The ship’s deck rolled, pitching rudderless against the high, dark seas. The distant cannon fire continued amongst the remaining three ships even as the Stella Maris listed slowly to her starboard. Our guns long silenced, cannon smoke still speckled the night sky, drifting listless in defiance of the squall, strung like dark pearls adorning the waning moon. Sails hung slack as the ship floundered at the mercy of the waves, and though I clung tight to her rail with the last of my life, the next squall sent me tumbling overboard, and into the dark abyss.
Plunged into the icy water, wounded as I was, the sounds of squall and cursed cannon fire fell away, and I beheld the blessed moon from deep beneath the surface of it all. Of a sudden, the sole source of light in a cruel world, I gazed upon her with a romantic longing, dancing as she was amongst the waves. I knew with a calmness and clarity I had not felt for decades that I had but to sigh one last time, sink into the abyss, and I might go to her cool embrace at long last.
But there, cast against the cannon smoked sky, I saw him. He was a mere silhouette struggling in the moon shattered darkness, and he clung to life even now, as all was lost. Though the ship was sure to flounder against the rocks, though he should face the sharks, the leviathans, the heathen cannibals ashore, he struggled for the surface, clinging for his life’s breath.
That he was of my crew, there could be little doubt, for the battle had moved a ways off, and likely he had been tossed overboard with the squall that took me. Glancing back over my shoulder, the call to the great emptiness below was alluring, and the moon beckoned to me, her siren song the sweet silvery silence of depth. But that man, that lonesome figure failing in his fight, he was of my own crew, and as such, I owed it to him to see him safely ashore if I was able.
I rose up from underneath, just as he had slipped below the waves. Wrapping an arm around his chest I struck for the surface, gasping for air, and felt him breathe as well. He was, at the very least, alive, though well broken by his ordeal. “We’re not done yet,” I gasped. Exhausted, he struggled to kick. The waves rose, great shimmering black walls, though we floated over the surface of them, two drowning men, waiting to sink down to our final resting place forever. As we rose to the crest of a wave, we watched another longboat, refugees from the battle at sea, as she was tumbled sideways over the crest of the next wave and sent her passengers to join us in the black abyss.
As if of her own volition, though listing badly and empty of crew, the Stella Maris had taken some sail, and crushing through a great wave, she moved as if to rejoin the fight, possibly seeking after some personal vengeance. She rose from the sea, her siren’s sword still raised at the ready, my beloved Galatea, slashing, slightly charred, through the waves.
Clinging to my shipmate, I clawed at the high wooden wall of my own ship as she approached, reaching in vain for any sort of grip. The Stella Maris, passing by, leaving us stranded with no merciful handhold, and she had nearly passed when I seized hold of her very keel and clung to it as tightly as if I had been nailed fast to the ship. Though I struggled to keep mine and my companion’s heads above water, our combined bodies’ weight served to right her but little, tilting her headlong into the next intolerable wave face. I heard the sound of knocking at my garage door. “Pasale!”
Seizing hold of the hempen rope, perhaps the same that the cut throat bastards had used to board her, I kicked as if to swing us further to starboard and not without some small prayer, back to the helm of my ship. Were she to sink, she would be damned lest she took out another of these awful bastards and somebody knocked at my fucking door again.
“I swear to fucking Christ, this had better be important!” I swung my legs over the side of the bed and planted my feet on the concrete. Under normal circumstances, my roommate Miggs might need his bicycle from the garage, but he generally whistled when he wanted in. Freddy might need a tool perhaps, but at least he called out Oaxaco, and neither of them generally did that shit at 7:30 in the morning on a Sunday. I pulled my pants off the oak desk chair and dragged them on, stumbling towards the door and swinging it wide as I buttoned up my pants. “What the fuck?”
A pair of Mexican women stood there, startled by the opening of the door. Both were dressed in conservative floral print skirts and blouses buttoned up to their necks. The younger of the two trailed a son, a neatly dressed little man that she tucked behind her as I leaned against the edge of the door. Judging by the costumes, I was guessing at Jehovah’s witnesses. Those bastards always send the women out for the dirty work. Mormons always send a couple of pasty looking Aryan nation poster boys. Either way, I’m not a big fan of door to door god salesmen, and it was Sunday fucking morning, for Chrissake, and I’m sure that they weren’t expecting some hungover whiskey-stinking savage of a gringo to answer the door. But it wasn’t one of the house dwellers fucking with me. “How may I help you?”
“We heard that a Mexican family lived here.” The younger woman said.
“Yeah.” I rubbed my face. “They live in the house.” I said.
The older woman nodded at her. She nodded back. “Is there anyone here who speaks Spanish?”
“Claro. Yo hablo,” I said. “Que chingados estan haciendo en mi casa tan temprano?”
The younger girl offered me an image of a whitewashed Christ, some blue-eyed, blonde-haired beach boy dressed in white robes, with a blue sash, on a mass-produced pamphlet. He sat with a bunch of multiracial kids, and some fucking sheep or something. He was sort of Creepy. I wanted to tell her that Jesus was probably a black man, but the last time I tried to discuss religion with a pair of Mormons, it ended in a shouting match. I waved her offer away without touching it.
“Gracias, no. Ya tengo mi dios.”
“When do you think that the family will be home?” She asked.
I glanced at the front door, squinting through a decent hangover and the early morning sun. Already I felt like kind of a dick, standing at my door in a pair of jeans, without even hitching my belt. They had a kid there, dressed to the nines in his little chinos and button up shirt. The kid was maybe four years old, and he had more class than me. I glanced down at him and felt ashamed. “We’re good.” I smiled at the ladies. “We’ve all got our own gods, and we’re good with it.” I smiled and nodded as politely as I could.
They smiled and nodded politely, backing down the walkway and away from me.
Andrew Tomacelli 