Mural of Ships

The sun beats down on the roof of the car, not a cloud disrupts the clear line from the fiery orb to the thin metal plate. The heat is not blocked by the overhead covering, but is instead filtered and absorbed by the car, making both the interior and exterior painful to the touch. The hot red car is in the single lane, behind it five lanes of cars are attempting to merge into the single lane, but no one is moving. There is a young woman in the passenger seat, both her feet are in the driver’s foot area, ready to accelerate or brake when necessary. A twelve year old girl is sitting in the driver’s seat. She is slightly portly, wearing glasses that make her eyes look glassy and magnified and slightly disfigured. The fabric covered backseat is empty of possessions or people, it is slightly more shaded than the front and a degree cooler. Waves of exhaust shimmy from the asphalt and rise above the vibrating back fenders of the idling cars. The motors of many cars are purring, but the surroundings are silent. There are no impatient horns, no children on the side of the road selling candy or sliced fruit. Just the lanes of cars, waiting patiently to reach the unknown that lays ahead. There are buildings on either side of the car. Some are short and made of wood, others tall and made of metal and glass, some are covered in stucco, some have crumbling sides. There is not a space in between then, they all share a wall. No matter how high or how low they rise, the buildings on the left side of the car are covered in a continuous mural. The oversized picture, spanning miles and raised thirty feet off the ground, depicts large wooden ships. They ride the waves, one after the other, clustered like an army of marching soldiers. The ships are pointed in the same direction as the waiting cars. Some ships have pink hulls and magenta ropes hanging from their masts, an intangible wind catches sails of pink and white lace. There are other ships painted in blue and green, others are black. One ship after another sails, painted in solemn colors or bright as rainbows. The ships are crowded together, ocean waves poke out occasionally from the massed hulls, but mostly, the ocean blue is buried beneath their weight and color. On the right side of the car, the buildings remain in their unadorned gray state.

Tour Ship

The ship is very large and composed of a string of connected cabins. There is little space out on deck, just a narrow walkway around the cabins. The plank boards are a dingy sandy blonde with stark white rails to keep them company and prevent passengers from falling overboard. The white paint is chipped and flaking off of the metal. Little wooden gangways lead from the dock onto the ship and crowds of people are streaming up and into the series of cabins.
Inside, a loud voice booms to the crowd already milling within the ships secretive insides. It is carried over a loud speaker and supplies concise little packets of trivial fact, directing the crowd’s attention to one or another aquarium, or that wall, or offering a historic or scientific anecdote.
The people are mostly older, anywhere from their late thirties to mid fifties. The men and women tend to be dressed alike, each wearing brightly colored polo shirts and khaki shorts or pleated slacks. The main difference is that the men are balding at the crest and their hair is white or gray while the women sport short haircuts full of unnatural curl and color. The women also wear bright lipstick and pearls or gold chains to add a touch of wasted femininity to their masculine couture. Both sexes tend to wear sun visors or other hats and carry little brochures and maps in their wrinkling, sun spotted hands.
They look where the voice tells them to look, nodding their heads and murmuring enthusiastically to one another. Many of them talk quite loudly, carrying on unrelated conversations about hotels, restaurants, or family members between moments of placing their attention where directed. Their feet shuffle along, carrying them where the voice suggests as if they were being moved along on a conveyor belt while their heads look at this and that and each other.
The various aquariums emit an eerie glow. The waving shimmer of light reflected off of the water dances upon the white walls of the cabin. There is otherwise nothing to be seen, except the occasional life saver mounted to a white wall. Nonetheless, the voice directs them to look, telling them what is in here and what is in there and where it came from and who discovered it and how long it lives and how it reproduces and who the captain of the ship was between the years of… and where it has traveled, and how it was named, and who has graced its decks with their shoe polish and so on. All the while, the crowd is responding to what they are told that they see. They snake their way from one room to the next to gaze into empty picture frames and exclaim things like,
“Oh Ralph, Nadia should have come! She would have liked this don’t you think? Maybe we can pick something up for her in the gift shop.”
Among the crowd, there are a few unruly children, also dressed in the classic polo shirts and khakis. They fight and play with their siblings and are ushered through the ship, one with the moving mass of humanity without taking notice of it or otherwise heeding their surroundings. There is an exit that allows a steady stream of homogeneous people to flow out of the string of cabins and across a second gangway. Just before crossing the threshold out of the cabin and onto the deck, they make their way through turn stiles with gleaming silver arms that let each patron push their tummy against a bar and get popped out on the deck as the following bar clicks into place behind them. They are especially merry as they emerge into the sunshine on the deck, smiling with satisfaction as the turnstiles count their passing.

Amusement Ride

I am in the bowels of a very long and thin ship, a modern recreation of a Viking ship made from black painted wood, metal and plastic. There is no water below the planks, but rather, hard pebbly land interspersed with blades of new grass, nearly invisible in the shadow of night. The boat is suspended in the air, held at least forty feet from the ground by enormous steel support beams on each side. The beams are buried far in the soil and extend vertically into the night sky, topped by a horizontal metal beam that joins them together. Welded to the center of the middle beam is another long metal pole that reaches from the underside of the air-born ship through the darkness of the bowels, up through the center of the deck and to the exact center the pole.
Within the ship, there are no windows, no portholes. It’s almost completely dark except for the cracks in the plank-wood roof which seep in short rays of yellow moonlight. The ship is a popular amusement park ride, but there are only three riders. Up, down, and up again…we swing from one point to the other with violent force, rocking mechanically between the metal beams, attempting to mimic the rolling of ocean waves, only, we cut through the air seamlessly with the force of Eric the Red.
I’m strapped to my seat by the plastic chest plate that comes with most modern roller coasters. The ship swings up high and fast, going up, then down with brutal force and speed. With each swing, my body registers panic. My stomach lurches as we trace another crescent moon with the pointed tip of the ship, then, nearly vertical, we descend, tracing another half smile. My hands are wrapped around the plastic safety belt and, with the beginning of each ascent, I take a long and deep breath. With the beginning of each descent, I release my breath in an extended exhale through pursed fish-lips.
My sister is sitting in the seat in front of me, just a couple feet away. Her long curly red hair moves with the motion of the ship. She is not anxious about the intense rocking, rather, she is preoccupied with the single piece of long plastic tubing that extends down from the ceiling between us. The tubing is thin and bendable, like the extra-long balloons that clowns turn into poodles at birthday parties, only a little thicker and stronger.
With each swing of the ship, the plastic tubing knocks me slightly on my forehead, in the exact center. My sister stares at the sight with an open mouth. She stares at the tube, watching it land on me with a light thump, over and over with each turn of the ship, neither in worry or sympathy, but dumfounded with disbelief.
Five seats away, on my sister’s right side, is my mother. She is clearly anxious. Her knuckles are white, gripping the plastic safety harness on her chest. Her face is covered in lines of fear and paralysis. Her lips are thin and her head hangs slightly forward, like a woman finally dominated by circumstances. She looks over at me and I can see within her eyes, through the blackness that nearly surrounds us, that she would cut the plastic tubing if she could, releasing me from the endless tapping on my forehead.
But she is strapped, we are all strapped, going up and down, tracing and retracing our path in endless mechanical repetition. As we travel the same route, we are nearly silent. I can only hear the light squeaking of metal beams as they glide past each other and the slight hissing of my breath through pursed lips as I struggle to remain calm. The ship is captain-less, not even a carnie graces the decks. We are alone. Below us, on the pebbly soil, is my father.