FAIGAN'S DREAM                                 BY TOM VAN GEMERT

I awoke to the familiar sounds of Faigan bailing water and snorted in disgust. He didn’t hear me but I almost wished he had. I slept to keep food and water off my mind. It was hard to believe that it was only yesterday that the old Magdaline went down and we both clambered into the leaky dinghy, the only survivors. All signs of the storm were gone and the sun cast its rays down on our blistered skin. The ocean was calm and I still couldn’t see a glimpse of land in any direction.

He tossed one last pailful of water over the side and plopped down with a faint splash, closing his eyes and gasping for air. At first I had felt guilty about not bailing as much as he. But now I just lay back and relax, waiting for the sea’s comfortable embrace to take me away. It was hopeless, our situation. I knew that any noble seaman would be disgusted by this attitude but I couldn’t really get myself to care anymore. Nobody was watching us - save the fish, and they weren’t going to tell anyone. All we had to do was yield. I could hear the waves laughing at us and I’ll have to admit I even felt embarrassed. “Laugh at him!” my mind would shout. “He’s the one who thinks he can withstand your power - not me!” I remember waking up the night before, choking on sea water and practically floating. I didn’t make a sound in fear of waking him and tried to go back to sleep. He did wake up, damn him, shouting at me to get up and bail. For a moment I sat there with the water well above my waist, half determined to resist him. And he looked up from his fast bailing, head steady, locking eyes with me. I couldn’t find the slightest hint of fear in those eyes. What I could see, however, was a bold persistence laced with anger. He sent a tension into me through that stare and it began to ring in my ears so loud that I couldn’t hear the sea laughing anymore.

Standing up, I began dredging the water out with my hands, and shook my head when I recalled the time a few months back on the Magdaline when there were two mackerel on the lines and I was the only one on deck. I shouted for help, and when I looked over my shoulder, he was peeking out from below. He popped back down, but I knew it was him because I could see the brown curls and the balding head. I was angry that he hadn’t helped out, but I never said anything. I ended up losing both lines and the captain threw a fit, but I never said anything.

Now he lay there leaning with his back against the bow. His long pointy nose and bald spot were bright red and his lips were blistered all over. His tattered, salt stained rags rustled around his wiry frame from the faint eastern breeze. For a long time I had been contemplating why he was so destined to keep us afloat. On board the Magdaline he had been a loafer, working only as much as he had to and no more. Whenever the captain wasn’t around, he’d be leaning on the rails or sitting on a slop bucket, staring at the sea.

I remember the day six months or so ago when he first came aboard. We were in Kittybunkport, Maine to unload.

“I’d like you all to meet Faigan,” the captain said. “He will be lending us a hand. Lord knows we could use one.”

The entire crew was lined up on deck to meet him as was the captain’s ritual. Faigan crossed the wide plank slowly, staring up at the masts with a look almost of awe, as if he were just now realizing how big the ship actually was. Holding a little black pipe between his teeth, he shook hands with each of us in turn. After the introduction, the captain mentioned how he and Faigan had been crew mates ten years back on a smaller ship called the Ugly Anne. Faigan frowned at the words “crew mates” but then raised his chin slightly at the mentioning of the ship’s name.

He put a feeling of edginess in the crew during the months that followed. His eyes were always darting around and his fingers fidgeted. He hardly ever spoke but was always observing everything going on around him. He was constantly throwing tin cans at the seagulls, but his aim was so poor I never saw him come close to hitting one. Every now and then he’d shout out a harsh command with a strong confident voice and then blink and look sheepish when everyone glared back at him in puzzlement. And every time he’d lose a mackerel, he’d throw fits and kick at the rails, coming very close to snapping them. We finally decided to go and talk to the captain about it one day and were surprised when he cackled and assured us that Faigan was harmless.

“Don’t worry boys,” he said, scratching his grizzly chin, “That man is just getting used to the sea again.” Upon further inquiry, he’d just shake his head and mumble that it wasn’t important. Then the ridiculous house of cards he was working on collapsed and he slammed his fist on his desk and we saw it best to leave.

That night at supper the captain had three bottles of wine opened and the crew was soon in a drunken stupor. I, detesting the taste of wine, sat back and enjoyed them all making fools of themselves. Faigan didn’t appear to be drinking either. He sat with his chair back from the table, elbows on knees, staring at the tiny, infinite bubbles as if lost in some daydream. The captain stood up with glazed eyes and raised his goblet.

“I’d like to make a toast,” he declared. After spilling half the glass onto his shirt and bursting into laughter, he regained some composure and then continued: “Here’s to our pasts, our times of glory......Our failures are best forgotten,” and everyone raised their goblets. Then fat Fogder fell out of his chair and the table exploded with laughter. I had kept my eyes on the captain, however, for he wasn’t laughing and had been looking at Faigan ever since his last line. And Faigan was returning the stare and I noticed a shiny wetness in his eyes. The captain nodded his head to Faigan’s full goblet. Faigan stood up slowly and lifted the glass off the table. Then he downed all the red liquid in two fast gulps. The captain smiled at him and he smiled back, a smile with a firmness in the jaw muscle, a flash of strength in the eye.

That night in the sleeping quarters, Faigan played his flute as we lay in our bunks dozing off. His music sounded different than usual. The notes held longer and he played a melody I had never heard him play before. It sounded so distant yet present. So deep yet at the same time, near the surface. It found its way into every crack of every floorboard and put a shiver through my soul.

On the third day in the dinghy we found enough seaweed to fill the cracks and didn’t have to bail as much anymore. When the sun reached its noon peak, the sizzling heat made the dinghy like a frying pan, and I lay there watching my arms and legs, half expecting them to melt away and bubble. At one point I remember opening my eyes and seeing what appeared to be a flock of gliding seagulls miles above my head but when I blinked they disappeared. Faigan, who had been sleeping, awoke abruptly, looked around in all directions, then lay back down, chuckling.

“I just had the best dream I’ve ever had,” he said smiling with his eyes closed, facing the sky. Then he tilted his head down and looked right at me. “A big white ship with three masts and twenty sails,” he exclaimed, holding his hands out wide apart. “And I,” he said waving a thumb at himself, “I was captain.”

Then he stood up in the middle of the dinghy with his arms spread apart. “We caught three-hundred mackerel a day.” He pointed at me with a lazy arm. “We used one of those gigantic nets. And at the end of the day we had the biggest stack of tuna you’ve ever seen in the center of the boat. Each one of ‘em must of weighed a ton at the least.” I kept blinking but he remained standing there, shimmering in the haze.

He took his pipe and tobacco out of the metal canister in his breast pocket and soon little wisps of smoke were puffing rapidly out the sides of his mouth. The sun caught the shiny strip of metal around the pipes rim, and I turned to the part of the horizon that Faigan’s eyes were lost in.

He continued to speak, only slower now, arms loose at his sides: “When the glorious day was over, it was time for supper and we’d sit down to a wonderful feast. The beautiful cook with the red hair and apron would bring in plate after plate of the best food the sea has to offer while we took turns telling tales.”

He paused as a gust of wind rose from the east which sent his brown curls waving wildly about his head. My nostrils caught the smell of his cherry tobacco and I looked up surprised to see him still standing with his feet together, his balance unaffected by the wind and the waves.

When the wind stopped, he continued: “My turn came around and I took a sip of wine. I told them of the time ten years back when I was skipper on the Ugly Anne, catching haddock off the coasts of Martha’s Vineyard. When night came and we were heading in to dock, a fog thicker than cotton rolled in.”

Then he rolled his head back and laughed a juicy cackle which turned into a cough. “Can you imagine it?” he said turning to look straight into my eyes. I nodded and smiled, not knowing what to make of the whole display.

“There I stood in the center of my ship,” he exclaimed, still looking directly at me, “the East Chop Light nowhere to be seen. All I could see were the pale faces of each of my crewmen looking to me for a command. I grabbed hold of the helm, closed my eyes, and using a sense I never knew I had, eased her right into harbor.”

He chuckled again, this time it was more of a wheeze, and began to sit down. “Later,” he said, “the oiler told me that he had seen a crag of rock pass within inches of the bow.” He leaned back and rested his pipe on his lap, still looking at me as if for a reply.

“Weren’t you afraid?” I heard myself say.

“Yes, quite so,” Faigan replied, closing his eyes as if expecting the question. “But when you’re captain, you have to learn to put the fear aside and take control. For the day you let that fear take over is the day you lose it all.”

I took his answer in and thought about it for a full minute before I blinked and became conscious of the sounds and sight of the open sea all around me. “And this was all a dream?” I whispered, wincing from the sore dryness in my throat.

He didn’t answer. His pipe had rolled off his lap and soft snores gargled from his half gaped mouth. Then I sat up and looked at him closely, thinking real hard about what I had just seen and heard. Had it actually happened?

The sun had begun to descend but the heat was still sweltering. I checked the horizon in all directions for a glimpse of land or boat. A dark patch in the sky far off in the east was the last thing I remembered seeing when I fell asleep.

I awoke to a thunder clap and the image of Faigan’s face screaming at me all twisted up and contorted. The flash from the lightening caught every detail - the gaping mouth, the soaked curls, the rain dripping from his sharp nose and chin. I lay there numb, not knowing where I was or what to do. A wave crashed over me and I sat up, choking and shivering, to see Faigan on his knees, heaving water over the sides with the tin bucket.

“Bail!” he screamed in a commanding voice, louder than the thunder. I started splashing water over the sides with cupped hands as another wave poured over us. No matter how futile our situation seemed, the sight of Faigan bailing more ferociously every time the last wave cleared, kept me going.

Then I saw through the torrent of rain the bobbing red cap of a lobster buoy.

“Look, a buoy!” I shouted, clutching his shoulder. He glanced up but wouldn’t look to where I was pointing.

“We can grab on to it and float!” I yelled into his ear.

“Bail, man!” he shrieked, “We can keep her up. Bail!”

Another wave sent me flailing into the pool that had formed and getting up as fast I could, I looked for the buoy. A vein of lightning lit up the violent waters for an instant and there it was, bobbing amongst the waves.

I looked to Faigan one more time. Every pailful of water he splashed out was replaced by ten pails of rain and sea. I screamed and shouted and grabbed his shoulder again but he wouldn’t respond. He was in a sort of trance and the rhythm of his arms moved in time with the waves.

It was difficult tearing away from him. I felt like a traitor when I dove towards the buoy but I knew he was no longer aware of my presence and that I couldn’t help him in any way. When I reached the solid metal, I held on to it as tight I could. Looking back through the dark showers and waves I tried to catch a last glimpse of him. At first I saw nothing. But then for a moment, a bolt of lightning illuminated the surroundings leaving me with an image that will never decay in my mind. There he stood in the center of the sinking dinghy, the waters shifting in every direction all around him. The flash cast his shadow onto the smooth wave behind him and the tin bucket raised above his head shone like silver. And when the light was gone, I was inspired by the idea that not a wave in the sea could strike him down.

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