Sailing

Sailing


“Winken, Blinken, and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe
Sailed into a river of crystal light,
into a sea of dew.”

I woke from a deep sleep and quickly dressed trying not to make much noise. It was after midnight as we crossed the equator in the middle of the pacific. I climbed out of the porthole, slipped into the warm water and watched the lights of the ship grow faint as it moved on. I hadn't had
time to take much with me, deserting the ship had been a sudden decision, one of necessity. I didn't want to leave my men behind but even all my reasoning and pleading couldn't convince them that we had to “jump ship” as we say on the high seas. I was the only one who could see the water coming in. I'd waited as long as I could, it was almost up to my knees before I gave up. I threw a couple things in a sac, grabbed a life vest, and slipped out the stern porthole while everyone was still asleep.
They thought I was the crazy one. I felt their eyes rolling as I turned away, while they walked around the ship pants soaked from the waist down.
I treaded a few meters trying to get my bearings. We were way off course.
The salt had been seeping in for too long now, the wood was crumbling
around us. Still they didn't believe me. They were going to drown out there, sure as hell, and how was I going to explain that to the Admiral?
I sighed. At least the air was warm about eighty or so. I stared up at the sky trying to find the north star, I had always looked for it when I was sailing or fishing and feared getting lost. The clouds were rolling in heavy and dark. The air smelled like a storm. After thirty years on the
sea I accepted it. I knew I could not survive a bad storm with just a life jacket. I reached for my bag. I pulled out a stack of pictures, sealed to make them last longer, but there was only one I really wanted. I gazed at
the others briefly before tossing them to the hungry sea, crumbs from my hand to a pitiless mouth.
My mother's likeness, solid and square; she lived back east now with her sister, both of them getting along in their own way. I sent her what I could spare. Her eyes were the last to drift under the waves.
My wife. Posed with one arm raised sepia toned roses clinging to her hair. She was dead almost twenty five years, our only child with her. I couldn't remember their names, I had deliberately crossed them off the back. The anger had let up a bit, but I could still remember burning my bible page my page after the telegram had been read and torn, the prophet's
false words ringing in my ears.
“Love is patient, love is kind,love is eternal.” Bullshit. Love had given me less then a year of happiness, just long enough to know I would never find again what I had lost.
“Sophia.”
Her name tried to rise with the steam from beneath me. I kicked my feet and swam as far and long as I could to get away from that name. When I
stopped, lungs burning, I realized my bag was gone. All of the pictures had been lost but one. I looked at it.
Petey. My brother. My tormentor. My hero. He'd enlisted in the navy two summers before me and the months until I joined him were the longest of my life. I sat in the recruiter's office at seventeen and a half unable to
wait anymore,listed Petey as a reference and he'd lied, like any good brother would, to get me in. The Ensign said I was like a duck jumping into ten feet swells without a plan or a prayer. I was almost sure that was my first real compliment.
Then I got married, had a baby on the way, and got assigned to my
brother's ship. I read my bible every night thanking God for the blessing she had given me. That's when things started to go wrong. My wife died, six months gone with a little boy we never named. I could have gotten
leave, even during wartime if I'd wanted to see their grave, but I didn't and never have to this day. Then Petey took me into his cabin,the captain's cabin and ripped out whatever was left of God in my chest.
I'm leaving the navy Sam. I put in for a transfer.”
I stared at him his blue pants so crisp, his folded hat, the lines around
his mouth.
“Why?” I managed to ask. It was the only thing I could think of to say and as it turned out it was the last thing I ever said to him.
“I just can't do it anymore.”
And he was gone. I never spoke to him again. I got his position, his rank, and a letter from my mother saying he had joined the air corps and would like to stay in touch. Like hell. I never wanted to see him again.

“You were my idol, my brother, my hope! I would have died for you. I would have lived for you.”
All the things I wished I had said that day but couldn't get out. I'd left him with a short why and a long silence. Thirty years of silence.
The picture I held now showed the two of us on our sailboat when we were about ten. The boat's name was painted on the side. Winken, Blinken and Nod after the old nursery rhyme. I was Winken, Petey Blinken, and Nod we agreed was the north star our guide to our one dream of sailing high enough to touch it. I was hanging onto the sails one foot over the water, while Petey was looking down a nervous twist to his mouth. This was the face I thought of, when I thought of him at all, not the one who deserted me,betrayed me.
The storm had picked up. I told myself to move with the tides, instinct and training comforting me. One side of my life vest was being torn away by the currents, I could have pulled it closed but I wouldn't let go of the
picture, so I let the ocean take my float the bright colors streaking to the west like the setting sun I would never see again. I could paddle with the best of them, for hours if I had to, but for what? No one even knew I was missing yet,and who would come out into the storm for one lost man?
I laid on my back and floated. I swallowed a lot of water but it didn't seem to matter, and when I finally went under it mattered even less. Tiny fish swam giddily around me until a white snake descended through the black
and they scattered. It moved towards me slowly. I blinked my eyes burned raw from the salt. It was a rope. I grabbed it and held on as I rose to the surface gasping in the suddenly cooler air. A large ship had appeared
alongside me. The sea was quiet, as still as the mill pond we has once tried to coax a breeze from. I lay panting on the deck, my red eyes trying to focus on the name I had glimpsed on the side of the ship. Was she
friend or foe?
A hand pulled me up and I looked into a face I knew well. My brother tall
and straight, a bit older, but he was smiling and wearing his old captain's bars,identical to my own.
“Glad to have you aboard sailor.” he said cheerfully.
“That's sir to you.” I replied and he grinned again.
“Just like old times Sammy.”
“Yeah,” I paused choking back the seawater that wanted to come up.
“I'm gonna say this quick in case I'm dreaming or something, but thanks for pulling me out, I don't deserve it I guess after not talking to you all those years. I was mad when you left but you must have had your reasons.”
His eyes shifted from mine gray as the waves beneath us
“I did. And Sam , I never told you ….or anyone I guess, but would you ever have believed this sailor never learned to swim?”
“What?” I couldn't understand. “Of course you did! You were in the navy, on ships...”
“Oh, I took lessons managed to fake a few tests, but...” he paused. “ I always sank like a stone.
I never got over it. I always knew the sea was waiting to take me down. So I left. I guess, I should have told you why.”
Then he laughed.
“I took to the air instead. The sky's not as deep.” his voice lowered. “But it sure felt it when I got shot down.”
I watched his eyes closely.
“But you came out here to get me. In the storm. Weren't you afraid?”
He clapped me on the back.
“I couldn't just let you go down could I? Besides you've been waiting a long time for me.”
“Not too long.” I reminded him. “I left the ship only a couple of hours ago.” I grabbed his arm. “ I didn't want to leave my men behind! You believe me don't you, you'll help me explain? Why couldn't they see the leak!”
He traced his fingers down my face finding long grooves I never saw in the mirror.
“Petey,” I whispered. “How long was I on that ship?”
“It sank a hundred years ago,” he said calmly “or just about. All souls were lost.”
I gripped his cold fingers against my cheek.
“You weren't ready to get off Sammy, that's all. You just kept on going, kept on sailing. You did your duty, you saw what you needed to see. Your men were a reason to stay, the leak was a reason to leave, you had to make a choice. Some people fight the current and they don't even realize they're doing it. They push and push until they can't anymore.”
He smiled and held on to my own elbows,my skin wrinkled and dry. “You never did want to get out of the water.”
I thought for a moment.
“So if I'm dead, why did you pull me out? I wouldn't have drowned.”
He looked down at the dark sea.
“There are lots of different ways of going under,” he said and pointed ahead “Look!”
I gazed out over the ocean, smooth as our mother's hand. Faraway I could see the other side of the storm. We were in the eye. The waves ahead were
roiling, waiting patiently for the white ship.
“Will we make it through Petey?” I asked softly, watching his face drift backwards to ten, and eight, and younger still.
“Look up!”
I did. I saw the north star right above us. Our third sailor. The Nod ahead waving us on. I closed my eyes. My voice as it rose to meet my brother's sounded young and very far away.
“So shut your eyes while Mother sings
Of wonderful sights that be,
And you shall see the beautiful things
As you rock in the misty sea,
Where the old shoe rocked the fisherman three:
Winken,
Blinken,
And Nod.”





“Winken, Blinken, and Nod, by Eugene, Field, 1850-1895
Found in the Oxford book of Children's Verse.”