Still on Your Side

Friday. More than a year since this journal went public, and the captain still has not read it. He reads his own log every night, aloud, to the parrot. He has never once wondered whether anybody else keeps one.

He is getting close, mind. Tonight he wrote that he has been thinking about the voice in the hold, the signs on the wall and the wink. He listed them all. I read it over his shoulder while he was doing it. Then he decided it was the parrot. I have never loved that parrot more.

So, for anybody who comes to the island next year: it will be your crew and nobody else in that shanty, the door will shut behind you, and the captain’s sails will be on the horizon. You will feel very alone. You will not be.

Book a time, bring your friends, wear your boots. I will be about. You will not see me. That is rather the point.

Merry Christmas from the shanty. Hide this somewhere good.