New Homeport Island (42 page)

operandi, on the ship and his voice was reserved for issues he
 knew we be resolved.
With Branson tucked away, and the Artimus circle hiding
 in the pentagon, and his gang with him on the stolen ship, there
 was no longer any social order what so ever. It was Hudlow’s
 time to shine. Everyone’s water had been contaminated by
 adding salt water to ‘extend water rations’ by the Artimus gang
 that is with the exception of their water.
Becky Clarkson and Jane Spayner sat off and away at the
 tree line smelling of vaginal fluids, they had bathed so
 infrequently so as not to appear wet their approach was
 unsettling to the men and agitating to the women. Their clothing
 was torn and tattered with rips in the butt and bloodstained near
 black at the crotch and inner thighs. Jane asked, “You think he
 really left?” Becky replied, “Ya. ya, he did.” Jane said, “We
 need to make those cloths.” Becky responded, “You give a little,
 you lose a little, they take a little, and you’re left with very little.
We have uniforms.”
Jane got up and walked to where they had made some of
 the island clothes after Athena had showed them how and started
 working. Chief Dotz called over to her, “Hey Ensign, they’re
 gonna’ have a rescue here in a week.” Jane replied, “A week of
 something wearable sounds okay to me chief.”
That night we slept in grief for our loss of hope. It was as
 though not one but all of us had died. We were betrayed, cast
 away, and possibly forsaken. I slept not nestled between Athena
 and Michelle, but with Athena and Michelle held snuggly in my
 arms. They needed me again and now I was less of a toy for
 distraction then I had become.  

Chapter Thirteen
Two more years
 
It had been a year to build the Woodenpeg, and Two more
 to finally create our ‘crane balloon’ and ready the wooden
 planks and stanchions to build our tower.
Haydel had joined us as well as Jane and Strutzer, Washam,
Tinel, and Kim luds. The Artimus gang had not returned and
 were thought lost at sea or to have left us as ‘Killed In Action’ in
 official reports. We didn’t dwell on our betrayers’ fate or
 condition, we lived our lives.
We had added a third cabana and refortified our walls with
 an extra outer layer with a thin space between. It was an odd
 rumor to us even as we watched it happen but there had been a
 civil war of sorts in the militant camp Brosuer and Deckly had
 been confronted by Hudlow’s hooligans and had been beaten
 into submission. It was the senate and governors position that
 first, they were not of our governing body, and second, their
 leadership lacked direction and effectiveness. The conclusion
 drawn was that their survival may well depend on a violent
 change of social structure and leadership and our interference
 could offer no solution, they did not think, act, or speak like any
 of us. They were not our people. Despite our warning they
 preferred to run one boiler, once a day producing three gallons
 of freshwater to which they added sea water so as to reduce the
 salt content as Artimus had them do before he absconded with
 our hopes in the theft of the Woodenpeg .  
Hudlow however had taken the ‘island front’ by force with his
‘band of merry men’. We had considered Hudlow to be brain
 damaged and our opinion had not really changed; but what he
 expected subordinates to do seem to pay off. There were

additional boilers made and only fresh water was being drunk.
He improved their shelters from lean-tos to short huts which
 stood only three feet high, but were circular and had palms
 fashioned into walls.
He sent a messenger to ask us where he could buy another boat,
 and we sent instructions for how to build another fishing boat.
His reply was ‘he was just fishing for another escape boat’. We
 sent the message we were working out a plan to better track the
 weather before risking another in response.
Hudlow wore a crown made of knotweed that he called his
‘booger belt’ but as time passed the Knotweed dried and turned
 amber yellow. He pointed out he was no longer green and the
 amber yellow of his crown was the only gold he needed.  
Before Hudlow’s reign over the militant bread had been once
 every two weeks like military payday, Water was made but used
 to dilute salt water, and the fishing supplied food day by day
 with no concern of maintaining stores. He had corrected all
 those things and yet remained an absolute buffoon. They didn’t
 need the shadow puppet theater or marinates we used in theatric
 storytelling, nor Chinese checkers or any type of whistle or
 ocarina to stay amused, Hudlow was startlingly unrealistic as a
 real person but somewhat compelling as a cartoon character.  
I believe it became a manor of the good humor he provoked that
 they had not resumed trying to kill each other or entirely shirk
 the work necessary to survive on the island. Hudlow did
 however find fault with Chief Dotz the only one that was given
 any warning of the upcoming theft of the native’s boat. And
 being he gave no warning, he would tend to a necessary task that
 might well be taken as a punishment. Every day was Chief
Dotz’s day in the barrel, he would protect against the possibility
 of rape due to the imbalance in men to women, by giving hand

jobs and should he be so inclined blow jobs to those that came to
 his ‘shack’. They said, at our fence when they came by for
‘Phone calls to the natives’ that Hudlow ruled with an iron skull.                                            
As a simpleton he applied the simplest of solutions to the
 simplest understanding of the problems they were facing. The
 end result of that was pragmatism dressed in drama. I thought it
 ironic that the pragmatism which we Diligent were driven
 toward all along, even as we spent two years performing a long
 term project of a hot air balloon was also reached by the belief
 system of a simpleton, if the tower or the hot air balloon were to
 fail I would lose any hope in the human race and the belief that
 those that actively live their lives and make choices, get to live
 the consequences of their own choices rather than the
 consequences chosen for them.
I had run every type of model I could on this tower design. And
 with Hudlow having applied his system to the militant side of
 the island to the benefit of all those there and adding to our
 sense of security, as they would not attack out of having nothing
 better to do; I absolutely need to succeed. King Hudlow even
 motivated me in the quality assurance arena, because I would
 die of embarrassment if I turned out to be less effective or
 stupider than him.
He walked with rigid movements and practiced postures. He
 uttered things he thought to be deep and thought provoking that
 were actually inane and witless. He was a vapid turnstile of a
 man, and yet while his achievement was less spectacular than
 ours, he actually started far below us in the face of Artimus’s
 corruption, and his accomplishment there was frankly fear
 inspiring…I mean that idiot got that much done??!!!
On one occasion just days earlier, I sat in a wicker chair made
 from knotweed on the elevated patio looking over at their beach

to see Hudlow in his island made boxing shorts and tank top
 with a cape and a scepter march a precession to their stills with
 wood and sea water in tow. It seemed he involved everyone in
 each and every task, not so much as a team but more as a mob,
 thirty people to carry a fresh water vase to a staging area then
 back to pick up another one not more than fifteen feet away
 from the drop off point. The laughter that solicited in me was
 probably a great relief of pressure, the raw comedy of it…we
 had music, stories, and games. They made up new star
 constellations every night and drew them in the sand just close
 enough to the water that the new tide would wash them away.
I was very frustrated we had to figure out the weather patterns to
 risk a second boat, so between the tower, the balloon, and some
Chinese paper lanterns released from the tower at certain times
 we could chart that out. But it took two years to make the
 balloon; meanwhile King Hudlow has managed to quell the
Neanderthals with idiocy. I’m am thankful for the beauty, grace,
 and charms of the women of our camp and of their amazing
 degree of tolerance, it could only be them preventing me from
 building a smaller tower out of wood just to jump off head first
 into the rocks. As Hudlow marched by in that precession he
 turned and saw me, got a big smile and waved. With his rigidity
 and childlike demeanor, I smiled politely and returned his
 wave…but I wanted to scream.
Now that the balloon was finished we used a standard crane like
 the one we launched the ship with to build the tower foundations
 and as much of the tower rise as we could. All the while that
 work was going on the balloon was soft inflated by ongoing
 flame in its ceramic torch chamber.  
As the days stretched by it became more and more obvious we
 should have started the tower earlier but everyone that wasn’t

fishing, farming, tending the boilers, or any other routine task
 was taking part in the balloon construction. It was like two giant
 parachutes joined together with a foot wide ribbon going all
 along the seams with passing holes for the net that went over the
 top. So we did use it for the bird’s eye view we wanted. I had
 envisioned a first stone aloft party and a marked stone like a
 corner stone, instead we fashioned a harness and we were the
 first rocks aloft. It only felt stable enough to me to view a more
 distant horizon than we had seen in years, but we would be far
 too distracted for weather monitoring.
Athena was aloft in the harness to which she had added a swing
 seat and stayed there for fifteen minutes much longer than
 anyone before her. There was a risk of falling embers from the
 pulley system that could add charcoal, so she wore a stocking
 cap and a sash around her neck that draped half way down her
 shoulders and was three times as thick as normal garments. She
 blocked out the sun with her hand over her eyes like a misplaced
 salute and gazed out at the horizon kicking her legs back and
 forth in glee. It was a beautiful sight I saw up there, first when I
 was up looking at the horizon and second when I looked up at
 her. Soon it would be one of us up there with a small bucket of
 cement mortar as we guided the stones hauled up by another
 pulley, and placing the stone into it mortared groove.
Athena looked down at our farm and saw all the pretty rows,
 sorghum, knotweed, young leech trees, and irrigation mounds
 ready for anything else we found to grow. She saw the white
 surf crashing against the white swept amber beaches. She saw
Hudlow and his kingdom all kneeling in awe of the sky princess.
She saw us tending the balloon lines and the pulley line to her
 harness and swing chair, as well as others of us scurrying around
 at various regular tasks. She giggled with delight and hugged

herself in excitement then called down, “Okay, you can lower
 me.”
As Michelle watched her being lowered she found some joy in
Athena response as we all did and comment, “She is a sweet
 girl. But, I’ll get most of my viewing time placing stones. So,
 save the charcoal on my flights for work.” Then Michelle
 pecked my cheek and rubbed my shoulder as she turned and
 went back to her tasks.
We didn’t give the balloon a relief cap, it had to descend as it
 cool or be pulled down and despite the primitive method it was
 way too much lift to pull down.
The cistern was near over filling and over the years we saw a
 week or two of rain at a time. So, we set aside the rocks that
 couldn’t be fitted for use in the tower for a cistern on the
 mountain top, it had always just been too far and too much of an
 incline to haul water to but it would give us water pressure. We
 would also increase production at the farm with some irrigation
 and aeration. My grandfather had an orange tree in his backyard
 and I was learning basic biology in elementary school and I read
 the condition of the tree, I watered it and aerated the soil and in
 the next season he said he had never seen it fruit like that before,
 it was absolutely flush with oranges, and the aeration was the
 cause.
We developed two work crews the cistern shouldn’t take as long
 and we found limestone vanes in the rocky cliffs of the island
 and there was still more in the jutting rocks at the beach.
On the night we finally placed our first balloon craned stone we
 celebrated by a bonfire, we had boar, and bread, leeches and
 some mushroom we had discovered near the boar pen. We had
 made paper lanterns that lite the sky with green, and red paper

lanterns dotting the night sky like visiting stars from the
 heavens.
Athena’s melody on her ocarina had become refined, it was
 beautiful and inspired. It struck cheer in our hearts and made us
 glad to be together. I used the marionettes we had made to dance
 to her tune in the fire light and with all the paper lanterns we had
 made we used the extras to make a shadow puppet screen and
 shadow puppets. We told the tale of Artimus stealing our boat
 and mocked him and those that betrayed us.
Shadow puppet captain said, “A vast me scaly wag dogs, there
 be a boat here fer, captainin’ and I be that there captain to
 captainin’ the boat that be here.” Shadow puppet gunners mate
 one said, “Aye but Captain ‘captain’, be we not stealin’ hard
 work of them here natives in the dead of night whilst they be
 slumberin’?” Shadow puppet captain replied, “Arr!” Shadow
 puppet cabin boy said, “Should I not be bouncin’ on yer lap
 cap’in whilst ye be liein’ to yer crew?” Shadow puppet captain
 replied, “Howst is it that ye canst speak with me member in ye
 mouth hole?” Shadow puppet cabin boy replied, “I be built
 upside dune’ cap’in!”
As the show continued the boo’s became over run by
 laughter at the folly and mishandling of the ship.
Shadow puppet girl sailors asked, “Why we be passin’ that
 same wave there by again me harty?” Shadow puppet
 ambassador replied, “That there wave be followin’ us, it has me
 bullocks name on it !!!” Shadow puppet cabin boy interjected,
“Perhaps that be the wake of a shark! This boat be to small fer
 me lolligagin’!!”  
We depicted a storm rising over the ship and rain falling
 down in a storm. Shadow puppet girl sailor said, “I knew it be
 cross and foul to be at sea with this manner a cap’in, we be