Chickenhawk: Back in the World

After lunch, John said we were going to remove the toilet from the head. “Thing takes up room,” he said. “One extra bale is another fifteen thousand dollars.” I went below, got a box of wrenches, and went to the head. I wasn’t going to miss the commode; we never used it, used a bucket instead, but it cost over a thousand dollars and it seemed wasteful to just toss it overboard. I got it undone and hauled it on deck. John grabbed it by its pump handle and swung it overboard. Made a big splash. Ireland suggested a possible threat to the world by our actions: “What if some fish hits that handle?” Ireland said. “Gurgle, gurgle, gone. Whole fucking Atlantic, down the drain.”

Two dolphins came over and played with the bow. I suppose they were scouts because five minutes after they arrived, a whole herd swam over to us, adults and babies. Nearly fifty dolphins surrounded us, diving and blowing, coming to within three feet of the boat. I’d never been so near these animals. Up close and alive, they’re beautiful to see. I went out on the bow pulpit with my camera and watched them dart back and forth in front of the bow. Now and then, one would swim on its side and stare back at me. I took close-ups of dolphins staring at me with their built-in smiles that come from a hundred thousand years of laughing. The whole world, most of it anyway, is home to dolphins. What a life. No mortgages, no traffic jams, always plenty of fresh food swimming around. Get laid whenever you want—if you’re a dolphin. They spend more time fucking than people do. The guys have bright red retractable dicks and they fuck on the fly. I saw a couple of the guys roll over and flip me a dick. Same as the finger? Maybe. They’re smart enough. They’d developed their language before we figured out that vines were for swinging. I envied them their freedom. A dolphin, gliding effortlessly through the water beneath me, stared me right in the eyes for a while, saying, Yeah that’s an interesting thing you’re on, but what happens to you when it sinks? You don’t look like you can swim too good. You’ve got weird-looking flippers. Yeah? I said. Well you can’t drive a car or fly a plane; don’t even know what the hell they are. True, said the dolphin. Do you?

The dolphins stayed with us for half a day and moved off toward the southeast, to wherever they’d been going before they met us. I had the feeling we had been a kind of dolphin tourist attraction, a diversion on a long trip.

At sunset, a cruise ship passed us, coming to within a hundred yards of the Namaste. I got out the binoculars and watched a young couple standing at the railing, dressed in their cocktail-hour clothes, holding drinks. The guy waved, the girl looked at us with concern. We must have looked awfully tiny to them. We certainly felt tiny. Each of their twenty lifeboats was twice as big as the Namaste. The Love-Boaters walked around on their gyro-stabilized, speeding behemoth like they were partying on the front lawn of a country estate—tent pavilions, strings of glittering lights, waiters, guests sipping martinis and chattering about business and sex. We were sailing at seven knots, but the cruise ship passed us like we were anchored. “Dammy,” Ireland said. “How does something that big move that fast?”

The wind held steady and strong for two days before it began to slacken. We slowed to three or four knots in the middle of the Caribbean. Still running with the wind, the relative wind—the breeze we felt—was almost gone. The sun began to fry us. It was difficult to believe that just two weeks earlier we were freezing in Jacksonville. Now we were trying to stay cool wearing swimsuits or nothing. The resulting sunburns made us feel even hotter.

On Christmas day, we made a special meal: noodles, peas, and canned chicken. I read the letter Patience had dated for Christmas:

… and I suppose you found a tree to decorate somewhere in the ocean? Ho, Ho. (Christmas humor) I miss you more than I can stand. I missed you even before you left. This is the second Christmas you’ve missed. Don’t let it happen again! I love you. P.

Yeah. Christmas in Vietnam. Now this. The two events seemed related. Both were in the tropics; both happened while I was on missions I didn’t want to be doing. I felt lonely for Patience and Jack. I felt like a failure. If I was any kind of provider, I thought, I wouldn’t have to make them put up with brainstorms like this one. I resolved that I’d make up for it after the trip.

The trip was my panacea. Every problem I had was going to be solved with thirty thousand dollars. I’d have time to write; we’d be able to pay off the car; I could add on a small addition to the cabin so Jack would have his own room; we needed a new well. Thirty thousand would cover all that with plenty left over. The scammers kept saying: Wanting; having. I wanted lots of things; I was going to have them; if we could just make this work.