Galway

by Matthew Thayer

  Paul was too excited to speak as he examined the masts hanging from slings, the coils of different gauge braided leather and sennit rope, and the rust-colored rhino leather sails. One of the most interesting finds was a beautifully detailed 1/25th scale model of the sailing canoe. I have no doubt the model was built as a template for the native craftsmen, a guide to show them how the finished product looked, as well as the proportions of its components. According to Caretaker Man, the model allowed the natives to finish the drum after their masters passed away.

  Needless to say, our Estimated Time of Departure has been bumped up considerably due to this miraculous discovery. Thanks to the long-range plans of Schmidt and Tamashiro, we may be able to launch within a week.

  The finished pieces have been well cared for, right down to the lashing Paul is currently using to bind the forward mast to its seat between cross beams. It was quite the group project to carry the heavy masts and rudder assembly down from the cave and raise them into the notches where they are now seated. Paul was all business directing the crew. He and even yelled at Rhino and me, ordered us to get our “butts” out of the way.

  Paul has been going nonstop since the Caretakers opened their vault. Some chores require assistance, and others go faster when he’s working alone. I pried the baby away from this evening’s drum concert to watch daddy wind his cord around the mast’s base by torchlight. The rest of the clan, as well as our gracious hosts, are sprawled on furs by the central campfire listening to Bongo and Conga as they beat their oiled hands upon the stretched-out leather sails.

  I cannot express our relief when we unfurled those triangular tarps and found them in perfect shape–well preserved and free of animal damage. Some of the rope has aged beyond the point of usefulness, but thankfully the Caretakers and their granddaughter, Berry Juice, have continued to braid sennit when it is available in the summer, and seal skin whenever one of the animals is unlucky enough to swim this far inland to visit their tiny, Spartan, self-sufficient world.

  I estimate the older man and woman’s ages to be about 70 and 65 years respectively. Though gray haired and a bit stooped in the back, they’re healthy and fit enough to survive on their own without fire in a remote environment. That cannot have been easy, especially in the winter. A good fire does more than make people warm, dry their clothes, cook their food and keep them safe. It provides a tranquility hard to explain to anyone who has not sat in silence and watched the flames dance until his eyelids grew heavy.

  As if reared in medieval days, their names match the jobs they perform: Caretaker Man and Caretaker Woman. Evidently, their granddaughter helped pick and squeeze summer fruit when she was a child for her name is Berry Juice.

  Berry Juice has only vague memories of fire before her parents and the rest of the clan were decimated by a sudden plague. It struck about a decade ago and caused those afflicted to “groan and sweat until they died.” Our hosts are the only three to survive. I put the girl’s age to be about 18 or 17. Despite being rather underfed, the girl with straight brown hair and protruding overbite has the curves of a grown woman–and also the desires of one if I’m correctly reading the signals she keeps sending out to the boys. Miss Juice better watch herself around Paul, or she’s going to be in for a social correction she will not soon forget.

  I won’t say being a mommy has made me cranky, but my tolerance for unnecessary bullshit has dropped to an all-time low. I just don’t have time to take care of my family, keep up with the chores required of me by the clan as well as The Team, and put up with ignorant people’s crap. Fralista and I went at it again today and I can’t get our argument out of my mind. It just keeps repeating.

  She holds a grudge over a tiff we had 18 days ago when Jones was first starting to feel down. This happened not long before we found the Stonehenge replica. Fralista was trying a new, in-your-face method of dealing with Jones’ depression, attempting to cheer him up whether he wanted her to or not. In a subtle way, I suggested she back off and give the poor guy some space. We’ve all tried the jolly approach with Jones. It doesn’t work.

  Fralista wasn’t willing to hear it from me. In fact, the dozen words I uttered have set our relationship back to square one. It is so damn frustrating that nobody will go look for Jones, not even Fralista! Now she wants to give him his space. The most they do is walk down to the river and call his name for 10 minutes–as if they could hear any cries for help over the rushing water and fucking birds. I’ve hailed him over the com line so many times I’m hoarse. No answer. Something is very wrong. I know it. If Capt. Jones isn’t back by breakfast–damn the promises never to use his password–I’m going to log on to his computer to look for clues.

  I would physically search by myself if I didn’t have to guard a beautiful little boy from this river valley’s many dangers. Paul’s too busy to babysit and I don’t trust the others to pay full attention. There’s too much activity going on. Their attention spans are stretched to the breaking point. Now I understand why Gertie hardly ever put the child down, and maybe why she wouldn’t let me hold him. Everywhere you look, there’s a predator or scavenger that would love to carry him away.

  Poor Gertie and Tomon, they would be so proud of their precious son. At 19 months old, he’s begun stringing action words together in Green Turtle Dialect. “I go. We go. You stay. Rin-rin hungry.” It’s so cute the way he calls himself Rin-rin. He’s got a great appetite, which matches his positive attitude. Raised without other children, Rhino’s accustomed to entertaining himself. As he winds down tonight, he’s lying in the belly of the boat, playing with a carved wooden eagle Caretaker Man gave him this morning.

  Now Sal’s singing one of his native songs. The ribald lyrics about men’s snakes and women’s oysters carry through the trees along with muted drumbeats and caws of laughter from Lucy and Pearl. I don’t know how they can relax so completely. Between thoughts of Mitch Simmons appearing with his guns and promises of revenge, worries about Jones missing, I couldn’t laugh like that. Now it sounds like Bolzano has told a joke or Lucy has pulled a prank, for they are all giggling their asses off and having fun.

  It must be nice.

  TRANSMISSION:

  Bolzano: “Slow down. His computer says what?”

  From the log of Salvatore Bolzano

  Firefighter II

  (English translation)

  My goodness, it seems every time we move one step forward we immediately turn round for a giant leap backwards. Please forgive my befuddlement if this journal entry rambles, it has been a long, trying day and I have just departed a crew meeting that has left me too vexed to sleep.

  After four days of intensive searching for Capt. Juniper Jones, the three surviving members of The Team voted tonight to accept the words on his computer at face value. The captain is gone. I would never call the stoic soldier a chum or pal, but in the end he was far more than that. Jones was clan. He was family, and he will be greatly missed.

  The suicide–that is what we are calling it now–has hit Dr. Duarte particularly hard. It was she who broke us up into search parties and delineated the grids to make sure we covered the territory properly. Twice more did Kaikane and I swim the river fork to fruitlessly search and attempt to hail him on the com line. I must remember to post a report comparing the wildlife on man’s side of the tributary to the untouched wedge of primeval forest on the other. Hemmed in by the two-kilometer wide river farther to the north, the area’s plant life and topography are roughly similar to this side, but it must boast three to four times the number of alpha predators. It is a perilous region with no sign of Jones.

  What causes such a stark difference? I cannot imagine two old folks and one delectable young lass could pose the kind of threat to scare the competition away. Does this side carry a lingering stench of mankind? Or is there a collective memory among the descendants of animals long ago displaced? Beware of man?

  My mind is all over the place. Come on Salvatore, focus!

  The stress has t
ransformed Dr. Duarte, our usually steadfast compass, into a mess. She holds conversations with herself, debating the merits of leaving against staying. Duarte says she feels the approach of Mitch Simmons, and even has the audacity to claim it is a “mother’s intuition.” Intuition? From a woman who calls herself a scientist? I wish I could discount her fears as mere rants of the temporarily insane, but I feel it too. Father is coming.

  Between searches, our Hawaiian sea captain has nearly completed his preparations for launch. During his report this evening, he said he expects to have the canoe ready to sail tomorrow at high noon. He fudged that by saying there is still much work to do, but he plans to complete the finishing touches while we are under sail. (He feels it too.) I take it that a noon launch is precipitous to allow us to reach the great river mouth on the outgoing tide. How he knows the timing of the tides and how long it will take us to reach the coast is beyond me.

  Leonglauix, Fralista, Bongo and Conga are the only adult natives of our group who have seen a sailboat. Kaikane ferried them across the wide, tumultuous mouth of the Rhine / Thames in his little catamaran. That boat made from two kayaks, a wing and a prayer was but a toy compared to the craft we now possess. Duarte asked the Storyteller and his two grandsons to continue calling the boat a “drum,” but even if they do not know exactly what is coming, the rest of the natives are quite aware something major is afoot.

  Oh, our natives. Once we signed off on Jones, rest his soul, the somber conversation turned immediately to deciding who goes and who stays. As you can imagine, Dr. Duarte has strong convictions on the matter. This time however, I do not believe she processed all the data. When she expected Jones to return, she says she figured we four moderns would sail off with only one native passenger, her little pride and joy, Rhino. Her own husband put the kibosh on that by pointing out that he considers six to be the minimum number of crew he needs to tackle the Atlantic Ocean.

  “But you and I sailed just fine with two.”

  “A bigger boat needs a bigger crew,” Kaikane countered. “Just getting around the fork’s first bend is gonna be a bitch. We need a pole crew of at least four to keep us off the rocks.”

  I let them toss the matter back and forth to gauge their opinions before weighing in with my own. I knew we must board everybody, or at least offer to, but Salvatore Bolzano is not so dim as to tip his hand early in the game.

  “What about Leonglauix?” I put my toe in the water. “Are you prepared to bid farewell to your mentor? Forever? Do you consider it kind to goad an old man into leading us to the ends of the earth, only to discard him there?”

  “It was his idea to bring us to the Big Drum. He knew it was our chance to truly break free.”

  “What do you think Father will do to him? We must take the Gray Beard with us. He has a history of navigation with you two, thus lessening the ethical considerations. That still only adds up to four adults. Who else?”

  And so began our circular discussion of who goes and who remains. The more fatigued we became the more maudlin our emotions. There were tears for Jones and laughs over visions of what the Caretakers will make of floating down the river in their clan’s ceremonial drum. It became harder and harder to differentiate our plans from our wishes.

  It took nearly two hours, but I finally nudged them around to my way of thinking. In the morning we will invite our fellow members of the Green Turtle Clan, as well as our three hosts, to accompany us on a sailing adventure. Twelve adults and one baby may be a tight fit, but we’ll make do.

  If later they determine the sailing life is not for them, we have two major stops planned to retrieve the kayaks and supplies that have been cached, one near the mouth of the Rhine and another along the southern banks of the River Garonne. After that, who knows? As Duarte points out, we cannot very well introduce potential breeders to unpopulated North America. That leaves the rest of Europe, Africa and Asia to explore with our friends until her adopted son is old enough to be set off on his own.

  I kept my lips zipped tight as Duarte talked this part out, unabashed over the rules she is breaking. It is enlightening to see how emotions can corrupt even the most uncorruptible. Duarte’s over the top love for the child blinds her to the potential enormity of her indiscretion.

  Once again, we must ask what in the hell was The Team thinking when it sent crews of temperamental humans back in time. Did our commanders really expect us to behave? I didn’t castigate Duarte, and she was kind enough not to mention my sweet drink called Berry Juice. I am not calling it love yet, but it is wonderful to once again be touched and held by a woman, to smell her hair in my face and feel her warmth around my manhood.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  TRANSMISSION:

  Hunter: “Do you plan to jump, or pick your nose all day?”

  Jones: “Mother fuck! Where are you?”

  Hunter: “Close. Having second thoughts? Too frightened to pull the trigger? Need a wee shove?”

  Jones: “Let ya know.”

  Hunter: “Your friends are all broken up by your alleged suicide, hailing nonstop over the open com line, which led me right to them. I’d forgotten the way. Why don’t you answer?”

  Jones: “Helmet’s turned off.”

  Hunter: “Did you bang Duarte? She behaves as if she lost the love of her life.”

  Jones: “Never touched her.”

  Hunter: “Your loss. We had a brief fling during a Team brainstorming session in my chalet. Get enough booze in the Portagee and she can be quite the vixen. Surely you have heard her moans when she and Kaikane shag. There is so little privacy in the Cro-Magnon world.”

  Jones: “How’d you pull through, asshole.”

  Hunter: “Oh my, it wasn’t easy. Did Salvatore treat his knife with poison before stabbing me? Those broken blades caused quite the manky infection. Can you imagine performing extraction surgery upon yourself? Can you? It’s very painful, I assure you.”

  Jones: “Why not get one of your lame-ass Sons to cut ya?”

  Hunter: “My Sons are dead.”

  Jones: “Good riddance.”

  Hunter: “Here now, do not speak ill of my precious lads.”

  Jones: “How?”

  Hunter: “Why, the Ice, of course. Those who didn’t starve were laid low by a spring storm. I reckon the trail of mammoth and oxen carcasses I left for them froze too solid to consume. From the forensics, I’d say the alpha Sons dined upon their dying siblings, drank their blood to survive. About half the buggers would have made it, but it was their poor luck, some might call it karma, to be caught by a rare blizzard with no place to burrow on the stretch of ice we call ‘Killer.’”

  Jones: “Boo hoo.”

  Hunter: “Yes, it was somewhat sad. Tell me, what did you folks make of my journal entries?”

  Jones: “What’s to make? Duarte never figured out the password.”

  Hunter: “Didn’t figure out the password? Are you people idiots? The password is password. P-A-S-S-W-O-R-D! Jesus Christ! That’s the reason I allowed Salvatore to take it in the first place! I wanted everyone up to speed before I killed them.”

  Jones: “Why don’t ya take it out on me, leave ‘em alone?

  Hunter: “You wish to negotiate? That’s not how this works.”

  From the log of Dr. Maria Duarte

  Chief Botanist

  Paul has been kind enough to watch the baby for an hour while I finish updating my reports–which, unfortunately, read more like outlines than completed documents. As we finalize preparations for launch, I’m left with barely enough time to cover the highpoints of this unique environment. Once we’re safely under sail, I hope to flesh out the data before I forget it.

  Of course, we’ll have to see how crowded it is on the boat. If the entire camp elects to join us, it may be a while before I have the privacy. I have a vision of dropping anchor at an island without bears or people where Paul and the baby and I can wander off alone for a few weeks of privacy.

  Our roster will be determined soon
. Gray Beard and Cpl. Bolzano are, at this moment, on their way to recruit the crew. We brought our leader up to speed first, knowing if he refused, there would be no chance with the others. As usual, the cagey old guy was way ahead of us. “When do we leave?” he quipped as we approached his morning fire. Gray Beard doesn’t miss much.

  I briefly outlined our plan to float the drum downriver and on a long sail to the south, far away from the Hunter. “Revered Father, brother to Bolzano, you have already spoken the words saying you want to go. Who else of the clan should accompany us on this water journey?”

  Gray Beard barely got a word out before Sal was lobbying for a capacity load. The Italian likes to live large. He said something last night that opened an interesting window into his psyche. Salvatore was lecturing us on how to appreciate finer things in life, saying the only way to properly savor a great bottle of wine or beautiful woman is to enjoy them all at once. “You should never parcel out a thing which is the best,” he said emphatically. “Love it, indulge it fully, and when it is gone, relish the memory.”

  Paul and I didn’t have the energy to tell the rich kid he was full of beans. The two of us know what it’s like to go to bed hungry, to live on food pellets and kelp powder for weeks at a time. My lean years in college taught me to always maintain a stash of food for when the money runs out. Before he began training for the jump, Fancy Sal’s notion of roughing it was not having strawberries to float in his champagne. (His words, not mine.)

  Gray Beard thought about our proposal for a moment then shrugged his shoulders in a way that said he either could not or would not decide for the others.