fLoOd--Part Fifteen

Getting to Know You

fIfTeEn

 

  Wilkerson shot upward like a dolphin, straightening his arms and tensing them so they would hold his body out of the water as he waited for the side of the boat that he was scaling to resume the upward drift of the rocking motion that he had conferred upon it. Unfortunately, his added weight held the boat in stasis, keeled over onto its starboard side. And to make matters worse, for Wilkerson's purposes in any case, the men on the seats, aided by that tireless workman gravity, slowly began an inexorable slide towards him, and this threatened to swamp the boat completely. But Wilkerson, after all his effort, was not about to surrender his coveted residence on the interior of the crowded craft. He quickly let go of the boat, dropped into the water, dove underneath and, in a few strokes, came up on the other side. He leaped again, grabbed the side of the boat and pulled with all his weight. As the boat came towards him, he relaxed briefly, took a deep breath, shot up as far as he could and then bent at the waist to hook himself onto the boat. As the boat now leaned over on the port side, and weight started shifting thereto, Wilkerson reached out blindly for something to get hold of and haul the rest of him into the boat before the water beat him to it. What he managed to come into contact with was Smith's right leg and the plank bench adjacent to Murphy. As he pulled with all his might, he gouged a large splinter deep into his right hand and yanked Smith completely off his seat with his left. Amidst his howls of pain as the blood flowed from his injured hand and Smith's yelps of shocked irritation at being so jarringly awakened, Wilkerson was astonished to find himself almost completely inside the boat, which was now rocking rather wildly and unevenly as a result of the sudden redistribution of its human cargo. At this moment Davis regained consciousness and began punching Wilkerson in the stomach, which offending bulk was completely covering his face and smothering him. As a result of these buffets, Wilkerson rolled over to his left and, as he landed on his back, his head came into sharp contact with Smith's brick, which had joined its owner in the bottom of the boat.

   So Smith, Davis and Wilkerson cavorted in the cramped space at Murphy's feet, groaning and moaning, oohing and aahing, huffing and puffing. After a little while, the boat gradually ceased its crazy rocking and came to rest calmly on the surface of the water. Murphy, half awake and half asleep, was experiencing visions of being beset by leprechauns. As the three men writhing in the bottom of the boat would start to subside in their vocal lamentations, Murphy would administer sharp little kicks in an effort at affirming their physical existence. This scientific experimentation would cause them to begin keening all over again. The Irishman found this study eminently enjoyable and explored the varied results of connecting different parts of his footwear to different sections of the anatomy of his three vocalists in order to produce a wide scale of harmonics.