by Gabi Moore
Walking down a nearby alleyway, I stripped several garbage cans of their bags and turned them inside out. Next, I emptied the contents of the bag into the bags, inverted their position, and added another layer. After each layer was secured, I made sure to tie everything in place. In the last bag, I tied up my clothes.
It was time for a bit of a morning swim.
Diving into the water was a shock, but also a type of blessing. I was reminded of when I was a younger man, and a bit less stressed. I can’t account for why the nostalgia came on so strongly when my body breached the water, but I accepted the feeling and felt a strong sense of peace about the dive. The water was dark, and I preferred things that way. With a silent, but steady stroke, I made my way along the shoreline toward the dock outside of the fisherman’s house. The sound of the water gently lapping up against the shoring of the boardwalk covered up the most diminutive sounds of my passage. The siding up the way to the boardwalk was high enough so that if anyone had been standing on the side, looking out at the water, I might have slipped right under their nose. As it was, nobody was out, and any cars that may have been posted outside of the fisherman’s house were safely ignorant of my presence.
I wasn’t sure which boat belonged to the fisherman, but there was a moderately sized vessel docked just outside of the shack, in addition to a sailboat and a small dinghy. I decided to wait just outside of the boat, and wait until he came out. I estimated that the water was in the high fifties, so I knew I could count on being submerged for another thirty to forty minutes or so without losing too much range of motion.
Silent and meditative, I waited for the fisherman to exit his house.
My eyelids were heavy, but a flash of light in a thin trace of movement caught my attention.
My eyes turned to track the object, as I didn’t dare move my body to make a sound. A hand rolled cigarette floated on the surface of the water a few feet away from my position.
He’s here, I thought, sensing a deep relief within my body.
A voice began to sound off through the muffled fog.
“Ah, Officer,” the fisherman called out in Italian, “looks like an uncomfortable place to spend the night. You should have let me know you were here, I have a spare room!”
I could tell the fisherman was more than a little perturbed to see the cop. I had lost track of time, and the cold was starting to cause my muscles to ache. I could hear the sounds of his boots walking on the dock, and then onto the deck of the ship. A rope hung loosely from the railing of the ship in a low arc. I allowed my body to drift over to the space between the ship and the dock, so I might grab ahold of the rope, and be carted off to sea. As long as the ship turned out toward the sea, nobody on shore would have a chance to see the fisherman trolling me along the surface of the water. To my relief, the ship began a casual turn out toward the ocean, and I made every effort pull myself on board.
For all of my effort, my arms were tired, and a bewildered fisherman had to help pull me over the side of the deck.
“Jesus,” he exclaimed when he saw me.
Just having him there to help me out was a bit relieving. I needed to rest, and I was glad to be in a place where I could finally relax. I wanted to speak, but I couldn’t be bothered to talk at that moment. It was enough to simply be in the boat. The fisherman seemed to understand the context of the situation and went on the deck for a moment.
I sat huddled on the dock, holding my knees, and rubbing the sides of my body. When the fisherman came back, he had a fresh set of thermals, as well as a wool blanket.
I got dressed immediately and wrapped the blanket around my shoulders. Taking quick breaths through my nose, I stood up and worked to revitalize myself through some calisthenics.
The fisherman let me be for a moment and set about piloting the ship.
“I see you’ve still got that bag,” he called out. “I was hoping that you hadn’t gotten picked up when you visited my daughter. I know that the police stopped by. They have been camping outside of my home ever since this yesterday afternoon.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but my voice cracked and broke.
The fisherman shook his head as if to suggest I was an amateur and then walked over to offer me a flask of spirits. The alcohol cleared my throat with a cough and a brief sputter.
“Christ,” I swore, the whiskey having brought a croaking sort of life back to my throat.
“Medicine,” the fisherman nodded, standing in front of me now and looking into my eyes expectantly.
“She didn’t get picked up then,” I said, putting the pieces together as I sat there.
The words of the fisherman echoed into my mind as he addressed the officer, and I nodded to myself; it’s amazing how sluggish the mind can get when putting under stress for a long enough period of time. The clarity of my purpose came back to me and met the eyes of the fisherman.
“I need you to tell me what your daughter is into,” I said, zeroing my focus in on the man. “I’m not sure if she’s alright or not, and I’m not sure if you know what’s in the bag…”
I paused.
“Do you know where she is at?” he insisted. “I need to know if my daughter is okay.”
“I have to say, I’m not impressed with the people your daughter associates with. They’re armed, and they are involved in illicit trafficking. I killed one of them, but I think they have a vested interest in keeping your daughter alive. After all, I’ve got her bag.”
“I’m not sure I can share much information with you. I have deduced a few things about her activities, and I have had some conversations with her, but Piper is a very proud woman.”
“The more you can tell me, the better.”
He nodded in response.
“Well, all I can really tell you is that even though the people are into the things you say they are into, my daughter is not.”
He sniffed.
“I raised a good girl, and she has a good heart. She treats her body well, and I feel like she only got involved with them at first because she believed what they claimed to represent.”
“They look like thugs to me,” I said.
He shook his head and wrinkled his nose.
“They are thugs, but I believe they are entrenched in a type of idealism which enables their behavior. When Piper started working with them, she was doing small things, and she would tell me excitedly about how she was learning more about anarchism, and social reformation. Naturally, I was very excited for her, as the subject has interested myself in the past as well.”
He nodded and sniffed once more.
“Then I noticed that she was continuously speaking around one set of opinions — a set that was predominantly concerned with ‘Direct Action’. I didn’t try to raise an impressionable girl, but when you admire someone, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. We had one argument when I tried to tell her that the line between what is an acceptable form of Direct Action, and what is not acceptable can only be determined by the individual. However, I also told her that I believe that each individual has a moral compass that we must share with others on an intuitive level.”
“A conscience,” I offered, flatly, to indicate that I was following.
“Indeed. That is one way to put it. Unfortunately, when people get wrapped up in personal ideologies, and fail to see their connection with the rest of the world, their concept of empathy becomes withered, and eventually disintegrates; when this happens, in my perspective, they lose the only thing that made them human — and I no longer care for whatever ideas they claim to be so revolutionary.”
“Philosophy in response to fascism,” I said, linking the historical anecdotes from my previous conversation with the fisherman to the current topic.
He scratched the side of his head and turned away from our conversation.
“Fascism is a systemic representation of a specific behavior set,” he replied. “There is no fascism, there are only people and their choices. I used to think that there
was no such thing as a bad man. I swore up and down that all men had the possibility for good, and that there was no such thing as a man who was beyond redemption.”
He turned around and yawned, looking tired, and worried.
“I don’t mean redemption in some kind of biblical sense,” he continued, “but I mean, truly — a reformation of character, demonstrable through action. Now, I have come to the realization that this is not the case, and it is by their own doing. I suspect this is the origin of the saying, ‘He who makes a beast of himself, rids himself the pain of being a man.’ The only difference, is I no longer share any sympathy for such beasts.”
“It’s hard to know where I stand on that continuum at times.”
He looked at me in a strange and penetrative way, as though I was slow to pick up on something important.
“I think not,” was all he said in response.
After our conversation, he began to pay more attention to the trajectory of the boat. We had been headed straight out into the Adriatic, but at the behest of the fisherman, we were now headed in a loop back toward the south.
“Doing much fishing today?” I asked, trying to get a bit of a hold on where we were headed.
“A long time ago, when my daughter was first growing up, I was involved in some activity that made me unsure as to whether or not things would be safe for my family. As it turns out, things weren’t safe for everyone, but there was one spot that has always been kind to us.”
“You think your daughter will head there?”
The man didn’t respond. He looked emotionally distant, and under a great deal more stress than he was letting on.
“It is a small island called Ottagono San Pietro or Bastion,” he said. “The island is abandoned, though it used to have military defense functionality during World War Two. I believe it is privately owned, but whoever owns it doesn’t care enough for it to take care of it. A man could live there and fish, if he had a sufficient supply of water. As it stands, there is only enough room on Bastion for a small grove of trees.”
“Will she know to go there?”
“If you’ve got her bag,” he said bitterly, “then I’m sure she’ll figure it out. Piper’s a smart woman; at the very least she will know not to go back to my home. I’d say this is our best bet. All we need to do is dock, and wait. I’d wager she’ll be out here before the morning is through.”
Time passed quickly through the beginning of the morning. I watched the sunrise from the eastern wall of Bastion. The waves looked beautiful beneath my feet, and I allowed myself to forget, if only for a moment exactly how difficult everything had been in recent memory.
When I’ve been in the middle of a stressful situation for a long time, it can be difficult for me to set things aside, and truly relax. I still found my mind drifting toward the words and philosophies of the fisherman. I still thought about the character and face of Piper, wondering if she was really as trustworthy as her father believed her to be.
Women were occasionally trustworthy, or so it seemed.
More often than not, women, like every other human being, tended to seek out things that were not necessarily good for them, perhaps more out of rebellion than anything else.
I was old enough at this point in my life to realize that rebellion for rebellion’s sake was not a good enough reason to do something. Perhaps, when a person was younger, and they were still in the process of establishing some form of identity, then rebellion might have its place. If Piper ended up forfeiting her own agency, for the sake of pursuing some hollow shell of a philosophy, I wasn’t sure I could respect her. I might help her, but I certainly wouldn’t make any effort to get to know her as a person.
If she ended up having some kind of integrity, I thought, focused on a thing that was larger than herself — then, maybe.
My mind drifted into the world of possibilities, but only for a moment.
A deep sigh banished the thoughts as soon as they had come. I blinked hard and stared out into Laguna Veneta.
Stay focused, Tyler, I told myself.
I knew that there was not really any room for error in the moments to follow. We may have been temporarily safe within the proximity of Bastion, but the long-term effects of the situation had yet to come to fruition. If anything, those moments were essentially the equivalent of the calm before the storm. There were far too many factors at work for me to prognosticate any sense of peace within the immediate future.
Then I saw her arrive.
Chapter 16 - Tyler
She was in a simple sailboat that she had rented from a nearby marina. The way that she commanded the vessel was inspiring, to say the least. She looked fearless in the face of the slight breeze, and open water that sat beneath her and the ship.
I looked over toward the fisherman and saw him swell with pride at the sight of his daughter. It was clear to me, in that moment, that Piper did indeed stand for something that was independent of whatever situational conflict she managed to find herself in at that moment. I couldn’t imagine how a person who looked that commanding could be in a position of duress, but then I realized that it was likely the context of the conflict itself which had likely brought her to that level of composure.
She docked the sailboat easily next to the edge of Bastion, secured it through a lasso toward one of the posts that were jutting out from the edge of the small, man-made island, and then hopped onto the edge of the wall herself, pulling her body up onto the deteriorated cobblestone wall.
She offered me a curt nod, as though she fully expected my presence on the island, and then walked over to speak with her father.
I let them be for a moment, knowing that both of them were glad to see the other in good health and prepared to engage in whatever new plan was at work in her mind.
She would have to take the charge in this endeavor, because even though she was in the least vulnerable position out of each of us, she was also in the position of greatest authority. Only through careful navigation could we hope to get through this experience in one piece, though I suspected that we would pay some tax for our troubles. The cost had not been high enough, as things stood in the present moment. Sure there had been some casualties on both sides, as well as some emotional trauma, but we were all here, and for a moment, I felt like I had found a team once more.
Walking over to me, then, she initiated conversation.
“I see you still have the bag, and you’re still in good health.”
“Relatively,” I said, moving my body unconsciously to stretch out the minor injuries and strains that I had sustained over the last few days.
“Any plans to give me that bag back?” she asked, figuring that I had at least some say in the process.
I shook my head.
“Not really. Unless you’re planning to make a major shift in your social circle.”
She nodded and looked down at the ground.
The wind buffeted through the small trees that peppered the landscape on Bastion. The ground was surprisingly established for being a man-made island. The only part of the island that reminded me that the ground I was standing on had once been an artificial installment was the sheer octagonal siding and the diminutive size of the landform.
“I figured you might say that,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been having more than a few second thoughts about my social circle as well. Though, I’m not convinced you would provide any better company. Unfortunately, I’m not sure at this point how to dismantle the work that has been done.”
Of course, she was referring to the fact that if she betrayed the group she worked for, then there would only be greater problems for the three of us. On the other hand, if she went to the police, there was no damning evidence to support taking down that group she was involved with, as all of the evidence lead squarely to the two of us, and now the fisherman by association.
I paused for a moment to reflect what course of action might be most appropriate, when suddenly, a small sail caught the co
rner of my eye.
Another ship had apparently gone around the backside of Bastion and was now coming into view.
Ships in Laguna Veneta were frequent, but there had been no ships around, and now not only was one present, but it was headed straight for the island.
Something about the ship’s presence felt very wrong.
Just as I instinctively pulled Piper to the ground, a shot went off. One bullet, and then two more spat into the ground, kicking up dust and rocks as it buried its deadly force into Bastion.
“Head to the cover of the trees,” I commanded.
Piper’s father ran over toward us, to help get his daughter to safety, but didn’t manage to complete the journey.
“Dad!” Piper screamed, staring in horror at the fallen man.
Falling into the ground below, blood spilling our from the side of a hole in his neck, the man looked up helplessly at his daughter, seeking to view the only remaining love of his life for one more moment as an excessive flow of his own warmth seeped out from between his gnarled fingers.
Knowing that there was no time in the present moment to indulge in the grief of the tragedy, I literally yanked Piper from her position, and sprinted toward the cover of the trees — dragging her mourning, flailing body every step of the way.
When we got to the trees, she was still trying to crawl back out toward her father. I slammed her body back into the nearest tree trunk and stared her directly in the eyes.
“You need to focus right now,” I said. “Your father is dead, and there will be time to mourn, but now is not that time.”
My speech was truncated by the spray of another series of bullets. Each bullet pulled bark and wood from the nearby trees. The weapon used was clearly a high-powered rifle of some sort. Whoever was attacking, clearly had a very simple plan of execution — Eliminate Target, Recover Goods.
The obvious reality that there were no official police members on board the attacking ship went without question. Venice’s finest didn’t operate clandestine kill jobs via sailboat.