but on every other subject he had been frank and honest with me. What was so horrific about being a stowaway that he thought he couldn’t tell me about?
“What’s this confessional you’re talking about?” I tried again
He smacked his hands together and laughed. “It’s almost the coolest thing ever! It’s this old thing from a church that we use like a brig. Charlie rigged the locks real good.”
I shivered. “Um…how about you just show me your projects, Polo?”
And then we were running again. “Yeah!” he shouted back to me. “Because these are the coolest things ever!”
We walked into an endless area that was incredibly noisy and covered with the filth of a thousand trips. The heat was instantly stifling and I had to remove the denim jacket to keep from suffocating. There were large electrical outlet boxes and exhaust fans fitted into the walls, but if they were for ventilation, it didn’t feel like they were doing much good.
Polo was pointing excitedly to some of the larger machinery, but I could barely understand him over the all of the noise. “Fuel pump…boiler…diesel…turbine…” I was fascinated that the few men who were working with tools and various other things somehow refused to acknowledge my presence. It all seemed so strange.
“Back here!”
I followed Polo to the back end of the engine room where there was a separate set of doors leading to a different room. Inside, there were large slates of fold out tables covered from end to end in what looked like the remains of a science fair. Beneath them, some large wooden crates were covered by tarps.
Everything from bundles of wires to beakers, cylinders, funnels, and plastic cords were scattered all over the place. The room was exceptionally bright with fluorescent lighting in the ceiling, so I could see everything well enough. I picked up a rack of sulfuric powder and immediately recognized the smell. Next to it was a large container filled to the brim with fertilizer. Almost everything was harmless by itself, but when combined I knew it could cause some damage.
“What do you do down here, Polo?”
He looked at me like I was a fool. “I make the knockers.”
“The knockers?”
His eyes rolled at me. “Explosives to get into stuff.”
He reached for a crate under the table and pulled out a plastic capsule. It was completely plain and ordinary looking with no markings and no bigger than my fist. He shook it fiercely, making something rattle inside. Terrified of what might go off, I covered my head with my arms and dived under the table.
Polo began laughing as though he might never stop. “It’s not active yet!”
I stood up and wiped the sweat from my face. My hands were shaking, but I couldn’t make them stop.
“Can we go back up, Polo? I think I’m getting seasick.”
Amongst other things, I learned that the large, metal fixtures that protruded from the front of the ship were part of the cranes that were dismantled before leaving port. I understood they were important, essential. But to me they looked like obscure pieces of art, disfigured sculptures too rusted for even the most eccentric to love. The occasional bird would land at their tops, fly away, and disappear.
As I watched the clouds pass over, I kept trying to picture the most innocent uses a group of thieves could use bombs for. But my imagination betrayed me, and I continuously only came up with images I had seen from the news and action movies, seeing in my head only suffering and physical pain.
The sun felt good on my arms and I willed myself to soak up as much of it as possible. There wasn’t anyone around, and with my head inflated with this new knowledge, I had every intention of going back down to Charlie’s cabin and only emerging if it was absolutely necessary. It had become clear that exploring the ship would only cause me grief and future headaches that I could easily avoid by just staying where Charlie instructed. I felt myself smile at the thought of him and examined the denim of his jacket with my fingertip. If I was even remotely normal, I would have been frowning instead. But I couldn’t, and something growing inside wouldn’t let me.
And just like that, I heard his voice on the wind.
It was soft at first, but then the low echoes of his baritone floated back to me once more, this time the sound was heftier, so I knew I hadn’t just been hearing