Arch Patton

by James Strauss

  “I’m the anthropology lecturer for the coming cruise.” I stuck out my right hand. “Doctor Patton, former professor and Department Head at the University of the Pacific. Late of Oahu, Hawaii.”

  Cochon didn’t take my offered hand. He didn’t smile. He made believe my hand wasn’t extended, so I slowly took it back.

  “Shit,” he said, instead. “I thought you were one of those goddamned alcoholics who roll in here all the time. They work and move on. I give ’em booze for the work.”

  He stared at me intently.

  “If you’re some hotshot professor, then why’d you do all that work for me?” he finally asked, one big meaty hand coming up to rub his right temple.

  I grinned, not looking at him. I finished the dregs of my coffee. “I’m not sure. To have some coffee, I guess, then later because you told me to.” I extended my hand a second time. “It’s Jack, to you,” I said, and then waited.

  This time, gingerly, he accepted my hand and pumped it.

  “Besides, the breakfast was great,” I added. I got up and headed for the door to get my bag and my coat. I turned to wave, as I exited. Cochon was standing, motionless, with his Navy coffee bowl in his left hand. He made no move to answer my gesture.

  “No, c’mon…. Who are you really? There’s no way…” I heard him ask, but I was already out the door.

  I stepped out of the building into the cool air. My journey towards the jetty where my ship awaited had begun.

  CHAPTER TWO:

  Yemaya

  I stepped aboard the expedition ship, leaving the city well behind me and wondering whether I had made a wise decision in taking this assignment. I looked back at the town once, not in any kind of wistful way, as the place (for all its Alice in Wonderland charm), was really just another broken down fishing village set along a hardscrabble shore and filled with some tough human beings.

  A beautiful young woman, wearing a distinctive necklace, encountered me at the top of the gangplank. Her necklace immediately caught my attention. I counted seven blue and seven white marble-like stones, set in a long single strand hanging just below her throat. My eyes caught a small reflection from near the deck. I glanced down to her ankle. A silver string of dolphins, set nose on nose, was encircled there. The hair on the back of my neck went up as I stopped in front of her, like I’d been ordered to by some unseen and unheard drill instructor.

  “Welcome aboard,” the stunning woman said. I noted that she was Dutch from her accent. Even though I had never met a Dutchman I hadn’t liked, I took her hand guardedly, and then released it as quickly as I could. I didn’t want to make her aware that I wanted as little physical contact with her as possible.

  “Thanks,” I replied, stepping back and thinking furiously. Three months earlier I had met a strange man at a coffee shop in Wisconsin. He’d taken a seat, uninvited, at my small table. He had been an intelligent man of Cuban heritage. “Juan Teigo, Priest of Santeria,” he’d termed himself. After discoursing lightly on a number of subjects, Juan Teigo had suddenly changed. His voice lowered, and his words came out dark and mysterious.

  “Yemaya,” he announced. “You are going to meet Yemaya.”

  I looked at him blankly across the table.

  “Yemaya?” I inquired.

  He laughed. “I know certain things,” he went on, “and I know this. You will meet Yemaya soon, the Goddess of the Sea, and you will know her by a necklace of seven blue and seven white stones. Upon her ankle will rest a silver ring.” Then the man had risen and walked out of the coffee shop. Once outside, he’d turned, and then walked back and re-opened the front door a crack. I had barely heard him say, “She’s an impish one, that Yemaya, be very, very wary.” The strange hypnotic way he had spoken those words affected me deeply. They were burned deep into my memory.

  “The cruise director wants to see you in her cabin,” Yemaya stated (her name tag said “Marlys”), then pivoted and headed through a doorway behind her. I followed, shaken to my core. I did not believe in superstition. I was not religious, in spite of my Catholic upbringing. But if there were a religion I might follow, it certainly would not be the Afro-Caribbean cult of Santeria, which drew from voodoo, animal sacrifice, and other mumbo-jumbo that Juan Teigo represented. But here I was, I reflected, following Yemaya, as pre-ordained by Priest Teigo, down the long internal corridor on a ship as foreign and bizarre as the Gold Dust Saloon I had just left behind in Nome.

  Marlys and I reached the end of the corridor. We stood together at a wooden door. She knocked twice, smiled my way, and then departed. With some relief, I watched her shapely body disappear. I sighed deeply.

  I stood outside the door until a loud voice from within shouted: “You going to stand out there all day?”

  I shook myself, squared my shoulders, and opened the door. I stepped in, closing the cabin door behind me. Once inside, I set my duffel down. I looked directly across the cabin to the far bulkhead. I had noticed a rather substantial woman, standing with her back to me, when I had entered.

  “Hello,” I offered, tentatively. Her large head turned. I almost did a double take. She was the spitting image of a female version of Benito Mussolini. I smiled crookedly at her visage, trying to take it all in, but not react.

  “You’re Patton, the anthro guy,” she stated flatly. I wanted to respond that I was indeed “Patton,” and that I enjoyed a special proclivity for the consumption of human flesh, but I did not.

  I nodded, “Yes, I’m Doctor Patton—” but I got no farther.

  “Not here,” she interrupted.

  “Not here?” I queried, caught at a loss.

  “We don’t use titles aboard the ship,” she lectured me, “not among crew staff, anyway.”

  I thought for a moment.

  “Ah, then what’s the captain’s first name?” The cruise director’s aggressive attitude, coupled with her appearance, irritated me on some level I could not pin down.

  “Don’t be a smart ass, or you won’t last the day aboard this vessel. The Captain is the captain, of course, or at least he’s the captain for now. Our normal captain is on leave, so this one is really our first mate. But I’m not talking about the crew. I mean the rest of us who work with the passengers.”

  “Oh,” I shot back, wondering just what hard-earned title she herself had given up in this odd bargain.

  “And another thing,” she went on, “We all have a variety of tasks, based on our backgrounds, which we have to perform while aboard, other than those which we signed on for.”

  My eyebrows went up, but I bit my tongue. I just stood, with my eyes wide and round.

  “You’re also to be the Physician’s Assistant and Deep Sea Diver if we need either.”

  Again I said nothing. In two minutes time, I had lost my academic title and been assigned to tasks which I had played at, but never in my life had considered doing for a living. I thought dizzily to myself about what had happened so far that day. I had just come from spending a good portion of the day working as a waiter and scullery maid, plus I had met a prophesied Goddess of the Sea and reincarnated female version of a dead Italian dictator. I was and continued to be in shock ever since landing at the airport, now seeming so far away, in Nome.

  “Do I call the doctor, Doctor?” I asked, my face expressionless. But my straight-man humor was met with a stonewall.

  “You’re going to be one of the difficult ones aren’t you?” She shifted to look out her single porthole, instead of at me.

  I knew the interview was over. I grabbed my duffel roughly, threw it over my shoulder, and went out into the corridor. I walked toward the light I could see at the hallway’s end. “See the purser for your berth,” her voice followed me down the hall.

  “Like I know what, or who a purser is, or where he might be,” I whispered to myself when I was sure I was out of earshot. I trudged back to the gangplank. There, Ma
rlys presided, as before.

  She directed me to another corridor, which led to another numbered cabin door. The purser was not there, but some assistant was. He gave me a cabin number and directions. I found the cabin without help, after exploring a bit, as I was uncomfortable having the “Goddess” anywhere near me. I entered the door to cabin 36 and was immediately reminded of Edmond Dante’s’ cell on the Island of the Chateau d’If in The Count of Monte Cristo. A man was sitting on one of the two bunks. He was smiling as I approached.

  “Donald Cook,” he said, with his right hand held out. I shook it, dropped my duffel, and then sat across from him on the remaining bunk. I had had access to information on some of the people serving aboard, but the significance of meeting them in person was much deeper. The man in front of me more closely fit the role of Dumas’s Abbe Faria than a crew-mate.

  “Are you a doctor? A real doctor? Or are you a fake doctor I have to call a doctor or a real doctor I have to call Donald?”

  I didn’t give him time to answer, as I rapidly continued, “There’s a Goddess of the Sea welcoming people aboard this vessel, a Captain skippering the ship who is not a captain but must be called Captain, and a woman who looks like Mussolini running the whole damn show. I’m the real doctor’s assistant, a deep-sea diver, in addition to being the anthropology lecturer, just maybe! Is this a ship, or some weird stage scene for a nautical Catch 22?”

  I finally ran down and stopped. He started to laugh. Pretty soon I was laughing too. Extra-hard.

  “Where the hell have I landed?” I squeezed out. “And is any of this real?”

  “Everything you’ve said is accurate,” he finally remarked, his laugh reduced to a great, bright smile. “Everything you’ve seen and been told is also true. But none of it is believable. This is going to be an interesting cruise.”

  The ship’s great horn began a series of deep, long groans, and I could feel the deck under my feet shifting and moving.

  CHAPTER THREE:

  The Lindy

  I learned from Don, my bunkie and fellow de-frocked Ph.D., that the ship was never referred to as the M/S World Discoverer, which was the name painted in black across her white prow and in white across her black stern. Unlike most ships, because of the seafaring lore of potential ill fortune, the ship had been named different things under different owners. The ship was built for Lindblad Cruises in 1978 and was the second purpose built expedition cruise ship ever in the world. Hence, the name Lindy, which was announced, for unknown reasons, to everyone who came aboard.

  Don gave me the tour. Six decks in all, with a workout room, sauna, and steam bath on the bilge deck, which was the very bottom of the vessel. The workout area was closed up and never used, but since our empty bags were stowed there, we checked the room out anyway. The rest of the bilge deck was used by the Filipino crew who did all the cleaning, cooking, and other scut work required to run an adventure cruise ship. They even did dry cleaning. The last place we went was up to a small blue door. It was the only metal hatch-type door I had seen aboard, the rest were all stained wood. A red cross was painted on the outside.

  “Here’s one of your other career locations,” Don advised, with eyes brightened, as he opened the hatch and ushered me inside. An old man sat on a stool, checking a list.

  “This is Doctor Murphy, the ship’s doctor,” Don stated, waving his hand toward him, by way of introduction. The elderly gentleman looked around feebly. I realized that he was at least eighty years of age, maybe more. I could not help acting openly surprised.

  “You’re the doctor?” I asked him, incredulously.

  The old man blinked, then shrugged. He answered in a deep healthy voice, seeming to either ignore or not care about my surprised reaction to his advanced years. “Not much of a doctor anymore, not since I lost most of my eyesight. I hope you’re my assistant, and that you can see well. I got the cat gut, anesthetic, and everything else, but can’t see to do the stitching anymore”

  I shrugged my shoulders. My surreal adventure just kept getting stranger and stranger. A funny feeling made itself present in the bottom of my stomach. I wondered why the doctor seemed to think that we’d be doing any stitching while on the voyage. But, I said nothing, instead shook the old man’s hand. I looked about his small quarters and then left with Don, promising to return later in the day.

  The four decks up from the bilge were all identical. A long corridor ran from bow to stern on each side of the Lindy with cabins dotted all along their lengths. Those were all berths for the passengers. We and the other “non-crew staff,” also berthed there. The top two decks were dedicated to meeting spaces, a dining room, bars, and open spaces. On top of all those decks was another, smaller deck. That was where the German crew, who actually ran the ship, had their quarters. Don told me that they only rarely associated with the rest of the crew or passengers and that that was a good thing. Most of them only spoke German. I did not mention that I could get along in Tagalog, the language of most Filipinos. I also did not mention that I spoke fluent German, with an accent from the southern part of that country.

  As the passengers came aboard, Don and I returned to our cabin. He showed me the small hot shower in one corner of our tiny room and told me that it would be a lifesaver, as our expedition was going to be sunny but cold, with even colder water. I almost confided in him that I had not brought my swimming trunks, but after the last few hours, I decided not to attempt such humor. If, of course, it was humor.

  We sat on our bunks across from one another. Don had a plug-in hot plate that ran off DC. We talked. He explained that this run was his sixth in as many years. That he was a Professor of Botany at the University of Montreal. That he was fifty and married, but the marriage did not count aboard the vessel. My eyebrows arched up, as I listened. When it was my turn, I blurted out my whole story. I particularly emphasized the Santeria connection with Juan Trigo and Yemaya, and how much that was bothering me. Don drank his instant coffee, looking over the lip of his cup at me. Big, bushy eyebrows, on a big, bushy Canadian. His very appearance brought reassurance whenever I looked at him.

  “You’re an anthropologist. A scientist,” he said, his face serious. “Don’t give superstition and coincidence a foothold. Just reason on through it.”

  Perplexed, I looked at him, wondering if the man had believed one word I had uttered to him.

  “That’s a pretty damned solid obstacle of circumstantial evidence to blow right by,” I finally countered, sipping from my own hot coffee. The Canadian chortled, and then set his own cup down.

  “Ever heard of Fatima?” he asked. I nodded, with reservation in the nod.

  “You’re Catholic right?” I assented again, wondering where he was going with that rubbery fact, and how he had made the assumption in the first place.

  “The story of Fatima. The appearance of the Blessed Virgin to three small children in Portugal. The close approach of the earth to the sun in 1917 and the letter the Blessed Virgin gave to the girls who then gave it to the Pope, following her instructions.”

  He then looked at me expectantly. I knew the lore of the infamous story or “mystery,” but I gave away nothing.

  “You believe any of it?” he asked, as he took his coffee back up to his lips. I did not know how to reply to his question. So I shook my head slowly after I considered it for a bit.

  “Well, I never believed it either, and still don’t,” Don declared, “But then I went to this town in Bosnia called Medjugorje. Have you ever heard of that place?” I shook my head, not revealing that I had been to the “space between the mountains” only a year before.

  Don went on, “While I was there a small girl gave me a note. She just handed it to me at that square there in front of the huge white church steeples and then ran off. She didn’t tell me to give it to the Pope, so I’ve still got it here in my journals.”

  He pointed toward a small, heavy-looking kit
at the end of his bunk. I looked at the kit, still not understanding anything, but kind of growing used to that in this strange universe into which I had deposited myself.

  “The note, from three years ago, says that I’ll sail the seas until I meet the strangest and best friend I’ll ever know. That man will lead me into more trouble than I would ever experience on my own. In spite of that, I should do whatever the man tells me, for the good of all, including myself.”

  Don stopped, abruptly, put down his coffee and reached into his kit.

  “You want to see the note?” he said, his face serious. I shook my head again, not knowing what to say. He retrieved his hand and then sighed slowly. He frowned deeply, and examined me closely, with a questioning expression writ large across his face.

  “So, are you that guy in the note, or not?”

  I shook my head once more. We sat for a good minute, looking at one another but not speaking.

  “Well then, do you get my point?” I just stared at him until he laughed, and his body lost its tension. He spoke again, after calming down after his laughter.

  “Either you buy into the occult, in which case everything becomes explicated by it, or a part of it, or you don’t. If you don’t, then you’re free to evaluate from the physics you see happening around you and make the necessary rational decisions. I believe in the former.” He stopped, appearing proud of himself.

  I shot a glance at his kit, wondering if he had been bluffing me to make a point. But I didn’t call him. I was more afraid that the note was really in there than that he might not be pulling my leg, and I was about full up of hopelessly strange metaphysical circumstances.

  “Where we headed?” I said, changing the subject, as the ship had really begun to move around underneath us, which meant that we were out of the protected waters of the harbor.