In Laymon's Terms

Michael T. Huyck, Jr.

MACKING THE TAXI’S yellow fender, Jong cupped his closest ear and bulged his eyes at the driver. When it only earned him a shake of the head in response, Jong pouted.

On the far side a door opened, releasing a burly gentleman with peppered hair and conservatism pasted to his suit. His briefcase came next, followed by a whip of a lady decorated in pleats and blonde tresses. The two walked away from the taxi, the driver, and the bouncing fool dressed in layers of newspaper. Without pausing they entered a meager white shed guarding the fenced mouth of the dock, shutting the door behind them.

When Jong approached again, the taxi driver climbed out of his car and leaned his bulk against the door. He stared at Jong, arms crossed and eyes slitted. Jong paused, all ten of his fingertips drumming a bit of headline stretched taut over his right thigh. He made popping noises with his lips, then clapped in final exclamation. The taxi driver didn’t move.

“You,” Jong observed, “are very quiet.”

“And you,” the taxi driver replied, “are very noisy. And you smell. Go away.”

“But this is my...” Jong started, pirouetting on one foot. He didn’t finish. Not the sentence or the pirouette. He faded and fell back when the taxi driver stood straight up and walked towards him. After three steps Jong chose to close his act with a retreat to the chain link fence surrounding the harbor. He collapsed, rolling beneath the slack in the links, then popped back up on the other side. With exaggerated flops of his feet, he headed down the decaying pier.

“On contract...yes...it’s true.” The guy in the blue overalls nodded at the people entering his shack and rolled his eyes at the cell phone. The lady smiled.

“Listen, there’s...right. I’ve work to do. Goodbye.” He flapped a heavy thumb across the face of the phone and fiddled to get it hung on the lip of his right front pocket. “Mr. Genuit? Ms. Jolson?” He offered a broad greasy palm, but reconsidered when the older gentleman raised one eyebrow. “Uhm, I’d offer you a place to sit, but NDRF (he pronounced it inderf) never bought this Overseer no chairs. Twenty-two years rattling around in their rusty old ships and I’ve never had a chair. Except the toilet.”

The gentleman stepped forward and clasped the Overseer’s shoulder. “Mr...” he peered at the nametag sewn to the overalls “...Willy...we don’t need to sit. Ms. Jolson would like to look the ship over, though, if you don’t mind. Perhaps then I can settle the paperwork with the government and we can get the Deep Dawn out of your hair.”

“Deep Dawn?”

“Ms. Jolson is renaming the ship. The label of letters and numbers the United States Navy previously anointed it with do little for her aesthetic vision.”

The workman smiled, nodded, and motioned for them to follow.

The wood deck of the pier, split and splintered as it was by years of sea service, still thudded solidly beneath their feet. Willy led them across the main artery of travel: a sidewalk constructed of thick planks, rusting iron gussets, worn tires, and welded steel pontoons. To the left, beyond a ten foot expanse of fetid bay water and encased in double rows of chain link and razor wire, sat an open field of naval scrap. To the right, in broad slips smeared with oil slick rainbows, floated rows of crusted bows fronting a line of government-stored ships of every size and use.

“Yours is second to last. Way out there.” Willy waddled surprisingly fast, the droops in his baggy clothes ever threatening to toss off the open-ended wrench jostling about in one rear pocket. Mr. Genuit and Ms. Jolson kept pace behind.

The LST tilted in its slip, its bow sunken several feet below the stern. Ms. Jolson tugged Mr. Genuit’s elbow and pointed at the tip of the ship, where the seam of the bow doors stood open nearly a foot. The lawyer nodded at it and looked to the Overseer.

“These ships were made to get wet inside, you know? So it’s wet. The draft here couldn’t be more than twenty feet. I do think,” he stared out over the ship, “that you’re responsible for doing whatever it takes to make her seaworthy, right? You know that?”

Ms. Jolson nodded and pointed towards the gangway. The Overseer led them there.

A pitted deck and scabrous superstructure greeted them. Stumps of metal dotted the surfaces where the stowing forces of the government chose to tear away the weapons and antenna. They leaned towards the stern as they walked to accommodate the ship’s list, gathering their sea legs, as it were.

One ship over, peering down from the heightened deck of a rust-caked cargo ship, Jong watched the strangers walk the decks of his sound machine...his sea-stranded orchestra...and he frowned. His toes tapped out dismay. His tongue clucked disconcert. With a backwards fall and roll, Jong moved away from the edge and sat with splayed legs. This wasn’t good, so it must be time to think. Time for sounds and time for decisions.

“She wants you to leave. She wants to look around.”

The Overseer imitated her with his own hands, flicking his fingers and turning them over. “Is that what she said? With her hands? How do they do that?”

“Ask her, you oaf. She may be mute, but she’s not deaf.”

His face reddening, the Overseer backed towards the gangway. “Ships are dangerous places, okay? You be careful. I really shouldn’t leave.”

“But you have things to do, right?”

“I have things to do. I’ll leave the gate unlocked and you can lock it when you go.”

“Here...pay the taxi for us.” He handed over a twenty-dollar bill. “We’ll call another when we go.”

Willy took the twenty and hurried away. The gangway bounced with every step as Mr. Genuit turned to Ms. Jolson.

I need to see inside, she signed. Alone. I’ll start at the top and work down.

“Be careful. The oaf was right—ships are dangerous. Especially when they’ve been practically abandoned for decades.” He looked around. “What a waste. All these...”

If they weren’t here they would only be scrapped. That’s what the literature said. Now it has a chance to be something for an eternity. A living piece of art.

“I know. The concept of welding your vision into this muscularity, then sinking it to grow fauna and house creatures on the seafloor, it’s bewitching. Mixing museums and artificial reefs...you’re a genius.”

Flattery? How not like my lawyer. Are you staying here?

“I’m a fan, first.” He looked around to find an open hatch dropping below decks with a ladder protruding from its maw. “No, I’m going down there. I want to see the flooded section. Again, be careful.”

You, too.

Walking towards the superstructure, Evelyn Jolson eyed the bubbled rust and paint of the steel staircase going up. It tilted some, inward, but maybe it was supposed to. Maybe it made hanging on easier in the thick of storms and whatnot. The first three steps came with measure, but she moved up quickly after that. The steel didn’t complain.

There were three levels above the main deck, each smaller than the one below but all much more than she’d expected. Rooms with brass tubes and hanging compasses and enormous square boxes that could only be radios from generations past. The paint, a uniform gray with an occasional warning in black or yellow, did nothing for her vision. The shapes would work, but the color would not. In her head she already pictured the huge hose of a sandblaster taking it all down to bare metal. Ripping out the tubes and the conduits and military trifles, leaving only the bulk.

At the top level, surrounded by thick, yellowing glass, was a stately metal chair that must have been home for the Captain. Beside it a table stood, with a microphone and a coffee cup slot. Certainly important for the Captain to have his coffee cup. She scraped at the glass, but the yellow held. It would have to be removed before the artwork was sunk. No...it would have to be bashed. One didn’t just “remove” the glass on a ship of war. There’s no energy in “removing.”

She dropped down a level to find one pane already missing. Looking out over the weather-ravaged deck, she wondered what she might use as an anchor point for the hundreds of yards of thick hemp rope she planned on weaving all about the exterior. And there would have to be cuts made throughout the deck. Big cuts. Squares and circles and triangles to let the ocean life gather and play deep inside her artistic whim.

Evelyn rubbed her lips.

Projects of immensity were her specialty, but this would be the first piece of art over five hundred feet long she’d ever done. And the first living art, as well. She’d always been fond of destroying her pieces after a finite time, tearing apart the corpse of a muse that didn’t haunt her anymore. There’d be no such luxury this time. This muse would be something greater. Always something greater.

Abandoning the window, she descended the ladder to the main deck and wandered behind the superstructure. There she discovered more doors. Bare passageways and rooms with curious tables. Acrylic walls with maps supported by angle iron from the ceiling. So much to see.

The water was lumpy, but Genuit couldn’t tell any more than that. Not in the scarce lighting the one open hatch offered.

He could see the remains of four army jeeps lined up on the starboard bulkhead. A hammock hung between a mid-deck support and piping just aft of the hatch. Shapes decorated the bulkheads and dangled through the space from lengths of nylon rope obviously tied off somewhere in the shadows. Most confusing was the immense scattering of trash and wretched stench.

He kicked an unlabeled can and it rattled off to splash in the lake making up the fore section of the space. Another watery lump.

Ms. Jolson’s idea was grand. Her best yet. This part of it, the front-end work of making the old Navy LST seaworthy enough to tow to Catalina, would be painful. But Genuit knew the right names to get it done. Lots of folks out of Long Beach Naval Shipyard would jump at the chance to be part and parcel to an Evelyn Jolson project. With the right money afforded, of course.

And, as with any Jolson work, the right money would always be afforded. She had more benefactors than the Queen had crumpets.

He walked port, kicking around the sea of garbage in search of more hatches. There had to be bilge access somewhere.

At the grayish limits of the lighting he found two boxes. One stacked with masking tape, the other piled with newspaper. He bent over to read the date on the top issue.

The echo of bone reverberating through the tire iron nearly made Jong dance. In fact, it did. Just a small two-step, but still a dance. He shuffled some afterwards, for effect. Shuffled right on over to the chain fall hanging from a centerline overhead girder. Jong slowly rolled through the operating chain to feed out the hook, listening to the soft and repetitive clink of the links as they fed into and out of the gear teeth. The smoothest of mechanical hums. He started tapping time with one foot.

With a couple feet of slack on the floor, he dragged the interloper in the suit over and did a quick double-loop around both ankles. Then he looked back at the hatch.

There was still the lady. No time to do this with the music it deserved.

Quickly he pulled the operating chain in the other direction, lifting the load chain, the hook, and the man. Still, it took two, maybe three minutes to get him airborne and hanging straight down. With the man’s head clear of the deck by just an inch, Jong wrapped the body vigorously with the operating chain and knotted it about the man’s arms. Then he grappled it and walked out into the water. Out into the shadows. With the list taking him deeper, he didn’t stop until the upside-down body was waist-deep.

“I miss the lovely pop-pop-pop of bubbles,” Jong whispered.

Evelyn stared at the hatch, suspicious of the silence. Lloyd Genuit couldn’t walk softly on socks through a bed of down. If he was down there, he most certainly wasn’t moving.

Still, he’d gone down. She watched him. And she would certainly have seen him by now if he’d come back up. Lloyd wasn’t a patient man.

But then she wasn’t a patient woman. She tapped her foot.

Three taps floated up from below.

She tapped again...

...and they returned.

Evelyn stared out over the line of ships. There were twelve, maybe fifteen in a row. Some with high decks, some low. Turrets without barrels, hemispherical housings with parallel slots. Conical peaks and geometrically perfect railings. Ragged, spiderweb netting.

But no people. No shapes that moved. No one to go for help. Nothing functional!

He might need help. Nothing sinister...just assistance. He could have slipped. There was water down there, and the decks were steel. Slippery steel.

She tapped her foot one time, and one tap came back.

No way. One tap was playing, and Lloyd wouldn’t be playing if he needed help. In fact, Lloyd didn’t play. Ever.

An echo?

Evelyn tried the first step, then the second. Nothing happened.

She took the rest of the steps in quick succession, stopping only when she stood firmly on the lower deck. Light streaming through the hatch above held her, but cast shadows deep in every direction.

Trash littered the floor, and vehicles of some sort hulked against the wall ahead of her. There were ropes with dangling objects. Steering wheels and chrome parts and little metal widgets. Nearest to her, four straight rods of steel, of increasing length, drew a rope down until they nearly touched the floor.

“Do you miss his sounds?” a voice asked from outside the light. Evelyn spun around. Everywhere was darkness. Every sound an echo.

Another half turn and she found him next to her.

A man, a small man. Dressed from head to toe in swathes of newspaper and tape. Even a hat, a wrinkled bowler, made of Sunday funnies. He smiled and cocked his head.

Where the HELL is Lloyd? she signed.

The man backed up, his eyes wide.

Evelyn clapped her hands, and he smiled. He clapped back. Then, with a tire iron he drew from behind his back, he tapped each of the dangling bars of steel. They rang in successively higher notes.

Evelyn crossed her arms and scowled.

“You can hear?” he asked.

She nodded.

“But you cannot speak?”

She nodded again, slower. Then she lit into him, backing him up with a hand-flung stream of epithets. She raised one hand as high as she could, swaggered for three steps, spread her arms to show confusion, then finished it again with where the HELL is Lloyd?

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.

Maybe he’d be short one ship soon, maybe not. The NDRF would just backfill the slip with another rusting hulk. The government called it a reserve fleet; he called it a ship’s graveyard and a paycheck.

Blood spiraled around her forearm like red on a candy cane. She chose to cut from elbow to shoulder on the apex of the bicep, then she nipped just inside the wound, on both sides, to give it a pucker. Her right arm already wore the decor and, through the stiffening blood, she saw her line hadn’t been as true. Such was the handicap of being a righty.

She eyed the work, scraping and pulling where necessary for symmetry. Voices (sounds she could hear Jong say) in her secluded little mid-brain cave whispered that the burning wasn’t bad. The blood wasn’t bad. She’d scar, but at least this way she’d live to scar.

“Hold your arms out. Straight out. Yes. YES! You are a...sculptress.” Jong sat cross-legged on the table with her now, knee-to-knee and face-to-face.

And you are sound? she signed to him. He nodded sadly, as he did every time she forgot and signed. Evelyn followed up by cupping one ear, then pointing at Jong. He chortled.

“And I am sound, yes! It’s my turn. Have you heard the tender pops and snaps of bone separation? I’ll take a toe. No-no-nee-no, I’ll take TWO toes!” Deftly he sliced away the newspaper and tape making up his shoes, even shredding his newsprint pants to mid-shin.

Pinching one filthy, small toe, he slid the knife-edge into his skin. He squinted his eyes and bit into his lower lip as the blade meticulously carved the dirt-stained flesh. His stomach rumbled and Evelyn slowly cupped one of his ears.

“Sound,” he whispered.

The toe separated with a snip, the only other sound being the blade against the wood of the table.

“Sound,” he growled through clenched teeth, and he started on the other foot.

The carving of the second toe came nearly silent, and Jong squinted his face. Evelyn extended her arms, her puckered wounds. She cocked her head as if to ask why?

When his stomach growled again, Jong reached for the only answer offering itself up. He palmed the two toes and popped them into his mouth, grinding with his molars instead of cutting with his incisors to guarantee that there would be at least some sound.

Some.

He swallowed in exaggerated gulps, and Evelyn smiled.

She took the knife, intent on repeating her arm performance down on her shins. Again, there would be blood. There would be scarring. But he appreciated it, and it gave her time.

Her legs were thin, as was the rest of her, and for a good three inches of shin she was able to reveal the blue-white of bone. Evelyn was careful not to knick it. Careful not to introduce any more infection than she was already going to suffer from this dissection of her flesh. She went slowly, methodically, thanking the newspaperman in her head for at least having the decency to keep the carpet knife razor sharp. Ripping this flesh would be so much worse.

It occurred to her then, in a flash of inspiration. They had to trade places...one on the knife but with the other’s flesh...but how to tell him?

With a drawing.

Taking the knife, Evelyn carved a graphic of an ear into the tabletop wood. An ear, flesh that a man made of sound had to appreciate. Then she notched the ear, up at the top, with a simple triangle. Setting the knife down, Evelyn looked the newspaperman in the eyes, reached up, and pinched the upper portions of her own ears.

His lips formed an “O.”

She tugged at her ears, pulling up, then pointed at the carving. Jong picked up the knife.

“You want...me...to sculpt? Sculpt you?”

She nodded.

Jong spun the knife in his fingers, his features sagging with doubt.

“Me?”

She rested both hands on the knife and lifted it to her right ear. Her eyes wandered to the carving, and he bowed.

“So much sound I know, but for me to sculpt...well, that’s something.” He looked up. “And I will. For you.”

Evelyn leaned forward and cocked her head, exposing her right ear.

The notching hurt more than she could imagine. Even with the quick slice of sharpness, the burning ebbed into tearing and the tearing into rolling waves of ache. But Jong worked slowly and carefully, and Evelyn steeled herself.

Next time it would be her hand on the handle. And on his flesh.

On finishing, he tossed the waste and backrolled off the table, skipping off to the row of pie tins hanging on the far side of the hatch. With a knife swipe the bottom tin fell. Jong nabbed it, ran to the water, dipped it, and polished it with a newspaper elbow. He brought the makeshift mirror back to Evelyn.

Even though she could hardly see her shadow in the reflection of the tin, Evelyn nodded and turned a grimace into a smile. Then she motioned for Jong to join her on the table again.

He did, handing her the knife in the process.

She carved another sketch into the wood tabletop. A head with a bowler cap, a neck, two shoulders. On the neck she carved two “S” symbols, one on each side of the jugular vein. The one on the picture’s left side mirror-imaged the one on the right.

Setting down the knife, Evelyn reached up and let her fingertips tickle down Jong’s throat like rain.

“Sound,” he said. “The ‘S’ is for sound. Your ears. My throat. Symmetry is beautiful.” A tear trickled from one of his flooding eyes. “You are...an artist.”

She started on his left-hand side and, coming back on the second curve of the “S,” dug the blade tip in deep and slid it deep through his throat. Slicing out to the other side, the only sounds she heard was the snap of his resistant flesh and the bubbling mixture of blood and air filling his lungs. His eyes never flinched; they remained locked on her. His fingers spread, his jaw relaxed, and he tipped like an egg falling on its side.

Evelyn stood, quickly cutting the rope from her neck. She looked down at Jong. At his bleeding and his silence. She pressed one tennis shoe against his throat, smoothing a little pressure that brought bubbles and squeaking air.

So she pushed harder.

More bubbles and a full-fledged whistle escaped. She started to clap then, slow and steady, and continued to play his wound like a kick drum.

Evelyn knew Jong would appreciate that.