We Are All Crew (11 page)

“Well now, the pioneers that spotted them, they figured they were the victims of Indians. But there were no arrows or hoof marks—just lots of little tracks, from tiny animals that must have swarmed around that wagon train like piranhas.

“That’s when the Stewart party—the wagon train that spotted the Soup party—became the first group of people to meet up with ammospermophilus homoedo and live to tell the tale. You see, ammospermophilus homoedo is the man-eating squirrel
.

“
Now it just so happens that this rare breed of squirrel couldn’t cope with the pollutants in the atmosphere from nearby cities and mostly died off. But, dontchaknow, life has a way of going on. In the early twentieth century, our predecessor organization happened to discover a nucleus of these little man-eating squirrels and began a program to repopulate the species.

“We at Locksley Ponds have continued their work.
”

The soft men glanced for the first time at the beings swarming in the box.

The beings in the box chattered appreciatively.

As the house gets bigger, more and more people run past us through the field—old people, young people, black, white, Hispanic. Most of them are laughing as they hustle by. A couple of them turn and urge us to follow, but then they double over and laugh like something’s really funny. Every once in a while you see somebody shuffling along timidly—an old lady or a couple of young guys who clasp their hands in front of them and walk like they’re afraid they might fall over. They peer at you out of the corners of their eyes like they’re paranoid.

Arthur and Esmerelda are starting to act funny too as we get closer to the light. Before they both seemed sad about leaving the
Tamzene
. But now every time somebody runs past they laugh and laugh like it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen.

Come to think of it, I’m feeling pretty damn strange myself. I’m dizzy, but it isn’t a dizziness I’ve ever felt before. It’s like somebody placed this really heavy octopus on top of my brain, and the tentacles are hanging over the sides. My mouth is dry as a mofo. The lights are beautiful in a way I can’t describe, and I’m mad hungry. I feel like I could eat a whole freezer of steaks myself.

Soon we’re standing on the lawn of the house. Dozens of people are there. The glow comes from these big floodlights they’ve placed on top of poles, along with Chinese lanterns. There’s a wooden dance floor with a deejay who, when we arrive, is spinning that country music bullshit.

Everybody is having a great time. And I mean
everybody
. Usually at a party, there’s screaming kids or a crabby old person mucking up the works, but everybody on the dance floor is grinding and shaking and flailing their arms. Surrounding the dance floor are these metal folding chairs, and in them there are some other people who are smiling and looking up at the lights.

I forget about California and the
Tamzene
and all of that and get caught up in it. We’re laughing and dancing and running around throwing stuff at each other, playing tag and going crazy. Some of the other kids our age join in, and soon
everybody
is in on this game we created. We call it paper plate tag—you have to touch the person with a paper plate instead of just your hand. It’s really funny.

And the food. Oh my God, people, I’ve never loved food as much as I do now. They laid it out on two long tables behind the folding chairs. It’s a potluck with ham, mashed potatoes, watercress salad, and German chocolate cake. We slather it onto paper plates and practically make out with it. We take big gooey mouthfuls.

This one character jumps up onstage and takes the mic from the deejay. At first I think it’s a girl because there’s all this gray hair, and somebody calls her Abbie. But then I hear the voice and see the beard, and I know it’s a guy.

“Avoid all needle drugs,” he says into the microphone. “The only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon!”

Everybody howls. The guy with the microphone collapses into paroxysms of laughter.

“Maybe I should get some new material,” Abbie says when he recovers. “In any case, welcome to Growing High!”

Everybody cheers.

An old black man steps onstage. He wears these wicked cool bell-bottoms but has a tangled halo of ash-colored hair. He picks up the badass left-handed Fender Strat. I expect it to suck because he’s old, but he makes wild sounds with that thing, like he took lessons from The Edge or something. He starts singing about some kind of “
Purpa Haze, all in my brain
.”

Everything spins. At some point we’re talking to the Abbie guy. I try to explain about the boat, but it’s getting harder and harder to talk, and it all seems totally hilarious.

“It’s cool, man,” he says. “I want you to meet my friend Tim.”

A
really
old man with skin like paper, wearing a white lab coat, steps up out of the crowd. He’s holding a silver tray upon which are squares of what look like jello.

“Actually, it’s Dr. Leary,” the old man says. Sharp for an old guy.

“You’re probably wondering why we’re all here,” he says. “Myself, Mr. Hoffman, Mr. Hendrix, Miss Joplin.” And he rambles into this long-winded speech I only partially understand. It’s weird—I guess he thinks I should know who he is and who all these others are. So I smile and pretend to be impressed.

Evidently they were part of a group who did math or something. A counter culture, he calls them. Well, back in the ’70s some of them ran afoul of the government and had to fake their own deaths. They had to hide out for a few years until they started this farm, and they’ve been here ever since.

Now this fat old lady with wild silver hair and wearing a muumuu is on the stage singing in this really deep, gravelly voice: “

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

the doctor

I take the first shift looking after the doctor, which means Arthur and Esmerelda get to be alone on deck.

The doctor is in a lot of pain. Every now and then he moans or grumbles about something. Even though we don’t say it, we all know hospitals are out of the question because, if that is the five-oh following us, the Green Police would have Doctor Seabrook in about thirty seconds.

I’ve never sat with anybody this sick before. One of His Eminence’s favorite flicks is
Bridge on the River Kwai
, which came out a million years ago. There’s this one scene where an old British officer takes a bullet to the foot, then collapses and orders everybody to go on without him. His Eminence said he admired the bravery, so I guess that’s how sick people ought to be treated. He didn’t say anything when the rest of the soldiers picked him up and carried him along anyway.

Every now and then Seabrook comes to and says something, usually asks where we are on the river, and when I don’t know he tells me to go get Kang. By the time we come back he’s passed out again.

“Ohio,” I say this one time when he comes to.

He sighs and smiles up at me. He’s lying on his stomach, his cheek shoved into the bedding. “Thank you, Mr. Brubaker,” he says.

“How you feeling, Doctor?” I ask. “Does it hurt?”

He rolls his eyes.

I want to ask him about his wife, the one who died, but I remember how he was the last time the subject came up. I try on publicspeak again.

“So, uh, where did you get your degree?”

“My what?”

“Your degree. Your doctorate. Where did you go to school?”

“Why suddenly the curiosity, Mr. Brubaker?”

“I don’t know. I’m just curious, that’s all.”

“McMaster Divinity . . .”

“Wow. Is that a liberal arts college?” I ask.

“It’s a seminary.”

“I never . . . good school?”

“I thought so.”

There’s a long pause. He closes his eyes. I ask, “What’s your PhD in?”

“I don’t have one.”

“I don’t get it,” I say. “When did you . . . what are you a doctor of?”

He opens his eyes again. “Who told you I was a doctor, Mr. Brubaker?”

Well, the public relations video he showed me had dubbed him Doctor Marion Seabrook. He isn’t wearing a stethoscope and doesn’t have a degree pasted to the wall of the cabin, but . . . hell, there’s been doctors all over the place! “Well I—you did! You introduced yourself as Doctor Seabrook.”

“Doctor Seabrook. That’s my name.”

“But . . .”

Seabrook looks at me with eyes that are so sad, I feel horrible for having asked the question. “My middle name is Marion. My surname is Seabrook. My mother gave me the first name Doctor.”

“But . . . but you built this boat. You’re an expert on . . . on . . . energy and stuff . . .”

“I did, indeed, build this boat, and I am, in fact, an expert on
energy and stuff
. I am a man of science.”

Up until now, the had doctor looked just fine in a mortarboard and robes, but suddenly the wind of that comment blows him down to his skivvies.

Seabrook breaks the silence. “My mother thought the name would give me some dignity and self-respect,” he says. “Odd, isn’t it? She thought it would give me a leg up in life. She was sure of it.”

I think it would be cool to be named Doctor. Automatic nickname: Doc. His Eminence and the Moms named me after a character in a movie, although not a character that helped my self-esteem any. They could have named me something cool like Dixon Steele or Josey Wales or something. But no, they had to name me after Winthrop Paroo, the dorky little kid with a lisp Ron Howard played in
The Music Man
.

“It didn’t give you a leg up?”

“No,” Seabrook murmurs. “If you ever choose to have children, Mr. Brubaker, do not foist unrealistic expectations on them. I’m living proof.”

“Oh.”

He smiles uneasily. “Don’t get me wrong, her heart was in the right place.” He frowns again. “Her heart was
always
in the right place.”

“Well, why is it such a bad thing? I mean, I would think it would be nice being named Doctor. People would think . . .”

“People would think you were a doctor,” he says. “Yes, how wonderful that is. Let me ask you this—you just found out that I’m not who I say I am. Has your opinion of me changed in any way?”

I’m still thrown as to how someone who hasn’t studied for millennia could build a device like the
Tamzene
.

“You don’t have to answer,” Seabrook says. He sighs. “When I tell people my name, they’re always impressed at first, but then they find out the truth.”

“Well, why don’t you change it?” As soon as I turn eighteen, I’m going to jump into my Porsche, drive straight to the Philadelphia courthouse, and file the necessary forms to change my name to the ultracool Razor, the one I decided on after winnowing down a typewritten list of kick-ass monikers, which included Saber, Rifle, and Bubonic Plague.

“But your wife was a doctor, right?”

He closes his eyes again and begins to breathe heavily.

the flood

The river swells because there’s been a big rainstorm. We cruise past a town where it’s gone up over its banks—you can barely see the roofs of some of the houses, the water has gotten so high. Tires, chunks of wood, boxes, and furniture float in the water. People zip around the streets in little motorboats.

Kang has been hiding the
Tamzene
as best he can when we travel by day. We try to hug the bank farthest from the town and keep under the trees, but a man in a bass boat spots us and pulls up close.

“Thought you might have been supplies,” he says. Greasy brown hair is smeared all over his scalp, and a three-day beard peppers his cheeks. He looks more annoyed that we aren’t who he’s expecting than he does shocked by the weirdness of our boat. “This is the third storm like this we’ve had in the past six months. Each and every time the government always shows up about two days too late to be of any use. This one’s about it for me and mine—insurance has gone through the roof. Only thing left to do is pick up and head out of here. Hopefully someplace where there ain’t no water. Y’all best get someplace high and dry. They say that storm might turn back around this way.”

We thank him and keep moving downriver. Water stretches all the way out through the woods in some places, reflecting the trees and carrying small sheds and old tires that Kang either changes course to avoid or lets bounce off the hull.

For most of the day the air hangs thicker than the water, bugs swarm us, and the sun burns up at us off the river. Then, late in the day, a gray glacier crawls across the sky, flashing like gunfire.

the snake

For days the water moccasin’s hunting grounds had grown.

This was happening with increasing frequency during the warm days. His ancestors had smaller territories in which to hunt; they had been forced to live within the confines of the riverbed.

Thanks to the big, two-legged mammals and their big, belching machines, the skies, the winds, the heat, and the water had changed. Now, his home became pregnant and burst forth from its boundaries. He swam through the forest on the hunt, through the lair of those very two-legged mammals. Down their streets, which had filled with water. Past many of the tree trunks of their legs, some of which he could tell—he could get very close without any of them noticing—had become whitened and chafed by the pestilential floodwaters.