Billy Frank Monologue

In the distant, distant past, when I was a mere boy of seventeen, I came to a startling realization that we all at one point come to. I was going to die someday. It could be tomorrow, or thirty years from now, but my life, like everything else, was inevitably going to end.

How did I reach this jarring conclusion? His name was Billy, and his life was short. I didn’t know his last name. I doubt he even had one. Of the forty two days on his journey aboard the Greyhound, I had only spoken to him twice. He was younger than I was, no more than fifteen, without a stubble on his chin. His story was like many of the crews’. He had ran away from a dump of a home, with no father or education, in hopes of finding opportunity. He didn’t speak well,
I never knew what he had done to anger his lordship, Captain Barren, but it hadn’t been good. He was pulled out onto the deck for long hours of flogging in the hot sun, before being thrown back into the verminous brig. He lasted only three days. On the fourth, while I stood on the upper deck looking over my shoulder with disdain, I watched the
Then, he announced to the boatswains with impressive definitiveness, “They will be executed at dawn.” A outcry erupted from the crew, but the captain turned his back to the crowd, and strode back the way he had come, escorted by half of the boatswains. The other half trained their weapons on us, ready to fire at the slightest rebellious movement.

I was among the condemned that were marched to the brig to await sunrise. I was too tired to object. As the Iron bars clanged shut, their sound echoed unbearably loud in my ears. My inmates all glowered at me, evidently too tired to strangle me. I rolled into a ball and tried to make myself as small as possible. Of all the things to die for, I thought, I’ve sold my pathetic life to this. I couldn’t help a tear slip from my eye.

Sometime deep in the night, right as my eyelids were beginning to fall, a sharp voice announced, “Empty your pockets.” Slowly, grudgingly, the crew spilled jewels and gold, even a silver flask onto the damp wooden floor. All had, I assumed, been stolen from the Captain’s chest. Fools. Before the boatswain collected it, I noticed a glint in the pile splayed before me. A small ring with a thin slit of emerald embedded in its shank lay on the ground right next to my leg. Without thinking, I slipped the ring into my pocket. If I was to die, I would go to my death wealthier than any of my dirt family ever managed. A small consolation, but the best I would