In Laymon's Terms

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.