Read Online The Captive Condition by Kevin P. Keating - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kevin P. Keating
Ads: Link
dry-rotted planks of the deck groaned under their feet and threatened to split in two, and all through that summer they tried to restore the boat to its former glory, painting it an exotic crimson color, a festive shade of tropical fruit, pomegranate maybe or red jaina that had been crushed into a paste and slapped unevenly on the boards. Across the transom, in big black script, they stenciled the name
Be Knot Afraid
next to a crude drawing of a mooring rope tied in a bowline; they cut and beveled new boards to replace the ones ripped violently from the gunwale and cockpit; they swapped the old ropes in the snake pit for new cables scavenged from junkyards; they patched the torn jib and mainsail; they worked with such industry and purpose that they started to resemble biblical patriarchs, hunched and bearded and slightly daft, as if trying to stave off an insidious, dictatorial voice that boomed and echoed in their brains.
Life had treated the men unfairly, but now in the lunchroom at the Bloated Tick they began to formulate a plan. Like fugitives who against all conceivable odds have found a way to elude their pursuers, they turned to their supervisor and said, “We’ll cruise down the river and out to the lake. We’ll sit on the bow, catch walleye and yellow perch and smallmouth bass for supper, gut and clean the fish, toss the fillets in a batter of stale breadcrumbs, grill them over open flames and eat them with a side of sweet corn picked from the fields—wild onions, radishes, carrots. And then we’ll wash down this feast with jars of moonshine. Sure, and if we work fast enough we can have her seaworthy for her maiden voyage before the blizzards barricade us indoors this winter. Imagine it. Drifting out there on the open water, why, she’ll look just like a ghost ship.”
At this inspired piece of nonsense, the Gonk’s red-rimmed eyes suddenly widened in disbelief. As the longtime director of the Department of Plant Operations, he’d listened to hundreds of plots and schemes over the years, each one more outrageous than the last, and now at his nefarious crew of drunken maniacs he laughed and said, “I have this theory that you are all brothers bound not by blood but by the same malevolent, nameless spirit. I think you men came into the world all at once, not like a litter of adorable pups, no, more like a twenty-four-armed, twenty-four-legged roving centipede, a thing blind with rage and hunger, eager for the sustenance of a mother’s teat. But I know women, pride myself on my knowledge of them, and I contend that any sane mother, after she laid eyes on you twelve, would have put an end to your lives, pinched your noses, clamped a hand over your squalling mouths.”
“Well, that ain’t such a nice thing to say,” the men complained.
“Nope, it isn’t nice,” agreed the Gonk, “but neither are you. Not very nice at all.”
—
The ticks were used to tangling with their fellow thieves, stalkers, addicts, anarchists, arsonists, but of all the unsavory characters they’d encountered during their travels it was the Gonk whom they feared and respected most. A clever and forthright man who harbored deep suspicions of colleges large and small, the Gonk despised the professors, with their adherence to social hierarchies and their pathological compulsion for strict, administrative procedures, prompting him to describe the entire system of higher education as an unwieldy Sodom of bureaucracy.
“One big mind fuck,” as he succinctly put it.
A native of the valley and its dark forest, the Gonk was the last known descendant of a proud and ancient bloodline destined for extinction. He was also among the last of that great American generation of serious bone breakers—humble laborers who once toiled in the now shuttered mills and factories upriver, bruised and broken-boned brawlers knocking back beers in smoky saloons, slouched and slow-witted reapers of rotten luck staring blankly at the insubstantial
Be Knot Afraid
next to a crude drawing of a mooring rope tied in a bowline; they cut and beveled new boards to replace the ones ripped violently from the gunwale and cockpit; they swapped the old ropes in the snake pit for new cables scavenged from junkyards; they patched the torn jib and mainsail; they worked with such industry and purpose that they started to resemble biblical patriarchs, hunched and bearded and slightly daft, as if trying to stave off an insidious, dictatorial voice that boomed and echoed in their brains.
Life had treated the men unfairly, but now in the lunchroom at the Bloated Tick they began to formulate a plan. Like fugitives who against all conceivable odds have found a way to elude their pursuers, they turned to their supervisor and said, “We’ll cruise down the river and out to the lake. We’ll sit on the bow, catch walleye and yellow perch and smallmouth bass for supper, gut and clean the fish, toss the fillets in a batter of stale breadcrumbs, grill them over open flames and eat them with a side of sweet corn picked from the fields—wild onions, radishes, carrots. And then we’ll wash down this feast with jars of moonshine. Sure, and if we work fast enough we can have her seaworthy for her maiden voyage before the blizzards barricade us indoors this winter. Imagine it. Drifting out there on the open water, why, she’ll look just like a ghost ship.”
At this inspired piece of nonsense, the Gonk’s red-rimmed eyes suddenly widened in disbelief. As the longtime director of the Department of Plant Operations, he’d listened to hundreds of plots and schemes over the years, each one more outrageous than the last, and now at his nefarious crew of drunken maniacs he laughed and said, “I have this theory that you are all brothers bound not by blood but by the same malevolent, nameless spirit. I think you men came into the world all at once, not like a litter of adorable pups, no, more like a twenty-four-armed, twenty-four-legged roving centipede, a thing blind with rage and hunger, eager for the sustenance of a mother’s teat. But I know women, pride myself on my knowledge of them, and I contend that any sane mother, after she laid eyes on you twelve, would have put an end to your lives, pinched your noses, clamped a hand over your squalling mouths.”
“Well, that ain’t such a nice thing to say,” the men complained.
“Nope, it isn’t nice,” agreed the Gonk, “but neither are you. Not very nice at all.”
—
The ticks were used to tangling with their fellow thieves, stalkers, addicts, anarchists, arsonists, but of all the unsavory characters they’d encountered during their travels it was the Gonk whom they feared and respected most. A clever and forthright man who harbored deep suspicions of colleges large and small, the Gonk despised the professors, with their adherence to social hierarchies and their pathological compulsion for strict, administrative procedures, prompting him to describe the entire system of higher education as an unwieldy Sodom of bureaucracy.
“One big mind fuck,” as he succinctly put it.
A native of the valley and its dark forest, the Gonk was the last known descendant of a proud and ancient bloodline destined for extinction. He was also among the last of that great American generation of serious bone breakers—humble laborers who once toiled in the now shuttered mills and factories upriver, bruised and broken-boned brawlers knocking back beers in smoky saloons, slouched and slow-witted reapers of rotten luck staring blankly at the insubstantial
Similar Books
