Menhaus was just sitting there with his arms folded.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Menhaus,” Saks said. “We’re leaving you out of the loop again. See, we’re talking about this movie we saw once about these queers lost in the Bermuda Triangle. This big, dumb fat lick of dogshit named Menhaus don’t believe that these ass-raping little green fuckers from the Andromeda galaxy have come to sodomize him. Movie was called Invasion of the Butt-Guppies or I Married a Leather-Boy from Outer Space. Something like that. It was one hell of a flick, I tell you.”
Fabrini joined in, laughing now with an almost hysterical sound. “Sure, I remember it. But I think it was called It Came in My Inner Space or The Man from Planet XXX.” He couldn’t stop laughing. “Remember that movie poster, Saks? It said: In space, no one can hear you squeal. Oh, oh, oh, that was a good one. What a movie!”
Menhaus was just staring off blankly now. There were tears coming down his cheeks. He just looked… broken. Used-up and violated like something important in him had been handled, dirtied-up and then stuffed back inside of him. That’s how he looked.
Crycek finally said, “None of this gets us anywhere.”
He was right, of course.
Saks said, “Let’s find us a ship somewhere so Menhaus can cry in private. Jesus H. Christ.”
Fabrini got out the oars and Crycek and he started working them. It was hard pulling through that weed. Anything with a keel on it was going to have trouble cutting through that growth. But they kept pulling and pulling until they sighted a fishing boat.
“She ain’t much,” Saks said. “But she’ll do for now.”
About then, a sound rose up out in the fog. Something like a high, insane chittering. The sound of a beetle just completely out of its mind. When it sounded again it was closer. And they were all starting to imagine the mother of all crickets coming out of the mist.
“Let’s make that boat,” Saks said. “I think our number is about up.”
It was the sort of wild, implausible rescue that, looking back on it later, George could scarcely believe had happened in the first place. There they were, about to be eaten by that monster-squid and then flames began to spread over the weeds… and out pops a woman, tossing fuel oil at the beast and driving it off. She said her name was Elizabeth Castle. That they had about two minutes to get out of there before Mr. Squid came back, probably not in the best of moods.
After that, to George’s thinking, things were a little fuzzy.
Everything happened very fast. They threw what gear they could into her boat… one of those flat-bottomed things that looked like a big box, you saw them on TV, people poling around the bayou in them
… and carefully brought Gosling aboard, still not knowing what any of it was about and just goddamn happy they were being rescued.
Of course, Chesbro had to get some preaching in, saying, “You were sent by God, Miss, you surely were.”
To which she politely replied, “If you say.”
George and Pollard grabbed poles and joined the lady in directing them wherever it was they were going. That flat-bottomed little scow was really something in the weed. It glided right over the most tangled and knotted patches. Elizabeth Castle was apparently an old vet, because she steered them through the congested weed, darkness, and mushrooming fog where you couldn’t see ten feet in any direction. She brought them back to a big sailing yacht that said Mystic on her bow and couldn’t have been in the weed for too long.
On the way, Elizabeth had Chesbro toss pailfuls of fuel oil over the water at irregular intervals and light them up.
“The squid,” was all she would say. “For the squid.”
Then they were on board the yacht and had hoisted her flat-bottom aboard and that was it. It all came down quickly and efficiently. Elizabeth Castle was some kind of woman, all right.
And the Mystic?
Oh, she was big and beautiful.
That’s what George thought as she came up out of the mist, sleek and proud with a bow sharp enough to slit paper. He never thought he could love something so abstract as a boat, but he loved this one. He loved her size, her sleek lines, her draft in the sea. She was a big sailboat and he was in love. And, admittedly, he would’ve loved her had she been but a leaky barge loaded with sewage and buzzing flies.
After that U.S. Army-issue tin can that wasn’t much more than a buffet for the squid, yeah the Mystic was a beauty. Sure, she’d been through some rough weather and tough times-the sails were hanging like dirty rags from the shrouds and the masts themselves looked haggard, leaning awkwardly like they were ready to come down any minute-but all in all, the Mystic was looking pretty damn nice in comparison to the other hulks and derelicts going to rot in the weeds.
