Jordan brought the weed.
I brought the rum.
Steve brought something in an unlabeled bottle he swore must be vodka.
And Mark brought us down Mill street and through seven sticker bushes and down a hill made of sharp rocks and onto a twenty-foot scrap of almost-sand with a rotting-ass shack in it that looked like it had been put up by thumbless drunks and smelled like it too.
“Gross,” said Steve.
“Sick,” said Jordan. “What, you never wanted to get wasted on beachfront property? What’re you, a peasant?”
And it was true, the Atlantic was right there – made a little smaller and safer by the rocks. Hidden, too; nobody was seeing this place from the water. I made a fire – well, I piled up a fire, then it wouldn’t light so after the fourth miserable little puff of dead smoke I gave up.
“Hell with it,” I said. “Breeze wouldn’t let it work anyways.”
“Breeze is cutting my ass apart,” said Jordan. “Mark, you sure this is a building? I’ve seen nets with fewer holes.”
“I know one way to get warm.”
“No matter how drunk I get, you aren’t good-looking enough.”
“Nah. Hey, Rob, pass that rum.”
“Pass yours first.”
“Fine.”
Slosh, slosh, slosh, clink, chug.
“Eww!” said Mark. “Straight outta the bottle?”
“It’s a disinfectant,” said Steve.
“I don’t want to catch dumbass.”
“You’ve had it since birth.”
I spat out my mouthful.
“Hey! Don’t waste it!”
“Nothing to waste – the hell is this?”
“Vodka.”
“Vodka? It’s got no flavour.”
“Vodka has no flavour, dumbass.”
“I know, but it’s got no kick!”
“That’s because it’s working. It sneaks in.”
“No it doesn’t.”
“Yes it does.”
Jordan grabbed the bottle out of my hand and swallowed a quarter of it.
“Jesus, careful!”
“Nah.”
And so the circle began. Take a pull, pass it on, vocally suspect Steve’s claims and my taste-
“It’s the same one my mom buys!”
“Your mom’s taste then.”
-and then pass it on. We got into a rhythm and it started to feel good, or at least normal.
“How’d you find this place anyways?” I asked Mark.
“Fell down a hill.”
“How’d you fall down a hill?”
“Steve’s brother and his friends picked me up and threw me into a bush.”
I whacked Steve on the head.
“Hey, I didn’t do anything you prick!”
“Yeah. Pass it on to your brother for me.”
“Fuck that! He’ll throw me into a bush.”
“Worked out for Mark.”
The bottles made a circle again.
“Heyy, Jordan. When you gonna share?”
“Not until I get more booze in me. You have no idea how hard it is to hand this out to you assholes. Know what I had to pay my sister for this?”
“No?”
“It wasn’t anything,” Steve said, “because you stole it from her sock drawer while she was at work.”
Jordan leaned over and smacked him on the cheek.
“OW!”
“Sorry. I’m almost drunk enough to share, and I’m getting all reckless. Can’t control my own strength and shit.”
“Bullshit.”
“Can’t hear you. Too drunk.”
The bottles made a circle again.
“It’s not so bad. This is vodka?”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, maybe.”
“Ech. Whatever this was, it’s more water than drink.”
“Says who?”
“I did. Better find the man who sold you this and take off a thumb, because you been robbed six ways to Sundays and back again.”
I looked to my left. Someone had squeezed his way between me and Steve without noticing – he was crazy-thin, which explained a little.
“Uh. This your shack?”
“No, but no one’s said otherwise for a long time.” Oh Christ he was a gargler. Sounded like half his teeth had been pulled out and put back in the wrong order. “Been a decent place for me and the boys to lie low.”
“Oh. Sorry. Should we… go?”
The new guy turned to face me, and maybe the rum and…maybe-vodka was kicking in, because he had the most sunken eyes I’d ever seen on anyone who could still talk. “You got another bottle?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s in it?”
“Rum.”
“Deal us in and you got the place for the night.”
I tried to think this over with whatever brain cells I still had at 100%. Potentially offend a strange man living in a shack, or invite him and his shack buddies in and risk offending them later?
“Sure,” said Steve.
“Fuck,” I said.
“Booze’s up, boys!” said the new guy.
And then his buddies pulled themselves up out of the dirt to join us.
Jordan had been sitting on the biggest one’s head. Neither of them were thrilled about that.
His name was Jack Witless. The others were Big Louis and Half-Shin Terry and Chop.
Chop had one arm and Big Louis was about six five; the rest were less obvious. Mind you, it was hard to tell them apart in the first place, on account of all of them being skeletons held together with glowing…stuff.
“Ectoplasm,” said Mark.
“Jelly,” said Half-Shin Terry.
“I sure as shit wouldn’t put it on toast,” said Jordan.
“Quit hogging the bottle,” said Chop.
Jordan threw it to her and she caught it with her missing arm.
“Shit!”
“Three hundred and sixteen years and you still haven’t figured that out,” said Jack Witless.
“It was my good arm!”
“WAS. Get over it.”
“You cut it off!”
“It was your arm or your life, you whinger. And I don’t recall any complaints at the time.”
“You’d shoved two bottles of rum down my throat!”
“And never got any thanks for that neither.”
“Quit hogging the bottle,” said Jordan.
Chop threw it to her with her missing arm, starting a quiet but angry wrestling match until Big Louis took it.
“So,” said Steve. “You guys were like…pirates?”
“Yup,” said Half-Shin Terry. He’d pulled a pipe the size of a baby’s arm out of his rags and was trying to light it with…something.
“Woah. What was that like?”
“Boring.”
“Woa – oh, yeah?”
“Ever sailed?”
“My grandpa has a boat.”
“Don’t inherit it. Dullest profession on earth. Winds and braces and mainsails are one-tenth of it and the rest is weevils.”
“What’s a weevil?”
“Good lad. Stay ignorant.”
I gave him my lighter.
“What’s this?”
“Click the top.”
He clicked the top.
“Well. Thanks.”
“No problem.”
And to think I’d been worried we’d brought too much. Lucky our landlords were light sippers – well, sort of. They TRIED to chug, but the muscles didn’t seem to want to cooperate. Or exist.
Mind you, some of them still did. Big Louis arm wrestled everyone one after another and then all at the same time. He won all of them, which wouldn’t have been so bad except the winner had to take a drink each time and by the end our rum was down to half the bottle and he was laid out flat on his back which meant half the shack was full of dead ghost pirate man.
“Budge up, you bastard,” said Chop, kicking him fruitlessly.
“That’s your missing arm,” said Jordan.
“Wha’?”
“You’re kicking him with your missing arm.”
“Aw fuckoff,” said Chop. Then she switched to her missing arm and didn’t catch on until Jordan almost threw up laughing.
The fifth time the bottles made a full circuit Mark started doing his stupid pirate voice impression. Good thing he was a mumbler and they didn’t seem to understand what a pirate voice sounded like, otherwise that might’ve started some shit. Chop was still sore over the arm thing.
Everyone else was having a good time though. Especially Steve, who was sitting close enough to Half-Shin Terry to get a good second draft of whatever-it-was he had in his pipe. And Mark, who didn’t seem to realize how close he’d probably come to getting shanked by dead pirates. And me and Jack Witless who’d decided to finish Steve’s maybe-vodka all at once between us to see if it actually did anything or was just pure water.
“S’garbage.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. Y’know. Thans.”
“Yeah.”
“Yur a goo’ lad, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Been a goo’night.”
“Yeah.”
“Lissen…hate to ask, but need a favor.”
“Yeah.”
“C’n you….clean up? Tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
“Thans. Y’know what?”
“Yeah.”
“Yur a goo’ lad.”
“Yeah,” I said. Then I threw up in my mouth, but just a little.
Things got pretty good after that, I think. Some laughing, some swearing, I think someone started making out and I’m PRETTY sure I didn’t imagine Mark using Big Louis’s ribcage as a xylophone. But it was harder to remember stuff after Half-Shin Terry gave me a toke of that whatever-it-was he had in his pipe which must’ve been pretty good because when Steve shook me awake I was wearing someone else’s pants.
“No,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Steve. “Morning. C’mon, we gotta hurry up.”
“No,” I said. The wall I wasn’t looking at was comfy. My face fit right into it.
“Yeeeaah. C’mon, we need help.”
“Aww. S’just. Bottles.”
“No it ISN’T. C’mon!”
I was rolled over and opened one eye in protest and was eye to eye socket with someone. I think it might’ve been Big Louis; whoever it was had nice solid brow ridges.
“Oh,” I said.
“Yeeeeaaaah.”
It took us four hours to bury all those dead pirates, and man my parents were pissed when they caught me sneaking back into my room smelling of three-hundred-year-old dank and corpses.
But y’know, what’s a grounding compared to a life experience? And let me tell you, that was one hell of an experience. Valuable and educational – Jordan says she’s got her career figured out now. I told her I thought the pirate market in Somalia is pretty saturated but she says naw they won’t be expecting it in New England this time of century, so she figures she’ll have a few months of easy money before she heads for college.
And hey, everyone needs a first mate, right?