The Journal of Water and Air VI

“I only got a glimpse of the dining hall before, so after breakfast I took the chance to wander around more. It is still a strange feeling, knowing that under the floor there was air, but I am growing used to it. At least that is what I thought until I looked out the big picture windows that take up the wall of the dinning hall. I have never counted myself afraid of heights but I do now. The thought that only helium is holding us up is a frightening one, though it does make me more sympathetic to the smoking ban on the ship than I was before. The thought of being so high up and catching fire doesn't bare thinking about.

“I was still cautiously peering out of the windows, trying to get used to the idea of being up in the air, when the captain came over. I instantly got to thinking of anything that I might have done wrong but I couldn't think of anything. It didn't help that he didn't instantly talk but instead just stood sternly, gazing out at the sky all around us. Finally he commented that if I wanted a really good view I should see out the ones in the cockpit, this after telling me when we first met that I wasn't to go up there without invitation.” Here I stopped my story again, the next part wasn't for the purser to know about. I wasn't willing for him to know how close my captain and I had become and the ties that we shared. I wasn't sure how, but I was sure that could be used against us somehow. Having said his piece my captain had turned to walk away and than stopped. I guess he must have seen how confused I was. “I used to be a sailor, before air took off. I served under your father,” was all he said though. Then he had actually walked away, leaving me if anything more confused than ever. I couldn't tell at the time if the man was my friend or if he hated me. I knew that my father could be a very harsh person and for all I knew he had mistreated my captain in someway or something. It had unnerved me even more because for a minute I had thought that he had looked at the sky with the same look in his eye my father had had that night on the dock. The purser didn't need to know any of this but he did notice that I paused for a bit because he looked up from his writing again.

“Do you need another glass of water?” he asked me. “I'll see if I can get you one but it's normally rationed.”

“No, that's alright, I was just thinking about what happened next,” I said quickly. “I think I remember now. We had the storm. We've been tossed through the air for several hours and I began to feel ill again. Yesterday was fun, the captain sent a man to guide me around the dirigible and I got to see everything, though I know very little about what any of it was. It's use and function was lost in a jumble of technical jargon but it all looked impressive anyway. Most of it was machinery, all tailored down so that it would be light. Then I got to writing since I had decided that I had seen enough to write a good article for the paper. I had thought that I would continue my writing today but instead I woke up to see the crew tying down anything that might shift. The storm moved in fast, and there are no friendly ports around that we can dock at to ride it out so we'll just have to endure and hope that we don't get blown off course by too much. I thought that we would be fine fighting against the wind but I was told that that was extremely dangerous and that it was safer and better to just let the wind take us where it wanted to when it is this harsh. I don't mind so much, it delays any chance we have of seeing action, which is not something I am looking forward to. I am starting to hate this unpredictable sky though, father was right, it can't be trusted.”

To be continued...

The Journal of Water and Air V

“So I have gathered,” said the purser politely. He need not have, I only said it out of a story telling habit that was hard to break after years of writing. All it served to do was to make me ashamed of having once more varied from my journals, if even for a second.

“My room is larger than I expected it to be,” now I wasn't even willing to change verb tense for fear that I might be tempted to make other additions. I could only help that the man wouldn't notice the oddity in my speech. “I was basing it off of the steamer room I had when crossing the Atlantic and when the captain said bunk I feared the worse. I thought I would be sharing a room with at least one other person, if not more. It was much to my relief when instead I was shown to my own private room, though it is still small. There is a sink, so I can do my toiletry in private, a desk that folds up so it doesn't get in my way, a chair, and a bunk that folds and latches onto the wall when I don't want it. Everything has been made so that it takes up as little space as possible which is just as well because once they bring my luggage into the room it seems much smaller than it did at first.” Here I did skip the details about where I was then sitting in my room and me writing in my journal as a way of relaxing. While I was sure now that the purser wasn't noticing my odd choice in verb, I was pretty sure that he would think I was insane if I started talking about doing things that I wasn't with things that weren't there. Instead I skipped completely over the details of me settling into my room and the things that I did that first day. They were all written in such a way that it would make me look very strange to retell them.

“It was after breakfast that the captain approached me, I have been on board for two days now and have spent most of that time in my room, trying to keep to his order not to get under foot. Anyway there is nothing to write about with us still on the ground,” I continued. “My first thought was that I had still somehow managed to get myself into trouble. The captain always looks so stern that it is difficult to tell what he is thinking. All he said though was that we were going to be taking off tomorrow, I have no idea why decided to tell me this, and in person. It isn't as if he was friendly to me our first meeting, and now all of the sudden he is trying to be helpful it seems. I have no idea what goes through this man's mind. Still if we are going to be air born it is good news for me because I am growing tired of my room, once we are in the air I have the excuse of journalism to wander around and ask questions.”

I stopped my monologue once again to let the purser catch up. He had fallen so far behind that he had to ask me to repeat the final part of my statement to him. I didn't mind the break, it gave me more time to think about what I was going to tell them, and I was at the end of that entry anyway. I asked the purser if I could have a drink of water before I kept talking and he asked one of the guards to go and get it for me. The guards were one of the reason that I was being as eloquent as I was, they kept me talking if only because I wanted to make them happy. They were a very threatening presence, clearly chosen for their pure muscle mass, and I couldn't be entirely sure what their orders were. Once the guard returned with a tin cup full of the same foul tasting water they gave me for my meals, I had no excuse but to continue.

“I've been completely under the weather for the last couple of days because of air sickness, never having been in the air before I had no idea that I would suffer like this. I have never been sea sick before so I don't know how to explain it, except that it was an entirely different feeling. Therefore there is nothing to report from my first two days in the air, I know very little about what has happened on the ship. The captain had them send me a thick soup from the kitchen to eat, which is another unexpected act of kindness. I was able to eat very little because of my stomach, but I probably wouldn't have eaten anything at all if the captain hadn't been so thoughtful. I guess I have grown to the motion now though, because I was able to venture out for breakfast, I think the captain nodded to me when I sat at my assigned seat in the dinning room, but I couldn't be sure.

To be continued...

The Journal of Water and Air IV

“I don't need that many details,” the captain said, but I ignored him.

“When I showed up at the airfield, I went to the hanger I had been directed to during my briefing.” I stopped there for a second to catch my breath and mentally skip the next part of my diary. “The hangers are really just giant warehouses, but the tops fold away to let the dirigibles out,” was probably something already in their intelligence but I still didn't want to risk it. I did not want the weight of our air port being bombed on my shoulders. “There was a man waiting for me when I arrived at the dirigible, just a regular hand but at least I wasn't left to try to figure out where I was supposed to go.”

“Do you remember much about how the dirigible was set up in the hanger?” the captain asked.

“No, sir, I was far too nervous to notice any details,” I said quickly. I had no intention of telling the captain anything that he flat out showed an interest in. “I mean I've spent my entire life behind a desk and then they send me off into a war. Would you have been looking at the scenery sir?”

“Well, never mind that. Actually, I think this interview is over.” The captain stood and called to the guard outside of the door. That guard called another and I was escorted back to the cell they had had me in before. I still wasn't sure if I had won or lost the interview, but at least I was confident that I hadn't given anything away. I supposed that the captain had gotten tired of my empty talk.

Now I wasn't as comfortable in my cell as I had been before. I guessed the captain was now talking to another member of the crew. I kept running over the interrogation in my mind, trying to think of anything I might have said wrong or in a way that could suggest anything at all. I couldn't think of anything but it didn't stop me from worrying. I was two days in that hole, on a small diet of ship food, before someone came into my cell and actually spoke to me.

“The captain sent me to interview you,” the man said, pulling a stool into my cell and having a seat. I stared at him blankly for a minute, trying to let my eyes adjust to the lantern light after two days of darkness. I tried to tell myself that nothing was different, that I should pursue the same tactic, but I had a deep paranoid fear that being in this cell alone for two days had somehow broken me.

“Where do you want me to start, sir?” I asked. Even if I was trying to be an obstruction I was going to be a polite obstruction, it would make it more likely that I would survive what followed.

“The captain has already recorded everything that you told him. You can start where you left out,” the man said. “I'm this ship's purser.” He pulled out a notebook and got ready to write down what I had to say.

“Well I had just said that there was a man waiting for me when I got there. He took me to where the captain was on the bridge. He was surrounded by all sorts of men who were giving orders and reading instruments that in my two weeks on that ship I never did find out what they were for.” At this point I realized that I had switched interview tactics and I decided I wanted to be consistent. Reciting from my journal had worked well when dealing with the captain after all, and what was good enough for the captain would be good enough for the purser. “I must admit that the captain scares me, he's tall and his facial expression never changes, so I can never tell what he's thinking. The man who had showed me up to the bridge announced me and the captain turned to look at me.” I paused for a second to let the purser catch up, I could see him scribbling furiously. I almost wished that I still had my typewriter so I could lend it to him. It would make all of this go much faster. My typewriter had been lost with the dirigible though.

“Go ahead,” the purser finally said, looking up from his papers.

“The first thing that the captain said was 'I don't like journalists much, but the air force informed me I don't have a choice, so we're stuck with one another. I want to make it clear that you will not be allowed on this part of the dirigible unless you are invited. You are to make yourself useful, I will not have idle hands on my ship. You will also keep out from under the feet of any of the crew, and not snoop where you are not wanted. This man will show you to your bunk.' And so he dismissed me, you can see where my first impression wasn't the best.”

To be continued...

The Journal of Water and Air III

“What was your position on the airship?” the captain asked. I suspected that he had already talked to a few of my companions, which would explain how bored he looked.

“I am a journalist, attached to the air force to cover the war, sir,” I reported. I might not be a soldier, indeed I had never received any military training, but I tried to act in a way that would not discredit the service to which I had been attached. I even came to attention in the way that I had seen the men on the ship do it when reporting to their captain.

“A pencil pusher survived? I understand that many of your enlisted men were not so lucky,” the scorn in the captain's voice made me bristle but I knew that it wouldn't be in my best interest to explain to the captain how such a thing had happened unless I was asked. I still hadn't decided how much information I was supposed to give away in such a situation, I wished that my captain was there to tell me. My mind drifted, wondering if my captain had been interviewed before me, or if they would let him sit for a while longer to wear him down. I hoped that they had given him the respect he deserved and spoken to him first. It took the captain's next question to snap me out of my reverie, really, normally I'm not like this, it had to be the hunger.

“When did you join the air ship?”

“Three weeks ago, sir,” I said. Counting the days was an easy thing when stranded in an inflatable raft.

“And one week of that was spent drifting on the ocean? You had a short run didn't you?” the captain asked. For the first time there was interest in his voice.

“Yes, sir. From a journalist perspective however this trip has not been a failure, I do not lack things to write about from my experience. However if you are looking information about the air force or the dirigible I know almost nothing.” I decided that the best way to make sure I didn't give away information I shouldn't was to deny having any information at all. The captain however was not going to give up so easily. Indeed my denial seemed to amuse him.

“I had your first mate in here before you, Mr. Brinehouse, he told me that you were frequently seen talking to your captain after you came aboard. I'm sure you do yourself a discredit when you say that you know nothing that would be of interest to me. I want you to tell me all about what you saw and heard after you came on board the airship, every detail. You may sit while you do so,” the captain added. I sat down and marshaled my thoughts. I knew that things might get ugly if I was contradicted on any point when he interrogated the others so my best bet was to remain honest. That didn't mean that I couldn't omit things from my account however. I would just have to hope that the captain would be understanding if I did.

“I took the elevated rail from my apartment to the airfield,” I said, remembering how my journal entry for that day began. “It was difficult carrying all of my luggage with me on public transportation but I managed. After all, it was all army issue and therefore meant to be carried around. I am not in the best of shape, so what I am sure a normal soldier would have been able to carry with easy, I felt buried under.” This, I decided, was the best course of action to make sure I didn't say anything I didn't mean to. I would recite the captain my journal and just skip over the parts he didn't need to know. If nothing else it was full so so much useless stuff from a military perspective that I could only hope he would only be half listening if I did let something slip that I shouldn't.

To be continued...

The Journal of Water and Air II

“So you'll be on an airship then?” he asked. I had known that this would bother him, but it wasn't as if I could change the position I had been assigned. One of the things that my boss and the air force had in common was that they didn't take no for an answer.

“That's right,” I agreed. I had learned as a small child that it was better to just agree with him and not try to explain or justify.

“I don't trust the sky, it can change on you suddenly,” father glared up at the sky with such intensity that he was still glaring when he looked back down at the ocean. Having said his piece however, he now fell silent again and as bad as I felt about it, I was relieved. I had been afraid that I was going to get a lecture about how many times in his life the weather had suddenly changed on him. I was so grateful for the silence that I didn't try to strike up another conversation, even with me leaving it wasn't worth risking an argument. I had thought that maybe we would have more time when we got back to father's house but he said he was tired and said goodbye to me at the door. If mother was still alive there would have been a huge dinner and she would have cried over me, but father isn't very sentimental. It didn't matter that I was going to war and risking being shot at, even if the chance was rather smaller as a journalist than it would have been if I was a real soldier, father would never cry over me.

When I got back to my rooms the delivery man had come and gone, leaving behind him five crates, all with the logo of both the air force, and the newspaper I work for. As if I needed a reminder of the union that had removed my status as immune from the war. I opened the crates and did some packing since I will have to be at the air field early tomorrow and I don't want to forget anything in the last minute rush. After a while I couldn't stand it anymore, all of the army gear made me uncomfortable and depressed, so instead I pulled this journal from behind the radiator and I started to write.

My mind was just drifting, trying to remember how it was that I had started my next entry, when a guard came and ordered me out of my cell. I was surprised, I had expected to be there longer. If they had really wanted to make me sweat they should have left me there for at least a couple of days. As it was I was still at the point where I was grateful not to be crowded on all sides under a blazing sun.

I was taken up to the captain's quarters, for what I assumed would be an interrogation. I still wasn't afraid, I had grown far too used to the idea of death over the last couple of weeks to be frightened of the idea of being asked a few questions. Compared to the person I had once been I liked to think I was stronger, even though I knew that in truth it was more resignation than anything else. I now had more of a feeling that things would happen and no matter how much I worried about them, nothing was going to change that.

The captain's room was about the same size the captain's room on the dirigible, small until you considered the limited amount of space given to everyone else on the vessel. The captain himself was seated at a fold away desk reading a paper when I was shown in. I would have been more nervous as I stood and waited for him to look up but I had had a boss that liked to do this to throw employees off guard and I had become good at relaxing. I was just starting to zone out again, after all we still hadn't been given any water or food so I was not at my best, when the captain looked up.”

To be continued...

The Journal of Water and Air

I am trying this again, sorry, but I didn't like how I told the story the first time which is why I didn't end it. You'll see some serious differences in how it is told this time around.

It was the expected out come, the only chance we had of rescue was by the enemy. It was a relief to see even them after a week of floating in the inflatable raft. As my companions waved their arms to get the attention of the enemy transport, preferring imprisonment to death, I was busy wrapping my journal in my rain coat. Once I was sure the water wouldn't get to it I threw it overboard. It was a romantic notion that it might be found someday, or wash up on a beach of civilization. They would take it from me once we were prisoners anyway and it had been such a comfort to me that I would rather run the very slim chance that I might see it again. Maybe, just maybe, someone would see my name and address inside the cover and mail it to me. Maybe I would survive the future of prison camps.

They claimed they had no time to question us right away. I suspect they just wanted to make sure we were more frightened and make us more aware of our captivity. This was suggested by how quickly they separated us once we were on board. I was thrown into a cell deep in the hold of the ship to wait. I didn't really mind, it was dark and stuffy but less cramped for all of its smallness than the raft had been. I sank down, back to the wall, an thought about my journal. I had read it so many times on the raft to pass the hours that my own written words were burned into my memory. Now, from the very first entry, my sharp, thin, handwriting danced before my eyes.

I have no idea how long this journal floated, caught in the jetsam under the bridge. Many people probably passed over it before it caught my eye. In my profession I can't afford to pass over free paper however, not with rationing and wartime prices. It was well worth the effort for me to scramble down the steep, muddy, bank to fish this journal, sodden, out with a stick.

I was panting for breath by the time I was back on the street, one of the few times I cursed the weakness and asthma that had guarded me from the draft. I was painfully aware that they people who were passing by were staring at my disheveled and muddy clothing as I flipped through the journal's damp pages. I would have been very upset had, after all that trouble, all the pages been full. I was relieved to see only the first few pages had been used, with what looked like blurred figures. I ripped out the pages and threw them in the nearest waste bin, making this journal truly mine. Looking at it now that it has dried, you can hardly tell anything was taken out of it at all.

I made it to my rooms without anything else happening, but I was hot with embarrassment by the time I had gotten there. People had stared at me all the way from the river, clearly noticing that I was covered with river muck, damp, and clutching a wet notebook like it was plunder. Once in my rooms I placed this journal behind the radiator to dry and changed my clothes. I had to hurry, my father goes to bed early and I wanted to make sure I had the chance to say a proper goodbye to him.

My father and I have never had much to talk about and after half an hour of sitting in his dim parlor awkwardly staring, I suggested we go for a walk. Walking along the docks, near my father's house, was at least more comfortable. It also seemed to make my father more social. As a former sea captain I suppose we were now in his element. From what I can remember from my childhood my father was never very comfortable in houses. Finally we ended up at the end of a long pier, surrounded by the ocean on all sides, and he actually initiated a conversation for the first time the entire night.

To be continued...

The Green Lantern IIX

“Well if I'm supposed to go tell Fred that you might be our bondsman after all, then I should probably get there. It would be embarrassing if I was late with the message,” Bryan was fumbling and I knew that he was uncomfortable so I let him go. Bryan had already given me far more information than I had expected, now it was up to me to think through it and I would do that better with Bryan gone anyway.

I cleaned off the breakfast plates while I thought, it was good to keep my hands busy. After I was done with them I moved on to cleaning the rest of the apartment. It was mindless work which was just as good because if my mind raced any faster than it already was then it would probably explode. One conclusion that I came to quickly was that Bryan had no reason to lie to me and the facts fit anyway, Uncle Art was not worth mourning. Given that they were right and Uncle Art was trash then I had to decide where fact that he was family mattered more than my neutrality as a businessman. That was where my mind was hung up. I liked to think that I was a man of honor, and part of that code was that family could not be betrayed. However I also had to ask where I drew the line, would defending a man like Uncle Art seemed to have been tarnish that honor more than me betraying him?

It was two tortured days later that I met Officer O'Reilly about a block from the Green Lantern, it was his beat and I knew that anything that went through him would end up on O'Conner's desk. I had already checked in the Green Lantern to makes sure that O'Conner wasn't in there, he hung out there as much as most gangsters. I had the envelope full of money all ready for O'Reilly when he came around the corner, and I knew that O'Conner would have told him to expect me. Normal bails wouldn't be done like this but Goetz was a special case, it had taken a lot of underhanded deals to pull this off. I hoped that Bryan understood that I expected to be paid according to the difficulty of the job.

“Here's the money for the bail, all of the paperwork has already been done with O'Conner,” I told O'Reilly when he stopped to talk. I gave him the envelope.

“A pleasure doing business with you. I heard there was a spot of trouble over this at The Green Lantern between you, Barker, and Karpis. The next time you try to get yourself killed, don't do it on my beat, alright?” O'Reilly was only half joking, I could tell by his tone.

“Yeah, it wasn't my easiest bail and I was unprofessional. Don't worry, it won't happen again. This was a specially situation and I let my emotions take control. For a little while it looked as if things were going to get ugly but Fred Barker and I sorted things out. We had a nice long talk yesterday, Uncle Art wasn't worth a bent nickel anyway. Certainly not worth me getting killed over I found out.”

“You don't want to get on the bad side of the Barkers, I heard they killed the lawyer who didn't manage to get Lloyd Barker off.”

“They won't kill me, don't worry. I thought things out, I told you. Everything,” I'm not sure why I added the last part. Maybe I was trying to convince myself that everything was alright, because I still wasn't sure I was doing the right thing. Officer O'Reilly was already walking on, our conversation over, and I went in the other direction. With any luck I would never have to face anything connected to the issue again.