Gus Openshaw's Whale-Killing Journal (20 page)

To the astonishment of all aboard the Georgette, Gus Openshaw,
no acrobat in appearance, acrobatically dodged thrust after rapid
thrust of Vurman’s rapier. Vurman was forced to back away.
“At the cat food cannery,” Gus explained as Vurman
stayed away to regain his breath, “they replaced my neighbor on
the line, Irv Fetzler, with a robotic arm. The thing was always
going haywire the first year. I got real good at ducking it.”
“You better have gotten good at bleeding too,” Vurman
said, striking anew with such speed it was impossible to track the
blade.
Only when a patch of red splashed onto the deck
behind Gus—and a dark stain appeared on the lower half of his
shirtfront—was it clear that Vurman had run him through. Gus
staggered backward.
His crew and I looked on in horror. His wound was
distressing, my inability to intercede more so (were I to have
tried, the Tortolans would have gunned me down, and Gus too,
as the duel would have been forfeited).
“It’s nothing,” Gus assured us, “My stomach’s hurt way
worse after any number of Duq’s meals.”
I admired his bravado, but his acting was shite. Seeing my
anguish, however, he seemed to gain new resolve. He charged
forth and issued a flurry of vicious strikes, the last of which
painted a crimson stripe on the frilly sleeve of Vurman’s sword
arm. To his credit, Vurman shook off the pain and responded
with an onslaught of his own. Gus managed to duck or block
each stroke. In the process, though, Vurman backed him toward
the portside rail.
Vurman then spun like a cyclone, sending his rapier
screaming toward Gus’s wounded midsection. Gus managed to
parry. But in his weakened condition—his blood was pouring to
the planks—he couldn’t maintain his grip on his sword. It slipped
to the deck, landing with a sickening clunk and bouncing
beyond his reach. He was then cornered against the rail, with just
the trash can lid to defend himself. Making matters worse, his
poorly lubricated elbow joint was stuck in the upright position so
that he could parry a blow from above only.
With the sort of grin seldom seen outside of asylums,
Vurman gripped his rapier as if it were a lance, then launched
himself at Gus’s heart.
Just then the Georgette shook as if she’d been torpedoed.
The portside rail knocked loose the elbow joint on Gus’s
prosthetic arm, sending the trash can lid clanging onto Vurman’s
skull. Vurman dropped like a domino and lay on the deck
unconscious.
Gus looked over the rail with a mix of disbelief and
profound gratitude. The whale had mustered what little energy
remained in him and thrust his sixty-plus tons into the portside
hull. The crew and I readied a huzzah.
At that moment much of the Georgette exploded—George,
that idiot’s idiot, had put beans in the second engine as well—the
one with the fuel in it.
P.S. Below, a scrimshaw of Dan and his boat. The cross on her
bow is to lead any authorities passing by to conclude that he’s a
missionary.

Gus Openshaw here, back helming the computer to detail the
latest instance of Openshaw’s Law. Before I do, since I don’t
think we’re going to be alive much longer, I want to take a
moment to express my gratitude. Who’d’ve thought that I’d
meet a guy who has been through the same tragedy and torments
I have and that he’d be the very whale I was trying to kill, and
then that he’d save my life? I feel like stuff culminated in such a
way that it bonded me and Dickhead as brothers for life. Now if
only life lasts long enough so I can get him patched up…
After her second engine blew up, the Georgette
remained afloat, barely. The blast cost the Tortolan sailors their
consciousness and their rifles. By the time the smoke cleared,
though, their boss, Vurman, had regained his consciousness as
well as a rifle. At the center of the deck amidships, he leveled the
barrel at my head.
Dealer Dan, who’d been slammed headfirst into the port
rail by the blast, could only watch out of hazy eyes from the deck.
And my crewmen, rat and potential future wife were all still
darbied in a row to the starboard rail.
“Give my best to Davy Jones,” Vurman said, curling a
manicured finger around the trigger.
Suddenly he fell over as if shot by a gun. In fact he was
shot by a toaster, which had slid Duq’s way during the explosion.
I limped over and scooped up Vurman’s rifle from the
deck a few feet from where he lay. Fork protruding from his nose,
he looked up at me in entreaty.
“Finish the bastard, Cap,” Nelson urged. The others
chanted—and Bob squeaked—along the same lines.
I hesitated.
“Don’t be a nancy boy,” Dan said.
“You owe him for your wife and son,” said George, no
doubt the wisest words he’s ever uttered (also, the first wise
words).
“If you do it,” Sybil said, “it will save me a costly divorce.”
“Don’t do it, Openshaw!” came a high-pitched cry from
the stern. Mutherford was darbied there. “Let me borrow your
laptop and in a matter of minutes I can have you exonerated
of all of the previous charges against you. If you kill Vurman
though, you’ll be no less of a criminal than he is.”
“Sybil,” I asked, “do you have any free racks in your
dungeon?”
“As it happens, no. However, I’m sure some of the fellows
there would be delighted to share theirs with Ricardo Vurman.”
I liked that idea. Before I could say so though, the
Georgette’s bow shot up out of the water. The engine explosions
had breached the hull. We were sinking. Fast.
“Five minutes tops before she’s at the bottom,” said
Nelson. “Bummer,” he added.
Making matters worse (which, per Openshaw’s Law,
matters always get), the small boats—Dan’s, ours, and the
Tortolans’—had been lost or set adrift in the explosion, there
were no other craft in the vicinity, the F-15 had mysteriously
vanished and the pilot wasn’t returning Dan’s calls, and both me
and my new brother Dickhead were bleeding to death—and as a
result, dorsal fins were springing up in the sea all around. The
good news: Nelson’s got the same blood type as I do and he has
offered, if needed, to donate it to me for half per pint what they
usually pay him.

Salt water was glugging over the Georgette’s rails. Dan and me
undarbied my crew and Sybil and Mutherford. Still, all of us plus
the seven Tortolans—whom desperation had turned into our
allies—would be either drowned or the sharks’ supper long before
any help could get to us. As for Dickhead, the poor bastard
was groaning horribly. I looked over the rail at him. At once he
ceased his groaning and seemed to brighten, like a puppy eager
to get taken out for a walk. And I thought: Why not?
“Maybe we can ride him to the nearest landfall,” I said
to the others. I hoped Flarq or Thesaurus would respond
enthusiastically. They didn’t.
Only Vurman spoke. “Do you have any idea how to ride a
whale?” he asked me.
“No, but maybe someone…”
None of my crew had any idea. The Tortolans neither.
Everyone looked to Sybil figuring if anybody knew, it’d be the
“Princess of Whales.”
She said, “I have no fucking clue.”
But someone else did. “We get on his head and steer him
not unlike you would a horse,” said Mutherford with confidence.
Full of incredulity, all eyes swung his way. “I saw it done with a
killer whale last winter when we went to SeaWorld to sue them
for Cruelty To Aquatic Mammals.”
No one knew if it could be done with an untrained sperm
whale though.
Suddenly the Georgette’s bow shot up at a sixty-degree
angle. Everything that wasn’t screwed or welded to her splashed
into the sea—weapons, line, duct-tape, cans of Captain Abe’s
beans (not a huge loss), and everyone aboard.
Dickhead was our only chance. The smart fish swam over
to us and lowered his head so that we could climb aboard easier.
Before we could though, the sharks attacked. Duq and
Nelson, fortunately, had recovered the blubber knife and a lance.
Bringing up the rear, they swung them like swords, keeping the
beasts at bay as everybody climbed onto Dickhead’s prunelike
snoot.
The now clear-thinking Moses used duct-tape to
temporarily patch up Dickhead’s wounds (and soon after,
mine). Of note, the tenderness with which Moses did so, and
his apology to the whale, seemed to patch things up, as it were,
between them.
The rest of us, meanwhile, tried to figure out how exactly
to drive Dickhead. What we came up with was this: Two of the
Tortolan sailors laid on their stomachs at Dickhead’s portside
gunwale (or whatever you call the edge of the roof of a whale),
then reached down and gripped one of Flarq’s wrists, holding
him in place by the whale’s left eye. Two more sailors did the
same thing by the right eye with Thesaurus. Once we got under
weigh, we hoped Flarq could nudge the whale for a left turn,
Thesaurus likewise for a right. We decided Stupid George, Dan
and the other two Tortolan sailors would spell the holders (I
immediately amended this to Dan and the two Tortolan sailors
spelling the holders and George “standing watch”).
“It’ll never work,” snorted Vurman, who’d taken a seat by
the blowhole.
Just then, as if protesting, Dickhead spouted. This served
both to shut Vurman up and lessen the stink of that cologne of
his. I know it’s an eight-year-old’s sentiment, but I was thinking
of the whale: Maybe I can keep him!
I then sat with Bob and Sybil at the peak of Dickhead’s
forehead, our legs dangling over his B. I gave him a grateful
pat, then, from force of habit of being a captain and calling out
something nautical each time we get going, I said, “Let’s hit the
sea!”

P.S. Here’s a scene from boarding that folks in Law Enforcement will swear was cut-and-pasted together using ScrimShop software: A Tortolan sailor helps Dealer Dan.

If you like jet-skis and buses both, I’d highly recommend sperm
whale riding. Despite his wounds, my buddy Dickhead cut
through the whitecaps like a clipper. Foam sizzled past on both
sides of his hull, and the air against our faces felt terrific—or
maybe it was just the way things were turning out.
After twenty-some minutes we sighted a small spit of land
the Tortolans had known of—they were our captives of course,
but it was in their interest as much as ours not to become shark
chow.
We reached it just in time—the exhausted whale couldn’t
have swum another ten feet. The poor fellow was going to need
more than duct tape to save him now. Flarq knew how to make
some salve from plants we’d likely find on land, which would
help in the short term. Dan and Sybil, meanwhile, would try to
call for some boats to come get us.
We waded ashore on the small island’s windward side,
which was walled by twenty-foot-tall stalks of bamboo that
blocked all view save the tops of palms. Soon, owing to the
efforts of Duq and Nelson with lance and blubber knife, we’d
cut a lane through the bamboo and reached the beach. There we
stumbled smack upon a couple dozen sailors from the Tortolan
navy—among the several hundred who’d come there in lifeboats
after the Neptune rockets had destroyed their brigs. My stomach
felt like the bottom had dropped out of it.
The sailors all crisply saluted Vurman, who snickered,
“What an Openshawian turn of events.” Then he ordered no
one in particular, “Bring me something to drink—I’m parched—
plus some guns or something to execute these prisoners.” Three
men ran off.
“Shite,” said Sybil, expressing the sentiments of the tiny
percentage of folks on the island not employed by the Tortolan
navy.
“Captain, with all due respect,” Thesaurus said, “your luck
is uniquely bad. Perhaps if you said a brief prayer to Sunoco.”
Thesaurus is not a guy you’d ever want to disrespect, but
I was in such a rotten mood I forgot. I aimed my scowling mug
heavenward and with all the wit of a third-grader said, “A brief
prayer to Sunoco.”
Suddenly a giant sucking sound drew everyone’s
attention to the sea. A murky form—at least five times the size of
Dickhead—was surfacing.
Thesaurus exclaimed, “Sunoco has come!”

P.S. Lots of interesting stuff to scrimshaw and Flarq goes once
more for a kitchen implement. It’s the one Duq shot Vurman
with, but still... Naturally I told Flarq I love it.