The Raft

by Christopher Blankley

  Chapter 22

  Maggie awoke to the sound of a gunshot.

  She sat up erect in bed, kicking off the heavy quilt. The shot was far off, but it had definitely been a gunshot. Maggie listened. There was a second crack and Maggie leapt from her bunk. She exchanged the warm, soft comfort of below decks for the cutting, diagonal spears of rain outside the companionway. The clouds were low, the world engulfing the Soft Cell in a blanket of gray nothing. But she'd heard a gunshot, she was sure of it.

  As the torrential rain soaked through her PJs, Maggie asked herself exactly what she'd expected to find above decks. A muzzle flash? In the fog? It was easy enough to make a rough guess to the shots' source: they'd come from a general easterly direction, back towards the Kalakaka and the main island of the Raft. Maggie dived back below decks and quickly dressed. Within ten minutes, the Soft Cell was underway, motoring slowly though the rainy gloom.

  Muted silhouettes of other craft began to appear at the edge of Maggie's vision as she drew closer to the epicenter of the Raft. The dark shadows were oddly motionless. The normally busy decks of vessels appeared abandoned in the gloom.

  Where had everyone gone?

  The answer came quickly as Maggie closed in on the Kalakala, the faint din of something that sounded like a sporting event reached Maggie ears: a crowd, a large crowd, hooting and cheering. As the streamlined dome of the ferry broke through the fog, Maggie could see the car deck packed to the grab rails with bodies. Shoulder to shoulder, Rafters were standing, all eyes focused into the depths of the ship. Maggie swiftly roped the Soft Cell up to the outer edge of the Kalakala's collected donut of boats. She scampered quickly across the slick connected decks until she'd reached the ferry.

  “Making false accusations and speaking hearsay isn't going to do any of us any good!” Gandalf boomed at the collected mass of humanity. Dropping down onto the car deck, Maggie attempted to squeeze into the crowd. There couldn't have been a soul aboard the Raft who wasn't in attendance, there was barely an inch for her to maneuver. Someone had cleared Gandalf's putt-putt golf course away, but the giant J.P. Patches head was still standing at the far end of the ferry. Gandalf was using it as a podium, balancing precariously on the flat of J.P.'s floppy hat. “What we need here is some calm, rational deliberation. If we all start going off half-cocked -”

  The crowd erupted in a cacophony of jeers and hoots. There was obviously no interest in rational deliberation. Gandalf waved his arms, trying to restore order. After little success, he pulled a single-action revolver from his belt and fired it into the air, off the rear of the car deck. It got the desired result. The collected throng of Rafters lowered their objections to a murmur.

  Well, Maggie had found the source of her gun shots.

  “Hey, what did I miss?” Maggie asked, tapping the nearest man on the shoulder. It was the latecomers at the very back of the Kalakala and the man Maggie spoke to was an old-timer known as Woodgum.

  He looked over his shoulder and smiled a toothless smile at Maggie. “Oh, hi, Maggie. You just arrivin'?” he asked in a thick Inland Northern accent.

  “I was...” Maggie tried to think of a suitable excuse for her tardiness. “Sleeping.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Woodgum laughed. “Well, you missed all the excitement. The first few junks that sailed north, ya know, them that's headin' up early for the Freaky Kon-Tikis, to set up, they run into the Coast Guard. Big ol' cutter from the Pacific. Blockadin' the Sound off Point No Point, don't you know? Stoppin' everythin' afloat.”

  “A blockade?” Maggie said in surprise.

  “Oh, yeah, it's war, everyone's sayin'. Them Coast Guard fellas mean to keep us from the Freaky Kon-Tikis!”

  “But -” Maggie stammered in shock. At the front of the Kalakala, Gandalf was again speaking up. Woodgum turned to listen.

  “Now I know you are all a little hot under the collar, but we've got to stay calm and we've got to stay organized!” Gandalf's voice was echoing through the car deck. Now that everyone was quiet, he needed no amplification to be heard all the way at back of the ship. “Our unity is our strength, people, we have to remember that. If we start trying to push past that cutter one or two at a time, them Jack Boots are going to pick us off. But if we can stay united, there's a chance we can stand up against this affront and send a message back to the dryland that the Raft is not to be trifled with, that we will not stand idly by and let our citizens be pushed around!”

  There was a general murmur of approval from the audience.

  “But we have to face reality here. The Coast Guard, the Feds, the police, they have us outgunned.”

  The crowd made some unhappy grumbles. Gandalf silenced them with a wave of his hand.

  “And if we sail full steam at that blockade, the only place we're going to find ourselves is in a gunfight! And a gunfight with the Coast Guard is no gunfight we can win!” Angry hoots of disapproval. “We have to attack this more strategically. A head-on collision is just going to let the authorities paint us as extremists.”

  “We're not starting any fight!” someone in the audience yelled out. “Sailing on the open water isn't an act of violence. If the government thinks that gives them the right to stop our ships, board our vessels, then that's starting the fight, Gandalf! It's them, not us!”

  The car deck erupted with cheers of approval. Gandalf was losing the crowd.

  “You have a point, my friend, but it's a point you won't live long enough to make twice. What do we have? Pistols? Rifles? Shotguns? And you want to sail towards machine guns? Cannons? What you're suggesting is suicide. Dying today for no reason won't do any of us, or the Raft as a whole, a damn bit of good!”

  “You just want to sit on your ass then? Float here and cower in our bunks? And miss the Kon-Tikis?” someone called out.

  “No, no!” Gandalf said adamantly. “Point No Point is not the only route to the San Juans. We can also sail via Skagit Bay.”

  “And Deception Pass? Are you crazy?”

  “It can be sailed.”

  “You're crazy!” And a wave of laughter and ridicule washed over the gathered Rafters.

  Gandalf stood at the pinnacle of J.P. Patches's hat and tugged at his beard in despair. He was convincing no one, and the strain was showing on his face.

  All through the speech, Maggie was making her way towards the front of the crowd, pushing through the gathered Rafters wherever the slightest light showed between them. Everyone was armed, Maggie could see, rifles slung over shoulders and pistols on hips. The meeting was less a town hall than an armed mob waiting for its orders. Maggie began to understand the magnitude of the bomb that Gandalf was standing on J.P. Patches's head trying to defuse.

  Everyone on the Raft had been waiting for this day, anticipating it. They'd collected weapons and ammunition in preparation. Every Rafter knew that some day soon the government would come for them. And today, that day had finally arrived.

  Blockading the Freaky Kon-Tikis, it was just about the most provocative act the government could have conceived of. Nothing was integral to the Raft, more a part of it, than the Kon-Tiki Races.

  And this on top of Meerkat's death. Despite all Maggie's best efforts, she knew that Chemcial's baseless allegations against the Senator would be Raft-wide by now. It didn't take a conspiracy nut to start connecting the dots of Meerkat's death and the Blockade.

  It was one big powder keg, a burning stick of dynamite about to explode and destroy the Raft. And poor Gandalf was standing on top of it, trying to snuff out the fuse.

  The other Gray Beards milled at the front of the car deck. Orac was standing, a foot rested on J.P.'s mouth, speaking in a low voice to Gandalf. Tiger Print saw Maggie approaching and ordered the crowd to part, letting Maggie through. When Maggie pulled free of the armed mob, Tiger Print took her hand.

  “Oh, Maggie, this is terrible. Gandalf can't convince them, they're hungry for blood, the lot of them.”

  “No, it didn't sound like it was going very well.”
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br />   “Why would the Coast Guard do such a foolish thing, Maggie? Don't they understand what they've started?”

  “They don't want to be seen as weak.”

  “Where's your lovely friend? The reporter? Perhaps she can help?”

  “She's back on dryland.”

  “If the dryfoots understood what was going on, don't you think they'd try to stop -”

  Gandalf spied Maggie and hopped down off his improvised podium. “Excuse me, can I borrow Maggie?” he interrupted his wife, taking Maggie by the elbow. He pulled Maggie aside behind the clown head, out of earshot of the crowd. “What's the news on Meerkat's murder?” he asked.

  “I'm still investigating,” Maggie had to admit. “I went ashore last night, I met with Senator Hadian and Horus. All I know is neither of them is our man.”

  “Damn it, Maggie!” Gandalf cursed. “Don't you understand what's happening here?”

  “I do.”

  “If you had something on Meerkat's murder it could help.”

  “I'm sorry, but I just don't know more -”

  “And Hadian has nothing to do with it? What Chemical Ali G said?”

  “It's all false. Not a grain of truth.”

  “But what can I tell them?” Gandalf thrust a thumb back at the gathered throng. “You know, people think the Senator is behind this blockade to cover up his involvement with Meerkat.”

  “That isn't true.”

  “Maybe, but can you prove it?”

  “Well, no -”

  “Then, what does it matter if it's true or not? Maggie, I need a murderer here. If I could prove to this crowd that the Senator has nothing to do with Meerkat, I could perhaps defuse the tension a little. Do you have anything?”

  “Gandalf,” Maggie grimaced. “I just haven't had enough time.”

  “Anything, Maggie, anything.”

  “I'm not going to make wild guesses.”

  Gandalf threw up his hands. He turned and stomped angrily back around the gargantuan clown head. Maggie turned to see Tiger Print standing well within listening distance of their conversation. Tiger Print gave Maggie a look of sympathy, perhaps pained acknowledgement, and turned to catch her husband's arm.

  While Maggie and Gandalf were conversing, Orac had stepped up onto the hat of J.P. Patches. The audience now listened to him attentively as he spoke about non-violence. “...need to remember the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King. That when faced with a stronger enemy, it is beholden on the weak, not to attempt to meet strength with strength, but to rise above the fray and transcend.”

  Gandalf paused at the base of the clown head, looking up at Orac with a confused look on his face.

  Orac continued. “If we sail forward from this place and brandish our weapons, we will be met with a hail of death. A cloud so thick that not a rat will sneak forth from the storm. No, my brothers and sisters, that is not the fate that should befall us. That is not what the Raft stands for, what the Raft has always embodied. We are not a violent people, we did not flee to the water to bully and deject each other. We live in peace, we are peaceful people. Ten times – a hundred fold more peaceful that the dryfoots could ever imagine. Aboard the Raft there are no thugs to kick down your door, no bureaucratic cut-purse to browbeat the innocent. Here, aboard the Raft, we live in peace and harmony. So it is and so it shall always be.

  “But if there's violence today, the government will portray it as fulfillment of prophecy. That the Raft was always a doomsday cult, a floating Jonestown, just waiting for the spark to send it plummeting to the bottom of the sea. If there's violence today, that will be the only legacy that we will leave behind us. The only truth that our children and our children's children will ever learn.

  “But it is within our power to write the history of this day. The government wishes to make this into a Ruby Ridge. Let us make this into a Birmingham, Alabama.”

  “What?” Gandalf said from below, surprised.

  Orac continued on, lost in his own rhetoric. “If the Coast Guard meets us with guns, we will meet them with open arms. If they would board our ships, we will stand aside.

  “Gandalf spoke the truth when he said in ones and two they will pick us off, but together we can resist this cowl of oppression. And that is what we will do, brothers and sisters. Perhaps you look around and see a Raft – your friends and neighbors standing at your side, their ships lashed to this ferry outside. But what I see, standing here looking out at your faces, is an armada. The greatest armada ever collected on an ocean, dedicated to truth and peace. Should this armada set sail and turn its course towards the clenched fist of anger that awaits us to the north, nothing on this planet will stop it. A thousand, ten thousand craft we can assemble, and what force on earth can stand in the way of that?” Agreeable murmurs arose from the crowd. “Divided we are weak, but together we are a force that can never be opposed. Brothers and sisters, sail together today and we shall crash against this blockade like the tide breaking on a beach. It shall collapse like so many twigs set before our bows! Brothers and Sisters!”

  A cheer rose up from the crowd.

  “We set sail!”

  And Orac, leaping down from the gargantuan head of J.P. Patches, was swept up by the crowd.