again.

  The Dutchman stood.

  “From the wardrobe. Put it on, you need to keep that clean”

  “I ain’t wearing no dead man’s shirt”

>   “Yes you are”

  “No I ain’t”

  The Dutchman looked down at him and stared him in the eyes. He shook his head slowly and walked away.

  “So don’t then”

  They cruised down the waterway where the trees poked from beneath like lost islands flocked with birds and they passed anchored boats and sailing boats and fishing boats and people floating idly on rafts of all types and there were bodies in the water and birds pecking at them. Three hours passed, and while the distant rooftops on the coastlines moved steadily further apart from one another as the channel widened, they remained in the great estuary.

  The Dutchman and the kid took it in turns at the helm and between them they tried to figure out how to use the different controls.

  They learned the navigation system as much as they could and while they had no map they knew roughly their course. The kid ventured into the cabin below to the small single stove and managed to power it up and made coffee from the pot though the old tank water tainted its taste with rust. The American refused to go below deck and sat where he had always been, up against the side of the boat with the bandage wrapped around him like a tethered animal, the green shirt still on the floor at his side.

  It was almost dark again and the rain started to fall as they approached a large flooded town to the east.

  A huge swathe of orange flame lit up the darkened sky but besides that there was no light in the town at all. The black silhouetted rooftops stood out against the glow and the black smoke poured into the black sky and golden embers rained into the water like dying fireworks. Boats were anchored in what had been a harbour and the masses of broken timber there bore no resemblance to whatever dock or pontoon they had once been.

  Around them the voices of men and women and children on other boats called out to each other in the darkness, each voice dismembered from its body like the ghosts of the place which had once been there.

  The kid gripped the wheel and held the boat’s course through the flotsam that littered the black water and banged and cracked against the boat’s hull, the shards and splinters of a life passed and the belongings of those living without anything but memories or not living at all.

  The Dutchman stood with the kid in the cabin. A single fading yellow lightbulb hung above, illuminating only the two of them.

  “You intend to drive this thing into the night?”

  The kid looked over his shoulder to him and looked back again.

  “You wanna stop?”

  The Dutchman shrugged.

  “Maybe. While we can. Once we get out there to the ocean we won’t be able to just anchor this thing”

  The kid thought about this and nodded and kept driving.

  The blackness of the world enveloped them and the lights from the boats drifted away into the night and the burning town flickered orange behind them until it was no more than a matchlight in the petrol sky and the smell of smoke and burning and death had gone completely.

  The rain was pouring again and the American still sat on the deck where he had sat the entire time.

  “Get him in, will you, before he dies out there” the Dutchman nodded to the kid.

  The kid walked across the wet deck and held on as he went. The boat was starting to rock on the waves.

  “Come on man, let’s get you inside”

  The American didn’t look up.

  “Fuck off”

  The kid ignored him and bent next to him and put his arm under the Americans.

  “You can’t just sit out here in the rain”

  “I can do whatever”

  He tried to bat the kid’s hands away but the kid persevered and took him under the arms.

  “You’re gonna sit out here half dressed? You can barely walk, the boat’ll rock and you’ll go over the damn side”

  The American looked up to him.

  He pulled himself to his feet and pulled himself away from the kid’s grip and walked to the cabin unaided.

  “I can walk fine”

  He went into the driver’s cabin dripping wet. The Dutchman watched him from the wheel.

  “At least that rain’s cleaned the blood of you. Put that shirt on will you, where is it?”

  “I don’t know. It stinks down there”

  “I know. Go sit down, we’re gonna find somewhere to put this thing over and we’ll rest for the night. There’s some food down there”

  The American looked down the stairs.

  “I’m starving”

  The Dutchman nodded.

  “We all are”

  He turned the wheel and took them north west by the compass and to the west they could just make out the shadows of something though indiscernible in the blackness.

  The American was still standing behind him, holding onto the old swing door.

  “That dead guy’s still laying out there”

  The Dutchman didn’t look around.

  “I know”

  The Dutchman steered the vessel to the shallows and though they knew nothing of their location they approached the trees ahead of them on a high spit of land. He pulled the throttle back and slowed the boat and they coasted in.

  “Careful of rocks” the kid called from the bow.

  “How am I going to be careful of rocks when I can’t see a damn thing?”

  They pulled alongside a tall tree and the Dutchman killed the engine and, as they floated nearer to the tree, the kid threw the lifering into the branches and it snagged and pulled through the wood and eventually the boat stopped with a slight jolt. He pulled the rope gently to move the boat in to the tree and it pulled some branches down but he was able to reach onto the wood and tie off the rope.

  They dropped the anchor and it splashed into the black water and didn’t fall far before it hit the ground.

  The kid took water from the tank and cooked rice and they ate it with beans and drank the stale coffee.

  They removed the dead man’s mattress from the bottom bunk and stood it on the deck and the Dutchman slept there on the wooden slats and the kid on the top bunk and the American on the floor through his own choosing.

  They slept long into the morning and when they woke the air was calm and the rain had stopped and they could hear seabirds and the sun was threatening to reveal itself again from behind the thinning veil of cloud. The Dutchman climbed out onto the deck and saw the kid already awake, sitting up on the metal hatch that housed the fishing net. His legs were hanging off the side and he was watching out to sea.

  The Dutchman stood next to him and he smiled to him and watched the sea too.

  “How far do you think it is?” the kid asked.

  “To where, the other side?”

  The kid nodded.

  “To the nearest land”

  The Dutchman shrugged and said that he didn’t know.

  “Do you think we have enough fuel in this thing?”

  The Dutchman shook his head.

  “No”

  The kid nodded and said that he didn’t think so either.

  “We shouldn’t go too far out from land in case. North of here is Pakistan, but we need to cross the Gulf. Let’s go north and see how far we can get on the fuel we have. Maybe we can find more somewhere”

  The kid agreed.

  “Do you think we have enough food?”

  The Dutchman looked at him.

  “My friend we haven’t had enough food for weeks”, he looked back out to sea, “but we’ll survive on what we have, because that’s what we do”

  At midmorning they were bouncing gently on the waves with the Indian coast to the east, though what coast existed defied recognition for the intruding floodwater. The water beneath them had been all shades of brown and black on the previous day and the day before and the one before that but it had faded to a deep crystal blue where they sailed.

  The Dutchman and the American wrapped the dead fisherman up in his sheets and tied them up with fishing line and took two of the ball weights from the fishing net
and put them inside. They lifted him up onto the back platform of the boat and the Dutchman called to the kid and he slowed and quietened the engine.

  They looked to the endless shimmering sea.

  “May you find peace in sleep now, go knowing that your passing allowed others to live on. Life and death move as one and the time we are afforded is borrowed and nothing more and there comes a time for all men when his time is asked back. You are not dead until you are forgotten. God bless”

  He crossed his heart with his finger and pushed the body from the back of the boat into the water and with a splash it sunk slowly down into the depths.

  The two men stood there watching as it disappeared.

  “I didn’t know you believed in God” the American said, watching the water settle.

  “It was for him”

  The American nodded.

  “So why did you cross your heart?”

  The Dutchman frowned at him.

  “For him”

  The American thought about this for a moment.

  “I don’t think he was a Christian”

  The Dutchman watched him for a second and shook his head and turned away.

  “You’re a real asshole sometimes”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Gulf of Oman

  The flooded coastline ran straight and uninterrupted from horizon to horizon and they followed it north west without venturing more than a mile or so out. The little boat ran smoothly and without incident but it ate through fuel quicker than it should and they knew that they wouldn’t make it another day. The kid and the Dutchman took it in turns to drive and though they implored the American to rest, he refused.

  “You know we’ve been staring this in the damn muzzle” the American called from the deck.

  The kid was driving and the Dutchman was below deck. The kid glanced round but couldn’t see him.

  “What?” he called.

  He heard the American fumbling with something on deck and there was a clattering and a loud thud of metal.

  “What are you doing?” he called again.

  Suddenly there was a screeching of metal and a loud whirring noise and a great splash behind the boat.