Arch Patton

by James Strauss

  I sighed. Then I approached from another angle.

  “I once visited an obscure university in the southeast somewhere. Can’t remember the name, but there was a professor of history there, a kind of human ‘teardrop’ of a male figure, but a man of great intellect. He said that the school motto, taken from some Civil War general’s family saying, was ‘not unmindful of the future.’” I checked Dutch when I finished. “Do you understand how this applies to you and your situation?” I asked.

  Dutch slowly moved his head in the negative, but then spoke. “I guess it means that we have to think of the future right now?” Dutch muttered.

  I smiled in satisfaction at the comment. The man was not a complete dolt.

  “You’re correct, especially about the ‘we’ portion of your conclusion”, I agreed, “which means that you’re going to have to do exactly what I tell you to do, or you’re headed straight back to Easter Island.

  I waited. Dutch joined me in laughing.

  “You got it, Indy!” he stated, his voice a study in relief.

  I stopped laughing and bristled. “Don’t call me Indy. I don’t much care for Harrison Ford. In real life, I think he’s a wimp, and the character he played in that movie wasn’t much either.”

  Dutch ignored my warning.

  “You know Harrison Ford, Indy?” he inquired, ready to be awed.

  I just dummied up. There was not going to be a lot to work with in Dutch, I thought to myself. I could only hope that he would follow instructions to the letter.

  “Let’s get back down there. And that pouch you have, you’re not giving it to Günter — or anybody else. Once you surrender that you’re history. Your knowledge and that sample are your power over them. Kessler is coming aboard in St. Paul. He sounds like a real piece of work.”

  We got up and hiked down the mountain. I wondered about whether I should just take possession of the nugget, deciding it would be better not to be physically involved. Not yet, anyway. I did reach down to my pocket to feel the bulge of my own gathered nuggets. The squeeze was reassuring. Missions come and go, but gold stays around for a long time. The emotional spell that the yellow metal cast over most people had to be held at bay at all cost or it could overwhelm everything.

  Don met us when we came out into the area where the boats were beached. Dutch and I were both tired. Trudging through the stones had taken its toll.

  “You boys manage all right up there?” he asked, with a co-conspirator’s wink.

  I indicated that we had, returning his joviality. Don would have to be brought in, but it would have to be later. We got the passengers back into their life-vests, used them to re-float the Zodiacs, and then headed for the ship. Although impossible to ascertain from the sun, my Breguet said it was already late in the day. Dinner, our staff crew lectures, and an evening with the passengers on the lido deck awaited.

  Marlys would be a centerpiece of the evening. Her innocence and young age still bothered me. Her cold delivery in my cabin the night before had not fooled me. She might have no connection whatever to the Yemaya thing, but she was attracted to me, and I to her.

  “You will not violate that innocent child,” I commanded myself, as I huddled up against the spray coming up over the bow of the Zodiac.

  Don cupped one ear to listen to my words, but I waved him off.

  Benito guarded the portal for our return. She assisted the passengers, individually, back onto the ship, interrogating each if they had collected anything while ashore. Several turned over rocks or flowers to her. She maintained a little pile next to her hobnail boots, until Don and I hopped over the Zodiac’s rubber tube. With one foot she swept the collected items over the side. She then reached out a hand to Don, pulling him aboard, as if he was a large stuffed teddy bear. Next, her hand extended out to me. It struck me to be about the size of a defensive linebacker. I clutched it and was powered aboard as if by hydraulics. She whispered in my left ear when it came close to her chiseled chin.

  “Come to my cabin after dinner for a glass of wine,” she said.

  I nodded but did not meet her eyes. As I headed for my own cabin, Don blocked the corridor directly to my front. He faced me with a message to deliver.

  “Mickey Mouse Club meeting in my cabin right now,” he said, impishly.

  I shook my head. He shook his back, then pointed. My shoulders slumped. I proceeded to cabin number 36, with its designation so appropriately ominous.

  The cabin was already filled with people. My eyes went round in surprise. A banner with Mickey Mouse decorations all over it was taped to the hull bulkhead. Everyone intoned, at the same time, “Welcome, Indy. “

  I kept a straight face. There were pitchers of what looked like Margarita mix being passed around. Marlys was there, next to Dutch on one bunk. The Basque cuddled up in her corner, wearing the first smile I had ever seen on her face. Then the party got bigger. Filipe and a Filipino woman of great beauty came in behind Don.

  Don’s voice broke in over the din.

  “The first meeting of the Mickey Mouse club is now called to order.” He raised a plastic glass filled with a green, alcohol-laden liquid. “To Indiana, our leader,” he boomed, toasting me with a motion, then tipping the glass up and draining it.

  Everyone in the room cried “Here! Here!” then drained theirs.

  “Here, here?” I muttered, but nobody was listening.

  I attempted to get to the door and out of the madhouse, but Don prevented me.

  “We must discuss the first order of business.”

  The crowd grew quiet.

  “Bring it out,” he motioned toward the Basque.

  Slowly, she pulled a white piece of cloth from under the mattress. She spread it out, then held it before her, the corners between the thumb and first finger of both her hands. Mickey Mouse and the Crossbones design were clearly depicted in black.

  “It’s our flag!” Don roared.

  They all cheered wildly.

  “It’ll be flown on the night we approach St. Paul.”

  The veins in my forehead pulsated, involuntarily, when he uttered the words. Clearly, issues existed between the Basque and her step-father, which, rather inexorably, I was being dragged into. Mickey Mouse pirates were not pirates any more than the fool’s gold was real gold. Whether there was twilight in the Twilight Zone was another matter entirely, but possibly just as germane.

  “There’s no night at this time of the year,” I weakly interrupted the following quiet.

  Don opened the door for my escape, taking a huge gulp from his drink and then grinning like the village idiot. I stood at the door motioning to Dutch. He unglued himself from Marlys’ side, handing her his empty glass. I closed the door behind us. There was no one in the corridor.

  “Take the damned nugget, yes, that big thing bulging near your crotch, and hide it down in the luggage. Your story is going to be that I was on you like a shadow and you couldn’t get the sample. Günter will act mad, but he’s powerless to do anything. He’ll have to support my plan when we get to St. Paul.”

  Dutch played dumb but reached for the pouch.

  “Not here, idiot,” I said, grabbing his hand.

  The door opened and Marlys peered out. I quickly removed my hand from Dutch’s crotch. But it was too late.

  “Get down there and get rid of the damned thing!” I said to Dutch, scathingly, in a vicious whisper.

  Marlys drew her head back in, her face registering no emotion. She closed the door.

  I made my way towards the stairs that led up to the lido deck. I passed Marlys’ cabin. I stopped before it. Looking back at number 36, I opened the door and stepped in.

  “I’ll just sit on the bunk and look. I’ll touch nothing,” I promised myself.

  I sat on a tightly made bunk. I felt the surface. It felt female. I sniffed the pillow. It smelled delightful
. I noticed a small wooden cabinet set into one corner of her cabin. The beautiful wood caught my attention. It was not something of the ship. It was nothing like the industrial passenger furniture the other cabins had. It had two little doors that closed in the center with tiny knobs of what appeared to be real ivory. I forgot my promise.

  I leaned over the table, opening the little doors. Then I took a step back. A long carving of silver dolphins kissing spanned the top of the interior. A glittering statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe occupied the middle. On the bottom were some black burned leavings of chicken parts. The hair on the back of my neck went up. Besides the burned offerings was a small shot glass of clear water, but alongside that was a very small photo of me. Someone had taken it when I had sailed under the fantail on my way back from the Isle of the Tsar of Russia.

  I closed the double doors quickly, silently, and carefully. I backed out of the cabin. I did not know how, but I knew that no matter what I did, she would know I was there. I fled to the lido Deck, hoping to surround myself with passengers. With regular, real people.

  On the way up I thought of the future. I was proceeding down a course of travel to the future at a great clip, but almost totally unmindful of it.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:

  The Pribilofs

  The lido lounge pulsed with drinking passengers, most of whom smoked cigarettes on deck as well. I had thought that only about thirty percent of the population still smoked, but the sample of humans we had aboard the M/S World Discoverer was a bit more jaded than that figure seemed to indicate. I sat at the bar in my usual corner, waiting for the staff crew to gather for our afternoon stand-up. I also expected Marlys, even though I was unsure of exactly why I was waiting for her to appear, or who or what she really was. That small shrine in her room had unnerved me.

  The night before, in my cabin, her youth, innocence and ignorance of the world had seemed totally persuasive. I reached down to my pockets. My left one still contained about eight ounces of Aguiak Island gold, but it was the right pocket in which the dolphin anklet reposed. I touched its shape from the outside. It seemed to burn with an interior heat. I pulled my hand back up to the safety of the bar. I looked up.

  My coffee glass had been replaced with a ceramic bowl. Marlys stood before me, wearing a white blouse. The necklace she had sported when I first came aboard adorned her neck. Her blouse was cut low. She leaned slightly forward, seeming to accede to my desire to see more. I looked away.

  “Soon, we will speak again. I need your help.” She stared, unblinking, into my eyes.

  Hers were a greenish blue. I could not help but stare back; I could not hold her gaze. I took up my bowl of coffee and drank, burning my mouth, but showing nothing at all. I put it back down in silence.

  “Do you want me to come back to your cabin or do you want to return to mine?” she asked, matter-of-factly. She dried some bar glasses while she waited for a response.

  I didn’t want to answer. I didn’t want to confirm that I’d been in her cabin, even though I knew she knew, as I knew she would. I found the whole Santeria thing repugnant. That it might have some application and effect in the real world made it even worse. I felt like rushing to my cabin, getting down on my knees, and attempting to come to an understanding with my old Catholic God, who I had abandoned in my youth. I battled the urge.

  “Alright,” I remarked, as if that made any sense as an answer.

  She went along, as if I had truly made a decision, and arranged a rendezvous. I knew that I was never going back to her cabin. I realized, as well, that she would find me. I wanted to return the anklet, which she claimed, bound me to her. I tried. I could not physically reach down and pull the silver strand from my pocket. My hand simply refused to obey. Willingly, however, it helped me gulp down more coffee.

  Benito prepared our “stage” and the staff crew appeared. They were all drunk and giggling. I looked around the lounge. Mickey Mouse stickers had appeared everywhere. I concluded that the Filipinos were in on it. They’d put the stickers up too high for the German crew to reach. The Filipinos had the ladders.

  The staff crew stood up, one after another, and delivered like I had not seen them do before. They entertained. They were interesting. The wonder of booze, I thought. When it was my turn, I spoke about the Yupik and Aleut tribes of the Pribilofs. About what we could expect when we arrived there. My doctoral dissertation had included those tribal cultures. But I elicited little applause. The passengers were primed for fun, not analytical detail.

  Don caught me before I could flee. Benito was moving in my direction, Marlys stood, looking like the goddess she was, behind the bar, and I had two pockets full of the most problematic metals I had ever handled in my life. I would have felt healthier, and in less danger, if I had been carrying plutonium.

  “What?” I said, rather harshly, pulling my arm from Don’s grasp.

  “Are you going to dine with the passengers?” he asked.

  I looked at him, dumbly.

  “We’re supposed to eat with the passengers, not scarf stuff from the Filipino mess,” he reminded me.

  I knew that, of course, as it had been written up in the instructional brochure all staff crew got long before they came aboard.

  “Do I have to?” I implored. My sleep cycle had been destroyed since encountering the Lindy. I just wanted to go to my bunk and hide under the covers.

  “We want to enlist the passengers in our Mouseketeer effort.”

  He looked at me. I regarded him as if he was a character from a Federico Fellini film.

  “What Mouseketeer effort?” I probed, not really wanting to know but knowing I had to ask.

  “Well, it seems that Herr Führer Borman has determined that we, the staff crew, can only order one free bottle of wine for the table when we dine. That’s terrible manners. How can ten people be expected to consume only one bottle of wine?”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. Don was ripped, slurring almost every word of his delivery, but protesting that there was not enough wine. I just wagged my tired head.

  “I’m in,” I said, giving up. “What’re we going to do? Start little fires in the corridor waste baskets or something?”

  Don didn’t laugh. He considered. At that point I knew he was dangerously drunk. I made for my cabin to get my dinner coat. My Mouseketeers could not be left to forge ahead on their own.

  Dinner was a formal affair. Much more formal than I would have expected. I was chosen by a table of birders. The passengers picked us, as we stood in a group. I felt like I was at a high school dance, or maybe waiting in the gym for one of the adolescent leaders of my class to select me for an athletic team. I never got picked back then, not until almost nobody else was left to pick, anyway.

  I was selected first for dinner. My back went straight when I was approached. I walked away with a stupid grin across my face. I ordered four bottles of wine for my table. To my surprise, Filipe had become our waiter, flashing a knowing look my way. The Filipinos were amazing, I realized. Somehow, they knew that I knew that. I scanned Don’s table to see when the Mickey Mouse Revolution was going to erupt. Don was nearly under his table. The staff crew members at every table were in a similar condition. The revolution was going to have to wait. I sighed in relief.

  Then, my eyes caught Benito’s. She wasn’t drunk. She was on her own mission. I looked away and thought of the burned chicken parts I had discovered lying at the bottom of Marlys’ fetish site. I shivered. It would be most fitting if Benito possessed a much larger shrine — and sacrificed much larger parts of much larger animals to her god.

  I fled to my room after dinner and locked the door. I thought of leaning my chair up under the handle, but then gave it up. It was not that kind of latch. I stripped, leaving my jockeys on, as I never counted on being totally alone anymore, and buried myself under the covers. In the middle of the arctic “night” I was awakened twice, both
times by gentle tapping against my door. I made no move to answer those knocks. However broken up, it was my first decent night’s sleep since boarding the Lindy.

  My automatic alarm went off. The anchor shot out, with one huge clang after another. My Breguet said six. It had to be morning. I wondered what was wrong. Where were we? We were supposed to dock at St. Paul, not anchor somewhere else. I shaved and dressed rapidly, then tore the cardboard off my porthole. We were moored. The harbor could be seen just over a long projecting spit of gravel. I slowed my breathing. I had not remembered to school Dutch in how we were going to handle immigration. That affair could turn ugly, pronto.

  Customs and Immigration was nobody to mess with. They exuded, by and large, meanness and suspiciousness. In my vast experience, they possessed hearts about the size of a hydrogen atom.

  I flipped open the door lock, but did not have to turn my door handle. Third Mate Günter plunged through.

  “We’re in St. Paul,” he stammered in German.

  “Actually, we’re just outside the harbor,” I pointed out, stiffly.

  The Mate’s face was furrowed with anxiety. He went on, “Dutch came to me. You wouldn’t answer your door. He is worried. Very worried, indeed. Immigration could be here at any moment. He said you could help. I can do nothing.”

  I did my best Prussian impersonation.

  “And you came to me because?” I barked, and then waited. We stared at one another for a full minute, before he replied.

  “You have the ore. I know you do. I don’t care what Dutch says. You went up that mountain. I should never have spoken to you. Kessler will execute me.” He finished, then sat on the bunk next to me, completely deflated. “What are we going to do?” he whined.

  Once more, I thought, I’d been drafted into a conspiring group without any consultation whatever.

  “How many?” I asked him.

  “How many what?” he answered, in surprise.