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diff --git a/lb-notes.txt b/lb-notes.txt index fbe7d17..c4af0f5 100644 --- a/lb-notes.txt +++ b/lb-notes.txt @@ -1,3 +1,234 @@ + +Jack Ratham was dressed in his trademark calico shirt, . Birdie didn't really know it was stylish, she just knew that it looked unaccountably good on Jack Ratham, which is the merger of fashion, what a thing is, how it is shaped and so on, with who a person is, which is to say what sort of figure they cut in the world. The one Jack Ratham cut was distinctly his own. She reminded Birdie of her father. They could not have been more different, and yet in some fundamental way, the way they looked at the world perhaps, they were alike. + + +Birdie heard her father chuckle. "Are you jealous John?" + +"Jealous? Of course I'm jealous. Everyone of sound mind is jealous of her." + +Birdie wasn't jealous. At least she didn't think she was jealous. She just loved Anne and whenever she was around her she felt better about everything, she felt better about herself, she wanted to be better. She wasn't sure if she wanted to better for Anne or just being around Anne made her want to be better. She wasn't even sure exactly how she wanted to better, she just knew that there was something about Anne that made everyone and everything seem like it was better and it was an elevation you had to live up to. + +Her rather stood next to Anne. "Where's Mary?" + +"In her quarters." + +"She staying there?" + +Anne shrugged. "I imagine she is." + +"How does..." + +Anne turned her head up to look at her father, Birdie could see nothing but an ostrich plum. "Doesn't matter to you does it?" + +Her father laughed. No, I suppose not. You're an odd duck Anne." + +"You're an odd duck too you know. I've missed you." + +With the ship on her side, Mary did come ashore, despite what Bonny had said. She did not speak to anyone but her own ship's crew and seemed ill at ease. Birdie smiled at her, but she acted as if she could not even see Birdie. Birdie took an instant dislike to her. +Lulu thought she was pretty and defended her when Birdie called her rude. "Maybe she's just having a bad day Bee, I mean her ships on its side, +# Notes + +- Need more details of landscape, sea, and marsh esp. +- household is father, Tamba and his wife, plus Kobayashi. + +Plots +- The british captain from Charlestown is also the landowner of th etrees, McPhail. He comes after the family about the tree stumps, which he sees as his, being used for their profit, and also that they make the pirate ships that raid mcphail's ships more seaworth, insult to injury. Add moral complexity for the kids, is papa a bad person? Is the McPhail a bad person? Or is it all just wrong and now can own the trees? + +They eta waring from Ratham that McPhail is coming for them. +How does the storm fit in? +No good guys, no bad guys. her father helps both ratham and mcphail. Warns mcphail of the storm, helps bring his ship int to he esuary to shelther, they take the wagon to chareston. + + + +"Behind the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegories of ancient doctrines, behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the seal of all sacred writings, in the ruins of Nineveh or Thebes, on the crumbling stones of old temples and on the blackened visage of the Assyrian or Egyptian sphinx... there are found indications of a doctrine which is everywhere the same and everywhere carefully concealed." ― Eliphas Lévi + +Birdie the artist, Lulu the what? What does Lulu do? We need to get deeper into the kids playing at some point. Maybe this chapter something about them making figures and playing. Or perhaps playing in the Arkhangelsk. Could I insert adventures of the Arkhangelsk as little mini stories within the story? Or should I do that with Papa's stories? I kind of like it as a tale within a tail. Maybe that's Lulu's talent, telling stories. Birdie pants pictures, Lulu tells stories, Henri has adventures or writes maybe? + + +| Mary Harvey (or Harley), alias Mary Farlee | | 1725-1726 | | In 1725, Mary Harvey and her husband Thomas were transported to the Province of Carolina as felons. In 1726, Mary and three men were convicted of piracy. The men were hanged but Mary was released. Thomas, the leader of the pirates, was never caught. https://www.geni.com/projects/Pirates-in-Petticoats/389 + + +# Overplot: + +- Opening at sea. The approach to Edisto through Birdie's eyes. + - Scenes: + - Birdie in the hammock, her as skilled sailor, desc of ship + - introduce Tamba, Kobayashi and rice + - Story of the storm, rumors about Nassau and the british + - Backstory of the mother, landing on Edisto + +- Pine forest intro: in the stumps + - Scenes: + - Camp establishing shot: + - Lulu and Tamba in the boat, more on rice, father as anarchist + - Lulu and the alligator part 1 + - Lulu on the stumps, break from the others, relationship with Birdie + - Backstory of the edistow + - return trip through the marsh + - Aunt and the pot for the Arkhangelsk + +- Fishing the Bank + - Scenes: + - Birdie on her cousins, father's rum speech + - Cousins as poor sailors, land people + - Birdie taking charge, Lulu as the sailor + - Fishing the bank + - Hint of the Storm + +- Tar harvest + - Scenes + - making tar for the ships. + - autumn cool, swimming and playing at the beach in the wrecked ship. + - further develop the cousins + +- Storm + - Scenes + - Birdie and her father sense the storm and try to stop the Uncle's boat + - birdie and lulu on the northern edge of the island screaming into the wind + - they go to get kadi + - storm under the boat, aligator scene wiht lulu + - cache barrels of tar in the high ground of the hammocks near their camp + - one breaks + - dark tar on the sand, foreshadowing of oil + + + +- Ratham arrives to careen the ship + - warns of mcphail +- McPhail part one + arrives to arrest the father, talks his way out of it because the shortm + - guides Mcphails ship into the estuary they take shelpter +- McPhail part two + - Still arrests the father, takes him to charlestown. + - Birdie goes with + - Lulu and henri hide with the others, they escape by sea. + - get to Ratham, they meet up with a third + - Ships proceed to blockade charlestown. + - Ratham helps the father escape, family escapes to sea, heads south toward the Caribean. +''' + +# Unused scenes + +Jamaican sloops[1] had beams that were narrower than ocean-going Bermuda sloops, and could attain a speed of around 12 knots.[2] They carried gaff rig, whereas in modern usage, a Bermuda sloop excludes any gaff rig. Jamaican sloops were built usually out of cedar trees, for much the same reasons that Bermudian shipwrights favoured Bermuda cedar: these were very resistant to rot, grew very fast and tall, and had a taste displeasing to marine borers.[3] Cedar was favoured over oak as the latter would rot in about 10 years, while cedar would last for nigh on 30 years and was considerably lighter than oak.[3] When the ships needed to be de-fouled from seaweed and barnacles, pirates needed a safe haven on which to careen the ship. Sloops were well suited for this because they were able to sail in shallow areas where larger ships would either run aground or be unable to sail through at all. These shallow waters also provided protection from ships of the British Royal Navy, which tended to be larger and required deep water to sail safely.[3] +## Storm desc + +That even a thunderstorm rolls in, cools off the land, the sunsets throught he clouds, the sound of the thunder was like drmming, a marshall, marching ound that advanced across the waves toward them. It was early, far to early for a big storm, those came later, at the end of summer, the first on was the sign it was time to move south, time to head to St Augustine for the winter. This was a thunderstorm from the south. A tk, Tamba called them. It brought a strange drop in temeprature as iff the storm were sucking something out of summer, giving it a viseral punch in the gut. No, as if summer were grathering herself up, taking a deeep breath, a momentary pause from her usual swelter to give them some reprieve. + +## Tamba backstory + + +The storm had been an early one, Tamba and tk were on captain tk's boat, bound for boston with a prize they'd taken off the coast of Florida when the storm came out of the south. Their captain tried to put in at Owen town, but they did not make it, the wind broke the mast and sent the boat over. Tamba and tk knew how to swim, the rest of the crew did not. Even so, they were lucky. They clung to piece of broken mast and managed to steer themselves in the heavy chop such that they madeit to shore. Tamba told of seeing a shark in the shallows on the way in, even it was so bewildered by the storm it showed no interest in them, merely passing by close enough to touch, though Tamba did not, before settling into their wake where it stayed until the water became too shallow for it. + +## Cooking + +The kettle hung ove rhte fire from the trupod her pap had made from iron taken out of the arkhnglsk. Her father was not a smith, but he' watched the man in Chrlestown enough to get ht ebasics. He come back the camp these year and built himself a small forge, and bellows out of sail cloth. So far he;s made two legs of iron for a fire tripod, the their was still a puece of willow, which was stong enough, though eventyually warped from the heard of the cials and had be replaced. + +In the kittle was a bubbling stew full of fish and rice and seasoned with salt and herbs Lulyu hadhelped father from the creak edge the day before. + +The sand was dug out, the six inch deep bit was lined with stone, but left caps on bothe swindward and landward sides so thta the windws would feed the firs enough oxygen even with the in burning almost entirely below the surace oft he sane. Sometime when her father or Tabe brough down a boar their father would dig another put and build a giant fire in it and let it durn down to a huge mountain of cials . Then he'd lay the board meant, wrapped in its down skin on the coals, burry the whole thing over night and then the next wmorning they'd dig it up and featst on meat so sweet and tender you never wanted to eat anythign else ever again. It would last them the better part of weeks, more if the weather was cool enough. They build a tootcellar in the dark shade of the hut, two feath cown in the sand, lined with planks of swap cypress ther papa had split, it kept food cool and fesh for quite some time. At night they banks the fire, but used the coals to keep the previous nights stew hot and in the morning the mother buit up the fire again and boil the stew and that wsas breakfast. + +Sometimes he roasted fish, but mostly lulu loved stews, fish stew, venison stew, boar stew, even rabbit stew wasn't have bad, espcially when the could trade with the Cherokee for ramps, which were lulu's favoir food in the world, at once swwet and sharp;y bitter, they made everything delicsious, When he could her father stuffed the boars with ramps before buring them to cook overnight. The resulting meat was tend an swet and smealed of the earth and tasted, a little bit like heaven Tamba said. + +## Delos original sketch + +The boat was wooden, 12 feet from bow to stern, wood planked and sealed with the arckhanglsk tar, smooth shiny weathered wood with hardly a splinter in the boat. She ws rigged like a doah, triangular sail, mast near the bow, single ling coming back offf the boom and a tiller in the rear. She had a outrigger spar that would be lashed to the port or starboard gunwale via two blocks her father had attached with nails he'dpryed lookse from the arckhaglske. She would be a palfrom so stable their mother often used it to threw nets beyond the surfline, obut shoe could also be rigged for speed that would outrun every boat the had ever tried to match her. Lulyu had raced her in charles town harbor the winer efore winning by two lengths ten lengh over a very nice, but piirly rigged effort the tk governors siun had put together. He was a nice enough boy shed told Birdie, he ust doesnt know how to sail very well. Or build boats. Birdie had smiled. The took their prize opurse of two bit and bought peppermint sticks and licorish imported from lindon. Hand their got their mother a brush for her hair. Their faother stood outside the store, sittinng on a barrel, carding something in the shade, watching the world pass but has his knofe flicked seeming absently at the thing piece of oak in his hand. He smiled when they came running out to show him the comb. She'll love that. + +Their mother was a stong independent woman who keep their camp with a nearly military sense of neatness. She didn't care a wit what the girls wore, but if they left a diry bowl lying a about she threaten them with a switch. This only very rarely happend to Birdie, the Lou had a defiant strek that foten set her up and kicked her about in whay she did not really understand. propelling her down paths she did not mean the woalk, great screaming matches with her sister, stomping and growling in theatrical ways that drove her mother to step in and threaten switching. + + + +He father pulled the sail in tight, the boat heaved away from them, but her father leaned back against he gunwale slightly until to reached a balance point that balanced speed and awkwardness, the boat lept across the waves and out beyond the surf line of the sand bar to smoother water. The wind was blowing offshore, a storm from the west would be here tomorrow her father said. + +Her father spun the little boat into the wind, dropped the sail and walked toward the bow to get the net. Birdie sprang up and followed. They heaved the net over the side, letting the drift of the current carry them away from it, spreading it out. Once it was out her father used and oar to bring the boat about to where he wanted it and then he yanked the tk line , shooting the halyard and the sail back up. It caught the wind the minute it was up and tighted the lines of the net, pulling them and the net back toward shore. Birdie leaned over the gunwale and watch as fish swam by and were pulled into the net. + +By the time the neared the surfline again the net was choked with fish. She helped her father pull it in, though it became so heavy that eventually her effort was of little use. Her father wrapped the line around the mast and pulled the net, chock full of writhing fish up against the hull, fell off the wind as the boat came into the break of the sand bar and then, timing it with a wave, surfed the craft expertly over the sand bar and into the more sheltered inner waters where he began to paddle it in the shore. + +Hoisting the net, cleanign the fish and drying wonderedthem. more description of their time at sea, her father smoking, talking of the sea, the old country perhaps, some kind of tradition. + +## Sighted ship at sea + +They had arrived early in the morning, the air still heald the wet chill of night, beads of dew shined on teh gunwales of the boat when Birdie came up to look at the coastline. Her father was on the bowsprit perched precariously, but riding the chop as if on a surfboard, glass to his eye, staring off at a horizon Birdie couldn't see. She came forward to have a look and saw the sail her father wa s studying. He did not look away, but did say, "merchant, heading north. Boston. Maybe Providence. Riding low. Make a prize if anyone gets to her." + +"Will they? " + +Her father brought down the glass, and looked down at her. "I don't know. I only know who is where. Last I head Whydah Gally was up that way. Bellamy'd certainly take her, sitting low in the water like that. Not gold, but something out of Owen town." He stared off at the ship, "but you never know. The sea decides." + +He jumped down the to the deck and rubbed her head. "It's always cat and mouse. That's why I stay out of it. Who are you rooting for?" + +Birdie considered this for a moment, she wasn't sure really. She didn't like the merchant captains she'd met. She was pretty sure she didn't care what happened to them, the way they treated their men they deserved whatever they got. Her father had once told her that there were good captains, he'd never met them but he'd heard stories. He also reminded her that even those ugly mean snorting fat men had wives and children somewhere who end up paupers in debtors prison or some other ill might befall them. Still, she thought of the men and women who sailed with her family, who flew the black flag and, while there were a few she did not like, for the most part they were kind, fair people. They had a code, way of living that was about more than the fortune the merchant men were always chasing. + +Her father dropped bucket over the side and filled it up. He knelt and splashed some water on his face, rubbed his eyes and she walked over the handed him the linen that served as his towel. He washed his face every morning, rain or shine, shivering cold or blistering hear,, it did not mater. He father was a man of unbreakable, unbendable even, habits. Not many. But he always washed his face and he always sat and thought, every monring, nearly without exception. She'd seen him seated near the bow in six foot chop, wind howling down on them and he with his eyes closed, thinking. + +He took the towel from her with a thanks and wiped the salt water out of his beard. + +"I think I'd like the Whydah to take her," she said. + +He smiled. "I think I would too." + +It was well past midday before the glided into the marshes and up the river to Tamba, tk and Cuthie's village. Tamba had waved them down in the marsh, coming out by canoe to guidethem in. Huge storms reshaped the mouth of the river and the marshes every year. Her family knew the river well last year, but that knowledge was dangerously out of date by now. If the wanted to make it to where the tk would be stored, they need someone who had been on the river all winter, knew it well. Tamba was that man. He took the tiller, the only man her father had every let take the tiller in Birdie's time sailing with him, and guided them slowly up the seeming still water. They rode the incoming tide through the marsh, but then the river began to take over, the boat slowed, finally it stilled them completely. The wind was not in their favor so her father locked two sets of oars to each side of the boat and took a middle seat for himself, while Lulu and Birdie and Henri took the other oars. Birdie worked the starboard oar while Henri and Lulu worked the port side. Slowly the boat crept up the river. The deeper water looked black and still but their oars told a different story, battling the steady current of the river that wanted so badly to merge with the sea. + +Why do you want it so badly river? Lulu wondered. What do you get out of it? You become salty. You become just another bit of water in the endlessness of the ocean, a drop, every drop once it's own, not joined with others into something more, the sea. The sea. You want to be part of the sea. You are part of the sea, it's a coming home after the long journey down the mountains to here. + +The sea had personality, the sort of thing a single drop of water might lack. The sea was something more, a home, a joining together, but greater than the sum of it parts, it was greater than just about everything. Like the rest of her family, and any one who spent any length of time around it, Lulu prayed to sea every morning, greeted it palms out. Some welcome the sun as a god, others welcome the sun so they can once again see the sea. + +arriving by ship + meeting with Cuthie + playing on the tree + discovering the arkhanglsk + + +## Kids playing in Arkhangelsk + +What do you want to play? Birdie was hoping Lulu would say I don't know and they could play a game Birdie had in mind, but she didn't. + +"We're crocodile pirates?" + +"Crocodiles that are also pirates?" Henri's face immediately brightened at this idea. "Can we eat people?" + +"We are people though." + +"Wait, I thought you said we were crocodiles?" + +"We're half crocodile, half human." + +"Do we have human heads or crocodile heads?" + +"It depends, we can have whichever we need. Mostly we have human heads, but when we go into battle we have crocodile heads and teeth." + +"Yes!" said Henri. "But we have human arms, because we still need swords and guns." + +"Of course." + + +## Description of the coast From Colin Woodward + +there were hundreds of miles of creeks, inlets, and islands on the North Carolina coast to hide among, places with entrances too shallow or convoluted for a large warship to follow them. For a novice pirate with a powerful vessel, the Carolinas provided a perfect sandbox in which to learn the trade. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + From Bartram: The general surface of the island being low, and generally level, produces a very great variety of trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants; particularly the great long-leaved Pitch-Pine, or Broom-Pine |