9 - For Any Approval

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 9: For Any Approval

Without a reply to the previous letter, this was sent in May of 2005…

Hi Floyd.  

This is indeed forthright to send in a letter, but here I go… I am moneyless. My friends can’t help. I don’t want more help from family. I need work. Please, help me with anything out there. 

You’ll understand more when I ‘m in LA for the opening I’m being shoved to attend. I don’t need to spend money on a party, but if I can at least work when I am there that would help so much. 

Dad brought me out to a sea school a few years ago. I became an Able-Bodied Seaman. That was right after you and all of us had our big hoedown together. Seems like both things got me sidelined on my way to stardom. 

Dad keeps tagging me as a merchant marine. He wants me to take a job offer that landed on his plate. I didn’t like him pushing me to begin with. But I have to admit that working on the sea allures me. Should I buckle? Take the offer? 

I have a long way to go every way I try. That’s why I want so badly to succeed as an actress. That’s the career I have invested all these years into. 

I think life is so tough. No one talks about how awful it actually is. 

I am tired of sending people stories. None seem to care about anything other than their personal interests. I start something and it flies away. My friends have actually made a million dollars on my ideas. They are all happy to do my work for me. 

You are the one who has always been so kind! Don’t let me drive you away. Please show me some friendship. I’ll accept any good industry work the town can offer.  

Floyd, maybe satisfaction isn’t really the thing we should care about, after all. We could all be happy to be alive and healthy. That would be something.  

My mom never intended to be a farmer, just like I never intended to be anyone’s executive secretary. 

This is real life. People must pay attention to what all the women tell them when they suddenly cry. 

Fiona

What happened to be enclosed with the aforementioned letter 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:

Fiona, 

Hope you like my work. I’m working a lot of working for you, kiddo. Gong to pay me any time soon? This job I’m doing for you is therapeutic for me too. I better say thank-you real quick. Right?

Love from dad, Meade. 

P.S. you’re going to be the star of this story about Sassy from here on out.

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

“Dad, I’m trying to get hold of you. I’ll call you later, okay? I wanted to let you know I’m in. I’m in. I’m going on wherever that ship is headed, okay? Call me back, okay? This is Fiona.”

I listened to your voice message a few times. I put the cell phone back on the seat, and I closed the truck’s door. In the week since we last talked, I forgot that I had invited you. 

Baxter and all six of the men who had flown in from the Ukraine were now hard at work on preparations for Sassy’s safety inspection. There was plenty of work left to go. Serious repairs were long overdue, with rust and parts missing all over. There were no replacements, and so I had been taking one of the other engines apart and soldering and re-building it right there in the Engine Room, with Baxter helping me.

Sassy was securely moored along the bay in Seattle. Each time I stepped on-board, I felt the hopeful eyes of everyone watching me. In my mind’s ten-cent theatre, I saw the entire vessel safely and slowly making the trip to India perfectly. I knew she could do it, if she stayed under my control.

Baxter was becoming a troubling man. Before Aoife met him, Baxter was someone whose easy attitude I enjoyed immensely. Now that our mutual acquaintance had recruited him as her spy, Baxter was watching me all the time. He would take phone calls on break which I didn’t think were from his wife. I couldn’t end the problem because he liked me, too. But when I got into questioning these phone calls, he brushed me off. 

I knew Aoife was getting him into strange conversations, off there on the side. He sometimes sat and wrote texts on the cell phone he had. He looked at me for a minute whenever I caught his eye. Then, he laughed and said something like, “I’m putting the phone down, Chief.”  

One morning, I got into my truck, put the radio on Loud, and I headed to the Port of Tacoma. I was at a stop light right next to this big movie theatre. All the lights were made out of neon and it looked like something else.  Got me thinking about your dream to be an actress. 

That morning, I walked on-board Sassy, and I headed back to the Engine Room. Baxter was there. He was going through the Coast Guard’s inspection checklist. Dmitry was standing there. He was a Ukrainian who happened to know about engines. We would be calling on him all voyage long in case something caught on fire.

Baxter said, “The Coast Guard’s list is a mile long, Chief. I’m getting together a list, too. It’s the parts we can still pick up at the depot.” 

It was going to be another long day of starting at the top of the Coast Guard’s list and then  sort of skipping around on things. There was always going to be a challenge to find the correct replacements. Baxter knew that I liked to remain solution-oriented.

Baxter was friendly and outgoing. He stayed that way most of the time. He talked about some children he has, and it made me think of Aoife. He talked about the family he put together in a showy and happy manner. It started to make me think he was putting us all on. He already had mentioned that Aoife “checked in from time to time”. When everyone finished that day, I wanted out. 

I walked back to my truck. 

It was another gorgeous day in the Puget Sound. I picked up my cell phone from the truck bench. The screen reported to me how Aoife had just left me a message. 

She said, “I fought Fiona against it. I don’t think it is a good idea. From what I heard, Sassy is not trustworthy.” 

This is the conversation I had been dreading as soon as I listened to your voicemail this morning. I thought about Baxter standing off somewhere, fiddling with his phone. He probably sent a text message to Aoife the minute I walked away from Sassy. That had to be how Aoife knew when to call me up. 

Complexity in friendship makes me very tired.  

Then there was another long speech from Aoife on a second message. 

Aoife said something like, “What I understand is that you don’t have any Coast Guard approval. Is that it? I think it was Sam who said so. You must have told him. So… that’s a big no for Fiona taking one foot on that ship. You aren’t supposed to have that vessel in the harbor, in the first place. You might be surprised who wants to call the cops.”

That one dug too deep. I was fighting something in Aoife that turned brutal too quick.  

In another message, Aoife was raising the bar. 

She said: “This really is a bold scheme. You are trying to drag our only daughter into something terrible and awful. It could kill you both. I am not going to let you do it!”

Aoife’s anger cost her my friendship in the past. Sometimes, it was her short-sightedness that made her too bold. I didn’t call her. I called you back, instead. 

I wanted you to be assured, so I said, “Hi there, honey. Heard you say that you are sold on my job offer?” 

“What—what—what?” You said. There was a lot of noise in the background.

“I was happy when you told me ‘yes’. I got the voicemail.” I said calmly.

 I thought I better warn you: “You’ll be in the Engine Room. Unless you don’t like it. You could also handle work on the decks though the company that owns this thing hired half a dozen Ukrainian men for all of that.”

There was so much on my plate in order to make the deadline. I didn’t know if we were ever going to be leaving. It had gotten to be late in the year. It was now well beyond the scheduled departure date. Pretty soon, it would get to the point where we had to depart in order to avoid bad weather. 

“Dad, this is going to cost me my life, one day, right?” You asked. 

It sounded like you were talking about something to order at McDonald’s. I didn’t respond. It was too much so I told you I would call you later. 

Ted Friday was reviewing things. He was looking at myself in the Engine Room, along with Baxter and Kingston Riggs, with you stepping in to help alongside me. We also had Captain White solidly on our side, as well as the six Able-Bodied Seamen from the Ukraine. We really needed one more person: a certified First Mate. 

Sassy had no need for tie-downs. There would be no cargo other than what we carried. The crew was substantial for an empty vessel, barring the most dismally obvious possibility of a collision with nature which might be a disaster given the reality that there would be nothing in the holds to give the ship any substantial weight, and we could die.

There was the chance we could never leave the dock at all. The requirements for the Coast Guard’s approval still seemed fairly out of reach. Despite these odds, we continued to work on the necessary requirements to get the ship from Seattle to India safely.  

Aoife called the next evening. I didn’t answer. I already knew she would dig in. I was in my truck, heading back home, and I kept the radio warmed up. 

The straight fact was Aoife had not once completed any long sea voyage. The most she did was the shrimp processor up in Alaska. That was in the summer, at the peak of the tourist season when everything was nice. Staying out at sea, day after day, can take a lot out of a person. 

Aoife called every time exactly when I wrapped up for the day. She called exactly at the time I got into my truck to go home. The answer had to be Baxter. He probably let Aoife know in one of those text messages he sat down to write every five minutes.

I let Aoife go another full day before I called her. The recommendation from the end credits on the screen on the mental image picture show inside my head read thus: Aoife never was a sailor, was she, Meade? 

We were working above deck all day. I looked at the loading bays, and the machinery, and the type of people around me. Aoife never was the same type of person I am. 

I walked back to my truck, and I listened to the most recent message I had from Aoife on my phone. It said, “Fiona is adamant about that trip. Why does she have to go?”

I called her back. She launched right in. 

 “Take it easy,” I told her. I didn’t know anything more about our daughter’s choice than Aoife did. It was the truth. Aoife might have learned something more from Baxter, behind the scenes of the movie she was playing on my brain right then. So, I asked her what Baxter had told her.  

Your mother replied with, “Meade, you are reckless.” 

I stayed quiet. Aoife kept going on with what she had to say. 

She said, “Fiona’s decision to go is against her better judgement. You are putting her on the spot. You think that you have Fiona’s interests in mind, but you don’t know how to do that yet. Everything is being put on hold between her and her man because of this. They need each other. They must stay together. They have to push things for each other, as a couple—not have Fiona go ride around on a sinking ship which is your only plan for our one daughter.”

I felt subdued. I didn’t want to pry into my daughter’s life. 

I said, “No idea what you’re saying. But I need her. She wants to come along. It’s settled.” 

Aoife didn’t come back hard. Instead, she said something kind. I won’t repeat it, but she was being nice. Then we both waited a minute. I was impatient, and so I broke the silence. 

I asked Aoife, ”Why don’t you tell me what’s going on inside your mind, hon?”

Aoife was quiet. I used to tell her I could hear the wheels clicking in her head. Stopped making that comment when we were sitting in a lawyer’s office, during our third divorce. 

“This will be your first job together. Why not make it something good? Not this. This is going to be terrible.”

In the end, your name was already written into the books, so far as the accountant was concerned. It was going to pay your rent. That single piece of knowledge ended the arguments from Aoife. The one thing that satisfied Aoife was telling her who was making any money inside our family and when it was planned to be spent. 

I called you, Fiona, following that. You wanted to bring along a camera and “film your monologue from the top deck”. 

I said, “No.” 

All the crew would be disembarking off the main deck onto a Jacob’s Ladder and into a tiny boat. There was no way you were going to carry a bunch of photography equipment with you. After that piece of data was given, the disappointment could be felt in the air everywhere.

You said, “Her kind of vessel uses older engines. I read that they were all scheduled to be outlawed because they dirty up the atmosphere, anyway. Makes me want to know why you are going through all this, dad. What is Sassy’s value, really?”

These types of question put the friendship between a father and his one daughter on an entirely different level. The owners had hired everyone to work, and we had been getting paid every day to prepare the vessel. We were doing a job we had been hired for. Instead, I went with the short answer for my daughter.

I said, “They could earn about half a million dollars. None of us had that kind of money laying around.”

You said, “Oh. I get it.”  

I said, “Fiona, let’s get an agreement on this one point: if you come, you’re going to do a single thing, and that is work for me. Got it?”

“Yes,” You said. Then you threw in something nice: “Thanks, Dad. It’s going to be good movie material.”

A few weeks then passed by and they were filled with doubt. The Coast Guard visited many times. Sassy flunked each inspection they gave. It didn’t get quite as gruesome as it could have been, but it was bad enough. 

The Coast Guard told us, “Fix that,” and we fixed it. They said, “Do this,” and we did it.  We had to because if we broke down it would be the Coast Guard who would have to save us.

It got to be three weeks past the day we were originally scheduled to get underway. I felt guilty about it every day. Sassy was such a disaster waiting to be had. In my opinion, the Coast Guard was bound to cancel the voyage.

Standing on the bottom of the vessel was surreal. The place was damp enough to feel the chill of a change in atmospheric pressure. The endless possibility of strange happenings down inside those bottom places went untold. The water felt close enough to touch and, for a sailor’s solace, that isn’t a good premonition to be had.

One morning, Captain White was standing on the dock when I arrived for work. He was a good-looking man in his early sixties, just like me. He was a few inches taller than I am and probably stood at six- foot-two, or about there. He had a battered captain’s hat on his head just like the one The Skipper wore on the old TV show Gilligan’s Island. He took it off and smiled when I approached. Then he placed the thing back on top of his head.

Captain White laughed when he said, “Meade. How are you? Good to finally shake your hand, talk to you in real life. Good news. The company decided to invest something like a hundred grand into the oh-so-much-needed equipment and for the supplies for our repairs.”

Next to him stood another man. White introduced me to Kelvar A. Hussein, who was fresh out of the New York Academy at King’s Point. Hussein had already taken all the tests. He was determined to sail as First Mate. 

With these two auspices firmly under Sassy’s control, things had gone from tenuous to rock-solid in a single morning. It meant any further doubt from the crew or their officers was thereafter banned. We all seemed to move away together from complaining about Sassy.

Sassy would be Hussein’s first job on the books. He was ready to get it finished. He had a wife and a baby to think about. He mentioned these people to White and I. We all started talking about our families. 

Hussein was not an easy, to-do-for type of guy, but it was hard to draw a hard line on this ship. He wasn’t planning on this level of heartache.  I had to laugh when I saw him look at the vessel for the first time. The three of us watched as Baxter and the men from the Ukraine headed each to their stations. It looked like the ship the demigods forgot after some war with King Triton. 

I was standing in the bridge when Baxter introduced himself to Hussein. They immediately brought up their sons. Next, they showed each other photographs on their phone. I know they wanted me to get into it, but I wasn’t about to. I didn’t need Baxter telling other people about my ex-wife. He embarrassed me every time he mentioned how likeable Aoife really was. I walked away feeling little guilt. 

So far, the ship had missed every deadline the owners gave. It flunked every inspection it got. It was now clear into the last part of June, and July was approaching. We had to move unless it got too late in the year. If Sassy couldn’t pass, the trip was canceled.

Now that funding was approved, new metal was being hauled in to replace entire weak patches along the upper siding. That was comforting. Too bad no one wanted to clearly inspect the entire hull. As with any vessel, we were now pumping out water every afternoon from the base of the ship. But that was normal. For the most part, the ship was dry down beneath. 

Captain White was now walking around to inspect things. He was paying his time to square things away. 

Each sailor had a checklist of tasks. With the extra tools and materials now being purchased, I was too busy getting the checklists completed to worry about my social skills. Most of the time I ignored Captain White as he came and went.  

“Chief, you don’t like me anymore?” Baxter asked suddenly in the doorway to the Engine Room.

“I like you.” I told him. 

Baxter followed me to lunch. I bought him a couple slices of pizza. He gave insight into Aoife and you, Fiona, being cohorts against me, one way or another. It all came from some line Aoife had fed him. I couldn’t believe Aoife had money to bribe the kid at all, but he confessed every time. That’s how I came to understand my problem in life with you, behind the scenes, rattling everyone’s cage all the time. Baxter relied heavily upon Aoife’s information. He had a preconceived idea about the way you lived your life, long before you had arrived to Seattle, and long before he ever met you.

Miraculously, early one morning, Captain White called me with news of the Coast Guard’s sudden approval for the ship to depart. White was frantic. He couldn’t believe it. He had almost written it off. From that day forward, he was duty-bound to only speak in very positive terms about the vessel and the crew and voyage ahead.  

I drove back to the dockyard. Captain White and the First Mate were listening to each other through the antiquated intercom system. One was in the Bridge and the other was down below. Each confirmed the system had worked yesterday but was now total crap today. 

Everything seemed solid now about the departure so I called Kingston Riggs to let him know the good news. He was stunned.

Baxter came along and draped one long arm over my shoulder, shook me and gave me a big thumbs-up. 

I said, “Riggs.” And I pointed to the cell phone in my hand. 

With his big friendly smile to distract everything, Baxter took the phone from out of my hand and pushed the little “speaker” button.

Baxter happily said, “Mr. Kingston Riggs, we are now officially setting sail! Can you dig that? I called my wife to get my funeral requests in order. I’m joshing, of course!”  

Riggs told him, “The First Mate probably pushed it through the hoop.”

If you ask me, we all felt sad about the Coast Guard saying we got approved to sail Sassy out across the Pacific. Everyone committed to bringing Sassy to India spent a few more hours going through things. Window replacement had been scheduled two days out. The Captain understood the matters. Taking care of everything was his job. It was agreed to spend three more days before departing. 

We were about a dozen people. I got a list together of what would happen on-board for the food supplies to be taken care of, and what was needed to prepare the kitchen with. I went over kitchen preps in detail. I was hoping that between Fiona and Baxter and I, we could all learn something about cooking. 

As we left, Kingston Riggs offered to buy everyone a drink at a bar, to celebrate. I directed us all over to my perfect spot in the town, Thirteen Coins.  

The bartender there is a nice, old gal. She listened when I entertained the room with my story of a friend of mine who bought another one of these old World War II ships. It was practically the same ship as Sassy, but no one could believe the coincidence. Its name had been the Yardarm Knot.  By the time I first was acquainted with that one, it was 1985. She had been set adrift inside the Puget Sound, and was floating somewhere between Poverty Bay, Vashon Island and Seattle.

We all crowded together at the bar as best we could that night. There, I told everyone a true story.

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