The Last of Barrett's Privateers

[Catche Jagger]

The polo shirt clung to him like a second skin, sweat soaking deep into fabric and forming a sort of adhesive in conjunction with the humid Florida air, a miasma which colored every move and coated every breath.

It wasn’t the discomfort or the heat that made the golf course intolerable, though. No, that was the game itself, slow and tactile, most of the time spent standing around and waiting. Yet every time he was asked to join his father and brother for a game, James would come along.

Stepping up and positioning his driver, he knew it’d turn out the way it always did. He’d place last, then it would be Stephen, with their dad handily beating both of them. If Stephen was bothered by this unchanging dynamic, he never let it show, but a lack of progress after years of playing did gnaw at James whenever he was on the course.

Still, he needed to try. He needed to focus, on his body and the ball and not the past or how Stephen was laughing at his own story about some woman at work as he told it to their father.

The course stretched out before him, a gentle downward slope interrupted by small hills and a sharp rightward curve at the foot. The green was pristine and well-kept, its only blemishes being the white sand traps by the curve.

His feet and shoulders were positioned properly. He visualized the trajectory of his swing. Everything was in place, so James took his shot. The ball soared through the air.

And landed in the middle of a sand trap.

“Well you had great form on that one, James.”

He felt a hand clap forcefully against his back, almost knocking him off balance. It was Stephen, a big smile on his face which might have been intended to lighten the mood, but which only served to make him look like a smug asshole. Stephen dressed in a manner similar to James, in a polo and sunglasses, though the older brother had added a baseball cap to his attire in an attempt to cover up a prematurely thinning hairline, a fate that James occasionally worried might hit him as well.

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll do better next time.” James lied, walking over to their father as Stephen set up for his own shot.

He couldn’t help but feel stupid, even after hundreds of botched swings. It was the mundane kind of disappointment that couldn’t overwhelm, at least not on its own, but which stung nonetheless.

Which was why James needed to change the subject.

“Hey, Dad?”

“It was a fine swing, James. Just need to work on the aim. You have the right fundamentals.” His father didn’t look at him, still gazing out at the green, probably already sizing it up for his own turn.

“Oh, uh, thanks. But I was actually talking to Ella recently.” That pulled his father’s attention, the old man’s face slowly turning to James, though his expression was hard to read.

“She’s doing well, then?” His voice was lower, in a way that James didn’t expect.

“Yeah! Yeah, she is. She actually mentioned maybe coming down to visit for a couple days soon.”

“What happened this time?” Came a sigh from Stephen. He completed his swing while James hadn’t been paying attention and now turned to the others. “Boyfriend turned out to be an asshole? She ran out of money? What?”

James felt an anger rise in his gut. Stephen was always like this with Ella, dismissive and condescending. She was his sister too, but it seemed like nobody had told him.

“I wasn’t talking to you.” James said, his voice quieter, not wanting to get baited into some sort of fight.

“Come on-” But Stephen was cut off as their father shot him a stern look, before stepping forward.

Both James and Stephen knew how much their father hated any distraction when his turn came, so both brothers stood silently to the side, exchanging awkward glances as the old man prepared his swing.

He’d been golfing for longer than either of them had been alive and, even in his advanced age, the act seemed to breathe new energy into him, the movement in his muscles and joints becoming smoother, more graceful. There were times where James had been in awe of the shift golf brought to his father, but such regular exposure rendered the process rather mundane.

Once he’d taken his shot, the three of them piled into the cart, an awkward silence still hanging over them as their father drove across the course, continuing for several minutes as James fidgeted a bit in his seat. Finally, Stephen spoke up.

“You know, James, I don’t think I ever told you about the guys I golf with from work.” He said, half turning to look at James, who was seated behind the other two.

“What?”

“So yeah, I didn’t tell you. Well, there’s these guys at work that I also go golfing with sometimes. Just kind of casual.”

“Okay…”

“The thing is, we’re all at kind of these different experience levels, but we’ve been doing this together for a couple years now, so things have shaken up as they went, but we’ve all got some idea of how the others are doing. Like, where we sit compared to the rest. You also kind of get a sense of the quirks that go into everyone’s game. It’s- hey, what the hell?”

The cart had stopped by the sand trap and James stepped out to take his next swing and try to get it out so they could just move things along.

“I just want to make sure we move things along, okay?” James stopped and looked over at Stephen, trying not to be too dismissive, though he had no idea where his older brother’s story was supposed to be going.

“Come on I- please. I can’t get to the point of this if you’re not listening. Alright?” Stephen implored, stepping off of the cart himself. Their father made no move to get up himself.

James hesitated, feeling like an ass for just stepping off like he had. He probably was being the inconsiderate one here, though he still didn’t have a clue what Stephen was going on about.

“Okay. Fine.” He shrugged.

“Great, I’ll try to make it short.” Stephen smiled again, in a way that almost seemed like he meant it, resting his hands at his waist.

“So, like I was saying, you get a feel for how everyone else plays, but,” Stephen sighed, taking a moment as he seemed uncertain of how to phrase the next bit, eyes wandering before they returned to James, “but there’s this one guy who keeps running into the same problem every time.

“You see, every time we get to this certain hole, he keeps getting stuck. In a sand trap, kinda. And that’s how it is every time we get to that hole and we all try to get him to switch things up, but we end up in that same spot every time. Honestly, we could tell that it probably wasn’t good for him, the way he’d get so frustrated.

“After a while, some of us decide that he maybe shouldn’t keep going this way-”

“What the hell? Are you saying I should quit golf, then?” James cut him off, too frustrated to let Stephen continue. He’d tried to give his brother the benefit of the doubt on this, but the longer it went on, the more insulting the whole thing felt, how patronizing the way he had to talk about it in terms of his ‘friend’ being hopeless at the game.

But then Stephen laughed, even as his own face twisted with annoyance.

“You really are kind of stupid, James. Are you-?”

“Enough! Both of you!” Their father had stepped out of the cart himself, glaring at his sons, and Stephen seemed to immediately back off, but the old man wasn’t quite done yet.

“You’re acting like children. And now you need me to reprimand you? Stephen, you’re a grown man.” He snapped.

James could see his older brother grow a bit pale at the insult, the implication of his childishness, and James found himself feeling just the slightest bit guilty for his part in the argument.

“Yeah, I’m… I’m sorry, James. I don’t know what’s going on with me right now.” Stephen said simply, though his eyes only briefly met James’s before he made his way back to the cart. Then, James felt a hand on his shoulder, gentle, not something he expected from his father.

“James.

“We’ll talk about your sister when we get home.”

[Catche Jagger]

((James sat at the side of the jetty, legs almost hanging off of the side as he held the sword out in front of him.))

The announcements had finally forced him from the patrol boat, when it had been declared a danger zone. There hadn’t been some final goodbye to Bacchia’s corpse, because there wasn’t a whole lot that he could think to say. Instead, he’d simply scooped up the sword he’d been assigned from the start and trudged away.

He’d learned from the same announcement that Vasily had also been killed by Ivan not long before Bacchia had been, which meant that only he and Fisk remained alive of the original members of the Respects.

Maybe James understood Bacchia better now, since he found himself desperately wanting to simply remain on his little patch of wood, far away from everyone else, rather than going back to the others and having to face Fisk, or worse, Sofia.

His eyes traced over the blade that had killed Bacchia, and James thought about how it probably belonged at the bottom of the ocean.

Instead, he pulled it tightly to his chest and felt his body curling up, a tightness forming in his chest, the sides of his head pressing in.

“What am I supposed to do?” He whispered, tears forming in his eyes and beginning to stream down his cheeks. He was so alone. So incredibly alone, buried in a pit that he’d gladly marched into without any hint of an exit route.

“I… somebody help me… I need somebody…” He felt a pressure at the back of his throat and he gagged, the weight of Bacchia’s body on him again, the lack of resistance in her body as all life left her and James knew that was his fault too because he could’ve done more. He could have done something.

“God damn it!” he hissed, slamming the side of his fist into wood again and again until it hurt too much to do it anymore.

And now there wasn’t any choice, was there? He had to go back to Fisk and the others. He was cursed, just like the rest of them, just like Sofia now was because he’d been so incredibly fucking stupid as to bring her into Fisk’s nonsense, and James was absolutely certain it was nonsense by now.

He felt like he might vomit, out of fear or disgust or both. What could he do? What else could he fucking do when death was hanging over him, hanging over everyone? How was he supposed to handle that?

James had put that question off because he had decided to put his faith in Fisk and the others, but now so many of them were dead and they had all that blood on their hands to boot.

But he had to go crawling back. It was his responsibility now, and maybe his only chance at not dying desperate and scared and cold and alone on some plank of wood.

He swallowed and tried to get up, but he couldn’t will the strength into his arms.

James grabbed a hold of the sword and used it to prop himself up, rising to his feet. He’d been wrong, it wasn’t the sword that deserved to be at the bottom of the ocean. Maybe that was just him.

He didn’t think about that any more.

((James Highchurch continued elsewhere))