The Ongoing Tales of one William Hillman

Chapter 4: Passage

A train barrels east between rolling hills. The sky, speckled with stars, grins down at the world through a half-moon maw. Inside one compartment, a slender woman with a silvery bob hairdo and a pearl necklace stares out of the window at the dark trees streaking past. Inside another, two men in black suits lean against each other, snoring. Two rows behind them a young couple does the same. In another compartment sits a man of roughly twenty-two years; although he could pass for older. His face is long and his eyes look sunken. Like the old woman, he stares out the window to his left. His flat-brimmed hat and his circle glasses occupy the seat to his right. His legs do not fit inside the space his own seat provides, so his bony knees stick out uncomfortably and press against the seat in front of him. The furnished interior of the train car is illuminated in a honey-yellow glow that keeps the weary traveler from sleep. When morning comes, he stands on a dock somewhere on the southeast coast. His right hand grips the handle of a suitcase, and he contemplates the vast fog-engulfed sea before him. Behind him, about half a mile west, a nameless harbor town sleeps. The man is sure he sees a lighthouse's beam through the haze.

According to the traveler's pocket watch, the first ship pulls into the harbor at 6:10 A.M. He watches as vague silhouettes of people deboard, and then looks back to the sea. At 6:20, another ship arrives. This one stops further away. Two minutes later, a remarkably short figure rushes down the dock and aboard the second ship. He wears slacks tailored for someone a good deal taller; they are pulled up to nearly his chest and fastened there by a belt. The ship departs not long after.

The birds begin singing before the third ship arrives. By the time it does, the sun is rising. Into the harbor comes a tugboat, no more than fifty or maybe sixty feet long and twenty wide. The outer walls of its cabin are painted an unpleasant dark shade of yellow, which peels to reveal the splintery wood beneath. Ropes dangle haphazardly between its masts. The dinky craft chugs rather pathetically through churning clumps of sea foam. The traveler observes it as it slows down and then stops beside the end of the dock. He approaches it. As he does, its door opens and a man signals him aboard.

"Cap'n Mackay," the man introduced himself. "Welcome to the Providence. Make yerself at home."

"Thank you, sir," William returned as he hopped from the dock onto The Providence's deck. Mackay was an old but incredibly burly and bearish man who bore few of the usual hallmarks of a sea captain. He was dressed meagerly, concealed only by a thin striped undershirt and overalls. Additionally, whatever words he spoke came muffled through a great wilderness of grey-black beard that obscured a large portion of his dark face. He reminded William a bit of Santiago, the shoe shiner from Hade street—if he were about three times as broad, that is. He was already back at the wheel by the time William stepped through the door, seated on a tottery wooden stool that should not have been able to hold his weight. Soon, the boat chugged away from the dock and into the vast expanses once again.

"So, Richport, aye? What business ye got goin' there?" Mackay inquired of William as he took his seat on a tattered (but, to his weary body, not at all uncomfortable) couch located at the back end of the ship's ramshackle cabin and set his suitcase on the floor.

"Oh, it's a long story... A friend of mine is conducting research there, along with some colleagues. Medical research."

"In Richport? S'pose I wouldn't know no better. And you'll be... helpin' out?"

"Yes, I suppose. We worked together back home."

"Hell of a world we live in. What'd you say your name was?"

"William. Hillman," he responded and then added.

The captain shook his head and croaked out a noise that could've been either a laugh or a sneeze. William turned and peered out of the peephole-like window to the left of his head. He saw endless water and a blue morning sky blotted out by fog.