by Robert Lyon
United States navy, Captain of USS Paul F. Foster.
I only remember seeing red the rest of the day. And just outside our walls the remaining militant’s originally planning god knows what heard our stories and realized they had the same experiences with the bastard. They left our walls and we found were the Artimus gang had entered and shored up our walls and fitted our gate with a quick release. We saw their foot prints and the hand and face prints they left pressing their faces to the wall to hear us, which I took as another stupidity it wasn’t drywall in an apartment. The slings we had used for boar hunting were made ready for defense. And once again I had to reveal a secret project risking looking like a fool.
I said “We’re all to pissed off to talk about it now but we need a lookout tower and you’re going to think the method is crazy but we may be able to do some other things with that method as well.” Michael collapsed down and asked, “How bad is it Rob?” I replied slowly and monotone, “I built a very small model tower, with a model hot air balloon” Tommi laughed and smiled hysterically, and Megan blurted out, “Holy Jesus!!”
We strolled over to my shop spot and I explained, “I really need this weather tower, and were not going to be able to fly home on one of these, but during world war two the Japanese successfully
bombed the west coast of America with balloons that released sand bags based on altimeter readings and the last sandbag was actually a bomb. So may be a mayday an S.O.S. or even a Hello
Kitty could be sent, but I’m afraid it would actually end up in brazil and I don’t speak or write Portuguese.” Michael said,
“Let’s just get a tower going and that patio deck we were planning on.” Tammy said, “Okay and I need to kill one of the militant douchebags.” Athena asked, “Anyone in particular?”
Tammy replied, “No, but at least one.” Athena said, “Okay, let just hold on that one. Hey Tommi, Atrisia asked how you were yesterday.” Tommi reached over with a slight tremble and took joseph’s hand and said with notable uncertainty, “Okay, didn’t know her too well, but don’t want to see any of them now.”
They all stood there and looked at my set up. I took the charcoal and put it into the ceramic disc and used the small paper bellows to fan it until it glowed just right. Then I held the balloon in place and added un-burnt charcoal and watched the balloon fill and rise. The tether was still attached and the test weight was moderate for what the balloon had been capable of resulting in the balloon rising slowly. The test weight was attached to a loop of twine and once I untied it they saw that I could raise and lower it like a crane. That was my proof of process. Michael came over for a closer inspection and Athena walked up and shoved me aside saying, “Let us play with it.” Michelle stepped beside me and kissed my cheek then smacked my butt and said,
“Good boy…go tend the boilers so we can figure this out.” I kissed her back on the lips and said, “Okay.”
Tammy stepped in front of me so I stepped aside and waited then walked forward and she did it again, then she kissed me on the lips and I kissed her back she giggled and stepped out of the way and I went to tend the boilers.
I returned to our camp site and heard rustling sounds outside our wall. I knew the boar had been penned in so it must be the militants. I peered through a small peep hole in the gate and figured they were looking for the hole. So I ready a sling and surrounded myself with spears stuck in the ground for a ready grab. The noise subsided and I was in a braced stance when Tommi and Joseph came up behind me. Joseph asked,
“They out there again?” I replied, “I think so. Looks like we’re going to need to get more serious about making that wall a more dangerous place to be.” With Tommi and joseph there I walked around the wall but on our side it was braces, mountings, and frames. So said I was going to open the gate and joseph ready a couple of spears and Tommi had a couple behind him but was ready to run for reinforcements.
Once I got out there it was Francesco and Monica and they explained, “We were just getting the football?” and smiled oddly. I looked at the fence line it looked unmolested but
Monica looked somewhat molested and aroused. So I nodded and went in and closed the gate. I told joseph it was Monica and
Francesco and they seemed to be making out getting the football, they were all supposed to stay away from the wall but I had worked with them both and they didn’t seem to have changed too much. Tommi had also worked with them so she and Joseph patrolled the fence line while I tended the boilers.
After the raid and theft we needed to refill the cistern and vases, back on full production.
Out under the blue sky and upon crashing sapphire blue waves laced with foam the Woodenpeg was flying at eight knots away from us, our work, and our team with a crew comprised of whining dogs and whimpering mules. Mike Elper sat at the bow near the fixture point for the triangular sheet and its mast. At the
till were Eric Milson and Gunner Smity, Midship starboard side sat Atrisia Wells and down below were the Captain and Ensign
Clarkson, with Cabin boy and Senior Chief Johann.
They all were a gleam as Gunner Smity charted in relation to wind direction and current using our sextant, our line with a floating bob, and the streamer on a staff they he held up sitting next to the till. Measure of time was a trick, no one watch survived the depths we had all tasted when the ship was lost.
They had used charcoal and paper to copy down our navigational circle before destroying it, which also destroyed our farmer’s almanac information we needed to watch our farm of sorghum and knotweed sprouts. They were joyful to be a sea again and the experience of the fishing boat did not compare. On the fishing boat to lose sight of the island could have been fatal.
Now they intentionally headed north east cutting hard and flying fast as they could. It was a run for the money and a race against the clock of rations stored.
I stood on the beach next to our kiln and said, “I guess I don’t need to worry about an hour glass after all.” Athena responded, “Nope” I added, “I was going to do the glass work for the ship while they tested it around the island today.”
Michelle replied, “Ya, but now we’re on boiler tending and ultrafine textiles for your balloon babe.” I looked at her with a big smile, she had never called me babe before despite the fact it was my habit to call the females I liked babe. Athena walked by and gave me an encouragement groping of the ass with a wicked smile. At least I was still hopelessly in love with more than one woman at a time.
There was an onset of cold breath in the wind and on the horizon the clouds gathered for a circling of the wagons before their flanking maneuver. On the landing site beach stood the shadow
of a former navy sailor, a shell of what he once was. The silhouette spoke out into the breeze and over the water, “I was a fire controlmen, my recruiter told me, ‘It’s a simple job. Go there, press a button, become a hero.’ he said it was the result of technological advancements.” Now he stares at a rolling ocean and wonders when he will fade into the sea, left for dead, by ship, by captain, by mate.
Brosuer wandered the beach and walked into the pentagon, and Clarkson blurted out, “Excuse me, you aren’t allowed in here.” Brosuer mopping about asked, “Are you serious? We built this thing. And that asshole stole the ship they built. And you think you’re special?” Clarkson replied, “I remind you, it doesn’t matter who won the football game this area is for the selected only.” Brosuer stepped out and went to a spot familiar to him and returned with his hands full. Clarkson asked, “Did you forget something chief?” and Brosuer threw his feces at her.
Deckly got up and walked out and Clarkson crawled out of
Brosuers way, as he began throwing around the lean-too pieces.
Brosuer sat amid the chaos uttering, “He wins, he wins, the captain loses his ship, strands his crew on an island…so, he wins.”
Branson had realized how bad things got when he woke to find out Artimus had left. Chief Dotz had been informed by
Milson he and the crew selected by the captain would be confiscating the native boat and setting in for friendly waters for a rescue. It should only take a week, the captain had reassured
Milson. Branson had headed back to the enlisted club before everyone knew. He found it easier to maintain a leadership position when you are only available when success is assured, if upper management is AFU then be busy with something that requires your personal attention. This had been his modus
operandi, on the ship and his voice was reserved for issues he knew we be resolved.
With Branson tucked away, and the Artimus circle hiding in the pentagon, and his gang with him on the stolen ship, there was no longer any social order what so ever. It was Hudlow’s time to shine. Everyone’s water had been contaminated by adding salt water to ‘extend water rations’ by the Artimus gang that is with the exception of their water.
Becky Clarkson and Jane Spayner sat off and away at the tree line smelling of vaginal fluids, they had bathed so infrequently so as not to appear wet their approach was unsettling to the men and agitating to the women. Their clothing was torn and tattered with rips in the butt and bloodstained near black at the crotch and inner thighs. Jane asked, “You think he really left?” Becky replied, “Ya. ya, he did.” Jane said, “We need to make those cloths.” Becky responded, “You give a little, you lose a little, they take a little, and you’re left with very little.
We have uniforms.”
Jane got up and walked to where they had made some of the island clothes after Athena had showed them how and started working. Chief Dotz called over to her, “Hey Ensign, they’re gonna’ have a rescue here in a week.” Jane replied, “A week of something wearable sounds okay to me chief.”
That night we slept in grief for our loss of hope. It was as though not one but all of us had died. We were betrayed, cast away, and possibly forsaken. I slept not nestled between Athena and Michelle, but with Athena and Michelle held snuggly in my arms. They needed me again and now I was less of a toy for distraction then I had become.
Chapter Thirteen
Two more years
It had been a year to build the Woodenpeg, and Two more to finally create our ‘crane balloon’ and ready the wooden planks and stanchions to build our tower.
Haydel had joined us as well as Jane and Strutzer, Washam,
Tinel, and Kim luds. The Artimus gang had not returned and were thought lost at sea or to have left us as ‘Killed In Action’ in official reports. We didn’t dwell on our betrayers’ fate or condition, we lived our lives.
We had added a third cabana and refortified our walls with an extra outer layer with a thin space between. It was an odd rumor to us even as we watched it happen but there had been a civil war of sorts in the militant camp Brosuer and Deckly had been confronted by Hudlow’s hooligans and had been beaten into submission. It was the senate and governors position that first, they were not of our governing body, and second, their leadership lacked direction and effectiveness. The conclusion drawn was that their survival may well depend on a violent change of social structure and leadership and our interference could offer no solution, they did not think, act, or speak like any of us. They were not our people. Despite our warning they preferred to run one boiler, once a day producing three gallons of freshwater to which they added sea water so as to reduce the salt content as Artimus had them do before he absconded with our hopes in the theft of the Woodenpeg .
Hudlow however had taken the ‘island front’ by force with his
‘band of merry men’. We had considered Hudlow to be brain damaged and our opinion had not really changed; but what he expected subordinates to do seem to pay off. There were
additional boilers made and only fresh water was being drunk.
He improved their shelters from lean-tos to short huts which stood only three feet high, but were circular and had palms fashioned into walls.
He sent a messenger to ask us where he could buy another boat, and we sent instructions for how to build another fishing boat.
His reply was ‘he was just fishing for another escape boat’. We sent the message we were working out a plan to better track the weather before risking another in response.
Hudlow wore a crown made of knotweed that he called his
‘booger belt’ but as time passed the Knotweed dried and turned amber yellow. He pointed out he was no longer green and the amber yellow of his crown was the only gold he needed.
Before Hudlow’s reign over the militant bread had been once every two weeks like military payday, Water was made but used to dilute salt water, and the fishing supplied food day by day with no concern of maintaining stores. He had corrected all those things and yet remained an absolute buffoon. They didn’t need the shadow puppet theater or marinates we used in theatric storytelling, nor Chinese checkers or any type of whistle or ocarina to stay amused, Hudlow was startlingly unrealistic as a real person but somewhat compelling as a cartoon character.
I believe it became a manor of the good humor he provoked that they had not resumed trying to kill each other or entirely shirk the work necessary to survive on the island. Hudlow did however find fault with Chief Dotz the only one that was given any warning of the upcoming theft of the native’s boat. And being he gave no warning, he would tend to a necessary task that might well be taken as a punishment. Every day was Chief
Dotz’s day in the barrel, he would protect against the possibility of rape due to the imbalance in men to women, by giving hand
jobs and should he be so inclined blow jobs to those that came to his ‘shack’. They said, at our fence when they came by for
‘Phone calls to the natives’ that Hudlow ruled with an iron skull.
As a simpleton he applied the simplest of solutions to the simplest understanding of the problems they were facing. The end result of that was pragmatism dressed in drama. I thought it ironic that the pragmatism which we Diligent were driven toward all along, even as we spent two years performing a long term project of a hot air balloon was also reached by the belief system of a simpleton, if the tower or the hot air balloon were to fail I would lose any hope in the human race and the belief that those that actively live their lives and make choices, get to live the consequences of their own choices rather than the consequences chosen for them.
I had run every type of model I could on this tower design. And with Hudlow having applied his system to the militant side of the island to the benefit of all those there and adding to our sense of security, as they would not attack out of having nothing better to do; I absolutely need to succeed. King Hudlow even motivated me in the quality assurance arena, because I would die of embarrassment if I turned out to be less effective or stupider than him.
He walked with rigid movements and practiced postures. He uttered things he thought to be deep and thought provoking that were actually inane and witless. He was a vapid turnstile of a man, and yet while his achievement was less spectacular than ours, he actually started far below us in the face of Artimus’s corruption, and his accomplishment there was frankly fear inspiring…I mean that idiot got that much done??!!!
On one occasion just days earlier, I sat in a wicker chair made from knotweed on the elevated patio looking over at their beach
to see Hudlow in his island made boxing shorts and tank top with a cape and a scepter march a precession to their stills with wood and sea water in tow. It seemed he involved everyone in each and every task, not so much as a team but more as a mob, thirty people to carry a fresh water vase to a staging area then back to pick up another one not more than fifteen feet away from the drop off point. The laughter that solicited in me was probably a great relief of pressure, the raw comedy of it…we had music, stories, and games. They made up new star constellations every night and drew them in the sand just close enough to the water that the new tide would wash them away.
I was very frustrated we had to figure out the weather patterns to risk a second boat, so between the tower, the balloo
n, and some
Chinese paper lanterns released from the tower at certain times we could chart that out. But it took two years to make the balloon; meanwhile King Hudlow has managed to quell the
Neanderthals with idiocy. I’m am thankful for the beauty, grace, and charms of the women of our camp and of their amazing degree of tolerance, it could only be them preventing me from building a smaller tower out of wood just to jump off head first into the rocks. As Hudlow marched by in that precession he turned and saw me, got a big smile and waved. With his rigidity and childlike demeanor, I smiled politely and returned his wave…but I wanted to scream.
Now that the balloon was finished we used a standard crane like the one we launched the ship with to build the tower foundations and as much of the tower rise as we could. All the while that work was going on the balloon was soft inflated by ongoing flame in its ceramic torch chamber.
As the days stretched by it became more and more obvious we should have started the tower earlier but everyone that wasn’t
fishing, farming, tending the boilers, or any other routine task was taking part in the balloon construction. It was like two giant parachutes joined together with a foot wide ribbon going all along the seams with passing holes for the net that went over the top. So we did use it for the bird’s eye view we wanted. I had envisioned a first stone aloft party and a marked stone like a corner stone, instead we fashioned a harness and we were the first rocks aloft. It only felt stable enough to me to view a more distant horizon than we had seen in years, but we would be far too distracted for weather monitoring.
Athena was aloft in the harness to which she had added a swing seat and stayed there for fifteen minutes much longer than anyone before her. There was a risk of falling embers from the pulley system that could add charcoal, so she wore a stocking cap and a sash around her neck that draped half way down her shoulders and was three times as thick as normal garments. She blocked out the sun with her hand over her eyes like a misplaced salute and gazed out at the horizon kicking her legs back and forth in glee. It was a beautiful sight I saw up there, first when I was up looking at the horizon and second when I looked up at her. Soon it would be one of us up there with a small bucket of cement mortar as we guided the stones hauled up by another pulley, and placing the stone into it mortared groove.