Galway

by Matthew Thayer

Duarte: “Say, have you seen Jones lately?”

  Bolzano: “You inquired already. The answer is still no.”

  From the log of Salvatore Bolzano

  Firefighter II

  (English translation)

  I have a new brother. His name is Leonglauix, the storyteller.

  Hidden in plain sight, my traveling companion for the past two years is no stranger, no sudden operatic twist who appears from nowhere in the second act. The surprise has induced feelings more complicated than I would expect. It is as if I have gained a sibling but lost a father figure. My favorite teacher is now a colleague.

  Leonglauix does not allow my professions of brotherly love keep him from assigning me chores, or giving me the evil eye when my efforts do not match his high, Cro-Magnon standards. He comports himself as if nothing has changed between us.

  As you can imagine, the revelation we share the same paternity has provoked many, many questions. His explanations have been abrupt and to the point, forcing me to conclude this subject is still painful for him. Many answers do not match his previous accounts, which is a bit disconcerting, but I have a strong idea these latest revelations hit closer to the truth.

  Prior to his conception, he allows, the Hunter had gained a reputation throughout the clans of Europe as a powerful man and unbeatable fighter. Women he bedded claimed there was no greater ecstasy than fornicating with the man who could make sticks expel lightning and thunder. I imagine he wooed the bambolas inside his field where they could be safe and truly alone. And truly impressed.

  Leonglauix’s mother, Spotted Horse, was the young, winsome mate of the Green Turtle Clan leader, Three Wolves, and well on her way to becoming a great shaman and healer when the Hunter chanced cross her path. These must have been the days before the Sons, for it sounds like Father was a bit of a vagabond, unattached to a specific clan. Far to the south, along the shores of the wooded lake where buxom Kolettelena would one day run her lucrative brothel, Three Wolves delivered his clan to the annual gathering to mark the vernal equinox. Among the native bands assembled for the ritual three days of feasting, fighting and procreating was one clan or another which boasted Father as its special guest star.

  That first night, having witnessed the Hunter deliver several merciless beatings to rival clan leaders, Spotted Horse pleaded with her husband to permit her to negotiate on his behalf. They both knew exactly what she was proposing. The Green Turtles have forever been a pragmatic tribe. Three Wolves had no desire for broken ribs or more broken teeth. Winter was coming and it was imperative he get his people to the Mediterranean coast to hunt mackerel, seal and fowl.

  Spotted Horse never spoke of what she experienced, would not bring that shame upon her husband. Three Wolves did his best to pretend it did not happen, even when a boy he did not resemble was born to his pretty wife nine moons later.

  Although his parents never spoke of the incident, that did not prevent the news from reaching the tender ears of Leonglauix. Mankind will forever love a juicy story. Gossip, tragedy and class envy garner as much interest now in the Paleolithic as they will in the future’s web-tab journalism. Amazingly, today’s best stories travel nearly as fast across the land even without communication satellites, ear peas and sonic relays.

  “You are the son of a powerful man,” a woman from another clan said one day by a creek.

  “Yes, my father Three Wolves leads the Green Turtle Clan with wisdom and strength.”

  “Three Wolves is not your father.”

  “He is.”

  “He is not. Your true father is a man more powerful than all others. You should be proud.”

  “I am proud of my father, Three Wolves.”

  This happened several times before the growing boy found the courage to confront his parents with the damning information. Their silence and embarrassed faces confirmed the rumors were true. Pardon me if this sounds a bit Jungian, but I suspect this inability to discuss the issue and come to terms with it caused the family’s inevitable rift. Leonglauix stewed for several years before one day he overheard travelers from the far north discussing the Hunter. Sidling up to their fire, he used his ability to spin a good yarn to ingratiate with the men and women. By the time he departed their fire he had learned all they had to say of the Hunter.

  “He helps. He hurts. He is unpredictable and so powerful he does not age. When we saw the Hunter, the people in his traveling party claimed to be returning to their northern home, somewhere along the coast of the Big Water, far to the north beyond the ice. It must be very distant. They said they were not even halfway, though we camped with them as far to the north as we had ever traveled.”

  At the next morning’s fire, without tact or consideration for his parents’ feelings, Leonglauix announced his desire to travel north to meet his birth father. The ham-fisted handling of the situation still causes the gray-haired man pangs of regret, as do the words he spoke during the argument which ensued. Before Leonglauix could take a step back, he was cast out of the Green Turtle Clan by the kindly man who had raised him and trained him to one day lead their people. Leonglauix left in disgrace and never again spoke to Three Wolves. The elder was trampled by a herd of bison the summer before Leonglauix’s return more than a hand of years later.

  The storyteller admits he was fortunate to be too young and ignorant to understand his quest was impossible. It took every trick in his kit bag, and then some, to survive the long, arduous trek north. Daydreams of his birth father helped pass the time as he crested hill after hill and rounded bend after bend. More than two full turns of seasons later, two years of building the man up to god-like status in his lonely mind, the teenage boy was gravely disappointed to find his birth father to be a mean, foul-tempered specter with no desire to be his papa.

  That is where the story ends, for he refuses to delve any further. In previous tellings, he claimed there were instructions to keep watch for “Doo-Art” and “Mertoonelly.” He initially said he was instructed to kill Duarte and help Martinelli. The storyteller backtracked on that nugget when Father refuted his claims, modifying his story to say he was told to bring them both north to the land of the Fish Eaters.

  Although Dr. Duarte and I have long lists of queries to help us piece this puzzle together, serious conversation has been placed on indefinite hold. The storyteller is quite keen to renew old times with the Caretakers, friends he has not seen for some 30 years. As they chat and laugh and go through their roll calls of the dead, the good doctor is most diligent in listening and taking notes. That leaves me to conduct a thorough, head-to-toe examination of the Caretakers’ granddaughter. Berry Juice may not be the most attractive lass on this solitary, green planet, but she’s certainly one of the more willing.

  TRANSMISSION:

  Duarte: “Does this make you happy?”

  Kaikane: “More than you can imagine.”

  From the log of Paul Kaikane

  Recreation Specialist

  Gray Beard finished our tour of the Fish Eaters’ camp by pointing upriver and saying we might as well hike over to the Big Drum and find out if it still makes big noise. He didn’t get any complaints. Wasn’t that why we came all this way in the first place? We gathered our stuff and followed him on an overgrown riverside trail that looked like it hadn’t been used in a long time.

  Across the river, a crash of hornless rhino was feeding, the huge animals stretching their long necks, reaching with thick lips to tear berry vines out of birch trees. The giants paid no attention to a pride of lions sleeping on a nearby gravel beach, warming in the sun next to a half-eaten elk. A few of the yellow-beige cats were on their backs with all four legs spread wide in the air to let the rays hit their bellies. Even without my helmet, I could see the swarm of flies and bees over the elk, competing with the scavenger birds.

  There were so many ducks, geese, swans, gulls and other birds floating with the current it looked like you could walk across on their backs and not get wet. Not even the hawks and eagles swooping down ou
t of the sky, or the snapping turtles and big fish pulling the birds under by their legs, could put a dent in the numbers. Eagles are the worst for us. Seems like they’re always waiting for a chance to make a grab for the baby. We’ve really gotta watch Rhino now that he’s walking. They can hear him and see him from a long way off. We’ve had a couple close calls. During the day, it’s the eagles and vultures, and at night, it’s the owls. Some of those quiet suckers are gigantic up here in Galway.

  About 100 yards in, the path jogged away from the river and into the dark shade of pine trees and tall ferns. It was slow going at first, but the ground cover thinned under the dense canopy. We hiked for eight minutes or so before somebody, I forget whether it was Maria or Sal, noticed we were smack dab in the middle of a graveyard.

  There must have been at least 100 weird-shaped, moss-covered wooden grave markers popping up out of the ground along with two big, stacked-rock huts that Bolzano said were probably mausoleums. One had a carved wood mantle reading SCHMIDT, and the other had TAMASHIRO.

  “So, they are dead,” Maria sighed.

  “Not necessarily,” Bolzano corrected. “It is not uncommon to prepare one’s tomb prior to the date of expiration.” Too bad Jones wasn’t around to tell the Italian he talked funny.

  Scattered between the towering pines, the redwood markers looked like, well, dicks sticking up out of the ground. The sunken posts were about five feet tall and maybe two feet in diameter at their flared tops. Even before we scraped away moss and lichen, we could see there were names gouged into the markers’ south-facing sides. The posts closest to the huts had German names like Klara, Max, Linus and Greta, while the farther away you got, the more native-sounding and descriptive the etchings became, names like Deer Kill, Rat Face and Trout.

  “Is this an H or an M?” Bolzano asked, tracing his finger along the grooves carved into a marker’s north-facing side. “They all appear to have this same mark on their opposite flank.”

  Turned forever away from the sun, the north-facing sides had suffered a lot more weather damage through the years. We had to look around awhile to find one of the newer posts and be sure. It was the letter M.

  Mitch? Maria? Martinelli?

  Maria and Sal were talking it up, acting like scientists. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. The place gave me the creeps. Rhino must have picked up on my negative vibe. He got fussy and wouldn’t let me put him down. Maria had that look in her eye that said she was ready to tear the place apart, but Sal talked her into leaving things alone until we had a chance to check out the drum.

  Gray Beard led us out of the cemetery and inland another quarter mile through the trees to a sliver of sunny meadow overlooking a wide gravel bank. And there it was. Half buried in the gravel, the Einstein IV was beached for good, just like Gray Beard said it was.

  It’s hard to describe the feeling of seeing such a big piece of equipment from the future. Before we launched, everybody was talking about what a beautiful ship “Number Four” was going to be. I thought she was supposed to jump a crew back to Egyptian times or something. Anyway, the Einstein IV was stuck like a tractor in a shithole, with a large crack running the length of her port side.

  I crawled all over that ship looking for clues or gear we might be able to salvage and found zip. There was nothing of value at all, not even cabin space. Gravel and sand filled every cranny. The polymer hull was beginning to flake and powder. An odd thing happened when I flipped my visor down to take a closer look at the hull. There was the ship’s name in bright red letters, “Einstein IV,” looking like they were brand new. Flip the visor up and they’re gone. That kind of thing would be normal in the 2200s, but here it just felt very weird.

  I don’t know what everybody else was expecting after crossing a million miles of snow and ice, but I was sure looking for more payoff than a worthless wreck. Why did we do it? So we could prove the Hunter wasn’t lying when he said he and his guys beached their boat in Galway? Big fucking deal. How did that help us? Poor Bongo and Conga, they were even more disappointed than me. They tried banging their hands and then rocks against the ship’s sides but didn’t get much of a boom no matter how hard they tried.

  Gray Beard let us sulk for a while before clearing his throat and asking the clan what was wrong. Maria was searching for the right words when Bongo blurted, “This is no drum!”

  “Did I say it was?”

  Bongo, who couldn’t see the gotcha look on Gray Beard’s face through his tears, spoke the first harsh words I’d ever heard come out of his mouth. “Grandfather, you promised we could play the Big Drum. It has been a long, hard trip. Why did you lie, you worthless old man?”

  The salt in the boy’s voice made the storyteller smile even wider.

  “I think you play the drums too much,” he scolded with a playful slap on the young man’s back. “The noise has stopped your ears from hearing clearly! Again, did I say this was the Big Drum? Remember hard. Did I say it?”

  “No, Grandfather.”

  “Would you like to see the Big Drum?”

  “Yes, Grandfather.”

  “A Green Turtle should not be so easily fooled. Have I not taught you to listen with your eyes and your heart, as well as your ears, to hear the true words, the true sounds, and not what you think you are hearing? Wipe the raindrops from your eyes and follow me to see if the Big Drum is where I last saw it so many seasons ago.”

  Feeling lucky Bongo complained before we did, we dropped into a single-file line and followed the clan leader up and over a stone point that sticks out into the river and causes it to make a wide bend to the north. His shortcut led to a gravel spit not too different from the one that wrecked the Einstein IV, except this beach had a beautifully built Polynesian sailing canoe parked on rollers about 40 feet above the high-water mark.

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing until I was standing below the double hulls. Unlike the gravestones and house sites, the boat was in beautiful shape, with not a speck of moss or lichen on her. Somebody had been rubbing the wood and rigging with nut oil. I could smell it, and feel it in the smoothness of the hull. The wood wasn’t cracked or gray, but a nice, reddish brown rubbed to a mirror shine.

  It was like somebody picked the lock on my brain and stole the blueprints for my design. They felled two giant trees side by side and turned them into tall, sleek hulls about 70 feet long. Stout crosspieces connect the two hulls and serve as the base for the decking, bunks and cooking area. The amount of work it must have taken with stone tools boggles my mind.

  Funny what a difference words make. Our natives were looking for a “drum” and that is what they found. The boys could hardly wait to start their concert, but the old man sat them down and made them listen to the rules along with everyone else. He said Big Drum tradition says there is no pounding with sticks, stones or anything other than open hands.

  “When I was young, back in the days of Franz and Tam Tam, if you were caught playing the Big Drum with a stick or rock, Franz would play your skull with that same stick or rock until he was playing your brains! These drums are more hollow and narrow than I remember. They have a good sound.”

  Gray Beard showed us how the Fish Eaters looked for rough spots and put sand in their hands to help the drum grow smoother as they played. I can only imagine how many hands and how many millions of man-hours of work it took to turn giant tree trunks into sleek hulls. If Franz was in charge of building this boat, I take back all the bad shit I ever said or thought about him. Only a master craftsman and organizer could pull something like this off in the Stone Age. Amazing.

  The drummer boys were working up a rhythm that could be heard for miles when I got Sal to give me a boost up the side to see how much work needed to be done. The to-do list was already rolling in my head–masts, sails, miles of rope and provisions–as I cleared the gunnel and came face to face with an old couple and young woman, all three scared to death.

  TRANSMISSION:

  Bolzano: “Can you imagine liv
ing so long without fire?”

  Kaikane: “Hell no. Why couldn’t they just figure it out? Or go find some?”

  Duarte: “Caretaker Man says they tried for years, but could never get a fire going. That was not their job growing up.”

  Bolzano: “You have deciphered the language?”

  Duarte: “Gray Beard understands about 40 percent of what they say. There’s a lot of pantomime going on over there.”

  Kaikane: “Happy as clams.”

  Bolzano: “And you would not be? After being isolated for so many years, being discovered by a clan as congenial as the Green Turtles must feel like hitting the jackpot. For heaven’s sake, we brought our own percussion section.”

  Kaikane: “Tell me again, what’d they say wiped out their people?”

  Duarte: “Sounds like dysentery or a really nasty virus.”

  Bolzano: “Herr Franz and Tamashiro-san?”

  Duarte: “Already dead and gone by then of old age. Caretaker Woman cried when she talked about their passing.”

  Bolzano: “Could you understand what she was saying?”

  Duarte: “Just the names.”

  From the log of Dr. Maria Duarte

  Chief Botanist

  We finally caught a break in this crazy world. Not to scoff at finding a half-finished sailing canoe, but we were looking at years of mast building and rope- and sail-making to finish the boat off. If the Hunter really is coming, we don’t have that kind of time. It was Cpl. Bolzano who had the wits to ask our hosts if the Big Drum had any spare parts lying around. He framed his question with hand gestures and by using his body to mimic things like the flapping of a sail. The guilty looks the locals exchanged told us he was on to something. After a bit of coaxing (we did give them fire after all), our hosts took us to their special, dry cave nearly a mile away.

  Franz and Tamashiro may have chosen the hillside cave simply for its low humidity and ability to be sealed with a quartet of wooden shutters, but I also think they had security in mind. The big half of the boat is stationed down by the river, while the bits that make it navigable are hidden in a separate location. Seems smart to me.