16 - Her Return Home

The Sound Is The Sailor’s Laughter

A Novel

For Andrew

e-book: “The Sound Is The Sailor’s Laughter”

The Sound Is The Sailor’s Laughter By Corinne Devin Sullivan

ISBN 979-8-9909558-0-6

© Corinne Devin Sullivan. 2024. All rights reserved.

Publication made by: CORINNE DEVIN SULLIVAN BOOKS

Published in the United States of America, in November of 2024.

Chapter 16: Her return home

The letter that was sent from India in late August of 2005…

Floyd,

We made it to India!!! I can’t describe to you how it feels though.

Our contract said the company would pay for a nice hotel in Mumbai. They got a hotel that was nice enough for all the men, but it wasn’t all that nice. I walked to my room and there was a woman waiting for me already at the door. She was there with her son. He asked for one dollar—that’s a day’s wage or more. I was happy to help her, but once I started giving a dollar they stopped over every day. I looked at her every time, but she never smiled. Her not saying anything at all when I thought I was helping her made me cry! Then, today, I spent all morning finally talking to the woman in the hallway. I want to help her, otherwise she and her little son could both perish!

Children are in the streets who are left there. I want to bring everyone back. Or, at least, I want to return to India someday to start something positive. Maybe a school? They could all believe in America. I should give the kids in India a chance! Is there any program for this in California?

I bet this is how movies get made—right now. I’m seated at the writing desk. It’s in the middle of the lobby. Yet there are people dying when I walk around outside the hotel. The clash of cultures here is just amazing. I got a world-class adventure, but I need some time for character-work.

Something must touch a person’s heart with so much intense emotion that they can’t talk. You can only say what you are thinking with a page of a script… the pictures with the right lighting and all the background music are how we say meaningful things.

Things are so different from what we tell each other, sometimes. We all need specific masterpieces which are made from both our imaginations and the real experiences we have to endure.

If I was a poetry expert and this was the start of the movie I could say something like this… “We have been marooned from a shipwreck that no one believed in, from the beginning. It was terrible for all of us, but we are all still alive. India, of all places, gave shelter to no one except for me.” Because it’s not fair, the whole system they have.

I’ll call you if we ever make it to a big airport. I’m bringing my big journal back with me to LA.

Please pray hard for all of us, Ken. I’m just some floozy you know, but please pray anyway!

With my heart and all my love, Fiona (the one who dissed everyone she knows loudly… until she needed them!)

What happened to be enclosed with the aforementioned letter was this here print-out…

Fiona, This is all I can say. After this one, it’s your turn. Get me a script or a book or something I can read after all this hard work on my end. Make it good. I love you, kid. Meade.

Stories from my time at sea. Written for Wonderful Fiona, my daughter. (header)

Aoife boarded a plane in Singapore going back to the United States.

There was just one week more of travel still ahead of Sassy in order for the ship to arrive at Alang Bay. We would be there some day in August. We would walk away from the entire Sassy thing as soon as its life was ended on the shore.

I expected White to say something salutary after Singapore. Instead, he gave me the shoulder. That’s why I knew someone was in trouble, but it was not me.

Captain White did his short practice of walking along the decks and passages. When he walked through the Engine Room, I beckoned him. He walked out. I found him headed upstairs. I approached him.

I said, “Are we going to need chef services assigned, Captain? With Aoife gone and everything?”

He didn’t answer.

I told him one last thing, “I don’t like playing games, but I sure as hell can. You stay on duty the rest of the trip, you get me? Keep the First Mate from getting blind-sided by someone shoving him some plate of nonsense. You get it? Show some self-respect, Captain, would you?”

Now, here’s where it became funny. I started to turn. I was headed back downstairs. The captain grabbed my shoulder to spin me around to face him. I saw his fist pulling back so I ducked just as it cracked by my head, about an inch away from hitting my nose.

White had thrown himself forward. Now, he was off-balance.

I took his arm . I turned him quick. Then, I got him down. I pulled back my fist. But we didn’t do anything. We just stared at each other.

“Chief, you get off me. Now, that’s an order!”

We both stood.

White said, “You’re an animal. You hear me? Your wife and I never did anything, but she needed a man at night. I told her to stay off my lines. Yet, you let her go around my vessel like it’s her crew and her Captain. You’re just a wash-up, do you hear?”

That cut deep.

I told him, “Don’t take that any further, White.”

He told me he wanted out of his life, permanently, but psychology is not my thing. I just walked off. We were men who could fight then get back to work.

Sassy departed Singapore around eight o’clock in the morning. We proceeded to clear the Strait of Malacca without incident.

While we were underway, Captain White was all eyes and ears on deck. He even brought the rifles back to the bridge and offered to hand them out in case any trouble was started. Everyone was alert to the possibility of warfare in the area, or attempts to steal Sassy from us, in the final leg of the journey.

My only daughter (you) had stationed herself permanently on Rigg’s sofa with a pair of binoculars. I saw you looking at the huts on the shore and taking photographs. Aoife had left you with that same electronic camera she had been using during our entire trip.

Day after day, the ride was intense. The heat was unbearable. Suddenly, one morning, India was in sight. Riggs was down in the engine room. The First Mate and I were up on The Bridge trying to spot India as we approached. When I saw her, the atmosphere felt downright majestic.

I found you and Baxter enjoying a cup of coffee together on the Main Deck. You both watched the sun rise above the little strips of land that were now visible. They were still miles and miles away from us.

Baxter turned to me. He gave me a big grin and stuck his thumb in the air like the two of you had a great night together. That’s when I came to realize I might have been jumping to conclusions a lot with you in your life. Maybe I ought to cut you a lot more slack and pay you a lot more respect. I was planning to but if I firmed up solid facts in my head, first.

Born as an historic ship that serviced the American military during World War II, but otherwise named Sassy, our vessel had concluded dozens, if not hundreds, of journeys. Sailors’ lives, and the lives of soldiers and fishermen and passengers alike had depended upon her hull and the main engine. Hard to say the weather our ship had endured. No document was ever written to resolve the number of miles she delivered in her time. Her regal existence would be taken from us all soon, upon the shore.

Later, in Alang Bay, a pilot boat traveled across the water, headed towards us. They would clear everyone on board Sassy for customs. When the boat was coming out, but before it reached us, everyone on-board ran to the other side of the ship to throw their handheld radios into the ocean. They were now considered illegal.

A group of hardened men walked aboard. They visited everyone. I kept you close by my side. I was grateful Aoife wasn’t there for any of their close quarters inspection.

“How about me? I’m here.” You finally told me.

Captain White held onto everyone’s passports during the voyage. He was obliged to return them now. Before he had the chance to give them each back, he met with the shipping brokers and officials. He was in trouble. Even though Captain White had the good sense to throw the firearms over the side of the ship, along with his radio, he had drunk every bit of the Captain’s alcohol long before the trip was over. The Indian men were expecting us to bring them some booze. They figured there would be plenty left over. Even though they really hounded him, he, of course, didn’t have any.

Sassy and everyone on board was finally cleared. Took a long day to do it. That last evening, we were waiting for tide reports, to plan the next day’s landing. They hadn’t come in yet to Captain White. The next morning, I spent some time getting the Main Engine fired up. Seemed morbid that this piece of history was soon to die.

We had what would be our final lunch all together in the Mess Hall. The ship was waiting close enough to the shore to feel at peace. Everyone ended up in the Mess Hall all together. We ate a bunch of fish.

The engineers all returned to the Engine Room. Baxter was going on about the ghost he had become friends with. His conversation was charging up Kingston Riggs.

Riggs said, “I’m more tired than worried, Baxter. But if it’s going to be a hit on this ship, it’s going to be by pirates. No ghost stories, thank-you.”

Thing is, pirates will try to hit vulnerable ships, one way or another, but they don’t hit rust-buckets. The whole idea was too ridiculous now that we were close to other large vessels that had already been run up onto the land. I had to laugh whenever I got to thinking about it.

Baxter wouldn’t let it go. He had a terrible feeling we were about to succumb within an hour of landing at our destination.

A thought crossed my mind.

In addition to the Engine Room we had all spent the last six weeks inside of, Sassy was refit with more expensive fish processors that were stored at the front of the ship. Must have been about a million-dollars-worth of machinery. We didn’t ever get to turn them on, but they sure had my interest. Everything inside the craft was about to be torn to pieces and resold at face value. Now, was the last and only time to take a final look.

I walked toward the front of the vessel and approached a ladder leading down, down deep into the front hold. I stepped out onto it, but a surprising blast of cold air hit me. I walked back to my berth, got a coat from my room and returned. I took a deep breath and I walked down the ladder.

There was ample light through the slits in the hull.

A mass of machinery rested quietly across one end. I could make out each one of the fish processors. They were all still in place. The nape of my neck came alive with prickling hairs. I turned my head, almost too timid to look behind me.

“This is the ride of this life, isn’t it, soldier?”

I forced myself to turn back to the rusted up engines. Then, I looked all around the empty space. I saw nothing. The voice was gone as soon as it had come.

I didn’t move. I didn’t want to disturb the source of the trouble. Then, from outside the vessel, the sounds of approaching motors filled my ears. There were other vessels in the water. They were approaching Sassy.

It was then I realized that this hold was terrible. It smelled. It was coarse. It was ugly. It held too many secrets.

No wonder the company who had invested all this trouble and laid down their lives for this dream had succumbed. The attempt to ride over something that was too massive to forget cost them their lives.

No coats of paint would ever trouble the dead. The only road to relief could be finally revealing their unspoken truth. Only the horrors of the dead expressed inside the world the living stole could do such a thing for these lost souls that would allow themselves to loose their hold upon the morbid spot where their bodies had rotted away.

Then, standing there, was an apparition of a man I knew. He wore his tarnished uniform, gray and white against his sunken dark skin. He slowly slid from the depths of darkness. He moved in my direction.

It was Baxter. Only it wasn’t Baxter in any way. It was him sometime earlier, far back in 1942. He was another person, gone from the fray, stranded and decayed inside the holds of a hideous mistake. It was a transport vessel that was still being readied to bring him home to the United States of America.

In all that had befallen this world in those years, this ship had failed to clear someone’s name or someone’s lifetime fully, neither for the soldier’s sake, nor for the fallen soldier’s family’s relief.

I coughed. It had a syrupy quality to it. It reminded me of blood. The entire sea was poisoned with the craft of warfare then. Few men dared to know the sea, nor to understand her, like I can, still, today. The words came to me, softly, like a dream I knew before lying still upon a vessel I myself had found and secured in the Puget Sound, some day in the Eighties.

I coughed one more time. Tasted okay.

I looked up.

The place was surrounded with terminology from the war etched everywhere. It stood in the foreground, black like soot up against rotted rust and worse on all those walls of the hold. The writing on the wall was everywhere, here.

Who could have done it but the timeless hands of those who still waited here for their loved ones to let them die completely or, somehow, restore life to all their many hopes.

“I’m sorry I was a real mean man to you that day.” I told him.

The relief washed through the olden-day version of Baxter. With that, his face resigned to part ways with me. The apparition shimmered for a moment like water. Then it disappeared one more time.

“Chief? Is that you?” Baxter called.

He stood at the top of the ladder into the hold.

“It’s me, alright. Come down, if you like.” I told him.

He was quiet for some time. I thought perhaps you had called him over. Then, I heard him take a few steps this way. His boots appeared on the top step. He leaned over so I could see his happy face.

“Nah, not for me. No, thanks, Chief. I’ll stay here.” He told me.

I had to smile to myself. Almost all the dots of the mystery of that lost floating ship were finally coming around, full circle.

“Unless, of course, you need a hand up?” Baxter asked.

“Not yet, I don’t.” I said.

I climbed back up to the Main Deck. I closed the lid on the horrors of the war this ship had witnessed in its past. I started looking around for Captain White.

“How we getting off this thing, Chief?” Kingston Riggs asked.

Riggs had caught up to me in the hallway, with you, Fiona, trailing behind him.

You said, “If we’re run up on the ground, we won’t be very safe for very long here, right? I mean the ship can fall over, right, when the tide goes back out?”

We needed something from the Captain about deboarding after we got the actual grounding completed tomorrow. As well, none of us had data concerning who was picking us up when the grounding was finished.

I went straight back to the mess hall. I sat and I waited. Eventually, Captain White came down to make his evening coffee.

“I understand you don’t really want the position of captain. Do you know what that means to me? It means you make me the captain by default. I don’t really need it. I’ve got my hands full in the engine room.”

White sighed.

He said, “Meade. You know what I meant. I never should have told them yes. Or you.”

It was like a confession for him. He had something to get off his conscience. Turned out he didn’t have the right license. Told me he was just a fishing guy. He passed as the Captain with all the officials because Sassy has the right kind of tonnage and her records included her fishing history up in Alaska.

“Hey, at least I brought the longline with me. Caught a lot of fish for food on it. That was good of me to do.” He told me.

I said, “Is that a quiz question?”

“No,” he said.

He said he was feeling remorseful. But we had made it across the sea, so he couldn’t have done such a bad thing, after all. I told him that.

I said, “Leave the pity party to me, White. I’m a professional.”

I walked with him up to The Bridge. In front of the First Mate and anyone else who was wandering around up there, White launched into a second confession: instead of giving the owner’s broker-free alcohol as the original plan had been, he had been compelled to give over all of our passports for them to spend time going over in detail.

“They asked. I forgot to ask for them back. I’m sorry!” said Captain White to anyone in earshot.

By then, Baxter and you, Fiona, had arrived. Next, Captain White told us what had thrown him into a maddening state.

He said, “I have not had any internet for the last four hours. There’s no way to reach anyone, at all.”

The Captain showed us an email from the vessel’s owner. He had printed it immediately before he threw every computer item including the modem and the printer inside the bridge over the side of the ship at the start of the day, to carry on the current theme of throwing guns and radios into the sea.

He said, “I thought that’s what I was supposed to do. Right after I did so, I knew I had done wrong.”

The printed e-mail let us know that those officials needed to collect a large fee from the owner, or from all of us, before we were cleared. It was all a bunch of red tape. It meant we had to get from the vessel, to the beach, to the Port Authority, miles away, in order to pick back up our passports and, if they were actually there in Mumbai, after that we could get a place to sleep.

It was pretty much extortion, at that point.

White got up. He seemed to be backing out the door, away from me and the First Mate.

I was caught up in the expression on Baxter’s face, and yours. We were both watching the Captain seem to disappear by slow backwards steps he made towards the door. It was all moving in slow motion because the Captain kept his eyes unmoving upon the email and the paperwork he had kept with him throughout the entire trip. It was spread out across the chart table. In my younger days, I would have caught him before he escaped.

The Captain disappeared. I told everyone who had just witnessed the madness to wait a minute. In my older days, I came to realize they always come back around.

Eventually, Captain White returned to pick up his paperwork.

The way you tell the story, Fiona, you were waiting for him. And on your own, you escorted him to the Mess Hall. By then, the men from the Ukraine had helped get everyone packed up. All the personal belongings that could be easily carried were in back-packs and soft seabags. Each person told me they were now ready to abandon the ship at any time.

The First Mate sternly addressed Captain White.

He said, “You’re under custody till we get our passports back, Captain. That’s the way this work. So, also, our pay must be given to us, and our hotel rooms covered by the company in Mumbai.”

White actually looked relieved for the help. Someone telling him what to do next was a good thing.

He said, “Thank you. Thanks for being a team. Thank you for staying here, Kelvar.”

White’s last sentence was directed at the First Mate who was caught off-guard.

“There are sixteen boats heading towards us,” Baxter suddenly cried out. “I counted.”

Kingston Riggs said, “But we still have no information about who is going to take us to land, and who is going to get us over to get our passports. And how the hell this is all getting done tomorrow.”

Riggs walked downstairs to the Engine Room. I headed up to the Main Deck.

We were flanked on every side by vessels. They were filled with men who were ready to tear Sassy apart the minute she was grounded. Some of those crafts were teeming with shirtless and shoeless men ready to climb all over Sassy and take her apart.

I looked over the guardrail. An old sailor, like myself, stood on the deck of a nearby boat. I waved my arms, and pointed at the water and the shore.

I shouted to him, “What time?”

I pointed at the water. I pointed at the land. I did it over and over again. I hoped I could get him to understand my body language.

“Five! Soon!” he replied, and it was as simple as that between two old boys who learnt the sea, and the missive of seamanship.

Then, the man hollered at us, “Fast! Go!”

The path became clear to me. I cleared the idea with the ship’s top men inside the Bridge. I asked the Ukrainian men to hurry and get ready to deboard. Then, I hurried after Riggs, down to the Engine Room, for our final push.

The First Mate called in with the signal. We could hear everybody waiting in the water outside. They wanted action, and they wanted it right away.

We had been waiting for the tide to roll in, big, in order to finish the thing. The plan had been for the next day. It didn’t matter. Everyone was ready to go. And, now, the tide was high so we could bring Sassy up and let her roar.

We dropped everything and got the thing going full speed. At, say, maybe, twelve or fourteen knots, we ran her boards right aground, right there across the bay of Alang.

Baxter ran up to the Main Deck when she started running forward. He was headed towards the ship’s bow right when the Sassy went aground. With her metal scraping against the beach, Baxter reached the bow and braced himself as the ship slowed its sliding movement to a final stop. He was standing at the front like the last scene from an old movie. He had his fists raised high. Baxter turned to look up at the Bridge and Fiona who was watching him.

Baxter gave everybody his great, big smile, and you, Fiona, took a photo. A year from now, that photo is on the wall of my home office.

Man, the final ride was just a terrible sensation. I realized the bottom could have been torn right off the hull. Aoife’s good advice filled my head, “That’s some criminal outfit you’re working for, and I would just walk away.”

The bottom stayed in place, but already I realized her holds were gradually filling. That is never a good sign.

I walked to the deck. I dared to look over the edge. There was water still lapping around her. We were still yet a good three hundred yards from the dry shore. The tide would be heading out again in no time. It was time to deboard and quickly lest she start to slide or fall. Or, worse, we would never have another boat there ready to accept us. The time was right now to go.

I hoped that everyone was still ready. At that point, we were relying on common sense and hand signals. We needed everybody to grab their gear fast.

A skiff was already waiting for us to load it up and depart. But nobody in the skiff spoke English. It didn’t matter.

With the tide slowly changing in order to head out again, soon the skiffs wouldn’t be able to get us off the ship. In India, I had no guarantees of a later pick-up. In addition, the vessel wasn’t supported at all. She could give way.

We were being pushed along by Team Ukraine who dealt highly in efficiency. We had to deboard.

Getting off a grounded ship in the changing tide is one of the more dangerous things to do. A rope ladder dangled off the main deck. Bags were being tossed into a flat-bottomed boat which was, for some reason, already brimming with natives trying to see if this was their opportunity to get started. Some of these people sat squarely at the bottom of the ladder we needed to climb down.

The first people to deboard were Captain White in the custody of the First Mate and Kingston Riggs.

The water was acting up. The tides were shifting. The skiff kept hitting against Sassy. At the same time, it was moving up and down. The Ukrainians were working hard to get everybody onto the skiff safely. At the same time, some of the workers tried to get a grip and climb up.

Captain White shouted, “Stay off that ladder! Don’t use it until we are all safely in.”

Everything was moving. If anyone had gotten caught between the big wooden boat and the side of the ship, that would have been it. If anyone had let go of the ladder when the ship was moving downwards, it would have hit someone when it came back up.

It was a real bitch of a time.

You and I, along with Ostop, Erat and Dimitry, we each managed to go down the rope ladder and get a seat in the crowded skiff one after the other.

There was just so much noise and confusion. Each of the work ships were overflowing with men. They were all from the outskirts of India’s caste system. This way of life was as bad as it can get on planet Earth.

The last of the ABs came down the ladder with any remaining bags. They had big, huge smiles, like they were having the time of their lives. They made things work, getting each of the crew off Sassy safe and sound.

Everyone made it to land like clockwork, except for one.

“Baxter!” You cried out. “Where the hell is he?”

Just then, a gun shot rang out. The front compartment of the ship had a door that had been fully shut. It suddenly was opened up. The sun was sinking now, but I saw him clearly. It was Baxter. He finally had gone down to the front hold. He needed to meet his demon fully. I saw him standing there in the cavity at the front of the vessel.

Like a true sailor, Baxter next hooked a rope ladder some place along the ship’s side and threw the thing off. Then he proceeded to go down it without any trouble. He dangled at the bottom of it for a few minutes before he let himself go crashing into the water.

“Baxter! Baxter” You cried, and it was just a scene from a movie when he popped up yards at sea, on the other side of the ship. Thankfully, one of the smaller crafts picked him up and brought him in. Otherwise, I bet he would have come swimming in to us like he was on an Olympic team.

“Chief! Chief!” He cried out, “That was something! One mighty fine day!”

“Temperature be damned.” Said Captain White. “The water is disgusting and filthy!”

And I watched her standing there, with the insides of her hull gushing water. But for a moment, Sassy stood there, a lone, teetering creature. She had promised me to stay afloat, and her promise was kept fine. Now it was time for the memory of her saga to be lost for good.

All together, we traveled in a bus to a ferry. We were herded into an uncomfortable ride that seemed to take all night.

We made it to the port authority, finally, the next morning. I met the owner’s representative there. Neither he nor the officials didn’t feel much like extorting more money from twelve proud sailors who looked at them without flinching, and with me at the front, who used to be a fighter in Seattle, back in his teenage years.

We were so tired. They signed off on the pay, and we collected our passports from a fairly detached-looking personnel. I told everyone it was time to go—like, right away.

Outside, the sun was rising up on everyone’s first full day inside India. I opened my check and saw that the owner had even included a bonus, one for each of us. Our lives had been in danger from the beginning. What’s so funny about that it is they all needed to go to hell and burn together, and instead they brought it to a head inviting Americans like us to watch things.

The Ukrainians needed to depart. They were walking together, and you walked with them. In that minute, I feared you would go forever. But, you gave Erat a kiss on his cheek, and ran back.

They were singing, then they were walking in the parking lot, then they were getting into a station wagon that picked them up, and then they were headed back to the Ukraine or wherever else.

“Have a great life!” Called out the First Mate, Kelvar A. Hussein, and he sincerely meant it.

“Bye-bye, you guys!” Said Kingston Riggs.

“You men truly, truly are king! King! Stay true! Stay connected!” Shouted Baxter.

“I love you guys!” You squealed, over and over again. I just rolled my eyes watching you throw away the Meade repute one final time in front of these guys.

When they drove right past me, with their hands held out of a window so I could touch them all, I guess I must have told them, “Take it easy.”

Remember how, at the beginning of the trip, Aoife told us that she wanted to smell the smells of India? In the bus, I could, indeed, smell the land.

That’s why I looked over and told you and Baxter, who were seated together on a ride to the hotel, “We are smelling the new world. It’s India!”

In all that, Captain White disappeared one more time. Later, Ted Friday told me his college buddy relayed to him that White had returned safely to his regular fishing work in Alaska.

What’s the nicest hotel you can think of?

Whatever it is, that’s the one you, Fiona, found, about two blocks away from the one the company had already paid for. It was way upscale.

Every afternoon, you asked me and the Engine Room gang to sort of pretend we were living at the other one. We did. And, we ate in the restaurant and visited the bar.

You discovered you could get a total rebuild there for about twenty bucks: a facial, a shower, a hot bath, all your fingernails and toenails, along with coloring your hair, and doing every other thing you could think of.

All the meals we had in India were good. In the mornings, I saw you out on the hotel veranda, and in the early afternoons, and when the sun was setting. You were taking things in.

On the last night, we all went to the bar at the nice hotel and proceeded to get hammered. I should mention that you never drank a thing or else I’ll probably get sued by you as soon as we’re back home.

On the flight back to Seattle, I secured everyone’s attention.

We had traveled through seven seas and oceans to take Sassy to her final resting place. We sailed the Pacific, the Strait of Malacca, the Andaman Sea, the Bay of Bengal, the Philippine Sea, the Laccadive Sea and the Arabian Sea.

“Something that I want you to remember is that Sassy’s engine didn’t break because of Baxter, though I know he thinks he did it. Truth is, that engine held together because of some of the work Baxter did on it. He saved the engine, not the other way around. That’s everything I’m going to say about it.”

Baxter was beaming. Everyone was happy, after that. And we talked a lot about the time we spent onboard Sassy, all the way during our trip home.

What an interesting time it had been for all of us.

WRITTEN AND PUBLISHED BY CORINNE DEVIN SULLIVAN

ISBN 979-8-9909558-0-6 e-book: “The Sound Is The Sailor’s Laughter”

© Corinne Devin Sullivan. 2024. All rights reserved.

Publication made by: CORINNE DEVIN SULLIVAN BOOKS “The Sound Is The Sailor’s Laughter” Published in the United States of America 2024. First Final EBook. Design by C.D.S. Website: www.corinnedevinsullivan.com