Pirates of Monterey by Andrew Beck

Pirates of Monterey, Part 6
(This comes from Andrew Beck who is writing Pirates of Monterey, this is where Correy comes into the story).


Pirates of Monterey, Part 6
He spit over the shambled wooden fence and tugged idly at his weathered hat, leaning on jagged splinters of a post that had seen too much rain. Sand and grass blew across aloe plants and brown weeds that had given up trying to soak up water through the routine fog. He didn't feel the wind, didn't care to respond to its presence or its direction. His face and form were as stoic and morphic as the dunes themselves; they never changed while you watched them, but given time the changes were noticeable only when looking at pictures snapped years apart. Such pictures yielded a hidden smile that grew with age passed up the cocky sneer or a embarrassed smirk; not as if he was growing into his own shoes, but rather that he tossed the shoes aside and wore sandals instead for their superior comfort and breathability.And this evening, with a postcard sunset and temperature to match, he stood with that weathered hat amongst the thorny brush to lean on the one fence post he visited many times before. He signed as the memories merged in front of his eyes, all indistinct enough from the other that the color of sky from one would merge with the dry heat of another. He smiled the broad sandal smile, proud that he had been here so many times before. With a dirty thumbnail caked underneath from the dirt of raided temples and oil-soaked ropes, he carved in the thirty-second tally mark to the post at a diagonal to the grain. Content with its prominence against the rot, he steadied himself on the barbed wire with a forearm, gazing forward against the breeze.His nose twitched as the evening seabreeze kicked up the same allergies that he forgot to take the pills for today, the same pills he had neglected to take yesterday, and the same pills that he wouldn't care to take tomorrow. The fact that he had thrown the allergy pills overboard two days prior wasn't about need, memory, inaction or action. He thought that too many people attached grand themes to small actions, declaring through their own shiny and unique experience that the patterns of a man can be yielded by his habits. He refused to be defined by Shakespearian dynamics or the chivalrous tales of men long dead. He had no trail to blaze, no demons to slay, no bringer of death to dance with in the night to see if he could walk away. Actions were executed not for the thrill of life, but to play a personal game of trial and error to see what made life thrilling. On the stand for tonight's trial: Corry himself. And Correy didn't like being drowsy when he stormed a bar.Shifting the coiled whip laid across the holster on his right hip, he walked quickly and straight-legged towards the bar with the "snak-snak-snak" of his sandals clicking loudly behind him. He smirked at first, then broke out again into a broad smile that he couldn't contain in the anticipation of the deeds to come. Such deeds had been written into history long ago, scrawled across his memory in drunken chicken-scratch that he would go back to read with fits of laughter. However, his memory was not the only place that the deeds were recorded.All stories are shrouded in time. The game of telephone so many children played in their youth reflects this axiom; a simple message, told in whispers to a waiting ear, could be utterly distorted within five passings. The same holds true with many of Correy's exploits. Many of his stories were later pieced together as best as possible through witness accounts, professional Associated Press reports, a FBI dossier or five ("One for each costume I wear"), prophecies heralding his descent from Valhalla to Earth thousands of years ago, and the one satellite photo of Correy's hundred-foot-long shadow of his heroic pose streak across a barren Kentucky field against the warm glow of a ammunition dump exploding into the crisp night. That particular Mardi Gras weekend he rarely spoke of, although his Captain later said that Correy would only drunkenly mention that "a lot of innocent Nazis died that day" and "victory can be directly measured by the size of the fireball".The first time it was mentioned, local townsfolk swore that the man who entered the bar in a dusty hat in sandals was just a college kid. Roadside bar or not, the place had standards, and sandals were not one of them. Insurance wouldn't cover a joint that invited the possibility of glass to leave the bar via bare feet, but luckily enough, Correy's social insurance did cover dealing with bars that had what he considered to be "rules that invite me right in". Invite generally implies that a welcoming party would grant admission to their own establishment, and Correy strictly adhered to those principles as he was raised a responsible and proud man. To continue that tradition of being that principled man his Daddy demanded he be, Correy welcomed himself into the surprised mouth of a striking dark-haired girl, granted admission of his fist into her boyfriend's jaw, and responsibly turned off the ignition of their car after he had crashed it through the left window of the bar.The details become fuzzy between 7:04 PM when Correy individually dragged out every male occupant of the bar and 3:29 AM when Correy and twenty-nine women came stumbling, laughing and heavily intoxicated, out of the now burning bar clothed in little else than panties, baseball caps, and the occasional bar rag to serve as a loincloth into the drawn guns of the Moneterey Police. In the fray that ensued, the police were simply too shocked with the sight of an oddly familiar armored school bus rigged with military-grade weaponry to roll up and turn on its flood lights to the burning bar to notice Correy riding away on a stolen Harley wearing nothing but a bra, worn baseball cap, and whip coiled around his left shoulder.The extent of damage done the subsequent thirty-one times almost always left a significant portion of the bar intact, but his exploits always remained extravagant.Eventually the bar simply took the measure of running out anyone into the evening that attempted to enter wearing sandals. Correy was never caught, and four years worth of visits eventually turned the crowd from the standard bar flies to adventurers and journalists waiting for the next time the man in sandals and dusty hat might appear again to relieve boyfriends of their duty to their girlfriends or to play bartender over the snoring body of the owner of the bar, occasionally helping him breathe in the silky fumes of chloroform to deepen the throaty snores to a level that Correy was satisfied with. Correy's bar tab always ran extravagantly high--damages nonwithstanding--but the turnout he generated on the days of his absence more than compensated for the cost of his visits.Correy's thirty-second bar outing began unceremoniously--he gained entry by casually walking in, hands in his pocket and grin on his face. His steps were sure and posture unchallenging, and he engaged in conversation with the bouncers in a polite manner that ended up disarming their suspicions. They had never gotten a good look at his face; too much commotion occur in his wake during his more colorful visits, and he rarely made conversation beyond roared one-liners and laughter. He gained entry inconspicuously, navigating the people and conversations openly and honestly without ever alerting them to his actual. It can only be assumed that Correy left as hidden as he entered, for there was no commotion, no fires, no police, no stolen vehicles; there was only a passing mention from the bartender commenting on a substantial amount of cash left in the tip jar he noticed while cleaning the bar that night and a woman's bra stuffed into an empty beer mug. Those who were close to him noted that Correy entered the bar the same manner he exited it--by not looking for life, but by being a vehicle for it.Correy's Captain spent most of that night and the following day waiting for the arrival of Correy that would never come. As the Captain leaned back on the roof of the armored school bus parked behind a shoddy barn some distance down the road, he thought back to the many people he called his own, their arrivals and departures, the times spent with them both memorable and drab. Those who left did so for reasons that never seemed to repeat themselves; some left freely, others were taken against their will, and too many disappeared into the sunset without any mortal comprehension. The Captain never did come to a comfortable conclusion where Correy went or why, and as he later walked to the fence post that he had quietly seen Correy lean against to stare at the bar many times before, he came to the uneasy belief that it was simply best that he didn't know.The Captain rubbed his fingers across the thirty-two tick marks, noticing the aloe vera plants and dried weeds strewn across the mixture of dirt and sand in the long stretch before the bar. He shifted his legs and cursed when a thorny bush at his feet caught his ankle. He wondered how Correy was ever able to wear sandals as an exclusive mode of transportation through all terrains and environments. It seemed Corry simply disregarded the option of wearing the same shoes that everyone else did, instead favoring the option to walk across of the world's comforts and pains he was purpose-built to experience.The Captain never saw Correy as a rebel without a cause, a poet, knight, a prophet, or an martyr. Correy gave very few theories or ideologies any measure of power, sapience, or precedence . With all that the Captain knew of Correy, he knew him to be a simple man whose stark simplicities made him one of the most complex men he had come across. It took more than a few empty bottles and sleepless nights to realize it, but the Captain slowly came to the conclusion that the time spent with Correy had been in the position of a student; not as a teacher he had earlier believed himself to be. In the quiet and empty moments that would haunt him when he was alone, the Captain found it impossible to take comfort from the realization that Correy had passed through his life like a regular at a bar--and more so that he had allowed himself to treat Correy as such. Yet, on the brighter days, the Captain instead sought to take purpose in the lessons of simplicity that Correy had left behind in his brief tour.While the same sun set for the Captain as it had for Correy two days prior, the Captain stood by the fence post with thirty-two tally marks on it and faced the bar in wrinkled clothes. He swallowed the last of whatever random drink he had found in the ship's hold, steadying his swaying as Monterey Bay winds swept up from the road and made him smile. He swayed a bit more, wiped his mouth with a dirty rolled-up sleeve and placed his flask atop the fence post. He stopped a moment to watch it plunk over in the wind and then removed his boots, cracked and faded from years of sun and seawater. After carelessly stepping in the thorns and laughing about it, he moved the boots to flank the fence post. After patting the fence post on the back as he would an old friend, the Captain placed his bloody and thorn-riddled feet in a fresh pair of sandals, etched in the thirty-third tally mark in the fence post, and walked with a smirk over to the bar as the shimmering sun sank into the sea.-----"Mama told me, when I was youngCome sit beside me, my only sonAnd listen closely, to what I sayAnd if you do thisIt will help you some sunny dayTake your time, don't live too fastTroubles will come, and they will passGo find a woman and you'll find loveAnd don't forget sonThere is someone up aboveAnd be a simple kind of manBe something you love and understandBaby be a simple kind of manWon't you do this for me sonIf you can?"

RIP Sojourner. We'll pick up where you left off.