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The Long Watch a-Keeping
A Short Story
By David DeWitt
There was:
A somber night sky, a light wind blowing abaft the ketch’s wide stern, the lone figure of a woman sitting at the wheel of the sailboat. Through the spars, she heard the rustle of a sea-bird that had alighted in the crosstrees, resting now, on its own Pacific traverse.
The headsails fluttered up forward , and the mainsails held what wind there was in a starboard reach. The forty-two foot ship, ketch-rigged, was sailing eastward toward San Francisco from Maui outbound ten squally days and then two calmer nights from her home in the islands. The days had gone by uneventfully, at first, aside from the daily work of maintaining the vessel and trying to stay sane alone at sea with her hard-nosed husband, Ron.
She felt so different now.
On a polished-oak mug-holder by her side steamed a cup of hot cocoa from the galley. The breezes washed along the sleek sides of the Anodyne felt warm, bath like. There was almost no light to filter through the black bellied clouds overhead, no rain, to fall onto smooth two and three foot swells the ketch clove through in an occasional whoosh alongside its white bows.
Arnella took the warm porcelain mug in both hands, tasting the hot sweetness of the cocoa now barely cooled enough to drink.
Her eyes checked the course, kept steady by the wind vane on the stern, and ship’s speed, flicked often to check the condition of the sea.
Forward was a set of brass lanterns, one glowed red and the other green. Aside from a dim yellow glow from the after-stateroom portholes behind the forward mast and a tea stain of red light from the chartroom, there was no other light anywhere on the surrounding ocean except the small shaft of light from the reading light Ron had installed beside the uncovered wheel where she sat with her cocoa and the old Agatha Christie mystery she’d picked up in a Honolulu Flea Market. The radio crackled softly in the chartroom. Ron was trying to sleep, below. Ron was so strong, so black-and-white about things. But she wasn’t looking forward to falling asleep. She looked skyward from the paperback’s pages into absolute blackness.
No wonder she had nightmares, she thought.
Since they’d crossed the Tropic of Cancer and entered the mid-Pacific Basin two days ago, the sea had become a stifling prison of sameness, of empty days changed little from nights except for an iron-gray daylight that covered them from horizon-to-horizon. A rolling sea and enough wind to steer by kept the Anodyne on course, but it seemed as if they were alone in the world, cast off, she mused, from everything they had left gladly so many days before; a life on Maui that seemed abandoned now that they were together on this endless graphite-colored sea.
The daily routines, she hated, of Ron’s medical practice at the clinic, those long, long hours he spent poking into people’s ears, eyes, noses and throats and her own money making but time consuming import-export business suddenly seemed almost fragments of her imagination. And their idea, of getting away, using Ron’s six week’s annual vacation so start a family, had seemed so right, so real to them. But she was still too uptight, and so guilty she was letting Ron down, that it was giving her headaches, nightmares. The same nightmare, really, in small pieces, like catching only seamy parts of a Steven King movie. She felt a salt-laced spray lightly whet her face.
The sky, she imagined, was a big black pearl, and inside it the Anodyne was a tiny-trapped ship, lost in time. It was so easy to wax poetic, out here. Where nobody could hear how badly you waxed. She smiled to herself.
There were four more hours till another gray dawn, and the end of her turn at the wheel. She could stop dreaming up bad poetry and get some sleep, maybe, then, when Ron tool over the starboard watch.
She twisted around in the seat cushion and leaned her gaze over the lee rail, away from the mild wind, to catch sight of the tumbling sparkle of churned up algae streaming in the ship’s wake. Her great grandfather, a clipper-sailor, had called the tiny flakes of stuff holystones, sea-coins, in his diary. Ron called them planktonic diatoms. There wasn’t an ounce of holystones anywhere in him, sometimes.
She refocused on the seaswell, rolling in thick cords under the Anodyne. She stared into the ship’s wake thinking about the ship’s counter, logging sea-miles, under the stream of black water. Her eyes drifted away from the stern, and she looked up the length of the white hull at the water breaking off the sides of the ship - and half-numb by what she thought she saw in the passing sea, she stiffened, dropping the paperback to the deck at her feet. She strained her eyes to see the lump of… a shape she knew instinctively was a man, languidly floating toward the ship in the weak light cast out from the Anodyne and reflected against the passing swells.
Her eyes held him in place, the gently swaying outline of him, his head, longish hair streaming in the saltwater, his dark, heavy-looking shoulders, as his body floated by the port stern rail of the Anodyne.
Christ! Someone drowned, fallen off another ship… or perhaps a suicide, she thought. A wilder thought flashed across her mind: a murder… Some drug deal victim, or Hijack, maybe…
The body was carried into the blackness, astern.
She could pretend she hadn’t see it, she thought, for an instant.
But she knew she couldn’t forget she had seen it.
And Ron would never believe her if he didn’t see it, too, with his own skeptical eyes. She knew what she had to do, and she did it, by rote. The ship began to come about, 180 degrees to port. The movement of the ship against the small combers caused the stirring below she knew it would. A light came on, she saw, in the salon beyond the chartroom. In a few seconds, as she steadied-up the bow, Ron came stumbling sleepily into the chartroom, and stood, glaring, forced awake, alarmed. “Arnella?” he asked.
She felt a twinge of guilt.
Ron had lost plenty of sleep in the last forty-eight hours because of her own anxieties and mal-de-mur, and now she was waking him from the first few hours’ rest he’d had since the previous morning for something that would sound crazy.
“Man overboard!” she heard herself say.
“What?”
“You heard me, Ron…”
“If this is a dead seal or something, I will be really pissed off.”
“Do your job, Ron -“ She shot him a serious glance. Her attitude was so genuine, Ron obeyed.
“What is it, Arnie?” He stood looking at her with the life-ring and boathook in hand as per their drill. Her eyes searched the water ahead, and she keyed the engines when the ship had lost headway. The sails began luffing noisily overhead. “Arnie?” he repeated. He looked a little ridiculous standing so relaxed, holding the long hooked pole, absently. She was less certain of herself now but stubbornness tightened her words. “Get out the lamp, Ron.”
Ron stood motionless.
“I saw a man’s body. It went right past us, like an upright log or something.”
“Probably what it was,” Ron said tiredly.
“I…” she realized he was probably right. “I thought…”
“Let’s look, anyway. We’re both up, now.”
Tears filled up in her eyes. “Too much Agatha Christie,” she said, softly.
Ron smiled at her. His understanding, boyish grin.
She loved him for that and she wiped at her tears.
“No harm in looking around,” he said. He laid down the ring and hook, and climbed agilely into the chartroom. In a few moments, he emerged with the portable lamp.
“Mind the helm,” he said, leaning out over the starboard rail with the lamp.
She steadied the wheel and watched the lamp’s shaft of white light swing out over the passing seas. There was noting within its oval interior except the moving blue-green saltwater for whole minutes. Ron’s crankiness had gone completely. He had so much more patience than she ever would, Arnella thought. Then Ron spoke sharply. “Back her off…” Her heart jumped. She reversed engines and the hull vibrated and rose gently, slowing up.
Ron focused the lamp beyond the bowrigging, outside of her eyesight.
“Oh, Christ-“ Ron breathed.
Arnella’s skin tingled.
“What?” she said.
Then Ron barked, “Cut the engine!” and the sound of the sea rose in her ears with the ebb of the engine noise.
A slight thump against the hull shocked her. The sound came again, a catching thud, repeated underwater. Something’s caught in our bowrigging, Arnella thought. Her imagination fleetingly knew what a man’s body might look like, tangled in the guidebars and roping below the bowsprit. Something rose hotly in her throat and she swallowed it again, “Oh, Ron-“
Ron positioned himself at the bow, fussing with the lamp.
“Tie her down and bring me the gaff, Arnie.”
Arnella looped the two ropes over the wheel handles and went forward with the long pole.
Ron gave her the lamp, motioning where to point the tubular shaft of light. It fell onto the sea wash rising and falling against the hull and she could see the bulk of something dark, evil-smelling, like rotten sea life enmeshed in the ship’s bowsprit. The man’s arms were tangled in the ropes. He wore a heavy black overcoat, like a Merchant Seaman’s, rotted against his flesh; he was bloated, whitened, and slimy, disgusting. It was the first dead man she had ever seen. He reeked and she turned away, looking into her husband’s eyes and thinking what he must have seen in combat. “I can’t…” she said, and stepped back from the rail. “Ok, Arnie,” Ron told her.
He said, “You can watch the wheel for me.”
He needed her to hold the lamp, and she wanted to stay and help him do whatever he wanted to do, but the revulsion was too much. She had never smelled anything so rancid, so putrid.
“I’m going to throw up,” she said.
Ron took the lamp from her and she moved to the port rail and vomited into the sea. God, a dead man, she thought. She hand-over-handed herself to the cockpit and sat behind the wheel.
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Copyright David DeWitt 2011 All Rights Reserved Zaca Publishing Press
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In the Ways of the Fathers
A Short Story
By David DeWitt
Camp Anderson is a religious camp, of sorts. It is staffed by nondenominational types, carrying crosses and clean thoughts, with earnest concerns for souls in jeopardy; or so they say, my father says.
There will be prayers before we have dinner, prayers before we hike, prayers before we swim, prayers before we play football, before we sleep, before we use the camp toilets, we ninth grade boys think!
And, of course, the Mill Valley girls will all be there, too. Assigned Camp B Barracks. It is now the last few summer days of August, and the parents of Mill Valley are letting us kids have the run of Camp Anderson for a whole week. We are no longer watched with the same grim care of the passing summer.
Six weeks ago, or so, the first mutilated body was found at Crazy Bill’s Auto Shop, in the rear of the shop’s parking lot. It was not Crazy Bill. Bill is not crazy enough to work late, the way his employees sometimes do. The Mill Valley Herald printed a few gory photos of the remains of George Otley, the shop’s fender man, whose throat was chewed up by some sort of animal, according to the newspaper.
When it happened again, twice, once at an all night service station on the highway that passes by the town, and again on the Mill Valley Elementary School playground, at dusk, the town locked up us kids and armed volunteers patrolled the streets at night looking for whatever was doing horrible things to its citizens.
Some old folks in town mumbled about similar types of murders years ago here in the valley, and predicted nobody would be caught because what was responsible was not exactly human.
Of course, the police here in town are not going to listen to any wild rumors about ghouls, or any of the gossip about ancient creatures, and beer-talk of the two oldest men in town who have nothing better to do than sit around in the taverns and shoot off their mouths to anybody who will buy them an Oly.
Still, nobody, no animal, no thing is shot sneaking around any of the buildings downtown, or prowling around any of the local farmhouses, or barns, and, when suddenly the killings stopped over a month ago, the same two old coots in town still kept up their warnings. Mark my words. It’s not over, they say, It’s not over yet…
But it seemed to over, and, after awhile, the patrols ended, and those who could began to forget the deaths ever happened.
It seems unfair to have kept us kids under lock and key, escorted to lakes, playgrounds, kept-in each night watching reruns while the summer wasted, and the big shots at the Town Council decided to open up Camp Anderson for the week to get us kids out of the house and to show it is safe again to live in Mill Valley.
It isn’t. I know it isn’t. Not yet.
-
My father speaks to me quietly before he leaves me at the gates of Camp Anderson where most of my school friends are being let off by their parents and taken under the wings of Camp Counselors who smile and put their hands on our shoulders, talking friendly talk while making certain they’ve gotten our names crossed off their lists.
For a terrible moment I want to jump back inside our truck with him when dad turns to leave, but I don’t. He waves as he pulls out of the camp’s gravel driveway, leaving me behind with all of the gear I need piled at my feet. I have a good sleeping bag, for the all-night camp-out under the stars, socks, toothbrush, and soap, and my Xmen figures; and I wonder if I should not have brought them. I have a little cash I’ve saved from my paper route, too. My father is taking over the route while I am here at camp.
We all mingle, hundreds of kids, it seems, out in the barracks area for a while and there are a couple of kids arguing. Then we are divided into groups by age and sex and introduced to our Counselors. My Counselor’s name is Henry “Herc” (for Hercules) Rodriguez, and he’s Spanish. He is also “Born Again” with the clean thoughts and cross on a chain around his neck my father told me about. He looks sub-human in an imbecilic sort of way, and I don’t think I am going to like him very much.
Herc says he will know all of our names, over twenty kids, twelve-to-fourteen years old, by tomorrow. Tommy, my best friend, and I think he is full of shit. Darrel, another friend, kind of likes Herc, he says. Darrel is a suck-up.
Before we go off to stow our stuff, the Camp Commander, Mr. Jethroe, says a prayer and I try to mouth the words.
With our stuff locked up in the hall lockers of our barracks and swim suits, ugly brown ones, and towels handed out for the pool this afternoon, Herc gathers us together to ask us how many of us are “Saved”? I cannot raise my hand, and he marks something down beside my name on his list. I have the feeling he will not leave me alone, now.
I hate him. I wish I hadn’t come, but then realize I must stop feeling sorry for myself. I have to be a man about this, and cannot disappoint my father.
There is too much prayer and too little sleep the first day. Some neat things happen, though, and we boys stay up after lights-out whispering in the dark from bunk-to-bunk about the boy who was sick in the pool, and the four kids, three guys and a girl, who were disciplined for jumping the fence and trying to let out all of the Valley dogcatcher’s strays from the pens on the other side of the woods behind Camp Anderson.
A few kids from another barracks are found, tonight, wandering around our barrack’s halls and making farting noises from the crappers, high shrilly notes and explosive drawn out toots answered by whistles and shouts from our darkened bunks. The ones who get caught are given ten demerits. 100 demerits and you go home, and no excuses…
In the morning, the Counselor’s find the camp goat, tied on a rope and chain holding it to a stake, which has somehow crawled up the ladder of a small slide and slid down with its chain now wrapped aroundhis balls. The culprits are punished in another barracks. The entire camp, though, is given a lecture about cruelty at breakfast.
During the rest of the morning we go to the archery field, in turns, barrack-after-barrack. In the mid afternoon our barrack rides in a big yellow bus to Lowery Falls for a hike. We older kids call it by another name, Rat Falls. It is a good place to shoot at rats with our .22’s.
On the way back from the Falls, the bus breaks down. We string out along the side of the road walking back to camp. It’s getting cold. It rains on us. Tommy spots some green apples in bushy trees beyond the rusty wire fence of the Michael’s Farm. Tommy, Jim, myself, an eighth grader, Jace, held back, and his girlfriend, Alie, all get sick from eating the sour tasting apples. After we see Jim throw up into the ditch we all start vomiting, too.
Jace doesn’t. Just to impress his girlfriend. He looks sicker now than any of us, as we walk alongside the ditch in the rain. We start dancing around him, poking our fingers into our throats and making gagging sounds. He loses his apples in a green smelly stream right on the road. His girl makes a disgusted face, and turns away. She told us not to eat the apples.
Walking with us, Herc tells us it looks like it will be too cold for the camp-out under the stars. It could rain all night, too. We all piss and moan about the dark sky. Inside, the black heavy looking sky thrills me. The scent on the air and the dampness of the ground, the moving trees, and the soft earth makes waves through my skin and I try to think of something else until the feelings go away.
Herc tells us again about his pistol and the wild bobcat that lives in the woods behind the camp. Behind his back, Tommy says Herc would love to shoot it, to show off for the girls. Herc is mean, I agree, especially the way he twists your skin at the elbow to make you listen to him, and his breath is horrible, too. Jim says, Yeah, like he ate a bunch of green apples!
Word comes to our barracks that we will be camping out, after all.
Even if it rains!
There is a cheer for the Camp Commander and then a short prayer, to help us quiet down from the excitement.
Herc notices me pretending to know the prayer and tells me he wants to talk to me tonight at our campfire about my commitment to God. Why doesn’t he leave me alone? We have our own ways, our own prayers, and I can’t talk to him about it. Darrel lied to him about being Catholic, so Herc leaves him alone but I can’t lie about it - I can’t claim to believe something I mustn’t believe in.
I hate them, both…
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Copyright David DeWitt 2011 All Rights Reserved Zaca Publishing Press
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Project Bio Armor
A Short Story
By David DeWitt
Dr Sidney Kingsford rocked gently back and forth in his beloved old rocking chair that his elderly wife, Flora, had retired from the livingroom as he’d been retired from the biomechanical division of Elseed Computers. Swiftly and without ceremony. Elseed Computers, known all over the world over as the finest makers of cybernetic replacements for failing human organisms, had been the professor’s only source of happiness. Many of the companies original designs had come into focus on the professor’s yellow legal pad, the same kind that now rested across his lap reflecting the summer sun over his balding, gray head, and large bushy eyebrows.
In over fifty years of faithful service, professor Kingsford had invested well in company stock. There was no need to worry about money. His stock dividends took care of his household needs handsomely and provided Flora with everything she needed to maintain her position in local social clubs and women’s organizations.
A legal statute stating that any uncybernetically aided person above the age could not hold a highly skilled scientific position forced him to retire. He had been very fortunate to miss his expulsion date by two years since no one had assumed the authority to review his personnel records. When an ordinary health check reported the professor’s impaired physical condition for a man of seventy-two, a computer the professor had designed himself issued the information to personnel computing division and an automated dismissal with full benefits was issued and mailed before any of the senior scientists had even been aware of it.
The mailing made it clear that there would be no need to return to work the following day. Further that to do so might be a breach of security and result in the offender’s arrest.
Since then, many months of relative inactivity replace his once energetic, creative life at the company. His only enjoyment came from puttering in his basement workshop. Many of his biomechanical prototypes rested inside glass cases. Several still highly sophisticated surgical devices were on private display high on wooden shelves or trunked away in the deepest part of the cellar.
The worst part of his retirement was his mental inactivity. There was always something mundane to do for Flora. She would call down into the basement with her high-pitched voice and make incessant demands on his time and energy. In any idea or project did come into his mind she would interrupt it for taking out the garbage or clearing away the weeds and dead leaves in the front yard. The ladies bridge club met twice a week, did he know, and the house must be respectable enough for a retired computer scientist’s wife. What would everyone think if the garbage can lids were soiled?
Professor Kingsford halted his rocker for an instant fearing he might crush whatever small life form was stalking through the perfectly shorn grass under his rocking chair leg. He peered hesitantly over the side of the armrest and settled his eyes on a magnificently armored grasshopper marching the slats of green foliage, striking its own strong path and then without warning springing many times its body length into the air and landing securely on its hydraulic like limbs.
A warm breeze stirred across the professor’s face and cooled his age weakened arms and legs. But not weakened by accident, not failing in legal terms that would provide him with his own designs for robot leg and arm replacements. If anyone who was aging could get their limbs and internal organs replaced at will, what would happen to the population? The world would flood with cybernetic men. New life would lose its chance for growth amid the choking billions. He had supported that viewpoint himself.
But now he felt cheated. Cheated by the scientific community and industry he had helped to create. By his friends that never stopped by to visit him since his forced retirement and especially by Flora, who seemed to resent his not being the socially important man he once was.
He mused over the possibilities for a moment and then his scientist’s mind began to apply fact to supposition. Armor. Not a new idea by any means, but a practical one nonetheless. Old fashioned hydraulics. Biomechanics. The thinly cylindrical beauty of the grasshopper shell. His frail hands began to give shape to his idea across his yellow notepad. What if, he thought, he could incorporate the best features of the grasshopper’s powerfully armored body with the intricacies of the computer technology available to create a new, although somewhat unorthodox appearing, automation body? With human intelligence added through surgery, a whole new, stronger, longer enduring body shell could be created. If medical law wouldn’t allow him to replace his worn out, aging, body parts then he’d design and build his own...
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Copyright David DeWitt 2011 All Rights Reserved Zaca Publishing Press
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