A Life In The Day (55)

PAST ADVENTURES and BOW WATCH
................................................................................................................................sorry for being away so long folks, but I'm back now.......................................................................................................................Since it was Sunday and the crew had pretty much nothing to do until watch change, we all just sat around the mess hall, and Joel and I talked and the crew just listened as we unfolded the happenings of the past few months...........As we sat there and told of our experiences with the BULL SOW, (oxy-moron!), that was stoned on phycotropic fruit, or Joel knocking Himself out with His bolo while hunting, or the attack of the killer MOTHS, and the killer Tarantulas, or the riding of adolescent Crabs in the river,or the meeting of THE BANDIT KING, they all laughed with uproarious mirth! When we came to the massacre of the village.............Joel started to silently cry and the crew either lowered their eyes or looked at us with either horror or pity.It was then that I realised my stupidity. I had no idea that I was either so double jointed or that I could fit my size 10 foot into my mouth. I unwittingly had sucked the air out of the room! I tried to pull the fat out of the fire by quickly changing the subject to the valley of light and finding the river of GOLD!, and the Piranhas in it, and later the territorial Headhunters as we were leaving our camp site, with our packs filled with the river gold. I believe that some of the seamen picked up on what I was attempting to do in changing the subject so as to get Joel out of His private hell. Some of them laughed overly hard at my telling how we had outsmarted the assayer in his office, at his own game.This work was harder than I thought. I started talking about the dumb things we had done to the dumbest things we had done, as time progressed the seamen started to get into a state of jocularity at our silliness of our adventure and Joel came out of his funk. I kept talking about more dumb things and it was obvious by Joel's demeanor that he was coming out of His hell. As the morning wore on, the Sun seemed to shine in the mess hall.
Finally the watch was changed, and we decided to go out and look at the sea without roiling stomach's. Joel and I went to the poop deck and looked out at what we were leaving behind.. An old life in America and a new life in who knew where..............................
............. and then I said,"Aw,fuck it. Tomorrow's another day."