New Homeport Island (30 page)

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 look 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