‘I am holding a fucking basketball? I want to drop it, but, no, this is too cool…’
So Nat stood mesmerized by the weird event, as if he had been permitted on the set of a spaghetti western in 1967.
Curtis was talking through the fence to the shorter, smarter black dude, whispering, comforting, misleading, conniving, gaslighting. Nat could see all the shades of manipulation being worked on the younger guy, who was no longer cursing Curtis, but listening to him while he looked at the big white men facing off. Nat could see all of the open doors of duplicity alternately reflected in the scheming face of Curtis. The young fellow though, was not looking at that duplicitous face, but away at two knuckle draggers of another race…
“Old man,” intoned the big young stud standing in UMBC shorts, sneakers and T-shirt, “take tour racist ass back to whatever log cabin you were hatched in—”
“Kooorack!” was the sound that came from the old Confederate fist impacting the face of the jock moralist, whose teeth, must have been the entire top and bottom rows of pearly white young teeth, scattered in a rain of bloody chicklets across the court. The young man sank to his knees, fell backwards over his right knee, his knee popping terribly, tilting crookedly back as if dead in some strange state of repose.
The smarter, thicker, man a few inches taller than the Major who was a clean six feet, then came charging in for a waist tackle. The Major side-stepped neatly, slapping the straining face upward with his left hand, causing the entire man to turn and pivot on his right foot, dressed as he was in gray sweats and sneakers streaked with sweat.
The men stood and looked at each other as the sneaker stopped skidding, the Major with a clear shot at that thunderous right hand, calmly noting, “You don’t have to.”
The man, a third his age, raised both of his fists as if he had no idea how to fight and returned, “Yes I do.”
The Major feinted with the right hand at the face and as the meaty arms raised, sunk a left under the ribs and dropped the younger man like a wheezing stone. The Major patted the conscious and kneeling man on the shoulder and said, “Attend your man—we are done here.”
With those words the tall black guy, whose eyes were as big as coffee cups, blurted, “Oh, hell know,” ran directly for Nat, who tried to block the gate, basketball in hand, and was soon looking at churning knees and being used as a runway for Ebony Airlines.
Nat was helped to his feet by Sergeant Crook as he heard the second jock gasping for air.
“Nice try, Son. You will do. Can you handle the gear out to the pier?”
“Yes,” said his ego before his mind cleared. He felt, as if in a dream, a heavy stack of cloth and iron, oiled canvas, leather and steel, a cool Confederate hat topmost, come to rest in his unconsciously cradled arms.
‘How do I dream within a dream?’
The world: the bridge, the court, the pier, the boat that was suddenly being poled by an African witch doctor—‘what!’ All came back into focus as the firmament and the stars, which he could momentarily sea behind the bright blue sky, ceased spinning.
He was drooling, tears running down his face as Curtis helped guide him to the pier.
The Sergeant was ahead of him with an iron neck collar and chain lead on the smaller of the two basketball players from Turner Station.
Ahead of him was the Major, striding on board, roaring behind him, “No time to gear up. Prepare for navigation, assign the pilot, Sergeant.”
Crook coaxed the neck-chained fellow to the pier as the witch doctor threw a line from the old looking sail boat, really like a Jamestown Pinnace, maybe like the Dove that accompanied the Ark to Baltimore back in the pristine, not yet fucked up, day.
The Major caught the rope and dragged the pinnace in to the pier as they waited.
“Why me,” whined their captive.
“Why not?” barked Curtis. “Betta you den me!”
Looking hurt at Curtis, the fellow said to Crook, “Sir, I didn’ do nuffin’ juz poke a little fun at dis crazy ole dude now en again. Name is “Bernard Jones, goin’ ta college, workin’ at the Seven Eleven helpin’ mamma out—don’t even got no baby mamma. Sir, I’m a good man!”
The Sergeant, holding the chain in his left hand and saluting with his right, in a serious and compassionate tone, said, “Buck Jones, we are counting upon the high content of your character. You are now our navigator, our pilot, our guide to righting the wrongs done to both of our afflicted races.”
The pinance shook the pier slightly as a rattle, a sand rattle, and a tambourine began to play in the hands of the witch doctor. Bernard—well, Buck now—pleaded, “But why me, why now?”
The Sergeant, handing the chain lead to Curtis, who took it with an unseemly eagerness, said, “Son, we had to come before smart phones made all of this too discoverable. I promise, it might feel like a raw deal. But we are only conscripting you—impressing actually, this being a naval operation—for this one voyage. You will then be released, freed to pursue your heart’s desire. You have my word, as U.S. Marine, Gunnery Sergeant Ken Crook, Retired, Timejacker. We are in this together, Son and shall share Fate’s same cup, be it bitter or sweet.”
Buck was near to tears and beyond, his wide eyes no longer expelling liquid but taking in something more insipid.
“Buck, Pilot Buck Jones, aboard,” soothed the voice of the Major. Something in that voice compelled Buck Jones to board,a voice that was not really the Major’s voice, not completely. Taking his own chain in his hands as Curtis backed away from the classic grass-skirted witch doctor, wearing flayed human skin for a shawl, shrunken heads hung about his waist from a leather belt, a bone through his nose, his woolly hair greased into red horns… Buck Jones stepped aboard the misplaced vessel, as if he owned it, chained though he was.
‘If its a dream, the stuff behind me won’t still be there, right?’
Behind them, Nat cast one last glance before boarding. The was the parked white Crown Vic, the basketball in the grass, the smarter jock helping the larger toothless one to his feet on the asphalt court.
Nat stepped down into the crazy boat from yesterwhere. The planks, weathered and salt rusted, creaked mundanely.
Crook was now readying the boat, drawing in the line and pushing off.
Curtis was picking his forever unplugged electric guitar, picking in odd cadence.
Buck Jones seemed mesmerized by the voice of the Major and the antics of the witch doctor, who opened his mouth to show he had no tongue, yet mouthed words that sounded through the deep voice of the Major:
“Buck Jones, our Pilot into darkness, our wayfinder into oceanic uncertainty, take the boat’s wheel and bring vile, life-eating Saturn to heel.”
Buck took the wheel with an expression of something between horror and ecstasy, his hands ashy and aquiver.
The witch doctor draped a snake, a living python, over the wheel and it wound its body slowly around Buck’s wrists and intertwined itself along the rim of the wheel, wrapping about each of the 12 handles. Nat then saw clearly that the ship’s wheel was made of black wood with handle grips fashioned of ivory worked with arcane symbols.
The wheel stood a few paces behind the single mast, on a small raised block—what looked like an Aztec altar, behind which Buck Jones stood, his back to rail and the rudder below. The chain attached to his collar, was fastened by the Sergeant to the ring in the nose of the evil, blood-drinking god whose belly was the altar.
Sergeant Crook, the Major, and Nat, following along beside his betters, stood in line and saluted Buck Jones while Curtis picked and the witch doctor swayed and breathed in deeply.
“Pilot Jones,” saluted the Major, “take us west of sunset and may God bless our burnished bones.”
With that, Nat threw up, the deck melting under his feet giving way to some immense, all informing heartbeat.
…
Part Two of Nat Star—Timejacker! Will be released in 2025 as part of the 2024 Fiction Omnibus Ebook and in the print novel Nat Star—Timejacker! It is our intent at Jameslafond.com to release one annual fiction anthology, being a simple collection of all fiction completed in that year.
Print paperbacks will be released individually.
Hardback releases will be select omnibus series editions.
The Timejacker Series will continue with Banjo: Timejack.
