Seaborgium Travels: An Imagined Travelogue in Four Parts by Paul A. Toth (Part 1 of 4)
Dedication
Anchor of arrogance
Pipes of pity
Steam of sermons
Propeller of paralysis
Sails of solitude
I demolish you
on this bow
1.2.09
The places give direction, and here would be there were it not for shopping thoughts and the attack fusion, ionized and perceived, driving one from light. A weak sun, scattered low, creates the shadows of disorder. Unfamiliar local bridges, zones of craterscapes, the spectral atmosphere where Galaxy 8.3 subtracts the aeroplanes: Home’s over-known temperature must give speed enough to overcome fear.
2.2.09
With souls of painter dogs, we’ve been framed by weather. Look: They’re gone, tossed main. A boy died. “People,” I’d said, “yer exploring pictures, even you, rye-eye-doe!” And that was the last of rye-eye-doe. Someone something played the weather cards. Condolences to our rolling house neighbors, each gone to city. They died but won. We’re still together, neighbors, and love more now than we did before or will again.
3.2.09
Been sailing but three days and yet gone already rye-eye-doe and the boy and others, too. The price for our journey comes high at the start and decreases as we travel. Now we finally enter the copper-hued waters that mark our true leaving of home, where sunlight still shadows the between-places of grass and where the land-bound make lives of restitution, redemption or ruin. We’ve left such easy categorizing.
Towards skies of dragonflies!
4.2.09
The wind sterile, the awful rocking of the boat. We bumble on tamely and shake loose of life jackets above the blue valley. Flocks flicker the clouds and the white spreads until we’re engulfed. Cholera in the seaway; how shall we escape? In fear of climate, we rise above heat and become happy again. Time thaws and the gale of days recommences. Without such wretched wonders, how quickly we succumb. Now, near stars and water and little else, we concentrate upon the reckless years to come, accepting the cautious measured steps we first must take.
5.2.09
The Bastard brought the maps. For a while, I liked The Bastard; I imagined someone long ago had nicknamed him that and in doing so nicked his shoulder. I couldn’t deny he resembled something of a bastard, if not The Bastard, but he held his coffee mug like a throat and tossed the maps on the table.
“Careful,” I said. “They’re sketched on satin.”
“You be careful with those maps, sir: They’re sketched on satin.”
“Have we nothing more modern?”
“Satellites won’t get us far, not as far as I can see.”
“I’ve never raised the issue, but should I call you ‘The Bastard’?”
“Call me anything you like, except ‘The Bastard.’”
“And your real name?”
“They call me ‘The Bastard.’”
“I’ll call you nothing, then.”
“Makes no difference.”
“I’ve the idea you enjoy being known as ‘The Bastard.”
“Being known and being called are two different things. I call you ‘Captain,’ don’t I?”
“What would you call me, if not for that?”
“I’ve nothing in mind.”
“I sense you do.”
“Nothing in mind I wouldn’t prefer keeping there.”
“You needn’t call me ‘Captain.’ Nothing is fine with me, too.”
“Two nothings, are we?”
Thus, I resolved he was The Bastard, but I kept it in mind.
6.2.09
A dirigible follows above our wake; it never sleeps but appears dreamy in its progression. The airship lifted from a German city, the film crew aboard expecting not, as I expect not, to locate our supposed destination. In fact, our destination remains unknown to me. The maps exist only to comfort the crew. Imagining a destination exists where one does not — a directionless direction all of us know so well — is as crucial to succor as daily rations of gin, from which I must abstain. I need no alcohol to achieve its effects; I will delirium and recover without hangover.
At times, the dirigible matches the color saturation of the atmosphere and temporarily vanishes. I never worry. It cannot die in flames but only greet us in the water, where I’m prepared to rescue those gone to sea…just as I may go to ground.
7.2.09
The dirigible’s pilot calls himself Hindenburg…a bit of fatalist, Captain Hindenburg, half-hoping, I suspect, to descend and set both our crafts ablaze. Now and again, we radio one another, though all my men despise technology. After the incident with the The Bastard, I felt it necessary to contact another leader for advice. When no one was looking, I radioed Captain Hindenburg.
“Do you have any bastards aboard?”
“Nothing but. Communists, all of them. They think they deserve profits. Envious bastards.”
“Nevertheless, you don’t have to contend with The Bastard.”
“The Bastard? Yes, I know him. An absolute, utter bastard. I caught him with my wife. He had the audacity to get angry as he pulled up his pants, for quite naturally I called him a ‘bastard.’ I chased him out of the house. Then I wildly flogged the Mrs.”
The dirigible weaved about the sky like an unhanded needle busying about an insane knitting project.
“Are you drunk, Hindenburg?”
“Of course I’m drunk. It’s well after dawn.”
“You’d better watch your way.”
“I’d watch,” he said, his words thin in the speaker’s static, “The Bastard, if I were you.”
I felt a hand upon my shoulder. I turned to see The Bastard.
8.2.09
The Bastard grabbed the radio and dropped it in the sea. A message from Captain Hindenburg burbled to silence.
“You’re next,” The Bastard said, but he made no move; at present, he was only thinking of killing me.
Without reason, I tried reasoning with him: “Mutinies don’t develop in three days’ time.”
“Sometimes they don’t take a day. And you’ve got an old school crew. Radios, blimps –”
“Dirigibles,” I corrected. “Or, at least, airships.”
“Blimps.”
“You’re a bastard.”
“And you’re lucky I don’t bed your wife, like I did Hindenburg’s.”
The way he stood there, like a totem pole, something native about him, made me think he belonged aboard the ship more than I did. He would travel by canoe, with all aboard…except me.
“Where,” he said, “are we really going?”
“You’ve seen the map.”
“You had it reproduced from an idiot’s map. That cheap stitching’s new. You don’t have anywhere in mind, do you? You’re lucky I don’t have a gun; that’d be the last of that goddamned blimp.”
“Mr. Kavanaugh, Fenshaw, Webber, Shortstick…they’re behind me. They won’t stand for this.”
“They’re sleeping off their hangovers.”
The men climbed on deck. I wondered if The Bastard had somehow signaled them, their appearance so well-timed to the moment.
Then Shortstick stepped forward, as if taking a microphone in hand.
8.2.09
The radio bobbed back to the surface with one last message: “My name’s not really Hindenburg. It’s –”
Shortstick watched the radio go down for good and then he gestured for attention he failed to receive as instantly as he would have preferred. Shortstick had sawed off his originally well-designed wooden leg because “the ladies like a limp.” The Bastard folded his arms as if everything about to be said had been scripted the night before, while they were drunk.
“Where we going?” Shortstick said.
I hate simple questions, their answers always that much more complicated.
“I’d tell you if I could, but even I –”
“Don’t give me that.”
Unhelmed, the ship moved in circles. Helmed, the airship circled above, fulfilling its purpose of documenting this voyage.
“No one likes an answer to a mystery,” I said. “Really, they don’t. It’s the end. It’s always the end and we’ve hardly started.”
“I like to know where me story’s goin’,” Shortstick said.
“Stop talking like you’re British,” The Bastard said. “You’re wife had no accent when she bawled like she balled.”
“You bastard.”
The Bastard pushed Shortstick away and now the former took the invisible microphone. “Any of you call me ‘The Bastard’ again and I’ll tell you my real name. It’s worse than ‘The Bastard’ and I’ll show you why.”
The others took their positions. If a mutiny had been planned, all the muscle had gone out of it. It really was a pathetic crew. Only The Bastard could have taken me out, but I carry a knife. I’m ready for him. I’m not sure I’ll wait for a reason. A reason can’t stop a knife, but waiting for one can.
I straightened out the ship. Did I mention it’s a small ship? That’s easily guessed from the number of crew members I’ve noted, even discounting those already dead. The half of them I don’t need. I picked them based on personality differences. I’m frightened of mutinies. Two wives already mutineered. I don’t believe in loyalty. It’s something somebody sells when selling you something else and it lasts about as long as the transaction.
There won’t be much loyalty aboard this ship, only enough friction to keep the wars civil in division.
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