After the Jamaican prison, the Scrimshaw Kid discovered the truth about the endangered species his family had been hunting for generations.  Humpback whales, bowhead whales, fin whales and monkeywhales.

start from the start-  Scrimshaw Kid I.

last chapter- Scrimshaw Kid IV.

One day, almost a year ago, Samuel Bingo Burdett went to Jamaica to get a change.  I would guess Burdett is in his mid forties (he wouldn’t disclose that information to me, drunk or sober), and he had been with the whaling fleet his entire life.

Burdett met some folks, sold some art, and fell in love with a woman while in Jamaica.  He would not tell me her name, so I have named her to benefit your reading experience.  Her name was Samantha, and she was vacationing with her two adult sons and their wives, from Asheville, North Carolina.  She and Burdett hit it off immediately, and were together for the rest of the trip.  Burdett had decided to go back to Asheville with Samantha, seeing how he had never been that far inland, and wanted to see the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Everything was going great until they tried to get on the plane in Montego Bay.

Burdett didn’t understand why the security officers where detaining Samantha.  Surely it must’ve been some kind of mistake.  He demanded to know what the problem was as Samantha’s bag was torn open, spewing sixteen pounds of Jamaican grown marijuana all over the terminal floor.  They were both instantly arrested and spent the next day in separate holding cells before appearing before a judge.

During the hearing, Samantha denied all knowledge of the contraband and pointed her selfish, cowardly finger at Burdett.  Heartbroken and directionless, Burdett plead guilty to the charges and spent the next nine months in prison with twenty eight other men, only one of whom spoke any English.  (I suppose Burdett couldn’t understand the other twenty seven men’s dialects)

The Scrimshaw Kid makes friends everywhere, however, and was soon met with respect.  He was the only prisoner who could draw.  Burdett put the entire Aztec sun calender (actually called the Mexica sun stone) on the cell wall, in pencil, from looking at an old National Geographic magazine.  He drew flowers and puppy dogs for the inmate’s girlfriends, scrawled poems of sailors on the tables in the day room, and drew large depictions of ships and mermaids and sea monsters all over the block.  Each sketch he did was more well received than the last.  He was in no fights, no one stole his breakfast if he overslept, no one messed with him at all.

Burdett assured me that the only time he even took a puff of marijuana in his life, he was behind bars in Jamaica, guards watching.  Life is strange.

Upon his release, our man took a flight to the States and eventually made his way to the little town of Todd, North Carolina.  He still wanted to see the Blue Ridge Parkway.

While on the Parkway, something happened to Burdett.  It was something that changed him more than any trip to Jamaica, more than being on a plane for the first time, more than being locked up for nothing, more than seeing those majestic blue-hued mountains with his salty eyes.  It was this thing- this event- which brought Samuel Bingo Burdett to Greensboro, North Carolina to find Monkeywhale Studios.  It was this event that led him to us, and me to him.

Burdett was in a fender-bender with a burgundy Volvo.  On the rear bumper of that Volvo was a sticker that simply stated, “save the monkeywhale”.

to be continued…