4 - Her Torn Heart
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 4: HER torn heart
A letter from October of 1999…
Dear Floyd,
I am not sure what was said behind my back. It’s nice to know you have been my friend. Otherwise, I might feel completely betrayed. Of course, all joking aside, if you are still putting anything together with my dad I would like to be there. Just because his email has been printed on everything I ever sent to you, that doesn’t mean you both ought to skip me over. I understand you each can be fully in-charge of your personal existence while I, on the other hand, am still original and house-bound as a “young woman” without really very much legal authority.
Dad doesn’t know anything about your show idea for his work. Since you are dealing in crap at this point, I won’t be the one to say anything that helps you with this thing. I don’t spend my time helping mean, ambitious people do better than I am in my life.
Disappointment seems to be the thing you are dealing in right now so please leave me out.
We can be friends again if you want to dream the big dreams TOGETHER like I first told everyone!
Dad will not be friendly EVER AGAIN if you take me further out of the picture. No pun was meant there, that’s for certain. We all expected to find a modern businessman in you—or a businessperson, in other words.
This is not your “thing” when it comes to my family. I said at the beginning my dad and I just wanted to write a movie together. We never needed a third wheel. You just seemed like a clean guy.
We have one thing in this life: we are merely a father and daughter teaming up together on something important for each other’s hearts and our life together however long that may last. That’s important to remember.
You have really moved into frosty waters, and I almost don’t want you to even remember that I exist. I don’t’ need any extra things to worry about in my day.
I hope you will be nice and deal with fairness in the future.
Sincerely, Fiona
P.S. Dad has asked me to remind myself what the bigger picture is for us. Only for his advice to me will I EVEN BEGIN to include another short thing from him that I have only just learned how to print in full color. It’s all work for a secretary which they are paid to do for their bosses. So. There has been a LOT of paperwork and connections handled by me and a lot of heart-wrenching stories. I made a trip to the store to get the colored ink. I should be paid something for that single act. Think about my work when you get together with dad on a deal for any picture.
Here you go.
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,
Keep things sailing forward. No regrets. It’s a meaningful offer. I thought your mother told you about the little deal I made with Floyd. It’s some short film about her and I. Your mom turned out to be so sweet about us being used in movies. She loved it. You know that I would have told you all of this when it was happening. You got the thing started for us, honey. I was at sea and she caught me over the phone while I was in port. I thought your mom was telling you every detail while it was going on. When I do something good I come out the bad guy, every time. I hope you are forgiven by Floyd for getting angry. Delete this note, everything in blue ink and italics, please. Delete the note at the bottom, too. I put the color in blue there, too. Delete it all in case you print it for Floyd.
DAD.
Stories from my time at sea. Written for wonderful Fiona, my daughter. (header)
I met Aoife in Seattle, in the Seventies. She had my full attention the moment I saw her. I walked out the front door to my folks’ house and spotted her. I happened to be visiting that day, at their place just south of Seattle. Her red hair got my attention.
Aoife was out in the city on foot, walking around. She had gotten lost on Rainier Avenue. Then something scared her so she made her way into the residential area. She was carrying these big paper sacks.
Aoife didn’t drive. She had taken the bus over to buy sausages at Oberto’s. Their store was just a block or two down the road from where my parents resided. There was some big company party, and she was a secretary for an architect in the city. She was buying up all the good food everyone was going to get to eat at their thing.
Aoife has always had nice, red hair. It’s become reddish-brown as the years have gone by. She has alabaster skin with a lot of freckles just like the little orphan Annie. She’s really the demanding type, too. I thought she was nice. I knew that I could get a lot done with a person like Aoife in my life. Only thing was, she was twenty-three years old and I was closer to forty.
Right after Aoife and I met, we were living together pretty quickly. I had a new set of wheels. I had a fun time taking her out to expensive places in Seattle.
Around that time, I was hired as an engineer on a seventy-five-foot fish processor called the Bay Shrimper. It might have been the biggest in the world at the time. It was a big deal. It was a big job. It was my first job working as any vessel’s Chief Engineer. It felt like I could hire anybody on for my department, and do pretty much anything I needed to without having to ask permissions. And I pretty much did that. I went on a roll. I kept things up. Everything was moving well as we prepared to head out to Alaska.
Aoife begged me to take her along. I told her I would. She and I were still new. It seemed like an invitation was the right thing to offer her. That was the biggest mistake I ever made. Or it was the best thing I ever did. I don’t know which, right now.
She wanted to earn a lot of money for herself. I told her they needed to hire people on the ship, so Aoife went and quit her office work in Seattle. She took a job. She was a fast study and made it through all of her courses right in time. That’s when I saw how she works. When Aoife gets going on anything, she is the top. Any job Aoife ever accepted, it was like God had asked her to do it. She has always been that dedicated to her work.
On the Bay Shrimper she ran the IQF, which was the Individual Quick Freeze. The machine blew the shrimp up and froze them in midair. She had to load and unload it several times each day. When things really got rough at sea, she would stack up nautical hours dozing in ice cold air and shrimp guts flying all around.
Lots of caribou in Alaska. In a port one day, some of the guys wanted to go ashore and shoot one. Everyone had permission. The ship was in port for a while. I thought I wanted to go with these guys, but I found out that Aoife didn’t want to go at all. There were a few couples heading out together, and some good-looking women that she had already had enough attitude from. So, then, I was staying put.
I had a big red jacket, and I gave it to the man organizing things. Next, I took a quick walk out along the deck and encountered Aoife who was looking over the edge of the ship. She was really angry.
She was shouting, “You dirty creep! You dirty bastard!”
It was going on and on.
“You bastard! You-you-you rotten bastard!”
Looking over her shoulder I could tell that Aoife thought it was me standing down there in my red coat with the men and women,. That was before she got glasses. She couldn’t see much distance back then. The sailor I had given it to looked like it was normal for him to have someone shouting at him off the edge of a ship.
I walked close up to her and asked, “What’s going on with you?”
She couldn’t believe it wasn’t me down there in the coat.
We were fishing together in Alaska for three or four months on that job. When we got back down to Seattle, and when I woke up the next morning, Aoife was happier than I’d ever seen her. She had earned a bunch of money. She asked me to drive her around Seattle so she could buy some new things on her own.
I was caving in because I had quit the job, and Aoife didn’t know a thing about what took place. I couldn’t bear telling her the story.
A father and his son, Bill and Mike, had been the vessel’s owners. When they hired me, they were already running out of money. Then, they had gone over to another outfit, and went out and got drunk with them at lunch. They all signed an agreement. And the minute I heard that, I knew they had signed the ship away because they had to produce so much money, and they couldn’t.
The problem started for them when someone had purchased the wrong generators. The time and money consumed all they had. They couldn’t afford to fix the vessel after that. And they couldn’t produce, because of it. Then, they couldn’t hire well because they had no cash to pay anyone. I ended up in an Engine Room with people they had put in there who hadn’t even been to sea before.
I needed help. The truth of the matter was that they couldn’t afford me. I was running faulty generators that each needed some extra work to make their vessel run right. Some other things also needed handling outside of the Engine Room. Then, it was like I was running the entire ship, but by default.
One time, the ship caught on fire. I happened to be nearby. The fire was jumping. It spread to the Engine Room. Inside, the fuel was dripping down. I was thirty feet away. I knew if I ran to get a fire extinguisher to put it out, I could probably make it. It was only a good possibility and not for sure.
I could have left the engine room, and everybody would have followed me out. There were ways to get me off the vessel fast. Diesel is slow. It can take a long time before anything goes up. But it would have been the end. Instead, I ran over. I took up the fire extinguisher and brought some guys to help me, and we put the fire out. Then, I went up and told Bill, the father, who was in his room. He was real quiet for a minute or two.
He looked at the sea and said, “You should have let it burn.”
The people who were financing the operation wouldn’t give them help. Everyone only wanted them to go broke. Then, someone else would end up owning their ship. It was that dirty.
A little while after the fire, the son, Mike, came to me with one of those old oil cans we used in the Engine Room. He’d found it in the garbage. A guy had thrown it away because it was busted.
“This costs money. You know, I don’t think you know how to save money.”
At that time, it was like twenty hours a day keeping things moving. I told him how he could save another $1500 a month.
He asked, “How’s that?”
I said, “Get yourself a new Chief Engineer. I’m out of here.”
At that time, where we were at, the vessel was coming into port all the time. When I quit, Aoife was ready to go. A bunch of guys quit with me, and we were all riding away from the vessel together that afternoon. It was just better to get the problem sorted out when the ship was able to stay in port and didn’t even need to leave the shore. Alaska’s waters can get rough in no time. Faulty generators are too much of a risk at sea.
Bill had the parent company send five guys up to relieve me. They couldn’t find anybody to help me until that point. But, when I left, they sent over five more men. I tried to give them the details. They didn’t even want to talk to me about anything. They said they knew everything, already.
That evening, I got a message from them: “Come back to the ship.”
All of the vessel’s lights were out. They couldn’t get things running right.
“If you know everything, handle it.” I told the replacement.
They were able to get back to the dock, but the lights stayed out for three days. Bill and Mike couldn’t hire anyone quick enough to hold everything together with their bad equipment. The situation was too risky. Being certified, the situation was finished due to lack of adequate personnel and equipment required for safety reasons. It had gotten to the point where somebody was going to get hurt.
I’ll give a good example of what happened to men in the industry back then: the Welder who built all the equipment on the ship was a good one. He made everything. He was a good guy to everybody. He really had to be fast on his feet with what the vessel gave him. The company paid half of what they owed him. They were going to pay him the rest the following year. The next year, the ship started out already owing the Welder seventy-five thousand dollars so then the Welder was called a bad guy now. It was never “Thank you for what you did for me.” It was something like, “Screw you, because I owe you money.”
I’ve been through that plenty.
After the Bay Shrimper, Aoife and I headed down to California. We did anything she dreamed of ever doing.
When we were home next, in Seattle, we had a wedding that made things between us permanent. Then, Aoife and I were really putting things together. Back then, anyone could buy good homes for what seemed like nothing. She found a nice one, and I could afford buying it with what I had earned. She loved that place. She picked everything out, down to the last detail.
I became the Port Engineer in the Seattle yards. Aoife gave birth to two boys right off the bat. Some years later, we had our wonderful Fiona, our baby daughter.
Divorce Number One happened. I had floundered. Suffice to say, I had failed. It still hurts today whenever I am reminded about what took place, back then at the beginning of the Eighties.
Divorce Number One, Aoife and I rarely speak about.
The twins were young but old enough to realize what was being said. Aoife was pregnant. I was away at sea, in Singapore, and I was not decent at all. I had to let her know. But, the day I arrived back to Seattle, I knew how Marriage Number One would soon be over. So, I was more than a little worried about the approaching argument with Aoife.
When I deboarded the vessel and checked out at the dockyard, I brought a few buddies along with me for a free meal. After all, I knew what Aoife’s family could do, and I was scared they would all be waiting for me when I arrived back home.
I had a lot of money. I’d been paid off for the ship I had just finished working on. We all stopped and bought a case of wine. I grabbed a lot of flowers.
Aoife couldn’t believe I was so low to walk into the house with a group of sailors who all expected dinner. She was pregnant, and the twins were a handful. Yet, she had to make them all dinner, and play hostess, before we could talk.
I told her I was sorry about what had happened. I said sorry over and over again. She didn’t throw me out because I was so sincere. She gave in, and she let me stay a while longer.
It was Christmas time. We went to a big company party held by her friends. She had just regained her earlier position at the architect’s firm. Everyone was celebrating. I proceeded to get drunk. All of Aoife’s important friends were there, and I might have made an ass out of myself.
When we made it home, she couldn’t get me into the house. No matter what she did to help me, I wandered around outside, and then I passed out in the hedges. She never forgave me for that.
For the remainder of that marriage, I was sleeping in the basement.
Aoife gave birth to you. A day later, she said she needed time. The main thing I remember in the month that followed was my children each curled up in the bed beside me at night.
Aoife vanished. I couldn’t find her, anywhere. Every day, I got up and made the kids food. At night, they all ended up catching their sleep in my bed because no one felt right without Aoife at home. First, the boys asked if they could sleep with their old man so they weren’t scared all night. Then the baby—you—kept crying in the little bed you were in, so we brought you along with us. Eventually, my mom stayed with me just to take care of the little children.
One day, out of the blue, Aoife walked back into our house carrying divorce paper for me to sign. When I sat down to look at the paperwork, she picked up our baby. She had already gotten the boys out from their school.
She said, “I’ll take my kids with me. Now, go off to sea. You can pay for it all.”
Aoife took the baby and walked out of the house again as soon as I had signed for the divorce.
I was able to catch a ship for South America.
The last time I had been in the area was when Chile lost Allende, the president, back in 1973. It was a big deal. I was working on a job, sailing south from Seattle. We were off Panama, Ecuador and Peru, sometimes a thousand or two miles at sea. When we went into Peru and were anchored up there out in the water, I told everyone I was going to take them ashore.
There were seven couples and me, the host. I paid for the whole thing. We found a real nice restaurant. I had muscles on the half shell. It was just a great meal—wine, friends, and a girl with me. An album by an American singer, Roberta Flack, was playing in the background. So, I told the waiter to turn things up so we could all enjoy the music and the way the woman sang.
The next day, Allende was fired upon, and the value of money in that country plummeted. You needed a wheelbarrow of their money to pay for a dinner.
At the close of Marriage Number One, this next vessel I was headed down there on had, maybe, a thirty-man crew. It was a lot smaller than what I had sailed on before down there. The people doing the work were all from an American university.
The students and their supervisors were all taking readings. Actually, they were mapping the bottom. They had an incredible array about a quarter mile behind us. The thing was towed at the end of a cable, taking seismic reads like a little earthquake. The thing had a three-thousand-pound air shot, meaning it used three-thousand-pound air compressors that sounded like a shot and it kept doing its little, minor earthquakes, with explosives, while the ship went along. It made a “boom” and the thing behind us took a reading on sonar sensors to pick up the “boom” from down below. The time it takes it to go through the water let you know the depth. You could tell what was under there.
It was paid for by a big university, at that time, but it was all for the oil companies because everything was for the oil companies, back then. There were two or three people who knew what they were really handling, and another fifteen or twenty college kids running things.
When we were returning back to the United States, down off of Central America, we hit a typhoon. We were blown a-hundred-and-eighty degrees. It was a rough son-of-a-bitch.
The ship was about two-hundred-and-eighty-feet-long. The engine room had heavy glass windows with chicken wire running in them. These windows were arranged to open them up and let the air in on a hot day. When you’re having rough weather you shut them in case the water breaks over the high end of the vessel. Those windows were maybe ten or fifteen feet above the main deck, and the bridge was maybe five decks above them. And the water was breaking over everything in the Engine Room the whole the time.
The ship was blown backwards and then turned around to face the other way completely. It was rough.
There are only three-hundred-and-sixty degrees in circles. One thing that you can count upon is, once we got blown all the way around, we were facing the right way again. It scared everybody on board when the ship turned around like that. I thought we were going to hell.
I slowed the engines and brought the ship back under control. It had a calming effect. Did that over again until we were free from the storm. However, the company lost the entire array, and it cost them like a million bucks. It was all blown away.
I knew we could have all perished but we didn’t. That was too many years now in the past to worry over.
I’ll say this one thing: I never slept out of wedlock again, and that’s the real truth.
…and at the bottom of everything this inscription did bear:
Fiona,
This reminded me of what a crass bastard I used to be. I know I took advantage of a pretty woman or two in my time. I had to get my ass kicked and nearly killed for it before I stopped doing it. You are going to be eighteen. Let’s get something clear in your mind: you’re still an illegitimate object of desire. And I don’t care what the movie script states. Plan on staying home with your mom until you are married or making enough to support yourself. Don’t become a broken girl because some guy pressured you to go around with him. And I don’t need to forget to tell you this and then hate myself for an eternity.
Dad (Meade)
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