The Great Willie Young vs. The Sea Snitches

The following is an excerpt from a cracked journal originally belonging to someone known only as “Francois.” Most of it was written in a sort of French/Haitian Creole, and has only recently been translated after being discovered in a mysterious boat found floating unmanned in the Caribbean. No one knows how long this Ghost Ship sailed the sea, but its condition indicated that it must have been out there for some time.

He comes to the village sometimes, appearing as if by magic from the sea, always from the shadows of a deep fog, like some god from another dimension, bearing gifts of great fish and toys for the children. The children call him Papa Guillaume, others call him Great, but I simply call him Willie. He is my friend.

I have known him since I was a child, and my father says that he knew him since he too was a child. This seems impossible, but we have learned not to ask questions. It is simply enough to reflect in his light.

One day Willie came to the village. His man was with him, Heinie, and as usual Heinie brought beers for all the men, and even some of the young boys who were allowed to taste after the men were deep in their cups. It was during one of these late nights – I remember because a young boy vomited and some of the men laughed, but Heinie got upset at the boy for “wasting good shit” – that Willie took me aside and told me that he needed my help.

“How could I possibly help you, Willie?” I asked.

“My friend,” he said, resting a hand on my shoulder and in that hand I felt an almost impossible love, a force and a warmth that radiated through my very being and made me understand, if only for a moment, the immense power and glory of the universe, the serenity of its eternity which makes all else meaningless, a trivium obliterated by its magnificence and bliss. “It is within you that the destiny of the future lies.”

I did not know what he meant, and it has taken me years to even begin to understand, but I believe that I do now. But that is something to be explained later.

I awoke early the next morning. Heinie was still “sleeping”, and I helped Willie carry him to their boat, a hardy – yet not ostentatious – fishing vessel. I had said goodbye to my young wife. I told her I would return soon, but we both had tears in our eyes for we did not truly know or understand what the future held. I would have gladly sailed forever with Willie, and if that was what he asked of me, then I knew I must sacrifice even love. He did not ask this of me, of course, for Willie is not a cruel man and understands that the beating of our hearts is the only thing that matters even in the eternity of the timeless universe. It is the timelessness of the universe, its essence, its everything. It is love. Willie is love, and he would not deny it to another.

We set off that fateful morning, and it took some nerve to ask after several hours where we were going.

“We goin’ to Miami, baby,” was all Willie said, a smile on his face. We spent the rest of that morning fishing. Heinie eventually stirred and spent at least fifteen minutes pissing off the back of the boat. I wondered at it all, but just before noon, the fog around us cleared, the sun shone brilliant in the sky and a second boat appeared.

“Cubanos,” Heinie grunted as he pulled yet another beer from a place I could never figure.

I squinted into the distance, and was shocked to see a bearded man with a cigar hanging from his mouth. It was Castro himself!

“Dumb motherfucker,” Willie said under his breath, but his smile never wavered as he signaled the second boat closer.

“Do you have them?” Castro called out.

Willie just nodded and then unwrapped several large packages. Swordfish. Giant ones. I had never seen fish so magnificent. Willie just looked at them for a moment, sorrow in his eyes, before handing them across to Castro’s men.

Castro inspected them, and I swore I could see . . . lust in his eyes. He smiled. “Very good,” he said, and snapped his fingers. Moments later, his men were delivering several crates to Willie and Heinie. The men nodded at each other, and Castro and his boat soon receded into the distance.

When he was gone, Willie sighed as Heinie opened the crates. I was stunned to see bags of cocaine and automatic weapons. What was going on here?

“Listen,” Willie said, “my friend, I do not pretend that this is not complicated, but rest assured that these guns and these drugs have a purpose even if small-minded folks do not and cannot understand. The world is very strange, and has become very evil. We must defeat it by confronting it on its own terms, by providing those who have nothing with the tools to survive in that world. Their enemies, the rich, the powerful, have all the weapons. No more, I say. These rich monsters threaten them and control them with this . . .” He gestured towards the cocaine, which Heinie was in the midst of “sampling.” But if we take that power from them and give to the people without taking money from them, without taking their dignity, then the so-called “powerful” will have no real power.”

I almost wanted to weep. It made sense. Willie always made sense, and I thought of my own village, of the poor men and women forever subjugated by the rich, by the powerful, how they bowed their heads to men with guns and gave what little money they had to them simply so they could have that which the powerful themselves had forced on them. A man may be poor, but if he lives simply, without want, without the need for the so-called “luxuries” which enslave him, he can have a free heart. I understood what Willie was doing. Giving power back to the people, giving them medicine and a “luxury” without taking from them in return. It was an extraordinary act, one which could potentially break the vicious cycle which keeps men enslaved.

We set out for Miami that afternoon. Heinie continued to “sample” the cocaine until Willie made him stop. By then Heinie was grinding his teeth and ranting about both Castro and “those Miami Vice motherfuckers lookin’ like a couple of bitch-made [horrible slur redacted]”

I was confused. “Isn’t Castro on our side?” I asked Willie.

Willie shook his head with disgust. “All that motherfucker cares about is fuckin’ them swordfish. His people are poor and broken too, forced to fish all day for him just so he can get his dick wet. But one problem at a time, my friend. One problem at a time.”

As night began to fall, Willie ordered Heinie to cut the engines. A fog seemed to descend upon us again, and Willie motioned for us all to be silent. Through the fog, I could see the lights of patrolling ships.

“Coast Guard,” Willie whispered. “Or Miami police. Same thing,” he said with a shrug. “They all pigs.”

“Fuckin’ pigs,” Heinie said, his hoarse voice raw with emotion, his eyes still wide from the coke. He put another beer to his lips.

As the lights from the patrol ships faded, Willie shook his head. “They out in force now, fuckin’ pigs. They even got some white boy with ‘em, last I heard. Called Marino. Supposed to be their new hope, some cracker ass motherfucker from up North. Soulless shit, man.”

Heinie shook his head and chugged the rest of his beer at the very mention of the name. “That motherfucker,” he said. “He reminds me of him, Willie. He reminds me!”

“I know, Heinie,” Willie said. “He ain’t that motherfucker Brees, but he close enough.”

Brees?

Willie turned to me. “Brees is a motherfucker in New Orleans. Or at least he will be,” he said with a shrug. “Time is complicated, brother. Don’t worry about it.” And so I didn’t.

A short time later, a school of dolphins appeared alongside the ship. For a moment, I marveled at them, but this was broken when Heinie started flinging empty bottles at them. Before I could even ask what he was doing, Willie had pulled an AK from one of the boxes and fired at the dolphins. I was shocked to see several of them floating dead after.

Willie turned to me, face lined with agony. “I don’t like it,” he said. “But these are sea snitches!”

“Fuckin’ sea snitches!” Heinie said.

Willie shook his head sadly. “They been humanized,” he said, “all so that they’ll do what their human masters want and snitch on ships comin’ in and out of port. I don’t like it. I hate it! These were once proud creatures, noble and beautiful. I used to swim with them!” His voice cracked with the agony of the memory. “My own mama was part dolphin!”

“His own mama!” Heinie shouted.

“Settle down, Heinie,” Willie said as we passed the floating dolphin corpses. “We gotta keep quiet.”

“Are all dolphins sea snitches?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

Willie shook his head. “Nah, man. Just these soulless sea snitchin’ Miami Dolphins.”

And so we passed them in mournful silence, reflecting on the cruelty of man and a world willing to taint such beautiful creatures for its own selfish ends.

We arrived in Miami that night. The port was crawling with more pigs, but they were easy to see. The dumb motherfuckers were dressed in colorful pastels and white blazers. We were able to ease past them and dock. We quickly unloaded the crates of guns and cocaine into a waiting truck driven by a “runner” Willie simply called “Johnson.”

“Don’t you worry, Mr. Young,” Johnson said, a smile on his face. “I know how to run past these fools without any problems.”

We all laughed, and Johnson soon disappeared into the night, ready to deliver guns and drugs to the people who needed them. It was then that Willie took me aside and told me he needed something important from me.

“My friend,” he said, “this is a lot to ask. But I need you to stay behind for me, here in Miami, to help oversee our operations. I’ve already left word with your young wife and she’ll be here in the morning, along with your closest friends and relatives.” He smiled at me. “I should wait for her to tell you this, but I want you to have a happy first night here in America. My friend, she’s pregnant! And it’s a boy!”

I wanted to ask so many questions, but I found myself overwhelmed. I just nodded as both Willie and Heinie clapped me on the shoulder and offered congratulations.

I was saddened when Willie said that he had to leave, but Heinie offered to stay behind for the night and “get shitfaced” with me. “Maybe we even find them Miami Vice motherfuckers and kill both some pigs and some sea snitch dolphins tonight!”

All I could do was smile and nod my head. I was having a boy. I wondered what to name him. Willie was obvious, but I did not dare be so audacious. I looked at Heinie. As crazy as he was, he was a good man. “Heinie?” I asked.

“Yeah, baby?”

“What’s your real name?”

“My real name?”

“Your birth name,” I said. “You know, your Christian name?”

Heinie laughed. “I ain’t no Christian, son. Well, I’m down with Jesus, but not them kiddy diddlers who use his name. Motherfuckers! They just as bad as the pigs and the sea snitches!”

“Heinie?”

“Huh? Oh yeah, right man, my name. It’s Ricky,” he said with a smile.

Ricky. I nodded. It was a good name. Ricky Francois. I thought of my grandfather then. I had spent my entire childhood at his knee. He taught me what it meant to be a man. His name was Jean. Ricky-Jean Francois. Yes, it was a good name. And for some reason, I knew that if I raised him right here in Miami, taught him the proper values, taught him to understand that the pigs and sea snitches were the enemy, that one day he too would fight for what’s right. Ricky-Jean Francois. My son. And Godson of my friend, The Great Willie Young, who I know one day I will join again on the endless sea as we sail into the horizon of eternity, an eternity of love.

The Great Willie Young and the Battle of the NFC South

 Heinie in action

I recently received an attachment in my email labeled “TGWYJAN2019”. Normally, I would have just trashed it, but you never know how The Great Willie Young is gonna try to communicate with you, and so after scanning it to make sure it wouldn’t give me e-AIDS, I opened it to find a document purportedly written by a young man who simply identified himself as “a soldier of The Great Willie Young in the battle for the South.”

This young soldier claims that The Great Willie Young sent him from the future to warn the world through me of what’s to come. Shaken, I huffed some ether and tried to make sense of it. It was certainly not beyond the powers of The Great Willie Young to do this, but he had never contacted me from the future before. This must be serious. And so I began to read, and indeed, it is . . .

Hello, Mr. Neil from the Internet, I’m but a lowly soldier of The Great Willie Young in the battle for the South, and I was sent to warn you that you don’t have much time. Shortly, the government will crumble and society along with it.

I’ll give you a moment to deal with this, to handle your emotions, but basically that Trump fella was run out of town finally, only no one bothered to replace him and so shit just kinda got weird. Politicians didn’t know what to do. A few of them tried but they just ended up arguing about bullshit until they eventually all just starved to death. No one tried to help them, and really no one much cared. Most folk just made jokes on Twitter and played video games and shit.

Here in New Orleans, though, Col. Brees, a dumb sumbitch who everyone suspects of torturing stray cats, sorta took control and started hollerin’ at everyone to get ready for war. No one knew what the fuck he was talking about, but apparently he had been communicating with some of the other cities in the South, and because he’s a goddamn asshole, he ended up pissing everyone off and they decided to attack New Orleans.

Now, nobody thinks it was a tag-team type deal or nothin’. They just all hated Col. Brees that damn bad, and were all headed our way at once. Naturally, this shit wasn’t cool.

And that’s when he showed up. The Great Willie Young. It seems that he had been here all this time, just layin’ low in the Quarter with some ladies, fishin’ in the Gulf and down by the river. He said he was never happier than when he was chillin’ with his river people and he was gonna be goddamned if he let some shit-smeared asshole like Col. Brees fuck up his city.

He was accompanied by a sidekick he simply called Heinie. Heinie didn’t much give a shit about nothin’. He just liked to fish with Willie, drink some beers and maybe get with a lady every now and then. Heinie said we should just grab Col. Brees and fuck his shit up, throw him in the river went it was done, but The Great Willie Young said it was too late for that shit, and that we had to see through what Col. Brees had started, and besides, Col. Brees had some weird control over some good men like Sgt. Kamara and Pvt. Lattimore, who followed him even though they knew he was an asshole. “Whole world run by assholes,” The Great Willie Young said, “and sometimes you just gotta hope your asshole is better than their asshole.”

This was depressing as fuck, but sadly true, I suppose. Besides, Col. Brees started this fight and it was only right that he be here when it ended. The Great Willie Young did take him aside and told him to leave them fuckin’ cats alone, and when Col. Brees tried to argue, Willie slapped him. I seen it myself! Col. Brees started to blubber like a little bitch, but Heinie told him to shut the fuck up and fetch us all some beers.

The first news of the attack came ‘round Thanksgiving. We was all sittin’ down to a nice meal prepared by some hos that Heinie had rounded up. The Great Willie Young said they didn’t have to do it, but they said they didn’t mind, and besides, some turkey might make Heinie take a fuckin’ nap so he wasn’t chasing their asses all night.

Anyway, our meal was interrupted when we heard some loud cries coming from what sounded like up above. “What the fuck is that shit?” Heinie yelled. “We bein’ attacked by wild crows or some shit! Brees, I told you to leave them crows alone, motherfucker!”

Col. Brees denied doing anything as The Great Willie Young poked his head outside. “It ain’t crows,” he said. “Heinie! It’s fuckin’ falcons! Hundreds of ‘em!”

We all rushed outside to see an army of falcons dive-bombing the city. Riding a giant falcon in the middle of it all was some square-jawed sumbitch. “It’s that cocksucker Ryan!” Col. Brees hollered, and Pvt. Lattimore grabbed an old rifle and started taking shots at ‘em all.

“That shit ain’t gonna help none,” The Great Willie Young said. “We gonna have to fight these motherfuckers hand to hand.”

“But they ain’t got hands!” Heinie yelled. “They motherfuckin’ birds, Willie! They got claws and shit!”

“It won’t be the first time I knocked out a goddamn bird,” The Great Willie Young said. “Shit, this one time I fought a whole flock of pelicans over some fish.”

We barely had time to prepare though when there was a savage roar, and the next thing we knew a bunch of motherfuckin’ cats was runnin’ through the Quarter.

“Brees, you motherfucker!” Heinie yelled. “I done told you to leave them cats alone!”

Col. Brees just stared with his dumbass mouth hanging open, but it was clear from the sounds these cats were makin’ that they weren’t normal alley cats. No, these motherfuckers was huge!

“Panthers,” The Great Willie Young said.

Col. Brees done pissed himself – I seen it myself – but while Heinie called him a nasty motherfucker and said he was ashamed to share his city with a piece of shit like him, The Great Willie Young calmed everybody down. “It ain’t no thing,” he said. “Y’all forget, my daddy was the Cheetah God. Now, these ain’t cheetahs, but same deal really. You just gotta know how to speak their language. The only complication is that motherfucker right there.”

The Great Willie Young pointed to the largest panther, which had a man on its back.

“That’s Cam Newton!” Heinie yelled. “I got high with that motherfucker when he was at Auburn! He stole $7 from me. I’ll take care of that piece of shit! Oh Lord, sweet vengeance be mine!!!”

Heinie rushed into the fray, exhibiting courage that inspired the until then horrified people of New Orleans. They all grabbed whatever they could get their hands on – bats, clubs, Heinie’s empty bottles – and rushed the panthers, some of them stopping to lob bottles at the falcons that continued to divebomb them.

“Get your ass out there and fight, you little bitch!” one of the hos screamed at Col. Brees, but he didn’t want to move. He just sat there in a puddle of his own piss until Sgt. Kamara grabbed him by the neck and dragged him out into the streets to fight.

But by then, we received even worse news. Captain Winston with his buccaneers had just landed.

Nobody liked Captain Winston. He was a known rapist and crab-leg thief. One of the hos was so mad at hearing that he had landed that she took a crew of her bitches to head him off before he could rape his way through the city with his boys.

It was a full-on war. Motherfuckin’ falcons were divebombing us and divebombing the panthers too. It quickly became obvious that this was a goddamn battle royale. Throughout it all, The Great Willie Young stood tall. One moment, he was trying to reason with a panther in its own language, the next he was wrestling with a falcon, telling it to stay away from his fish.

Meanwhile, Heinie had pulled Cam Newton from the back of his panther and was whipping the man with his own pants. Cam Newton squealed and begged him to stop, said he had Heinie’s $7, but Heinie said it was too late for that shit, and Heinie’s hair was flowing wild and free at the back, the sun shining off the top, and he had a sort of wild madness in his eyes. Heinie was a chill man, there is no doubt about that, but even a chill man can only take so much. He had been through it all, had walked the flood waters of Katrina, had rode with The Great Willie Young through space and time, but that motherfucker Newton had stolen $7 from him, and worse, we found out later that he took the last of Heinie’s weed. He thrashed that poor bastard right there in the street.

I saw Col. Brees feebly slap-fighting with that motherfucker Ryan, who had landed with his falcon. The falcon seemed so ashamed of the whole thing that it done flew away and we never seen it again. The rest of the falcons – the ones The Great Willie Young hadn’t knocked the fuck out anyway – joined him in his flight.

The city cheered. The panthers had begun to see reason from The Great Willie Young, the falcons were gone, Ryan and Col. Brees was slappin’ at each other, and Heinie had done some dark shit to Cam Newton I can’t talk about here.

The only problem was that we could still hear Captain Winston and his boys runnin’ wild. We rushed to meet them, but when we got there we found that the hos was already whippin’ up on his ass. His men was runnin’ back to their ships and Captain Winston was hollerin’ about crab legs. The Great Willie Young told the hos to chill, and laid hands on Captain Winston himself.

“If there’s one thing I hate more than anything – except for maybe the redcoat motherfuckers that hunted and killed my daddy, the Cheetah God – is a weak-ass rapist. Rape ain’t fuckin’, boy. It’s just weak shit.”

Captain Winston tried to apologize, but The Great Willie Young just slapped him around some and told him to take his bitch-ass boys and slink on back to where they came from. But before he let ‘em go, he had the hos geld each one of them motherfuckers as a lesson to all. “I don’t like taking that shit from another man,” The Great Willie Young said. “But these motherfuckers ain’t men.”

And so ended the battle of New Orleans and the war for the South. After it was over, The Great Willie Young and Heinie said it was time they be moving on. Heinie grabbed a bucket and walked the streets before he left, the people cheerin’ him and throwing beers in his bucket. It was the most heartwarming thing I ever seen, I swear it.

I asked The Great Willie Young if we’d ever see him again, and he just smiled and said “Boy, just look into your heart and I’ll be there, baby.” He then whispered to me that I tell you what happened, and I asked him how such a thing was even possible and he told me not to worry about it, that you would know what to do. I’m hoping so.

Anyway, after he left, we all partied for a few days. Of course, that bitchass Col. Brees took credit for the whole thing. People let him, mostly because they knew there would always be an asshole like him around, and better it was a soft asshole like Brees that they knew how to deal with instead of some other crazy asshole. He still likes to torture stray cats, but last I heard the cats had turned on him and there are rumors he has feline AIDS now, which is fucked up, but what the hell, that’s life I guess.