We Are All Crew (4 page)

A gurgling noise starts in. The woods thin, the monster trees stop scraping, and we find the river. It has fattened in the rain. On it is a boat so bizarre it makes all the tunes on my mental iPhone skip.

I guess it’s a boat. His Eminence considers himself a beast on yachting—when he isn’t parlaying business, he’s going off about his own hundred footer anchored off the Schuykill, which is how I know all about anything that floats. But this thing is like nothing I’ve ever seen floating in Annapolis harbor.

It’s about fifteen feet tall and rests on what I know is a pontoon.Above it are several other pontoons of different shapes and sizes. The pontoons all connect on a dial that looks like the bullet spindle on a six shooter. On top of the dial is the wooden hull of a boat right out of a history book. Plank upon plank wrap around the pointed bow and the wide stern. Portholes are cut into the planks, and grooved gunwales spread across the top of the hull.

A large cabin rises near the center of the deck. It looks modern, made of fiberglass, with sheer plastic for the windows. To the rear of the cabin, a mushroom-shaped smokestack painted a rusty red points skyward.

Beneath the forecastle, a figurine stares ahead—the wooden form of an old man with a toothy grin and a ’70s-style three-piece suit. I recognize it from school: it’s a statue of former president Jimmy Carter.

Near the bow, the name of the boat is spelled in blue letters: the
Tamzene
.

We wade through the water and climb up a rope ladder to the deck. The Indian lays Arthur down, signals us to wait, and then goes around the cabin.

From this height, the monster trees don’t seem so big. The Allwyn River sweeps past and disappears behind an outcropping of rocks and bushes. In the cabin, I can make out the silhouettes of a steering wheel and radio equipment.

Static hisses. A voice chatters on a radio in the cabin: “
How to prepare . . . Fill your gas tank regularly.”
¹

I kneel next to Arthur. He’s wigging out like a mofo. If we’d been on
Sniper Dude X
or a movie or the
Psycho Car Thievery
video game, I could lay a wicked line on him, like, “I won’t let them hurt you, man,” or, “I’ll avenge you.” Instead, I say, “You don’t think this guy is going eat us, do you?” which makes him shiver even more.

The Indian guy reemerges, but not alone. A bald guy follows him. He has a circle of hair with muttonchops that drift down both cheeks like dog legs. A paw of red hair pokes out from the neck of the brownish undershirt he wears tucked into plaid boxer shorts. He stares at us for a minute or two, his big bushy unibrow making a V between his eyes.

Finally, he says, “Who are they?”

Nobody says anything.

“You.” He nods at Arthur. “Who are you? What’s going on?”

Arthur is still shaking.

Bald guy looks him over. “Your ankle,” he says. “What happened? Who are you?” He gets down on one knee and observes Arthur’s bad ankle. Arthur just lies there like a sack.

Well I, of course, am schitzing hardcore, people. The brain bungee jumps past rock songs, movie lines, game graphics, and comes to a thud on His Eminence. When reporters fire questions at him about fossil fuel emissions and air pollutants, he lasers them with a smile, and the even tone in his voice knocks them back like a weapon.
Publicspeak
, I call it. A masterclass shit talker, that’s what he is, the Moms always says. We Brubakers could talk our way out of a lethal injection if we were already bound to the chair.

“He can’t speak, sir,” I say, trying on His Eminence’s publicspeak. I’m rebuilding the reservoir leeves. “He’s got disabled vocal chords. That’s why he’s wearing that stereo on his chest, if you understand what I’m saying. To make himself heard. Audibly heard.” I offer him a smile so big it hurts my cheek muscles.

The bald head pivots toward me. I shrink back a little.

“Who are you?”

“Well, his name is Arthur. And I’m Winthrop. Winthrop Snake. And thank heavens you two came along here. We were separated from our camp—Godspeed Summer Camp? Like, Christians, you know? My friend Arthur here busted his ankle up pretty bad and your, I guess, friend there was, um, magnificent enough to help us out.”

The bald guy frowns at me and tells Arthur to wiggle his toes. “Nothing is broken,” he says. “Looks as though you’ve sprained it.”

He pushes himself up, a big meat slab of a guy: middle ballooning out and hairy arms that look like they could do some damage if they wanted to. In a video game: X, Y, X, Y, a scissor kick to the solar plexus, and a Japanese throwing star to the forehead would off his ass.

“Well,” I say, still fronting publicspeak and holding down Wimp Winthrop, “thank our Lord and Savior-guy Jesus Christ for this holiest of holies. Our friends at the Christian camp will be so happy.”

A vertical wrinkle flickers above the unibrow V on bald dude’s head. He turns to the Indian. “What can we do?” he asks.

The Indian just stares back at him like he didn’t say anything. He looks at Arthur, then back at me, and then Arthur again, smacking his lips. My mental plasma screen boils with some mad freak show. I’m alone in the woods, and His Eminence and the Moms are probably still clueless as to my exact GPS coordinates. Weak little girly arms, pale fragile skin that monster trees can make mincemeat—I’m probably the kind of thing this guy eats for breakfast.

“Okay,” he says finally. “Okay, I guess we can’t just leave them here. Mr. Snake.” He looks at me. “A few miles downriver from here, we’ll reach the outskirts of a town called Snow Shoe. There’s bound to be a phone there somewhere, even in this day and age. Kang here”—he points at the Indian—“will carry you to a pay phone or something. I’d like to do more for you, but we just . . . we just can’t. In the meantime, you and your friend here are to sit very quietly and still, and above all,
do not touch anything
. And after we’ve dropped you off, I want you to forget you ever saw us. We were never here.” He leans in horror-movie close. He smells like pipe tobacco. “Is that clear?”

CHAPTER THREE

i take a boat ride

Monster tree arms grope at the boat for miles. From the boat’s deck, and with morning lighting things up, they look less badass—more tree than monster. Still, I’m glad we ditched them because they’re everywhere, and we might never have found our way out.

The
Tamzene
chugs along, making whirring noises as it moves. The Indian—Kang—and the bald guy fooled around with some instruments and stuff that dreamed up the purr. Smoke pours out of the big mushroom-shaped smokestack, and metal arms in the rear pump like boxers throwing jabs. I haven’t gotten a good look at anything. In keeping with the bald guy’s instructions, Arthur and I stay where we are, behind the cabin on the deck, and try not to notice anything.

The bald guy seems cheesed at Kang for bringing us aboard. He doesn’t say a thing to us after he says to pretend he doesn’t exist, and he barely speaks to the Indian. He grumps around fiddling with levers and knobs, walking past us with that unibrow still in V formation. He’s dark and depressed. I don’t mean he looks like he’s going to cry, but he sure doesn’t look like he’ll laugh. When he’s not messing with the controls, he stands at the side of the boat and looks into the trees or fiddles with his key chain. He has this big key chain—a silver cross about as big as the palm of his hand. He keeps it in the pocket of the khaki pants he’d pulled on after the
Tamzene
started out this morning. It must have cost a chunk of change; he’s always polishing it with his thumb, staring at his reflection on its surface, and rubbing fingerprints off on his shirt.

Kang, of course, says even less. Every once in a while he flashes past us, following whatever the bald guy says, which is stuff like: “Check the burner level.” “Make sure the O2 is stable.” “Synchronize the timing.” He doesn’t look like a laugher or a weeper either, but he doesn’t seem as dark as baldy—he seems more robotic. His mouth is a straight line, and his eyes remain focused on their work. His tats rule, though, people. Swirls and symbols circle his biceps.

As for yourstruly, now that I know they aren’t pervs, I feel a lot better. We’re on our way. And Arthur’s ankle isn’t broken. We’ll get him to a doctor, and since the two guys escorting us want us to forget they exist, I don’t have to worry about them calling His Eminence.

But I’ve got to admit, I’m curious: who are these guys? What is this boat, and why the hell don’t they want us outing them?

“Do you think they’re drug dealers?” I whisper to Arthur.

He’s lying on his back next to me, forearm pressed to the bridge of his nose to shield his eyes from the sun, which has baked the sky yellow. The PA system on his chest is so big it could strangle him. Without moving his forearm, he shrugs.

“I’ll bet that’s what they are,” I whisper. “I’ll bet this boat-thing is loaded to the gills with ganja. Maybe before we get off at that town, we ought to think about buying some off them. It’s better than trying to find it on the road, after all. Whaddaya say? You down?”

I’m trying to sound cool again. Truth be told, I’ve never smoked the stuff. Wimp Winthrop wouldn’t allow it. A short kid is horrified by anything even rumored to stunt your growth. Once a spurt raises me some, I’ve always figured I’ll hit the pipe. Most of the non-lame kids from my class have smoked homegrown out of soda cans. Some of the cooler kids even have brass pipes, or so they say. Trotsky told me he scores his weed from this Puerto Rican guy who lives by an underpass on Broad Street.

But, of course, I want Arthur to think I’m cool.

He lifts his forearm. Red veins crisscross his small blue eyes.

“What?” I whisper. “You’re not down? How else do you think we’re going to get it? My right Timberland is stuffed full of Benjamins I’ve liberated from His Eminence. I thought we might use them to get a hotel and score us a stash for the trip.”

Arthur covers his eyes again.

“What, are you lame or something?” I hiss. “This is a golden opportunity here, Arthur. You smoke, don’t you?”

He just lies there.

“Oh come on,” I say. “How do your friends let you get away with that?”

He looks at me again. “I don’t have friends,” he mouths, his face tense.

Well, that shuts me up. In that one sentence I know his life story: in the morning he always sits in an empty bus seat instead of with another dude, his face to the window, pretending not to notice how even the little kids use him—his look, disability, and punchline features—to climb their ladders. In the cafeteria at lunch, even Paste Eaters can jump levels by pelting him with rubber bands, spit wads, and food. Gym class is a dungeon of horror, him the lone prisoner to tens of other guards. School chews him all day, every day, spits him out at night, and starts over again before the first bell.

But can you blame them? The too-tight shirt. The jorts. The guy has never smoked a doob. No status. He’s obviously not an athlete, despite his height; he’s obviously not a hipster; he’s obviously not a badass. He isn’t even Paste Eater.

You have to listen to people, watch them—what they wear, do what’s cool. We say what they say on TV and in the movies. I mean, the other guys laugh at how I talk sometimes, but you keep trying and working at it until you get the right combo. You get a cold smackdown if you don’t at least feign badassness and say you’ve smoked weed. That’s how you get friends.

So when Arthur says he has none, I get it. I’ve been there.

We let the river talk splishsplash with the
Tamzene
. Not a house nor a street shows itself no matter how hard I crane my neck. But you were here, people, and you left your trash behind: your plastic Mountain Dew bottles and cigarette boxes pepper the edges of the river where the water stalls and smells like dead fish.

This one time in history class, we studied a population density map of the US where clusters of people were represented by lights. The northeast corner, where we are, was like a firework in freeze-frame; almost all of it was lit up. Who knew it’d be nothing but river static and bird cackles for miles in Pennsylvania? I want those soda bottles
filled
and sitting on a
shelf
in a
store
next to a
hotel
where I can take a
shower
.

My junk reeks—smells like Campbell’s chicken noodle soup, if you can imagine. My skin is slippery with my own filth, and my ’do is all matted and gross.

I will stand fast and resolute
, Fang sings. I try to shove this nastiness below, but again I’m thinking about my house and the hum His Eminence’s plasma screen makes a split second before coming to life. In a few hours,
Little Gnomes
will be on the Cartoon Channel, followed by the early morning repeat of
Attack Bears.
Ordinarily I’d be sitting in the Barca lounger, Prada jean–encased legs propped in front of me, a cool glass of Pepsi bubbling on the end table.

the trout

The trout heard the boat coming and darted to the bottom of the river.