The World as We Know It (12 page)

“Good luck,” he said. “I’ll be praying for you.” Then he pointed me in the direction of the clan’s floating fortress. I placed the two crates in the boat and set off.

The ocean waves smacked the hull of the little rowboat like a heavyweight boxer with a punching bag, and it was all I could do to keep a straight heading as I was tossed about. The flightless birds squawked in confusion within their crates. My stomach grew ill and my arm ached as the pirates’ ship came into view—a massive white yacht that never moved because it had run out of fuel, which was even scarcer than medicine. As I drew near, I could see silhouettes of men moving around on the deck. Five of them boarded an orange lifeboat and began rowing toward me.

“What do you want?” one called from a distance.

“My name’s Joe!” I yelled back.

“I don’t care who you are!” he replied, still rowing closer. “I asked what you want!”

I could then see guns in their lifeboat.

“Antibiotics!”

They said nothing else but continued to approach. I stopped rowing, the waves still rocking me from side to side. When they reached me, they drew alongside, peering into my rowboat. Then they hooked a rope to the bow and began towing me toward the yacht. My stomach grew sicker. What had I gotten myself into?

We reached the stern of the yacht, where more of the crew on board pulled me in and tied up my rowboat. All of them carried automatic weapons. They directed me to come aboard their vessel, and I collected the crates and
climbed from one boat to the other. We rose up the steps that led from the water level at the stern to the main deck, and I was led alongside the cabin out to the bow. They’re going to rob me and throw me in, I thought. I was too far from the shore to swim. Would they just shoot me?

I was told to stop at the bow and to turn facing toward the stern, still holding a crate under each arm. Three pirates stood guard on either side of me. Across the deck their spoils were strewn—stacks of coins and cash, cardboard boxes full of jewels, and clear plastic packages of marijuana that could have been stolen from a medical supplier or traded by a desperate customer. Among their treasure laid empty cans of food and trash they hadn’t bothered to throw away. There was a grimy filth covering most of the exposed surfaces of the boat.

A few moments later, a young man, perhaps not even twenty years old, emerged from the cabin wearing a red robe and a tricorne hat. A black patch covered his left eye. His boots clapped on the wooden deck with every slow and menacing step he took. The only thing stifling the humor of the spectacle was the terror I felt in the presence of those men who wanted so desperately to emulate pirates as portrayed by Hollywood that they would kill me for any mockery.

“What do you want?” asked the boy in the tricorne hat.

“Antibiotics,” I replied.

“You’ll address him as ‘Captain’!” demanded one of the men beside me.

“Antibiotics, Captain,” I said again.

“What do you have for us?” he asked.

I held up the crates in my arms.

“Chickens?” he asked incredulously. “What do you expect us to do with two chickens?”

“Breed them, Captain,” I said. “One is a hen, and one is a rooster. You can breed them, and you’ll have more chickens.”

He stared at me for a moment and then asked, “What else have you got?”

“Nothing,” I replied.

“Search him,” he commanded of the men standing guard. They did as they were told, and he watched sternly and expectantly. I stared back at that black patch and the one good eye with its heartless expression as they jerked me about and patted me down. His disappointment was plain when they produced nothing of further value.

“Are you a poor man?” he asked me.

“Not sure I would put it that way.”

“You don’t carry gold.”

“I don’t carry much of anything. Where I’m from, we don’t trade in money or precious metals. We trade in commodities and labor.”

“Where is that, exactly?”

“A woodland in southern Missouri.”

The boy in the tricorne hat took a seat on a plush bench built into the deck of the yacht.

“What did you say your name was?” he asked.

“Joe.”

“Would you like to know how I lost this eye, Joe?”

“Yes, Captain,” I humored him.

“It was a duel with a man over a single gold coin. I killed him. It belonged to him, and then it belonged to me. Do you know what I bought with that gold coin? Lunch. He lost his life so that I could have lunch.”

“And you lost an eye,” I replied, immediately regretting the slip. His face turned angry for a moment, and then his frown grew to a grin.

“Yes, well, I would do it again,” he replied.

I stood still, looking at him, doubting whether his eye patch actually served any purpose other than as an ominous prop for some nonsensical anecdote. He sat silently as if he was waiting for me to respond. When I didn’t, he said, “Perhaps you’d like to swim back to shore.”

With that, a man on either side of me grabbed my shirt and dragged me to the edge of the boat. They leaned me backward over the water, still holding onto my chickens, who were squawking with madness.

“Wait!” I exclaimed. “These birds are far more valuable than some coins!”

“Do you see any place around here for us to breed chickens?”

“I don’t, Captain, but what is the big plan here?” I asked at the risk of offending him. “What happens when you run out of medicine to trade? These chickens are an opportunity, Captain. What if you went down to, say, the Caribbean, and commandeered an island the way you did this ship?”

His eyebrows rose.

“Let him up,” he said. They reluctantly lifted me back to my feet.

“You could build an empire,” I continued, “but you’d need food. You’d need farms. Perhaps these two chickens are just the beginning, Captain.”

He continued to stare at me for a moment, his gaze slowly drifting out to sea. After a while, he turned and nodded to another pirate, who grabbed my arm for a look at the infection and then disappeared into the yacht’s cabin. The minion returned a few minutes later with a jar and handed it to me.

“Leave the chickens,” said the boy in the tricorne hat. The pirates led me back to the rowboat.

I returned to Esther’s farm, relieved to still have my life, and began treating the infection with the antibiotics I had bartered for. I owed her so much for her generosity. I hadn’t mentioned to the boy the abundance of chickens that roamed free on populated Caribbean islands, but we would be worlds apart by the time he realized he had been duped.

Esther, being the grandmotherly figure that she was, had been reprimanding me about the disheveled mop on my head since she had taken me into her home. “A man should take pride in his appearance,” she had said as she was stitching up the wounds in my leg. Of course, she came from an era when men donned suits and ties to walk picket lines. I came from an era when they wore jeans and T-shirts to church. In her eyes, God deserved
more respect. In ours, He would accept us despite our attire. Perhaps we were both right. After all, we’re born naked.

I finally gave into her persistence and allowed her to cut all of my hair off. She said that would be adequate payment for the chickens, and that was the only time I saw her laugh during my entire stay with her.

“I should make a sweater with the leftovers,” she said.

“I knew there was an ulterior motive.”

“Now, when I’m done here, you’ll shave that beard.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“See? There’s hope for you yet.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, honey,” she said.

“Do you think you’ll ever see your husband again?”

She looked at me and thought for a moment, and then she asked, “Do you think you’ll ever see your wife again?”

“If I make it home.”

“You aren’t sure that you will?”

“I’ve got a long road ahead of me,” I said, “and it will only get rougher. My journey has barely begun.”

“We all have a journey that’s just beginning. I imagine my husband is in about the same place you are. And your wife probably looks upon life much the way I do. She’s just waiting for her love to return. It doesn’t usually help to make plans. The world has a way of changing them without our permission. All we can do is have faith that things will work out in the end.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” I mumbled, looking over at the child sleeping peacefully nearby. “I lied to that little girl.”

“What do you mean?” Esther asked.

“I told her there weren’t bad people anymore.”

“You’re talking about the pirates?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe they’re not all bad. They just need someone to show them the way. There’s a bit of evil in all of us.”

“At least a bit of good in all of us too, though.”

“I think, yes.”

“You think she’ll find her parents?” I asked.

“Well, she’ll have a home here as long as she needs it.”

That night while the old woman and the child slept, I came across a framed photograph of Esther and a man who I assumed to be her husband. It was a candid shot of the two of them, carefree and happy on the steps outside of an ancient temple with snowcapped mountains poking through the clouds in the background. Hundreds of colorful flags were strung about them. The pair stood out from the crowd in their western garb, but aside from his attire, the man blended in with the locals.

I dreamed of Maria. I dreamed of fights we’d had at the farm and of fights that had never occurred. I woke up with tears in my eyes, anxious to move on, eager for another change in scenery in the hopes that it might ease my pain.

Soon, I was headed north again, taking with me a sack of tropical fruits that I was sure to miss again when they were gone in a few days. Esther and the child stood in the doorway waving as I departed on the back of my horse. Nomad and I passed through the settlement toward the ocean, and I could see three boats in the distance, sailing toward the shore.

7

MONUMENTS TO PRECEDENTS

I
n some weeks, I reached what had been Washington, DC, after brief stays outside the remains of Jacksonville, Savannah, Charleston, Raleigh, and Richmond. It was midsummer, and the heat was brutal. I had been trying not to watch dates too closely. Independence Day came and went without fireworks, and I didn’t know it until days later. Dwelling on the time served no good purpose and would only amplify my anxiety, but I happened to glance at my watch one afternoon, and I realized it was my birthday. It was a milestone I hadn’t thought once about since we had left the city. For the first time in my life, I spent my birthday alone. Well, not entirely alone, but Nomad, as loyal a companion as he was, could not substitute for my family. I remembered the cake that Maria had made for me on my last birthday in our house in the suburbs and the watch she had given me that had come to be torturous.

“It’s powered by movement,” she had said. “As long as you keep moving, it will always work. Now you don’t have an excuse for coming home late.” Then she kissed me.

That night, I couldn’t bring myself to stop, and it was then that I saw the lights of fires in the darkness outside of Washington, DC. I thought of a time when Maria’s cousin was flying into St. Louis from DC and Maria had asked me how I planned to pick her up from the airport. Of course, she was asking how we would coordinate the retrieval in the middle of a weekday, but my response was, “Well, I was thinking we could get some ski masks, rent a black van with tinted windows, come to a screeching halt in front of the airport, jump out, throw a shroud over her head, and toss her in the van before speeding off again. Would you like me to call Enterprise and see if that vehicle is available?” My sarcasm was not always well received, but in the months I had been gone, I wondered if she was beginning to miss it.

Nomad decided he was done for the night, and we finally stopped to sleep in the shadowy outskirts of the new settlement. Abandoned cars covered the road around us. The next morning, I awoke to the voices of men outside of my tent. I listened for a moment, but they spoke so quietly that I could not make out the conversation. I was unsure of their intentions, and out there, there would be no witnesses to a crime. The lesson I had learned from the pirates had not yet been lost. Certainly humans can be dangerous creatures—more dangerous and territorial even than an alligator. As a precaution, I
racked a shell as quietly as I could before emerging from the tent.

“That’s cheating,” was the first thing said when they saw me. There were three of them standing around me with bows but no arrows drawn. They looked relaxed.

“You can’t be too careful,” I said, fearing again that I had lied to the child.

“Easy to say until your finger slips.”

For a moment, nothing was said. I eyed the three of them with suspicion as they glared back. Finally, one spoke.

“Are you going to put the gun away?”

“I haven’t decided,” I said.

“We thought you might be hungry. If you prefer, we’ll move on.”

I paused to look them over. Their attire suggested they were out to hunt, not to rob drifters on the side of the road. I reluctantly slid the gun into its sleeve attached to my saddle.

“There you go. We’re all friends here.”

“You guys from DC?”

“The vicinity. But we don’t call it that anymore.” One of them laughed.

“What do you call it?”

They looked at each other for a moment and then looked back at me and shrugged.

“Well, I’m Aaron,” said one of the men. “And this is Dave and Jake.”

“Joe.”

“You hunt, Joe?”

“When I have to.”

I was suspicious still. Caught off guard and outnumbered was not a position into which I relished being placed, particularly in an unfamiliar and lawless land. Even if their intentions seemed innocent, I hoped they wouldn’t invite me to join their hunt. Not only would it be an excuse to draw weapons, placing me in an even more vulnerable spot, but it would also certainly expose my weakness in that particular trade. I was still not the best shot with an arrow, and worse at keeping quiet and still. Both the fear of the strangers and my own insecurities left me apprehensive.