There’s a critical point required for a boat to leave the dock in my village. I used to think it was a number of passengers or cargo required before departure, but just now, as this boat I’m sitting on cast off, I discovered the key, the fuel to the engine is volume.
You could argue that volume is directly proportional to the amount of individuals onboard, but I would argue back with you and win. Sometimes I’ll be pleasantly engaged in eating fish bones in my house and wonder at the volume of the crowd massed outside by the police station next door- reminiscent of Autzen Stadium on an autumn Saturday- only to discover all the decibels are generated by a pair of disgruntled women. Conversely, I’ve entered the community center expecting it to be deserted, but rather walked into the company of 30 souls feasting while conversing in library mumbles between mouthfuls.
A fully loaded boat can sit for an hour. No tension on the boat would suggest it’s coiling to spring away from its mooring, in fact last anyone saw the captain he was headed for the palm-wine bar next to the river. But then at a shadowy point, at a moment that lingers like a burst bubble, the snowball of murmurs begins rolling. It’s not a gasoline ignition, but the reluctant burn of a damp log. No more than two passengers with a goat might have joined the after-capacity boat in the last, hot hour, but the listless fame of noise discovers it has friends… and cousins… and acquaintances… and then, as if an arm is told it will be slowly pulled out of its socket, the boat flexes and chests expand with air- with ammunition.
I’ll take a moment to say how much I adore pirate ships and old-school warships. Build a wooden, floating box, then pack it with black explosives to feed eighty hungry mouths vomiting leaden death? I’d love to sit in the crows nest as an opponent pulls his iron-studded girl next to my own and we disintegrate each other in a Hollywood-sized helping of splinters, black smoke, and glory. I’ve never had an explosion of wood and sparks behind me before, but I imagine instead of ducking like a sissy my eyes would probably turn to steely storm clouds and my head would remain as motionless as the bust of a Roman conqueror.
Anyway, instead of cannonballs, boats leaving from Mambolo’s warf exchange a fury of sounds with the concrete bank. The pulsing waves are almost visible, frantic as if the clutch of land can only be repelled by the diaphragms of those onboard and shore bound. Today I literally covered the ears of the baby on my lap as it groped for my useless nipple, wishing someone would cover my own. As if they’re stones driving away the last of a flock of birds, it’s not uncommon to see wads of money thrown by those on shore chased by deafening instructions for its use. (Honestly, couldn’t you have done this the last two hours we were sitting here smoldering?)
A goodbye at this point can’t be delivered anywhere below the level of a preschool field trip in a candy shop, and any explicit missives should be delivered in the same range as a head-on train collision with a circus. But as the gravity of the shore is strained and the last word is flung fiercely out, at an indefinite time with an invisible exit, the sound waves dissipate into the wake of the boat and wind from the open water sets about its task of scraping sweat off of faces.
Oh- and really unrelated- I’ve got a problem. Usually mice or rats in my house are whatever. the only time they ever bother me is when they forget to invite me to their diskotek parties on top of my ceiling tiles. Every now and then they’ll send a Champion to challenge me for possession of Mambolo Manor, but with Knut and my cutlass, I’ve managed to dispatch them effortlessly- even if with some excitement.
So you can imagine my ill-ease when I found my coveted mountain-sized bag of protein powder had been nibbled through. The scattered, chocolate flavored powder suggested a nutritional orgy, and I balked as pictures of an angry Schwarzenegger with a rat’s head bowled into my mind. It was like coming home early from an 8-5 to smell cookies that my fully make-up’d housewife had just made for the new, buff pool boy. Uh oh. Might have a problem.
Every day since then I’ve been listening for heavier than usual scuttles along my ceiling, looking forward to the dark day Knut and I will face a mutant army and I can utter the words, “Knut, you take the one on the left. I’ll take the thirty on the right.”
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