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The Onion's Defense Mechanism 5
This is another episode in the thrilling series!
It was refreshing, the wind in our hair, sea spray occasionally also in our hair, seagulls soaring overhead as we pulled out of the harbour sending us ducking, in case anything else found itself in our hair.
I'd finished taking my notes inside a smaller cabin up front, and took it upon myself to wander around the boat.
One thing that was niggling at the back of my head... well, mind, anyway. Nothing was niggling at the back of my head. Certainly not some scurvy-ridden sea worm or anything. But that had me thinking, so I wandered around the ship, looking for oranges, and thinking about the actual thing niggling at the back of my mind, at the tip of my tongue, it was so far back. I'd never actually signed anything, I was thinking.
I wasn't sure if this made me a stowaway or a captive aboard this ship, this Devil's Dam, wherever it was going.
Shortly into this whole exploration, I found out the big man's name was Kipper.
He'd just finished telling me to get away from the closet ("the hold," he called it) I was poking around in, looking for harpoons. I'd shifted my focus from wandering around the boat trying to guess its' trade and my potential purpose at being there. A few of the closets offered nothing more than life jackets and other things that looked like they might, with a bit of air, provide some sort of floating safety.
I got inspired by the great thick rope nets I found under one seat in the main, more open cabin, and began thinking of the tales of great whaling voyages, many of which emanated from the very shore we were not long in leaving. And it's quite likely the shore teemed with Fundamentalists in those days, as well.
So I got to looking for a harpoon, which would serve me well in many occasions, should they bear any fruit. If it turned out that I was held captive, well, I could defend myself, wait until we hit the distant shore of wherever we were going in a few weeks, and then gracefully disembark, and catch a plane home. If it turned out I was a stowaway, well, the harpoon would be a good prop to put into my weblog when I got back to dry land and I was able to get an internet connection. Plus, I had a feeling that there was nothing like the feeling of plunking a harpoon around the deck of a great ship like the very one I stood on, and I wanted to try it out and see if it was true.
In previous life opportunities, as I like to call them, I'd been prone to sitting around, not taking enough initiative, not being enough of a self-starter, doing only what it took to survive, not thrive. Or so I was told by coworkers, roommates, and management alike.
One of the things I'd told myself, as I set out that one morning for the sea, was that I would be that person no longer. I would go and get it. I would be like I'd never been before. Be a self-starter. I figured finding a harpoon and getting down to business would be an excellent and extremely visible way to start. The reason, I figured, that I'd never taken the bull so by the horns is that sitting in front of a computer, playing with Photoshop and the digital equivalent of a bunch of crayons all day wasn't nearly so visceral as jabbing a big moving thing with a sharp thing. It's amazing what you can do with a little sea air in your lungs!
After a reasonably thorough search of the main cabin, I made my way back to the smaller cabin at the back of the ship.
Now, you're probably thinking, it's a boat, like, how long could it be? Even those big ones aircraft are able to land on you could walk the length of in thirty minutes, tops.
Well, let me tell you one thing. One thing that we have lost, since we set muddy foot on land oh those many thousands and millions of years ago, has been our sense of how to pack an incredible amount of stuff into a very, very tiny space. Barring New York City residents, who still live in the sea, to a certain degree, the people who inhabit ships are probably the most skilled at fitting the most amount of sheer stuff into the tiniest of places.
Which is why, if only people would sit back and think about it, those constant complaints that their home hasn't enough storage harkens back to the days when we were fish, and we able to store a prehistoric version of a microwave, typewriter, toaster, fridge, hair dryer, suitcase, hair straightener, makeup bag, television, telephone, keys, and couches somewhere about their person in a series of oblong lockers.
Well, this ship had those, in spades. So the entire length of the deck along back to the smaller cabin was covered in potential harpoon-harbouring lockers.
Which is where Kipper found me, hand-first into an old-fashioned divers helmet in a compartment that looked like, from the rest of its' contents, it was the knickknack compartment. It contained a plastic lobster, many of which I saw in gift shops on the mainland, as Nantucketers called Cape Cod. Actually, the Nantucketers I met called most things the mainland, including one addled man in the coffee shop who introduced himself as Elijah, the prophet, who wanted to know if I wanted whipped cream on my mainland... errr.... cafe mocha.
It also contained a rubber seagull, and an incredibly life-like raccoon. Stuffed, of course.
And, yes, a divers helmet, which seemed to have an ineluctable attraction to my hands, which went accordingly to it, and there I was found, arm-deep in a big iron helmet with the little glass window in the front creaking open. when Kipper came round the corner.
To break the awkward silence, I asked him his name. Which he said was Kipper.
With that out of the way, he seemed pretty content to stand there until I got the divers helmet off my hand, and the awkward silence settled right back in. You'd think trying to pull a divers helmet off your hand wouldn't be the quietest thing in the world, but it was pretty quiet. And awkward, still.
So I asked the captain's name, having caught a glimpse of the captain walking further forward on the deck.
"Gerald," he said. He crossed his arms the most slowly I have ever seen anyone cross their arms before in my life.
"Funny, he doesn't look like a Gerald," I said. My hand was going to be very sore, once I did get it out of the helment, due to one tug and twist I performed while making that particular observation, in case you find my response less than thrilling.
I was just about to enquire after the name of the guy with the mop the captain was walking by when Kipper must have guessed my next question and waved it off with one hand. I was impressed, after the length of time it took to settle into the cross-armed position, with how quick he was to uncross it.
And before I could think anything else, he yanked the helmet off my hand, plunked it back into the locker, and had closed it away. Before I could think even "Ow."
While he walked me back down towards the main cabin with his great big hand firmly between my shoulder-blades, we began talking more freely, as I've found people tend to do once they grow comfortable with me.
Over a cup of somewhat watery coffee, he also told me that we were bound for the Von Neumann, which I think is supposed to be italicised, as it's a boat, sort of. And David Moffet, who isn't a boat at all.
Oh man, I thought, David Moffet. The one man that could get both strawberry and chocolate in a single swipe at a dish of Neapolitan ice cream.
Oh. Man.
To be continued...
disclaimer:
Hey, so, the web's a-poppin' this week!
Okay, okay, so you caught us. There are no Starbucks on Nantucket.
Except for maybe the nautically-inclined ones.
It was just a regular coffee shop, we were just being funny. Funny as in the peculiar sense of the word.
This has been an editorial note.
Carry on.
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