To Whom Shall Measure Thy Station?

By: Hunter Christian

A saltwater weathered fisher boat faced the rising Sun creeping methodically northward over a blackened seascape horizon in the far off distance

Captain Pratt throttled the vessel's diesel engine to keep the sea's persistent currents from pushing the boat into the rocky shoreline lining the crescent shaped cove

The engine's persistence granted the fisher boat necessary resistance

To ward off agonizing tooth pain from an abscess molar, the captain pushed a small piece of cloth into the throbbing tooth's cavity after soaking it in clove

The captain warmed his coffee - in a kettle handed down to him from his fisherman father - on a coal-fired cast iron stove

Being a wet fish trawler, Pratt's vessel had a large bounty of fish swimming in the boat's hull - where kept alive until delivered to market - the captain's lucrative catch was stowed

An aberrant look of consternation showed -

Upon the captain's prominent brow; a look that proved to be a prophetic harbinger for the strange events that followed

The black waves - now painted with strands of oranges and reds from the awakening morning Sun - pitched the boat to and fro as it wallowed

The hot coffee the captain sipped at cautiously soothed a sore throat as he swallowed

Crewmen of myriad ages and station slept quietly in their bunks

All the while, the fisher boat tread water above generations of vessels - that carried a crew, carried its bounty, carried the fish that fed hungry folks - until it was buried where it had sunk

Each crewman, allowed to stow his belongings in a trunk - carried along with them: pictures of home and loved ones, old rags for clothing, cards, cigarettes, jars of homemade whiskey, myriad other keepsakes and sundry - and of course from the captain - their obligatory guerdon

Wild-at-heart - were Pratt's Crazy Crüe - to which the lot were referred back at the port - each and every last one

This known debauchery was equaled by Captain Pratt's stern work ethic; dispersed judiciously with a childlike penchant for fun

As the hot coffee soothed his sore and scratchy throat

The incoming tide raised the creaking long-in-the-tooth fisher boat -

Higher and higher in relation to the bobbing sun soaked horizon

On similar mornings throughout the years, Captain Pratt did in fact consider all of those fishermen who had come before he, and at that very point in the turbulent sea below him, each had met their demise in - perhaps as a background of a similar sun soaked horizon

Along with memories of the dead who came before; the captain also entertained memories of joining his fisherman grandfather, who sailed his artisan vessel, and as a child tagging along who was eager to learn, Pratt's pap put the lad in charge of the mizen

Again - just as he did before and after each invading thought about his vocation - the captain gazed back to the waking horizon

"A new day is upon us," the wryly middle-aged captain opined to himself in a raspy whisper, "and from God himself, the clear skies be a good and welcoming sign"

All the while, black waves crashed, and bashed, and lashed, the welcoming shoreline

Most of the salty sea water settled into gray foam, then the foam was briskly channeled back out to sea to recapture its midnight hue, save for the small puddles that remained trapped like so many canning jars of brine

The captain consulted his logs, charts, watch, and compass, calculations were made in reference to Greenwich Mean Time

Also known as the acronym GMT

A ubiquitous reference point for any captain at sea

He could hear the ticking of the watch his grandfather gave to him, the waves crashing into the waiting shore, the grumbling of the trusty and true diesel engine, the throbbing of an aching molar in his ear with every heartbeat, the old boat's creaking structure bending and flexing - and in that idling place perched atop the rising tidewater of a black sea -

Captain Pratt - aged forty-three - had never felt so alive, so connected to the universe, so in-touch with his sense of "self," and he also never felt so free

Free to strike out from the land and roam

Free to be a wayward transient, a vagabond, a drifter; with the sea as his home

Free to log his travels into time's hidden tome

Free to travel the world alone

Free to be that proverbial rolling stone

Free to make the mistakes to which he is prone

Free to discover mysteries known and unknown

Free to be a sinner or a man who wantonly atones

Free to be a child-at-heart, or a man whose childhood he's never outgrown

Free to be the king of the sea, and a raggedy old fisher boat shall be his golden throne

Oh yes, the captain was a thinker

And he was known at the time to had once been a heavy drinker

By then, his morning coffee sufficed

Several years on the wagon proved he could reject a destructive vice

That had had the goodly captain knocking at death's door not once, but twice

So…

With introspection mired in existentialism, the wryly captain, experienced in the Egyptian Mukhabarat, produced thoughts or delusions of grandeur,

But what?

Life being what it was, its unpredictability stepped in with a forced majeure

The captain's swift transition from maritime officer to fisherman transpired in a jump-cut

All due to a scathing scuttlebut

That in his youth he refused to litigate

The incident flowed through his life like a spate

Still, never one to get bogged down in hate

Pratt took his abundance of lemons and made lemonade

And as the night continued to fade

To another coming of the day

A brisk wind blew

As the captain throttled his boat's engine in efforts to put-in, as he sounded a horn to awaken his crew

The captain had another obligation to keep

Only then, could the captain consider what his addled mind truly desired; a long and dreamless sleep

As he shepherded - back to the port - his flock of weary sheep

The equally weary captain - once alone - and only alone - could he rid his mind of its angst, of its guilt, of it’s aching retribution; and with his head in his hands, and his hands on his knees, he would rock, and shake, and weep

The past cut him like a knife, the wounds remained as haunted memories do, and the scars too - the scars healed slowly, yet the scars ran long and deep

The horn sounded off into the waiting dawn

And with a readied brawn

Captain Pratt shook off a pending sentiment of woebegone

And began to whistle a song

All the while, Captain Pratt, welcomed the rising crew with a wry smile, a nod of his head, and an obligatory yawn -

Then, the captain finished his greetings and salutations with a traditional wink to the mighty dawn

Within mere moments, the captain, his crew, and his fisher boat were long gone.