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Isaiah Jones vs the Sea (A 21st Century Odyssey)

California Dreaming reprised pt 1 of 2

Long Beach Marina, California / aboard the SS Ariella

— August 24th, 2029

‘Ring of Fire

“Love is a burning thing

And it makes a fiery ring

Bound by wild desire

I fell into a ring of fire”

-Johnny Cash

Ariella had lived most of her life on this old boat, an aged catamaran, already a decade old when she first met her beloved Hector 25 years ago. Back then, she was still the SS Elenore, the moniker a holdover from the ghost of his first wife. Long dead by the time they first met but never forgotten. Hector was still in mourning 7 years after her passing. A 15-year-old Ariella was jealous of his deep love of his late wife.

On board the SS Ariella, Isaiah, Aeon, Penny, and Sybil were all lounging around the deck of his grandfather Hector Leonardo Jones and his wife Ariella’s catamaran while the ship was moored in the marina in Long Beach. They were spending the night here while Isaiah’s sloop, the SS Exodus, was in LA’s Marina Del Rey for her first haul-out full refit and rebuild. In the seven years he had sailed her around the globe three times, this was the Exodus’s first total overhaul and refit.

Everything that wasn’t the hull or the deck was coming out of the ship—every wire, every inch of plumbing. It was all being replaced. The aging computer that had only been upgraded once was also being replaced, along with the keel-mounted rotating mast of the 44-foot titanium-hulled sloop.

Isiah didn’t like being back in the States. After they rested for a few days here, they would make their way south to Penelope’s old friends in Mexico. Her parents had finally closed the deal and purchased Hemisphere, the world’s largest sailing catamaran. She was anchored off the coast of Puerto Vallarta, waiting for them to board before setting sail. Pen had grown up around superyachts and the kind of people that owned them.

Isaiah and Aeon were like his grandfather Hector, a different breed: old-school, working-class sailors. Even now, with the wealth of a nation at his disposal, Izzy still sailed around the world in his 44-foot sloop. Until a few months ago, when he docked in Galveston to pick up Aeon, Penelope, and their dog Mau Mau, a few weeks later, Sybil, he had done so alone. Now, with his fiancee and old friends for company, he seemed happy to be around people for the first time in a very long time.

The old man was in good spirits, and everyone knew a big part of Hector’s happiness and good health was his new young wife, Ariella, from Venezuela. She and Hector married seven years after his wife Elenore died of cancer only one year after he retired from the Marine Corps.

Hector met Ariella when she was in the country illegally after sailing to the States with Kaleb Astor, a 27-year-old white boy from East Coast old money, in a sailboat they built in Caracas that was basically made from Bazooka/bricks of pure uncut cocaine.

Kaleb liked her because she was good with boats. He kept her in his bed for the next 3 years, and that kept her off the streets turning tricks with foreign travelers, mostly old white men, mostly Americans, and mostly Europeans, who routinely traveled to poor 3rd world countries looking for prepubescent girls and boys like her to make them feel like men. Kaleb was smart, educated Ivy League, but he did a lot of coke, so he, like all white people, thought he was smarter than everyone darker than a bowl of milk before he was busted by the DEA while she waited alone in their hotel room for his return.

The feds were after the cartel he was selling the drugs to and had no idea who Kaleb was until he stumbled into the middle of their sting. Ariella was 15 years old and had lived most of her life on the streets of Venezuela. She was 9 when she met Norman Barnes, the 53-year-old British expiate, after her mother sold her to him for her weight in dope. After that, she lived and worked for 2 years before he gifted her to Kaleb right after her period started when she was 11.

Kaleb put her to work laying fiberglass, sealing the bazooka (uncut cocaine bricks) into the fiberglass hull of the SS Circe, his 48-foot cutter they built then sailed to the states 3 years later. Kaleb hid her in a cubby beneath the chain locker when they sailed through the Panama Canal since she had no paperwork, passport, or identification of any kind and was obviously under the age of consent in most countries. Ariella didn’t hate him as much as the others; at least he didn’t beat her or loan her to his coked-up friends to use for their twisted pleasures the way Captain Barnes had done. And he wasn’t as old and fat as the other old white men she had to satisfy before they would give her food or money enough for a few meals.

In the hotel room, she saw the news of Kaleb’s arrest on the hotel room’s TV. Fortunately, he’d left the keycard to their hotel room with her, and no one else knew she was with him. Ariella was a ghost. There was no way and no reason to return to her old life in Venezuela, so she made her way to the Big Sur marina, hoping to find some work helping some of the skippers clean and maintain their boats. Ariella was an expert at fiberglass repair work and not a bad budding diesel mechanic to boot.

Hector saw the scrawny, ebony-haired Latin American girl hanging around, figuring she was just another dock lizard looking to suck some old sailor’s cock for dope money like the other youngsters that occasionally showed up at the docks. He was still alone and in mourning seven years after his wife Elenore died, and he had no interest in her—even if she were of legal age, which she clearly was not—so he ignored the jailbait and continued cleaning his boat’s hull while it was hauled out.

It was backbreaking work grinding at his age, though he was in good shape for a man of any age. When the kid did something he never expected—she asked in broken English, “I do the work.” That had never happened before in his entire life. No dope fiend teen whore said a thing like that. He handed the kid a scraper and the power sander and watched her go to work. He was about to explain to her how to use the rotary sander, but she had already pulled her mask, a black bandana up high, covered her hair with her grey hoodie, and donned a pair of wraparound shades, expertly sanding the debris away with practiced ease. It was obvious this kid knew her way around a boat. He grabbed a couple of cans of soda and passed one to Ariella.

“Gracias, Señor,” she said, taking a break just long enough to take a few sips before carefully covering her drink with a black-and-white paisley bandana and placing it where she could keep an eye on it before getting back to work.

It is nearly impossible to impress a marine with hard work, the corps almost having a fetish about cleaning and polishing everything. Hector, at heart, was still a marine even in retirement, and he was impressed. He ordered pizza for lunch neither one of them were much on small talk he smiled as she peeled the anchovies off of her slice and tossed them to Speedy one of the friendlier Harbor Seals that liked to sun himself on the pier and hung around the docks, and at the end of the day she left, with a full belly and cash for a day’s work. When he woke up at dawn, she was back looking for more work. It didn’t take long for Hector to realize that whatever the kid was she was no junkie. Ariella was smart and tough. She liked the old negro sailor; he was genuinely kind and never looked at her like she was a piece of meat or treated her like anything other than a worker while they primed the hull.

A week later, when the hotel kicked her out, she had no ID and was obviously a minor. Ariella was prepared to do the unspeakable again, as she had been forced to while growing up on the streets of Venezuela. But it never came to that, because when she told the old Black man she couldn’t rent a room, Hector let the kid crash in one of the spare quarters on the big empty boat, a 50-foot catamaran the SS Elenore now back in the water. He never treated her like anything but a goofy kid that lived with him and his dogs, Daisy and Mavis—two mastiffs on a boat so large it was big enough that they may as well have been living on separate boats.

Ariella liked Hector. Over time, she eventually told him about her life in Santiago de León de Caracas, Venezuela, and how she came to America. She could see by the look in his eyes that he would have killed Kaleb and Capt. Barnes. She was wise enough to never ask what he did in the Marines, and he never talked about his life before he retired. Hector’s Spanish was fine; she could tell by his accent and vocabulary that he also spoke Portuguese, and he had spent quite some time in Brazil. Still, the old Marine insisted she learn to read and write English in order to get around safely.

Hector schooled her daily after work, giving her a book a week to read and write a report on in English. He taught her math disguised as navigation and map reading lessons. He immersed her in the language, going so far as pretending not to understand her when she spoke to him in Spanish until she switched to English, which infuriated the girl. It worked, and soon, Ariella was cussing like a Marine who read too much Nabokov, who also spoke English as a second language.

She thought there was something tragic and beautiful about the way he mourned his late wife for all of those years alone on his boat, never looking at another woman, wearing his wedding band, and keeping up all of her photographs. The ship was a floating mausoleum for his dead love, the Taj Mahal of the sea. There was a part of her that was jealous of the ghost. Ariella wanted someone to love her the way he loved his Elenore.

Over the years, they kept her hidden away from the authorities, and three years later, when she was 18, they got married. That handled her paperwork and citizenship problems. Isaiah’s dad, Kennedy never got over being mad at his father after his mother’s death. It was irrational, but he was angry at his father’s new wife. It wasn’t the fact that Ariella was 10 years younger than he was, but just the fact that he was with any other woman besides his momma never sat right with him. Kennedy, like his father, loved a ghost.

Aeon lived with Hector and Ariella while she was attending the University of San Diego. He and Ariella sailed down the coast from Big Sur and moored their boat in San Diego’s Sun Harbor marina nearest the school where they lived until she graduated two years later. Ariella, as usual, made friends the first day with one of the harbor seals, a friendly, sometimes very loud fellow named Mister Bill, who loved to sun himself on the docks. Aeon and Penny were dating on and off, and consequently, even when they weren’t dating, they were still best friends, so Penelope lived with them for two years also. No one other than Penny and Aeon knew Sybil wasn’t human. The dogs liked her, so Hector and Ariella accepted the black girl with bubblegum pink Bantu knots and the same bright green-eyes as Isaiah as one more of their eccentric grandson’s friends. Never mentioning Sybil’s uncanny family resemblance to Isaiah.

The ship looked the same as it did the day Elenore died only one year after his retirement from the Marine Corps. In time, she came to realize he blamed himself for her death. The cancer that killed her was a result of her living in the base housing at Camp Le June, which had contaminated water discovered after a class action lawsuit. She bathed, drank, and swam in the poisoned water while he was safely deployed in a warzone on the other side of the globe. They had planned to live on anchor and sail around the world together as soon as he retired after serving 20 years. For the last seven years, he had lived alone on the ship, drinking himself to death. It was a slow suicide.

Now, the ship, re-christened the SS Ariella after they married 25 years ago, she was no longer jealous of the ghost. As Hector told their story, Ariella wrapped her arms around him. She was still a lean, elegant woman with a long, handsome face, wide mouth, and full lips—not unusual in that part of the world. Her hair was rail-straight and streaked silver with age and the sun. She was barefoot as usual, one of the dogs licking her pedicured, clear-coated toes, as she listened carefully with the others, learning something new about her husband along with the grandchildren.

Hector wasn’t drunk, but it was after sunset, and while he wasn’t three sheets to the wind yet, he was far from sober as he spoke. As the ship rocked gently on the waves of the rising tide. The old Black man leaned back into the thick ivory cushions of the bench where he lounged, dressed in khaki cargo shorts and a teal and ivory striped bowling shirt, his white hair in immaculate cornrows, his skin as Black as Isaiah’s—an older version of him with brown eyes. A glass of bourbon in his hand.

Isaiah Jones vs the Sea (A 21st Century Odyssey)

California Dreaming reprised pt 2 of 2

Long Beach Marina, California / aboard the SS Ariella

— August 24th, 2029 pt 2 of 2

Ariella kissed her husband gently on his forehead, saying goodbye before she led the women, Aeon, Penelope, and Sybil, down the companionway into the stateroom for drinks in the comfort of the air-conditioned cabin so the men could talk amongst themselves. Isaiah needed to talk to another man who was a veteran, someone like himself who had seen combat, and she knew this was a conversation they needed to have alone with other men.

Isaiah Leonardo Jones vs the Sea (A 21st Century Odyssey) ] Isaiah Leonardo Jones vs the Sea (A 21st Century Odyssey)

California Dreamin’ reprised, pt 2

Long Beach Marina, California — August 24th, 2029

Ariella led her grandson’s fiancée and her friends below deck where she opened a bottle of Chianti and filled everyone’s glasses enjoying the company of these three extraordinary young women. She was not Isaiah’s biological grandmother, of course; she was a decade younger than his father, but she doated on the boy whenever he visited as if she were his actual grandmother. He, like his grandfather, loved having his hair braided. She made a point to oil his scalp and braid his hair as soon as she had time whenever he visited, and it helped him bond with her in a way she and his father, Kennedy, never had.

The girl Sybil was a mystery; she was introduced as the cousin of one of Izzy’s 10 wives in Africa, but she looked more like his sister than the random cousin of one of his wives. She wondered if his father, Kennedy impregnated two green-eyed white women at the same time. The dark-skinned, green-eyed girl with her bubblegum pink Bantu knots fascinated her.

Penelope Stockard Bedowitz, the 6 ft tall punk rocker, was more than just the token white girl. She was Isaiah’s lawyer, representing his corporate holdings in the US. As well as unanimously winning his civil foreclosure case, having his name removed from the State Dept’s terrorist list, and the record 25 million dollar bounty on him if captured alive revoked by the USSC. She and Aeon Isaiah’s Pinoy/Dominican fiancée had lived with them while Aeon attended school in San Diego 7 years ago. Tonight, Ariella wore a light cotton azure and titanium white long flowing kaftan, her husband’s favorite, as she served their guest. She loved entertaining.

“I missed you girls,” she said, filling their glasses. “Penny, you were magnificent last month on MSNBC when they interviewed you. You had Ari eating out of the palm of your hand. Ah, and that Alice Walker quote from her review of Motherland, in the New York Times: “Motherland speaks to secret hopes and dreams buried deep in the hearts and souls of black folk everywhere.” -AW that was a brilliant comeback to his black Zionist accusation, I have never seen anyone leave that man speechless.

“Thank you,” the lanky Californian replied smiling.

“Since you two little scamps left, it’s just been me and my babies,” she said, looking at the two mastiffs, Bella and Donna. The diminutive green-eyed African girl, only 5 foot 5, Sybil sat on the deck between the two huge dogs petting the hounds, obviously fascinated with the gigantic beasts.

“You ladies all handled yourselves quite well in that riot at the port of Kingston Jamacia.” Ariella looked at Aeon. “We watched the videos online. That was quick thinking firing the flare gun into the drunken mob to disperse them.”

“Thank you, Aeon replied, but I didn’t think, I just knew I had to do something before that mob ripped us apart.”

“And Penny, you were magnificent.”

Penelope blushed.

“All state junior female heavyweight MMA championship all four years of high school,” she replied with a grin.

Aeon lived with Hector and Ariella while she was attending the University of San Diego. He and Ariella sailed down the coast from Big Sur and moored their boat in the marina nearest the school where they lived until she graduated. Aeon and Penny were dating on and off, and consequently, even when they weren’t dating, they were still best friends, so Penelope lived with them for two years also.

No one here other than Izzy, Penny, and Aeon knew Sybil wasn’t human. The dogs liked her, so Hector and Ariella accepted the black girl with bubblegum pink Bantu knots and the same bright green eyes as Isaiah as just one more of their eccentric grandson’s friends. Never mentioning Sybil’s uncanny family resemblance to Isaiah.

Now in her early 40s, Ariella had lived on the boat with her old man for the last 25 years. She was no longer jealous of the ghost. Hector told their story as Ariella wrapped her arms around him. She was still a lean, elegant woman with large hazel-colored eyes, a long, handsome face, a wide mouth, and full lips—not unusual in that part of the world. Her hair was rail-straight turned silver with age and the sun. She was barefoot as usual, one of the dogs licking her pedicured, clear-coated toes, as she listened carefully with the others, learning something new about her husband along with the grandchildren.

Hector wasn’t drunk, but it was after sunset, and while he wasn’t three sheets to the wind yet, he was far from sober as he spoke. The old Black man leaned back into the thick ivory cushions of the bench where he lounged, dressed in khaki cargo shorts and a teal and ivory striped bowling shirt, his white hair in immaculate cornrows, his skin as Black as Isaiah’s—an older version of him with brown eyes.

“I’m sorry you had to sleep with some old man to get your green card,” Penny said sincerely.

Ariella put a hand over her mouth demurely to cover her lips as she began to laugh in Penelope’s face. She looked at Aeon and asked, “Is she really this white?” Aeon shrugged and smiled knowingly.

“Bless your heart. Ariella said with a pitying smile as she set Penelope straight. “First, during the three years I lived on this boat with my Hector before we wed, I had many suitors. I rebuked them all. I did not have to marry my beloved Hector. There were many men and a few women, some quite wealthy, who propositioned or proposed to me offering immense sums of cash in exchange for my hand in marriage. Others simply wanted to bed me for a weekend. I turned them all down and sent them away.

“My dear child, if it was up to Isaiah’s grandfather, I would still be sleeping in the forward cabin alone. It took me three years and every trick in the book to get that man into bed. To stop seeing me as the 15-year-old child he met three years before and see the grown woman that he married. I didn’t need him to get a green card; any of the others would have done that. I married my Hector for love. Ariella smiled demurely.

Do you know that even on the night we married, after dinner, he said good night as usual and went to his cabin, thinking I was going to go to mine alone? But I had had enough of this cat-and-mouse game, so I told my Hector that I was a good Catholic and a terrible liar and that if we did not consummate the marriage, it would be a sin. And if immigration asked, I would be deported. I have not slept alone since.” A Cheshire smile spread across her face.

“Every morning, every night, and some afternoons, I drain his balls,” she said with a giggle. “The truth is I am a bad Catholic and an excellent liar.”

Penny, Aeon, and Sybil all burst out laughing.

“Girls gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. That old man is the closest thing we have to a Paladin in this world. I would wear my tiniest purple Pokka dot bikini while cleaning the hull, and the next day, he would buy me a wetsuit—the short half ones like the surfers wear. I would say it was too hot, and he would buy me a kaftan to cover up with after I climbed out of the water,” she giggled.

“Finally, he asked that I please cover up before one of the guys said something stupid, and we had to give up our slip to go dump a body. I wore the kaftan after that. It can take years to get a good slip here.”

“You seduced Hector?” Penelope asked incredulously.

“I had to! He is very shy around pretty girls and gets as nervous as a schoolboy. Do not let all of that Master Gunnery Sergeant United States Marine Corps cacca fool you; my Hector is an old softy, a real sweetheart of a man, as gentle as a kitty cat. You see the same traits in his grandson.”

Aeon agreed. “That is true; Isaiah is very sweet, but it can be frustrating at times. They do not take hints.”

“Nope. Not at all. You practically have to paint a runway on the sheets and tape Christmas lights to your thighs before they catch the hint: ‘This is for you, Papi.’”

The four women all roared with laughter as they sat in the stateroom chatting.

“For three years, nobody touched mi cookie but me. I was starting to get man hands,” Ariella said with her softened Venezuelan accent. “So, no, Penelope, please never feel sorry for me or think that my beloved Hector ever took advantage of me. The truth is I was in love with him the first day, and I had to wear him down. It took three long years. And it was worth it.”

“Mi amour, he is hung like a—” she tilted back her head and neighed, whinnying like a horse.

That was it; they were all laughing till they cried.

“God has blessed the men of the Jones family,” Ariella said between guffaws.

“And the women who love them,” Aeon added as they raised their glasses and drank to love.

“Now tell me mi amiga, how long have you two been in love? Ariella asked, looking directly at Penny and Sybil.

“How did you know?” Penelope gulped. Ariella’s laughter rang out through the cabin. You look at her the same way you used to look at Aeon when I first met you. And let’s be honest, it’s starting to look like you have a type. 5 foot 5, maybe 5 foot 6. dark-skinned black girls with huge tracks of land. Aeon did a spit take.

“We went on our first date on my birthday, Sybil confessed. May 10th.” Ariella dropped her wineglass, that was Isaiah’s birthday. The plastic wine glass didn’t break, but it did spill its contents. Aeon fetched a towel from the galley and cleaned up the mess.

Oh, for fucks sake, just tell her the truth. I don’t like keeping secrets from her; it feels like lying. Besides, she’s family. She deserves to know the truth. Penny looked at Ariella then at Sybil. ” It’s ok, bae. Show her.”

“But I promised Izzy I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“I swear he will be okay with this.” Aeon chimed in. “It’s ok, I know my fiancée he would approve.” Sybil stared at Ariella, looking directly into Ariella’s eyes as she spoke, changing her eyes colors from green to blue, to hazel, to violet, to black. I am not human. She shifted her eyes to goat eyes, then serpent eyes. Then back to human green. “I am what you would call a cyborg for lack of a better term. My brain is organic, but everything else was made in a lab in Japan. Isaiah’s AI MOTHER created me in cyberspace, digitally replicating his dead sister Emily’s psyche. It’s all very complicated, but my mind is over written on the organic brain of a dead Japanese girl.”

“So, you are the reason he flew to Japan after he left Mexico before returning to meet you two ladies in Cuba?” Ariella seemed more comfortable with the answer than they expected. “Thank God. I thought Kennedy had cheated on Helena and you were his bastard.” They all laughed at her priorities.

“I come from a very conservative culture; these sorts of things trouble us Catholics more than they should. Ariella exhaled a sigh of relief. “That explains the flex in the gang plank. When you came on board, you must weigh twice what a human woman your size would.”

“Well, Sybil confessed with a grin, it’s actually more like 3 times the weight of an average Japanese girl my size. 314 pounds.”

“This makes me so happy!” Ariella exclaimed. “The thought of Kennedy cheating on Helena while she was pregnant was really starting to bother me,” Ariella confessed.

“We need drinks stronger than wine. You have no idea what a relief this is.” She hugged Sybil and Penny, then headed to the bar. How did you date before you left Japan?”

“I was still trapped in the net without a body, so I was in her phone for the date.

Aeon chimed in. “I have to tell somebody. It was the most romantic thing I have ever seen in my life. They were on the hotel’s cedar deck overlooking the beach. Penny had a slice of chocolate cake with a single candle burning in it. She sang happy birthday to her and then told her to blow out the candle. After they blew out the candle together. ‘Ring of Fire’ started playing, and I was in tears.” The three girls looked up, and Ariella was crying.

With her hand over her heart, she swore to them, “You two will be just fine. Alexa play ‘Ring of Fire.”

the computerized digital yet female voice announced over the ship’s speakers “’Ring of Fire’ by Johnny Cash.” Ariella mixed their drinks as the music played. The girls all rose to their bare feet and formed the ancient circle as they danced and they sang.

“The taste of love is sweet

When hearts like ours meet

I fell for you like a child

Oh, but the fire went wild

[Chorus]

I fell into a burning ring of fire

I went down, down, down

And the flames went higher

And it burns, burns, burns

The ring of fire

The ring of fire

I fell into a burning ring of fire

I went down, down, down

And the flames went higher

And it burns, burns, burns

The ring of fire

The ring of fire”

-Johnny Cash/Ring of Fire

[-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.]