Captain of Polliwogs, Part 1

by Brandon D. Christopher

-----

In this first part of this Being 13 nautical adventure, Brandon hunts sperm-shaped creatures and commissions a drop-kicking sailing vessel.

-----

The rains had continued for close to three weeks before there was any type of let-up. In Los Angeles, winter wasn’t really a season or a climatic shift in the calendar year, “winter” was a word people used to describe the couple of months surrounding Christmas – people had to tell you it was winter for you to really know. The temperature remained about the same all year round; if you didn’t have a calendar nearby, or a dad that loved announcing foreign holidays and first days of new seasons, it would be hard to tell Spring from Fall, or Fall from Winter. But this incessant raining day and night – and weekends! – it was just too much for someone to handle, pretend-winter or not.

The dark gray clouds turned to light gray clouds, and the rain drew back to a gentle trickle, so I threw on my satin Members Only jacket, tucked my BB pistol into the back of my pants and headed outside before my mom had a chance to tell me, “It’s always quietest in the eye of a storm.”

Willie had found something in the alley so wonderful, he had contacted me and asked to meet him “at my quickest convenience” when I got home from school. He had relayed this message to meet me by taping a piece of paper to the screen door of my house, because he didn’t want to wait that extra 25 minutes for me to get home to tell me in person. I followed his crudely written map up two blocks and to the right, to where this particular section of the alley was supposed to be. It was difficult judging distances on this map since abandoned piles of dog turds and empty cigarette packs were reference points.

The alley had been a good source of entertainment for Willie and me since discovering it a few months ago: Its dilapidated warehouse rears, dumpster bins consistently full of something exciting, and third-world charm always held worthwhile activities for a kid after school. The narrow road down its center was the black hole of all things unwanted –old golf clubs, cats, ripped suitcases, old sofas, rolls of carpet – which, in turn, prevented most cars from being able to drive through it. It was an untamed land which renewed its own treasures weekly.

According to the map I was getting close to where I should be. There was indeed a dead cat with a cigarette butt in its mouth to my right, just like the wrinkled piece of paper in my hands predicted. That was the only real indicator on the map – the rest were just crayon-drawn squiggles and squares beside a dotted black line.

I arrived at the corner of Sancola Ave. and the alley, and looked around for any indication of Willie or his find. Nothing stood out from the ordinary: It was still an abandoned old alley, only frequented at night by people handjobbing themselves in their cars as they left the adult bookstore a block away, or maybe some of those teenagers that wore the AC/DC shirts.

I saw two big dumpster bins filled to their brims with foul, dirty water and a couple of run-down buildings behind some chain-linked fences. Nothing. I wondered if Willie had set me up; set me up to take the fall on something; set me up to take the wrap on some unforgivable act he had been concocting all along. He was no altar boy; he wasn’t Catholic! Willie went to a public school! How could he be trusted? Maybe he was at my house right now raping my mother or going through my Dungeons & Dragons magician’s portfolio. My precious spells and character attributes were unsafe, unguarded! Willie had set me up; he was at my house right now raping my mother while reading—

“Over here!” A distant shout came from the alley just before a waving arm was seen.

With my palm rubbing the butt of my still-concealed pistol I cautiously walked through the alley toward him. I passed between the two dumpster bins to come face-to-face with a 10-foot-high chain-linked fence. But behind this magnificent fence lay a fantastic body of murky water, enclosed in a squared hole in the ground some 40 feet wide by 30 feet long. God only knew how deep.

I saw Willie sitting Indian-style on a large steel beam that sat behind this surreal lake, near a gigantic roll-up door to the building.

“How did you get in there?” I yelled through the fence and across the water that divided us.

“There’s an opening in the fence down by your feet,” he pointed and replied.

I looked down and saw where the fence detached from the wall, and carefully I squatted through it. On the other side, the square lake looked even bigger…and darker. The water was almost pitch black at its bottom, and it appeared to be moving – the water looked alive and squirming. I walked closer to get a better look.

“The rain filled it up,” he said. “It’s all full of polliwogs and frogs.”

“Really?” I asked. I squatted down and inspected the water inches from my feet, and thousands of little black semen-looking creatures shimmied away. I automatically pulled my pistol from the back of my pants – a natural reaction – and aimed it at the water, but Willie had me beat.

Chook! He shot a BB into the mass of water, resulting in nothing more than a strange sound. “I got a couple of frogs before you got here, but they seem to be scared of me now. They don’t come out anymore.”

“How many polliwogs do you reckon are in there?” I nodded my gun at the water.

“Maybe one million,” he answered, “and they’ll all be frogs unless we do something about it.”

“It’d be like a plague in our fair city.”

Without wasting a second, Willie and I both started firing into the lake, shelling out at least 70 rounds each. But the only result of our salvo was 140 cool little sounds of BBs splashing into water at high speeds.

“I’m out,” Willie silently shook his pistol and exclaimed.

“I got about eight shots left.”

“Hold onto them,” Willie glanced around the empty alley and replied. “We may need them later.”

We walked around the large lake and scavenged anything shiny on the ground, and then we kicked discarded nails into the water. It wasn’t until our fifth walk around the lake and our third dare to each other to jump in before I noticed a large pile of crates under a blue tarp.

I walked over and pulled the tarp off, exposing six or seven wooden shipping crates underneath. They were each about as long as I am tall and looked like they could have held a few mummies stacked inside. Most were damaged and kicked-in, but two looked pretty well preserved. They had somehow managed to stay completely dry throughout the weeks of rain, thanks to the blue tarp. Or perhaps it wasn’t the tarp? Perhaps the wood deflected every drop of rain and refused to absorb any particle of it. Perhaps being waterproof was a safety precaution for transporting stacked Egyptian mummies transcontinental. Waterproof wood? That would be great for ships. Then the idea hit me.

“Give me a hand,” I motioned to Willie, and we pulled out the best looking crate of the lot. It had pale wood strips at every edge and a thin particle board body. I pulled the top off and threw it aside, and I gazed inside the crate and slapped its side.

“It’ll do,” I whispered to Willie.

“It’ll do for what?”

“I’m going to sail this body of water.”

“In this?”

“Aye,” I squinted my eye and replied.

He stared at me for a few seconds wondering if I was serious, then he contemplated building one himself. Then he asked, “Do you think it can hold the both of us?”

“After I’m through with it, it’ll hold an army,” I replied, already gazing around the abandoned alley for supplies.

“What if it sinks?” He asked, “How far down do you think the water goes?”

“Maybe ten feet tops,” I answered. “Polliwogs don’t usually inhabit bodies of water deeper than ten feet.” I totally made that up.

“She’ll have to be a strong boat,” Willie peered inside the crate and remarked.

“A ship! She’ll be a strong ship!”

The crate was already in decent form, save for a small crack in its side and a separation of two of the supporting beams at its bottom. I found some rope and tied it around the entire crate several times, then tightened it as tight as it would go to keep the wooden beams compressed enough and keep the composition strict. I found a bag of orange FRAGILE-labeled stickers and used them to seal the crack in the ship’s side. I probably could have gotten away with using three or four, but instead I loaded the side of the vessel with maybe thirty stickers. Willie found some long wooden beams and a few nails, and we used a rock to hammer the beams onto our ship so it shot straight up. We found a page of a newspaper, drew a skull and crossbones onto it and nailed that to the wooden beam, providing our ship with a flag.

“Do you think that’ll do it?” He asked me.

“She needs more.”

“What should we name it…her?”

I paused my search for supplies and turned back to Willie. “Yes, she needs a name, doesn’t she?”

“Every good ship has a name…the Titanic…the Moby Dick.”

“Hmm, what about The Chuck Norris?”

“It’s not really a girl’s name, though.”

“That’s alright, I like The Chuck Norris. The Moby Dick is a guy’s name.”

“That’s true,” Willie nodded. “Yeah, The Chuck Norris!”

We ran around the alley searching for anything that could be used to help The Chuck Norris set sail. I found the broken bottom half of a wooden chair and put it inside, and Willie found a plastic bucket and placed it beside it – we had our galley. We found most of a child’s tricycle and attached the handlebars to The Chuck Norris’ front. We used the peddles and back wheel as our engine, and we fastened that to the ship’s rear.

She needed a test run, so we both stepped inside The Chuck Norris and felt out our surroundings. I took my wooden seat and grabbed the handlebars. Willie sat on his bucket and began spinning the peddles which, in turn, spun the wheel behind us. I tapped and lightly kicked everything around me, making sure she was strong enough to withstand any and all punishment.

The Chuck Norris was ready.

-----

A native of Los Angeles, Brandon D. Christopher has survived 41 jobs, 7 cars, 4 days in jail, and completed a 3-hour Learning Annex seminar to become a private investigator. He is the author of several published essays and short stories, and is currently searching for a publisher for his latest novel Dirty Little Altar Boy. He can be reached at BrandonDChristopher@hotmail.com.