I found my passport (they’re good forever). I’m going back to the People’s Republic of St. Ignatius. I’m going home, and I’m staying. My employer is going to take issue with that. Home is an island(s) of indeterminate dimension that seems to shift in location (in defiance of GPS, compass needle, and reason). No indigenous population, unless you count the first shipwreck. The place collected people through misadventure and calamity until it had enough to become a nation (of a sort).
Missionaries, Catholic or way-later Pentecostal, failed to convert the populace. The British couldn’t conquer them. They wasted a decade, a small fleet and the lives of a lot of soldiers and East India men trying to irradicate (and later eradicate) the devouring Puffins and failing to grow tobacco. Every captive or coerced labor force ran into the woods to vanish, presumed eaten by feral puffins (good guess, but no).
During the first Cold War, the People’s Republic flirted with the Soviets and US and pissed off both (repeatedly and severely). Commandant General Fidel Mostly-Day dodged more literafigurative attempts on him than Castro.
He lasted a while too, looked like he might outlive Ronnie and the other Fidel. Wasn’t to be. The coup came on August 14 1984, the day I was born. My mother was the secretary of education. My father a district party stooge (a respectable gig in those days).
There’s the story of the drive out of the capital, past a bunch of kids in uniforms with rifles and “now what?” expressions. These were the same young men who had just arrested (murdered) the Commandant, and it was a bad time to work for the boss. Mom and pop made it (obviously).
The sober fact of the story, the version dad tells when he’s sober, is that they politely bluffed their way through “papers please” roulette to make it out of town into the country side and grandma’s spot. A bunch of soldiers in inherited uniforms who did not yet need to shave didn’t understand just how new a newborn they were looking at. They were young enough to pull a trigger or take a stupid order, and also young enough to refuse to arrest someone’s momma with a baby me in her arms.
The drunk versions grew more elaborate over the years, by the time I left for school, it was mom squat-birthing me in a field while dad fended off swarming feral puffins armed only with his fists and his wits.
*
“Crew make ready for landing. Passengers, we Approach People’s Republic of Ignatius.” The pilot is an amalgam of Western 1980’s action movie villain accents. The plane is the product of some defunct Soviet factory and has bones older than any person within it. Flying boat. Gull wings and propellers. We the condemned passengers sit facing each other across the pallets of shit, our luggage and cargo. We wear headphones, thick eggshells that keep engines from deafening us and are wired into the plane’s comms.
“Where in sweet-sacred fuck is the island?” And the missionary and his wife wince and cross themselves. The missionary’s teenager is laughing her ass off at the profanity-poetry. Pilot left his thumb on a button or a gremlin left a mic-switch toggled so a dozen passengers can hear him curse the plane, the plane’s mother, and the residents of this “shit covered fuck hole island of fucks” in a bit of every language he knows. It’s a tour from the Baltics to Kiev (and a few real nasty curses from some tongues I can’t place).
Thanks, guy. To be fair, home isn’t a paradise and bird shit is a serious ecological problem. It’s great (fertilizer) until it isn’t. Then it’s run-off and algae blooms and dead fish and everything every other place on Earth deals with. Pilot scream drags me out of the dream: “Rocks.” Pilot Guy roars-actually-roars. Old engines sing the Soviet national anthem in tandem, drunk. Flying-boat hits the waves as it was designed to do (at a speed and force it was not designed for, no sir). For a moment, but only for a moment, the pilots pray in tangled creeds and tongues to all kinds of saints and prophets and martyrs. Promptly after prayer, each sets about blaming the near crash landing on his comrade. Co-pilot swears the altimeter said 1000 meters and climbing when we hit water in a fog that wasn’t on any weather report.
The plane sounds tired, so tired, like a beat horse. The pilot-co-pilot are screaming over the stuck-on comms at each other’s mothers while we taxi in perpetually-and-unnaturally-shitty seas toward a run-down dock. There’s a dozen of us, passengers, waiting at the pier in the evening, and the guy in a government uniform surprised to see the plane shrug-apologizes. “It’s gonna be a while” waiting for a customs person from the airport (the real international airport outside the capital to the north). There are some perplexed looks at the gleaming glass and brutalist blocks at the other end of the sound. Looks close enough to walk in 15 minutes. That’s an hour walk, straight shot as-the-puffin-skitters. It’s like taking shrooms, like really heavy boomers, with no high. Hand to god. You can expect visual distortions and space-dilation (more perceived than real) while your brain adjusts to Ignatius. Time gets weird too.
There are a lot of first time visitors to the island. They’ll repeat often in the coming days that something is “off with the light”, “sound is different”, and my favorite “the vibe’s not bad, just off” while their senses adjust to a place that brains and compasses just read wrong (until they don’t).
No one here waiting where the waves meet the concrete really wants to know anything about one another. I mean, people are nosy, and I did indeed spend some portion of the flight imagining stories for other passengers (and I assume they did the same). Spies. They’re all spies. Not really, there are a few white collar criminals fleeing consequence. But the missionaries might actually be a cover, no one is that fucking chipper (especially without caffeine). Dock boss offers us coffee, cause my people are nice like that. No one wants to know anything about each other but the missionaries.
I flee to find alcohol and cigarettes so that I might endure the faithful. The late light on the sound or bay, I’ve never known what to call it, is beautiful at sunset, painting everything that burnt gold–the sleepy port town, and the gleaming brutal capital up the way. End of the pier, two soldiers stand guard over, us I guess?
There are two kids in familiar inherited uniforms with rifles-sans-ammunition looking bored, but the border must be guarded. Both boys are happy to sell me partial packs of cigarettes for American dollars, and one is happy to go buy more cigarettes and return with them, along with a bottle of liquor (or many) “what’s your drink?”
“Surprise me. Many bottles. Keep the rest” I give him a couple of twenties (I think that’s still a lot of money here) and the kid runs across the street and into the small town of South Port. By the time he’s back with an armful of bottles, I’m back with the familiar strangers and we’re all huddled together with our backs to the coming night around a little guard shack and customs shop. We’re a temporary tribe waiting for a guy with a stamp to trek across an island with irrational geometry. The missionaries have us semi circled beneath a red sunset.
It’s hand-to-god some kind of team-builder or ‘ice-breaker activity’ administered by the missionaries while their teenager hides in her headphones and screen. I share cigarettes and some kind of Cyrillic labeled plum brandy and some mystery whiskey with the rest (label-scraped hooch from god knows where\when is an island specialty). Bless that young man, he brought Soju too. I share cigarettes in solidarity, in opposition to being ministered to. Could you refrain…” passive aggressive from the preacher-man.
“I cannot refrain” I am polite about it though.
“And I will not” from a business man next to me. The pep and energy, dare I say zeal, in these godly folks after a long and near-death flight is exhausting. An anti-congregation of corporate exiles and junior lawyers sent to tend to the tax shelter and hop back discreetly is not their target audience. But the church folk are bull-rush smiling and just full of some kind of ‘something.’
I’m tired enough that the thought of being drunk makes me silly, and the silly notion I am entertaining is that the extremely fine preacher’s wife is eye-humping me. This is not likely, but my coffee tastes like paint thinner and poor judgement. “Well ok. We haven’t heard you’re name yet, Mr….?” She is absolutely beautiful. Eyes first, and everything else about this woman pleases me–the woman with the little cross necklace I dislike.
Expensive Suit next to me lights a joint and passes it. Preacher and wife judge-cluck. Their kid asks and is rebuked by we with the weed and both parents, rightly. I hit that shit hard. The herb is delicious and smooth-fruity and the hubris hits me harder and for reasons I will never be able to explain, I use my real-given-name. I wasn’t even drunk yet: “I am Ulysses.” I blow smoke from the nose like a dragon for effect.
His wife, June or Jane or January it’s a J name, definitely a ‘J’: “That’s a mighty name Ulysses.” And she squats, like she’s about to approach a stray cat or heathen to offer her church’s flavor of the gospel as a treat. June does this this should-be-un-sexy crouch-walk toward me.
Smiling. Gorgeous but grim in the eyes: “If you don’t put the devil’s lettuce aside we will have a problem.” We don’t and she skitters toward the two soldiers to tattle. When the beautiful prude returns with the kids with rifles, I’m out twenty dollars more. Expensive suit gives the boys a few nugs from somewhere, and I’m astonished that a man in such tight pants is inexplicably carrying so much marijuana on his person.
“I imagine you’re quite pleased with yourselves.” I mean, obviously yes we are. “God sees you, Ulysses and ..?”
“I am not fucking giving you my name” from Expensive Suit.
The church folks leave us to smoke and giggle, the whole circle gets talkative if not warm–even the missionaries prude-brooding at the consumption all about them. Expensive Suit and I have proudly inoculated the group through intoxication, and no practice sermon is forced on the gaggle at the dock (and I swear I see the preacher take a sip).
From time to time in the long wait for the customs man, I catch that woman, June looking at me. It’s likely self-delusion. Hubris. For it’s been a long time and I am thirsty, but it looks like she wants to love me or stab me or both.
By the time the customs dude arrives, it’s proper night. The town, the one literally across the street from the pier and figuratively a mile away isn’t huge. There’s exactly one option for travelers until tomorrow: inn that’s more bar restaurant in it’s day to day with dust-musty rooms being aired out for the “unexpected arrivals.”
We make our way to the place, the dozen of us. There’s a joyful dinner where the grumpy dozen-or-so that didn’t die on the Soviet wreck break bread together. Couldn’t have taken more than an hour to find each other. Small town, short route, one place open and everyone part-ways wanders to the same place (except Expensive Suit). Maybe it’s the addition of the locals that makes the second meeting of this odd group warmer. Everyone felt lucky to meet this time having caught ‘the wanders’, another quirk of the People’s Republic of St. Ignatius. Until your brain adjusts (in so much as a brain can) to Ignatius’ peculiarity -as-place, you will struggle to find anything. That journey that seems arrow straight tends to twist down side streets and alleys (even in tiny towns with few of either).
When I sneak outside to smoke a little of the herb I procured, preacher’s wife follows me, and I know I wasn’t imagining it–the eye humping. She takes the paper I’m fuck-fumbling and rolls a perfect joint. Around the corner, side of the building, bar sounds–music and joy or something like it. The ocean chuffle, water-churning and salt breeze. Close enough to the coast to hear bird song. No Puffin shrieks. We kiss. She kisses me actualy. The preachers wife stands up, climbs up me and pins me to the inn wall.
Reader it’s lovely. Her husband is in there with their kid, and it’s cheap and tawdry, but the pious woman who rolls perfect joints kisses me and it’s lovely. She hiss whispers, like we’ll be found out, wants to know what room I’m in, asks me if I’ll “leave the door unlocked?”
When the family leaves to put the kid to bed and read psalms before sleep, June gives me that smile that’s lust and violence and I am lost to it.
*
“Ulyssess..” she hisses real sweet in my ear, nibbles a bit. June is straddling me and the best dream ever gets really-real so very quickly when the preachers wife straddling me hiss-kisses my name in my ear again late in that drunk night.
“Oh, ohkay, you are here” and wide awake yanking at restraints. I am four-point tied to the bed-posts (with disturbing expertise) with the preacher’s wife on top of me in the dark.
She stops my struggling. Little flashlight clicks to life to show cleavage that distracts from the ghost-story shadows cast on her face. “Hey, easy you.” And I know it’s June’s ‘stupid man’ voice, but it works quite well even if you know that.
“You want to play a game?” (stupid man…) and a blouse-button is relieved of its duties for the evening.
“I. Yes. Absolutely.” I don’t see where the needle comes from, but the preacher’s wife is freak-fast, and whatever is in my thigh is narcotic sweet.
She keeps kissing on me, and it’s almost-hot. “I need your heart rate up.”
“That’s kind of clinical, but yeah. Let’s get that heart rate up.” And I’m trying to dirty talk medical language until she just stops. Like, sex time just ended with not even a whimper.
Let there be light, and in the chair in the corner, there’s the husband. The missionary.
“I didn’t actually catch your name, guy.” It’s Todd. “Okay. Is this a cuck-chair situation? Cause uh. I dunno if I can perform.” I slur-stammer as the room’s vibe swings full back from sexy to terrifying again.
June scoffs, buttoning up and climbing off me. My skinny legs and chicken wings straining at the ropes. Todd produces a silenced pistol, cocks the gun and keeps it on me: “That’s not what this is, but listen you skinny, basic fuck. If I want to sit in the cuck chair?” Todd, we have a job to do. “Just a minute hon. If I want to sit in the cuck chair, who are you to judge me?”
“Good point. Unrelated question: What if I scream?”
“I will cut your balls off.” June uses her preacher’s wife voice and sociopaths up an insta-smile.
“Response times are slow here. We will hurt you badly, tiny man.”
Then she scours my wallet. Searches my bag, past the booze. Tosses the clothes. At the bottom, she finds the military ID and my American passport “Got it.” Returns, gloating. “We are going to play that game now.”
I am proper fucked up by whatever was in the needle that is dancing with whatever I smoke-drank earlier. Name. Rank. Serial Number. I can’t ever remember it, but Name. Rank. Fuck I can’t remember my license plate.
“Ulysses, you’re supposed to give your name, rank, and. You’re just repeating ‘Name. Rank. Serial..’ You gave him too much.”
The damn breaks and the truth pours out of me, great gouts of it: “I’m a dog. I knew you were married, but you kissed me and I’m so fucking lonely. I haven’t seen a tiddy in person in forever.” Whose in the cuck-chair now? “Still you Todd. My name is Ulysses REDACTED. Specialist 3. Guardian, E-3. I baby-sat a satellite for twenty years. I’m a fuckup.” Space Force? “Yes! I’m AWOL and a few days from desertion, and my dad died. And I came home to bury him and stay and hide.”
“Good boy, good yankee dog” stupid man, but June still holds the knife. “Your father was Stefan REDACTED. You must know why we’re here.” And hand to god I don’t. I have no fucking clue what they want from me, and the melody the drug is singing suggests I won’t remember dick about whatever else I volunteer to the missionaries.
*
JANUARY 17, 1966–PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF ST. IGNATIUS
*
I’m the supplemental narrator here. My name is not important, I’m not offering it, and it’s best you think of me as my role: the Ghost of Tenses Past. I’ll do my best to elucidate Ignatian history and the oddities and peculiarities you’ll encounter on the pages ahead as needed. I was born here, same as Ulysses. Different time that was the same time. We went to school together. That familiar-stranger thing all the way through high school in Port Town. He went off to university in the States and I went to try to run the family farm: vegetables and weed grown dangling above the forest floor (Puffins are omnivores that shit all over what they do not consume).
Sing in me muse, and through me tell the story of the scrawny man who was no soldier, the one who tossed his uniform and flew for a home that had moved on in his absence. To do that I’ve got to sing the song, tell you the story of the man that helped make Ulysses: Stefan.
Borrow my eye that you might see the photograph, the old physical thing chemically developed, black and white. Christmas Eve 1965. Radar hut in the hills north of Malverde (back when the Capitol had a name). There’s a skinny kid in an inherited uniform with a big old grin, too-tall, whip-cord skinny–prelude to the dad bod he’d have later in life. If your mom or dad had their “army box”, you know the kind of photograph. The two guys with locked arms over their shoulder are my father Glenn and You-You’s dad: Stefan.
They were great friends, met during their mandatory service when they manned anti-aircraft missiles and guns and radar. Their job was “boredom punctuated by apocalyptic terror” as my dad put it. I don’t know, my generation grew up between two Cold Wars. I dodged the draft (less of a big deal here and now), and the island relocated itself to less geopolitically relevant waters in the North-West-South-East Atlantic. Yes, the island of Ignatius moves. No, the island doesn’t “float” or “sail.”
Anyway, Northern Hemisphere winter 1965-66 Cold War shit was heavy and Fidel (our Fidel) was displeased at the SAC flights that kept straying over our island’s airspace. The big powers kept bombers with nukes on them in the air at all times in those days. The island of Ignatius sat somewhere sorta-kinda close to the straits of Gibraltar that decade.
Comrade General Mostly-Day showed some leg to the Soviets, and they gave us aid and food and boats and trucks and these telephone-pole looking anti-aircraft missiles. With all the useful goods the commies gave us, we did what we did with American beneficence: acted in Malverde as if we were putting them to the terms of use. Then we promptly distributed them about the island’s population where Yankee or Soviet just did not go without good reason. There we did our own socialism. I don’t want to miss the first Cold War, but those were good bad old days for the island. We were like a cargo cult, and communist and capitalist industry just poured blessings.
But the other side of that coin, the Faust bit, the snake-bite meets the poison-pill was all the military hardware (and the advisors who came with it). I’m speaking here of the thing outside the frame in dad’s old photograph: Soviet anti-aircraft missiles the size of telephone poles with wicked fins.
An internet search or an encyclopedia will tell you that the Ignatian Missile Crisis was a shorter Cuban Crisis. That Ignatius rattled sabers at the Soviets and Yankees and won some measure of being let alone by both.
Reality, it turns out, was Puffin-shit-crazy. I never believed my dad’s drunk stories about those days before my existence. A lot of us are Americans, or were before their ship crashed into an island-outta-nowhere and some portion of them decided to stay. Our contribution to the cultural stew is being prodigious bullshitters (shipwrecked, not vacationing, boredom is deadly). Every kind of person tells a fine story and is part of the whole rolling tapestry, but when you got time to fill, the people I come from are damn good at weaving something to fill it. Here’s my father’s turns-out-it-was-absolutely-true pile of Puffin shit story.
This is the one where somebody’s dad might have (definitely did) shoot down a Yanqui B-52 and a Soviet Tu-16 in the same week. The story where somebody fed a Keh-Geh-Beh man to the Puffins and a bunch of airmen defected to the island. The yarn about the time two superpowers (nearly) “invaded” the little Puffin-infested shithole that looks like a shark drawn poorly from memory on the map (if you can find it on the map at all).
*
END IGNATIUS 1
MORE TO COME