3 - Her Desire For Industry

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 3: HER DESIRE FOR INDUSTRY

A letter sent in the middle of 1999…

Dear Floyd Ladd,

Been so nice working with the company you have put together! I hope you will let me stay on your roster even if you don’t want me on the other side of the camera. 

I’m a little confused about not being needed anymore with the show in its second season. I was under the impression I was the lead-in on the entire series. It’s depressing, to say the least. 

You got it right. My twin brothers, Ben and Sam, are both famous in politics. I fully prefer not to talk ever about them. Please do not ask me ever. 

That said, one family member loves the idea of making a movie about his life… you can always talk to me about Chief Engineer Meade! You should deeply consider things. Dad raised me over the phone from ports in the Orient, Africa, the Middle East, or Singapore—and from fishing ports in Alaska. It was just the way I was brought up, take it or leave it. 

I only bring him up because you told me you like ships way back in our first conversation. 

Hey! Great job on the nomination for the Academy Award because any recognition is a giant step towards success. Sorry I forgot to say it earlier.

Hey, if you are looking at putting something together based on me, you should include crazy sleepovers my friends and I pulled together in the Nineties. That would amplify innuendos and sexual drive in Season Two. So important so don’t skip! If there really is going to be a “next big thing” with me at the front, this little bit will add a touch. We were into Disney, foreign films and occult trash. We would stop for an hour at the video store. We’d get about six movies and watch them until the middle of the night while we ate just a pile of pizza and ice cream pretty much every Friday. My friends I got to know each other really, really well. Well, it’s nothing porn—not like that. It’s just that’s the sort of thing we got into doing on weekends until I booked a commercial. I made my first paycheck working in film at fourteen. From that point on, I lived sort of like an adult by supporting myself.

Anyhow… I am starting to bore myself. New Jersey has been real. I want to get back to New York. LA is not my thingy. But I will be willing to stay in LA for the rest of my life, at a moment’s notice, if you ever call me back and want me there for another season.

Take care, Fiona 

P.S. Malcom has headshots! Nice!!! I’m sending a stack for you to cast them about if you like him. Contact information is on the back. He’s not turning out to be very tall but he is so funny! He’s my Fav--Totes!

What happened to be enclosed with the aforementioned letter were 2 print-outs and the first was this…

My Spite Or Is It (really) My Story? By Fiona Eloise Meade:

The closest thing my dad ever achieved to normalcy was the caring and tender telephone call Meade made into our farmhouse every month. We were so amazed to hear something from him that we would go berserk. 

During all the phone calls, everyone in the house filled him in, as best as each person was permitted to do by my oldest brother, Ben, for it all had to take place in the timespan of less than twenty minutes for it was a great expense. Mom had to pay the phone company every month with a check. 

My parents wanted to make some money selling the blueberries off the farm but that never happened. Any blueberries being picked at our family’s blueberry farm brought such a goodhearted laughter to my dad. It filled the phone. At other not so good times, our father charged on us for names of anyone picking the blueberries and then what exactly happened with the money they were paid for with. We would have to give names to him very quickly or we would need to have some receipts to show him whenever he came home otherwise my dad would be so sad that he would start to cry!  

My twin brothers, Ben and Sam, are much older than I. Malcom and Ted are much younger than I. 

The twins are mostly famous only because they conducted shouting debates out in the back pasture. This was carried on all throughout their high school years. A shouting debate requires a big field and so everyone found the family farm to be perfectly made for them. Everyone was able to hear both the grand as well as the smaller points that were made. I was only ten and eleven years old. I am sure shouting debates are popular at your school. They are popular in this country. Many of the nation’s most important people in politics attended our high school, and they are usually popular people, too. I am certain how everyone who was popular in my school—or, actually, everyone with political ambitions who graduated with the twins had spent some quality time in my back pasture.

Children should be remembered as being kids during childhood. For example, both Ben and Sam were rather screwing off with their sports and research projects and their “in-between classes”. However, Ben was a champion in basketball. Sam was into “very necessary” girls and won an award for science in junior high. As this tale centers only on my father’s life, it’s important to remember how Meade was proud of his two oldest sons because they passed opportunities to slack off and instead stuck with high school until the very end and didn’t end up a pair of permanent drop-outs in their sweet lives.

After almost nine years of owning the blueberry farm in New Jersey, my father took his very first six-month vacation when he got home from a trip to Singapore. There and then, Meade had a collection of carved elephants, and they were all for me. They were all carved out of ebony and ivory, and he said, “They make some of these elephants as big as a golf cart, Fiona, but there was no way I was going to carry that one back to the ship.” Every one of them was lost somewhere between the barn and the blueberry fields. The youngest brother I have, Ted, somehow buried every one of them without asking anyone whether or not he should. He was only seven years old! There had been eight beautiful elephants, in total. Now, they are just like buried treasure for someone to find.

On that fateful day back from Singapore, it was wonderful to have Meade home. 

After the second night of Dad being back from sea, our parents were at it. 

On the third night, I walked down into the kitchen and discovered how awful the room’s “attitude” had gotten to be. I had to assume that an argument had taken place. In the air, it was cold. It was all the heavy spite I dreaded. And that’s why I changed completely. I had spite, too, from then onward.  

My parents swore they had not been fighting to which I replied, “Well, don’t let me stop you.”

Mom asked Dad about picking up his vacation pay, to which he said, “Aoife, if you don’t mind asking later, that would be nice. I’ve been home about five minutes.”

My mom came back at him with the worst thing you can say. 

She said, “Well, don’t come home at all unless you have your vacation pay with you. You can just stay on the ship. Fiona and I won’t care, at all.”

The kitchen was then quiet.  

The spite I had developed made me say, “Most of us won’t care, but some of us will surely die by this.”

I realized that I had pushed them into a fight without them really seeing me when, actually, I was hoping to make a light joke. You have to grab things by their horns, so to speak! I had my own spite now. I sensed it was going to backfire. I had a bottle of milk I was trying to put the lid on. I started to place it inside our fridge.

  “I usually plan to take it a little later, instead of blowing it all at once. There’s not much to go around when it comes to paid vacation time for me.” My dad said that one. And he also said, “Why don’t I get to spend any of this money I earn on my own things?” 

Meade liked talking to the empty room that only had my mom and I staring back at him. 

For a minute both mom and dad didn’t say a word. But then I dropped the milk!!! 

Both of my friends flew at me with tears of agony and betrayed friendship that we all scorned despite all of our years together. But I deserved it for being so much like acid. I didn’t know I could simply not care what the hell was wrong to begin with and lightly toss their worry away. They were shouting at me to get out of the kitchen. Then I had to get the milk cleaned up.

By the end of that week, my dad drove me to an audition I had booked. It was a really big deal. Next thing I know, he told me he made the decision to make another trip to sea. 

“For how much time?” and I heard my voice crack with emotion because by then the spite had ended its rage inside of me, and I was reminded about how much I distrusted my father in general but still loved him a lot no matter what. We tell each other we are “compadres” but that is dishonest as we are Irish and not Mexican at all. 

“I don’t know. It’s a six-month job. Could be a year. I don’t want you causing trouble. Don’t stress your mom.”

That was the first time he ever said anything like that. I was the instigator but I wasn’t even in their thing. I wasn’t listening, even, but that’s where truth is hard to see for it may be that one other person’s side is much more relevant to the story of life than mine. Sometimes. I need to be quiet. Unfairly, no one ushers me in. Like rain on a windy, autumn day when you’re walking back from the bus stop, I remembered that I did provoke the entire thing.  

I felt terrible in my life after that one experience. I have never returned to who I was before it happened.

However, I did end up booking something. It’s going to pay for my apartment in Hollywood. It’s going to last for about four years. That’s how much money I made. So, I think the spite is good, sometimes.  Still, I understand how the karma was changed by my dad’s words. Ever since then I just learned to suck it up. 

That whole time period is basically where I grew-up, for real. 

About a week later, we all were made to say our good-byes again to our father, Chief Engineer Declan Aidan Meade, at the airport, one more time. He didn’t take his vacation time, yet again. So, in the end he won and also mom won because he left.  

And this part could be the entire movie. If you will close your eyes you will see it (better do it soon after you finish reading this unless you miss it!)… I never can forget all of us waving to him when he walked off down the really long hallway to board his plane going to Texas. He looked different, like a shadowy guy. I remember asking myself if my dad was going to be alive next year.  

The End.

The second paper that was enclosed with the letter was this…

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

…as well as this here documentations and such:

Fiona, I’m taking something positive from this. I appreciate writing things out. I ever wondered what my family thought or if they thought at all of me while I stayed away. Finally, someone gets to say something they’ve been meaning to tell this world and that someone is me. I love you (but don’t let it get around too much or the others will know I took sides). Love, Dad

***IF YOU SEND THIS THING OUT OF THIS HOUSE DELETE MY NOTE.***

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

In 1989, I had applied for a permanent job with a group of companies in the oil industry. There was a constant need from my wife to cover her expenses. That’s why I fell off the wagon to start working at sea for oil, one more time. On top of everything else, our mortgage payment for our blueberry farm was just too heavy. 

On a plane ride over to the Gulf Coast for a work interview, I was reading a magazine about hydrogen generators, just to sort of pass time.

  The guy looking to hire me picked me up in his brand-new Chevrolet. That was a big deal in those days. On the ride to the dockyards, I started talking about hydrogen generators. It was all taken from the article I had read. It turned out I was saying things he had never even heard of. He hired me pretty much right there. Told me it was because of my electrical background, more than anything else. 

Then I asked him to turn up his radio because Norman Greenbaum was singing. I had bought his album back in the Seventies, back when I had lived up in Seattle. I like his single, that big song Greenbaum sings: Spirit in the Sky. It was playing real soft so we turned things up and got to singing with it. 

The next day, I managed to swing by this strange bookstore while the ship was still in the port being readied for the next trip out to sea. They had little bundles of books for sale everywhere you walked. I picked up a roll of them. It turned out to all be stuff by Michael Crawford. Every book dealt with the Roman republic. I always wanted to understand better why Rome fell, but I found out later on that that wasn’t what was happening in Rome at all. 

Next, I picked up a huge cup of coffee and scarfed down a dozen donuts. I liked doing it without anyone around to complain about my belly fat. Then I had to make my way fast to the yards. My gut told me the vessel was ready to go much earlier than planned. When I arrived, I found out I was correct. Everyone had already gotten ready to head out to sea. They were happy I was so nonchalant about starting the trip a day or two early. So, off we went. 

The oil boys were running a particularly big company, back in those days, with ships that went all over the place. They would take seismic soundings for oil then fly the results to an unknown location, on a helicopter that went through LAX no matter where the vessel was located.

Aoife and I continued to talk on the phone whenever I could call her. She was nice and happy about the consistency of my pay but not as excited as I had hoped for. She needed a bit more, she liked to tell me. Everybody got a new pair of running shoes every year, even the toddler and as well our new baby, Ted. It was just shoes, shoes all the time. They couldn’t get something at Goodwill or any army surplus store around town. It just had to be designer shoes, every time.

The trips made to sea on this vessel were known as “stints.” That’s how everyone knew what we were talking about on pay stubs and throughout all the logs. Each “stint” would be about thirty or, maybe, sixty days away, on the ocean. After one’s “stint” finished, we all got to take it easy for a month or so.

I was supposed to fly from Alaska on through to New Jersey, for a few weeks off, after each “stint”. That schedule would provide me with time to see my family, regularly, for the first time in our children’s lives. However, the first time I was released for free time I called Aoife on the telephone, and she was drifting. It was apparent she was trying to end each conversation too quickly. Neither of us could hide the fact that she smiled whenever she mentioned some guy she had met in the city council. She handed off the phone, first to the twins, then to you, then to the little guys, and that was the end of every phone call.

So, I just skipped it, and kept myself in Texas doing sideline work in the port on my days off. 

Inside and down deep, I was ready to get back to all of you right then. My family had become the best thing I had. It was sad when I told you I missed you because you didn’t say anything for a little bit. Then you said, “I think you are supposed to be here today, Dad. That’s what I wrote in my calendar at the beginning of the year.”

I promised I’d be home whenever the job let me. You went silent, again. You seemed to take my not making it back personally. No one else mentioned a thing. Maybe that’s not true. The boys also had a say on the topic but don’t quote me today on anything from way back in those days. 

You remembered every detail I ever gave you about free time or work schedules. That’s just the point, Fiona. Someone knowing what you’re doing, and listening, is everything to a guy like me. Children are just the best thing in the entire world. Besides, the truth is I just didn’t want to see Aoife if I was going to get my ass handed back to me ever so carefully. She had transformed into a different woman. She was a little bit like a worm.    

I know you aren’t going to be happy hearing these things, but this is how it all went down. I’m relaying the story of what took place. By all means, take out parts you don’t want anyone to know about the Meade family, Fiona. 

I know I hurt things between you and I every time I chose to stay at sea. That gives you the upper hand. I had kind of sunk into my own shell. My heart felt like someone stopped it. 

The song Cat’s In The Cradle was my own life ever since the twins came along, back when everyone lived up in Seattle. I had busted my rump to get these furniture toy things that Aoife was certain the twins would need or appreciate mentally. Then came the need for an entire nursery carousel thing that had to be installed in the ceilings. 

Cat’s In The Cradle is the song by Harry Chapin about the father who is sure he is never at home for his children. Point is, you were the only one who seemed to track with things at all. 

Cat’s In The Cradle was on the radio right after I got into my free rental car. The company provided rentals to all the union members. I had just signed up to spend my free time when I should have been going home to our blueberry establishment working part time in the Port of Houston. I was going to catch a double-feature movie. It would be Batman first and then Honey I Shrunk The Kids. 

The song had finished. I cried a while longer. Then, I decided to change things up. I wanted to get interested in my own world, one more time. Instead of catching time at the movie theater, I looked up data about attaining my next credential in the engine room. I spent years going back to school, so to speak. The merchant marines offers all sorts of night classes. They make you meet extra requirements at sea. That’s how, eventually, I got the highest certification in the merchant marines. As a result, I am able to work on any vessel. I can sail Chief in the Engine Room anywhere it’s needed.  

When the next “stint” began, the vessel’s captain assigned me to a “top-priority detail”—that’s how they term things in oil. 

There was a secret room on the vessel the size of my bedroom. In it was a square box. You opened it up, and there was nothing but chips, chips, chips. I’d studied about all of it. It was the hub where they shot the data to. It was taking in the readings the company was paying for with these ships going to sea. They wanted to see what the bottom of the ocean looked like. 

If anything happened to that room, right away they had to call Houston, and I mean anything. If somebody could steal all these readings the vessel was getting then they could drill in the company’s places or sell the information out from under them for a million dollars. 

One night, they called me up at about two in the morning because there was a problem. Nobody could enter the little room but me. I was the only one with access because, in addition to being the Chief Engineer, I was now carrying the doctored-up title of “main electrical guy”. 

There must have been a dozen locks to open up. 

Everybody on the ship was standing around. 

I opened the final lock. The top brass wished me luck so I stepped forward. 

I walked inside. There was a stand-by connected with switches. I hit the breaker. Right away, somebody started beating on the soundproof door. I went back out through all the locks. The people on the deck were cheering. They told me everything was set right.  

“It was nothing.” I told everybody.

We arrived back in port because it was a big deal if anything happened. A man was waiting to come aboard. He was from the very top of the top brass of the oil company. He had a technician with him named Freddy.

He said, “Well done, Meade. Can you walk us through?”

Freddy, the Captain, and the best man they sent over from corporate watched me open things up, once again. It was a big shove of keys that I had to go through to do it. Once we were inside the compartment, I showed them what I saw: one big box did a great job, and the other one was an antique. I had switched it over.

“Well done, Meade.” Freddy told me. 

We closed the room up. Next, we were all headed out for lunch. The Captain and everyone walked behind me and the corporate people, down the gang plank and to a row of cars rented for them. Everyone was so happy. They were each giving me pats on the back.

Our vessel had to return to sea. Now that we had firmed things up as friends, the company asked me to start attending their daily meetings. The people in attendance were all high-ups. I was asked some mighty unfair questions, but I answered them anyhow so I could fit right in. The next day, I wasn’t convinced anyone needed me. I had to attend anyway because I had already put my name in the log for the last one.

The meeting started to feel just so fake. I told everyone there, “I’m in the blueberry industry, and in the blueberry industry, we don’t mess around.”

The Captain and his mates started to buddy up to me. But they also told me I needed to watch myself.

“You might be a farmer, Meade, but we’re talking international commitments. Don’t hold back. Jump right in.”

A lot of the stuff the company worked on was right off of the Russian line, up north. This was back when Russia was still a big enemy of the United States. For political reasons, we couldn’t have anything to do with them. The oil companies seemed not to care a thing for respecting boundaries.  

Eventually, everyone on the ship knew I owned a blueberry farm even though they didn’t know that we never actually harvested anything. I didn’t need to divulge worship material for any one side. I only dreamed about being back there, with Aoife, and all of my boys, and you who were starting to make it big, back then, in your acting career (it was early on and before all the trouble set in).

The little things mean a lot to me, Fiona. I don’t agree with every idea that goes through your head. A lot of them are just ridiculous, actually—but that’s because of your connection to your mother. You are my daughter, and I’m going to love you no matter what decision you make. That’s just the way it is. 

In the middle of the third meeting, I had it. I needed to quit working for oil. It depressed everything about my life. The job had us out at sea for “stints” of twenty-eight days, taking all their readings until the ship would head back in to its port to be re-crewed. Everyone had time on their hands, at that point. I could go home, for a bit, and get some rest. As you know, that didn’t happen—not once. But after that third meeting and listening to the mindset of every person there who complained about Russian waterways, I couldn’t stay. 

Aoife told me to stay at sea, take whatever extra pay I could earn, working as second in the Engine Room to my scheduled replacement during the off-times, or getting into some other temporary work in the port.

But, that one night, I couldn’t take it anymore. The helicopter was just ready to go. The company let me fly in to the airport from the ship, in the same helicopter they delivered the daily readings from. 

It was impressive. The chopper landed at LAX, the way it always did. From there, I caught a regular plane at the last minute to New Jersey. I planned to rent a car and surprise everyone at the farm. 

I called Aoife when I landed. I told her I was in town. I was going to sleep close to the airport and then drive out to the farmhouse with all the presents I had picked up for everyone. Instead, Aoife drove to the city to meet me. 

I brought Aoife out in the best rental I could get, one that had all the gadgets. We spent a night out. I took her to the best Spanish restaurant in town, close to the airport. It was one I always had my eye on. Next, I took her to a hot, little club. They played every mix of music, and I held her close that night. 

Aoife didn’t like the idea of getting back to the farm. The twins were taking care of you and your two younger brothers, and Aoife’s horses. It meant she had time free for us. I took her out for clothing and other things she wanted to purchase. She got herself a new wardrobe.

Aoife stayed with me, alone, for two nights. Then she let the bomb drop. She had gotten a real patient attitude about life since the last time I was there. She wanted me to get right back to the vessel because they had called her when they found out the joke I tried to pull by taking the helicopter in, and she had talked to the Captain. She was relieved that he was going to take me right back as if it had all been fine from the beginning. 

What a rotten trick Aoife had pulled.

Aoife took the gifts I had purchased for everyone. She gave them to our children, herself.

Aoife and I were strung out on our love affair. She had me flying straight back out to work, never taking any free time at all to live on the farm I was paying for. I didn’t make the guest list there, anymore. 

Back at sea, going all over the place while taking these readings, and fixing things up whenever someone called on me to do something extra, I got to feel like I wouldn’t ever be able to go home. Working conditions were not comfortable. I felt like a fish out of water there. 

Finally, I took my own break after the next “stint”. 

On the last day, I caught the helicopter a second time. The thing flew over to Los Angeles, and I took a plane up to Seattle from there. I stopped by my dad’s house. I saw my brothers and sisters and all their new children. 

My entire family was all friendly. Everybody was happy to see me. It hit me how long it had been. Nephews stopped me and made a point to thank me for loaning them money years ago, and for letting them stay at my place without charging anyone a penny. I used to do anything I could whenever my family asked for my help, back before I had to move myself to New Jersey to be a farmer.

The trip back home was the good one. I had needed it for a long time. I didn’t know how badly I needed to square away with the people in my own family who still liked me a lot.  

I got back to work, and I felt relaxed and ready for my next four weeks at sea. We went underway right on schedule. Like always with oil, the clock was on and ticking from Day One. The engine room was shining. People were stubborn for a minute or two, but they liked me enough to say, “Glad to have you here, Meade.”

On Day Two, someone approached me with a clipboard, and said, “You got to sign this. That’s to pay for the helicopter.”

“You were going there anyway,” I said. “Why would I pay for the helicopter?” 

“When you have a personal thing, we get you to pay.” He told me, standing there outside the engine room. Some of the boys needed a break. I let them take it. And I told the higher-ups to stop haranguing them because they had been at all of their throats for minutia. 

I was going to tell him to hang it. Fifteen hundred dollars was the price tag. It was one month’s mortgage payment for the blueberry farm. It was also a lot of pairs of Nike shoes for the twins and my baby boys. I told them I was already going to look for something better for my pay. 

The Captain himself came to see me. We talked a while.  

“Go, then.” He finally told me.

The ship was traveling south, to port in Dutch Harbor, up in Alaska. I called Aoife to tell her I was coming home. It would have been my first time home in a year. Ben answered the telephone.

“Hey, pal, how are you? I got you a big surprise. You’re going to love it,” I told him I had found him a big deck of flipping cards, the ones he would save up to buy. A mate on board was selling about fifty of them to me for thirty dollars. It turned out the cards would normally cost about a thousand dollars. But Ben didn’t sound happy about the cards. I had to ask why. 

“Well, for one thing, Dad,” he said. “You and me have some talking to do, next time you are home.” 

Aoife was in the background, yelling at him. There was a pause when he covered the mouthpiece. The fur was flying between them.

Ben said, “Call me back. Ten minutes, or something like that. Hey, dad, one more thing. Keep smiling.”

That was my line. I had used it on them many times when they were growing up. I had to get in at the bottom of the queue one more time again to use the payphone. It was probably about thirty-five minutes before Ben heard from me.

Ben said, “When are you getting back?”

Turned out Aoife had been unfaithful. Fiona, you probably never heard anything specific. I’ll say what it was: she was staying with a high-up in the town council. Ben told me the news right then and there. I couldn’t speak. I just cried. The shame and distrust I felt was raw. It gripped my heart. 

The men standing close by the phone booth stepped backwards to give me some more room. 

Sam took the phone from Ben and told me how it had been going on between their mother and this man for years. They both thought I knew, but then they both came to realize I didn’t. 

For some reason, I felt like did I know it, already, but that wasn’t necessarily true. I didn’t really see it coming. It made sense now that I knew. Everything went strange. I didn’t want to hear it ever again, in my life. I didn’t know the details.  Somehow, in my soul, I understood everything that Aoife would try to pull next with me.

I told the boys how much I loved them. When I hung up the phone, I took a taxi to the nearest hotel. Drank about a box of wine, and I just about passed out on the floor.

There was a big party in Long Beach scheduled for that weekend. The oil company had chartered a plane. I hadn’t planned on attending it. Even though I was leaving, everyone was saying I should go to the party. All of the executives of the company were scheduled to be there.

We flew into Los Angeles as one big group of sailors and millionaires. It felt like everyone was staying sober, but I hadn’t drunk that much in years. I got hammered. 

A few guys said, “You know, you got to play it cool around here.”

I told each one, “I’m in the blueberry industry, and in the blueberry industry we don’t worry.” 

No one managed to argue with me. It turns out, no one knows how blueberry sales work.

Somehow, I managed to sit down with every one of the managers that night. Maybe even the owner had tapped me on the shoulder. They all knew I was working out well as the Chief Engineer on the company’s ships, but they didn’t know I had already had papers signed off to leave that world, for good. When I told each what I thought about oil and their industry, they nodded and just walked away. 

Next morning, I boarded their chartered plane with the rest of them. We were going back up to Alaska, but I had already planned to buy a ticket back to Seattle. No one was kicking me out the door despite the attitude I had displayed at their big party.

I was still a little drunk. There were two large men which my seat was in-between. Each man must have weighed about three hundred and fifty pounds, and they were both crammed into the airplane chairs with one seat in between them. They must have each been at least six-and-a-half feet tall.  

One of them saw me the minute I walked on-board. 

The man seated next to the window said, “Meade? Come here.”

The other big guy stood to let me in. I squeezed into my seat. 

I asked, “What—do they hire you guys by the pound?”

They introduced themselves while the whole plane laughed at my joke. No one knew how things were going to play out. They let me know oil had their own union—a company union—and I was invited to join. Turned out that they all liked me, still.

But, I already had a union, from back before my work there, in oil. My union was based out of San Francisco, and that was where I was headed to. I knew they would be happy to let me back in. So, I told the men I was not interested in whatever they had going on. 

We had a couple of drinks together on the plane-ride back to Alaska. One of the men was on one side. The other one was on the other side. They continued to tell me about joining the company’s union, but I already knew I was old history. I was not going back. I had to make more income to buy more things for the people I loved. 

I knew I was just about to be divorced by Aoife, again. That was my main problem. 

I saw a straight path in my mind. It started to form on the mental picture show inside my head. I saw myself over my shoulders, with my jacket pulled tight. The scene was grainy, or a yellow-tone resting on black and white film. I was walking a rough line to get right back to my regular line of work. It had always been on transport ships around the Middle East and Africa, or container vessels going to and from the Orient, or with fishing crews up in Alaska. I wouldn’t be able to stay with the cushy oil guys even if they became my best friends, and even if they took me to a party every weekend. 

The men on the plane started to strong-arm me to join the oil company’s union. But I have been to Ballard and back again, and I do not strong-arm well. They didn’t like the attitude I had so I just kept ordering everyone more drinks. That kept them happy. 

We landed, and they both sort of rolled out into the aisle. By then, we were best friends. Everyone was having a good time. That was the last sentiment I heard them tell me when I left. 

I called my old union on the telephone. Next, I took a flight to San Francisco because, at the time, they had more to offer in work than Seattle did. The city looked wonderful. I hadn’t been there in more than a year. I stopped at a favorite spot close to the union hall and told some jokes while I drank a beer as well as rum. When I made it back to the union hall, no one had changed. They each gave me a nice greeting. I put in for my next job. Nothing was available that day so I flew home, to New Jersey, unannounced.  

The first person I saw was Sam. It had been about a year. I knew he could have been a good football player. The kid stood over six feet tall. He looked healthy. He was strong. He had a gleam in his eye like he already had a plan in his life. 

I was friendly to him and said something like, “Hey, kid.” 

Gives me a great big hug. He was crying by then. I guess I started to tear up, too, standing next to him. Because the kid is just forget-it handsome, and he’s got the whole world in his own hand. 

Sam was unhappy about me and his mother. He knew that our not keeping it together was all going to end with everyone unhappy, all over again, like when he was a boy. The end of Marriage Number One had been hard on him. He knew that the end of Marriage Number Two meant we would sell his home just like we had sold the first one. 

He walked with me back into the farmhouse. He asked why Aoife’s new man, Terrence, was already living at the farmhouse.

I told him, “A guy is going to do what he thinks is right. A lot of people I know did a lot of things. I was doing something right, too, because I always worked. After everything was said and done, I knew I needed to earn enough to keep the show on the road.”

Sounded real calm to Sam. He just looked at me, like he was impressed. In my mind, I noted the man’s name as “Terrance,” but never showed my need for that knowledge to our son.

Ben came running right up to me. He burst out the front door of the farmhouse, running straight at me. Caught me by the head, and pulled me onto the grass. Together, the twins tried to pick me up, and then they did. My boys carried me into the kitchen. 

Straight out of Tartarus, Aoife started yelling at all of us. She lightened up when I told her to cool down, but she didn’t like the pressure. Then, eventually, she let me give her a tiny, little hug. I couldn’t resist giving her just one more hug because she really is a sexy woman. Then she let the boys give her a big hug, and each one did. They were crying hard so she settled them down by telling them how they are both fine sons to her all the time. For some reason, it was a good time we had together there in the kitchen. 

But then Aoife wasn’t right, again, and she shook her fist and pulled away from me and the boys. She made a comment about their intrusion. Everyone had to tell Aoife to lighten up.  

There was this strong tension in the room. Aoife and I never stopped looking right at one another. Neither of us knew what was coming, or what we needed to do, next.

Marcus and Sam were in the living room watching a television program. Handsome and dark, both of them were, like I am. Aoife may have been angry due to her red hair and her family’s lighter complexion. Everyone in our family ended up looking a lot like me. All four boys got to bragging. They told me they were ace’ing everything they had gotten into at school.

I teased Aoife. Even though we were about to end things, I loved my sons and a lot of her was there. Then I realized that she had cried but had hidden the fact when we were all kind of joking about their maturity. I couldn’t believe it. She just kept staring at me. That’s how I knew I had to get going.

Fiona, you were away at some sort of an acting camp, that day, per your mother. 

I told Aoife, “I can pick Fiona up tomorrow. She loves it whenever I surprise her.” So, you were already with me, in my mind, Fiona. It was better you didn’t show up. That get-together that afternoon was male-oriented. 

Aoife continued to just cry the whole time. Soon, everyone was looking at her. 

She said, “You could have called first instead of stressing the entire family’s packed schedules with a whim, Meade.”

Aoife was apparently now willing to turn the boys’ afternoon with us all getting together and talking for the first time in a year or two into something heavy. I just wanted to enjoy the feeling of the place. But between Aoife and I staring at each other, and our children’s concern over her tears, I could feel happiness falling away from us, practically dissolving under our feet, standing there in our kitchen. 

She said, “Meade, I didn’t know you were going to be here this weekend. Are you going to tell us to sell the place?” 

The farm wasn’t even being sold yet. It was just an unspoken thing that everyone knew could happen. When reality set in, and with the way things were in my life, I had no pull—no sway anywhere—to control the farm any longer. And Aoife was never going to ever say outright that she was sorry for anything that she had done to bring our marriage to its end. 

Later that night, I stayed up with my boys. I gave them each a beer even though they weren’t old enough. They were now apologizing for their mother’s bad behavior towards me. They found it irresponsible of her given all I had factually achieved on everybody’s behalf. It wasn’t a secret how I got the money to pay for everything. I simply got willing to work every day no matter my frame of mind. 

I didn’t want this emotional happening to change them or shape their minds. I asked them to consciously refuse to take on that part of her personality, later, inside their own lives. They saw how she was being distant with them, too, and it was not just me she hated, sometimes. 

They had a lot of jokes they had learned during their lives in New Jersey. They shared them. We were in the twins room. I was lying on their bed with Malcom and Ted. The twins were on the sofa and armchair they had somehow acquired from Terrence, their mom’s new man. They each apologized for liking the furniture, but they couldn’t help anything about it because both of his pieces were made from genuine leather.

The boys all joined in together to pump me up. Even the little guy, Ted, made a pissant out of himself just to get me to smile at his antics. He was just a toddler, but he started telling me about how I was the man who made it all happen, and that he knew who to protect me when it came to his mother. 

I told my boys, “There are people who don’t know a thing about what they are doing. You can’t tell them a thing.”

Then I gave them each a handshake. Then I gave them each a long hug.

“Are you guys going to get divorced?” asked Sam.

“That would be the second time,” said Ben.

I didn’t say anything. Didn’t want to set things off. I handed Sam the rest of the twelve-pack, bid them each goodnight, and I walked into the room Aoife and I shared. 

Aoife said, “I am not going to stay up. I am going right to sleep.” 

But before she fell asleep, she wanted to know why I was back.

I told her, “I’ve been gone for two years, almost. Give a guy a break, won’t you, please?”

She brushed off questions about Terrence. It was still clear to me that she had drifted elsewhere. I was no longer the mainstay of her heart. I wondered if I ever really was.

I sat on the end of the bed. She didn’t have the courage to tell me to sleep in another part of the house. To fill the space in the room, I started to talk. I told Aoife I was going back with the union, and leaving the oil boys. I was just waiting for a ship back at the union to call the oil company to officially, finally quit. 

Then it was like things hadn’t changed at all between us. 

Aoife sat up in bed and said, “Well, don’t quit until you catch another ship because we can’t lose a day on the payroll.”

“We’re not making it with the oil people. I’m headed back to Seattle. They already know.”

  “It’s not reliable. No, no, we are at least waiting until we have another ship. We are flat broke. Do not quit that job.”

I wanted to cut my ties, with them and even with her, now, because how could she never care about what things really had meant to me after all these years? It was not good between Aoife and I. Still, I almost always followed her instructions. Now, those instructions were guilt trips. I planned to throw everything into the fire. 

“You made all this happen, Meade.” Aoife said. She looked me straight in the eye and the look pierced the very lining of my heart. She told me, “You make it all happen in this family, in the end.”

I stopped by the twins’ room. The party had ended. The twins had gone to sleep on Terrence’s furniture. I carried the little ones to their room and tucked them in myself. Then, I slept on the couch. As I nodded to sleep in an easy chair that cost us nine hundred dollars I felt sweet content. 

That was a nice day. And it happened after one hell of a bad year at sea with the oil people. By the next morning, I let it go fully.

Thankfully, Terrence didn’t stop over. But, in the end, I knew they all had sided with their mom when the morning came.

Aoife said, “Meade, I didn’t know you were going to be here this weekend,” in front of my sons who each fell into that rapport with her because they had hangovers and couldn’t keep anyone’s schedule. 

However, I still followed her instructions and didn’t officially quit with the oil company right away. In less than a week, Aoife had received a letter telling us the oil company had officially laid me off. They didn’t tell me what happened to make them send the letter. The company also gave me an eight grand bonus. It was eight thousand dollars that told me to go away. It was a bigger reward than when I was busting my behind for them. It was just life. 

I let her bank it. 

“That’s how the oil boys do business.” I told Aoife . 

I always sided with Aoife, too, because she has the role of the mother of my children. By that time, we had walled off the dining room downstairs. That was where I had my primary landing pad. 

During the day, I took turns driving places with the children or walking around the blueberry manufacturing plant we had installed. No one had plans to use it, though.  

Aoife listened when I told her my frustration about time management, expenses and purchases. 

Aoife looked at me and said, “Well, go back to the union.”

“I’m already there, sweetheart.” I said. 

And it was just like a line from a ten-cent movie, the kind I grew up on. 

I walked outside and I shut the door. I left New Jersey later that day. 

The ten-cent movie that played was a beginning chapter instead of a final scene. I’m walking down the street, and the movie pans backward over my head and shoulders. It shows the whole scene of a guy like me starting out in life on his own, in his fifties, like it was just a big joke ever since time immemorial. 

In the union they give you a shipping card. The next job comes in, everyone throws their card down. The guy who has got the oldest card gets the best job there. I had been aging my card the whole time I was working with oil. When I put it in, it was stellar. I got offered a Chief’s job on a high-class merchant vessel, sailing as the ship’s Chief Engineer. Everything felt cool again. 

As for Aoife and as for my troubles in our relationship, I was kind of grateful I was getting a second chance at being divorced from 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