whitt45

Also posted on lit.org. This isn't my best stuff, but that's been submitted so I can't post it. Fire at Will! Arr - whitt45
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The Last Voyage of the Brig Matanzas
Josh Whitt

Every trip started the same way, with me giving a speech and playing at being happy. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking, and I’d like to welcome you aboard the Brig Matanzas, touring the St. Augustine Bay and the Intracoastal Waterway. Thank you for joining us today for our day cruise ” Or evening cruise, as the case may be. I turned the lifejacket demonstration over to my crewmen, Matthew and Chris, and after we shoved off, I would let a couple of the tourists raise the mainsail. They ate that shit up.

We would pass under the famous drawbridge, after the radio call: “Bridge of Lions, this is the Brig Matanzas, we are northbound for six o’clock, over.” The bridge operators loved having an excuse to hold up traffic, it amused them to no end to sit in the control rooms and watch the tourists curse them. They would acknowledge me on the radio, and we would loop around the inlet until such time when the bridge would open. After five years of three trips a day I had this down to a science. I’d served on this boat under the last captain, old man Clark, who had retired two years into my tenure after repeated complaints from customers that he took the crusty old salt thing a little bit too far. The last straw came when Captain Clark had actually threatened to keelhaul his other mate – for those uninitiated, that means to hang them from the side of the ship let them bounce around off the keel of the vessel -- when he wasn’t tying off the jib runners fast enough for his liking. That offended a lady lawyer that had chartered; she did what lawyers do, and Clark’s last order before his early retirement was to appoint me to succeed him as captain.

I could make nautical jokes for the whole trip and as long as I didn’t repeat myself the customers thought I was hilarious. On our tours we would pass under the drawn bridge into the St. Augustine Bay, smooth and tranquil; dolphins swam here. To the left would be the Castillo de San Marcos, the old Spanish fort, bristling with cannon and mortars and built on memories of death and pestilence, spun into adventure for the pale folks to chew on. Most curious visitors did not consider the misery of the place, merely the architecture; St. Augustine had a bloody past; Matanzas was Spanish for “slaughters.” To the right, the homes of the wealthy grew out of the shore like jolly tumors, with their boats hanging on their davits, barnacle-safe and in full display for their neighbors’ benefit. There was a movement last year to make davits illegal, because the boats when raised would block the other wealthy persons’ view. Past the bridge and the fort, we turned to starboard, heading east.

The wind would usually blow against us, so I discreetly throttled up the engine and we made the trip out under diesel power. Occasionally a purist would complain that we were ‘cheating’ by using an engine. As a relatively seasoned sailor, I knew that I’d rather have a motor than a bunch of sailcloth any day, and that this particular brig was fiberglass and aluminum and steel, so authenticity was far beyond moot, but I could see their point, too. The company advertised us as a sailing tour, not a half-sail-half-motorboat tour, and I didn’t care much for being told half-truths either.

We would sail to the end of the inlet, nearly to the ocean, at which point we would make a one hundred and eighty degree turn to port, sailing back up the St. John’s. I would cut the engine, ridding us of the stink of the diesel fumes, and the crew and I would set the sails for a slow cruise along the wild edges of the river. Then things would get chilly, and we would pass over the place that I could not bear to see.

At this point I’d have to go below decks for a spell, passing the helm to one of my mates. Of late this was Matthew, usually; Chris had been slacking off, but after three years of service with no promotion to show for it, I would, too. He was going to college, and simply liked the job, he had told me; otherwise he would have quit by now. Matthew, on the other hand, was an old Coastie like me and he had nothing better to do. He wasn’t married, but he tended to date nurses, since they made good money here.

My ship was not big enough to quarter one person or three by today’s standards, but I had an office of sorts, in the back near the engine. It was in the corner - a small table, with photographs of her, and a book. It was her favorite, To Kill a Mockingbird; a leather-bound edition that she had found at a rare and curious oddities type of shop in Daytona, of all places. She was my fiancée, Melissa Dawn Kilgore, and she had drowned on this spot, two years, ten months, and 22 days ago. I could always tell by the angle of the shoreline, as I saw it from the helm.

It was, pardon the cliche, a perfect murder. I had secured a pass for her at the office, and I took her out on the evening cruise, to demonstrate my authority over the mates and my command of the high seas. She didn’t know any better. She was leaning out a bit over the side, holding the set rigging, and a grinning moron on a WaveRunner pulled in close to inspect the brig. Its impeller’s blowoff as it turned away had sprayed sea water onto the deck, and into her face. She brought her hands to her eyes instinctively, and with no grip on the rigging, a suddenly wet deck, and a swell inbound from the little waterbike, she lost her footing and tumbled overboard. She struck her head on the gunwale, and was unable to swim as the brig pulled her into its undertow, drowning her. We were all too cool and experienced to wear life jackets.

After the incident, the company had offered me a month off with pay, and a waiver of liability. You know, for her death. This was very generous of them, so I took it, and that may have been a mistake. Without anything to distract me, I mourned for every hour of that month. My parents, who had come to stay with me, had tried to engage me, to get me out of town, but I wouldn’t have it. That would be dishonoring her, and besides, it was my penance to face it, daily, when I would go to the marina and look out at the water that I used to love.

At the funeral Melissa’s dad had said to me, “Greg, you are a fine young man, and I know that you would have done nothing at all to hurt my daughter. I want us to remain close.” I told him that I didn’t know if I could handle that yet. He said that he would be there when I could, and we shook hands. She was 22, and in these pictures, her smile was a white scythe, cutting me to the bone every damned time I looked at the pictures. I could not stop looking, even so.

The story of her death had been taken regional by some crusading newspaperman out of Atlanta that had it in for boats, and it took some time for the rumors to die down about the Brig Matanzas being a death trap. Then, the off-season came, and with it, the rest of the town commenced to worrying more about being broke due to the lack of tourists than things like girls that fell overboard. I for one continued to worry about Melissa, which you must understand. When they pulled her out, she had already been a third eaten by crabs and other ocean-going vermin, and the thought and picture of that still hit my stomach like swallowing concrete. I no longer ate seafood.

Now when I sailed, I would stay below and reflect for the necessary amount of time, twice a day. When I ventured topside I would not look back. On this, the last time, I rose through the hatch and I saw that Matthew had kept us reasonably on course, but that he had handed off to Chris as he went to jabber with some of the passengers. The J&B that I had downed still burnt my throat, and I was feeling very maritime indeed.

“Avast, swab,” I said to Chris as I sidled up beside him, and he chuckled nervously, turned away from me. I was neglecting my tour guide duty, but sometimes I did that, and nobody really seemed to notice, or care. “What’s up?” I asked him.

“Nothing, just hanging back,” he said, nervously.

I said, “Something wrong,” a formality.

Chris’ eyes darted about and he gulped. “I shouldn’t tell you this.”

“What?” I said.

“You see that guy up there with the redhead?” Couples were our main customers; they found the trips around the bay and inlet to be romantic. I knew how ridiculous they were, they with their idiotic assertions of infinite and inevitable goddamn bliss. They didn’t see it that way, though, and that’s ok - someone has to keep dreams alive.

He grimaced, and said, in one exhale,“That’s the guy was on the WaveRunner. I didn’t tell you.” He made his way to the foredeck.

I couldn’t be sure. That guy had been wearing a life vest, sunglasses, and trunks. Between the three, a person could be made to look totally different from how they look in their plain clothes. Then, the man smiled, and I knew Chris was right. The teeth were unmistakable, white like Melissa’s. That’s probably how Chris had figured it out. Matthew was a better sailor, having trained a year or two after me, but Chris had the better eyes, and the better memory.

The next few moments were remarkable for their clarity. I wondered what exactly that my fiancee’s murderer, the man who had taken her away from me, was doing on my ship, with his girlfriend; we were the only ship of our type to sail out of St. Augustine so ignorance was not a viable excuse. He had to have known; it came time.

I went back down to my office and this time I came back topside immediately, with the bottle. I drank it openly, from the neck, out the side of my mouth, staring ahead at nothing. The passengers regarded me with amusement, most half in the bag themselves from the free wine and beer. Matthew came back to the helm; he had been briefed by Chris.

“You OK?” He asked me, stupidly.

“Yeah, Sherlock, I’m just peachy fucking keen, you know?” I snorted and drank. Damn

“It’s the guy with the teeth, right?” I made no response. “Wanna take it out to sea?” His eyes gleamed, and the light bulb came on.

I slapped Matthew on the back, and gave him the order to stand by the topsail. I spun the wheel to port and we heeled over in a sharp turn; we made for the ocean, eastbound again under diesel power at full throttle. The fishermen on the beach at the north side of the inlet gaped at the brig in astonishment, as we hadn’t been out to sea in several years, and fishermen, even amateurs on the beach with their mullet rigs, know all the port business in ocean towns. The water itself was unnaturally calm that day, as if it were waiting for me to start trouble. Still yet, a calm ocean is a lot rougher than a choppy inlet, and most of the passengers were heaving their free food and drink out over the rails by the time we made it 200 meters out.

Mr. Teeth, captain of the WaveRunner Piss-Ant, was not one of the ill. He stood tall on his sea legs, looking straight at me, and I was chilled, by his brazen apathy and stony gaze. I took another gulp of the whiskey and coughed up the fumes. “Explain yourself, motherfucker,” I said, as I pointed at him with my bottle hand, in the manner of Blackbeard and other pirates.

He said, “I came out here,” he paused as a bow wave sprayed him, “to apologize to you.” His skin was the color of dried tobacco and he smelled of Italian perfumes. His companion regarded him with sickening worship. It was just the three of us on the boat now, functionally speaking. The rest of the hands were either quietly watching or loudly wretching, and could not speak.

“What?” I squinted, not sure I heard him right. I stepped toward him; Chris had came astern to keep the wheel. “You’re going to apologize?”

He spoke very clearly and with grand enunciation. “I’m sorry. I did not mean for anyone to die that day. I have nightmares,” he said, and salt water on his face confused me; I was blurry myself. “I think about her, too, you know, I saw her, I saw the look on her face, I saw her go overboard, but I couldn’t come back before she went under.” He gulped.

I cleared my throat; I spit. “Don’t fucking lie to me. You turned around and were driving away when she went over. You were 100 yards away when she drowned. I can see every last detail of it every day and you will not corrupt it or question me.” Wide-eyed, he had no response, so I kept on. “We were going to be married,” I said, “and you took that away from me, my future life.” I was in his face now. “Your negligence took her away, stole the woman I loved, and you will pay for it.” I switched the bottle to my left hand and wiped my face with my shirttail

He held his hands up. “I can understand why you’re angry –“

“You don’t understand shit,” I roared, and I threw the best right haymaker ever thrown in or around St. Augustine. He took it on the chin, and I felt his jaw give under my hand as he crumpled to the deck. His girlfriend came at me flailing hands and feet. I backhanded her across the face and she sprawled out behind me, sobbing and educated. I looked down at Mr. Teeth, his jaw broken. I stood in a conquistador’s pose with my foot upon his rib cage and spoke to all and nobody in particular.

“As the captain of the Brig Matanzas, I hereby pronounce you guilty of the crime of first degree murder and by the law of the high seas I am endowed with the right to sentence you. And I do so sentence you, to death by drowning, to be carried out immediately.” I lifted him by the armpits, and dumped him over the side; unconscious, he floated as a dead man does, face down and not breathing. The diesel was running, and, like my Melissa, Mr. Teeth was pulled underneath, but the screws caught him and I don’t know if he was drowned first or chewed up. I don’t much care, either. I drained the fifth; I capped it and hurled it into the ocean. No note was necessary. An empty whiskey bottle is its own message.

tagos

Hi,

There's some nice writing here and a potentially very interesting revenge story in an out of the ordinary setting.

My first feeling is that you took way too long to get to the theme of the story. 800 words of setting and character before we’re told his fiancé was killed. There was nothing to get me hooked. IMHO it would be better to open with a hook, get the reader interested, before moving onto setting and character.

I always review things as a potential reader and as a reader I don't read a short story to see if it might be interesting. I expect it to be interesting from the off.

I’d start with:

‘It was, pardon the cliche, a perfect murder.

She was my fiancée, Melissa Dawn Kilgore, and she had ('was' – make it seem more active) drowned on this spot, two years, ten months, and 22 days ago. I could always tell by the angle of the shoreline, as I saw it from the helm.’

Okay - that's got my attention. I immediately know there is an interesting story and I can then be more relaxed about setting and character. Not the whole 800 words though. Way too much detail that has no bearing on the actual story, particularly when the death itself is dealt with in so perfunctory a manner when in fact you want this to be the first twist.

Have us thinking the narrator murdered her. Then find it was an accident. Then descent into obsession, attempted reconciliation and a real murder. For me that would be a more entertaining structure.

I found the ending anti-climactic somehow. And with the FP VP it seemed to be condoned and so the story came over to me like a revenge fantasy with the author cheering him on. I wanted more twists, more ‘unexpecteds’, after the discovery of the guy on the trip.

And an unexpected ending. Not necessarily different but just made unexpected. This wasn’t unexpected as the narrator seems like a sociopath from the word go. He’s fine with keel-hauling, contemptuous of half the other people in the story and generally comes across to me as an unpleasant human being.

Maybe you need to build on fine writing like this to evoke reader sympathy so that when he kills an innocent and remorseful man at the end we experience it as a tragedy for him?

‘She was 22, and in these pictures, her smile was a white (gleaming?) scythe, cutting me to the bone every damned time I looked at the pictures.’

The tragedy being that he chooses to destroy his life instead of taking the chance to heal his wounds. I’d have him kill the girl instead to intensify things.

If you cut out a lot of the secondary setting stuff you could have an inquest scene where the guy isn’t prosecuted and so ignite a burning sense of injustice in the narrator and let us experience his pain, grief and rage, his inability to let go. Acting out his own buried knowledge that he was responsible for her death because she wasn't wearing a life jacket.

And if you made him a decent human being we would be hoping he’d heal himself and root for him to forgive the guy and so be more powerfully affected by the murder at the end. And you need to make the other guy sympathetic. As it is you go out of your way to make him a stereotypical cad, which is why the story comes across as an authorially approved revenge fantasy.

As it is my end emotion is, ‘Well at least he’ll be locked up where he belongs now. Shame it didn't happen sooner.’

There's a great story here but I think it needs a ground up restructuring before rewriting.

On the other hand I have the feeling that you wrote the story you wanted to write. 'Cad causes death of a woman and later gets what's coming to him.' And that's cool, and i'm not one to lay down a blanket slap on revenge stories, it's just in this case it seems like a pointless murder by a thug (who as the captain who didn't make sure she was wearing a lifebelt in the first place effectively killed her anyway), not the righting of an injustice.

whitt45

Well, that tells me that it came out wrong, because I didn't really mean for it to be a revenge story. I was inspired by a sailboat ride that my wife and I took a couple of weeks ago on vacation. The captain seemed to be distracted, so I thought of reasons why. The revenge thing just came out as a quick way to end it, but it screwed up the point, which was to contrast the tourists being all carefree and happy with him being so tortured by his own mistakes. On the other hand, I don't think much about message when I write, I just kind of let things come out in the way that seems natural.

tagos

That's a good idea to run with and will make a good story and I can see now what you were aiming for.

I guess we work differently. I do the whole 'establish a story premise to guide structure' thing and plan a story scene by scene, leaving out anything that doesn't relate to that premise.

I'm sure it robs my writing of spontanteity and maybe it leads me to misjudge stories not written like that.

I set records for being wrong.

Others may hcome to a different view.

whitt45

Sure, and all of our different views is what makes literature great. I don't mean to come off as thin-skinned

tagos

No problem, you didn't at all. What I like about places like this is to see how other writers work and come up with ideas. I'd like to see another version of this that builds on the original idea now that I see I misunderstood what sort of story it was. Touching contrast of grief and gaiety.

Murders, by their nature will tend to cast a long shadow over a story so maybe a different ending?

Chris Miller

You are a skilled writer whitt45,

Good character development.

The narrative pulled me in, especially once he found his fiancé’s “murderer” on his boat. The sea-faring vernacular sounds authentic even beyond well researched, casual but detailed. (I thought keelhauling was when you got pulled under the keel though, down one side and up the other.)

I liked the humor. Not over-powering, flowed and melded in nicely.

I would lose the 2nd “pictures” and write “…I looked at them.”

Found it a little strange that she would be a third eaten by sea vermin until they pulled her out. I would have thought, given the circumstances, she’d have been pulled out within hours if not minutes.

The “Damn” seems to be a typo.

The ending surprised me. Especially after the apology. But it worked.

No note was necessary. An empty whiskey bottle is its own message.

Love this ending!

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Barcelona Review story: http://www.barcelonareview.com/64/e_cm.html

whitt45

Thanks for your kind words.

I think the typos qualify as "doh" moments

As for the half-eaten by sea vermin thing, you're right, good catch - I'll have to correct that, one way or another.

Chris Miller

Actually, I didn't read this as a revenge story at all. I read it as a tragedy. A revenge story strives for a satisfying, happy climax as the evil villain get's his just desserts. A tragedy involves the downfall of an otherwise good man because of some small mistake, or flaw or weakness in his character (which cascades into terrible consequences).

No effort is made to satisfy the reader with the murder of the man who accidentally and innocently caused the death of the girl, and who also suffered for it and attempted to apologize. Quite the opposite.

This story is a tragedy, a double tragedy really, of terrible grief and misunderstanding spawned from tiny errors of judfment and character flaws that grow, and very well done I think.

Chris

__________________
the fairwriting blogs

Barcelona Review story: http://www.barcelonareview.com/64/e_cm.html

whitt45

I am working on a couple more drafts of this story, with different endings - one non-violent, and one where the capt. has remorse after killing the guy. I don't know how realistic either of those outcomes are, though. The guy is deeply wounded, and an alcoholic - he's drinking cheap scotch straight from the bottle - that's not really a good recipe for self-control and empathy.

Also, I don't know if someone would book a cruise on the boat just to apologize. That seems kind of expensive, and like it would be just asking for something like this to happen. It'd be more likely that he'd meet him at the dock.

tagos

I guess it depends what story you want to write. What I find a useful technique (i'm not a naturally gifted short story writer so I am big on learning craft skills from good short story writers) is to come up with a phrase that summarises the story as a premise the author is trying to prove. It is a statement of what happens to the character as a result of the core conflict of the story.

If I were writing this story (I couldn't have come up with the idea in the first place though) my premise could be:

Denial of guilt leads to murder.

This story would be about the inability of the captain to recognise that as he did not get her to wear a lifebelt he killed her. As he can't recognise that he drinks and blames the other guy.

Using this I would shape the story so that the jet ski guy was more sympathetic and just careless.

Denial of justice leads to revenge

Jet ski guy's carelessness is the main cause but he gets let off and this drives captain to an act of revenge. You'd shape the original incident and the jet ski character differently and the tipping point of the story would be an inquest or something that lets the guy off.

Tragic loss causes revenge obsession which leads to greater tragedy.

Denial of his guilt causes self destructive behaviour and desire to inflict the same hurt on the jet ski guy so he drowns his fiancee. The character of the fiancee would be more developed and the ending more of a twist as we'd be expecting him to kill the guy not her.

Or maybe:

Getting away with killing causes overconfidence and leads to getting one's just desserts.

Jet ski guy gets off, callously gloats in face of grieving captain and gets righteously killed. Then you'd shape the story to play down the lack of lifebelts and the drunken callousness of the captain and play up the bad character of jet-ski guy.

But, that's just how I work (or try to). I find the discipline of proving a premise useful in keeping a story focused, crafting scenes and deciding on character roles. I might only come up with a premise after I have written a first draft or explored the options in my head for a long time.

Generally it comes for me from the ending and the emotion it evokes in me and which I want to evoke in the reader.

The fact that Chris and I come to radically different understandings suggest to me that your story lacks a clear premise. It doesn't evoke sympathy for the captain for me, just contempt (particularly as the passengers still aren't wearing life-jackets.) But Chris find him tragic.

I think it's a petty revenge story, he thinks it's tragic downfall. We're both right and for me that's the problem. I think it should be a tragedy but for me it just lacks key elements. Chris is probably just a much nicer guy than me and works hard at finding the good in people and so can empathise with the chracter more. I just take him as he's presented. A drunk who avoids his own guilt by wallowing in self pity, unwilling to take steps to prevent a recurrence of the tragedy who then murders an man guilty of nothing more than carelessness.

If I feel that then you can bet so will a lot of other potential readers. With more focus I know it could be a good tragic story that works for both of us. I would construct a premise based on the emotion you want the reader to feel at the end and then rewrite the story, but like I say, I lean on craft to compensate for other short-comings.

A helluva lot of books on writing recommend variants of this approach though but in the end I also believe, what works for a writer is what works and for some this sort of approach is too limiting.

It's a good concept, an interesting setting and some good writing. I'd love to see another version of this story.

whitt45

This story in particular was pure off-the-cuff inspiration, that doesn't usually happen for me. My approach is usually in between the meticulous planning method and the pure off-the-cuff method. I usually start something and just let it come out and see where it wants to go. The idea kind of forms as I'm working with it. Then, I revise it into something coherent. If I plan my work too much I feel like I've written the story already, and that the finishing work is just filling in the blanks.

Some might consider the widely varying interpretations to be a good thing. However, the issue about the life jackets was an unintentional hole, not something that should be seen either way.

We didn't wear life jackets on the cruise that I went on that inspired this. Either they've never had anybody fall overboard in the past, or they're confident in their ability to pull them out before something like what happened in the story happens. The water there is as calm as your average lake; I overstated the danger a bit.

I mostly finished the non-violent draft last night, just need to add some color to it and refine it a bit. I'm reluctant to post it in public, though, because it is IMO much better and it might be worth submitting to paying markets.

tagos

Great! Good luck with it. Had another rejection today.