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I talk to the flying creatures of Bozeman, through paper airplanes, and tree-forts. We have conversations about weather disturbances; I ask which will come next. They ask about Story Mill, “who has been repairing the windows”. Bob the pigeon got locked in that second floor, and died. These birds are just as sensitive to change as I am.

I don’t tell them their Bridger views will be soon coming to an end. They wouldn’t understand Leed, or big money investments. I don’t understand Leed, or big money investments. I face the change before it comes, paint walls with memories and try my hardest to move on. Even the rats have to find other places to live.

These are horses; they sometimes sleep standing up, the young are called foals, they love to lie in the sun. These are buffalo; there use to be two hundred on Manley. That is alfalfa and it only grows in 7 to 8 year stints. The Bozeman recreational pond use to be a dump-site, *a child wears a snorkel mask looking for hidden treasures.*

I take these things for granted:
the art galleries,
the rodeos,
the skiing,
the fishing,
the pine trees,
the cottonwoods in winter,
fire-pits in the backyard,
fire-pits in a tee-pee,
dirt roads,
snowy mountains,
that one big blue thing.

It reminds me of my youth, days spent exploring antique stores with my parents. Hours wrestling in the back seat of the minivan, my father turning from the road: “Don’t make me stop the car!”. The Colorado pond became the first connection, my grandfather stringing half-dead trout in the water. “Why don’t you kill them?” I would say. “They look like they are suffering”.
I never really liked the taste of fish.

Chapter 2 the happiness that comes with realizing your not dead, and the distraught you feel when it all hits you in the face.

Puck awakes. He is blindfolded, his hands are fastened behind his back, and he is tied to a chair. Olden and Hord sit next to him, Olden is quietly peeing his pants and all three men feel the warmth on their bare feet. Hord slugs his head from left to right and makes loud screams like “bahambadda” and “arrrrrgggggghhhhh”. He seems to be enjoying the pain. They had survived an attack from 7 open sea bandits. The eagle kahs turn into whoos and bring down night, and up the moon. The three blindfolded men sleep, like babies, in a wooden crib (without blankets), or hungry children in a tree fort by a storm drain.

The sun buzzes like an alarm clock, commencement of the day begins, the clouds get a good punch in the stomach, swinging, like an open door. Puck wakes up with a knock in the jaw. POOM!
“wheyrs da treasure!” The pirate takes Pucks blindfold off. The morning light smears down the widdled stairs making him squint and he slowly and fuzzily makes out the figure before him.
“GoldBeard!” Puck shouts. “I thought you were dead!” *Cue the A minor from the ancient eels*

“I am suprisd you recognize me Puck, Is been around 17 years since we had last spoke. And by my impression, it was the day I killed your fadher.”

Hord and Olden are still sound asleep, either that or they were passed out from the shear frighten of waking up to a pirates rusty blade and maybe a skull and crossbones or two. Puck, absolutely helpless, starts crying, and he doesn’t know what to do but think of his father, and the lessons he had taught him. “Son, there will always be an end to any road, and that end will always be the ocean.” And this comforted Puck, and with a swift knock on the head, he was once again sleeping and dreaming of his childhood and fishing off small boats with family and friends.

Time streams, faster then an anchovy but slower then a rabbit. The three crew men and Goldbeard are the only ones left on the boat. Gone were the three unnamed others (who I never cared to introduce) where to, not even I the narrator knows. They have probably been taken away to an island or someplace tropical with palm trees. And the Pirates won’t feed them well; they get like a piece of bread and a glass of water twice a day. And they have to go the bathroom in a corner which smells worse and worse. One child in Chicago will be upset for a year, because his grandfather will never teach him to play baseball. And his father is an asshole and left his mother years ago.

Puck is alive and breathing, and Hord tips back and forth with an awkward smile on his face, Olden is wheezing like a dog asleep on a rock.

Puck awakes; Goldbeard sits in front of him with a deep wishful expression on his face.

“Why are you still here?” Puck says.

Goldbeard spits on his palm with as much snot as possible. He then lifts both hands to the air and slaps Puck across the face.

“Its jusd you and me ya know”

“Stop talking like that.”

Gold beard takes his hat off which unveils a bald shriveling scalp.

“I never knew you would be the one to make me rich.” Goldbeard unlatches Puck from his chair and takes him up into the sun.

“Do you see this?” Goldbeard points in every direction. “This will one day be mine.”

Olden hears the morning chatter and wakes up slowly, rolling and rubbing his eyes. Hord still half asleep, snuffles and shouts out “Quickersnopper, get me my eggs and bacon”. Goldbeard and Puck hear them and rush back down.

The two men look at Goldbeard with wide eyes, then quickly to Puck who still bleeds down his left temple..

“Well, ders som good newz and ders som bad newz.” Goldbeard says in the form of a question.

Hord is pale, wears no descriptive remark on his face. Olden somehow manages to pee himself again, and falls to his knees.

“Leds get dis motharrrship rollen!” Goldbeard, with his sword in the air, runs like the 70 year old he is back up to the deck.

Olden questions Puck “You can’t just say ‘I have some good news and some bad news’ and then walk away?”

“I think the good news is we are still alive.”

“What about the bad news?”

“The bad news is we will probably die soon.”

Olden looks at Hord, gazing as if suggesting Hord might save the day by saying something profound and heroic.

“This digs down in a man’s soul ‘he puts his right hand on Olden’s shoulder, and points in the air with the left’, it pries out a vessel and a liver and a lung and then it takes your close friends. And you’re left, without a soul, and without friends, but you have a heart and that heart doesn’t beat anymore. It just putters and pats, and the blood will eventually get to your toes, but…. It’s a complicated situation. For the heart, I think. That’s all I have to say”.

———

I think therefore the air hangs heavy on my head. Dad, the boy says, why do we grow up, why do we learn and why do we die, but why don’t we learn to die?

But it isn’t just about Puck, there are more personalities aboard, and you really wouldn’t understand this one character unless I had another two to bounce off some live real life interaction. This will allow you to invest your emotions into the story, and really, I mean really feel comfortable giving your precious time away to some simple yet sketchy characters. Hord and Olden and three others are down below in the hull. The story starts with the odd. Imagine moving at the speed of 65 miles per hour, and not going anywhere at all.

The oceans smile turns to a sad frown, and within minutes becomes calm, the ship starts slugging, moving slowly, the main sail slouches and bends down with no wind to even lift a flap. Somebody below the deck yells up, “Hey Puck, get me a Budweiser will ya!” Puck is drifting to sleep and drifting awake but hears the call and wiggles his toes to get back to work, he yawns, and reaches for the cooler. Walking down the tight wooden stairs he finds his crew of patrons, politicians, shamelessly happy, complacent with a television and bunny ears.
Hord lights up, “Hey Puck, you get fox down here?”
“nope.”

It is the middle of December and across three continents, over a thousand miles away, is thirty siblings, all families of the five crewmen sailing the red sea for charity. This time of the year is Christmas to the children, and business to the grand-father. Olden leans in and drops down his five cards, “I fold” he says. Olden is a normal guy, Italian, with glasses since he was four and a receding hairline that started at the age of ten. His wife was a nerd, but successful.

Hord rolls his greased back cut sits back at the only head of the table, inhaling a giant puff of a Cuban cigar he laughs out his nose and in his higher then normal voice remarks “You pansy little bitch. I had nothin’.” Hord was short in stature and in grin, but he was brave, stupid brave like slapping a bull dog across the face brave, the perfect politician.

Puck leans in, politely interrupting, he tells the crew about the weather

“Men! The water is trying to tell me something, (the boat thumps up against the tip of a sand dune). Poomph, Everyone grabs on to the table in the center, chips and more chips and salsa fall to the ground. “We must have hit a sand dune.” The crew sits in wonder, confused. “A whale, you mean” Olden says. “We must have hit a whale is what you meant right?”
Puck runs up, starboard, *a G flat comes hogging through distant fog*, “We didn’t hit a sandbar!” But in fact, another ship, and within seconds 7 pirates board the wooden boat and with a swift knock on the head Puck goes down. And once again he is bleeding, half sleeping, but he hears mumbling as if awakening from a dream. “Puuuuuck, ooofta, pew pew pew,” Thump! Thump!

The crew waits anxiously below, wondering what is going on, bewildered in amazement. The footsteps rumble, rumbling from two feet to fourteen. One man grabs his beer can preparing to fend himself and cut with aluminum. Another hides in the lieu. Olden is crying with his palms over fingers gripping his face. Hord clinches fists and darts around trying to find something to fight with. “Where are the guns he asks, where are my Berettas when I need them.”