Take It Easy

Floyd did not mind much that his trailer was floating down the Mississippi river. He had put it on the flood plain when he first bought the land twenty years ago and so he knew the risks involved. Moreover, the river had risen by the grace of God. Who was he to question the Lord? The ride was quite relaxing, in its own way, especially at night when he went to bed. During the day he would catch a cockroach and hook it to his fishing line, casting the line out his front door. More often than not he caught a catfish or a carp. They had muddy flavors, of course, when he cooked them on his kerosene grill, but Floyd didn’t mind. Floyd didn’t mind much of anything, really. He was as easygoing as the river. Whatever the Lord willed, he accepted. He was by himself, anyhow, and so he needn’t have bothered to worry what anyone else thought or believed. Not that he was contentious. Throughout the year of marriage to his exwife Mabel he had been the most accommodating, agreeable husband a woman could have asked for. The only reason Mabel divorced Floyd was because he “had no ambitions”. He only wanted to exist as he had done for years, neither wealthier or in a better neighborhood. He aspired toward nothing and Mabel resented that aspect of him. Mabel never once thought that, had he ambitions, he would aspired for someone better than her. Not that Floyd ever thought such things. He was too easygoing for grudges and insecurities and the other petty emotions of Man.
The trailer swayed gently in the current. It was like living on a houseboat. Floyd did not mind it at all. He thought himself possessed of no reason for unease or upset as he was swept downstream. If the trailer sank, it sank. If not, that was fine, too. It wasn’t that Floyd was suicidal, passively or otherwise. He just accepted things the way they were. On the spot. At face value. It had galled his exwife somewhat. It also galled his coworkers at the rock quarry. Sometimes they thought working the rock had softened his brains. But Floyd had always been the way he was. His mother always said he never cried once when a baby, even at his birth. She attested that it was because of his “Cajun stock” that he was so mellow. Their long line of New Orleans ancestry had lived in places where others dared not, and consequently their blood found life easy nowadays no matter how stressful the modern world could be. After all, wrestling gators and eking out a living on the bayou with mosquitoes always at your neck was a good way to condition the blood to flow slower when other bloodlines would gush in a panic. If gators taught a bloodline anything, it was patience, tolerance, and abidance.
The river widened and rushed onward, faster. Yet, the trailer did not sink. Naturally, Floyd had no electricity since becoming unmoored, but he lived in Louisiana, and it was Summer, so he didn’t need electricity. It wasn’t cold. When it was hot he simply sat at the door with his feet in the water. For entertainment he watched the trees and the banks roll by. Occasionally he saw a riverside town or city. Gobsmacked people watched him with gaping mouths, pointing incredulously. He waved at them in easy friendliness. Sometimes he would climb up on the roof of his trailer and lay down beneath the sun. So long as he was on the Mississippi, he had a source of water. He drank it without much caring about germs. He knew they existed, but, again, he thought it up to God whether sickness killed him or not.
It was on his fifth week of his journey that land disappeared altogether. Curious, Floyd climbed atop the trailer and gazed out over the horizon. End to end without end, the horizon was only oceanic water. The trailer had floated out to sea. Not even a smudge of land shadowed the horizon. Floyd put his hands on his hips and gazed out to sea. It was beautiful. Nor did he feel overpowering dread, nor fear for his life. Instead, he caught another cockroach and went fishing. He caught several fish over the course of the next month or so. He did not know any of their names. He cooked them on his kerosene grill and ate them calmly while the briny scent of the ocean filled the trailer. Nor did he lose one wink of sleep knowing that he was adrift at sea. Sometimes when he woke up in the early morning hours he saw shark fins through the front door. This caused him no alarm whatsoever. Rather, he fished as he usually did, and if a shark stole his catch he would hook another cockroach on his reel and try again. There were plenty of fish in the sea for Floyd and the sharks. Eventually, they all ate their fill.
And then came the storm. It started as choppy waves that tossed and shook the trailer like an impatient child trying to open a tin of chocolates. The winds howled like beasts incensed by blood-thirst and madness. Calmly, Floyd closed the front door and sat on his sofa, wondering what would come next. He had never been in a storm at sea before and it was a novel experience he accepted as he had accepted everything else in life.
The trailer tossed left and right. Floyd’s sofa slid to and fro with the direction and momentum of the waves. He accepted this, too, sitting at ease upon that sofa as it paced back and forth restlessly like a caged animal.
The storm lasted for three days. Floyd did not have much to drink, since the sea was saltwater, and he could not catch fish, since the sea was a jagged-toothed shark in frenzy, but he accepted all of this rather easily. It was easy to accept, too, since his trailer was like a bronco in the bug-bitten madness of a rodeo. His stomach was queasy; his lips parched. His body accepted this as much as his mind, however, and so he was only mildly sick from this incessant rollercoaster ride.
On the fourth day the sea laid down to rest like a child after a terrible tantrum. Still feeling queasy and dizzy, Floyd climbed on top of his trailer and sat there for a while, beneath the cloudy sky, letting his stomach and brains slow in their churning spin. In time he saw an island toward which the trailer drifted. Had he been anyone else he might have thought it a delusion brought about by dehydration and hunger and fatigue, but Floyd accepted it for a real island. So, when the trailer struck the white sands, he climbed down and stepped foot on dry land.
It was a tropical island. There were palm trees and mountains and exotic flowers abloom everywhere. Birds flew above, and he heard boars rummaging through the bushes. He saw coconuts and accepted everything he saw as it was. He even accepted that a band of short men in boarskin loincloths were approaching him, holding their spears out as if skewer him like a kabob. When they pointed their spears at him, and then pointed up at the mountains, Floyd understood and followed them through the forest and up the slopes. All of this he accepted, too.
There was a village on a foothill leading up into the mountains. Clay huts roofed with palm leaves huddled atop the flat crown of the foothill. Women and children waited there; the children playing while the women cut fruits and cooked stews in large stone pots. The men motioned for Floyd to sit. He did so. The women brought to him clay plates filled with fruit. He ate it obligingly. They also brought him stew, which he accepted in turn. While he ate he looked around the village and saw artwork made of bones— marine bones, boar bones, bird bones, and even human bones. Actually, there were lots of human bones. There was a pyramid of human skulls tucked away in one corner of the village, behind what seemed to be a stone altar. Blood had stained the stone.
Floyd accepted all of this as easily as he had the storm and the river. Whatever God willed, he accepted. So, when the men pulled him up to his feet and began marching him up into the mountains, he did not fight or reject his lot. The view from the mountainside, at least, was very beautiful. He could see all over the lush island, and even far out to sea.
The pygmy men halted at the cresting slope of the highest mountain. They then pointed Floyd forward, holding their spears at his back lest he escape. They did not look at him, however, but kept their heads turned away. It was obvious to Floyd that he was meant to proceed forward alone.
Floyd walked forward. Atop the mountain he found a tarn with the deepest, darkest, blackest waters. Where the sun touched the waters no light shone nor penetrated. It was like a well of black ink, fathomless as lightless space between stars. Floyd stood at its edge, watching. Accepting. Unafraid.
And then the inky waters began to churn. Something rose from it— an eldritch entity beyond human comprehension. Floyd saw it, and it spoke to him, and he accepted the Cosmic Truths that it gave to him. It then submerged again, the inky water flattening to a smooth onyx surface once again. Floyd descended the mountain.
The pygmy men waited for him in the foothills, as did the women and children. They had spears and stones hoisted, at the ready. Yet, when he descended— waving and smiling in earnest friendliness— they dropped their spears and stones, and then dropped to their knees, bowing and wailing for forgiveness.
The tribal elders directed Floyd to a special throne they had made for the predestined prophet and avatar for their god. Floyd could not understand any of this, but he accepted the seat offered to him as tribal hospitality. The native people served him fruits again, and coconut milk, and roasted boar. For the next ten years they treated him as a god-made-flesh. They genuflected before him and thanked him for rains, or else clasped their hands together, wringing their fingers worriedly as they begged him mercy when lightning struck during the sea storms. Floyd did not want them to worship him as an avatar, but he also did not wish to question or rebuff their beliefs. He believed that people should believe what they wished to believe, and who was he to muddy their religion with doubt? It was rude to question another person’s cherished beliefs.
Some of the women offered themselves to Floyd, too, and he accepted them. They seemed as pleased about the copulations as he was, so he saw no reason to reject them. It would have hurt their feelings to push them aside when they mounted him in the privacy of his own hut. They wanted his children, and he gave them children. Even the married women wanted his children, for the tribal elders wished to mix their blood with his so that the subsequent generations could commune with their God without being driven mad. Floyd eventually learned to speak their language, but never convinced them of their error. He was too easygoing to attempt to correct them in their (mostly) harmless habits. They said he had been sent by their God, and he agreed that God had sent him. It was God’s will, as was everything in Floyd’s world view. Things were as they were, just-so, and Floyd accepted them as always. He even spoke to the God in the mountains, though he was not sure the God even saw Floyd or acknowledged him. The God in the mountains was more like a weather system than a sentient creature. It was not that it did not like Man, but rather, it did not think of Man at all. Yet, it did embody the Cosmic Truth, and so it imparted that knowledge, whether it intended to or not.
All of this Floyd accepted, also, living in contented acceptance for many years. His newfound family grew, alongside the tribe, and they faced no better or worse circumstances than any other tribe of equal technological advancement.
Eventually, a boat arrived from America. It was an exploration vessel belonging to a team of anthropologists seeking to better understand the island tribe. For a long time the tribe had been known, but never studied. Now a group of twenty-somethings intended to make what they presumed to be first contact with the tribe. The pygmy warriors met the anthropologists on the shore, their spears at the ready. They escorted them up to their village without delay, much to the delight of the Americans. The anthropologists were very pleased about all of this…until they saw Floyd sitting on his throne.
The pygmy village bowed before Floyd, but the anthropologists refused. They accused Floyd of colonialism and slavery and cultural appropriation. Floyd, on the other hand, accepted all of these accusations also, as he did the accusations of “cultural genocide” and “white male entitlement”. Who was he to upset the anthropologists with counter-arguments? He kept his silence. On the other hand, he also accepted it as God’s will when the pygmy people took umbrage at the way the strangers were squawking at their God’s avatar and marched them up the mountainside to face their God’s judgment. After all, who was Floyd to intercede in another culture’s edicts? He had no aspirations toward that maladjusted cause.
The anthropologists went mad from the Cosmic Truth. Afterward, they wandered down the mountainside, laughing maniacally, or else sobbing uncontrollably. Some fell to their deaths. Others threw themselves willingly from the mountainside. Some had to be put out of their misery by the pygmy people, their heads smashed on the altar and their skulls cleaned and bleached in the tropical sun before being added to the pyramid. All of this was God’s will, Floyd thought, and so he accepted it as such. There was no need to be willful, himself. Taking life as it was was the best way to live. Not even an Eldritch God could ruin his peace of mind.