11 - Her Mother And The Sea

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 11: HER MOTHER AND THE SEA

This letter was sent in June of 2005…

Dear Floyd,

I am tackling the job my dad offered where I earn everything I need in 20 days. For now, I stay at my dad’s condo in Seattle.  

I’m sorry I missed your call. It’s been a challenge. Seriously, Chief Engineer Declan Aidan Meade bought himself a one-bedroom and this place is gloomy. I sleep on the couch. He sleeps in his room. We fight over the one bathroom. I am more than ready to get back to my apartment in the valley. California dreaming…

The hidden fact is how I will be forced to leave California for good if I can’t begin to even pay my own rent. You haven’t met my new boyfriend, but he is lousy at paying anything. 

Thank you for your interest in keeping score with my adventures. I am simply a merchant marine to-be. I know I will have a landslide story from all this work I am doing. 

I stopped at the stationary store and I bought a leather writing-book. I am going to take it with me. I’m going to write in it every day. 

Honesty is very important, I think. I am realistic when I tell you how I stand by the new work I now undertake. I will put together a story that I have actually lived myself and found out by going through it on my own. 

We leave tomorrow, I’m told. I’m going to think about you every day. I mean that! Don’t forget me. This ship’s not safe, I don’t think. If we sink, no one will know. If we fall overboard, and if we don’t yell loud enough to be heard, no one will realize what happened until we don’t show up for our next meal. 

For now, I mean to fix an already broken-hearted ship by standing by my much-distressed divorcé-parente because he calls on me. The Meades are dire people and yet they are honest people at the same time.  

Your effervescent, nearly drowning, giddy actress-in-waiting, 

Fiona 

P.S. I’ll be back again in your limelight. I’m flying to LA after India. Talk soon!   

What happened to be enclosed with the aforementioned email when it was later mailed in the post was this here print-out…

Dad, You can write any story you want about the ocean here… CLICK “SAVE” PLEASE!!!

…as well as this here documentations and such:

Hey, Superstar. You can write a whole lot better than I can. This is what I put down last night. Appreciating the opportunity to creatively smooth things for myself. Love ya. Meade.

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

Going to sea is no big deal. We had the Coast Guard’s approval. Sassy was free to depart at any time. 

Ted Friday had the owners buy you a plane ticket. I drove out to SeaTac Airport to pick you up. We returned, and immediately you walked away for a tour of the ship from Baxter, instead of me. 

“I know him!” you screeched.

You can’t realize the attack I felt from you by that one sentence. You sliced me to the core, Fiona. You and Baxter shook hands and smiled at one another like two people who grew up together.

Next you said, “Mom already knows Baxter. Dad, did you know? She introduced us last night on some phone call she arranged.”

You did it at your own insistence, daughter. You let me be alone. From there, I took charge on the assignment of living quarters. I put you across from me, up high in the ship’s superstructure, instead of down low, above the Engine Room where the rest of the unlicensed people would berth, but where no young woman in their right mind would ever venture in the dead of the night if it was left up to me. 

Two days basically were consumed in filing paperwork. My daughter worked diligently every step of the way, right behind her dad. She got to know everyone on the ship from Captain White and the First Mate, on through Kingston Riggs, Baxter and our new friends, the Ukrainians. 

On my way to lunch, my usually respectable daughter left me to get pizza with ten men instead of driving back to the condominium with her father who needed to pick up a laptop he had forgotten on the counter that morning. 

Baxter was not as reliable once he had you around, Fiona. One day he was on time. The next day he threw some tool overboard because he said it was junk. Then I wound up telling him to pick it up or get us another one, and then I didn’t see him for the rest of the day. When he reappeared the following morning, he was back solely because he needed the work. 

Now, he was suddenly your best friend and you all had to have pizza together. It was just more to deal with, that’s all. There is something you do to make things go that way for you, Fiona. 

Baxter rushed by, “Chief, can we pick you up a few slices? Your wife said you take all the toppings.”

I ignored the question because I told him once, already, that I don’t like talking to him about Aoife, ever.

I walked back to my truck. I took out my keys along with some pocket change that fell on the ground. I cursed Aoife hurtfully, but it was all under my breath. No one heard the awful thing I said. 

Suddenly, I heard Aoife tell me out-loud, “Hello, Meade.”

All of a sudden, Aoife was standing there with me there in the parking lot. Her suitcase was set upon the ground. A yellow cab was driving away. I could tell how she was ready to board. She eyed me like an eagle that suddenly found a soft spot. 

“I knew something was missing on this ship. Turns out, it was…” She let the tension pull me to her. She brought out a bag of coffee from her handbag and concluded with, “…the chef!” 

She laughed with a smile so big I knew she had already gotten deep into everyone’s affairs. She was just so happy about it. It was just like Aoife to bypass everything I had planned. And she talked the way you sometimes do, Fiona, where she had already pulled off the biggest heist ever made but no one else on the planet ever knew her name. 

She had already called Ted Friday. She already had the owners working for her, over me. She was hired to prepare meals and wash dishes, just taking everything over I had already gotten going there. Aoife planned to run a makeshift kitchen on-board, for the entire trip.  

I told Aoife I had figured each crew member would work his own meals out. 

Aoife replied, “I am the steward, too. I make everyone make their bed, each morning.”

I brought a lot of adventure into Aoife’s life. She lived for it, too, though she never liked to say so, and she never gave me a proper thank-you. Probably, when I told her where we were voyaging to, and what we were going to receive in pay for the work, Aoife was sitting alone at home, feeling lonely, and looking for a way to get more income in. Everyone does it. 

Aoife had an established system where she acted as go-between financial advisor for all our children’s income strategies. In the nest, and still requiring regular funding, were your younger brothers, Malcom and Ted. She never needed to go far to fund their travels or requirements, but sweet-talked everything they needed from me. I had paid, and I had paid, and I had paid happily for the family we built together.  

To that very day when she surprised me in the Port of Tacoma dockyard, the shoes everybody needed to have brand-new continued to be this constant expense that I had consciously carried since the day the twins arrived. There we stood, years later. There was no war at all, but every year Aoife bought all five children another expensive pair of shoes, and I had to foot the bill. 

In all these family needs, I didn’t at all mind being be the guy to come through for everybody. However, Aoife also liked to buy expensive things for her own happiness at any given time. 

She stood before me. She was talking about going on-board Sassy right away. The way she talked, her ambition was only to get more cash on hand at the end of the voyage.

I smiled. I helped her go on-board. Inside my head and my heart, everything had reeled. 

I felt dizzy with guilt because I had made the trip a possibility for Ted Friday. It was a reckless fling now, as far as I was concerned. There were a few people who could use more salt from the sea on their breath, but not my parallel-moving friend, my Aoife. Though we had been divorced for the third time some years priorly, my sense of alliance with her was never-ending. With Aoife, it was a turmoil inside my head and inside my heart, always. 

I turned off a horror film with us sinking and all dying together because it came playing on the ten-cent movie theater in my head when I walked her around Sassy.

“Glad you can help us get things set up. Of course, you will get paid, but don’t give nobody no extra pressure. I mean that, Aoife. Ted Friday’s been reliable. Take this company card…” and I pulled my wallet from the inside pocket of my jacket, but Aoife showed me how she already had a card. Friday had the Captain go to the bank to get one directly for her.

How could I say how many weeks Aoife had been planning all this when no one ever told me? 

I had to laugh when you walked around the corner with Baxter. You blew a fuse after you caught a first sight of Aoife. I promise you, Fiona, it was a big surprise on my end.  

“What did you think of the pizza, Fiona?” I asked. 

Baxter hid his head in his hands. He shook his head, standing behind you. You stared at Aoife and just gurgled. 

“I’m sure she liked her food, Meade. Fiona, get a handcart ready for me. I’ll be back about four o’clock. I will need a big cart to unload your dad’s truck. Will you please be there when I return with some things?”

I noticed that you controlled yourself well and in a flash, I might add. Baxter ushered you up the gangplank. If I hadn’t seen the look on your face, walking alongside Baxter, but looking over your shoulder at your mother, I would have suspected you and Aoife had planned her ambush and never would have trusted you again, Fiona. You looked as dumbfounded as I felt. That made me feel somewhat better. 

At night, we all crammed into my condo: Aoife and me, as well as you. 

“Can we talk, dad? Outside—alone?” you asked me that night. We sat on one of the benches behind my condo. We were looking at the playground and the green grass that the building association spent a lot of time keeping up. 

“I’m kind of disappointed, dad,” you said, and put your arm around my neck. 

“Well, you don’t need to come along, you know.” I said it, and I could tell you didn’t like my answer. You stood and took a few steps, like you were practicing a dance, or something odd and screwy, like you sometimes do.  

Finally, you said to me, “I was planning on this being the first time we could get to really know each other, you know? We haven’t really ever had time like this, together.”

But it’s not only you I think about, Fiona, and I told you that. 

Prepping a kitchen is something your mom has had a knack for her entire life. She was getting to purchase food, and all the goods, plus the pots and pans to cook things in. In less than a day, she bought a new stove and a microwave and a collection of little cooking appliances. It’s things like that make life seem worth living for her. And now she had worked out how to make a living by doing it. She was expert at all the menu planning requirements. She loved it. Plus, we discovered this time around how much easier we could get along now that we were both older. 

You pouted, and then asked me, “Are you going to have me work as an AB? Baxter said you may not even need me, but I prefer to work with you in the Engine Room.”

“I got to hand it to you, kid, you sure picked a bad time for a father and daughter get-together.”

You looked so let down. 

I pointed out we were going to get to see more of each other than either of us could bear to take. You smiled, but your smile was in the dumps. You had tried to pull an emotional trip, but I couldn’t take it. 

I said, “This ship is going to be real trouble, really fast, if everyone isn’t going to remain focused on it. Can you promise me to keep focused on the ship and our safety the entire time?”

 I run the Engine Room on four-hour shifts, with four hours on and then four hours off, every day. I had three engineers on the job, between myself, Baxter and Kingston. I decided to ask Captain White for two extra people every shift, and I told you to be ready to be one of the extra people I needed. 

“Thanks, Meade—Dad.”

There was a long silence. 

You said something like, “Yes, I will remain focused,” which was the only thing I wanted to hear. 

You stood, took my arm and we walked inside. Aoife had already made us cheeseburgers, and they were good. Next morning, she made a point of getting all of the beds ready before we left the place to head back down to the dockyards. 

Aoife and I managed to stay humble with each other. We had been taking things really easy, between the two of us, for a while, now that she and I had developed our own personalities all on our own. It was enough to look one another in the eye without changing our personas one bit. If we could decide not to meddle with each other’s thought processes, too, we’d make it back without hurtling the other one into the ocean. 

Things were feeling very “up” the next day. The three of us had coffee together. Seattle is just so beautiful in the summertime. I mean it. When we got to the docks, I looked around and took it all in, standing up on the Main Deck. You couldn’t ask for a nicer time of the year. 

When I stepped onto the ship, I went up to The Bridge. The First Mate let me know Sassy’s intercom couldn’t be fixed without high cost. He handed me a receiver.

The First Mate said, “We each have telephone radios from the owners in order to avoid miscommunication between the bridge and the engine room...” Then a smile played on his lips. He said,”…and between the steward and everyone needing to make their beds.”

He thought I would laugh. I stayed silent. I told him I agreed that we would use the radios to talk to anybody on the ship. 

I was going through the checklist one more time. The Coast Guard was scheduled to arrive shortly for a final see. Any remaining replacement parts I could get ordered for the Engine Room were finally at the dock. Captain White asked Dimitry to get every AB together so as to get the ship’s fresh parts loaded in. 

“I really like working together, Dad.” You said. 

You appeared wearing the coveralls Aoife had bought for all of us. You looked happy. 

You said, “It’s cool this is finally happening. Can I help you?”

I was completely wrapped up in getting the checklist done, plus everything else. Aoife and I were going to meet in the kitchen, soon. I didn’t have time for a lecture, and I heard you went to see the First Mate in the event there was something for you to do on the bridge. 

The customs official in Seattle had come on-board as soon as the Coast Guard authorized our departure. He noticed Baxter playing with his radio. He was taking the thing apart during his walk-through. It forced him to ask that Captain White have everyone there rounded up.

Standing in the middle of the tiny group headed to India, the customs official directed each one of us to get rid of the radios long before entering India’s water. In India people use these things inside of bombs, or even as a bomb. If you bring one on the mainland, they can send everyone on-board to jail. Some things you don’t mess around with. 

As the day went on, I started to watch what I said. If Aoife was around, she repeated loudly as well as fifteen times anything I mentioned about the condition of the ship. And if she said something to my daughter, they both made a simple thing to be dealt with into the worst thing that could possibly happen inside the ship. So, I made a point of telling them, “You’re doing fine,” if they looked like they needed it. I felt better doing the extra thing to help Aoife and my daughter stay with the program.

Sassy’s officers walked through. We sped through the kitchen where Aoife was still organizing things. We went through every level, but when we were about to inspect the front hold where the fish processors were originally installed, the Coast Guard appeared. At the end of their once over, the Coast Guard gave new and finalized paperwork to the Captain. 

“Good luck, folks,” was the final reprimand the U.S. Coast Guard gave us. 

We were approved, but there was also this feeling of, “Okay, if you insist. We aren’t very likely going to save you outside of these waters.”

Everything was ready. Now that the ship was given a final okay, it was time to get the show on the road. It was close to the end of June, and we needed to leave. The Captain agreed it was a good time to split. First Mate Kelvar A. Hussein had a scheduled tug with her pilot coming aboard to take Sassy beyond their fiduciary lines. Things would get started within four to eight hours. 

With minutes to spare, First Engineer Kingston Riggs, appeared at our gangway, with you, Fiona, helping him. I watched you each haul a big couch, plus an old armchair, out from a truck. You set each one down in the shaded part of the Main Deck. It would be the nicest place to catch some shade. He had them underneath the awning of the superstructure, beneath the bridge and everything else.  

“I was throwing them away.” Kingston said to me when I inspected his maneuver. 

Riggs sat himself down on the armchair. I sat across from him on the couch. The empty Main Deck stretched for a hundred yards. The smells in the harbor were terrible, but once we were underway things would be more controllable. I had a feeling that Kingston Riggs and I would end up talking for hours in that spot, moving across the Pacific Ocean. 

Kingston Riggs was also divorced. We had that in common.

Baxter appeared. I hadn’t seen him alone all day. He usually was directing the ABs on some important tasks. But, he hadn’t returned my cell phone call to him the night before, and I wasn’t about to learn to text. 

I wanted to talk to Baxter about the order of things, and I was worried I had lost his friendship.  

“I’m back, Chief. We still good?” Baxter asked.

“That affirmative,” I said. Then I winked and said, “That’s Navy-talk for ‘yes.’”

“It’s been good pay working on this beast.” He sat for a minute. We all looked blankly at our own troubles with Sassy. No one said a word for a bit.

Baxter said, “Sorry that she can’t sink fast enough for the Coast Guard, though.” 

Kingston Riggs snickered. I refrained for it would be just as heavy to walk around all day on post wearing a noose around my neck.   

Washrooms and the quarters seemed to meet everybody’s approval. 

Ted Friday had seen to the purchase of the essentials that each crew member needed, such as beds and blankets and towels. Anyone who had been assigned with purchasing duties had also taken into account our common areas by purchasing a few TVs and VCRs so that everybody could watch movies. 

Aoife got to work rearranging a ton of mattresses which was part of her Steward detail.

I said, “Come tomorrow morning, I am sure everyone will have one.”

She replied, “Thanks.” 

Aoife was marvelous in any role she assumed. She also took care of getting all the beds made. 

The AB’s had one big room assigned down low above the engines. I had a bedroom and my own office on the main level of the superstructure. Everything in there was fine. My only daughter, Fiona, as well as Riggs and Baxter, each had their own room on my floor. The rooms were good and clean after a month of having the ship’s insides gone through. We had waited for the new window panes to be inserted before leaving, and that was a smart thing to do. 

Any talk about ghosts on-board came across as very strange. To me, Sassy was feeling pretty empty. I wanted the people sailing this thing to know they were okay given Sassy’s peculiar history of carrying bodies home from the wars she had serviced. 

I made sure Aoife had a room way high up in the ship’s housing, in the same place as the Captain and the First Mate. 

Sassy, now being tugged, was headed to the air of the open ocean. She was steady enough, though light as a cork. There was nothing in the holds to give us any substantial weight. However, the big fish processers at the front of the ship meant we didn’t need to flood any of the holds as ballast.

I was on the Main Deck when we were finally leaving. Seattle looked beautiful before dusk. 

“The major task before one and I, I guess,” spoke the Captain to everyone at the rail while Sassy was moving gently away from the Puget Sound, “is constant prayers and worship for perfect weather. I’m not sure how much bounce she’s really got.”

Baxter smiled at me.

He told everyone there, “No troubles. No troubles, everyone.” 

Baxter and I walked down to the Engine Room together. 

Soon, the tugboat joy had ended. We were on our own, with our bleak Engine Room coming to life, and people in charge of vital activities making sure to keep our vessel safe. We were set to travel eight knots all the way to India, and that really is not fast, at all. 

The main engine that powered the vessel at that speed was a sight for a merchant marine.  At the start, everyone in my Engine Room felt anxious. We took turns manning the thing, oiling and wiping, and watching every moment we could bare to. An hour stretched into two, then three and four. My watch finished and Kingston Riggs appeared. He took over from my duty requirements.  

I was hungry. I had been looking forward to enjoying my first dinner from Aoife’s Mess Hall. 

I walked into the Galley at eight sharp. That was the posted schedule. However, someone was missing. In the kitchen, I saw that no one had started cooking, other than two of the ABs from the Ukraine. They were making something with rice and beans on Aoife’s stovetop. Their dish looked regional but good. It only served enough to fill themselves.

“Should we make some more?” asked a very dark man whose name was Peter. 

“Not on my account,” I said.  

I turned around and walked back up for one more view of the land. I found Aoife up on deck. I had bought her a little electronic camera instead of the big one I paid for in New Jersey that used regular film. This was one she didn’t mind accidentally losing. Aoife was taking electronic photographs that she would next put onto her computer. She stayed outside for a long time. After maybe an hour, she walked by on her way to her berth. 

“Any word on dinner?” I asked her.

She was about to respond. Then she pointed to you, at the top of the Bridge tower.

She said, “Go help her in case she falls. She’s your daughter.”

We were both looking to see you wave at us from there. Aoife added that she was headed up to her room and leaving the cooking to everybody on their first night.

She said, “It will be good for everyone on-board to find out where I put things in the kitchen.”

She was a little bit too abrupt. I put my coat around her. She shrugged me off. Aoife was playing things safe. Her little barriers telling her she was about to get yawned at, by me, had her using social graces nonstop. I hadn’t seen her nervous like this since we were young. 

Then it hit me, suddenly. I realized she was downright scared. I could see thoughts go through her eyes, across her face. She wasn’t going to let me know anything, that was for sure. She walked inside. 

I headed up to the kitchen. I made Spaghetti for everybody who was now waiting for food. Later, a larger bowl now had ten servings of the same dish. Turns out, the Ukrainian men were all tops in the cooking department. 

I had hours before my next watch. I found Aoife in her cabin. She talked about watching the tug’s final push, and hearing the engines really kick in. She realized the sound of the engine was key to her own survival. She sounded fairly murky in her head because she was feeling low.

I was a little worried, too. Something was happening.

“It’s a lot more of a challenge than it looks from the shore, wouldn’t you say, Meade?” 

I put my hand in the curve between her neck and her little shoulder. I was so glad she was with us. I felt calm again. And, I told her so. 

“I’m glad I’m here, too, Meade. I have been dreaming about India. I want to smell the scent of her land. I’ve heard amazing things.”

She let me hang around her room for a while. Later, she told me she felt better with the ship finally on its way to India, rather than waiting for the entire job to be cancelled. 

Aoife and I were at the beginning of another adventure. The possibility of our needless tragic deaths loomed. But, we both understood. We didn’t say anything further out loud to each other. 

It felt like the first year we had come together as a couple. We needed to make it to the other shore. We were mutually excited about something in our immediate future. Everything felt like danger for both of us, back then, with our families coming together, and with all the work I ended up taking halfway around the world. No one really needed me, I came to find. But everyone came to rely on my work. 

It felt like our good old days, that night. Aoife felt so real. I fell asleep happy by her side, one more time again. 

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