Kong (A James Conrad Love Story)

Not A Mechanic

 "You've got to be kidding me," Nieves said as he stepped aboard. "This thing looks like it's made of pure tetanus."

"I know she ain't pretty to look at, but it's nothing a couple extra hands can't fix. Now, unless you got a better idea, I suggest you all get cracking."

"All right," Conrad said before stepping in and taking stock of everything. Slivko stepped in behind, and I followed. It looked like the same piece of crap it did years ago. Everyone got down to work, and Slivko slipped down into the engine to work. It looked more like he was taking it apart than putting it together.

"We've got forty-eight hours to make it to the north shore." Conrad said while hauling an entire basketful of bolts onboard. I was just sitting, having very little else to do except handing Slivko the stuff he needed.

I leaned over the side of the hole that went down to the engine. "Slivko, do you know what you're doing down there?"

"Yeah. My pop's a mechanic. If I can't fix this, he'll disown me." Everyone stared at me. He added, sort of an afterthought, "If he ever sees me again."

After a while, I heard Marlow start in again with the current events. "Hold the phone, Churchill. Russia was our ally. Now you're saying we're at war with them?"

"It's more of a cold war."

"Cold war, as in, like, they take the summers off?" Nieves was sitting in the background, and he shook his head slightly. "Hey, what about the Cubs? The Cubs win the World Series yet?"

Slivko popped his head up from the engine. "The Cubs? Not even close." He chuckled. "Were they ever good?"

"That happens to be my home team," Marlow said.

"And mine," I added. Nasty shock for me finding out that Marlow and I were from the same place. I mean, I'd been in boarding school there for six years. "Where are you from?"

"Detroit."

"Oh, okay, whoah, yeah. The Tigers, they win at all this year?" I had a friend from Detroit that loved baseball, and he was constantly moaning about the Tigers being terrible.

"Well, no."

"Then there you go."

"Hey, who do you think would win in a fight, a tiger or a cub?"

"A tiger." I conceded. He nodded and bent down into the hole again. I whistled innocently as a wrench fell down into the hole and hit him on the back of the head. A muffled "ow" echoed across the lake.

The topic then moved on to the man on the moon. Marlow clearly didn't get it, because he asked, "What's he eating up there?"

To answer, Nieves said dryly, "Tang. Spam." Marlow just digested it as fact and moved along.

After about an hour of hauling stuff around, I came to the same conclusion that I had made before ditching the project the first time. I was not meant for mechanical work. Hauling fifty pound bags of wheat, sure, but the tiny details in mechanics made my brain shrivel up. I really did more harm than good. After dropping a bag of tools all over the deck, I stood up and said loudly, "Call me if you ever get it working," and headed off into the trees on the other side of the wall. Mason had wandered off into the village, taking pictures of everything that moved.

It was peaceful back in the jungle, no noises but the clacking of thousands of animals. I saw a few inquisitive faces shine above me, and I smiled. It was some of the ugly birds, the ones that looked so much like pterodactyls they very well could have been. They cawed at me, probably hoping for a tasty snack. Human flesh was good, but they'd found out pretty quickly that I didn't really like having the flesh ripped off my body.

There was really only one flock I has seen on the entire island, so they all must have been up in the trees watching me. Thousands of eyes that I couldn't see, but I didn't worry about them too much. I held out my hand with my last papaya from breakfast. Their tiny beaks couldn't do much with a gigantic fruit, but they apparently loved them to death. I had learned this the hard way when the entire flock smelled some stashed in my hut and descended on it at three in the morning, prompting me to have to run around whacking them with a broom until they flew off. From then on, the snacks were hidden well below ground level and a good distance from my house.

As small dactyl glided down tentatively. Probably one of the babies that had been born in the last month. It landed daintily on my hand, staring up at me with soft brown eyes. They were ugly as can be, but they were also cute, in their own way. I whistled to him, a song that I heard them sing to each other often. He whistled back, or at least tried to, through the large chunk of papaya he was trying to swallow. I laughed and pulled it out of his mouth, splitting it up until he could eat the pieces without choking to death.

Soon, the entire flock was gathered around my feet. Nibbling on my shoelaces, rolling around playfighting, grooming, and eating. It was peaceful except for their strange noises. I heard a quiet snap in the brush in front of me, but the dactyls didn't flee. I stilled though, watching for any silhouette in the trees. If the dactyls weren't leaving, it couldn't have been anything too dangerous. Soon, Conrad's face appeared in the shadows, but he made no attempt to wade through all the dactyls to get to me. "Marlow says the ship will be ready in an hour or so." He noticed the birds all around me and stared in awe. "How did you do that?"

"I thought you said I was a magical animal trainer."