The clownish man dropped, sitting on a box of what appeared to be newspapers. He looked up.
“He’s...silent.”
It was then that Evelyn noticed the clown’s newspaper pants were wet, yet his newspaper shirt was dry. She stared off, to the right, at the in-ship lake. Inklings dripped over her, and fear trickled atop her anger. She backed away.
The newspaper clown bounced up and, making a wide berth, beat her to the foot of the ladder going up. She turned again, shooting aft.
That’s when she saw the stars.
Light flooded her eyelids, tickling so much that Evelyn rolled her face away. She didn’t open them, though, because she didn’t want to see. Not yet.
He crumpled paper somewhere across the room, tearing and wadding in rhythm mixed with regular pauses. Every pause ended in a snort.
The knot at the back of her head didn’t ache so much as it did ripple, like the concentric pulses in a pond after it swallowed a pebble. Ropes tugged at her neck and each of her wrists. Her feet found freedom, but little purchase, on something soft and poorly balanced.
“Woohoo, WOOHOO! Woo woo hoo hoo. Hey.”
She couldn’t help herself; Evelyn cracked an eyelid.
The strange man bound to his feet, flipping open a section of newsprint and bending it backwards. Then in half again. He skipped up to her.
“Evelyn Jolson! That’s you!” He flipped the paper around to a features section done on her six weeks previous. A prattling work all caught up in the eccentricity of her work. Not the cutting edge. Not the new vision. The weird. Evelyn turned her head away.
“I knew I’d seen you-da-do-da-do. I read all these before I wear ’em.” He smirked. “Efficient.” He wandered back to his box, staring at the picture. “Yes, well, this makes everything different. Everything. You’re an artist. Like me. You sculpt and paint, I sing and play and tell stories.” He scampered back into her face. “I’m Jong...short for Jongleur. A minstrel. And this,” he put both palms up and spun in three hundred and sixty degrees, “is my ship. Are you here for...art?”
Evelyn looked at her feet as she shifted and found them spread over four poorly stacked tires. One foot on each side. The tires slid and subtly collapsed with her slightest movement. Her concern wandered to thoughts of the neck rope.
She nodded to him. Nodded hard.
“Me too, you know.” He waggled his wooly eyebrows. “I love noise. I work with sounds. Not music so much, just sound. And I don’t really sing. Not well. But sound is why I love it here, in this ship. There are so many! Look around!”
Instead of looking around, Evelyn looked straight up at the rope. It was a thin nylon thing. It might not even hold her weight, but she didn’t want to learn.
“It’s a dilly, isn’t it? See, you’re sound. Made of sound. We’re ALL made of sounds.” He cocked his head. “Being as you can’t talk, I think your sounds might be different. Fresh. Virginal.” He repeated the last word half a dozen times, moving the emphasis back and forth between letters. Finally he signed the letter “L” to her.
“It’s the L that counts. Here!” He bounced back in the shadows aft of the hatch and started dragging something her way. The metal deck screeched in complaint.
He returned with a metal table, perhaps three feet square with thick legs and a solid wood top. As he approached he flipped sides, pushing instead of pulling. He nudged the table up within inches of the tires.
From behind his back the newspaperman produced a carpet knife, its curved tip ground away by the sharpening stone. With two quick flicks he had her wrists free.
Unbidden, Evelyn climbed atop the table and sat crosslegged. Her hands wandered to her neck to find the rope around it in layers and knots. To hamper her further, he’d fleshed out a thick skin of tape over the ropes.
“Now...look around.” His voice dropped. “Like I asked you before, art lady. Look around.”
She scanned slowly.
Four floodlights attached to tall tripods flooded the room with brightness. Orange extension cords ran together to the aft side of the hatch, then up and through it onto the deck above. Trash covered everything. Newspapers, cans, plastic tubs. Flies milled and swirled in the beams of light.
Evelyn wrinkled her nose, trying to block out the stench with her upper lip.
“Keep looking,” he growled.
More garbage hung in the air. Rows of similar refuse, like eight milk cartons on strings and pie tins wove in series on a single strand. Iron bars of varying length. A pile of plastic garbage can lids filled one corner. Four old army jeeps stood parked on the starboard side with parts and tools littered around them. Again, pieces hung from the overhead. Steering wheels, gear shifts, seats, and hoods. Ammo boxes, every other one’s lid opened, lined up in front of the jeeps like ants.
She discovered Lloyd over the water. Or, more concisely, in the water. He was submerged at mid-chest. His coat drooped down past his armpits and spread out around him in a light-colored stain.
All around him floated trash and other...lumps. Animals, mostly. Dogs and cats and birds. Bloated and distended bellies, stiff legs, sunken muzzles and beaks. At the far end, where even the floodlights didn’t clearly carry weight, a length of pale flesh spoke of something larger. Something more human.
“It’s all sound. Has to be.” He jumped up, buried the carpet knife behind his back, and picked up his tire iron. Starting at the pie tins, he tapped his way around the room to display his point. His feet shuffled through the trash, scratching aside the detritus. At the water’s edge he swished the head of the tire iron back and forth, creating waves.
“Sound,” he said. “Like me. Like you, I think.” He poked at Evelyn with the tire iron, but she folded up at the belly to avoid it. He poked deeper and caught flesh, pulling a grimace from Evelyn’s eyes.
He frowned and poked. She grimaced and squirmed. After half a dozen tries he tossed the tire iron on the deck.
“I’m not wrong! I’m not. You’re quiet, but you must be sound...we all are. The can, the cats, the balls and bats. Both kinds, in case you were wondering.” He shuffled about in a circle, his bowler forward on his brow and his hands clinched behind his back. “We’re sound because I’m sound. I’m sound. I’m sound. And you’re s...” He looked up, his smile a flash of brilliance. “And you’re art! Well, we’re both art, but you’re sculpture. THAT’S why you’re not sound. You were made to be seen, not heard.” He took his carpet knife back out.
“I’m an explorer now. New territory.” Tapping his toes twice with every step, he approached. “The animals?” he asked, nodding back at the water. “Could they be sculpture?”
Eyeing the knife, Evelyn nodded slowly.
“The man, your friend, was he sculpture?”
She inhaled and closed her eyes.
“I think not,” Jong whispered. “For they were sound, like me. I didn’t get to play the man; I didn’t learn his sounds. But I did the others over there. Played them for all they were worth, and they proved that they were sound. So he would have been, I think. No, it’s only you who’s sculpture.”
Willy dropped the National Geographic on the floor and stood to wipe his ass. It was past dark, way past dark, and he hadn’t seen the artist and her snooty lawyer come out yet. They might have already...hell...they had to have. It was pitch black in them hulks without the floodlights off the dock.
He looked out the window. Nothing. Just shadows and creaking ropes. The tiniest of waves rattled the dock—incoming tide.
Drawing his overalls up, he snapped the Straps and flushed. No need to wait anymore; they had to be gone. He grabbed his cooler and left, locking the shed and the gate.