Fragments Fiction

This new station will bring Misawa into the Twentieth Century and the western world. The great train will arrive at the new station near the dockyards. Carpenters, workmen, and the town of Misawa worked diligently to build a new dock from teak so hard it would last a thousand years.

The green crown of Aomori Prefecture flew high over the torii at the entrance to the rail yard. Red lanterns and white trees of Omikuji--prayers for good fortune and success--lined the rails. Tables filled with Shinsen and Saki for the Kami--sacrifices to the gods of Good Fortune and prosperity--stood at the beginning of the passenger platform. The President and Board of Directors of the Tohoku Main Line greeted the arrival of the locomotive, a magnificent iron dragon from the Western Powers, spewing fire, steam, and black smoke, shaking the ground with a chugging rhythm all the way from Sendai and Morioka to the Misawa dockyards on new shiny metal tracks. The people of Misawa looked on the Iron Horse and dream of the trade it will bring from overseas. Hope lived in the ferry metal beast. Our town will grow fat and have prosperous families.

"Break waves, break on the cold stones, break on the depths, break, so my tongue could utter the tales of men who dare to live by the seas." ^{[note 1]}

I heard the third ring of three bells.

I was back at my computer on the foredeck. I looked for the men on watch. They were awake and alert, nothing out of place. Uncertain of what happened, I returned to my emails, uneasy. Is it possible that the ghosts of a century before visited my dreams? I don't believe in such nonsense. But my hands shook. I packed the computer in my footlocker. Tomorrow was another day. I sat on the deck and leaned against the bulkhead.

I heard the first two of five bells.

I stood on Sabishiro Beach a third of a century after the dock was built.

"We send this plane 'from afar, and it carries with it all our good intentions.'"

I was back on the Astoria Annie. The last two bells of the five rang in my ears. Galen Boyd, our Tennyson spouting first mate, stood next to me, shaking my shoulder. He startled me.

"Captain Conway requests your presence," Galen said.

"What?" I stuttered and composed myself.

"You OK, sir," Galen asked.

"Yes, Thank you."

"The Captain sent me; He would be angry with me if anything was wrong and I didn't tell him."

"I was simply lost in thought." I followed him and joined Captain Conway in his cabin. He sat on what passed for a bed--a metal cot bolted to the bulkhead. A crate set on its narrow side served as a table, and a folding chair was waiting for me to sit. He'd covered the crate with a white tablecloth, a candle, and Shochu rather than wine. MuShu pork and chicken wings sat in a microwave, heating. I smiled. In this cabin, he reverted to my college roommate and friend.

"I didn't think that you'd remember," I said, glancing at the portal and not finding the other element of our make-believe banquets. I gave him the "what's missing" nod.

"I'm Lord Nelson on this ship, not Captain Shakespeare. Tights hanging in the windows drying are not suitable for a rough, tough tugboat captain," Carson said.

"You never regaled them with tales of wispy, small-breasted ballerinas and how you practiced the pas de deux with them? Or lay in the arms of Venus in her secret underworld city."

He laughed. "I don't kiss and tell. They were sophisticated ladies and one or two are doing well. After my knee blew out, I had to give up ballet and took the seas. As I recall, you were going to build skyscrapers and great edifices, not work salvage. Helluva destiny for both of us. Me, tugboat captain and you, salvor," he said. I nodded. He poured us each a shot of Shochu.

I toasted.

"To the good old days and the dumbest wannabes in the world," he said.

Memories of college life filled my mind for the first time in many years. I had suppressed my boyhood dreams of being an engineer of new metal structures and colosseums. Advanced mathematics didn't work for me, and so I started working, learned business, got an MBA at night, and discovered salvage and junk.

"To the ghosts of what might have been, the dancer and the engineer. Good memories, no regrets," I responded with bonhomie. However, ambitions, hopes, and dreams cling to what remains. Subtle events of times passed are not easily forgotten. The hopes of young men drown in the seas of reality. Nevertheless, memories rise from the deep and seek out the living, waiting for the day when your guard is down to reveal themselves like ghosts.

The microwave buzzed. We dished out the MuShu pork and ate. We talked about moving large barges and steamships and salvaging fancy clothing and watches from bankrupt designers. Idle chatter that meant both everything and nothing. We basked in our friendship.

I looked at the time. Late. I went to the door to check on my men. They stood watch. As I returned to my cabin Captain Conway wagged his finger at me.

"You have to trust your men. I learned that lesson my first days at sea."

"It's not my men. It's this dock. I think I keep seeing its history. I can't stop the illusion. I feel a little out of control," I said.

"Trust in the sea," Carson said, pointing to the ship's clock. The second hand swept to the twelve, and I heard the first ring of seven bells.

"Right on time," he said.

And with it, my vision blurred and the captain's cabin slipped away.

I am small, childlike, sitting next to a much larger adult.

"Break, break, break, at the foot of thy crags, O Sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead, will never come back to me."

I opened my eyes at the sound of the watch bell and found myself weeping, face in my hands. Captain Carson reached out and shook me.

"Jesus Christ, Trevor, I've never seen you like this."

My hands shook as I grabbed the decanter, poured myself a shot of Shochu, and drank. I let its fire burn my throat. This wasn't wise, this drink, and I wasn't a child. I was preparing to salvage a wreck, a derelict, a piece of dock cast off from its moorings. Nothing more. Nothing more.

"I saw something, memories, bad ones, too," I whispered.

"It is the sea and nothing more."

"I must sound deranged."

He shook his head.

"Not any more than any sailor on a first voyage," he winked and shook my shoulder again. "You're a landlubber, and you're having a landlubber's freak-out. The sea is not a mistress you make love to. She is a harsh and vengeful goddess. We call those thoughts the siren's song. Every sailor hears its call. It is the song heard by Jason, Odysseus, Erikson, and Drake -- all who sail the seas. Think of the ocean as memories and your mind a schooner." He took a deep breath and sighed. "Either that or you're spooked out by water stretching from horizon to horizon. Get some sleep. I'll take your watch."

"I don't want you to do my job." I doubted his explanations, but I worried that it would send a bad message to my workers.

"I'm the captain of this tugboat. I can bird-dog your people without causing hard feelings. That's my job."

I left and went to my cabin to sleep on my undersized bunk. Sleep wasn't comfortable, but at least, I slept without dreams.

I woke and drank black coffee to wash the lingering taste of MuShu and Shochu out of my mouth. The sunrise cast long beams of golden yellow over the surface of the Pacific. I joined Kai and Captain Conway on the stern of the tugboat. They were discussing the grounding of the dock.

"I told Kai that we can strand the wreck on the beach at high tide and dismantle as the tide recedes. Kai made the arrangements," Captain Conway said.

"The lumber mill said that the carpenters want this Teak. They haven't seen it in since the Vietnam War. The steel haulers said that the structure isn't big enough to give them heartburn," Kai said. I nodded my approval and patted his back.

"Good job. How does the dock get close enough to the shore? The Astoria Annie can't come in that close to land," I said. Deep draft beaches were few and far between.

"The steelworkers are bringing a hawser rig for three winches. They'll use inflatable power-boats to get the hawsers to the dock," Kai said. I gave him a quizzical look because nothing is ever that easy.

"That's too simple. What's the catch?"

"You're the only one trained to shoot the last line."

"Like shooting skeet at a target range," one of my guys hollered, laughing. I glared at him. Well, to be truthful, I snarled at him with teeth bared and eyes narrowed--a primal growl of "me boss." He stopped smiling and got as far away from me as he could on the tugboat.

Several hours later we sighted the private cove where the loggers and steel haulers waited. A massive hawser lay across the tidal sands along with pairs of inflatable speedboats. The plan was that after the tugboat detached from the dock, I would fire a line from the leading end of the dock to the loggers and they would use it to attach the hawser to the dock.

Captain Conway brought the tugboat behind the dock and pushed the dock at the coastline with the roar of engines. We picked up speed. Sailors have patience. Salvors do not. Maneuvers at sea require slow turns and many course alterations, especially to ground a portion of a dock on a beach. I watched from the front of the dock. The rising tide broke over the cold gray stones of the shore as the unwieldy combination of dock and tug threaded its way past stone breakwaters and hidden sandbars.

The tugboat gave its final push, separated, and swung away from the shallows in a single smooth motion. The dock drifted. Seconds ticked away like hours as I waited for the dock to drift close enough to the inflatable boats. When the lead inflatable was about 30 yards away, I fired the line. Once the logger secured it to his inflatable boat, I put the line over my shoulder and walked the length of the dock, hauling the excess line behind.

When I returned to the front, the logger was leaning on a chest brace and drilling a second hole in the decking. He bolted a large cleat to the thick beam. I fired two more lines at the other inflatable boats, and they came forward with the other hawsers. The dock so rigged, they radioed the winch operators to take out the slack.

I relaxed when the dock lurched toward the shore. I congratulated the loggers, shaking hands and patting backs, and then memories intruded on reality.

The world of recent times.

We were four in a small fishing boat, rowing furiously. These were my sons--the pride of my family, destined for university this year and years after. We heard the shrieking of the earthquake and tsunami sirens. Far away, on the shore, I saw my parents, my wife and our daughters and friends, scrambling out of the buildings and up to the highest hill where the tsunami wall would keep them safe.