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Isaiah Jones versus the Sea (A 21st Century Odyssey) Havana, Late January 2022. Havana, Late January 2022

Naomi Galatea Cabbala and Isaiah Leonardo Jones walked toward the warehouse at the end of the pier, where they were set to meet her employer, Dead Eye Polly, and his henchmen, the Sons of Sparta. The pair had their improvised weapons ready in case things went sideways, Naomi’s was stored in a canvas bag meant for extra sails while Isaiah carried he’s in his guitar case in his left hand, which concealed the magnetic accelerator electric-powered cannon—a mass driver, or rail gun, often misidentified as a Gauss gun, though it was, in fact, a linear rifle hybrid the lab techs had dubbed War Pig.

Both wore their hair in cornrows and were dressed to kill—Isaiah in a white Tang suit, the Chinese-style jacket with buttons down the front and a Mandarin collar with “frog” buttons. Beside him, Naomi, at 5’11”, was only an inch shorter than Penny. She had dug through the clothes Aeon and Penny left behind when they headed to San Diego for Aeon to start school, finding Penny’s red silk, black lace Dior Shanghai-style cheongsam dress.

They walked side by side down the dock towards the warehouse, with its corrugated steel walls and roof, into the lion’s den where Dead Eye Polly and his henchmen awaited them. The modified high-powered pneumatic gun was concealed in the duffel bag Naomi carried, and the rail gun was hidden inside the guitar case carried by Issaiah. Once, without thinking, his hand reaches up to caress the Saint Nicholoues medallion hanging from a leather cord around his neck.

As they got closer, something seemed off. Naomi noticed the guards were not in their usual positions in the rafters, nor was anyone looking at them as they approached the group of several dozen people, all of whom had their backs to the giant sliding metal doorway. The people were all kneeling, and a candle was lit, with a portrait of Caesar Milo on the table, turned into an improvised altar between the glass tubes holding the holy mother candles.

When Polly saw the two, his eye was red from weeping, but he was obviously overjoyed to see Naomi. The gargantuan 6’9″ tall, 413 pound, one-eyed negro albino embraced her. Polly stepped back and looked at the two.

“Naomi, I am happy to see you, my child. I was certain you had met a similar fate as my Milo,” the albino said in his lisping, adenoidal voice. It was the voice of an educated man, if not formally, then in countless hours of autodidactic study. Dead Eye Polly’s vocabulary slid in and out of that of an early 20th-century Southern aristocrat, with the affectation of Truman Capote and a third-world gangster. “I assume you are the man to whom I owe a debt of more than gratitude for rescuing my little ninja Naomi here. Thank you, Captain Jones. We are having a memorial for Milo. His brothers and sisters are saying their goodbyes.”

Naomi finally gathered her wits enough to ask, “So, you don’t blame me for his death and want revenge?”

Polly looked at the woman incredulously. “Why would I do something so foolish? The police reports and the news all said the same thing as my people on the island reported—he boarded the boat with a gun.” He looked at them both. “I sent mi Milo with you to learn how to do things using his head, not a gun. It was obvious he disobeyed your orders and got himself killed when the seasick passenger saw him board armed and grabbed his own handgun.

They hit the gas, which caused the stove to detonate, setting the cabin ablaze and sinking the ship. No one had reported seeing you or knew you were there other than my people. When you didn’t turn up dead or call, I assumed you had been shot too, and your body had simply drifted out to sea or perhaps washed ashore somewhere out of sight. I was just happy that you were alive when you called to report in this morning.”

Naomi smiled. “I want you to meet the man who saved my life. This is—”

Polly interrupted, “I know who he is. The youngest recipient of the Fields Medal, on track to win the Nobel for your work on electrohydrodynamic droplet deformation, electromagnetism, and gravity. I knew who you were before this whole viral video of you partying with the local yachties in Key West thing started last weekend. Thank you, Señor Jones. Please, let me feed you, thank you, and resupply your ship before you continue on your most noble journey.”

Isaiah and the albino shook hands. They were both very large, odd-looking black men.

“She needs to see a real doctor,” Isaiah said as they headed into the building.

“I will have her driven to the clinic immediately,” Polly said, with a nod of his head to one of his men, who helped her walk to the car.

“I will see you as soon as I get new stitches,” Naomi said from the car window. “Thank you, Isaiah, for everything.”

Polly and Isaiah headed to the warehouse.

“So, you came prepared to kill me, I see?” Polly asked unable to suppress his smile.

“Well yes, but only if you couldn’t be reasoned with.” Isaiah grinned like the goofy kid that he was. Polly looked into the 6′ 2″ green-eyed, black-skinned teen’s eyes and knew that he was not lying.

“Good. he retorted curtly. Naomi is at heart a good person with some bad habits. It is unfortunate that she likes to gamble, sometimes too much. So, I purchase her debts before someone dangerous comes after her.”

“I thought you wanted her to work for you?” Isaiah said. “Isn’t that why you paid off her debts?”

“Yes, but that is only partially true. I do want her to work with me, but I took on her debt to protect her as well as recruit her to teach Caesar, my Milo. I have used her services on occasion in the past when I wanted a new boat to sail, and she has never failed me or harmed a hair on anyone’s head in the process. Sometimes we want the best for our children, so much so, we can’t see the worst of them.”

Isaiah wrapped his arms around the big man and let him cry on his shoulder. For all of his wealth and power, when he truly needed a friend, he had no one. Isaiah had felt like that for the last ten years since his sister Emily died; he understood this man’s pain. The guards kept their distance and watched their boss cry in the arms of a stranger.

A few minutes later, after he regained his composure, they made their way to Polly’s car, and the armored SUV driver headed into the city of Havana. The gangster’s château was on the rocky cliffside overlooking the harbor, and his ship, a stolen 40-foot catamaran, was now anchored just offshore.

The servants brought drinks out to the cliffside patio overlooking the beach where the two men sat and talked sailing while waiting for Naomi to return from the hospital. Isaiah sipped his mojito and sat in the heavily padded chair; his dogo Argentina, Starbuck, now curled up at his feet, as the two men took a moment to stare out at the last day’s light, the sun being baptized by the sea.

Naomi arrived a few hours later to find Isaiah and Polly engaged in an excited discussion of the merits of sloops versus catamarans. The two black men, both sailors, were happy to have this conversation with each other as they drank, seated on the cliffside patio of the château overlooking the Caribbean Sea. Naomi watched the two men for a moment, mesmerized. She would have never thought the two of them would have a word to say to each other, and yet it was obvious from here that they had a real bromance going on. And something about this, for reasons she could not articulate, disturbed her to the core of her being.

-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.