Joey Cloudy online

Isaiah Jones vs the Sea (A 21st Century Odyssey: My Last Night in Havana*   

 March 15 2022, Middle of the Atlantic   

Longitude 15°31’47.9″N X Latitude 40°21’14.2″W2    

The Ides of March/The Devils You Deal With   

“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”  

 -Tyler Durden  

    The stupidest thing he could do would be to open that crate. Isaiah thought as the suns fire dipped below the winking western horizon warming his back with its last gasp of it rays casting long shadows over the kind-hearted waves that rocked the SS Exodus as she sailed east toward the rendezvous point to meet the ill named container ship: the Ides of March at the coordinates Dead Eye Polly had given him his last night in Havana.  

Isaiah stood at the helm, lost in thought as the ocean breeze tugged at his clothes the time approaching for his rendezvous with the ship nearing, it couldn’t be soon enough for him. He would be relieved to finally get the crate off the deck of his ship where it had been strapped down for the last three weeks since it was delivered by the albino’s people in Barbados. It had clawed at his mind like a mechanical Tell-Tale Heart that sat there relentlessly ticking rather than beating.

No matter where he was or what he did since he and Starbuck left Barbados it traveled into every cabin every task what ever was doing where ever he was on the ship his thoughts soon drifted back to the crate. It was easy not to think too much about what he had signed on for when he agreed to transport the package as Senor Ovejero’s mysterious cargo.

As he traveled through the islands doing his research by day and enjoying the company. Even though he had grown up sailing with his parents and neighbors his entire life he never gave any thought to the fact that he had not seen another black sailors on their boats in the Caribbean other than himself they behaved as if seeing the lanky black teen sailor was akin to seeing a unicorn or a sighting of the lockless monster or big foot.

The Caribbean Islands peoples all welcomed him each night he came ashore more to celebrate rather be alone at night with his own thoughts as the time grew nearer. His unwanted unwarranted infamy or fame of the viral video idiocy kept him distracted for the last few months before he picked up the crated enigma in Barbados. Everyday since without the distractions of the sex, drugs, and night life of the islands he could think of nothing else. He missed the company of the Caribbean islands locals who wished only to share their hospitality with the quirky young sailor.

He lay in his rack each night staring up through the deck with imaginary x-ray vision of the superman clearly seeing the crates contents as easily as the big blue schoolboy. The true horror of it was was he came to understood when he put his ego aside that whatever was about to happen aboard that ship in truth had nothing to do with him. If the two men had not met this death ship would be nothing more than another tragic anonymous atrocity in a world over run with little apocalypses every day he could pretend to care about the lives of these strangers on board now, but he knew that the reality was he simply did not.

As a high functioning autistic his attempts to replicate human empathy sincerely in this case did not exist in his mind. He learned to fake a mask of empathy and express the cliche riddled lexicon of compassion the way a whore fakes an orgasm it was a matter of survival he felt no remorse for not giving a damned about the conversations of small and average minds. It made him feel dirty to lessen himself in this manor but it was necessary in order to navigate in this world.

It was all a series of calculations on the age, race, gender, and nationality of the crew of the ship. He knew how many were crew and the dimensions of the megaship he could tell you all of the data concerning the schematics displacement, speed, and capacity of the massive ship. He could give you pages of data on the life expectancy of the people who sailed these particular types of vessels but what he couldn’t give you was a single genuine emotion about the lives of those about to die in the so called accident.

It would be of no more significance to him than any other blip he would completely ignore in his news feed.  Impotent acts of heroism would accomplish nothing here. This wasn’t Hollywood, he was no hero. This was a necessary evil a business transaction. It was the Ides of March he sailed towards a hungry ghost ship whose spirit didn’t not know that it was already dead. 

He knew Polly didn’t want him dead but that didn’t mean that the people who sealed the crate didn’t have it booby trapped just in case it fell into the wrong hands. These people were not amateurs; they were the gangsters only known to other gangsters they were the real world boogie men and Dead Eye Polly was their Boogie Man. It was the fact that Polly had no records in any database after he fled foster care at age six that kept him baffled as to who could do such a thing.

Before meeting Polly after Naomi told him of her gambling debt being picked up by the gangster, he decided to do a bit of research on the man before they met him in Havana. There was not a single word about him or anyone fitting his rather distinct description in the entire alphabet soup of investigative agencies anywhere on the planet. That fact was as terrifying in its implications as the tarp covered crate strapped to his ships deck. 

  In the darkness in the middle of the Atlantic, he spotted the 1200 foot long cargo ship, like him also running dark. The humongous freighter was barely small enough to pass through the Panama Canal, not the largest vessel made they were too big to go through the narrow old locks of Panama so they stayed in Asia and Africa, but still the ship was gargantuan next to his 44-foot sloop.  

The Ides of March loomed ahead, a leviathan illuminated gently silhouetted against the expanse of nearly full moon over the ink black sea of the dark Atlantic sky. The large sealed wooden crate, strapped to the Exodus deck under the heavy cerulean tarp, had been there for three weeks since he set sail from Barbados, heading toward Cape Verde, a cluster of islands 100 miles off the west coast of Africa.   

  Isaiah had a lot a time to think since he agreed to deliver Senor Polly’s package, he had contemplated simply shoving the damned thing overboard and reporting it lost at sea to the Cuban mafia lord but he knew that would change nothing, the fate of those on board the ship not in his employee was sealed long before he stumbled into dead eye Polly’s sights.  

Yet he could not help but wonder what the crate actually contained; he repeatedly decided it would be wisest to resist the urge to sneak a peek at what was inside the crate. It may as well have been Pandoras Box; as if he hadn’t opened it already, the moment he decided to help Naomi. Besides, if it contained what he suspected, an estimated 800 pounds of C-4 by his calculations according to the size of the crate, and the way the Exodus now sat lower in the water, then it was safer not to know.  

 Polly’s men in Barbados had discreetly loaded the crate onto the Exodus at the last minute, just before Isaiah left the tiny island nation and set sail for Africa. The viral video media buzz around his ship and his rather academic in nature voyage puzzled him—why would anyone other than the patrons who provided the funding for his researches grant care about his journey?

No one other than a handful of Pan-African history professors and a few sentimental old revolutionaries, now in their 80s and 90s, scattered in the black ghettos across America should even take note of his reverse voyage documenting the remnants of the Middle passage? So few of the old warriors were still alive; some were still in cells: Americas secret political Prisoners since the 1960s and 1970s, while others remained in exile, with bounties still on their heads from the US State Department. 

The reporter in Puerto Rico had been very good, he didn’t know anything about her other than it was obvious more than their politics aligned.  After his arrival in the island nation a few weeks after leaving Cuba there were only a half a dozen or so people at the marina when he docked his sloop that morning just an hour after sunrise. Again, by the time he and Starbuck returned to the ship with their supplies of fresh fruits and vegetables there were several hundred strangers gathered at the docks near his ship. The group of gawkers mostly locals were polite enough, many using their phones to record the young negro captain with the ever watchful large white dogo Argentina with the black spot around her left eye that never seemed to leave his side.  

  The three locals waiting nearest the Exodus ask if they could interview him about his voyage. Isaiah didn’t mind, if they wanted to know his thoughts on the history of the diaspora and its continued effects of its legacy. Most days he preferred to be left alone to his work, today he didn’t mind talking over brunch. Bianca, Phillipe, and Emilio, all followed him and Starbuck onto the deck of the sloop. They asked their questions as he prepared their food. He answered while he cooked their noon day meal; bruschetta covered with bottarga served with a caprese salad and several bottles of Soave. When Bianca and Phillipe awoke the following morning both thanked him for the interview before they climbed out his bed, dressed, and left as he finished his morning Wing Chun régime on the Mù Rén Zhuāng / Chinese wooden man.    

Isaiah glanced at the crate again, secured beneath the sapphire hued tarp. He had paced off its dimensions, length, and width; from its size and shape, it could easily hold enough plastique explosives to sink a cargo ship. Granted he had no formal expertise or professional training with explosives; but like most engineers and a physicist he had made his fair share of things that go Ka-Boom for fun; this was not rocket science after all. Polly’s men would be most likely be professionals, prior military being the best place to get this sort of training and once you have that skill set there are not a lot of options for you in the private sector. 

They would need to use shaped charges on the diesel fuel tanks and then blow the the hull, with the right placement on the hulls support superstructure it would crack the massive ship open like an egg. Isaiah decided it was best not to dwell on the fate of the ship’s crew. They were dead whether he made this delivery or someone else. He knew Polly had people in his organization to do this sort of thing. Polly was intrigued by the fact that he didn’t turn Naomi over to the police in the Bahamas when he found her unconscious with a gunshot wound, adrift in her skiff, but a man like Dead Eye Polly Ovejero did not get into his position by being trusting.   

He needed to know if Isaiah was willing to get his hands dirty. Unknown to the albino mobster; Isaiah had his own plans once her reach Ghana, and a man like Dead Eye Polly would be a useful tool to have owe you a favor in the days to come.   

  As he approached the dark cargo ship in the it was easy to spot the ship running with no lights with the moon almost full tonight, a signal flashed from its deck. A flashlight beam, used a Morse code, strobed in the night. He motored the Exodus parallel to the stationary ship beneath the spot where the man on the deck 50 feet above him stood.  

Isaiah secured a line to the crate’s harness as instructed, and the crate was hoisted up by what he assumed was a davit on the freighter’s deck. He never saw the men on board, but he could hear them calling down to him in the darkness. They shined their spot lights on his sloop, blinding him whenever he tried to look up.   

“Attach the line to the crate!” a voice with a heavy Cantonese accent shouted down. Isaiah could tell the speaker was a native of Hong Kong. After securing the cables, he shouted back in stilted Cantonese,

“Hǎo ba, lā qǐlái. Xiànlù yǐ gùdìng./Okay, haul it up. The line is secured.”   

The spotlights continued to blaze in his eyes as he watched the crate rise up into the darkness. There was the sound of the laughter of several voices coming from the darkness behind the spotlights shining on his ship. 

“Qióngsī chuánzhǎng nǐ de yuèyǔ shuō dé hěn hǎo./Your Cantonese is very good Captain Jones.” One of the men shouted down to him. They must have recognized him from the damned viral video of the Key West Party Mara and Beatrix posted back in January, it made no sence he figured it would blow over soon enough.    

As soon as the crate was clear, Isaiah motored the sloop away from the vessel headed due east at full speed. He had turned off all of his location equipment since leaving Barbados, relying solely on analog tools to navigate. The compass, sextant and chronometer were that all he needed. With his AIS transmitter turned off he could see other ships but they could not see him until he was in range of thier radar. He was well out of the major shipping lanes and he intended to put as much distance between himself and the Ides of March possible.   

He guess-estimated it would take several hours to place the charges. He knew it would take time for the men to set and prime the charges throughout the enormous vessel— they might even remote detonate once they were safely aboard their escape vessel, rather than relying on a set of chained timers.

Less than an hour later, he heard the massive explosion. Glancing back, he saw the tangerine and amber glow of the enormous cargo ships silhouette aflame on the distant horizon, less than a mile away. He pulled the twin levers all the way down as he opened up her engines full throttle. He kept the engines running at top speed heading east until dawn.   

Now, the gangster trusted him, he had Dead Eye Polly in his debt. In the days to come Isaiah intuited that men like the albino would prove to be useful to him.  Isaiah rested his hand on the pup’s head and sailed east into the morning light.

[-about the author JD Cloudy’s poetry has disappeared in the literary journals; Fatfizz, Mad Swirl, Texas Beat Anthology, Danse Macabre, Du Jour, and Death List Five. He has won no literary awards, entered no slam competitions, and never completed college. He lives to write in Dallas, Tx.]