Tim Curran - Dead Sea

Elizabeth was looking really pissed-off now. They were forcing her into a corner and her claws were coming out. It had been a long, long time since she’d had to answer to anyone, to justify her actions or her lack of them.

“All right,” Cushing said. “Let’s take it down a notch here.”

“Prisoners,” Pollard said. “I don’t think I can live like that.”

“Elizabeth?”

“Yes, Aunt Else?”

“How long are you going to keep us here as prisoners?”

“Aunt Else…”

“Don’t deny it,” Aunt Else said, shaking a finger at her recalcitrant niece. “You’ve kept me here under lock and key for far too long. I think I’m within my rights to ask how long you intend to keep this up. Well? What have you got to say for yourself?”

Elizabeth had nothing to say for herself. She just stood there, under attack by her own aunt, looking suddenly older, heavier, ungainly like maybe she just didn’t have the strength to hold herself up anymore. She looked at Cushing, because he was the only one she felt a connection with. Then, blushing, she cleared plates and cups onto a platter and took them into the galley.

“Where’d she go?” George said.

“Oh, silly girl,” Aunt Else said. “Probably off to pout. You’ll find her sleeping in the cabbage with one purple wing.”

George tittered under his breath. “What?”

“ Don’t encourage this,” Cushing told him.

He stalked off after Elizabeth, leaving George with the perpetually-brooding Chesbro, the unconscious Gosling, the very-confused Pollard, and… yes, Aunt Else of course, who was maybe a little of all of those things and a few others, too.

“I think what we need here is a man in charge,” Aunt Else said, stroking her chin thoughtfully. “Yes, yes, yes. A man in charge. I don’t think my niece is up to it.”

“Looks like she’s done okay so far,” George said.

Aunt Else was looking over at Gosling like she was having the conversation with him. She threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, listen to that, will you? Men. They only want one thing and they’ll say just about anything to get it!”

George was laughing now. “Did I miss something here?”

“Maybe she’s right,” Pollard said.

“About me wanting one thing?”

“No, about somebody else being in charge. Maybe Elizabeth needs a break. Maybe she’s been here way too long. Maybe she can’t see the forest through the trees. Maybe you should take over.”

“Me?”

“Why not you?”

“Cushing’s in charge.”

But Pollard shook his head. “No, he’s not. Ever since the First. .. well, ever since Mister Gosling has been sick, you’ve been in charge. Cushing’s like an advisor or something. He’s smart, but he doesn’t like making decisions. You should be in charge.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Aunt Else said. “He’s only a boy, Captain. A lying little boy and you can’t trust lying little boys. He’ll say anything to get his way. He’s always been like that. Manipulative.”

George felt overwhelmed. He was having trouble keeping up. “That’s a hell of a way to talk about your son.”

“Captain,” she said. “I’ll ask you not to interfere in family matters.”

“I’m just saying that maybe you’re the guy to be in charge is all,” Pollard said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

George held his tongue. He didn’t want to be in charge. It was the last thing in the world he really wanted… yet, if Elizabeth was going to maroon them all here without a single hope of deliverance, then maybe they did need different leadership. But then again, she knew this place. She knew what they were up against… and what really did he know?

“I prefer a democracy,” was all he would say.

“Just an idea,” Pollard said.

“I’ve never cared much for politics,” Aunt Else told them. “I lost interest after McKinley was assassinated. I think Roosevelt was an idiot. A lot of us thought Roosevelt was an idiot. But he was smart, wasn’t he? Crafty, wasn’t he? He knew the common man believed as he did and he used that power, that popular appeal. My father lost money during the coal strike.”

Cushing came back in. “What are you people talking about?”

“Politics,” George told him. “Did you favor Roosevelt, sir?”

“Bully,” was all Cushing would say on that matter.

Saks had it all figured out.

Maybe they thought he was really stupid, but he saw what was going on. He knew what Fabrini and Menhaus were up to. Same way he’d known what Fabrini and Cook had been up to. Jesus, you try to help these guys and first chance they got, they started scheming behind your back. Now that was gratitude. And it was just too bad, just too damn bad when you thought about it, because Saks had been starting to think that maybe Fabrini wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe he could mold the guy, make him into a real man, but that wasn’t going to happen.

Minute you trusted a guy like Fabrini, you were finished. First time you turned your back on him he’d slit your throat.

All right then, all right, he thought as he laid there on the captain’s bunk. You guys want to play it this way, you want to play games with me? I’ll show you a couple fucking games you never even heard of. This is where you sonsofbitches learn what it’s all about.

Saks calmed himself.

No, he wasn’t going to kill them. At least not Menhaus or Crycek, but Fabrini was a different matter. That little prick had to be made an example of. He was the same rotten apple that had gotten Cook thinking funny and now he was turning Menhaus.

Saks didn’t know how he was going to do it, but it was going to be spectacular. Those who saw Fabrini’s end would never forget it. Not in this lifetime.

Rubbing the sores along his arms and chest, Saks began to plot.

One minute there was life and the next there was death.

You could guard against it and fight it at every turn with drugs and disinfectants and healing bandages, but you only beat it back into the shadows. And it was there, in that damp and sullen darkness, that death grew like a tumor, reached out and clutched, squeezed, became something huge and hungry and inevitable. Breathing toxins and fevers. Its cold fingers were iron once they had taken hold and no man could hope to pry them loose. You could try, but death only grabbed that much harder, recognizing its own and determined to take what belonged to it. And it would not stop until life had been uncorked and spilled to the floor and there was only darkness, a whispering darkness that pulled you down and down…

When Gosling died they wrapped him up in a waterproof tarp from the raft and had Chesbro quote some scripture over him. It was the best they could do. Elizabeth managed to keep her Aunt Else out of the entire affair and that was a good thing. Because George was taking it hard, was feeling Gosling’s death like his insides were filled with tacks and ground glass. Whichever way he turned, he hurt and hurt badly. And had Aunt Else laid into him about his negligence as captain of the ship, he would have shared some of that pain with her, he knew. Said things to her that would have waxed her lips shut forever.

They performed the threadbare service out on the deck by lantern light. It was a grim and disturbing affair, those lanterns flickering and shadows jumping and that fog pressing in like corpse-gas.

Then Gosling was put over the side in his weighted shroud. At first, he just languished on the weed and George thought, with a terrible sinking feeling inside him, that the body would never sink. It would lodge itself right there and make him look at it day by day. .. but then, slowly, it melted into the weed and the last remains of Paul Gosling, first mate of the Mara Corday, sank from view and something in George sank with them.