He was out tramping around on a volcanic rock; a heaped lava flow turned to pasture for a bunch of bleating goats and scrawny cows. He eventually made his way out of the pastures and into the flax fields farmed by some imported Dot-heads as he looked down toward the harbor where the Beth-Marie was anchored, with Burton still aboard drinking and writing and reading and smoking, without a care in the world.

What choice does he have? He cannot afford to be recognized by the officials. He is somewhere in South America right now.

He walked on through the flax fields. How he had longed to stretch his legs, and then longed to do it someplace free of cow and sheep shit, and now his spurs kept catching in the tangled crop. There was no practical reason for him to be wearing these spurs. He had only needed them for his ride out onto the pampas with the Don and his greedy friend. To dampen any suspicions on the part of his boss about the murders he had committed to get those fools out of their way and provide a damsel—or widow, the next best thing—in distress for Sensei to comfort, he kept wearing the spurs, and sticking to his story that he just always wanted to be a cowboy, and that it was part of his Cole Younger disguise.

Within an hour he was on barren volcanic rock, marching across a landscape that he somehow sensed prefigured the fate of this entire planet if the capitalists kept selling out to the Yellow Hordes Pap had warned him about. Pap had survived the Second World War in Europe, only to be disappointed by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which denied him the opportunity to shoot some Japs. The old man made up for it by volunteering for the Korean Conflict and practicing his marksmanship on the Chi-coms. Randy knew deep down that his racist worldview had been ingrained in him by his grandfather before he was five, and that it wasn’t really the exercise in creative political thinking he pretended it to be.

Randy had gotten annihilated on the strong London IPA at the bleak harbor-side pub in Saint Helena. He had been so drunk he barely remembered Sensei carrying him to the dock. He came to the next day to the sound of Rick reciting some Arabic poetry as a rat crawled across his ankle.

I hate rats—well, it’s something to do.

He spent the next three days on their way to Ascension Island hunting the 13 rats that had managed to board in only two days. The captain was appreciative, so much so that he slipped Randy a pint of moonshine out of his own private store.

After his fourth day without alcohol, and nothing left to kill, it was time for him to start self-medicating again. So he pulled up a sea-chest next to Rick’s seat on a crate of jerky and produced the nectar of the hills. “Hey Rick, how about you break out some of that mud juice so that we have something inadequate to fortify.”

Burton gave a sly grin. “Yaas, I was thinking of instructing you in Hindustani today, classically, reciting the Kama Sutra. However, in the absence of any members of the distaff gender, one might regard it as a pointless indulgence. If we are going to imbibe, perhaps we might engage in comedic relief by way of your education. I think a translation of Revelations in Hindustani might make for a pleasant passing of the day.”

He felt his wind-burned face crease into a crooked smile—the right side never did seem to follow the lead of the left—as he uncorked a bottle of port and passed it to Rick, “The bitter words of a child-molesting Greek fag spoken in the Dot-head tongue? I’m there Rick!”

His teacher shot him a curious, almost troubled look, and then proceeded with the lesson, reciting the King James Version by heart, before repeating it in Hindustani passage-by-passage, “This is the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him…”

But of course, more God bullshit—can’t get enough of that.

Pay attention. Be a good little mindless—here, he’s about to give it to you in Dot-headish…

And so Randy Bracken’s journey across a barren sea became a meditation on man’s fertile beliefs, recited by a man who was an apostate of at least three religions. For Randy it was the perfect intellectual experience; irony washed down with the mind-bending nectar distilled by the godless hands of the greedy to dampen the disappointments of the guilty and the guileless...

In this way the days washed by them like the sea. He barely even noticed or cared, when Captain Tandy announced that they could not make Ascension for bad weather. It was just another irony; an act of God barring them from Ascension, preventing him from shooting rare turtles and terns, which would have only upset his boss anyhow…

He had not been close to sober anywhere from the Tropic of Capricorn to the Tropic of Cancer. Then the grip of early winter in the central Atlantic had insured that he went not a single day out of two weeks without freezing. Rick and Sensei and Randy stayed close to the woodstove and killed the last of the port as they headed past Norfolk up into the Chesapeake.

Finally, after the much anticipated news that they had passed through the Kent Narrows he could no longer contain his elation and burst out onto deck and challenged Bobby Shine, the wiry South Baltimore boy he had been keeping company with on deck, to a celebratory game of chicken, “Hey Bobby, how about a game of chicken.”

Bobby’s voice had a squeak to it, “As soon as I reef this canvas Mister Randy. Captain wants us coming in slow in case of floating timber.”

What a sport. There are not many that will risk their toes for a good time…

…..Randy felt a little guilty.

This is such an unbecoming, weakening emotion.

As they sailed beneath the guns of Fort McHenry and neared Dugan’s Warf, Randy sat with Bobby’s right foot in his lap, stitching up the stump left by the amputated small toe and applying some iodine from his first aid kit. Bobby was a trooper, so much so, that Randy gave Bobby the bet money he had collected from his crewmates and made a gift out of the elk-handled Bowie that had taken off the toe. “Here Bobby, something to remember me by, it’s easily worth a toe.”

Bobby seemed happy. “Why thank you Mister Randy. Sir, did this here knife ever lift a redskin scalp?”

Randy grinned and patted his own shaved head. “No man, just this here White one. It’s a good knife. Treat it well and pass it down.”

As he helped little Bobby Shine to his feet Rick was standing beside him even as Jan stayed at the rail trying to ignore the entire episode—which had entertained the crew quite a bit. The Englishman’s voice was crisp in the late morning breeze of early December, “Mister Bracken, how does one become proficient at such a nasty game without entering adulthood minus a number of toes?”

“I practiced every day for five years with wooden knives Rick. I’ve never lost a toe, and most of the boys I challenged did. That’s how I financed my drug habit in school—we generally used balisongs, which are folding Filipino gravity blades.”

Rick gave a muffled snort, “Let us, Mister Bracken, never make a wager.”

Randy extended his hand and Rick took it, “Deal Rick. I will never bet against you, and I will always be your friend.”

That statement seemed to make Burton’s eyes sparkle, and left Randy feeling like he had formed an important bond, and that he had slipped up as well, opening a panel in his mental armor. Burton seemed to concur, “Yaas Mister Bracken, friends are few and far between and we travelers should have at least one; friends it is Sir.”

That is the first friend you have ever made.

I don’t know.

Now there are two people on the planet you can’t kill!

Man, I really don’t like this feeling.