Chosen Ch. 03

I'm not sure where to begin. I am travelling at the moment and I need to be careful, because I've deserted my position with the U.S. Navy and I don't know if, or when, I will return to duty. Dereliction of duty is something I take seriously, though not as seriously as the Navy is going to when they find me. I'm writing this because an account of what's going on and why I made the decisions I did is going to be important when my hearing happens. But I should have been writing this from the beginning. Some of it is fuzzy now.

My story starts at Guantanamo. The base has a reputation now, thanks to the prisons, but I was not involved in that and people forget that it's a naval base with a long history unrelated to detention. While relations with the rest of Cuba aren't great, it's an important base, and a stop for a lot of ships patrolling South America; it's part of drug interdiction efforts, as well as a meeting place for foreign dignitaries who would rather not be seen visiting America. I can't talk about who comes and goes there, but some of it is eye-opening. A lot of different flags have sailed in and out.

As a Petty Officer (Second class) I do a lot of problem solving, being just far enough up the chain to have real responsibilities, but not far enough up the chain to avoid real work. I joined the Navy because I love ships; it look a few years to come to grips with the fact that Navy personnel are on shore quite a lot, and ships are mostly things that sit in the water nearby. But I've gone out of my way to keep my feet wet. And that means I've been around a lot of visiting ships and boats, as support crew for meetings and for logistical execution. (If that sounds to you like I move a lot of boxes and crates between boats, you get a gold star.)

The Lua, out of Portugal and visiting Cuba en route from the Port of Coquimbo, was an older ship that had clearly been a lot of places and seen a lot of wind and tide. But she was beautifully maintained; some captains will find any excuse to polish and paint, and I love to see that. I got invited aboard when my passable Spanish and few words of Portuguese got me points with the captain, and when I Indicated I'd trade a tour of his ship for some good Cuban rum.

We settled on the bridge, and while drinking on duty isn't the wisest move, I nursed a cup full of rum while the captain showed a more in-depth, old-world sailor's familiarity with the contents of the old blue-green "cleaning solution #6" bottle I used to transport distilled substances in these situations. His English was much better than my Spanish -- you don't find much command crew on larger vessels with international work who don't speak passable English -- and we got along fine.

"Is a lot of your crew in port?"

"Hell no. Strict orders to keep them aboard until our passenger has his meetings. Apparently someone doesn't want any incidents on base while he's around. My crew would behave -- but rules are rules."

"Small crew then?" No one likes to run a ship with minimum crew, but I hadn't seen that many people on board.

"The smallest I can use to keep her going. It's hard to find sailors willing to run older ships. We're not military, we just contract to them... so we scramble for good crew just like everyone else." He smiled mirthlessly. "I offer ten percent above the usual pay and I still have trouble signing crew."

He took another pull of the rum, and looked me over. "You're not keeping up your end of the drinking, amigo. Don't make me do all the lifting."

"I'm on duty. And this rum is no Havana Club, it's locally made and it has a kick."

"I am noticing that," he nodded. "But you need to get a little more into you if I'm going to shanghai you."

"Heh. You have a nice boat, I'd hate to see it full fathom five. The USS John Finn's not far away and I'm sure her captain would like to try out her capabilities on a pirate."

"No, they'd never know I had you. You ran off with a local girl."

"Hell I did. The Cubans laid a minefield around the base, just so all their women wouldn't sleep with Americans and get themselves a baby and a new nationality. I'm not saying we never visit up and down the coast," I smirked, patting the bottle of cleaning solution, "but meeting the women for anything long term isn't as easy as that."

"Sounds like you're a true Navy boy."

I gave him a Take Your Gay Navy Sex Jokes Elsewhere look, and he laughed. "You'd like this boat, amigo. She's not modern, but we get interesting jobs and we can go anywhere. It's not all Portugal navy contracts. And it's not all legal..."

"Is that why you sail with a small crew?"

"No. Not by choice. Like I said, it's hard to get good people..."

We'd been drinking for a half hour. My cup was half empty and I felt a trace of lightheadedness. He'd taken down half the bottle and he didn't look even slightly affected. But he stared out the glass at the water's light chop, and added "...especially when the ship is haunted."

"Is it." Haunted ship stories are as old as navies are, and before them, cargo ships. In the Navy you'll sometimes find someone to tell them to new recruits, and the ones who fall for it become the butt of jokes for months. Maybe when boats were made of wood, and creaked in the night, and wind whistled in the rigging, the stories had a place. Modern ships are metal and in the large ones you never realize you're at sea unless you go up on deck, which there's rarely reason to do. Bottom line, my new amigo had marked me for a chump.

"Si. Not ghosts and spirits. Just a curse. Count my crew and you'll find we're at minimum crew... less one. We had a disappearance off Brazil."

"You know, I'm not that drunk."

He looked at me, expressionlessly. And nodded, reached back and opened a locked drawer. He pulled out a form and slapped it down in front of me. "You read Portuguese?"

"Not well." I can read Spanish, which means sometimes I can get lucky with Portuguese. But this wasn't that hard to make out. It was a missing persons report, signed by the captain, two weeks ago. Stapled to it was a fax confirmation.

I looked up at him. "Light wind, moderate swell, fifty miles off the coast?"

"What it doesn't say is that it was a suicide. He left a note. I don't have it; I mailed it to his wife. Didn't think the police needed to know, eh? No one's business but him and his."

"So you had a depressed guy on board. Being at sea can be dull; he had too much time to think."

"Twelfth loss in twenty years. I'm the fourth captain in that time. The owners have tried to cover it up with a name change and different paint, but the stories still get out among the sailors."

"What did she used to be called?"

"The Sino."

"I haven't heard the stories. How did all the men die?"

"Disappeared overboard, every one. They were never found. Some left notes, others nothing. And ten of twelve happened after a storm." He sipped more rum.

"After a storm? Not during? And why would any modern ship sail through a storm?"

"The day after, or the day after that. They were not large storms, and it's a big enough ship to handle a little weather. Sometimes deliveries have to be on time, si? And there are some customers you don't want angry. But you can see how the stories would start. It's said it started happening after a newlywed couple drowned in a storm, they were washed overboard... that is untrue. It has never been a passenger vessel except on rare trips like this one, when people prefer to move without announcing their business and destination."

"So if not newlyweds, what is the basis of this curse?"

He looked at me. "You think I am telling a story. In stories the reason for the curse is always known, it is why the story gets told. It's because of the ancient mummies shipped from Cairo, or the Irish saint who was killed on board, or the ship that sailed too near the dark, unmarked island... but this is not a story, senhor. There is no known reason for the curse. There are only twelve dead people, all believed suicides." He chuckled mirthlessly. "Sign on and I will give you one hundred and twenty five percent of rate."

"Sorry, I still have a commitment to the United States Navy. I assume you ruled out foul play?"

"The meaning of this I do not know."

"Murder."

"Ah. Over twenty years? None of the crew is from the beginning. And the ship has been gone over by inspectors, looking for secret compartments, leaking gasses, drugs in the cargo. Nothing was found. Welcome to the mystery, senhor... but I do not think the mystery will last much longer. The insurance company is how you say spooked by this, and they will find an excuse to raise the rates eventually. That will finish this boat."

"That will be a sad day. She's a beautiful thing."

"Yes, I keep her scrubbed down. All the captains have, it's become a tradition. Modern boats, they just apply paint, but she is kept enameled where I can, and we've kept up the brass everywhere. A bitch to clean, but a pretty bitch after polished and oiled in the sun."

"I've done my share of polishing brass."

"It's good to be captain. I have crew for that. One hundred and thirty percent, amigo? Since you know how to polish brass."

"Still can't do it. But I'll take that look around now."

Walking the ship was definitely odd. It was almost museum-piece pretty and the paint job reminded me more of a well done old fashioned merry-go-round than a cargo ship, but the crew was as small as I'd thought. Navy ships being tight on breathing space with all hands aboard, this was startling.

When the area around a fuel intake gleams, you know the captain is a stickler. I wondered how many toothbrushes they went through, keeping it spotless.

We paused in the shade of the superstructure for another drink, against my better judgment. I'm a lightweight when it comes to booze and the second cupful had me noticeably lightheaded. I grabbed the railing and looked up to assess how dizzy I was getting.

"Unusual bells," I said, peering up at them.

"Si. The ship doesn't have one bell, it has five. I don't know why. The one at the bottom is a regular ship bell, and we ring it at the usual times. The three above you can see are smaller and thicker and the one above that is smaller still. Only the bottom one actually rings -- you can see the pull cord. The others are stuffed with something to mute them."

Clinging to the railing, I looked more closely. They were the only thing not spotless above deck, on account of being mounted 12 feet up and out of reach, on a pipe curved into an S. "Hellava thing, four extra bells and up there and useless like that. What were they thinking?"

"Ask the first captain, I was told he put it in. I left them alone. It's not like we use the bell for much anyway."

"Wouldn't be hard to rig lines to them so you could ring them all. Maybe they're tuned. That little bell though... really needs polish." I frowned. "Never was all that good as getting a good polish out of brass. I lack the patience I guess."

"I don't think rigging them to ring is a good idea... they've been there silent for a long time. Cuál ha sido será... who knows if there is a reason for these things, eh? The ship has enough mysteries."

Occam's razor, I thought. Two mysteries in the same place are probably related.

"So here is an idea," I said. "People go overboard after storms. What happens after storms? On a pretty ship like this, clean up. Salt spray gets into things, brass needs to be wiped down. Someone looks around with a polishing cloth in their hand and they see the bells. They fetch a ladder, the boat hits a swell and the ladder goes down. Over goes the man."

"A poor theory, senhor. Suicide notes in some cases as I said. And even if a man could topple from that height and go over, the ladder would stay on deck. We'd know."

It was probably just the rum, but I was curious. "Mind if I take a look?"

He shrugged, and whistled. A man popped around the corner immediately.

"Andres, uma escada."

A moment later a paint-speckled ladder was dragged and leaned against the superstructure. I climbed, slowly, frowning a little at the effect of the rum.

Ten feet up, I regarded my footing. My theory had indeed been a poor one; a fall from here wouldn't send me overboard even in rough weather. And no one would stay up here to polish the bells anyway; they could all be unhooked and carried down.

The ships's bell was a good few years old, but nothing like ancient. It had Sino engraved on it, and a date that matched the age of the boat. They hadn't bothered to replace it in the name change.

"What is Sino, in English?" I called down.

"Bell," the captain said. "So I suppose the original owner just liked bells. They ward off evil spirits you know." He chuckled, wryly. "Or not so much it seems..."

The three above it looked identical, and perhaps not any older. They were unmarked. I tapped one with a fingernail to get an idea of pitch, and then did the same for the ship's bell. I was no musical expert but I didn't think the bells had been chosen for their harmony.

The bell above that...

It was clearly brass, but it was reddish, and old. Very old. It had been cast, and the casting marks were still visible. It was small, more the size you'd use as a hand bell than anything else. Faintly engraved near the rim was lettering, which I struggled to make out. rrepenti. There may have been more but it was obliterated, a victim of the years of salt spray it had taken by facing the breeze.

"What is rrepenti?"

"That is not Portuguese. But it is very like arrepender-se. Repent."

Oh. It had probably been arrepentirse, Spanish for the same word.

"It's Spanish I think. What is a Spanish bell doing on a Portuguese ship?"

He chuckled. "That must be why it doesn't get to ring."

An attempt had been made to polish it, maybe several attempts. But never a complete job or anything close. Someone had rubbed some of the corrosion off the bottom of the bell and then, apparently, hung the bell back up, work unfinished. I tilted it; there was a thick piece of leather fitted inside; the bell would not ring unless it was removed. It looked very old. The clapper was also brass.

I was dizzy up here. On a whim I unhooked the bell and carried it down.

"What are you doing, amigo..."

"I want a better look and it's not a very steady ladder."

"Or maybe not a very steady sailor? You don't handle the rum well, amigo."

I settled against the warm metal of the superstructure, and fished the leather from inside the bell; it was stiff, curled into place, and hooked on a projection inside the bell. When I got it out it broke in half, weak from salt and age.

I rubbed a fingernail over the corrosion at the base of the bell. The rest of the letters of arrepentirse became dimly visible, but there was no other markings. It was quite heavy for the size, but it was hardly larger than my fist. A hole in the top hinted that it might once have had a wooden handle, like a hand bell. A thin bar of brass across the inside supported the clapper.

"Now this just doesn't make sense. A little bell like this? You wouldn't hear it far in fog and it wouldn't wake anyone up, you probably couldn't even hear it below decks. Why bother?"

I stuck my pinky in the hole and dangled the bell that way. He put his hand around it.

"Senhor that bell hasn't been rung in years. Decades. Could be centuries. Nothing good comes of... waking things that sleep so long, you understand? Tudo o que foi... Old things deserve respect, and maybe expect it-"

"Now who isn't handling the rum well. It's a bell."

He took it off my finger, and wrapped his fingers inside it. The bell made a muted, metallic noise. "Oh," he said. "I remember now... the first captain... remember this was twenty years ago and he was old, almost seventy I think. He'd sailed with the Navy and his first job was to find and stop pirates in the Mediterranean. I remember now. He wanted only the purest, the most loyal, and most virtuous for his crew, believing that God would favor the virtuous over any pirate. That is why this was here. The sailors had to repent and confess their sins publically before he'd sign them. I wonder if he rang the bell to start the confessions."

He looked at the bell, uneasily. "I have too many sins to confess, I would never have made his crew. He'd have gotten bored after the first hour of my litany, yes? Maybe not yours, you are too young to have sinned much. I think this bell is best filled with rags and put back where it was..."

He moved to the ladder and began to climb. The bell made this awkward, and he was not very steady either, so without thinking he put his pinky in the mounting hole as I had done, using his other four fingers to grasp the ladder.

He slipped trying to step up, and the bell rang.

It was a very resonant bell, and surprisingly loud for the size. The frequency was complicated, perhaps due to the corrosion, and for a moment I imagined I heard wind noises or whispering in the pitch of it.

The captain settled on the deck, staring at the ringing bell. His hand twitched, and it rang again, louder and purer.

"I... drink too much," he said, softly. "Once I swore I would never drink at sea, only in port. For a few years, yes. But then after the first disappearance on my watch... it started to go too far. There was a woman... in Lisbon. Waitress... so young. Too young for me. But she brought me drink after drink and soon enough I realized she was not charging me, and soon after that I had her in my lap. I look her away with me, but at the last moment, in my room, she started crying, she'd changed her mind, she did not want to be a whore... I was furious. I slapped her across the face, she struggled... I was drunk and angry, I did not want to hear no. I forced her, she hit her head on furniture... there was no blood and I thought she'd be ok, but she wouldn't wake. I panicked, there was a dock nearby... I forced alcohol into her, filled her purse with coins, went to my ship and got an old flashlight with a dead bulb, and some oil. I made it look like the flashlight had died and she'd slipped in the darkness in some oil at the water's edge, just another whore on her way to a boat. I was at sea before she was found, and I swore I would never drink again, but I just drank more. I have not thought of her for years, but oh God, she was little more than a child..."

"I don't think..."

But he was not listening to me. His hand twitched again.

The bell rang.

"I ran guns. South America. Guns in, drugs out... we changed flags and ran silent and no one ever proved it was us... so much money. I could have given it up but I have a taste for Caribbean whores and they put up with rough treatment when you pay them enough... it was all about the girl in Lisbon. Deep down I knew it, I would slap them around the same way... eventually that was not enough and I found the wife of a fat mayor in the Dominican Republic... I bought her interest, and then taught her to crawl, beg, do drugs. When she fought me I blackmailed her, and never had to buy her gifts again... in the end she told her husband, he divorced her, there was scandal. She's poor now, ruined. I never had to care. I could have given her money but felt that would just tie me to her for longer, and I was done with her..."

The bell rang.

"I framed a partner, in a shipping company, before I was captain. We exported drugs hidden in oriental vases; but I realized we'd be caught in the end, drug enforcement was getting tighter, the Americans will not leave it alone... the paperwork made it look like his work, not mine. He didn't know anything, now he's in an American jail. He has family. I ruined them..."

I stared at him; he continued to stare at the bell.