Pirate Tales: Cap'n's Eyes and Other eerie stories. by Stattelman Mark

Author:Stattelman, Mark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-08-26T00:00:00+00:00

Awaiting Dickie Raggs

Jolly Dick Raggs, as he was better known, that’s who they was awaitin’ on, truth be told. Eighty-six years was how long they had been waitin’. And they had both done long since turned to bone . . . Yep, you heard right. That’s all that was left of ‘em. But you’d a thought they was still formed men, coz that’s just how they acted. Not that they didn’t know they was nothin’ but the ivory—they knew it certain enough.

“You cheated,” said one to the other.

“You always accuse me a that.”

“Coz it’s true. You do.”

“You wanna fight about it?”

“Aye, but first let’s play another hand.”

That’s usually how the argument went, or some variation that was close to bein’ the same. The scene had been goin’ on for years, eighty-six to be exact. And it always went the same. You’d a thought they was doin’ a theatre performance, night after night, that it was all just some play-act. And there the two sat. One skeleton dealing out the cards to the other, leanin’ atop the chest they was guardin’.

The two hadn’t always been skeletons, of course; one time they was true, full-blown flesh and blood pirate figures. Now they were just resemblances of their past selves. Oh, there were bits of flesh hangin’ off a bone here and there, but mostly it was just ivory a showin’. The moonlight would come shinin’ down and bounce right up off the bones of each one. Well, there was some cloth too, on each of ‘em. One wore the remnants of a large blue pea coat, and the other man’s coat was of a mauve color, faded. One, the blue-coated one, had a floppy pirate hat atop his head and the other had his hat set off to the side, restin’ atop the trunk. The hatless one with the mauve coat wore an eye patch over his left eye. And a person wonders—well, me in particular, I’m wonderin’, but maybe you ain’t so much—whether the patch is at all necessary since there really ain’t no orb to speak of a restin’ in either socket. Perhaps it’s just all part of the act, or costume rather.

And then often enough the two would argue after a hand, or right in the middle of one, and stand to do battle. Yep, sometimes it was pistols they used, and they walked over to a clearin’ (still within eyesight of the chest, of course), where the two would stand back to back and then walk off the decided number of paces before turnin’ and firin’. And being as there weren’t much in the way of flesh, the lead musket ball would pass on through one body or the other, whiskin’ right on through the open spaces between the bones. Often enough, however, the ball might get caught up and ricochet around in a rib cage, nickin’ away a little bit of ivory here an’ there before finally passing on out.

And sometimes it was cutlasses the two used.

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