(Short Story) If We Now Are Dead - Part 1

A conscripted pirate, estranged from his love, fights for a life of peace.

I dreamt of Bellflowers and Poppies, Fields of endless Colour disrupting the dejection of an endless Toil, and you were with me lying out amongst the Flowers, an odiferous Tryst, my Alessandra; As the Sun began to burn our Faces, the ev’r present Sun and Sky, we stood and we march’d Indoors into the little House built with certain Brick, and we found a Place ev’r more comfortable to lay, and It was far away from ev’r Here again.

The waves of the churning ocean turned the concept of fanciful, learned handwriting into a mess of shapes and syllables in practice. But as Joseph Bledsoe came to close out his written letter, he knew there need not be a single legible word. The document in its very conception spoke to his love. This, she too would know.

Matthias Wolcott loomed over his shoulder, making a considerable effort to read the parchment but soon thereafter giving up. He was not quite sure what contributed most: the swaying ship, the dim lamplight, or the scribbled mess as a consequence of both. The letter was then rolled up and stuffed into a brown, opaque bottle for purpose of preservation. Beneath Joseph’s feet, a crate with a dozen more stacked in an orderly fashion.

“Another letter?” Matthias asked.

“More a poem,” Joseph corrected. The bottle clinked with happy union as it joined the crate.

“That woman will be so inundated with reading upon your arrival that she'll have time for little else.”

“We’ll make the time.”

“Alright, come. Best to prepare now.”

Deep in the hull of the ship, many of the other men—hardy men—prepared themselves physically and mentally for the impending battle. The fumes of sulfur and saltpeter wafted through the air. A bitter smell. Cannons were being rolled to their ports with furious intent. 

And Joseph simply waited for her. Brown hair, fair skin, soft curves. He waited with her. Green eyes, button nose, thin lips. In his hand was a gold coin-sized locket with her portrait in fine, miniature detail. In transfixation, he did not move. In transfixation, he was moved. Joseph did a delicate dance with its chain between his fingertips, the lightweight metal tickling his skin as he toys with it. 

But a firm hand clasped his wrist. He had entirely forgotten the request.

“Are you listening, man?” Matthias asked, “Put to halt your obsession.”

“What?” He heard him that time. Joseph pushed his chair out and stood to confront the looming man. Even on both feet he was forced to look up with his short stature, but he made sure to stand tall, nonetheless. 

“You've daily letters to merely broach once again the growing sentiment. Steel yourself for the battle ahead or you won't live to see her.”

Joseph finally yanked his wrist out of the dirt covered hands of the senior carpenter. They were noticeably less calloused, having been hardened by pen and not plank. That was the paradox of Matthias Wolcott. A seasoned, learned man who plied his craft not in a guild or shop but on the waters. Reinforcer of ill matters. Fine detail for the crude.

“It's the curse of us, yes?” Matthias said, “Pirates. Men at sea. Our transience requires no anchor. Else we're halved, unwhole and weak.”

“Have you no cherishment?”

“I cherish the integrity of my brothers.”

“No woman,” Joseph clarified. It was a question, but his apparent irritation made it come off declarative.

“The wandering mind lays ruin. I've seen it.”

Joseph had never seen battle. Not like a former privateer has. A number of attacks and boarding parties, by then, but never reciprocal combat. The bounty-hunting brigantine in pursuit was about to put to end a streak of twenty-three successful, uncontested raids by the ensign of Captain Edward Meyrick. Or at least it would try. Its captain, former naval rear-admiral Roger Dawdry, sure did love to try.

“You can have all the women you like in Laurent’s Bay.”

“We’re to try for child. I'll have nought.”

“Aye.”

Matthias held out his left hand, beckoning it. The locket.

Joseph hesitated, thumbing the locket as though the gold would rub off and bless him with luck. A raging bout of forgetfulness, or the runny shits. Anything for his departure. It wasn’t as though Joseph was about to turn away from his obligations.

“I’ll raise the matter again with the boatswain,” Matthias said, “this I assure you. Only after.”

Know the value of a carpenter upon a splintering kingdom. Understand its certainty beneath a despotic king. The irreplaceable foundation. Joseph knew months ago, under the white flag of his merchant’s vessel. He knew he was never going to see his Alessandra again. Not with Meyrick. Was her image visual eulogy?

He looked down at the locket. She returned his gaze, her emerald eyes, from a moment in time of unneeding expectancy. The two were a certainty. They certainly were. He then thought to himself, if we now are dead, we bled slowly. He often tried not to think to himself.

“All hands!”

The words rang out faintly from the surface of the ship, and once more much louder as it danced outward with more men’s affirmations. 

“ALL HANDS!”

“Stations!”

Bledsoe, as if being snapped out of a trance-like state once more, immediately handed the locket to his superior. There was no exceptionalism to forlorn madness. At that moment, there was only duty. The command wasn’t new to Bledsoe, not in the slightest, but he had the faintest clue of what would come after it now. A cacophonous affair, surely.

 The two carpenters immediately reset themselves to rigor and routine upon hearing the words. Well, one did before the other. As the footsteps trailed away, entering a single organism of other footsteps heading to their marks, Matthias remained.

He hovered over the desk still, with the locket in his hand. The look of love was permanently placed delicately within its frame. His reminder. For all of the man's expertise in woodworking, he could not fortify himself at this moment. He started to remember youth and dreams. Something similar to a bed of roses in a peace-time countryside valley. Trudy, and then later on Alice. They chose the valley, he chose the sea. Both beat the city, he thought at the time.

If not solitude and heritage in his legacy, then attribution to the history books. He deserved this at least, for what the crown put him through. If not his name on others’ lips for decades to come, then the monster he helped create. And its erasure was an imminence.

Before heading above deck, Matthias made sure to tuck the locket deep in his pocket and stuff it with cloth so even overboard it would not leave his side. They all had long ago.

The sky above was a swirl of light grey, and the dim clouded sun blinded them until their eyes readjusted. A crowd of bodies collected on the deck of the ship. The gunners began loading their cannons and swivels. Dozens threw themselves at the rigging and sails in preparation for the heaving efforts. Somewhere in the mess of things were the carpenters.

“Carpenters!”

Joseph and two other carpenters ran over to the voice of boatswain, a nearing-middle-age Silas Leary. He looked past the men expectantly, and soon enough Matthias Wolcott arrived.

“Harrison, I want you down in the orlop. Wolcott, you're on main and you follow my command. Bledsoe, you’re with Perch on the gun deck and I want you to assist the surgeon, time comes.”

“Me?” he asks, as if not already knowing the answer.

“Yes.”

There was a light fog covering the coastal waters, a curtain pulled to hide absolute darkness. The black flag of Edward Meyrick had no fearful onlookers, not in this haze. The canvas flapped with the wind; it danced alone. But not for long.

“Clear the deck!” the quartermaster hoarsely cried. Harrison, Perch, and Bledsoe dashed for the hatch, doing everything but dropping straight into the ship's core.

The word surgeon kept echoing in Joseph’s head as he submerged into the ship underbelly.