Galway

by Matthew Thayer

  He fucked with the rollers and was just starting to saw on one of the bigger lines right up by the boat when everything let go with a snap. The upstream hull went off the rollers first. Extra drag turned the canoe at a bigger angle. There was nothing I could do but hold on. Original idea was to hit the water so the canoe was already pointed downstream. Wouldn’t be surprised if Kaikane planned to use the long poles strapped to the deck to push the boat off the rocks if he got too close.

  There was no stopping or turning the heavy boat as it rumbled and bounced across the stones and hit the water with a splash. Could hear Hunter yelling as the current turned the boat so it was going backwards downstream.

  “Wait! Turn! Turn! Turn!”

  I pushed the rudder far as it would go and the boat slowly started to come around, but there was no fucking way it was going to turn fast enough to miss the rocky point. Once she went broadside to the current, the rudder was useless. Letting go of the long wooden handle, I staggered over to get my Team members free before the crash. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a blur of light as the Hunter sprinted out onto the rocks and used his force field to cushion the collision like one of those rubber bumpers the Navy guys use.

  He couldn’t hold the canoe in place, but he absorbed the hit and deflected it with a big push that turned us so we were at least headed in the right direction. The guy didn’t look so hot when he pulled himself up over the side. Blood gushing from his nose and lips, having trouble moving his legs, he rolled onto the deck and found me trying to unstrap Duarte and Kaikane.

  “Get back to the tiller!”

  By the time I reached the rudder, he had scooped up one of Kaikane’s poles and was kneeling, leaning over the side, straining to keep us off the rocks. We cleared the point with inches to spare, then almost slammed into the far bank. The first few minutes were crazy, but once I figured out how to put the right touch on the rudder, things settled down–until we reached the Y where the fork joins the main river.

  “Whirlpools!” For the first time since I met him, there was genuine fear in the Hunter’s voice. “Swing to port! To port!”

  I never could keep port and starboard straight. Instead of turning left, I took a hard right that almost put us into a bunch of fallen trees leaning into the river. With the angle of the deck, I didn’t see the whirlpools until we were right over top of them.

  “Oh my God! You’ll kill us all!” Miss Hunter screamed like a little girl as the canoe’s twin hulls straddled one whirlpool and then another. Standing at the back of the boat, I heard the vacuum sound before I saw the whirling green holes pass below. That was some wild shit.

  Now that we have reached the main channel, the only things we have to worry about are fallen trees drifting in the current. We’ve hit a couple and survived, but it’s gotta be better to miss ‘em or pole them to the side if we can.

  The Hunter seemed to get a rush out of it all. Even slapped me on the back and told me I did a good job. One of the first positive things I’ve ever heard come out of his mouth.

  TRANSMISSION:

  Hunter: “Captain Jones?”

  Jones: “Yep.”

  Hunter: “It’s time.”

  From the log of The Hunter

  (aka – Giovanni Bolzano, Dr. Mitchell Simmons)

  Ethics Specialist

  After all the guff I’ve given Capt. Juniper Jones, I had no right to expect such tenderness as he helped secure my belt around the mast and dressed me in native clothes.

  Weak as a long-haul astronaut reunited with gravity, I was not able to walk to my bunk without his assistance nor lower myself into the leather hammock suspended inside the massive port hull. Jones could have easily tossed me to the river sharks. While considering this harebrained attempt to reconnect with my humanity, I reckoned there would be some sort of transition after 60-plus years inside the field. Never did I expect such extreme muscle atrophy or powerful awakening of my senses and emotions. Six decades is a long time to be deprived of feelings.

  I struck my deal with the right soldier. Rather than making me walk the plank, the dark-skinned man with bushy hair locked one strong hand around my bicep and used the other to cradle my neck as he guided my collapse into bed.

  With a smile, he snatched the pistols from my hands. “You ain’t gonna be needin’ these.”

  “Duarte.”

  “Got your back–unless she nags you to death. Can’t help ya there.”

  I lay motionless, listening for the sounds of their waking amid the cacophonous river life. Such volume and all the smells! Have they always been around me? Gazing up at the furled sails, feeling the hull heave in the rapids beneath me, I worried I may have cut our schedule too tight. My shanghaied crew was sleeping longer than I expected and the ride down the river had gone much more quickly than planned–a bad combination. Either way, off in the distance I could hear ocean waves crashing on rocks.

  “Jones! Jones!” It took forever to get his attention with a voice so thin. Finally he called from the back of the boat as we gained speed on the outgoing tide.

  “Ya calling me?”

  “Kaikane! Tie off the rudder and wake Kaikane!”

  Jones had to brace himself with guide ropes to keep from sliding off the wet deck as he stood over my bunk.

  “He’s not moving. How the fuck do I get ‘em up? Slap ‘em?”

  “Not so close. Poke him with a pole. He might wake angry.”

  No one appreciates being roused early, especially when they’ve been hit with the dosage of knockout sauce I applied this morning. It took a minute or two for an eruption of shouts and curses to reach my ears. “Calm down, calm down!” Jones’ measured tones rose quickly to the voice of military command. “Soldier, I am ordering you to stand down! Immediately! Stand down! Do you read me, soldier?”

  The escalation dissolved into mumbled questions and answers, and then the sound of bare feet running across the deck. Above me, the forward sail unfurled and billowed in the offshore winds.

  “Rhino! Where are you, son?” Duarte’s drowsy calls became shrill and frantic. Listening to her search the boat, understanding her pain, feeling complete empathy for the first time in a very, very long while, I found I tears rolling down my cheeks. Overall, it was not a pleasant experience, stiff upper lip and all that rot.

  “What did you do with him?” Hair flying in the wind, stone-headed club clenched in her right hand, the botanist was a raging Medusa towering above me. “If you hurt my baby, I’ll kill you! Where is he?”

  I didn’t have the strength. “I, I thought it would be....”

  “Be what? You thought what, you son of a bitch? Where is my boy?”

  “Left him. Left him safe with my daughters and drummers. Caretakers. Good people.”

  “Why? Why did you do this to me?”

  Lower lip beginning to quiver, my former protégé was trying her damnedest not to sob. Consciousness slipping away along with my inhibitions, the floodgates opened on my eyes.

  “Not to you,” I said through tears. “For you. I did it for you.”

  Drifting in and out of reality, I charted our escape from the river’s mouth in groggy snippets–waves of sea water, Salvatore’s voice as he bailed the hull beneath me, calls of gulls and terns, bright orange sunset, beautiful clouds, darkness, splashes of rain, someone covering me with a waxed-leather tarp, daybreak, weak sun, low voices, someone pressing a shell full of water to my lips.

  “Come on wake up,” said Jones, his voice cutting through the haze. “Ya gotta get up and move around.” The American enlisted Salvatore to help hoist me out of the bunk and serve as matching bookend as I made several shaky circuits of the deck. Duarte followed me with angry dark eyes from her station at the tiller. Kaikane ignored me as he filleted a bluefin tuna that must have weighed 100 kilos.

  “Nice fish,” I said, taking a seat beside the Hawaiian waterman. “How’d you catch it?”

  He studied me for a moment, then slapped a foot-long piece of bright red sas
himi into my hand. “With an ivory hook. I make them.”

  “I’m sorry about your boy.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes, I truly am.”

  That was two days and many leagues of endless circles ago. During that time, as we hover near the river mouth trying to decide if we should return upstream or not, the sailing canoe has hosted many frank discussions, including several that threatened to dissolve into trials for mutiny and hijacking. In the process, we have laid all our cards on the table–at least most of them. As you might imagine, my decision to separate two crew members from their adopted native baby has come under intense fire.

  Who better to know the difference between right and wrong than an Ethics Specialist, one who has spent six decades breaking every rule in the book? With each rehashing my reasons gain traction. Jones and Salvatore came over to my way of thinking yesterday and, although it breaks their hearts, the temporary parents are also beginning to accept they should not be raising a child in this world. Not only does parenthood detract from their duties and ability to explore, it could cause a disruptive ripple through time–at least that’s what I’ve been arguing. Though the decision will be painful, I expect Kaikane to steer us out of this holding pattern and set sail south within the hour. The distraught couple is currently ensconced in a covered bunk, whispering and consoling.

  No matter how intense their sorrow, it will diminish over time. That’s one of the things you learn while living more than three centuries. Another thing is that life without heartache is not life at all. Who would know better than me? How many wives, children and good friends have I already buried? How many more will there be? Considering my nanos have chugged well past their 300-year expiration date without so much as a hiccup, the answer may end up being in the thousands.

  That’s a lot of sadness. The most difficult aspect of opening my heart to friends and family is the final act, watching them wither and die. For the past 60 years, I removed myself from that cycle. I stopped caring about anybody or anything other than me.

  Concealed within the field, all sounds, smells and tastes filtered to my perceived liking, my will to live was put on autopilot. I reckon caring deeply for people must have been discerned by the field as a threat to my well-being, for I slowly lost the ability to feel affection or sympathy. This dawned on me as I spied upon my son and his two friends as they struggled to deal with the would-be suicide of their comrade Jones. Even though the sullen captain was flawed and unlovable, they mourned him as a prized member of the family. I could see they truly cared about him, and were also genuinely concerned for each other’s feelings.

  Sitting invisible in the limbs of a pine tree, I could not help but compare their emotions against the ones I experienced upon finding my Sons frozen and eaten upon the ice. Dispassionate is too kind a term.

  I discovered the first pile only two days’ walk from the dung line. They almost made it. The mound of rock-hard, intertwined bodies was covered by a meter of snow melting under a bright spring sun. Stopping only to brush away the slush and take quick stock of how many and whom, I left intrigued to discover what I would find next. Every camp featured at least one pile of human bones, with ribs, fingers and other bite-sized bits splintered for their marrow. I’d like to think they ate their brothers only after they dropped, but the skull fractures pointed to more nefarious circumstances. The elders fell first.

  A normal man would feel sadness, revulsion, surely anger over the murder of his extremely loyal family members. Those boys did whatever I said to do, and on the flip side, only did about half the things I told them not to do, which is a far better average than any of the other children I’ve sired. Despite all that loyalty, and their ability to put up with my moods no matter how selfish and foul, I shed not one tear. If anything, I felt anger over their betrayal. I would need to recruit and train an entirely new crew to carry my belongings, cook my food and collect my firewood.

  Meanwhile, here were Salvatore, Duarte and Kaikane grieving over their friend, paying tribute to his character and abilities–while the man was not even dead. I cannot say exactly what my intentions were when I arrived at the Fish Eaters Camp, but I do know I was ready to punish and cause pain. Walking through the home sites, however, my mood softened. It was impossible not to wax nostalgic thinking about our great mammoth hunts and early building projects.

  After a rocky start, I learned to more or less coexist with Franz and Tamashiro. As long as we kept our visits short, we did all right. I let them build their village and organize their society, and they let me do whatever the hell I wanted. What could they do to stop me? Boff the native leader’s wife? Why not? Destroy the smelt nets to punish an imagined thief? Sure!

  I would leave for years at a time, then return to make everyone’s life miserable. If I had known Franz and Tamashiro had converted to Martinellism before the jump, I never would have brought them. The religion was so new, they probably had no idea how powerful and destructive it would become. Their chants and ceremonies were harmless and, I see now, soon forgotten. My dark history with the Martinellists of the future polluted my attitude. I belittled their beliefs and knocked down their temples whenever the mood struck me.

  One day they executed a nifty little trap by felling a heavy tree across my legs. I reacted by knocking everybody out, and then had to wait for hours until they woke up and could hear my pleas for help. Nanos or no nanos, force field or no force field, there would be no escape without assistance. We negotiated for three days and three nights. They didn’t want much, just for me to leave and never come back. In the end, I swore an oath, waiting only for the tree-cutting crew to section the log and for my legs to heal before departing never to return–until this week.

  It would be fair to say that being bested by my former crewmates left me in a pissed off mood for the past 30 years. Eating crow has never been a favorite of mine. But if I am being honest, I grew to miss my modern compatriots. No one else on this planet had the foggiest notion of who I was or where I came from. There is no vocabulary to reflect on life before the jump with a native.

  Having shed my belt and surrendered my guns for the time being, I once again feel mortal. I know this foray into humanity will cause feelings both wonderful and awful, but I’m ready to saddle up and go for the ride. Should I tell the members of my crew how short their lives are going to be? Am I prepared to open my heart for the next 25 or 30 years only to bury them like worn-out, arthritic German Shepherds? I had friends in Scotland who quit raising dogs because they just could not bear the thought of burying another beloved pet. “You should try it with humans,” I nearly quipped.

  That is no way to think. If we only have 20 years, let’s make them the best 20 years possible. These people are witty, intelligent, and I imagine quite capable of toting my gear and building my fires. This is a lonely world. I could do worse for traveling companions.

  First, I must dissuade them from this idiotic desire to rush off to North America. Without man, void of human conversation and pretty girls to share your bed, the Americas are a sprawling, boring place. Once we cross the Atlantic, they’re going to want to see the Pacific. There will be no coming back.

  EPILOGUE

  (Seven months later)

  From the log of Paul Kaikane

  Recreation Specialist

  Using a humped, cedar-covered island to screen our sails from the mainland, I swung in close as I could to drop the boys off to go whoring. It was three hours before sunset, plenty of time for them to paddle to shore, stash the kayaks and check out the nightlife of Napoli. We’re calling it a scout, but I know what’s on their minds. Same thing as mine.

  After months of Hunter talking the place up, telling us all about Napoli’s great food, loose women and goods to trade, it was nice to see the smoke of cook fires and know he wasn’t completely full of crap. Hunter can be a decent guide, but there also times when he steers us wrong. An “uninhabited” island loaded with warlike Cro-Magnons comes to mind, not that he ever
apologized or took blame.

  He treats us like we’re the hired help. Now that he’s got his guns back, it can only get worse. Knucklehead wanted to wear his belt to town. Sal and Jones talked him out of it, but it’s getting harder to hold him off. That damn belt and its red flashing lights would already be on the bottom of the sea if we could figure out how to get at it without tearing the whole boat apart. We’ve snapped two spears and worn out a dozen knives trying. Hunter just laughs. “You’re going to wound yourselves,” he says. “It’s stronger than titanium.” He swears he can control the belt as long as he doesn’t overdo it. I expect one of these days we’ll find out.

  We let them paddle through the calm waters and round the island before I opened both sails and set course for the open sea. We’re going to give them a couple days to get a feel for the place, maybe even take our own turn on shore if they find something interesting, but I’m in no rush to leave the canoe. Maria has a special meal planned for tonight and already has a fire going in her new clay hearth. Her hair is pulled back into one long, thick braid running straight down her back as she carefully feeds hardwood limbs to the fire to build the coals for our seared octopus and baked squid. Sounds likes she’s humming Sal’s new tune about flying fish. It’s a pretty catchy number, one we’ve heard the Italian sing at least 200 times since leaving the Atlantic.

  It’s impossible to describe how happy it makes me to see Maria smile again. I know she’ll never forget Rhino, but after seven months, I think my wife is finally beginning to accept we probably did the right thing. We tell ourselves he was left in good hands, and that someday we’ll meet again. For now, it’s the best we can do.

  I figured Gray Beard would be hot to cruise with the guys, but he was on a roll catching sea snakes and didn’t want to stop. Nothing makes the old guy happier than stomping the life out of a poisonous snake. Lately, when we’re anchored or adrift, he launches Franz’s little model canoe at the end of a 12-foot-long sennit rope and almost always brings a few in. He’s attached a wooden ramp off the back of the toy canoe that leads to a simple box trap suspended between its hulls. Snakes wriggle out of the water thinking they’ll rest on a hunk of driftwood and it’s one of the last thoughts they ever have.