Einstein

Einstein

       by Dougie the Derelict

As you will recall, when Einstein was a little boy he went caving and came, in a deep and forbidding cavern, upon a bad Indian man named Indian Joe who had found a treasure and kept it hidden there. But Einstein and his band of cutthroat pirates, using their wits and high talents for arithmetic, located the cave, entered it, found the box of gold and brought it to another secret spot where Indian Joe would not be able to get it again. When Indian Joe captured them and forced them to show him where the treasure was, it had already been surreptitiously re-hidden by Einstein's reclusive and fellow adventurer, Ben Gunn. The gang was as surprised to find the treasure gone as was old Indian Joe himself. And this is where we return to our story.

       These two, Ben and Einstein, were true companions. Their friendship came as no surprise to those who knew them, and it comes as no surprise to me. I have a Ph.D. in literature and philosophy and am currently the owner of Dougie's Designs, a tatoo parlor on the east side of Missberg, Mississippi, a city of maybe 400,000 souls. They were not blood brothers though they were born of the same mother as twins. Ben came out first and Einstein followed holding onto Ben's heel as if to say that he had not the strength to exit unless Ben gave him a hand. Einstein had a strange, x-shaped birthmark on his groin and Ben had one that resembled a mermaid bent around his anus. Neither of them ever showed these marks to anyone. They did not even know of each other's marks, so fastidious they were about keeping these oddities unseen. When they went swimming they wore trunks, even when it was just boys at the local swimming hole and all the rest swam naked. I think it was this common use of trunks when all others were naked that bound these two together at an early age, though one would have to research the Einstein past more fully to say this with any certainty. Ben has no past. No records exist for and of his passage through time. Hearsay alone (and, of course, my experience of him) accounts for all that I record here.

       Before they could talk these two dined together against their mother's wishes. She worked, oh curses on such mothers, have had them sup at separate tables, and though for a time she got her way, Einstein calculated that if he whined and screamed each time she made motion to part them she would eventually give in to his needs (he referred to them then, and later, too, as his needs, not his demands) and let the two be friends. Needless to say, Einstein's prediction came true, and his mother eventually let the two of them be. They took their meals together from then on and not one meal but one or two did they ever spend apart from that victorious day onward (except for a period of three years, of which more later). In sum, they were inseparable.

       They ate prodigiously, though politely, consuming when young, at the ages of two or three, whole fowl at one sitting, washed down by two liters of milk each and a glass of white wine. Red wine did not sit well with Ben whose constitution was somewhat consumptive. They were late weaners and their mother dreaded each occasion at her breasts since these, once upon a time erect and lovely, became dugs, flat and so empty of substance as to make it difficult to find a brassiere to fit. 

     By the time the boys were five, a fat porker would disappear down their gullets at a sitting during which time, while masticating and gulleting both hard liquors and wine, they would play games of counting and arithmetic. They knew their times and tables by heart long before they spent their first days formally at school. At the age of ten, they would call for another ox and a hogshead of wine brought to table as a sur sur la fete if they felt that the three bullocks and the herd of chickens turned on spit and roasted to perfection constituted too meager a repast at the main course. When they went outside to relieve themselves after such dining, streams that country folk would see suddenly flowing past their huts would be regiven names, and with such naming the two made the country new and got it remapped simply through their endless hugeormous gustifariousnesses.

       I, myself, have seen them gorge in this manner but I have other matters with which to acquaint you. When Einstein was twelve years old Ben disappeared and he had no knowledge of Ben's whereabouts, which troubled him not the least, knowing as he did that Ben would make trouble enough without him. Also, when Einstein was twelve—his mother tiring of his consumption of her vitals and drink at the Benbow where she kept tavern—he hired on to a ship bound for the south seas to trade British goods for those of hotter climes. He sailed as a common cabin boy, first checking to make sure that the captain was a God fearing and abstemious man. He was not, but Einstein knew this not until much later, the third day of their voyage, when he was required to bring a special bottle to the captain and asked, upon his entry into the cabin, to come in and lock the door after him.

       Einstein learned much on this his first voyage, not the least of which was the fact that instead of being a trading venture this journey of the Smallwood, a little but sturdy and trustworthy ship of French design, was after treasure. Yes, treasure! The treasure of a nefarious pirate commonly named Blackbeard. When they finally arrived at the small coral island to which the treasure map directed them, they found it deserted with not a soul there. But the trouble lay in their own midst. Unbeknownst to them, the sailors that the captain had hired to take the ship south were pirates themselves, also in search of Blackbeard's hidden hoard. These cutthroats remained quiet and good enough until they reached their destination because they had no map of their own telling them wither to sail or where to dig. Once anchored in the island's harbor (and a quaint little harbor it was, all surrounded by a white sandy beach and tall endless successions of coconut trees waving their emerald branches in the warm breezes) these criminals showed their true colors. They shouted a sudden command that rest of the conspiring sailors obeyed, and these manhandled Doctor Smallet, and a certain Squire Tremblay who had with grand generosity funded the journey, as well as young Einstein. Their leader, one Randex by name, a peg-legged man who had had his left leg bitten off at the knee by a great grey shark, clapped the good men in the hold in irons, starved them till they produced the treasure map, and departed for the island to dig it up.

       Now, the skeleton crew of pirates left aboard to guard the prisoners and the vessel were soon roaring drunk and the good Doctor, Squire Tremblay, and young Einstein quickly made an escape. Before long the situation had reversed itself. The good now controlled the ship and the bad lay moaning in irons. O blessed tidings!

       Peg-Leg did not find the treasure and came forward begging to be let back aboard (his real purpose despite his remonstrance being to manhandle the good ones again and to force them through whatever means necessary to account for where the treasure was really buried). The fact was that on this very island Ben Gunn had been marooned by a black-hearted captain some three years past, and he had found the treasure by accident and re hidden it in a small seaside cave. The upshot of the events here was that Ben freed the good, helped confound and finally capture the bad, and showed them all the location of the gold that he made them promise he would receive a quarter share in while Dr. Smallet, SquireTremblay and young Einstein received each a quarter share as well for their parts in the adventures of Treasure Island.

       I have since changed my ways. Converted now to good living and temperance, I regret only that my one good leg has recently shown signs of infection, possibly the result of a recent tattoo,. It may well have to be amputated, Dr. Smallet has informed me, if I am to live much past my fiftieth year. My grandson, Dougie of Dougie's Designs, has formed quite a strong relationship with the good men of the ship. Now and then he is asked by prison officials to provide his services to this or that incarcerated pirate who wishes for one of his creations. Adornment is of such importance to us all, I might safely postulate.