fLoOd--Part Five

Too Much

fIvE

   The urn barely cleared the boat's side and would have fallen into the water but for the fact that its base caught on the edge and so there Brown's father hung, contemplating the watery abyss just as, for the last seventeen years, he had contemplated Brown's living room.

   Peterson was clutching two arms, which happened to be Jones' left and Smith's right. This detail may arouse curiosity as to the disposition of Jones' right and Smith's left (arms, that is). Those two delinquent limbs, after having done their utmost to dispatch Murphy to his otherworldly reward, had then sought some security to keep them from an extremely damp situation. By a strange coincidence, each found this haven in the sturdy column of his neighbor's neck and they thereby cordially proceeded to choke each other until a quite attractive hue of aquamarine began to tint their respective faces. Once a lack of necessary oxygen had rendered the two men unconscious, they collapsed into the bottom of the boat, yanking Peterson forward with a jerk that banged his head against the boat and effectually reduced him to a similar state. Needless to say, as Peterson slid down the side of the boat into the element which had engulfed his inheritance, a large splinter of wood from the boat's side, which had been created by Jones' unintentional gunfire, managed to fasten itself through a buttonhole of his coat. And so there he hung, part of him drifting in the water and part of him dangling against the boat.

   And so Smith, Brown, Jones, Murphy and Peterson drifted through the watery landscape blissfully unaware of the glories of creation and the limitless possibilities of the beings that inhabit it.

   Until a ringing or a banging noise gradually insinuated itself into Smith's dreams of rebuilding San Francisco one brick at a time, Jones' dreams of target practice involving little furry animals with large eyes, Brown's dreams of arranging and rearranging rows of urns containing all his relatives and acquaintance, Murphy's dreams of cavorting in an ocean of bright green whiskey, and Peterson's dreams of standing in space atop a blue-green globe that he had recently inherited.

   Each man opened his eyes to find his body laid out as well as could be in the small boat. Smith on one seat with his legs hanging over the side and Brown on the other, legs over the opposite side. Jones, Peterson and Murphy were stretched out down the center of the boat with their chests under one seat and their legs under the other. Peterson was in between Jones and Murphy with his head by their feet and vice versa. One end of the boat,  the stern, containing Brown's seat and Peterson's head, seemed quite low in the water, while the other, the bow, barely touched the surface.