A  LESSON  LEARNED

                                                                                                            By Langdon Hues

                                                                                        with Brian Tarcy   

1983, Honduras

      “Do you think we’re prepared for everything?”

      The question, uttered friend to friend in a rattly single-engine seaplane, was about the only thing that could cover every possibility of what they were about to do.

      The pilot of the plane is the one who asked. His name is Eke – pronounced like his initials – E.K. Who knows how he got the name. Eke didn’t. He just talked shit about it, made up stories to compensate for the odd name. “My parents drank heavily when they named me that,” he told people. His parents, though, didn’t drink. Eke did. Or at least he used to. But that’s a long story and part of it has to do with him being here flying with his childhood friend, Bill, over the Patuca River next to the Sierra de Agatta mountain range deep in the Central American country of Honduras.

      Honduras. It wasn’t like their homeland, back in Massachusetts. It wasn’t Massachusetts, sweet home Massachusetts. No. This was different, very different. This was actually Honduras. Look. There it is. They looked. Yes, Honduras.

      They’d dreamt of it for years. And now they were flying.

      Bill smiled at Eke and answered the question the best way he could: “There’s only one way to find out.” And then he pointed down. “There it is. That’s the bend way up there in the river. Take her down.”

      “Here we go,” said Eke, as he tilted the nose down towards the river. “Looking for adventure.”

      “That’s right, brother,” said Bill. “Looking for adventure. Whatever comes our way.”

      “Amen to that.”

      And the plane lowered towards the river. As it did, Bill, the bigger of the two, looked at the mountain next to the river that was to become their new patch of land. Paradise is a journey. That’s the thought. That and more. This was going to be an adventure. For the first time in their lives this was going to be a true adventure. Not a rock concert, not a fishing trip. They were looking for life or death. They wanted to really experience life. Yeah, something like that.

      Dreams are funny things, how they can gnaw at you. For Eke it was like that his whole life. This idea of adventure had pulled at him. Barely 120 pounds soaking wet, he wasn’t the biggest guy in the world. But he had big dreams. Yeah, dreams that in the past had somehow been derailed. Somehow? Well, sometimes he drank his dreams away. And sometimes he was unlucky. And sometimes both. But now? Now, he was flying into the junction of land where tropical forests, mountains, and pine-laced savannahs meet.

      Honduras.

      What the hell? That’s how dreams are, though. This one was the biggest one of all.

      Bill was almost a foot taller with the blue eyes of a Swede. Reminiscent of a young Nick Nolte, his long blond hair was feathered back wildly like a lion’s mane. He was loud and boisterous, social and strong-minded and always willing to share an opinion.

      They were an odd pair, the two of them. One was tall and loud. The other was short and quieter. The tall one still watched cancerous amounts of cartoons. The shorter one was a dreamer in a different way. He wrote. Yes, Eke was a romantic dreamer, while Bill’s head was grounded in the realities of every day life.

      Yet they hit it off right away. They’d met way back when they were 14 years old – that impressionable age when the roots of youth compete with the wings of growing up – and they found common ground in their quest for entertainment. They rode bikes together, played baseball, went fishing, and then when they were older they partied a lot together, but their friendship wasn’t just about entertainment. They were kindred spirits – always seeming to want, somehow, something that they couldn’t get.

      And now: Honduras.

      They got what they wanted this time but they, especially Eke who was more reserved and introspective, wondered if the old adage of “Be careful what you wish for” was true. 

      With the flaps lowered and the throttle maintained, the plane glided down with the nose tilted up. Eke had flown before, but not under these circumstances. His palms were sweaty. The plane sunk into the river’s natural tree corridor and then past a set of rapids while Eke played with the rudder pedals to adjust his lateral axis and center the craft. Just past the rapids, 50 feet from the water, he disengaged the clutch and the engine purred idly as the plane lowered to the water and sent a huge splash up each side as it slowed and then finally settled in the toiling river.

      Honduras. This really was Honduras.

      They each opened the side doors to the plane and climbed out on the side floats. “That’s one small step for man,” said Eke, smiling.

      “And one giant leap for us.” Bill smiled back. “We did it. Can you believe it, man? We did it. Check it out.”

      Eke, in a sense, couldn’t believe it. He scoped out the scenery. Lush. Different than back home, that’s for sure. And that, Eke knew, was the whole idea. Different than back home. Honduras. Yes, pretty much different.

      Just then, the water broke. A fish jumped.

      It smelled different too. Rich. That’s what Eke smelled. Earth. Rainforest. Lush.

      Really rich, as Eke quickly learned. A mosquito landed on him. He flexed his muscle to try to get the bug caught helplessly in his arm, but all he really did was attract more mosquitoes. They were having a party and he was their keg. Welcome to the tropics. Great.

      He swatted his friends away and then climbed back in and guided the plane towards shore. Then he cut the engine. It glided while Eke reached into a compartment in the back of the plane for a chainsaw. He then sprayed himself with mosquito repellant and lit a cigar. Bill, meanwhile, hopped onto the float and began using a pole to push the plane the final feet to shore.

      Eke made the small jump to land, then started the chainsaw. As he did, he thought to himself, “Let the revolution begin.” What a funny thought. He laughed at himself. And then he began attacking the brush with the blade. Vrroooom.

      Soon, sweat poured down his body. This was a new kind of humidity. Thick. Whew. He looked around and everything was so…so green. Vrroooom.

      After a few minutes, he stopped and wiped his brow. Bill came over. “Hey, give me a hit of that cigar,” he said. “Shit, I didn’t know you brought cigars.”

      Eke handed him the blunt. “This stuff’s thick, man,” he said, pointing to the brush. “I don’t know how we’re going to get all the way up the hill to the clearing.”

      Ah, the clearing. The magic clearing at the top of the hill was the place of their destiny. A hillside cabin in the rainforest was to be the dream project.

      But just getting there would be a bitch.

      “Don’t worry about it,” said Bill. He smiled. He knew that was the phrase that Eke had grown up worrying about the most. Eke’s mother had always believed that when someone said ‘Don’t worry about it’, it was time for concern.

      Eke smiled.

      Back then, there was nothing really to worry about. But she worried. Led Zeppelin. She worried about Led Zeppelin. Why? Only because the two boys secluded themselves away for a playing of all nine albums – a Zeppelinathon of epic proportions. And she was worried that the boys were in there doing drugs or something. She had nothing to worry about. The boys were in there eating mass quantities of magic mushrooms that make your stomach quiver and your mind float effortlessly but that wasn’t anything to worry about. Was it? All these years later, Eke wondered.

      The jungle lay in front of him. Jimmy Page’s magic guitar sang and then roared in his internal memory while he started up the chainsaw. He pretended, for just a moment, that it was an instrument, playing with the engine speed. Back in the day, he thought as he started carving at the trees, woods meant partying. They would go and party in the woods. What times they had. What times. Vrroooom.

 Now, they weren’t talking about dreams and this wasn’t a party. They were trying to carve out a campsite and a path up to the eventual site of their hilltop cabin – which they had to build from the forest around them.

      Back in the day when Robert Plant was spinning a yarn about a stairway to a couple of young men on mushrooms, the stairway seemed like it could have been, well, right here in the heaven that is Honduras. Heaven? This jungle? Back then, who knew? It’s how dreams happen – unreal visions. And John Paul Jones’ driving bass backed by John Bonham’s manic drumming all added up to something bigger than four men with instruments and microphones. The sum was greater than the parts. That’s how it was and, listening to them, that’s how it felt to Eke and Bill. Together, they could do great things. Vrroooom.

      Eke continued to clear and sweat and think all this through. They’d been running together since they were 14. Even during the decade that Bill was married and Eke was drinking, they still managed to get out fishing, hunting, partying and talking crazy dreams. And, as happens, eventually crazy Bill got divorced and the old friendship resumed, just like in the old days. Except by then, of course, Eke had to quit drinking.

      That’s when his dreaming became bigger. Instead of drinking, he’d write, and write, and write whatever came into his mind. Then one day he had this idea about evolution, past, present, and possible future- he then wrote what came into his head. Though it was self-published, it was picked up one day by someone visiting his hometown bookstore (the owner was a friend and agreed to put five books on the shelf) who happened to write a science column for an academic magazine. The columnist hailed the book as written by a non-academic with an interesting academic idea. And though his fame didn’t go much beyond the world of evolution fanatics, it made him enough money to finance this dream move to Honduras. Evolution. Vrroooom.

      He and Bill remained friends and continued to talk about adventure. It had always been a common theme for them. When they were both in high school they were going to volunteer for the Marines but just then the Vietnam War ended. Unlike many of their generation, they wanted to go to war. But when the war ended the chance disappeared - the chance for real adventure seemed to have vanished forever. But now they were in Honduras.

                                  II

      The Rolling Stones once sang, “You can’t always get what you want” and maybe you can’t.

      But what if you could?

      The two sweaty friends were exhausted from yard work – because that’s what they called clearing the rainforest – so they rested up in the L-shaped clearing, a pasture, at the top of the hill where they planned to build their cabin. It was already open land because of its height, angle and a confluence of rocks. Perfect. Getting the way carved up here was the challenge, but still – now look. From up high they stared down at the moving river and at their plane resting against the shore, and then out at the green, green rainforest. You can’t always get what you want, but what if you could? Would you?

      Eke and Bill came to Honduras to find out. Birds were singing, and these weren’t robins. Amazing. For just a moment they had a chance to look and reflect. Of course, Bill didn’t have much reflection in him so he just started singing cartoon songs – “We’re going on a ship; we’re going on a ship”. Ah yes. It was a classic cartoon with both characters in the end, stranded on an island – each eying the other as food. The skinny one became a hallucinogenic hot dog while the chubby one morphed through the other’s hunger into a hamburger.

      Bill and Eke both had seen that cartoon a bunch of times. Back in the day, that was what they did, a Saturday morning ritual – they called it “Drugs with Bugs”. Bugs Bunny and others provided a lot of entertainment for these two – back in the day.

      The sun was beginning its slow descent. It was afternoon. Animals chattered. All of it was a feast for the senses. Civilization, and Massachusetts were very, very far away. The buzz, Eke realized, was intense. Yet he drank no alcohol; took no drugs. It just was.

      And it was a good thing he took nothing at all. There was still a lot of work to do. A lot. They had already cleared a swath of land down by the river and a path up to a bigger swath of land a little ways up the hill. That was where they planned to set up camp. So now they stood and gazed out at the grand view one more time, and then headed back down the hill to the plane. They needed to unload and set up camp. They needed to get back to the basic concept of doing whatever it takes to survive. They came here to challenge themselves.

      Back at the plane, Bill pulled out a rifle. “Wonder what kinda eats are around here?” he said. Then he smiled at Eke. “This sure is a different kinda grocery story, eh?”

      Eke smiled back at his friend. “At least checkout should be easy.”

      “Still, I get the feeling the meat might not volunteer to be cooked the way it does at Stop N Shop.”

      A bird flew overhead.

      “See,” said Bill.

“You expect it to just land here for you to shoot it?” 
“Yes, Eke, I do.”

      Eke grinned. “I know you do, Bill. Now put the gun down and let’s do some work. You know we brought hamburger in the cooler for tonight. There’ll be plenty of time for shooting later.” In fact, Eke had never really wanted to hunt, never wanted to test himself against a defenseless animal.

      “Just one shot,” said Bill.

      “Grab the sled.” Eke could only take so much of Bill’s mischief.

      Bill grabbed the sled. They brought along a toboggan to pull their gear uphill. Bill reached in and dragged it out of the top of the plane’s compartment. It was stacked upon everything else, which they would soon begin to stack on the toboggan so they could pull it towards the campsite.

      First they packed the sled with their hiking packs filled with clothes, tents and the cooler with the hamburger in it. Although they were only here on this first trip for a couple of weeks before they planned to fly back for more supplies, they didn’t bring anything else except dry food, like pasta, plus some canned food – Spam – and also some energy bars. They both expected to be using their rifles soon. And their fishing poles. Spam, after all, is Spam.

      Once the sled was loaded they both realized at the same moment the one bit of preparation they had skipped entirely – physical training. Though they were both carpenters and spent plenty of time doing actual physical work; that was different than being in shape and especially being in shape to pull a toboggan up a rocky slope.

      “This is going to be heavy,” said Eke.

      “Hard work won’t kill you,” Bill spoke.

      “Yeah, but why risk it?” Eke replied. Of course, he knew the answer for now- because he had to. There was no one else but the two of them. They came here to challenge themselves. And so they each grabbed a rope attached to the front eyehooks on the sled and nodded at each other.

      “Ready?” asked Bill.

      “Yeah.”

      Bill continued as count man. “One, two three,” and then they budged the barge into movement. Getting started is often the hardest action of all. As the initial burst faded they both instinctively went towards the grassy edge on the right, up the steep and slippery rock towards the middle and all the land they cleared.

      Up they pulled. Eke felt his muscles strain, especially in his legs. The rope dug into his shoulder. Up. Sweat rolled down his cheek. Up. The sled scraped against the rocks, making a grinding sound. His body already hurt. Up.

      Back in Massachusetts – back home – doing mindless work was good for the mind, Eke decided. A long time ago he figured that out. It was during the mindless manual labor that thoughts appeared. Out of nowhere, thoughts that turned into words and thoughts that turned into dreams and thoughts that turned into…Honduras.

      Up.

      They wanted adventure. They wanted to believe in something all the way, the way people did in the old days. What they wanted was romantically fuzzy- but right now they wanted to get the sled up the hill.

      And finally at the site, they stopped, settled the sled in a spot where it wouldn’t slide and let go.

      “I bet there are oxen on the other side of the hill laughing their asses off right now,” said Eke, stretching.

      “Do ya think?”

      Eke wanted to just stretch his body out on the clearing. But Bill is hyper-competitive and this friendship has, in many ways, been based on competition and the desire to one up the other. Rest? Pussy! I’ll take another load myself. Eke could hear Bill in his head. He stretched one more time and then started at the sled.

      Of course, Bill was just as tired and was actually hoping Eke would suggest a rest but since he didn’t, Bill knew he couldn’t. It was these dumb circles that sometimes got them in trouble and sometimes got a lot accomplished. They unloaded the sled in 15 minutes and had both tents set up in another 15. Neither one would stop first.

      But after another sled load, the natural five-minute rest turned into sitting, cooking fat sizzling burgers over propane and listening to the animals and watching the sun settle over the green of the jungle.

      They’d been dreaming of this since they were teenagers. The smell of meat cooking on the grill made Eke’s mouth water. He was tired.

                                                       III

Bill asked Eke if he wanted to set a tarp up over his tent, but Eke was feeling lazy and besides, he said, he wouldn’t need it tonight. It wasn’t going to rain. So Bill set up two tarps, one for his tent and one for their supply tent. Eke’s tent, the third tent, was tarpless. It wasn’t going to rain.

      When the rain started, Eke was in a deep sore-muscle sleep and didn’t notice the sound. But when the water started falling on his face, he noticed. He rolled over and hoped it would stop. It didn’t stop. It just got wetter faster.

      Tarp.

      He thought about why he is such an idiot. He was so tired. How much effort would have it taken to be smart and put a tarp over his tent? How much? Less than it would take to deal with this. Shit. He could hear Bill snoring.

      Eke grabbed a flashlight just inside the door of his tent and turned it on, waiting for his vision to return to normal. He could hear Bill, in his mind, telling him to put a tarp over his head. He could hear his father too, telling him, “No tent is totally waterproof. You still need a tarp.” Shit. Eke hated being wrong- he was wrong so often it just started feeling right.

      The water was coming into the tent faster now. Middle of the night. Eke needed sleep in the worst way and he couldn’t even get the worst sleep in this tent. Drip, drip.

What to do?

      The plane! He would go sleep in the plane. Bad things happen to people all the time. The results all depended on how you approached the situation. This was no poor-me situation. Well, maybe it was. But so what? He took action. Walking downhill to the plane made him totally soaked. Drenched. He reached in his pocket and found the key. Unlocking the plane he climbed inside and looked around with the flashlight. Finding what he was looking for, a blanket that they used to wrap the rifles and fishing poles, Eke stripped to nothing. He wondered while laughing at himself, who could possibly be watching, before finally falling into a slumber.

      And as he drifted down into a nether world, it all swirled inside him – the heat, the work, the scenery, and the dream. He was so tired it felt like his skeleton was falling through his skin and as he began the rhythmic breathing his mind flew to a place where he met every challenge. He saw armies against him and he kept battling and winning. He slept and slept.

      By the time he awoke with the near-equatorial sun shooting through the windshield of the plane, Eke had dreamt some exciting dreams but he couldn’t recall details. Just being challenged and meeting the challenge. He opened the door to the plane and saw the path and the clearing that they had opened yesterday. And he saw Bill up by the campsite with a fire going.

      As Eke walked up the path with the blanket wrapped around his naked body, carrying his wet clothes, Bill smiled.

      “Not a word,” said Eke. He knew. And he knew that Bill knew he knew. Stupid, sometimes, is obvious.

      Bill was kind, for now. “Coffee’s ready.”

      “Thanks,” said Eke. He grabbed a cup, went to the supply tent and dug out some clothes. He sipped the coffee. Caffeine was his last drug of choice, and it was wonderful. He felt it hit his taste buds, his stomach, and then his heart rate. He downed the cup and went back for more. “Good coffee,” he said, looking out at the forest. “I needed it.”

      “So, you’d get wet?” asked Bill. Of course, he couldn’t resist. “Should have used a tarp.”

      “I’m going to have more coffee,” said Eke. Complimenting Bill’s coffee seemed his best defense right now. He was just too tired to deal with the competitive shit right now.

      Not Bill. “So where’d you sleep? Under a tree?”

      “In the plane.”

      “Oh, of course. Of course.”

      Eke smiled. What could he say? He slept in the plane because he didn’t put a tarp over his tent as Bill suggested. He poured himself another cup.

      As the second cup took hold, it came back to him again. The dream. The cabin. That and more. What funny thoughts the first rush of caffeine gives. He stood and looked at all the greenery left to clear. “Well, Bill, what do you say?”

      “I say I’m cooking up some fried Spam,” said Bill.

      And at that, the oddest phrase in the world made Eke’s mouth water. Fried Spam. It had only been a day since they’d left civilization, but the hung over feeling he had from all the work and wet was enough to make the sound of anything frying like heaven. Mmm – fried Spam!

      By the time they finished eating, the sun was burning and Eke, dream refueled, was ready for the day. The plan was to cut a path up from the river to the L-shaped pasture where they would build the cabin, and then another “driveway” down from the pasture to the lone road that went by here a quarter mile away. Cutting all that timber should be enough to actually build a cabin. That was the plan.

      He picked up the chainsaw but Bill reminded him that he had to siphon gas again from the plane.

      “I’m so glad siphons have bellows,” said Eke. I hated sucking gas up with your mouth.” He thought about all times of getting a mouthful of gas back when they were kids and even a few years ago – stupidly needing to get gas from a car to a … whatever. He did it a lot of times. Never seemed to carry a gas can with him. And now? He walked to the plane.

      Walking down, he realized again where exactly he was and what he was doing here. He looked at the plane. He could, of course, just fly back. Just like that. Pretend all this never happened. Instead, he siphoned gas.

And he thought. He looked around again. Bill came down the hill now carrying the other chainsaw.

      When Bill arrived, Eke confessed, “I’m already feeling guilty about cutting the trees down. They’ve lived here a long time.”

      “I’m not,” said Bill. “That tree will be great for our cabin, helping us live here.”

      “Good-for-nothing conscience- always getting me in trouble” Eke said.

      “Serves no purpose,” said Bill. He smiled.

      Eke handed Bill the siphon and said, “It’s a brand new day.”

      Vrroooom.

      Eke reminisced as he started cutting the tree. He’d been working with wood for a long time. One of his first jobs when he was 17 was in a wood mill in an old abandoned chicken coop. He planed the faces of rough lumber and then jointed the planks to get one straight edge. The idea is to be able to rip it on a table saw. That was the idea back then when he was inhaling oily dust that created brown liquid snot. The worst kind, worse even than the suffocating drywall dust he played with for a couple of years. Carpentry was better than drywall or lumber. Pounding nails helped vent frustration.

      But this cutting, even with the sawdust flying, was better even than carpentry. This wasn’t a factory after all or someone else’s crew on someone else’s house.

      He was the boss.

      “Come on, hurry up,” yelled Bill.

      Well, he was one of the bosses. Eke smiled at Bill, who was going faster than Eke even though Eke started first. Size is an advantage and Bill reminds Eke of this all the time. Even though they were competing, as they were always competing, they were also working together. They used a system of notching two trees and then falling them one at a time. And then after they fell, they would slice the bark lengthwise with a chainsaw.

      Of course, before they did that, they had to trim the trees of the branches and that took time. For a while, even as the competition heated up, it seemed like they were making no progress. Finally when they started making the trees fall, they were happier, high-fiving each other and even breaking into a spontaneous Stones’ song – singing to the jungle their joy at progress.

      And so they broke for lunch, boiling water and stirring in rice. Bill was making more Spam. The Spam master. Lunch in Honduras.

      “You know,” said Eke, afraid to say it but feeling he had to, “it would work a lot better if…”

      “It’s working fine the way it is. Just stop it, okay, Eke. Geez. Always something, some idea with you. This isn’t rocket science, we’re just cutting logs, dude. Okay?”

      Eke hated when Bill got this way. But that’s how it is, how it has always been between these two. Friends who compete are friends who fight. And Bill, being bigger, stronger, better with woman was always riding Eke. And Eke, who never met a challenge he wouldn’t take, especially from Bill, was the perfect foil.

      And they sure had themselves some fun along the way. Sometimes it was too much fun. And sometimes, it was just enough.

      How do you end up in Honduras? Eke finished his feast of Spam and rice and packed a corncob pipe with loose tobacco. Bill, on the other side of the fire, lit a Marlboro. To each his own. That’s how you end up in Honduras. Eke lit his pipe. He thought about all the diseases they might catch here. He had studied for it before the trip – cures and preventions. He thought of other things. He looked over at Bill, smoking a cigarette and engrossed in his own thoughts, and Eke remembered. He remembered the dream. He remembered how it used to be. It used to be a game.

      They used to blow things up. It started with firecrackers stuffed in things. There was something about explosions and destruction. So fast. So awesome. Yeah, the real meaning of the word kaboom! It was just so cool. They were vicious too. Horrible to think about now. But it happened and Eke, sitting in the jungle listening to, well, frogs, thought of the frog. “Remember the frog?” he asked.

      “The frog?”

      “The frog and the firecracker?”

      “Oh shit, yeah, that was funny,” said Bill.

      “No,” said Eke. “I always felt bad about that.”

      Pick on someone your own size, he thought to himself. He was a pretty small guy to feel like a bully but he thought of the frog and he felt exactly like that. He yearned for something more. A fair fight. Test myself. That’s always been the thing. Test myself.

      And somehow Bill has almost always been there for the testing. It was dirt bikes. It was blowing things up. It was getting wasted. It was wasting a life. And now. Eke smiled. This was life. The ultimate test.

      And it was going to get better, more interesting.

                                                       IV

 A week later, they had cleared a long driveway to within 20 feet of the road. They had cut, shaved and notched all the timbers so they were ready to be stacked and made into their dream cabin. When finally they stopped, Eke said, “I think my hands are numb from holding the chainsaw.”

      He contemplated what they’d finished so far. With his numb hands, he lit his corncob pipe. His body was a lot stronger now. Thinner too. He couldn’t wait to get back to the U.S. and eat some real food. That was the plan – fly back, spend a few days in Massachusetts and then drive their old truck full of supplies down to Miami where they would put it on a merchant ship and work on the boat to pay their way to Honduras. Then they would drive their reconditioned 1973 Chevy truck to the driveway, clear out the last 20 feet and then build the cabin. And then see what happens.

      His smoke floated into the air. Honduras. It was all so peaceful.

                                                      V

The eggs were spiced, scrambled and runny, while the toast was dry from sitting. Yeah, welcome to a merchant ship where it seems the cook is just learning to cook or, if he’s not, he didn’t have much to work with. Eggs? How can you mess up eggs?

      Chue was his name. He was a towering Caribbean-looking fellow with a big smile and dirty white apron. They remembered him from the night before when he was wearing an officer’s uniform and he was checking luggage. It was a ship where many duties were served. “Hello, did you enjoy?” he asked. His Creole accent was thick. Even the simple sentence required effort to decipher.

      “Enjoy?” said Bill. “That doesn’t even begin to say it. It was the best breakfast ever.” Bill smiled at Chue.

      Eke laughed to himself. Bill always cracked him up and now was no different. Playing to the cook.

      And then Jose walked in. He was the waifish young man carrying a clipboard. Jose was the one who checked them on board last night and seemed to run things on the ship. “Hello. Bill and Eek, right?”

      “It’s pronounced E.K., like my initials,” said Eke.

      “Okay, Eek,” said Jose, his accent was also thick but not as bad as Chue. And his was a completely different accent, South American perhaps.

      Eke smiled. Bill laughed.

      “Yeah, that’s us,” said Bill. “I’m Bill.”

      “Okay, Bill, Eek, when you are done eating just come on down and I’ll show you around and set you up.”

When Jose walked out of the room, Bill smiled and asked, “You done eating, Eek?”

      “Shut up, rabbit,” Eke growled while continuing to eat.

      “Shut, shutting up,” Bill answered. “Eek, I think I like sound of that,” he pressed.

       Eke, starting to become annoyed, just looked down and munched his last bite of dry toast. They sat this way for a few moments, silently ignoring each other. With a dry sense of humor of their own, eek really is how his parents intended to pronounce his name- with his last name being King, it was better than their second choice of Joe.

          Both were now finished eating. They just sat there, waiting for the other to move. Bill, meanwhile, was wondering about what kind of work he would have to do aboard this ship. “Hey Eke,” Bill said his friend’s name correctly. “Why did we have to take this ship anyway?”

      “Because we had to take the truck. You know that.”

      Bill knew. They both knew, they both carried a gun and it would have been difficult to get aboard a plane.

      Also, Eke thought, it was to keep busy and occupy his time and mind because Eke knew the old saying that an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. This trip would help keep Eke from drinking. And that, he told himself, was part of the plan.

      Bill, though, didn’t quit drinking, didn’t want to quit drinking, and didn’t, in fact, think he had a drinking problem. Eke had the problem.

      Eke said, “Come on, admit it, you like traveling first class like this.”

      “Yeah, right. First class. That’s funny,” Bill scoffed. “It’s too early. I should be sleeping.”

      There were a couple dozen men of various nationalities working and traveling on the ship. Some would get off in Honduras like Eke and Bill. Others would stay on for the next leg, to South America. All worked menial jobs to keep the ship moving.

      It was 6 a.m. “Some of those guys have been working since 4,” said Eke. “Comparatively, Bill, we got a lot of sleep.”

      “Yeah, and now we’ve got to work.”

      They both stood and headed out when immediately they saw Jose. It was like he had sixth sense and just showed up. “Done with breakfast?” he asked. He smiled. “Follow me, I’ll bring you downstairs.”

      Jose led them through the containers towards the bow. Containers were five feet high and they were stacked 10 of them so that they rose 50 feet in the air to create aisles. The ship held 12 rows of boxes in its width, and 12 in the length. There were more than 700 of them. They looked like tin coffins. As they walked, Jose asked them about their trip and when they informed him that they were actually moving to Honduras, he smiled.

      “You know about the troubles there, right?”

      “Troubles?” asked Bill.

      “Well, Nicaragua is next door,” said Jose.

      “Oh that,” said Eke. “Yeah, yeah, that’s all over the news. But Honduras is stable. Right?”

      Jose smiled and kept walking.

      In fact, Jose knew what the Americans had read – that Honduras was a staging ground for the Contras to enter Nicaragua in their running war with the communist Sandinistas. There were, in fact, death squads running around the country in the cause of the pro-American government. It was all very nebulous and the difference between right and wrong was considerably murky.

      It wasn’t exactly 1983 in the civil and organized United States of America. They were still figuring things out in Central America in some very violent ways.

      “Honduras has a pro-American government,” said Jose. He stopped at a railed ladder. “But be careful. Two Americans are liable to attract some attention.”

      “That’s cool,” said Bill. “A little adventure is exactly what we are looking for. That’s why we rode this ship,” he said. He smiled at Eke when he said it.

      “Sometimes, you should be careful what you wish for,” said Jose. He stared out, like he saw something, some vision in the air. Like he was looking at a memory. And then he turned.

      They watched Jose descend the steps. They waited a bit, neither wanting to stick their ass in his face. After all, some things are probably right for people of any culture. “After you,” said Bill.

      “No, after you,” said Eke.

      “I insist,” said Bill.

      Another stupid power struggle and this one really was silly, so Eke just gave in. “Fine,” he said. Down he went. And then he realized it was funny that Bill would follow him.

“What the?” said Bill as he descended after Eke. 
“Sorry man,” said Eke. “Eggs. You know.”

      “Oh man, that’s bad.”

      “Thank you, thank you very much,” said Eke, mimicking a bad Elvis.

      Farting at your friend, thought Eke. There you go – we’re grownups. And yet here they were, doing this big grownup thing on this ship bound for Honduras.

      The hull was a mixture of storage rooms and machinery and when Jose got to the biggest machine of all, he stopped and hollered over the loud noise, “This is the engine.” The engine rose two stories with grated steel platforms wrapped around the second floor to make working on it easier. Right now, the first mate was on the second story grate tinkering the engine’s noise. It roared like a dull thunder and it was magnified by reverberations off the metal hull.

      They continued towards the rear. Back there was a room running in the center for the last 30 feet of the ship. Jose led them to a door on the left wall and opened it. In there was a 12-inch thick drive shaft spinning wildly in control.

      “A whole room for that?” asked Eke. But as soon as he asked he realized the need for instant access to it as well as the need to stay away from it for safety’s sake.

      Jose just smiled and said, “Yes, a whole room for that.” He stood a moment saying nothing and then finally he said, “Well, that’s the tour. It’s time to start your job.”

      “And what would that be?” asked Bill.

      Jose pointed at the walls. “We have temporary workers scrub these walls down here. As you can see they get dirty fast.” He smiled. “I cleaned them myself a month ago.”

      “What do you use?” asked Eke.

      “Mops. Bleach. Jose pointed to a closet. “Everything you need is in there.” He paused. “If you need anything else, just look for me. I’ll be around.” And then Jose walked away.

      Eke looked at the walls. Everything had an engraved plate labeling it. Odd. (An international regulation, but if you don’t know, odd indeed.) Eke wondered if the urinals were labeled. He didn’t notice last time he used them. But he will, he’ll be looking for labels everywhere now.

      He looked at the walls again. They really were gross – in need of cleaning for sure. If he were to use a color to describe it, he would call it grimy – somewhere between black, gray, purple and orange.

Grimy. He looked at the length. It was at least a hundred meters; a football field in length. It was, to say the least, daunting.

      And so he began. Slopping his mop in the bucket of bleach and detergent and slapping it on the walls. Slop and slap. Rub, rub, rub. At one point he got frustrated and tried to imitate some movie, or maybe it was a cartoon. He picked up the bucket and threw all the water at the wall, somehow expecting a cleaning miracle.

      “Good one,” said Bill.

      “Jackass,” he said aloud to Bill. Then under his breath, “it never works like you picture it.”

      Shit. They both scrubbed and scrubbed and seemed to be getting nowhere but after a couple of hours they actually had almost 50 meters cleaned. Just then, Jose showed up. “Looks good, looks good,” he said. “And in a week it will be dirty again.”

      Eke smiled. “Then we really are contributing, eh?” As Jose turned to walk away, Eke asked, “Hey, when is coffee break? I’m hungry again.”

      Jose laughed. “Whenever you want. We take our time here. Go on up and help yourself.”

      Eke smiled. “Whenever I want?” He put down the mop. “Now is good.”

      Bill smiled too. “Yeah, me too.”

      “Good job so far,” said Jose again.

      “Thanks,” they both said.

      Upstairs, Chue was still in the kitchen. They sat down and Eke pulled out a couple cans of Chef-Boy-r-Dee. They opened them and ate them cold, with plastic spoons. Both were thinking similar versions of the same rap on luxury. It seemed so quiet up here compared to down below. Still, they could feel the boat rumbling, moving through the water. Moving through time. Moving through life for once. And it felt damn good – mopping or no mopping.

      Eke finished his can first. “Hey, Bill.”

      “Yeah.”

      “Did you see Jose’s face when he told us to be careful because two Americans could attract some attention.”

      Bill smiled. “Yeah, I did.”

      “Do you think that’s good?”

      “Did we come here for adventure? Or not?”

      Eke took a big breath and felt all of it hit him at once. “Yes,” he said. “Yes we did.”

      “It’s going to be cool,” said Bill. “I bet there will be a bit of old west to it.”

      “This boat has a Mayflower feel to it,” said Eke. “Going to a new world.” “Yeah, something like that,” Bill agreed while drifting away.

                                                       VI

      Eke looked through his binoculars and tried to imagine what it was like for the original European explorers not knowing when or if they’d see land. The sun blazed off the sea. For a week now, he’d been on this ship scrubbing his way south and now, he knew, they were getting near.

      Honduras.

      He’d been thinking of this forever. He’d even been to Honduras and cut wood but soon, he’d be driving. They were moving in.

      Off to the left, he noticed something. A couple of specks moving in the distance. He turned with the binoculars and he saw clearly that they were two boats, that they were together, and that they were moving towards the merchant ship.

      He was standing on the port side of the bridge. Suddenly, he heard the noise of scampering feet.

      “Hurry up,” he heard Jose say. “They’ll be here in a about ten minutes.

      “Okay, okay,” he heard Chue’s thick accent.

      Eke wondered what was going on. He slipped his binoculars into his pants pocket and walked to find Jose and Chue inside a container towards the back of the boat. The metal box was full of guns.

      Jose and Chue were loading weapons, two being 50 calibers. Jose looked up, saw Eke, and kept doing what he was doing.

      “Do you need any help,” asked Eke.

      “Help? Help do what?” Jose tried to down play the fact they were arming themselves.

      “What are you doing with all these guns,” Eke pried.

      “Marauders are coming,” said Jose matter of factly. He looked up briefly to catch the visitor’s reaction, and when he saw confusion he clarified some more. “Pirates.”

      “You’re shitting me,” said Eke. His heart jumped a bit. “What do they want?”

      “They want what we’ve got,” said Jose. “And we’re not going to give it to them.” He stopped for just an instant and gave it some thought, “So, want to help?”

      “Sure,” said Eke. “What do you want me to do.” 
Just then, Bill walked up on them. He came down to ask Eke a question about Spam but then he saw the guns and said, “Holy crap! Those are big guns. What’s going on?

      “Pirates,” said Eke. He was so in the know.

      “Pirates?”

      “Yeah, marauders. Tell him, Jose.”

      Jose stopped again. “We have to hurry. There are two boats coming up the port side and I believe they are thieves. We need to get these guns up on deck now.”

      And so they helped carry the gun pedestals and ammunition while the crewmen carried the big guns, and even two grenade launchers.

      “We can deal with them safely as long as everyone else remains calm and stays in their rooms,” said Jose as they hurried towards the bow. In fact, we don’t need you getting in the way either. Just stay below and hand us ammo if we need it.”

      “Deal with them?” asked Eke.

      “Yeah,” said Chue. He smiled halfheartedly.

      Eke couldn’t believe any of this was real. Pirates? “What do they usually have for weapons?” he asked. He was stunned.

      “Small machine guns,” said Jose. “That’s about it. Usually all we have to do is show that we are ready for them.”

      “Interesting,” said Bill.

      “Happens all the time,” said Jose.

      Bill and Eke carried the ammo boxes. One was long and rectangular and the other was square and the size of a small television. Both boxes had handles. Eke carried the smaller box.

      As they hurried up the stairs to get to the bow, Eke wondered how close the boats were now. His heart was racing. Was this really happening? This was an adventure all right. He passed up the box to an awaiting Hose and then finished climbing the steps.

      He looked out and saw they were within a mile. A first mate, an Asian looking fellow named Alex showed up out of seemingly nowhere and together the three of them efficiently assembled the guns while Bill and Eke watched gape-mouthed.

      Unbelievable. Pirates. They looked at each other and each could see the excitement in the other’s face. Holy shit- in this day and age.

      Eke wondered what would happen next. He was ready for action, ready to be involved in saving this ship.

      Within a minute the two big guns were set up and Jose, Chue and Alex were holding other guns standing on deck, staring down the approaching boats. Eke held up his binoculars and he could see on the boat on the left a big man holding binoculars. And then the man yelled something. And the boats kept coming. And then the big man held up the binoculars again and again he yelled something – something else.

      And the boats turned. Just like that.

      A little show of force and that was that. The three crewmen next to the big guns gave an audible sigh of relief. “Thank God,” said Chue in that thick way of his. They began clicking the safeties back on their weapons.

      Eke was amazed. That’s that? Wait a minute.

      And yet that WAS that – the entire extent of the confrontation lasted, well; there was no confrontation so it didn’t even last a second. Before Eke knew it, the gun was disassembled. Jose was telling a dirty joke to Chue and Alex.

      They went quickly back down with all the equipment and ammunition. Bill and Eke naturally helped without being asked. They were fascinated. Finally, when the got into the locked gunroom, Bill couldn’t contain himself any longer. He looked around at all the guns. He looked at Jose and at Chue, both calmly putting the guns away and he asked, “Okay, what the hell just happened. And why do you have so many guns?”

      “The world is a dangerous place, my friend,” said Jose. “And on this ship, we travel through that dangerous world.”

      Eke, also couldn’t contain himself any longer. “That was pretty damn exciting, even if nothing happened,” he said.

      “Yeah,” said Bill. “That was awesome.”

      Jose stopped what he was doing and looked at the two of them. He shook his head. “Funny Americans,” he said. “You think it’s fun because that was not real danger.”

   “We don’t have a problem with danger,” Eke said quickly. He nodded at Jose as if to say, you know. “Excitement,” he said. “We came down here