New Homeport Island

by Robert Lyon

  It was the day before the commencement of the trial,

  Artimus was jovial in his cage, he had had plenty of one start hotel service and stranded on a desolate island that’s just heaven. He did however realize he would soon once again be

  their captain or worst case scenario be joining a beleaguered work force as the second oldest guy on the island.

  You could see the scheming in his eyes as he observed how the group got along; up to date he hadn’t cared so long as all believed he was in control. After gazing at Washam for a while he realized holding eye contact was taken as a threat. He had to gesture dismissively by rubbing his eyes and acting as though he were suffering from allergies a time or two, but for the most part he was able to observe unnoticed.

  McCree spoke with Deckly about the circumstance and that regardless of the outcome she wanted to be a girl, which being that she was a girl or women I would have thought it to be an odd thing to say as did Bruce given the expression on his face but Dave Artimus seemed to understand completely. Atrisia wells was the next subject of observation and she scratched at her crotch liberally, Artimus seemed to gleam some meaning to this as well. Brosuer seemed exceptionally polite and soft handed when interviewing the sailors for the trial; he had the demeanor of an elementary school teacher. Jane looked confused and dismayed, but also as if she could see a

  McDonalds just on the horizon. Becky was staring at Jane’s ass which was not unusual for her, it seemed as though she were aware of some tattoo of some kind and couldn’t help getting a visual from the sight of Jane’s posterior from their time together as roommates, an unfortunate aspect of sisterhood. Koleson had bribed one of the women to give up her bra and walked around shirtless with it on, from the mountain top where I observed this

  I could actually see Artimus shake his head at the sight of that and mouth the words, “No help there.” Scott Tinnel was urinating in the direction of the cage at a distance of some ten

  yards and Artimus saw that and laid down, Scott had found an effective way to show contempt.

  They piled rocks into what looked like an altar, some were round and smooth so it was packed with mud. Eric insisted the grey ones be on top and the colors shade was to remain uniform as possible. Artimus watched from within his cage as

  Eric sorted stones and squabbled. Artimus suspected he was an idiot and might be useful. Haydel was on the beach and noticed

  Artimus was analyzing everything going on, so she pulled off her dungaree shirt and having already given up her tee-shirt for a drinking cloth she was in her bra, which she also removed. She bounced and waved at Artimus trying to distract him but despite her giddy girlish demeanor he was unimpress…in fact no one was impressed, so she gave everyone the finger and put her bra on backwards and laid down in the surf. McCree checked in her own bra and asked Brouser standing near her, “I’m not fat am

  I?” Brouser replied, “Your firm.”

  There were more people watching than before now that Haydel had drawn attention to the captain, though most black sailors had to hide from the sun, they too watched from lean-to’s and the shade of the tree line. Artimus shrugged and said, “What!? I have to shit and I don’t want everyone watching.”

  Hudlow stopped wandering the beach where Hefter stood as a statue, Hefter had been a Hull Technician first class petty officer, he stood there with grey eyes, a grey mustache, and short curly grey hair. Hudlow asked, “Are you afraid of spiders…ah, ah, ah..?” Hefter replied, “There are people missing, I know there’s a way out of here, they got away…there’s, there’s…a ship” Hudlow looked out to the horizon where the ghostly apparition of an ‘Abraham Lincoln’

  HT1 Hefter stood looking and said, “I don’t see anything.”

  Hefter replied, “a white ship.” Hudlow replied, “Oh. That’s just death” and they stood together starring at the horizon experiencing vertigo and dizziness looking for a ship.

  The stone judges table had been completed and

  Hauldbalm whispered in McCrees ear, “I’d let you under my desk, but there is no ‘under’.” McCree gave a single wave down of her hand and said, “Oh, that’s okay.” Hauldbalm being forty eight years old recognized the disinterest and played his I won’t let her see me cry and smooth things over card. He said, “Well, young miss, I’ll bid you good day. I have duties to attend to.” and with a broad politicians smile he strut away simulating pride as many years of wearing a uniform had taught him. As he walked pass Tinnel he lean over and said so as to be over heard,

  “I’m gonna’ be the judge you know!” Tinnel squinting form the sun light and bright sands replied, “I know” Hauldbalm pointed at McCree and said, “See that young lady over there? You take care of her when I’m gone.” and then he marched off to the group finishing the mud between the stones of the alter looking table.

  I stood on the mountain top and my legs were beginning to ache and thought to myself how odd it seemed he didn’t look back after he spoke to Tinnel, she was so much younger than him he knew he couldn’t keep her, not even stuck on an island, I wouldn’t have been that strong and yet I considered him an idiot for wasting so much of his life at sea as a navy sailor had been the merchant marine the pay would have been an excuse for days thrown away in work.

  Brosuer’s khaki chief’s uniform was tattered and discolored at the lower legs, but what really stood out were the black socks he walked around in, shoes in the sand wasn’t

  working for anyone. He had been collecting information for the trail from the former crew, and he was beginning to realize the situation called for recognizing they had been a crew but were now ‘castaways’ a term that struck at his gut. Castaway from their ship, from the sea’s, from their society, from the whole world, this is when the term ‘former crew’ became the descriptor used by most if not all. I had, as many others, decided the captains command was at the bottom of the ocean. I didn’t understand how his propensity for political games that were actually way above his station, sank the ship but I would develop my suspicions over time and in the beginning, it was just the sort of thing that would happen to him and his crew.

  Atrisia was heard by all yelling at Brosuer, “Are you kidding!! that many charges and you aren’t even up to the ship sinking yet!!?” Brosuer replied, “Don’t yell!! We think the ship was lost due to a lot of contributing factors and we had little to no warning, according to many of the engineers forward pump room is supposed to have the sounding and security watch pass through once an hour…but, they’d rather not bother. And Sonar seven may have had some problem pipes, on top of which these are just some of the ongoing problems for the ship over the years.”

  Deckly looked on with interest but lacking true concern. He knew of these problems but all the ships officers knew the root was follow through. The chiefs would report a problem corrected, then days to weeks later say they needed time allotted to fix what they claimed they had already fixed. It was a middle management stall tactic not uncommon in any organization solicited out of insecurity to shift the sense of control from the ‘managing’ officers down to the ‘labor’ enlisted. The political motivations of the enlisted were often

  what made the job worth doing…the chief could not understand why the officers weren’t more enthused about the baloney sandwiches the chiefs finally managed to get them unaware of all the red tape they had to fight through after having created that red tape themselves to feel officious. The officers had their own version of these ‘result’s free’ behaviors, but those were mostly for the drama majors to feel utilized and to inspire senior officers to believe they still actually did something. After all, what’s a staff meeting without cappuccino?

  Master Chief Hauldbalm piped off, “Let’s get this thing started.” Chief Brosuer looked startled and glanced at

  Mr.Deckly. Deckly waved at the Master Chief and retorted, “It’s getting late…tomorrow”

  As the sunset we managed to deliver more bread with the fish and water, the grain source on the island lo
ok sparse but we had exceeded what I thought we would produce, there was something resembling wheat that we hoped was wheat but we couldn’t be certain and it seemed so unlikely but we added it anyways. Michelle standing in tall grasses, Athena popping up from the grass as well, and despite the facial expressions of

  Tammy and Megan bent over with aching backs it was like heaven.

  We slept in our usual arrangements, being so close felt so good. There was a softness to it that any bed lacked, even as tammy snored and Michelle twitched and Athena purred the rest was deep and easy. They were perfumed by a lack of soap and the scent in our cabana was sweet. Michael and Jennifer slept a bit further away, and Mitch would get restless and come in and out.

  The lean-too’s of the pentagon whimpered in the absence of its commander Dave, he sat in his cage sleeping

  against the knot weed bars, while tucked into a small crevasse at the base of his lean-too rested a fold of clothe he was preparing as a flag. He want it to be large…obscenely large, so that any flag pole of the island would never measure up. Hauldbalm nuzzled up to McCree and once he fell asleep she got up and moved and sleep next to someone else she could not make out in the dark. Jane lay near her former roommate Becky sucking her thumb, resulting in Becky placing her arm around her like a good big sister.

  Deep in the cage of his mind Dave Artimus was dreaming as always his dreams start with a field of daisies and a young girl pulling pedals from a daffodil and counting them wearing a circlet of forget me not’s in her hair, and then in the distance is a flash a white light and the song eve of destruction whispers through the air, but tonight rather than a castle tower overlooking a battle scared field, there is instead his wife. She sits in an unfamiliar room wearing black, and calls for a woman named Druecinda and asks her for her husband’s coat.

  Druecinda is dressed as a Spanish Madonna in morning with a black veil over her face and a black dress pillowed by many petticoats. She answer her husband has no coat for her and has left a distant land. Dave’s wife, Elizabeth sighs sadly and reaches for a top hat on the end table next to her and the heavy red velvet curtains behind her sway. She looks into the hat and pulls out a cigar and places the hat on her head.

  Dave hands Elizabeth a glass of wine but she won’t look at him and he is saddened. Then a large red ball rolls through the room and after following it Dave feels lost and finds he is in a forest. He walks up to his horse and mounts it, he is dressed for a fox hunt. Becky Clarkson rides up in a white flowing sheer sun dress, but says her name is Debbie. Dave says,

  “Have you found my rose bush.” Debbie responds, “It’s a shame to lose a whole bush…how could you.” Dave laughs, “She was old.” and a crow landed on Debbie’s shoulder.

  Dave rustled in his sleep, the knot weed bars he sleeps on are ridged and uncomfortable. Bruce Deckly slept alone and he too was dreaming. Bruce stood in Pioneer Square under a billboard upon which he was a model. It was an underwear advertisement. He stood there surrounded by beautiful women fawning over him. On the billboard he stood in white bikini briefs and the caption reads, ‘Pimping this out’. Bruce urinated on himself in his sleep that night .

  My dreams were different but then I was an obsessive,

  I had reoccurring dreams that we had run out of wood and couldn’t build ships or run the boilers so we carved stone statues that looked like people so that satellites or passers-by would know there were people there. I dreamt of coliseums where we acted out events through our empire so the voters would be well informed. I dreamt of schools attributed to gods so that no one would ever challenge the instructor resulting in procedures not followed and parasite infects in all that drank water not purified.

  And on this night I dreamt of weather towers made from stone we had all cut from the island and used the cloth we had made from plant fibers to make hot air balloons with pulleys and lines in place of baskets which we used as cranes to lift the stones into place nearly one hundred feet in the air. Farming plateaus to maximize irrigation, and an island senate that was broken into working casts .

  It was a cool comfortable night. ‘Snack’ was dancing on James Hudlow’s forehead as he counted the stars; he was also dancing on Hudlow’s knee. Snack was frequently in more than one place at a time. Sometimes snack would try to make a

  web blanket for James and James was so grateful he’d run around in circles when he woke up yelling, “Who ya, who ya

  !!!”. One morning James got so excite he threw up. The last words spoken near the pentagon that night were, “Snack, my forehead needs to sleep now.”

  The following morning was trial day, Bruce seemed a little more nervous than he had up to that point. Brosuer didn’t look nervous or confident, he just looked pissed off. Nick

  Eckievari called for morning calisthenics in the form of a slow pace around the trail area until a trench had formed in the sand.

  There was a drum beat cadence added by Wayne Bohee, he had used some driftwood that had been hollowed out by decay and some large sticks.

  When we heard the drums over at the boiler site Mitch and Mike started running in the direction of the landings and I yelled, “Wait, wrong way…we’ll find out what’s going on from the mountain top.” Mitch looked back in shock. We all ran up there but mike, it was the first time we had left the boilers completely unattended. Mike watched from the opening in the tree line, as they paced around kicking up and away the sand they trod upon.

  The Captain sat with his legs crossed in his cage with one of the knot weed bar right between his buttocks so as not to be a pressure point causing him pain, he folded his hands together, interlacing his fingers and looked down into his lap then murmured to himself, “I tried to make them believe that without my leadership they would turn cannibal…and now, I’m going to be eaten alive.”

  During Artimus’s time as captain the course and tone he set took an adjustment but the crew came to terms with their social roles and Identities and came to believe they had to play

  the cards they were dealt, but god did not play them these cards,

  Artimus did. There was an artifact of the American south present on the ship, it was an expectation that being subordinate meant you had to at least maintain a pretense or pretend that you weren’t smart, better informed, or capable of preforming better than someone that out ranked you. I theory of operation that renders actual results meaningless, it’s not whether or not you feed your family that matters it’s what your wearing when you either feed them or don’t feed them. This system had completely failed with that drum cadence. The college time of some of the commissioned officers actually resulted in them being smarter and more effective but for those that it only made surly, fate was taking back what they had stolen.

  Senior chief Rickley saw mike standing there and called out, “Hey, get your ass over here.” Mike strolled out trembling as Rickly gesture to an open spot in the persecution.

  Mike felt like he had been inducted into the Marine Corps as a hillbilly. No shoes, a torn shirt, terrified with only one thing on his mind; and true to a hillbilly he couldn’t remember what that one thing was.

  The command master chief took his post as the trial began and all were seated, mister Deckly crossed himself pressing his hands together and looked to the sky. Artimus was brought out of his cell to the courtroom floor and with a gesture it began.

  Artimus said, “I would like to begin with…” Master chief hauldbalm serving as the judge interjected, “You aren’t in charge here captain we’ll hear from the lawyers first.” Brosuers jumped up and said, “We’ll go first if it pleases the court.”

  Artimus then yelled, “Hey! These are my opening statements,

  I’m the accused I get to speak and you haven’t even presented

  the charges yet.” Hauldbalm said, “ahh, Okay. You have to forgive me I just got out of a rocky relationship.” Artimus heard a whisper from behind him, a couple of women in hushed conversation. It was Charlie McCree saying, “Does he mean me?” He glanced ba
ck and saw Charlie stand up fold her arms and cock her head with an angry look on her face as tears started to flow from her eyes. Hauldbalm said, “It looks like I am misjudging things already…I don’t know these procedures but I have heard of recusing yourself or in layman’s terms, which I actually do speak, someone else is going to have to do this.”

  Mike Elper stood up and said, “I’ve been with the guys over there maybe I should do this.” With a facial expression artimus signaled no to mike and his lawyer mister

  Deckly replied, “I don’t think you want to drag them into this.”

  Mike replied, “Well, I’m over here now. I’m one of you not one of them.”

  Mike saw his opportunity and felt he needed I leadership position. He had originally tended the boilers and helped build the additional three after the first one was proved to work. He figured he would build up the other side of the island and manage the work flow there. He knew there were some things that ‘Lyon’ knew that just hadn’t become relevant yet. I had become a giant in his mind and between being in my shadow and needing something for himself he ventured out to where I would not go.

  Mike took his place at the judges table and pick up a rock from the ground and smashed it as hard as he could against the stone table top saying with supreme confidence, “I call this court to order.” After looking around at the shock and astonishment of the crowd seated there he knew he could manage this group taking him seriously and continued with,

  “The court will hear from the accused before opening statements for the benefit of the courtroom.”

  Artimus said, “Thank you, your honor. For the record

  I state to the court and all gathered here I am David E. Artimus

  Captain United States navy and your commanding officer. I recognize our plight and the need for acknowledgement of your contribution and your sacrifices. What we will find through this formal inquiry is that we did the best we could, but the odds were stacked against us. Rescue and truth will come; the very delay of rescue infers our brothers and sisters in the armed forces are otherwise engaged in some manner of conflict preventing them from attending to us.” Artimus began to pace as he said, “We have to get beyond the past, we have to accept that we all had a part in those events, we have to…” Mike interjected, “Captain if you could please refrain from pacing.”