by Fore, Jon
Amelia tottered, then grabbed the top of Gabriel's head through his hat to steady herself. This was also a whole new thing, but deep inside, he found he liked it. Really liked it. He worked the thin sock over her heel and up her ankle where it stopped with a thin flowery border.
She started to put the foot down, but he clutched it under the heel, "Wait, one more.” He rolled up one of the thicker cotton socks and rolled this over the satin. This reached mid-calf, covering the delicate floral fringe. Then he repeated the same thing with her other foot, and when she put this down, he offered her the Levis, feeling much better about himself, the situation, and even dared to feel a glimmer of hope for what was left of humanity.
She took the jeans and put them on herself. With the large sweater, its fabric thick and furry, the jeans were almost entirely covered. All Gabriel could really see were the brown sweater and white socks. The sleeves hung down to her coconut knees. She looked like a cross between a little clown and a vagrant. Gabriel actually felt a smile grow slow on his face. "Let's get you a shirt that fits."
She shook her head, the limp wet hair barely moving.
"Why not? That doesn't, um, look right."
"It was mommy's."
"Ah. I see," and he did see. In his room, he kept a small figurine that was his mother's. His boyhood friends, when they saw it, made fun of him. But he didn't care. It was his mothers. Just an over-characterized country boy in overalls, no shirt, a straw hat and a twig of wheat jutting from his mouth. He slept with a fishing pole wedged between his knees. It wasn't valuable to anyone but Gabriel. Gabriel and maybe his father. But he had his own momentous. The fishing boy was Gabriel's alone.
"Why don't we find you a couple of shirts to wear underneath that? Just to make sure your warm. First, let’s dry that hair."
Gabriel took the towel from the floor, and shook the clinging straw from it, then tossed it over Amelia's head, drawing her hair back and scrubbing it in the towel. Again, an activity reserved for those responsible enough to be a father. Not a nut job Marine reject like him. But this was good. This was a very good. He, Gabriel, the man with a staggering kill count was doing a good thing. Like putting the socks on her bare feet, it felt... right.
He let the hair fall in a damp cascade. It was dryer, but not dry. It was also a tangled mess. If the girl's mother saw this, she would have shot him, Gabriel was sure.
"Wait here," he said and patted her shoulder once. He went to Big Guy's pack saddle, and using his folding knife, cut a strand of leather from the fringe decorating the sides. It was nearly eight inches long and looked like half a shoelace. He brought it back to Amelia, straightened her hair with his fingers the best he could, then tied it with the leather thing. "There, how's that?" he asked, still feeling for all the world like a father.
Amelia nodded at him with large teardrops of gratitude in her eyes.
"Good, now for some shirts."
After another half hour, not only did he have the horses packed, and Fuggly fed, but he also got two shirts on Amelia, one that said 'Daddy's Princes,' the other a gray tee-shirt with the moniker, "U.S. NAVY" across the chest. Like the jeans, these vanished beneath the large fuzzy brown sweater.
Big Guy's luggage pack was not intended to be a full time saddle, but it was shaped to receive a rump. Unfortunately, he did not bring the stirrups along, but after sitting the girl up on the big horse, it was clear her feet wouldn't have reached them anyway. He used some of the thin hemp rope to fashion a handle she could grip if she started to slide off the side, and affixed this where a saddle pommel should have been. It wasn't great, but it was good. He would just have to keep an eye on her.
He opened the barn door and lead Lance out, which by way of the tether, led Big Guy out. Fug followed with his nose to the ground. Gabriel slide the barn door closed and mounted again, "Ready?"
"Yes.” Amelia said, looking a lot better in warm clothes and clean face. The hair pulled back let Lance see her, really, for the first time. She was very pretty, and would grow to a beautiful woman someday. He intended to make sure she did, that she got a chance at life, got a chance to grow up.
They started off, still in the earlier part of the day, heading south to what Gabriel hoped would be safety.
You're too stupid to bring her along, Marine....
Chapter 17
William turned out to be a rather knowledgeable sailor. To Vega, he had command of not just the ship, but his voice, his knowledge, and his ability to read every ripple of water in the bay. She expected the orders to come in odd seafaring terminology, but when he wanted the main sail to go up, he just called her by name, pointed at a rope wrapped around a metal thing that looked like half an 'X', and tell her to take that off and pull on it until he said stop. When he told her to stop, she would wrap it around the metal thing, called a 'cleat', to keep the sail from falling. She knew he did these wind-jammer cruises, and guessed that's why he didn't use the vague maritime terms only the bowlegged, old fishermen knew. It didn't matter why, she appreciated it.
However, they still worked their tails off. Pulling rope, ducking wide stick like arms he called 'booms' and hauling rope out of the cold water, trying to coil it neatly. It was a difficult and trying new experience for her, and William could see how much it was wearing her and Jackson out. Although, good ole' Jackson didn't seem to be working hard at all. He could pull rope further and faster with one hand than Vega could with two. She felt stronger than she had, healthier than she had before the amulet, but she was also dog-tired. How Jackson could still be going was beyond her.
But still, there was that inkling that thought, that feeling there was something not quite square with this surfer dude. He was polite and gentle of voice, always had a positive thing to say, at least so far. But it remained. His initial lie was understandable, and she could reason that without much effort. But it remained. He seemed to be in the space God intended for him, behind the helm of this ship and calling plain-English orders out to his crew. But it remained. So Vega decided to sleep only when Jackson and Maria were awake, or at least Jackson. One of the three awake at all time, that was for sure. That, and she intended to keep her sidearm on her always. William hadn't voiced a complaint yet, and she guessed he was waiting for her to get rid of it on her own. That is, of course, if this was more than her intuition gone hay-wire.
Leaving the port was a tricky business. The navigation buoys had run their solar charge dry, and no longer flashed. Some had bells on them, or so William said, but the water was too calm to make them ring. However, the biggest problem was the number of boats anchored out in the inlet. Some were large, but others were barely more then day-run fishing trollies with tarps pulled tight over the helm cabin. Most were engine driven and not wind riders. These were pretty much stuck where they were, hanging from a strand of chain. This made navigation even more difficult, all these lazy floaters making unsynchronized rotations around their anchor points. Somehow, with tricks of sail and helm, William was able to get them out of the inlet and to open water.
Vega had never been in open water before, and she wondered how different it must have looked when the sky was still the sky, and the moon still made it's night long visit. The water, the color of ink, and the swirling masses in the darkened sky, that was what she saw. It held a secretive beauty, even still, but Vega could not understand why. It was as if the earth was scorched and had been left to freeze as a sunless world.
"You know how to use those weapons you brought?"
William's voice startled her out of the shadowed musing of the water and sky, and she turned away from the rails. Jackson was gone, probably off to find his bed, or that slender beauty who loved him. She could tell simply by reaching for them, touch that emotional aura that emanated to her, and she to them. But, if what she expected was happening, was in fact happening, she didn't want to share in it. That was their time, and she thought, their long awaited time. It deserved privacy. She found William still standing at the helm, every inch of him
a sailor, "Yes, I do know how."
"That's good, you know. There are pirates of a sort, or so I have heard, lurking openly now."
Pirates? Not off the coast of the Netherlands. Perhaps Somalia near Yemen, but not off the northern coastlines of greater Europe. That just couldn't be, could it? But then again, there was this E.M.P. blast. If it reached all the way to Amsterdam, then it might have reached into the oceans, at least a little. If that were true, and Vega hoped it was, then those Pirates would be adrift, right? "Don't you think they would be having the same engine problems you're having?” She leaned into the rail, resting her elbows on the rope adorned horizontal bar.
"Yeah, sure. But they don't all use engines, you know. It's much cheaper to keep a sail going than an engine, and no gas at all, you know?"
"Yeah, I know. It just doesn't seem like a pirate thing anymore." It sounded weak, but she couldn't help saying it.
"What makes you think they will have the same engine trouble we have? Do you know something about why the engines and the lights and all that stuff don't work anymore?"
He never took his eyes from the ocean rushing toward them, and under the bow. To Vega, it was called 'the front of the boat.' "Well, we think it was an E.M.P. blast," Vega said.
"Really?" He sounded disbelieving.
"Yeah."
"Well, what is an E.M.P. blast? We aren't all soldiers you know."
The lighthearted tone of his voice took the sting out of his words. Still she could feel that nagging little itch of distrust, "Electro Magnetic Pulse... it fries anything with a circuit board and erases all magnetic storage, like diskettes or hard drives."
"Oh, no, please tell me your lying. I got twelve and a half gigs of music on a flash drive."
"I doubt you do any more.” Twelve and a half gigs? This dude was a music freak. What bothered her was how 'not pissed' he actually was. That had to be hundreds or thousands of dollars in music, lost.
"Well, when everything is back up and running, I'll just download it again. Not too big of a deal. It's in the cloud, you know. Want a turn on the helm?"
"Me?"
"Ah, its easy, really. Come here, I'll show you.” He waved her over, still keeping his eyes out to sea.
She looked him over in his jeans, button down shirt, worn leather jacket, and decided to go ahead and give it a try. She stepped up onto the platform where the small helm wheel waited, and he directed her in front of him with a hand on her shoulder. "Go ahead and grab on. It won’t jerk in your hand or anything."
She took the cold chrome coated wheel in one hand, and he stepped back to allow her to center herself with the wheel. Using her other hand, she gripped the other side, 10 and 2, like a car.
"There you go. Now two things, Don't hit anything, which means always spare a look every few seconds out to the water, you know?
He paused so she replied, "Okay."
"Now see that compass just in front of you there?"
"Sure."
"Keep us heading west by northwest. If it sways to one side, just counter steer the other way. You won’t keep it on that heading perfect, not like a car, but just keep it close enough, you know?"
"Fine."
"I'll go get us some wine. You like wine?"
Wine? she asked herself. "Um, sure, I guess." Could she drive a boat while drinking? Was that even legal? Was there any cops out here to arrest her if they pulled the boat over? How in the blue hell do you pull a boat over? Just as she thought to ask him, he was gone.
I'm driving a boat, she said to herself and smiled inwardly. She wished Maria and Jackson were up here to see this. Not a professional sailor or anything, but she was sailing a boat. Or was this a ship? What was the difference?
"I hope you like cheese and strawberries," William said as he appeared behind her holding a cutting board with a large block of cheese, a small knife, and a bowl of strawberries and what must be sugar. The berries looked a bit worse for wear, but the cheese looked fresh, or maybe wax coated.
"Sure.” She said, still involved with the fact she was driving the boat.
He placed the cutting board on a table to the right of the helm, and then set a chrome bucket down on the floor, or deck, or whatever it’s called. It held a bottle of wine, its color hidden by the green bottle, and two glasses. It would be room temperature, but then again, room temperature didn't mean the same thing anymore. Not with all these clouds and an almost utter lack of sunlight.
William put the glasses on another small round table with no legs, just bolted right to the half wall, and uncorked the wine. He poured two reasonable amounts, not too much, not too little, and put the bottle back and started cutting the cheese into slices. "Help yourself. I didn't have enough here for the other two, so now is a perfect time, you know?"
Vega checked the compass, then the water, then decided there was no harm in it and tasted the wine. It was aged and woody, mellow and not too dry. Not the best wine she had ever had, but it was pretty close. "That's good.” She admitted, then turned the wheel slightly to correct her course.
A hand with a small slice of cheese appeared before her face, "Open up, and try this."
The idea of eating from a stranger's hand was a little much, but she felt clumsy with any excuse she could come up with. One hand on the helm, one hand with the wine glass, so she opened her mouth.
He placed the tip of it between her teeth and she closed around the slice, not liking his fingers that close. He let the cheese go, and his hand vanished to her right. She pulled the cheese in with her tongue and closed her mouth around a creamy cloud of smooth nutty flavor. She moaned softly in spite of herself.
"Now, when you swallow, take a sip of wine to chase the cheese. Best damn flavor in the world, you know?"
Vega didn't want to let that flavor go, the richness, the wholesomeness, but eventually swallowed, taking a quick sip of wine to chase it down. He was absolutely right. The full flavor of the wine encapsulated the nutty flavor of the cheese and cradled it all the way down her throat. "That was really good.” She said, and chuckled in surprise while checking the water ahead and the compass just below that.
"Next time, try it with a strawberry first, then the cheese, then the wine. The strawberries aren't as fresh as they should be, you know? Still, the result is even better."
He stepped up behind her, close, too close. She felt the heat of him, the breath on the left edge of her neck, that intoxicating smell of the wine. Before she could say anything, he reached around her and took the helm wheel, "Let me take the wheel so you can eat. I think your friends will be asleep for a long while, and we won’t have to share, you know?"
Vega stepped to the right and around the table holding the wine as he took his original position behind the wheel. Innocent enough. "Thanks," she said, honestly grateful, and plucked another slice of cheese already cut."
"No, berry first, then cheese.” He corrected, his eyes never leaving the water.
"Right."
William let her get through the swallow of wine, "What are you going to do when you get back to the States?"
"Um, there's something in New Jersey we have to get. We left a couple of... valuable things, and we need to keep them safe." It sounded so plastic, so manufactured, but for some reason, no matter how charming this dude was, she couldn't get over the little trust speed-bump. Telling him the truth just didn't seem prudent, right now.
"Really? How valuable?” His voice didn't hint at excitement or greed, it was more like a friend who was almost interested.
"Oh... I don't know. Not worth money or anything. There is a necklace and an old book. They are valuable because they've been in the family for a long time. I was stationed in Germany when all this... stuff happened." She crammed a slice of the cheese in her mouth before he could ask her another question.
It didn't work.
"What part of New Jersey?"
That was an innocent question. Unfortunately, she didn't have an answer. Her mind struggled with an idea of a
n Aunt who lived there and died, or maybe an airport locker or anything, but it didn't work. Maybe if she could have remembered the capitol of New Jersey, she could have used a lie like that, but it wasn't until much later when that fact popped into her head like a useless bubble. "I prefer not to talk about it. It's stupid after all, I know. But they were important to me, and if I can get there... considering what's going on, then I will and get them and keep them safe."
"That sounds perfectly legit to me, you know. Don't worry about it. I was just making conversation. So, how do you like life in the Army? You know, I was going to join the Army once, when I was younger."
He seemed to Vega to be socially deft by turning the questioning onto himself. That and very mannerly for a Florida Surfer. It was almost like he was the icing on the cake hiding an iron file. Too sweet, so it seemed. It added to both her discomfort and her nagging question about that discomfort. She realized she hadn't spoken, "Why didn't you?"
"Well, Papa Bell offered to send me to school to get a degree in Naval Transportation, and help me finance the boat. He wasn't against me going into the Army for my sake, hell no. It was for the Army's sake.” He smiled broadly at this and took a long pull at this wine. "You're not the Army type son. You're a beach comber, a surfer, a wayfarer. That, boy, and you're a teacher. A natural born teacher." He gave his little speech in a parody of General Bell that almost won Vega over entirely. Would have a week ago, or three days ago, before the amulet.
"So instead of living that regimented life, which I had been living my whole childhood, I decided to take him up on his offer, you know? And here I am, teaching people how to work a sailing ship. Mostly old people looking to recapture their youth or other people looking for that adventure of a life time, you know?"
After a long pause, Vega took the wine bottle and refilled his glass along with her own, careful not to pour more than he had. "I bet it wasn't a boring life, huh?"
