Richard Caponetti_TIEMPO Chapter Two_Sharks and Ghosts

Richard Caponetti(571) 215-6643 / [email protected], Chapter Two: “Sharks and Ghosts”

Chapter Two: Sharks and Ghosts

Tiempo is time.

Hector’s dubiousness lasted until the corto punk approached Chenbrunuela’s littoral

waters. Guillermo was there, as was the pilot of the puny and unimpressively equipped ship, of

course. Also present were four other recruits, each of whom Guillermo gravely pitied. They

didn’t know shit. They hadn’t been told shit. They hadn’t been told any part of what Guillermo

and all other cortos knew was the truth about the island. They just couldn’t know, because, as

told before, the superiors demanded ignorance until initiation.

But Hector? Hector had to know. Screw my superiors. So he went on and on with it,

Guillermo did—but of course he did so quietly so as not to let those poor, poor men in on the

island’s truth and thereby risk fatal reprimand when he, Guillermo, got ashore.

When the sketchy boat stopped a half mile from Chenbrunuela’s sand line, Hector saw

the truth, part of it at least, for himself. It was entirely as Guillermo’d made it out to be, and it

terrified Hector straight through his flesh and well deep into his bone.

Just past their skiff’s anchor point, Hector witnessed in utter shock the Caribbean’s waves

race toward the shore assuming unnatural hues, shapes, and timbres at speeds and along courses

that changed capriciously from wave to wave. Their colors vacillated between prismatic and

cocktail black rather than stuck to shades of ocean foam and blue, their structures were clawed

rather than curled, their cacophonies were a mix of pitches high and low rather than a wash of

chromatics, their velocities switched chaotically from ambitious to lazy rather than progressed as

waves normally do, and their paths to the sand were senseless, looping, reversing, sinking, and

rising rather than adhering to the laws of tidal physics.

Richard CaponettiTiempo, Chapter Two: “Sharks and Ghosts”

Hector’s fear was obvious. If what he had days earlier dismissed as nonsense about the

waters surrounding Chenbrunuela was true, as he could now not deny it was, what other bits of

the fantastic mythology that Guillermo and others over the years had spun for him were also true

—a few, a good many, the whole of them? The mere thought that any portion, even the smallest

portion, of what he’d believed until seconds ago was bullshit was true made his eyes go wide, his

nipples stiffen and poke up his mesh tank top, and the length of his body shake and list.

Guillermo thought it was hilarious.

“I told you I stopped lying years ago, my man,” he chided Hector in good humor. “Heh.

And you ain’t seen nothing yet, yeah, David?” he called out to the punk’s young, stylishly

disheveled captain.

“Heh heh heh,” the captain replied. “Low tide: one hour, Guille. Heh. Catch him if he

faints,” he congenially ordered Guillermo.

“And that goes for you Betties, too,” David said, turning his attention to the four other

recruits on his boat. “Get your Irish up or bolt your little girly asses down. Heh heh heh.”

Guillermo added to David’s laughter with his own. All five recruits were terrified; they

both found it hilarious. The recruits didn’t, naturally. They found it cruel and bewildering;

Hector the most of them all. His father was Santa Quinto’s most knowledgeable man when it

came to maritime history and folklore. Demonic waves, why hadn’t he spoken to Hector about

them? Not a warning, not even a mention. Why? They had had their differences in the past.

They’d come to blows, they’d cursed each other, but what the hell was this? Vengeance,

disproportionate vengeance for all the times Hector told his father to piss off? Could that be it?

What about all the admonitions and prohibitions over the years—all the successful attempts to

scare Hector into protective cowardice and safety? Was it all just some sick joke? Had he,

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Giles, just been waiting for the perfect opportunity to really fuck his son over? Was this that

opportunity?

“What exactly did you know, Pop?” Hector questioned his absent father in a louder voice

than he’d intended.

“What’s that, Hec?” Guillermo cut in. “What’d you say, my man?”

Hector didn’t answer, he just waved his friend off gently and made for the other end of

David’s punk. Guillermo gave Hector a half minute to calm himself down, which Hector failed

to do, before joining Hector on the boat’s port side and offering him solace.

“You’re gonna beat this, Hec,” Guillermo said as he placed his hand gently on Hector’s

shoulder. “It’s a test. It’s the island and the ocean. It’s testing you, and you’re gonna come out

on top, bro. I promise it, man. You will. Just relax. That’s all you have to do: relax.”

Hector lashed out, throwing Guillermo’s arm of him and responding with angry vocal and

body language.

“Why didn’t you tell me this beforehand, goddamn it?!”

Guillermo retained his composure, both for his friend’s benefit and the benefit of the

other recruits, who were enduring their own frustrations and had no right—technically, Hector

had no right, either—to hear what Guillermo was about to say.

“I did tell you, Hec, you just wouldn—it’s a test, man, like I said. Tiempo is testing you.

You have to remain calm, or it’s going to reject you—and, man, since you’ve already seen the

waves and know what they’re doing to you, testing you, right now, it’ll kill you for breaking

down. It won’t let you go back to the mainland or anywhere to tell people about it, warn

anybody about it, man. Time will kill you to keep you quiet, okay? I’m not kidding. I’ve seen it

happen before. It’ll send the waves after you.”

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“Why?” Hector asked dubiously, his voice rising and eliciting a weighty shh from

Guillermo. “Why the hell would it care?”

“Man, man, come on! Cut the shit!” Guillermo screamed in whisper; then looked back at

the other recruits to see if they’d caught on to his and Hector’s nervous conversation. They

haven’t, thank Christ.

“I’ll explain it later, okay? I’ll tell you ev …”

David cut in. “Low tide, gentlemen. Early today.”

Guillermo wasn’t happy to hear that. Not with Hector and the other recruits as they were,

failing the easiest of Chenbrunuela’s tests.

“Uhh, shit!” Guillermo said aloud, betraying his nervousness to his captain and his

discomfited passengers, setting them more ill at ease.

“Any way you can give us a little more time? Turn us around for a bit?” he asked David

(pointlessly, he knew).

“You know I can’t, Llermo” David replied dryly. “Sorry.”

“Hh. Okay,” Guillermo sighed to calm his nerves. He had to remain calm, too, as all

visitors, first time or long time, to Chenbrunuela did.

“Face the shore, guys.”

The five of them complied, and what they witnessed there in Chenbrunuela’s shallows

was far more terrifying than the island’s demon waves—or anything they’d ever seen or dreamed

of: Hundreds, thousands, countless, enormous white sharks standing perfectly erect before the

high temblins that arched over the water, waiting for nicks of tiempo to fall from the pockets of

the cortos above straight into their mouths, or for the cortos to fall straight into their mouths.

They preferred the tiempo, but it really didn’t matter. Both they found delicious. Raw tiempo

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was the best, but the cortos were damn good, still—they were covered in time pollen, which

wasn’t as tasty as the raw stuff, but in a pinch it’d do the sharks just fine. They knew better than

to expect dessert at every meal anyway.

They also knew not to expect the island to give them corto flesh every day. But they

were fine with that because they weren’t there to eat. That wasn’t their purpose, that wasn’t their

occupation, wasn’t why they were there. They were there to guard the island, to protect

everything and everyone on it, plunging cortos notwithstanding, of course, so as to preserve the

growth and harvest of tiempo. Tiempo was instantly addictive to their peculiar genus of great

white, and their addiction to the stuff is what obligated them to serve Chenbrunuela and its

workers for the purpose they did.

The sharks had been beset by tiempo dependence long before the cortos began reaping

the stuff from the sky. For as long as there’d been air above Chenbrunuela, tiempo had made

seasonal drops from the atmosphere to the sea below. It was a menstrual cycle, a quarterly

expulsion of the sky’s rotting pockets of time. It was a cleansing that kept history reproductively

viable.

Time comes and goes; the passage of time is movement. Without tiempo, movement on

Earth would cease. Life on Earth would cease; everything would. Time, tides, orbit, et cetera:

all these things are movements, and all these movements literally take time. That’s not just a

saying.

And it’s the same everywhere else in the Created world, the grand realm of realities and

universes. Wherever there is motion, there is time, tiempo, either clustering in pockets or

pollinating things from afar; seeding and growing movement. On Earth tiempo clusters above

Chenbrunuela; on other planets, or in other stars than Earth’s own, or across the vast vacuum of

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space, tiempo clusters wherever it pleases. Its concentrations are local; its pollinations are wide

as hell, which is how the tiny patch of sky above the cortos’ island could yield enough time to set

the entire Earth and all its occupants in perpetual motion.

So time on Earth grows in pockets above Chenbrunuela, and when these pockets exhaust

their temporal pollen, they fall like rotting fruit to the ocean below, where Chenbrunuela’s white

sharks gnash and thrash against each other to snatch the decaying wombs of time in their jaws; to

savor the residues of tiempo that stick to the uterine flesh the sky expels from its oxygenated

loins. Hundreds die in seconds trying to catch that flesh. They fatally and in a snap exhaust

themselves and rip each other in a snap to pieces to get a cut of it. They love that high to death.

The most addicted do, at least.

Hector was shocked by what he saw, as were his peer recruits; three of them so horrified

that they messed their shorts, and true to Guillermo’s word were struck down by the ocean for

their lack of cool. Fortunately for Hector and the recruit to his left, his name Vincent Charlie,

their stun at seeing and hearing the sharks sway in unison, growl and bark (!) melodiously in

time, and genuflect as one to soak their gills when necessary subsumed the two men’s fear,

covered it, hid it from the violent water behind them. And even more fortunately for the two,

they’d stood with their backs to the doomed recruits, and were so fully transfixed by the sharks

in the distance, that they neither saw nor heard the ocean sprout a set of gnarled claws, slap their

hysterical peers overboard, and pull them under for good. Had they, they would have no doubt

soiled themselves, too—God, are we next?!—and been murdered by the sea, as well. Without

the transfixing effects of the sharks, they’d also have been driven to the same fate by the

horrifying image and sound produced by the clumsy corto who fell straight into a shark’s mouth

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just seconds after the waves claimed Hector and Vincent’s fellow recruits, and been screamfully

chewed to his oblivion. They’d seen and heard it all, but luckily reacted to it none.

“So who’s hungry?”

Hector and Vincent responded as Guillermo had hoped they would: with nothing in their

words, voices, or postures to indicate any awareness of what had just happened. Their unison

reply was monosyllabic (“me”), devoid of all passion, and given without any change in their

unison body language (arms crossed, jaws dropped, eyes wide). They didn’t turn, they didn’t

bend, they didn’t crane back a single inch as they answered Guillermo. They weren’t even aware

of Guillermo. Each thought that he had answered his own stomach. Aside from their hunger,

they were aware of nothing but the sharks, in fact. They weren’t even on a boat, as far as either

of them could tell. It was just Hector and the sharks; it was just Vincent and the sharks—both so

focused upon the magnificent beasts before them that they, the beasts, appeared to be at most

nose length from them. No boat, no sea, no world, no universe, no distance, no two of them: just

Hector to Hector, and Vincent to Vincent, and all those spectacular fish.

A minute passed between Guillermo asking Hector and Vincent if they were hungry and

Guillermo responding to their aloof replies that, yes, they were. In the interim, Guillermo

harnessed the nascent telepathy that Hector had dismissed as nonsense and trained it on the hilt

of his blade, where, as he had previously told his cynical friend, each day he concentrated his

intentions as a corto.

And his intentions that day were all about Hector, keeping him safe and improving

Hector’s chances of impressing the bosses, which Guillermo in his arrogance believed was more

than just possible; it was fait accompli. He really did think he had his employers’ collective

number. After all, he’d gotten away with visiting Hector on the mainland, warning Hector about

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the dangers of working in tiempo—revealing to Hector just what tiempo was; that was the big

coup for Hector—and now looking out for Hector on David’s boat. And getting away with it,

getting away with it all.

I’ll make them think Hector is God! Heh heh, yeah!

He smiled at his catatonic best friend. Told ya, motherfucker! Ohhh, yeah! As long as

he had his blade and his manga, everything would be fine, at least for Hector and himself. As for

Vincent, there wasn’t much Guillermo could do for him, he feared.

For the first time in years Guillermo surrendered to humility, admitting to himself that

neither his blade nor his mind might be sharp enough to perform what he was about to perform

on Hector without being detected by his bosses. He was already shielding two minds, he

thought, he just wasn’t sure he could shield another, so he just wasn’t going to take the chance.

Besides, Hector and himself first, and Vincent wasn’t even supposed to be there anyway. David

was originally chartered to take Hector and Guillermo only to the island; gaffes that had nothing

to do with Guillermo had put Vincent and those dead men into David’s punk that day. Had he

known ahead of time? Maybe he could have prepared something …

Ah, fuck it, Guillermo told himself before re-focusing on the task at hand: Making sure

that Hector remained ignorant of the three lives they’d just lost until Hector, Vincent, and he

arrived at the island (obviously, Hector couldn’t appear oblivious to the other cortos or to the

bosses); ensuring that when they reached the island and Guillermo made Hector cognizant of the

tragedy at sea and that Hector wouldn’t be overwhelmed by it, because it wasn’t just the ocean

that required cool heads, everyone and everything on the island did, as well; they’d all kill

cortos, or recruits, or whomever just as quickly as Chenbrunuela’s waves would for losing it.

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Time in utero is as vulnerable to human emotions as it is in passing powerful over human

emotions—for the sake of tiempo, Chenbrunuela had to be a place of absolute peace.

So Guillermo pulled his dagger. He concentrated on Hector’s head, slowly sliced his

knife across the air, imagining that its blade were a scalpel and that its movement through the

breeze was movement through the thin cortical membranes that revealed his friend’s basal node

when pried apart. Then he focused the magical powers that he was too arrogant to realize that he

did not have through the slime colored leather of his knife’s hilt, and with those powers ran his

intentions—keep him calm; keep him in the dark—up the blade, off the blade, through the air,

and with delicate quickness into Hector’s ganglial striatum and then his hypothalamus.

When Guillermo was satisfied that his surgery had been a success, he stitched Hector up

with a suture of willpower and smiled warmly to himself. Emotionally and cognitively,

Guillermo had his most beloved friend in his protective pocket or so he believed, just like he had

since the moment the bosses announced that they’d be courting Hector’s membership.

It was all bullshit, everything he believed about the role he played in Hector’s

recruitment. Sure, he’d supported Hector’s candidacy in the cortos, but that hadn’t been

necessary. Like all male children of cortos or corto hopefuls like Giles Ricas, Hector had been

logged at birth as a potential future time cutter; he’d been watched through his infancy,

adolescence, and teen years—quietly observed and evaluated every step of his way into young

adulthood by the bosses of Chenbrunuela, who all along the way had very much liked what

they’d seen, and who had decided to invite Hector into their ranks as soon as the young man

graduated from college. So Guillermo’s endorsement was utterly moot.

As were the supernatural counterespionage skills he claimed to possess, the powers to

throw off his bosses’ telepathy and tracking magics so he could go wherever he wished and say

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whatever he wished to whomever he desired. Could Guillermo befuddle a mind? If the mind

were no more than casually interested in locating and dropping the eaves on him and possessed

no remarkable mental powers of its own, sure, sometimes. Could he befuddle the mind of a

corto jefe? No, not even a bit; not even the lowliest powered of them, as even the lowliest

powered of them were still vastly more endowed with mystical strength than Guillermo was or

would ever be.

So how did Guillermo do it? How did he throw them off? How, as Hector wondered, did

Guillermo not take a bullet to his head the instant he engaged in or even thought to engage in ex

parte communication with a potential corto? The answer is that he didn’t. Guillermo didn’t

throw off or hide from the bosses, not any of them. Everything he did was known, and known

from the moment he dreamed any bit of it up. And the bosses had all permitted because they

wanted Guillermo to squeal the truth about their work in tiempo to Hector, and they wanted this

because they knew that whatever Guillermo spilled about cutting time and those who did it and

those who directed it, Hector would write off as same old, same old Guillermo bullshit; whatever

Hector dismissed as such they knew Hector was more likely to sign on to with little hesitation—

usually with none at all. So the bosses were more than happy to feign ignorance of Guillermo’s

intentions and look the other way when the smug, mediocre corto snuck off to spill the beans to

their topmost potential recruit.

Hector’s father was another story. Like Guillermo, despite never having become a

cortador as Guillermo did, Giles Ricas knew the full truth about tiempo, about its cutters and

how its cutters lived, about the bosses, the island, the sharks, the waves, the murders, the

communism, and everything else about the opportunity the bosses presented to Hector two weeks

after his graduation from Taíno University in Holguín, English Cuba. And he knew all this

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because during his youth Giles could remotely and perfectively sense everything the bosses and

their workers thought, said, felt, and did no matter where they were or what they did to shield

their thoughts, et cetera, from him.

“Christ, he could fuck us!” the bosses frequently complained about the threat Giles could

pose to them if he so wished.

“We just have to get him join up!”

They wanted him as much as they feared him. And not just for his great telepathy. He

had so many other powers; each one of them that frightened and enticed the hell out of the

bosses, especially his raw, martial power, which wasn’t merely vast enough to defeat any corto

in battle including the bosses all at once, day or night, but vast enough for him to do so easily.

And then there was his intelligence. Contrary to the impression his accent and diction

typically made on people, Giles Ricas was the smartest man in all of Santa Quinto.

Mathematically, philosophically, technically, medically, supernaturally, and in all other

academic manners, he was a bona fide genius. He was nation’s most bona fide genius, which

naturally made him the cortos most sought-after mind.

“God, we have to have him!”

It wasn’t just the cortos who gravely desired him to join their ranks. It was the Masons

and Santa Quinto’s ruling Three Families, too. They all wanted him, and they all let him know

this. Routinely, they did. Since he was a boy, the cortos, the Masons, and the Families had tried

over and again to snuggle up to him and convince him to follow his father’s lead (Constantino

Ricas had worked with all three groups) into their employ.

The cortos pushed for him the hardest because unlike the time cutters, neither the Masons

nor the Families had a solid enough understanding of magic to recognize just how useful Giles’

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mystic gifts could be to their operations. They did, however, fear him just as much as the cortos

did. Notwithstanding their insufficient appreciation of the supernatural threat Giles could pose to

them, they fully appreciated just how dangerous Giles could be to their operations, and they

knew this because Giles proved it to them.

In the beginning, they weren’t so careful when it came to Giles. As was said, they didn’t

push as hard as Chenbrunuela did to bring Giles onboard, but they did push far more

obnoxiously than Chenbrunuela did with their early efforts to woo the man. They offered him

vacations here and vacations there, they offered him houses, and cars, and women, and fat

expense accounts, and they teased him each time he turned their employment and their gifts

down. He found it intolerably rude. I’m a communist, and you know it! Giles would silently (he

was so congenial) fume whenever they came around. How dare you? How dare you? How

dare …?

Sooner rather than later he had enough, so he fucked with their computers and

communications networks and such to disrupt their financial actions, tamper with their puppet

politicians’ vote tallies, and redirect their shipping and sales schedules, and so on. He hurt them

very badly, and they backed off for a very long time—and when they resumed their recruitment

efforts, they made sure to do so more tactfully than they had before. No more gifts; they

appealed to his intellect and morality as the cortos did instead, hoping to convince him that

capitalism was the most logical and the only moral economic system in existence. It never

worked, but he appreciated their cooled down approach nevertheless, so he didn’t bother with

their political and economic livelihoods ever again, though he reminded them that he easily

could, which neither the Masons nor the Families doubted for even the splittest instant. He’d

always be able to hurt them.

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Not so with the cortos, however. They feared Giles Ricas until June of 1966, when his

spouse, Lenora, fell onto the hot rail of a regional train line that took her life, and Giles in turn

fell into a torturous depression that took his magic, becoming an ordinary man, one who could

never hope to harm even the weakest of the time cutters, and one who had not a chance in Hell of

ever escaping the cortos’ prying eyes. They were out from under his thumb, and he was the one

afraid for his life—even though they assured him that he had no reason to be.

“We have no interest in harming you, comrade,” said the boss who’d volunteered to

speak to Giles two months after he and his brother jefes detected that Giles’ powers had gone

dark (they’d waited that long just in case).

“No interest at all in doing that, especially not now, not when young Hector needs you so

much,” the boss said with a dubious smile.

“He’s such a special boy, and so beautifully attached to you. We would never wish to

disturb that.”

Giles read between the lines. It wasn’t a threat to his person, but it was a threat, a

declaration of intent that scared Giles terrifically. They no longer wanted him, they wanted his

son now; the only reason Giles wasn’t dead was that he was a great father to Hector. He kept

Hector healthy and happy, and he would put and keep Hector on the path to cortohood, or at least

stay out of the boy’s way, which the bosses’ augurs had foreseen at Hector’s birth was the way to

Chenbrunuela island, so you don’t fuck with the boy’s destiny, was the message, and we won’t

fuck with yours.

Until the day Hector was approached by the man for the final time—when the man made

the big promises (money, women, power, fellowship, and such lihike zhou’ve nevzer sssseen

baheevorr) that he’d been hinting at for months—Giles did as he was told. He didn’t say a thing

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to Hector about the cortos. He let Hector, as all threatened parents of targeted children did,

believe what the great majority of people in and out of Santa Quinto did: that tiempo was an

agricultural product that hippies, gypsies, and college kids loved, nothing more; that its cutters

may be weird, but hardly dangerous, not at all spooky like the paranoid minority said they were.

But on that day, just after Hector had randomly bumped into the man and lunched with

him, and then came home and bragged to his father about the offer the man had made to him

(Seventy-five thousand base! Base!!), Giles let Hector know that he opposed the idea of his son

“working for those evil, despicable men.”

Hector wouldn’t hear it. He knew what was coming: warnings about Satan and the

ghosts the cortos submitted their souls to, warnings about the insanity that Chenbrunuela heaped

upon its workers, and bullshit about how Chenbrunuela was cursed by God, and bullshit about so

on and so on and so on.

I just don’t have time for that garbage right now, he told himself. I never do, especially

not now.

Hector spent the remainder of the day with his friends, the stupid ones (the smart ones

were still in school), drinking himself silly with them and blowing off everything they had to say

about tiempo, some of which was true.

“It’s fruit for Christ’s sake!” He said too many times for his inebriated mind to count.

“Fucking hell, guys!” he exclaimed with uncharacteristic vulgarity. “You’re worse than

my goddamn father!”

This wasn’t the case. Unlike his friends and aside from stuff about God and Hell,

Hector’s father knew the whole truth about tiempo, not bits of truth mixed with sacks of rumors

and lies. He knew everything pragmatic, observable, and observed about tiempo. He just wasn’t

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able to speak on it, which the corto bosses, by way of the man, reminded him minutes after

Hector headed out for the bars with his young, idiotic friends.

“Zhou are note … zhielded fvrom oossss … anzymore,” the man needlessly reminded

Giles as he, the man, strolled into Giles’ parlor after telekinetically picking the locks to the

Ricas’ side door.

“Ve know fhat zhou h’are zinkink, unt ve vant … zhou to … sssstop.”

“You can’t stop me. You can’t hurt me,” Giles retorted definitely. “My boy needs me

well—he’ll sense if’n I’m not, if’n I’m hurt.

“You ain’t go’n touch me.”

The man paused and smiled tightly, then drew in a long, nostril breath.

“Ve haff fvound zhor … bruthhhher. Tventy-fahive yearez heedahen—he vaz fherry …

ssssneakahy. Vhut ve haff fvound heem.”

“I don’t care. I ain’t hardly know him.”

The second part was true; the first part wasn’t. Yes, Giles Ricas barely knew Frederico

Ricas, eleven years Giles’ senior, but he stilled loved him. He couldn’t help but. Even with his

magic dead, Giles shared a love bond with his brother, just as he did with his son. Frederico was

never far from his heart, wherever he was—where was he?

“Ssssan Trahópey,” the man answered. “Gvowing olt unt haháppy … zough heessss

mahagic … issss dyink.”

There was no use in trying to hide his emotions. Even if he had his erstwhile abilities, the

lines on Giles’ face would have told the man it all. They had him. The cortos had him. He

didn’t want to see his brother dead; Giles knew they knew it.

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“Tehell zhor ssssahon fhatever zhou vant avout religion unt tiempo, Gahod unt tiempo,

zhe Dzevil unt tiempo, unt anyzing elsssse … zahat issss … pure viction. Vhut dzon’t tehell

heem anyzing zahat issss … trueyu,” was the man’s final message. And the message was clear.

And that is why Giles Ricas said nothing worthwhile to his son, Hector, the night before

the boy hopped the punk to Chenbrunuela Island and joined the most powerful, fearful, and

mysterious group of eccentrics—a cult, they were a cult—the Earth had ever known.

Of course, to Giles, what he told his son was not not worthwhile. It was more worthy in

his opinion of consideration than the facts the man would not allow him to speak on. As true as

what he could not speak on. Far more important.

Hell, my boy. I’m talking about Hell.

“And I’m looking at it, dad,” Hector breathlessly intoned as he watched a corto fall from

a high temblin into the jaws of shark below. “Christ, I’m fucking looking at it.”

Still too stunned to broadcast his terror, Guillermo sighed in relief as he watched Hector

turn and ask when and what they’d eat. Vincent did the same. Guillermo was happy about that,

too.

“Up to Dave, boys,” Guillermo answered then faced his captain and queried, “So what’s

on the menu, Dah-veed?” Guillermo obviously didn’t mind speaking in his true voice to this

particular corto.

David gave a mildly annoyed laugh. He hated Hispanic names, but loved Guillermo, spic

name and all—only kidding—so everything was jake, and David signaled with a second, this

time, jovial chuckle, then tossed a man-sized net to Guillermo.

“Catch and cut, man,” David replied in an apologetic tone, considerably hungry himself.

“I forgot about the food today, sorry.

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“Do you guys got a ham, either of you?”

They both did, Hector and Vincent. So had their three drowned peers (three drowned

hams). Any proper guest carried a welcoming ham to his host in Santa Quinto. It was like

Americans with their wines and fancy breads: if you were a decent Quintocano, you always

brought a ham.

“Good, good, good,” Guillermo said with flare as he watched Hector and Vincent

produce a fresh wedge of pig apiece from their hopsacks. Guillermo was hungry, too, so the

appearance of the meat pleased him much; the return of a (relative) state of normality to the face

and body lingo of each of his recruits pleased him far more and spurred him to contemplation:

Ceremony always calms motherfuckers down. Unless it doesn’t and shit, but...

He didn’t let that bother him. His two boys would be okay now. He was sure of it. He

was happy, confident, and terribly, terribly self-impressed. Master of ceremonies, I am. Dig it!

‘Cause I’m manga and shit like that, he bragged silently. I’m fucking good like that.

Guillermo didn’t let his self-importance interfere with his work. Within thirty seconds,

he’d exhausted his repertoire of back pats and secured Hector and Vincent’s hams within

David’s sea net with a series of complex and beautiful knot work, then thrown it over board and

let loose an audible boast to his famished audience.

“Top shelf coming up, boys. Dig it! Three, two …”

He never got one. He didn’t have to. He was exceptionally talented at this—had the

corto’s measured supernatural skill solely by spirit fishing ability, Guillermo Varnas would have

ranked among their best. Today’s yield more than proved it.

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“Sixteen lobster, five conch, one octopus, seven crabs, nine anemone, twelve jellies, three

kiddy sand” sharks, he meant, three young sand sharks, and jellies as in hydromedusae, of

course, “aaaand five oysters.” He was exceptionally talented at quick-count, too.

The haul intrigued Vincent. Something about fishers and men. And irritated Hector,

who could only take so much seafood at any given time, and none of the seafood Guillermo’s

netting yielded here. Crabs, shark, oysters—anemone!—Jesus Christ, disgusting! I traded pig

for this?!

It was just short of a scream to David’s telepathy. “You surely did, little Miss,” he

laughed with only Hector noticing. “And you’re eating it all!”

“I have no problem with that,” Vincent came in, drawing a confused and cross look from

Hector. “I’ve seen this done before.”

Now Guillermo and David were confused and cross. Spirit fishing, flash flirting sea life

into your net with nothing but a ham and your intentions, was a corto tradition, which made it a

corto secret. They’d have to look into this.

“And you’ve eaten that much fish before?” Hector asked incredulously. “That much fish

and that much other stuff?”

“It’s not that much, actually,” Vincent replied, “and it’s astoundingly good. You’ll see.”

Seconds later, David tossed two twelve inch, white buckets to Guillermo, who fumbled

one and missed the other because sports had never been his thing. He didn’t mind that, though,

and even if he had, it wouldn’t matter for more than a minute, because that’s all it would take for

him to prepare one the best meals that either Vincent or Hector would ever eat . Would ravage,

really. They’d tear into the food and drink that Guillermo was set to deliver faster and more

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earnestly than they’d had with any food ever before. And that wasn’t just because of their

hunger; Guillermo, as was said before, was just that good.

I guess he must be, Hector told himself without complete conviction. How could he not

have when he had no idea what the hell to expect?

David heard that. Guillermo didn’t, because Hector hadn’t queried himself loudly

enough. That’s always the way it had been with the two friends. Hector was usually too

composed, too quiet for Guillermo’s telepathy to pick up. David heard it, though.

Yes, boyo, he planted into Hector’s head, you will see. Believe it, he gently commanded.

Hector waved that off as a thought of his own. David allowed that. He didn’t want to

push too much magic on the young man too fast. Stun can only hold back terror so much for so

long.

Now watch. Another gentle command.

Hector followed, pasting his eyes on Guillermo as the corto collected his buckets and

assembled them linearly, hung his net on a crook above that which was closer to him, and then

began stabbing, seemingly but not randomly, at the catch within it, staying clear of the jellies,

and never hitting David’s net or missing what he desired to hit.

Hector stared in amazement, and Vincent in happy anticipation—David couldn’t have

been less interested; he’d seen it a million times and just wanted to eat—as the sliced fish

transmigrated into a saucy rainbow of colored chunks and liquids that yielded the finest culinary

smell that either of them had ever had the pleasure of breathing in. It was a tremendous sight;

both recruits were disappointed by how quickly it ended. Thirty seconds. Guillermo was fast in

addition to skilled.

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And now a bit tired. He only made it look easy. It was anything but, though, so he took

a minute’s break, then reassembled his catch over the second bucket and meticulously stabbed

away at the jellies within it. Again, Hector stared in amazement, and Vincent in happy

anticipation as the contents of the net yielded to its collector below, this time flushing out as a

pink-tinted, heady brew of something that both he and Vincent couldn’t wait to imbibe.

Split seconds later, they were set to.

“No utensils, gentleman. No cups, or plates, or bowls, I’m afraid. Sorry about that,”

David found himself apologizing again. He was an incredibly powerful corto, but a frequently

forgetful one, too.

“Me, neither,” confessed Guillermo. “Sorry.”

“How are we supposed to eat this, then?” Vincent asked and Hector wondered.

“Hands, my man,” Guillermo replied with zest and a smile. “Hands is all you need.

Watch.”

And with that Guillermo plunged his left arm into the fish bucket and his right into the

bucket holding the brew; pulled both out and gave Hector and Vincent (he’d never seen this

happen before), and presented their contents to the two: stew and drink held in perfect cylindrical

shape in the palms of Hector’s hands with no chance of tipping over or losing to gravity. Their

shark was delighted this time.

“Completely sterile,” Guillermo assured them lest they needed be. “The food and my

hands now.”

“Dirt goes in, but it doesn’t come out,” David added. “However the fuck that works,”

and Hector finished.

“Go for it.”

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“Far out!” Hector and Vincent both uncharacteristically shouted.

They ate side-by-side with Guillermo and David, Guillermo between and close to the

recruits, and David eighteen inches from Vincent’s left. Guillermo always moved in on first

timers, wanting to close the gap between his telepathy and their surprise and enjoyment as

possible; David liked to give them space.

Thirty minutes later, they were done. Vincent had been right when he’d said that

Guillermo’s catch wouldn’t be too much. Inexplicably, what came out fell far, far short of what

went in in spirit fished cuisine. Over a hundred pounds, Hector had pulled in; the men were left

a bit hungry nonetheless. They weren’t left at all unsatisfied, however. Their tongues had come

and their heads were left pleasantly buzzed, which Guillermo hoped would aid their corto

hopefuls with what was coming next. David hoped it wouldn’t, because he adamantly believed

that recruits needed to survive their first trip to the island on their own, which meant without

being advantaged or disadvantaged.

Fuck! he quickly grew concerned. A little ribbing is one thing, but being drunk is

another. Fucking hell, Guillermo, you’re going to get these boys killed!

He wouldn’t, and David would soon see that and be relieved.

Once they’d finished up, Guillermo directed Hector and Vincent back to the sharks, who

were all still doing their thing, singing and dunking and hoping for another corto or some tiempo

to fall. Hector and David generated and kept their stunned cool once more; however, neither

wished to watch the scene before them any longer, of course—that was obvious to them all—

neither did Guillermo or David, just not noticeably so. They still had their roles to play.

Guillermo, the arrogant hepcat (actually, obviously, not a role); David, the insulting

motherfucker (a true role no doubt because he was anything but, as will be clarified).

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Hector spoke up.

“Guille,” he said in dead tone and without taking his eyes from the whites, “how … how

long does this last? How … how long do we have to be here?”

Guillermo lit a cigarette and responded nonchalantly. “It lasts until the work is done, my

man. And we’ll be here until our transport shows up.”

“How long is … that?” Vincent Charlie asked in a shaky whisper.

Guillermo didn’t answer. He didn’t have to or have time to.

“Heads up, girls,” David ordered suddenly, startling even Guillermo. “Your rides are

here.”

“That wasn’t an hour,” Guillermo lamented the failure of the estimation David had given

earlier. He, Guillermo, had wanted the recruits’ stone to set in more before they pushed on. It

could only have helped, he thought—assumed, really, as he’d never gotten any passenger on

David’s punk inebriated before.

Shit.

So Hector and Vincent looked up, straight up, and received another of the many

remaining shocks of the day: A unit of ghosts, fifty or sixty of them, descended from the wispy

clouds above and settled a foot or two above the boat, just above them. They were unlike any

ghosts Hector had ever seen—they were unlike anything Vincent had ever seen, having never

encountered a ghost before—and they conducted themselves in a manner that none but cortos

had ever witnessed ghosts conduct themselves in before. They didn’t wear tatters, they didn’t

howl or seek to spook anything; they wore cabana wear, they spoke like blue collar humans, they

laughed and smirked and cursed and smiled and bumped into each other and said “sorry,” they

smoked cigarettes, some the same brand as Guillermo’s; others, purely ethereal, imaginary but

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no less real to them. They appeared as nothing more than ordinary people, save for the floating

and the slight, gauzy blur that aura’d about them. They were mundane, crass, unhealthy,

argumentative, apologetic, and clumsy everyday people—only blurry, dead, and floating.

“All right, boys,” Guillermo said to Hector and Vincent calmly. “Ready?”

No.

But they didn’t let on. They girded their loins and quietly, instinctively expressed their

faith: Vincent, in Jesus Christ, to whom, and to Hector’s chagrin, he audibly prayed; Hector, in

his father and himself, and each grabbed the nearest extended pair of ghost hands and took a

deep breath as they began to rise.

Guillermo did the same, with his deep breath taken in concern for his two recruits, then

informed them that they “might be up here for a while, maybe even a long while because of the

corto who died. If he shows up, they’ll want to greet him,” he said referring to their, his, and the

other ghosts.

“But don’t worry,” he told them. “Don’t worry about your hands getting tired—grip with

your confidence, not with force, okay? Let your body relax and keep calm. And believe.”

He shouldn’t have said that, especially not as loudly as he had. He’d opened his mouth

during this trip too many times already—it did no good to help recruits too much. There were

some things they had to figure out and had to be strong enough to do on their own, because what

was waiting for them on Chenbrunuela was far, far worse of a challenge than what floated above

and flowed below them.

And it’s much better to die out here than it is on there , Guillermo reminded himself,

adding a goddamn it to underscore his belief in himself. He’d never felt less manga.

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So the men floated up and just a bit away from David and his punk, with Hector and

Vincent not knowing what to expect and holding more onto their hosts with their strength than

their confidence, but that was okay for now. They were confident enough. They’d been

recruited wisely.

David waved to his departing passengers and stayed put to salute the ghosts, look down

to the sea and thank it, and did the same to the sharks, the island, and tiempo. Then he turned his

skiff around and took off, but not before communicating to Hector, Guillermo, and Vincent

farewell and good luck and that he’d be back later in the day to see how they were doing, which

was fine. A telepathic goodbye, good wishes, and see you soon wasn’t against the rules in any

way. Oh, David played the asshole to test recruits’ resolve a bit, but in actuality, he was pure

gold. He was a corto, a communist, and a violent rebel, Hector and Vincent would soon find out

about him and everyone else on Chenbrunuela, but as he did unto Guillermo, he did unto all of

humanity—he loved it fully. He loved even the capitalists he fought and killed all too often.

He was a great man. He was gravely saddened by the three lives that’d been lost under

his watch, and he truly wanted the best for Hector and Vincent (and Guillermo, too, obviously).

He wanted that. He wanted them to make it to the island, through the day, through their careers

all right, better than all right. He was one of Chenbrunuela’s lead telepaths. He knew that

Hector and Vincent, just like their three unfortunate peers, were good people—a little rough

around the edges in a few spots, but what decent people aren’t? Hector could be a bit obnoxious;

Vincent could be a bit naïve, his telepathy told him. Nevertheless, the skipper wanted both

recruits to live long, happy, healthy, rich, and enriching lives among his people.

It was lucky for David that he’d disappeared beyond earshot and with his back turned to

Chenbrunuela before the ghosts, who waited only so long for the slain corto to show up—he

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didn’t, he wouldn’t, it happens—began their way to the island, because had David not, what

followed next would have caused him to turn back and engage in a comedy of errors that’d have

cost him his life.

A half kilometer to the shore line, the three men’s ghosts began to inexplicably act up in a

shocking and unbecoming fashion. Seized by an alien force, they treated their passengers like

ragdolls, tossing, turning, and throwing them amongst each other; careening toward the water

then pulling up inches from the rough, clawing tides; shaking the cortos too rough for comfort;

laughing at them; threatening them; scaring them terribly, even Guillermo, who had taken their

ride from David’s punk to the cutters’ island scores of times over the last four years and had

engaged in their tomfoolery with some frequency—it had never been like this, though. The

violence and irony of their roughhousing wasn’t playful at all, it was sheer cruelty, and while

Guillermo’s ethereal senses detected no deadly intentions among his group’s piloting spirits, they

spotted a carefreeness within their ghosts that threatened his and his charges’ lives nonetheless.

Ironically, because he was under far more battery than either Hector or Guillermo, the

least terrified of the group was Vincent, whose faith in his God was and would always be

stronger than Hector’s faith in his father and himself and Guillermo’s faith in his ability to

remain cool under, and control, unexpected and dire situations, and that’s saying a lot given how

bloody arrogant Hector was. Even when he was tossed and dropped and just barely caught by

Guillermo’s outreached hand, he, Vincent, remained more somewhat convinced than his

companions that he (and they) would make it to the island safely.

Hector was taken aback and embarrassed by the relative, austerely relative, look of calm

on Vincent’s face: taken aback because his longstanding prejudice against people of faith had

long led him to believe that the religious were cowardly; embarrassed because he felt now and

25


feared he always would (he wouldn’t) never be able to believe in and humble himself before God

and gain the strength from Him that Vincent did. Such a simple act for most people, stupid

people, Hector believed, but an impossible act for Hector, who believed himself far more

intelligent than the majority of those around him, especially his present company. Guillermo had

his delusions of supernatural grandeur, and Vincent, his silly faith—how could Hector, the realist

and the atheist, not be the men’s intellectual superior, he disconsolately wondered? How am I

not cooler than them both?

Of course, he was cooler, more composed, than Guillermo, about whom it’s been

established was the most nervous of the three, only Hector couldn’t tell this. What Hector saw as

confidence on Guillermo’s face was in reality nervous concentration, Guillermo desperately

stretching out his telepathy to identify the source of the ghosts’ thoughtless, aggressive verve.

It didn’t take long. Guillermo identified the cause of the spirits’ cruel recklessness as

Kember, an eight years-dead corto with whom Guillermo had never gotten much along, but

never had problem with, either. No one ever had.

So what the hell’s wrong with you, my man? Guillermo wondered inwardly as he drew

his blade and took aim at the contagious ghost. Really, though, it didn’t matter, the matter with

Kember. Cortos didn’t hesitate to do what’s right, so Guillermo threw the question right out of

his mind and threw his blade as hard and as accurately as he ever could, the wretched jostling of

his body be damned, and prayed to himself that it’d take down Kember and no one else. Cortos

despised collateral damage and risk, and an unattended or poorly attended corto blade is a threat

to everything, and this is why, after Guillermo’s blade slashed fatally through Kember and fell

into the sharky waters below—Chenbrunuela’s patron whites weren’t only littoral—Guillermo

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took a deep breath, broke and plunged from his pilot, and chased his weapon to the bottom of the

sea.

Guillermo Varnas was a braggart, a man beset by repulsive vanity and delusions of

grandeur, but he was also a faithful corto—a hero as every faithful corto is (his mediocrity be

damned here, damn it!), and not only by his group’s peculiar standards.

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Documents

Richard Caponetti_TIEMPO Chapter Two_Sharks and Ghosts