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No Ship is Big Enough

D. D. Renforth

    Kola sat up in her wheelchair in her small studio apartment, adjusted the confining belts with her right hand, looked down at the spoon with its large deep bowl and could easily see her blond hair and long face reflected in an upside down image. Her blue eyes and red lips were exaggerated. Her hair, tied back in a ponytail, seemed to glisten. Her nose had grown. Countless times she had performed this spoon ritual in many countries and cities, in the days when she was not crippled. She liked the spoon reflection. It made her look bigger than she was. Her image stared back at her, regardless where she was, what might happen, and what she was thinking. She was alive and big enough to take on the bad guys.

    This particular large spoon was a special gift from those who knew she liked spoons. It had a beautiful wide handle on which was engraved a woman on a raft with her arm up trying to halt a giant ship, though the carving only included the bow of the oil tanker. At the bottom in tiny words: “Nature thanks Kola Spanán.”

    Kola was that lady in the boat and she did stop that ship. Unfortunately, that moment put her into a wheel chair for the rest of her life. In her attempt to hold up a sign, her boat rocked, she fell backwardly on to a metal contraption she had brought along to hook herself to the ship, and severely and permanently injured her spinal cord.

    She smiled at the spoon. Her teeth spread out before her in the bowl.

    Beside the spoon was a group of items. Other than her head, her right arm, and her hand, she was paralyzed, so it was critical that everything was in easy reach. In front of the cereal bowl, spread neatly in a large semicircle on a wide tray, were a glass of orange juice, a tiny round clock, a harmonica, a small CD player with inbuilt speakers—her favorite CDs were in two large pockets on the side of her chair—a set of colored pencils upon a drawing pad, three books piled on top of one another, three rocks in a group, a phone, a small television, another small screen for satellite images, and a hand-held computer. Several wires flowed away in different directions.

    ‘It’s absurd,’ she thought, ‘absolutely absurd, as she contorted her nose and mouth in various faces gazing into the spoon. Why would they want to talk to me about taxes?’

    It was true, she had not paid any taxes for three years, but that was because she had made less than the minimum. She wasn’t trying to hide anything. She had no secret source of money or ingenious way of disguising wealth so that she could cheat the government. She was one of the ninety-nine percent.

    Perhaps it was a mistake. The government makes mistakes.

    The thought of government mistakes immediately sent her mind on a familiar path of criticism and an equally constant habit of talking out loud to herself when she was frustrated or angry.

    “They sure do make mistakes!” She mumbled to herself. “They made a mistake letting oil companies drill the waters. They made a mistake dumping toxic waste into the waters. They make a mistake letting beef companies level the rainforest. They made a mistake allowing coal and other companies to destroy the atmosphere. But those are huge mistakes. I am only one person. What mistakes have I made compared to those?”

    She knew of several people the government had wrongly audited and a few they should have audited more carefully. The government audited the Augers who lived next door with their three kids and found nothing. They would have found something if they had audited their heart. The Augers, as they proudly admitted to anyone, contributed large cash donations to organizations that denied climate change.

    “Waste! Yikes, audits are wrong,” she concluded to Goldman her cat. “Unless the government is going to audit itself, right, Goldman?”

    “Keep your eye on the ball, Mr. and Mrs. Government!” she shouted. “Look at the real problems! The need for renewable energy, pollution, unbelievable waste, poverty, infant mortality, the one percent, youth unemployment, millions with no health care and millions more who can’t afford the health care they need, the twenty percent who finance the drug war, millions who can’t afford an education, and so on, and so on. You have so many more important things to do than thrust your bureaucracy at me.”

    The phone rang. Kola reached over and touched a button on the phone, activating the speaker phone.

    “Kola,” she answered.

    “It’s Angie. Did you hear from Reg?”

    “No,” Kola said, “he has seven minutes more.”

    “Midge has not checked in,” Angie said.

    “Where are the media?” Kola asked.

    “They’re here.”

    Kola turned on the television and switched to channel four.

    “The others?” Kola wondered.

    “They’re set” Angie replied.

    Her computer beeped.

    “OK,” Kola said, “I have confirmation from Reg. Start right now.”

    Kola turned off the phone and watched the television screen with the sound off.

    Ten minutes later, she turned on the sound.

    “A few minutes ago,” the reporter said, “four vice-presidents of Fortune five hundred corporations were abducted. They were on a boat tour and conference regarding their future investment in the area. All are from corporations involved in using the resources of the Amazon River and the rain forest. They were, literally boxed, hooked and taken into the jungle by helicopter by the mysterious activist group KOSPA, as you can see from this video supplied by them. This is the second time this year this group, which is more often involved in political and economic situations, has entered the environmental arena. The group has asked the companies to begin repairing the damage they have done to the rainforest and the disruption they have brought to the Amazon River cultures. They list ten travesties committed by these corporations. Here is the list.”

    The news channel then displayed the list for the viewer.

    “The group has promised to release the executives. However, it has warned them and their companies that real abductions will occur if they do not halt the rape of the lungs of the planet. Government officials again say that they have no idea who KOSPA isor what KOSPA means. Nor do they know how the three were abducted. But they assume that compatriots of the group were on board the ship, so every person will be interrogated before they will leave the ship.”

    Kola again turned down the sound of the television and looked at her satellite screen, then stared down at her spoon.

    Goldman meowed nearby.

    “Ha! Of course you don’t know, you bureaucrats!” She said. “Do they, Goldman? And you know why? Because we’re right in front of you! Haha.”

    Goldman meowed again.

    “How could you know us? You’re looking for crazy people and none of us are crazy. You’re crazy!”

    A half an hour later, the phone rang again.

    “Kola,” she said.

    “We got a problem,” Reg said.

    The sound of helicopter blades swirled loudly in the background.

    “Good. It means we’re causing trouble,” Kola answered.

    “God I wish you were here, like the old days. I don’t know how to do this,” Reg said.

    “I bet your face is all red, isn’t it?”

    “Yeah, it is,” a female voice came on the phone too.

    “Midge, you girl!” Kola said.

    “Well, after all of those lessons, yes, I can say I can pilot a helicopter, but we got a problem.”

    “Give the man a kiss for me,” Kola said. “He did great!”

    A big smacking sound could be heard.

    “You know, don’t you, that she didn’t really kiss me,” Reg said. “She could have, mind you, but she chose not to kiss me. I could use a kiss right about now, but no, no, she throws a fake one.”

    “What’s the problem?” Kola asked.

    “There are people on our patch!” Reg said.

    “You’re kidding of course,” Kola said.

    “No he’s not. I screwed up,” Midge said.

    There was a moment of pause.

    “Put the bad boys back on the ship,” Kola replied. “We made our point.”

    “What?” Reg said.

    “Contact Angie on the boat, say we’re bringing them back,” Kola said. “You have time. It’s only a couple of minutes away. The authorities won’t be there for another fifteen minutes. Go!”

    “What about Sasha and Chang?” Midge asked. “They’ll still on the patch and they’re frightened. They think they’re in cannibal country.”

    “Ah no. No, they’re not,” Kola said. “Tell them to dig a deep hole, and bury themselves up to the neck. When the natives come near, tell them to crawl slowly out of the hole and start speaking loudly in a made up language. I did it once. It works. The underworld is terrifying to all peoples. That will give them enough time for Midge and Reg to come back and pick them up.”

    In ten minutes, another television update appeared on Kola’s screen:

    “We have an update on the abduction. Here is a video of the executives being returned to the boat. No one expected them back this soon, but as you can see, they’re on the deck and the helicopter has taken away the boxes and is out of sight. We assume that the government has made a deal. Oh, I’ve just learned we have the tour organizer, Ms. Angie Riddick. Hello Ms. Riddick. What can you tell us? How did this abduction occur?

    “‘Several activists were hidden on board. The helicopter came in, dropped the boxes, and the masked activists forced the executives, two men and one woman, by gunpoint into the boxes. The boxes and the activists were taken away by the helicopter. It happened so quickly. The return of the boxes also happened much more quickly than we assumed. The federal agents and police have not even arrived. It was over in a couple of hours. How brazen these people are!’”

    Kola smiled at this remark of Angie and turned the television off.

    “You’re so naughty! I love it,” Kola said. “Isn’t she, Goldman?”

    Kola pounded the right armrest in joy. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

    Kola still had not begun to eat. She would not eat while her team faced danger.

    Another beep from the computer. She read the email. Midge, Reg, Sasha and Chang were on their way to the coast. Kola acknowledged the email, happy the cannibals did not show up, and requested that they call her around midnight.

    As Barber’s Adagio now sounded from her CD player, Kola wondered where she had put all of her tax receipts.

    “Goldman, find those receipts! We wouldn’t want to anger the government!”

    Kola dipped the spoon in the cereal and began to enjoy her breakfast.

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