Captain of Polliwogs, Part 2

by Brandon D. Christopher

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In part two of his nautical tale, Brandon and his co-captain encounter danger in the form of hull breaches, mutiny, and sperm-shaped sea creatures with the intentions of anal penetration.

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“She’s beautiful,” I petted her top and remarked.

“She’s the strongest ship I’ve ever seen.” He replied.

“We could take this baby to a lake or a river and just sail away,” I marveled. “I bet you The Chuck Norris is fast, too! This engine runs completely gas-free. I can’t wait to test her out.”

“We could probably charge people to get from one side of this lake to the other,” Willie added, “or do some type of sight-seeing tour or something.”

“Over time, sure,” I answered wisely. “We’ll need to first see if she’s seaworthy. If there’s one thing I know, it’s captaining a ship, by God.”

“Shall we set sail then?” Willie asked.

“Call me captain,” I answered.

“I’m not going to call you captain!”

“But I’m the captain of this ship!”

“I built it too!” He replied.

“OK, fine, we’re both the captains! But we should refer to each other as such. From this day forth I shall be referred to as Captain Brandon.”

“Then I’m Captain Willie.”

“Sure you are.”

“Is that sarcasm?”

“What’s that, sea-talk?” I asked; I was slightly unsure of the actual definition of the word ‘sarcasm’, but I had heard it used before and knew the ‘street’ meaning, just not its origin. And it did sound very maritime.

“No, it’s not sea-talk,” he replied. “It means you really didn’t mean what you said about me being a captain also.”

“That’s sarcasm?” I asked disbelievingly.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, no, that’s not the case at all. No, you’re a captain also…a real good one. Now let’s get this maiden voyage underway, shall we, Captain Willie?”

“Okay, captain.”

“Captain…” I drew out the word to emphasize that I was waiting to hear the rest of it.

“Captain Brandon. Let’s do this, Captain Brandon. Let’s set sail.”

We gave one last look at the lake from dry land before pushing The Chuck Norris across the concrete and halfway into the water. Willie found a pair of old sweatpants and ripped them in two, giving me an entire pant leg. He fashioned his half into a bandana and tied it around his head. I made more of a floppy hat by simply pulling the cuff down over my forehead and tossing the rest to my back. I zipped up my mint green satin jacket and buttoned the collarless collar at my neck. I tucked the barrel of my pistol into the front of my cords and crawled back inside the ship. I took my seat and clutched the handlebars with one hand and waved forward with the other.

“I’m not going to push you.” Willie folded his arms and stated.

“Just till she’s in the water!” I demanded. “You can’t push an empty ship into the water! What if she gets loose? Huh? What then?”

“Just don’t leave without me.”

I leaned forward as Willie pushed The Chuck Norris inch by inch deeper into the abyss. The body of water ran flush with the concrete at its side, and there was only a foot of the ship left on dry land when Willie grabbed hold of the stern and jumped in. Past the point of no return, I thought to myself as his final jerk sent us completely afloat.

Time stood still for a matter of seconds as Willie and I remained motionless in The Chuck Norris, too afraid to make any sudden moves in fear of sending her on her side. The wood made a strange series of sounds as our weight settled inside the thick water. We slowly took our seats and gazed out over her wooden sides, marveling at the ocean all around us. Suddenly a barrage of tiny taps hit the bottom of The Chuck Norris as hundreds of polliwogs blindly bounced off its hull.

“Next time we’ll put a glass floor in,” I said. “I want to see what’s below us.”

“Yeah,” he answered. “Do you want to open her up?”

“Yeah!”

Willie turned his bucket around to face the rear of the boat and started spinning the pedals, and after a sudden jerk of the weight we were cruising—cruising slowly, but cruising nonetheless. I knew that the handlebars didn’t really steer anything, but it felt good to hold them. It felt like something a captain would do—the real captain of this ship.

We were nearing the center of the great ocean when I noticed that the water level was beginning to rise around us. I grabbed his shoulder and motioned for him to stop pedaling, and that’s when we heard what sounded like several people pissing on wood. We both looked down at the floor of The Chuck Norris and not only realized that we had sprung several leaks—four at last count—but also that there were no nails used in the construction of this once-mighty vessel. Upon further scrutiny we became aware of the fact that there weren’t even any large staples holding the wood together—not even small staples. Judging from the way that the water was really coming in now, we assumed that the crate had been constructed using some type of water-based glue.

“Oh no,” I darted my head around and exclaimed. We were taking on more water and new leaks every few seconds. Our feet were now submerged in several inches of the murky juice. “Can she get us to the other side?”

Willie turned back around and began pedaling as fast as he could. The force was too much for The Chuck Norris, and with his last push the entire back of the ship snapped free from the rest. Before he could pull the stern back into place we took on at least 10 gallons of water, which splashed back and forth around us.

The Chuck Norris was sinking, and us along with it. The water inside was now up to our knees, and the walls of the mighty ship herself were almost level with the sea around us. I started scooping handfuls of the water out as Willie did his best to paddle us to the other side—neither seemed to be working too well. Every time I threw a handful of water back into the lake I came face-to-face with a rapidly elevating sea line. There were just about three inches of the ship’s side that weren’t underwater, and I wasn’t sure how long we had left before it all flooded inside.

Willie stopped paddling and grabbed my arm and shouted, “Maybe this lake is shallower than we think! Maybe we’ll just hit bottom any second and be fine!”

I hoped he was right. I had faith in his statement, faith in my second-in-command. I stopped scooping water and stood casually beside Willie and watched the sea slowly rise all around us. Inside the ship the water was now at our thighs, and somehow some polliwogs had gotten in and were swimming about. It grew uneasily quiet as the water level around us finally became flush with the top of The Chuck Norris. There were moments that seemed like hours as the wall of sea buckled lightly atop each wooden side of the ship—not yet entering, but not subsiding either.

“I think we’ve stopped,” I cautiously put my finger to my lips. “And from the looks of it, just in the nick of time.”

At the same moment a smile broke across Willie’s face, the ever-growing mass of compacted rain water finally breached the hull, and gallon after gallon poured over our sides. The Chuck Norris filled up instantly, which sent us sinking another two feet below water—straight to the bottom. I’m not sure why but neither of us made a move to leave the ship until we were completely soaked, and The Chuck Norris completely submerged, and then we paddled and bobbed frantically through the foul water as if our lives depended on it.

The feel of a million polliwogs swimming through our clothes and unmentionables, not to mention whatever wretched debris was splashing about at the floor of this lake and bumping us in the legs, helped us speed across the large body of mystery water to the other side in ten seconds flat.

I was the first out and pulled Willie up to dry land beside me. We both yanked and shook at our clothes until every last polliwog had been dropped free, and then we stomped our feet until all of them were nothing more than blackened paste and a memory. We watched the last few bubbles rise from the coordinates of where we sank and said our silent goodbyes to The Chuck Norris. Seconds later the bucket Willie had been sitting on floated to the surface, followed by our newspaper flag of the skull and crossbones.

“She was a fine ship,” Willie stated as he inspected behind his shirt for more polliwogs.

“The sea is like a strange and funny woman,” I replied. “She gives and takes without much indifference. That, Willie, is what you call sarcasm!”

Willie thought about it. “No, no, I don’t think it is. If you would have said, ‘That was a great cruise,’ then that would have been sarcasm, but saying it’s like a woman…I’m pretty sure that’s not. No, I’m positive it’s not.”

“I suppose you think your stupid map was sarcasm, right?” I grew angry and asked. “Or the fact that you thought you were a captain, too, right? Well, you weren’t! I just said that to get you to push the ship in. I was the only real captain.”

“You’re a real son of a bitch!” He yelled.

“That’s mutiny talk, boy!”

“Just shut the hell up!”

We crawled through the chain-link fence and marched down the alley in wet, putrid-smelling silence. We waved goodbye at our crossroads and didn’t talk for a few days. It wasn’t until the sky had been blue for a week before we made the trek back up to the alley to see what had become of our treacherous sea and fallen ship, and there we saw the mighty Chuck Norris upon the floor of the nearly dry lakebed—everything once mighty about it had been turned to shit.

Our undiscovered sea was nothing more than a lowered driveway for large trucks to back into—a lowered driveway with terrible drainage. Nature had taken care of itself when coming face to face with a plague of frogs, and The Chuck Norris and Willie and I were just pawns in its game of survival. Nature had been dirty and cruel to us, when all we ever wanted to do was help it out. And that is what you call sarcasm, even though Willie says it isn’t.

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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.