Revolution

Pops could be heard before I could define my city’s shape…cracks and pops, quiet, then more of either. At first I assumed the noises a celebration of some type but easily they grew into being guns firing in the joy and anger of revolution.

Within the haze of the port city spiralled funnels of smoke were reaching toward the mountain peaks that joined the clouds. Grey strips in the tree green of life. But the city sparkled as it always did around this time of day with a sun just leaving morning knowing it will continue to make us a day.

I looked about me to see other boats sailing these seas, crews staring toward the Prince’s Port, staring at the landsman’s doings, calculating how to profit with the loving edge of fun thrusting. We waved to each other smiling in our different ways. The spiritualism of piracy pounding our hearts to life. I felt my beard and brushed my hands over my head. My hair was hot. My skin was wet with sweat. My hand felt my wide smile and my fingers patted the smile to summon up a scream.

We could not contain ourselves, conch calls and other wild screams announced us, the pirate fleet of sensualists come to call on our own unguarded capital. We could not contain ourselves, in the light breezes with crews of delirious ragamuffins and dancing machetes. All teeth we were, eyes and pointed things, in the bright afternoon sun.

We were going to plunder our city, capture and burn it into memory. We were pirates, worshippers of the free winds, destroyers of enslaved lands.

I searched for something to do in the time it would take to get into the port. I went below and brought back a rum bottle. I sent a libation to the sea loa, Agwe, and drank, filling my mouth and gulping, liquid joining liquid on my chest through my open shirt. Rum is the true blood of flibustiers and it surged through me to my lion-heart as conch shells moaned all about, machetes poked the sky, rum bottles passed, even between some boats. We moved in a tight forest of canvasses over the slight swell and grand widening wakes. Ahead and after me were rakish sailing craft, some with canvas sacks patching old sail material. Beneath me lay my fine cedar runs on a tilting deck that held billows of proud sail.

I drank more rum, then ran forward to reef my mainsail to present a small amount of sail to a noticeably stiffening breeze. There became less celebration of banding and more consternation with movement on their boats to contain the wind, because it was a wind now. The fleet was yawing side to side and almost hitting the brothers with much yelling and instructions. Our tight knit motion became fragmented as Magic cut through the leaders and left the slowest or un-ablest dropping behind. We were the leaders now with a nice soft swell pushing us from the quarter and the wind complimenting it over my shoulder. Some thought they knew better and tried to lead us taking their best known routes with this point of wind on their particular courses. But we held and my rum bottle came up to my lips again in the comfort of a wonderful boat. My fraternity of raiders were now scattered by the force of wind that pulled us together. None were near us as we gained even more space with me eying a spot that I knew from my childhood days before this all happened.

I was going back to my youth and carelessness about what the future may hold. I knew there was no fear to close a door on my life then and I was reckless enough to walk with a chest full of myself. Running away became running toward and running toward found me aboard a fine vessel with a crew who knew what they were about.

I put the rum bottle below, knowing one pirate who would need his wits about him to enter port if he was to depart with treasure. They all seemed to do the same and the conch shells were put down next to the rum bottles and the machets were back in their scabbards and the smiles stayed fixed under flapping hats. There was that look. I know it because I have it also. That look of place and time where I, like they, were coming back to awareness and necessities. Our celebration would be after the treasures and enough had been uniting before we take them. Life was the drama ahead and the excitement of conquest.

I pulled in the mainsail to slow the boat so I could approach the port with a caution that knew of rifles in guard posts down at the far end of the pier. I leaned over and uncoiled my stern dock line then corrected my course toward the end of the pier. Now, it was just wait and relax but to consider where to go first and who to order to go where. The boat slowly moved forward with just the mainsail and shaking jib pulling all of her weight. The wind had died down to a whisper as we neared the cargo warehouses and it bounced off to reduce its might. A man lay next to a large doorway with one knee up and one sandal off. His face was turned away looking at the doorway. With our fleet on this side I thought that strange but had to pay attention to the course. I ran up the deck forward to ready my bow line as she steered herself straight toward the corner of the pier.

A man with a wide straw hat sat fishing in the heat of the day off the pier’s end. A tranquil scene accented by his bare feet hanging shadowed and still beneath the wharf. The popping and crackled shots in the city caused him to turn from time to time, nodding as though to remind himself of the revolution over there. I waved to him several times but he did not respond.