Where Men Once Walked

by Mark L Watson

  The Dutchman came up the steps.

  “What the hell is going on out there?”

  The kid shrugged.

  The Dutchman ventured out of the cabin to the wooden deck where the American was leaned over the stern with his hands on the grabrail.

  “What the hell are you doing man, why won’t you rest?”

  Behind the boat the entire fishing net was cast and though the little red balls were keeping most of it afloat some of it had sunk down into the sea.

  “What d’ya think I’m doing?” he said with a smile, “I’m fishing”

  “Don’t you think we need to slow the boat for that?” the Dutchman asked.

  The American shrugged.

  “I got no idea, but we have nothin’ to eat in there but damn rice and beans and I’m sick of ‘em” he looked at the Dutchman and then back to the sea, “I sure could go for a bit of fresh salmon”

  The Dutchman watched for a while. He nodded to the American.

  “See if you can fish out a couple of t-bones”

  They pulled the dragnet behind the boat for a while and the American sat at the winch correcting the ropes when they crossed.

  Other boats passed them and they slowed when they did and the sailors of each called to one another. A longboat pulled alongside them filled with boxes and bags and wooden barrels and crates and the men on board signalled to them and the Dutchman met them at the side of the boat.

  “Afternoon”

  The men waved and nodded back to him.

  They were old and dirty and had most likely been at sea for some time. A man with a long beard stepped forward, his shirt torn and worn open at the chest showing his curly grey hairs.

  The Dutchman asked them where they were headed and the man replied that they were headed nowhere at all and that there was nowhere to head. He asked if they had anything to trade and the Dutchman replied that they had nothing but some tins and rice and old coffee and the clothes they were wearing. The man asked if they had any tools and the Dutchman put his arm out and passed it through the air at the boat and said there was nothing but what could be seen. The man nodded and spoke to his ragtag crew and one of them pointed to the American.

  “What is he fishing for?” the man asked.

  The Dutchman looked around.

  “Whatever he can find, I don’t expect he’ll catch anything at all”

  “Do you have fish?”

  The Dutchman shook his head.

  “I told you, we have nothing to trade”

  The American called from the back of the boat.

  “Ask him if he’s got any whiskey. Or smokes”

  The man replied that he had no whiskey but he did have some tobacco though not a lot to spare for each of his men smoked it but that if they had something to offer he was happy to let them take some. The Dutchman told him to wait and went to the galley and came back with three of the tins from the cupboard and held them to the man.

  He took them from him with his long bony fingers and again looked to the American.

  The Dutchman interrupted his thought.

  “I’m telling you, we are not fishermen and he has no idea what he’s doing with that net, just ignore him”

  The man nodded and inspected the tins and put them into a plastic bag and put the bag in a box and brought out a wrap of tobacco and thumbed some of it into his hand and passed it between the boats to the Dutchman and passed him a handful of rolling papers.

  The Dutchman thanked him and the man nodded and he cast his hand to the sea and the boat started moving again to continue its petty trade along the flooded coastline.

  The crank squeaked and scraped as the American turned the wheel to reel the fishing net back in.

  “Slow it down a bit will you” the kid called, trying to pluck the items from the net as it wound around itself. He pulled the debris free and tossed in onto the deck and when he was finished and the last of the net was drawn in and they regarded their haul.

  The Dutchman looked over to them from behind the wheel.

  “Anything good?”

  The American crouched and pushed his way through the items on the floor. There was driftwood and plastics of all kinds and bottles and tins wound in seaweed and there was a cushion from a garden chair and a plastic bucket and amongst it all there were three small sardines and a wriggling seacrab and nothing more.

  The kid took the fish and threw them into the bucket and set them to one side.

  “Throw that stuff back overboard, it’ll just weigh the boat down” the American called.

  The kid looked to him and looked back to the sea and his conscience as a conservationist began to talk him out of it, but he knew that with the flooding along those thousands of miles of coastline the irreversible damage had already been done. He knew that when all was done and the time came it would be the planet and not the men who would survive the longest.

  He agreed to throw back the wood and the seaweed but not the plastics.

  As they were feeding the dripping kelp back over the side of the boat another boat appeared, blurry and glinting and bobbing on the horizon. They glanced to it once and then again and paid it little regard as there were other boats of all sizes which had passed them but as the blur moved into focus and the boat drew nearer they could tell from the spinning orange light atop it that it was the military.

  A hundred yards or so out from them the boat slowed its engines and coasted alongside their own.

  An officer stood on the bow wearing a blue shirt with short sleeves and a cap and a pair of big black sunglasses.

  “Good afternoon sirs” he called to them in a thick accent.

  The Dutchman slowed the boat and it bounced on the waves and on the catching wake of the coastguard’s boat.

  The American and the kid stood on the deck.

  “Afternoon” the American called.

  “Is this your boat?” the guard called.

  “Yessir it is”

  “And you have the papers for this?”

  The American shook his head.

  “No sir we do not”

  The guard nodded slowly.

  “Where are they? Who owns this boat?”

  “We do now. The previous owner is dead”

  The guard nodded.

  “Very convenient. And what happened to him?”

  “He died” the kid said blankly.

  “And what sir happened to you?”

  The American looked down at the bandage wrapped round his chest.

  “Nothing important”

  “What are you fishing for?”

  “Nothing”

  “Do you have a licence to fish?”

  “We’re not fishing”

  The guard looked up and down the boat and back to the men.

  “Where do you think you are heading in this thing?”

  “North” the kid called back, “into the Gulf”

  The guard laughed.

  “You will not make it alive into the Gulf, there is piracy across these waters and they will take your boat and most probably your life with it”

  The American didn’t break his stare.

  “Well then we’ll die trying ‘cos that’s exactly where we’re going”

  The guard nodded and seemed to think about this but he didn’t protest further.

  He called something down to one of the men on his boat and the man called back and he turned again to the kid and the American.

  “If you go north, by sundown you will reach the harbour at Porbandar. I strongly recommend you stop there and turn in that boat before a less lenient man than myself takes it from you”

  They nodded.

  “OK, sure will do” the American said and through their differing accents and intonations the guard could not detect the obvious sarcasm in the American’s voice.

  The guard nodded and whirled his hand in the air and the great white powerboat spat and roared and went forward to the south and before any time had passed at all it had g
one from sight entirely.

  “We should stop at that harbour” the kid said to the American.

  The American turned to him frowning but said nothing.

  “We’ll stop and get fuel for this thing and food and if you can get your hands on a gun then I suggest you do”.

  He turned and walked back to the driver’s cabin.

  The American smiled.

  The rain had started again and the American stood at the wheel of the boat pushing it steadily into the wind with his lame arm hanging by his side. The boat rocked and crashed through the waves that beat against the hull and the horizon was a blur of sky and water and cloud and they could see nothing but grey haze. After some time, to the north east, there came into focus from the cloud a blackened strip of something indiscernible at the horizon and in the fading day they could see three low flashing orange lights blinking along its rim.

  He called to the others below deck and they came to the top of the stairs and looked out through the old windows of the cabin.

  “You reckon that’s the port?” the kid asked.

  The American nodded.

  “I reckon”

  He banked the fishing boat against the waves and fought with the wheel to pull them across to the shore.

  As they neared the coastline the dock took form from the grey.

  Barely visible above the beating waves of the rising ocean, the flickering lights were inexplicably still illuminated, the great sweeping stonebuilt arm stretched out into the ocean, cradling all else within it.

  The land and the sky were darkened entirely by the time they glided into the harbourmouth.

  Before them an assemblage of boats and yachts and container ships clustered in the shelter of the bay like giant sleeping cattle left at pasture. The water had smashed through the breakwall and had engulfed the town and there were, dotted along the north side of the port, the rooftops and bent metalwork and broken timber frames of the harbour buildings what had once stood there.

  The wreckage glistened in the black water. Fires burned to the east and the water shone orange and gold and white and the lights danced on its surface as the ocean pushed more and more water inland. The air reeked of diesel smoke and fire.

  At the west side of the harbour, a huge container ship was moored and from the lowered platform at the side a fuel tank pumped diesel through a hose directly into the engine of a smaller fishing boat tied alongside it. The men stood on each boat guiding the fuel-line across the gap between the vessels and calling to each other in a language they did not know.

  The American coasted their boat slowly alongside the anchored giant and filed in behind the refuelling fishing boat. The men aboard watched them in the dark with glinting eyes and glinting teeth.

  They cut the engine and they could hear in the dusk the chattering of a hundred hidden voices calling out across the water.

  The American stood tall at the bow like the captain of some ancient battleship.

  “You guys got diesel?” he called.

  The man on the boat turned to him.

  “Two hundred rupees per litre”

  The American turned back to the others and shrugged. He turned back to the man.

  “We ain’t got no money” he called.

  The man shrugged.

  “What’ll it take to get some fuel? Can we trade?”

  He knew also that they had nothing to trade regardless.

  “Two hundred” the man called again and turned away to recoil the fuel line.

  The American stood for a moment watching him and then turned back to the boat to the others and walked along the deck to the cabin.

  “That was to be expected”

  They stood for a moment in the dark.

  “Do you know where the fuel tank is on this thing?” the kid asked.

  The Dutchman nodded to him and pointed across to the service hatch on the deck.

  “You reckon you can get me onto that ship?”

  Neither soldier spoke at first and both watched the solitary man recoiling the fuel hose onto the ship’s platform and the Dutchman turned back to him and shrugged and smiled and blew out a thin wisp of air through pursed lips.

  “Yes I do. You reckon you can get back off it?”

  “You reckon I can’t?”

  The Dutchman looked to the American and he was rolling a cigarette in a paper between his thick fingers and he didn’t look up. He laughed as he did it and the Dutchman smiled at the kid and the kid smiled back.

  They slowly coasted the boat further into the harbour proper and tied it in against the harbourwall through the giant rusted rings that were bolted into the stone and the Dutchman and the kid pulled their boat as close as they could to the side. They clambered across onto the stone jetty and up the slippery wet steps onto the walkway above. The waves thundered against the wall and soared up from the depths into the night sky to rain seawater down on them and it slammed down onto the walkway and they held each other as they ran, hunched over, and by the time they reached the fuel ship both men were drenched entirely.

  Where the gangplank crossed from the deck to the harbourwall they stooped in the dark next to each other and waited and listened but nothing could be heard against the thundering ocean. They kept low and passed along the walkway taking care not to slip and they hurdled the railing at the far end and onto the ships great deck.

  The kid turned back to the Dutchman.

  “Go back and keep watch, I got this”, he looked around again but there was still nobody there, “it’ll be much easier alone”

  The Dutchman looked him in the eyes for a moment and though the kid could see that he doubted him, the Dutchman didn’t voice it and eventually he nodded and passed back along the gangplank to the wall and the kid stood alone on the painted red tarmac of the ship’s deck.

  He ducked in behind a giant steel container unit and listened again. There was still nothing to be heard though the sound of the sea had subsided slightly behind the wall.

  He peered round the edge of the container. Above him on the bridge there were lights and he could men shouting to each other and though he couldn’t make out the words spoken, he could tell they were in good spirits and that he was, so far, still safe.

  He scuttled low like a hunted animal along the shadowed edges of the container units until he reached the opposite side of the ship and peered out through the railings into the harbour below.

  He scanned the water quickly and saw down to his left their fishing boat bobbing in the dark.

  He looked along the edge of the ship and kept low on the wet deck and he thought about whistling down to the American but he thought better of it for risk of being detected and as he was about to move back from the edge he saw the Dutchman darting down the stone steps towards their boat and he knew that the message would reach the boat in time for them to move.

  He jumped from shadow to shadow, one container at a time, forward along the ship’s deck, closer to the fuel tank and the bridge and the voices above.

  He stopped.

  Ahead of him not more than twenty feet, two men stood at the edge of the ship, talking quietly. The crane for moving the containers towered up into the heavens built of steel and he ducked in behind the metal framework and lay low and still and silent.

  He waited.

  His back was up against the rough steel beam and he sat still, looking up to the night sky. Thick grey cloud billowed against the black and somewhere through their blanket the faintest hint of white moonlight tried to push out.

  He was soaked through.

  He slowed his breath and listened. The men were still talking.

  In the distance a ship sounded its horn and it echoed under the cloud.

  The kid turned himself so that his face was at the very edge of the metal framework and peered through one eye around the corner. The men were walking slowly across the deck, lost in conversation and knew nothing of his presence there. He tried to peer over the railings at the side of the boat into the
harbour below but he couldn’t see their boat anywhere and he daren’t stand up for the better view.

  He considered the height of the ship and what was below him and he imagined how it may feel should he have to launch himself overboard if he was spotted there and he prayed there wasn’t another boat below that spot blocking his fall to the water.

  The voices moved from where they had been though they didn’t fade at all and he knew the men were still close and were walking around the other side of the container units.

  He knew he had to move.

  He remained motionless for a few seconds until he was sure the men were clear of view and then darted along the floor to the next container and skidded in to the side. He tried to move quietly but the deck was wet and his footsteps splashed as he went and he sat again and silenced his breath and listened. The voices moved further behind him and he waited and then darted to the final container and ducked down behind it.

  The voices faded up the ship and when he looked again he realised he was sitting in clear view of the bridge and the open door leading up from the deck. His heart thumped in his chest and he threw himself to the side and ran across the deck and jumped down from the edge onto the loading platform. He landed with a crash and slammed his shoulder against the wet floor.

  He was sure they must have heard him. His shoulder and head hurt and he had lost his breath but he painfully dragged himself in to the inside wall and flattened himself against the hull.

  A moment passed and then another and then he caught his breath and his heart rate slowed and he saw next to him the fuelpump and the long filthy hose laying idly on the wet deck.

  There were more voices calling on the deck and a dog barked and the kid froze again and again he stood up against the wall and waited.

  He knew he must act quickly though what he must do was yet unclear and he knew that the moment another boat were to arrive to refuel, their chance would be missed and he knew also that the fuel pump was within touching distance and to fail now would be unacceptable.

  His shoulder was throbbing.

  His heart raced as he scanned the machine for its controls.