Captain Cotton Top Ch. 01

Otto's spindly gears were weakening and losing control as the locked muscles of Capt tightened around the wheel. With the sloop's rudder biting deep into the current, the bow torturously swung toward the Gulf's deeper waters. Inch by inch, the bow crawled away from the reef. From his place on the cockpit floor, the Captain watched the clouds above the mast make their slow turn, white indicators of a lofty compass ticking off degrees to salvation or ruin.

From the top of a West Texas hillside, he'd watched similar clouds glide across a tireless sky. That was years before his companion arrived. The boy Cotton was fearless back then. Peddling until his legs couldn't keep up with the frantic speed, he'd made reckless bicycle escapes from packs of dogs a daily affair. Roughly sewn parachutes from frayed cotton sheets were reasonable, as was finding the highest roof to test their chancy design. The name 'Cotton' was scratched into the top of every high tower and grain bin he climbed.

Some grown-ups called him the white headed tornado, others simply a reckless child. Ignored by the majority of people, he was a flash of a child too busy hunting new contests to hold anyone's attention very long. When he slowed enough, mothers' throats tightened from his appearance on their porches - terrified of what might happen to their fragile ones under the magic influence.

The fathers were different. To keep the peace, the men agreed with their wives' opinions but hidden deep, they knew the truth - recklessness had nothing to do with anything. Young Cotton glowed with courage and the light blinded every kid in that small Texas town. However, that was in his youth.

A skinny girl first stepped up and introduced Cotton to the terror. The girl's blonde hair proved as feckless as her word, both pulled from a Walgreen's shelf, only the cheap bleach had lasted longer. Her speech came from the pages of Hollywood gossip rags stacked close to the hair dyes - platinum drama for a girl born in a tin sided trailer.

Trapped in his lumpy cocoon, a seventeen-year old alabaster boy met dread the night the platinum girl flung her engagement ring into his face - a perfect toss of disinterest bouncing from his head onto the gym floor. Capt wondered if his life might have been different if the ring's arc had ended there. He would have pocketed the thin plated gold and sloped shoulders wouldn't have told a tale on him as he walked away.

With another life in mind, the golden ring had rolled perfectly down the middle of the prom's floor, gathering momentum and audiences through its journey. Drawing a million gasping witnesses, the ring rolled along; a marching band of one cymbal, advertising the coming circus. Instead of elephants, giraffes and lions, oh my, a single clown stumbled behind the rolling ring - a white crowned jester tripping on untied shoelaces. Fear first climbed onto the boy's back that Texas evening. It found a home between his shoulder blades, hunkered down and grinned - fat and sassy as it fed in front of all, on a prime cut of anguish.

Unlike the dusty streets Capt had escaped, there was a cleanliness to the ocean, a finality that didn't require mopping up your mistakes. You dropped something overboard and it was gone in a flash, never to be seen or felt again. You might yell "shit" or "damn" or even "oops" but there was little room for regrets in deep water.

Around bonfires in the night, Mexican fishermen told the tale of another dirty trick of nature. You could boil a lobster without the lobster feeling pain if you began the task with cold water. By the time the lobster sensed a problem, he'd be cooked. Hunkered deep on the floor of his shaky sanctuary, Cotton had been cooking for over fifty years. He still showed a little pink but was almost done in more ways than one.

To be continued...