TALES FROM THE CARIBBEAN

Dave (everybody called him Shark Boy) finished scrubbing the Weaver’s teakwood deck and invited Ryan below deck while he straightened up the cabin’s galley and put things in order.

“Have you seen my Mom?” asked Dave.

“Yes, she was with some clients and they were headed uptown to Boss Penny’s bar,” said Ryan.

This was horrible news to Dave. He loved his mother, but she had a problem with alcohol and after she took that first drink, the drink took a drink, and then the drink took her. Ryan noticed the disappointment, worry, and concern passing over Dave’s face, but he refused to lie for Dave’s Mom.

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She had recently taken a costly month-long sabbatical to a Connecticut treatment center in an effort to get her malady in remission. Dave’s Mom blamed his Dad for her chronic alcoholism while his Dad blamed his mother-in-law, but the ugly truth was that the blame game did nothing to fix her problem.

After a brief silence Ryan tried to smooth things over: “Dave, we’re powerless over other people’s bad habits, especially our parents, but we can be the best sons that we can be, no matter what they do. Besides maybe your Mom isn’t drinking tonight.”

“I’d like to believe that, but something tells me there’s a bad moon rising; I feel it in my guts,” replied Dave.

After a longer period of silence Ryan stood up to leave and said, “Dave, if you want to talk about it you can stay on my boat tonight, and if she doesn’t show by morning you can cover for her and do the sunrise cruise yourself.”

“Thanks Ryan, but I’ll be O.K.,” Dave said.

After he tossed the painter on the dinghy’s bow to Ryan, he stayed on deck and watched the rising moon. It wasn’t just any moon, it was a reverse yellow crescent, and by early morning it would be setting just above the bright silver planet Jupiter against a coal black horizon. It’s the same crescent moon and planet that ancient sorcerers and alchemists displayed on the front of their black cone-shaped hats. Dave lay down on a cockpit cushion and looked up at the stars while Dream Weaver’s masthead gently swung from star to star in the Southern Cross.

He was about to nod off when he heard a mysterious chant wafting across the water. He sat up and squinted his eyes as he looked towards Rosa’s Star, where the sound was coming from. Mona and Catrina Analusleiscu, the Gypsy sisters, had a candle burning in their cabin and they were conducting another of their mysterious rituals whose significance was known only to them.

Dave blinked his eyes in disbelief as a blue ball of light suddenly began to hover over the Rosa’s masthead and descended to the spreaders and traveled down the mast until it hovered above the cabin. What could it be? Dave had never before seen anything like it. Maybe the Gypsy sisters had conjured it up, but blue balls of light like this had frequently been reported running along the rigging of sailing ships in the Caribbean. Columbus reported it in his logbook from 1492, and the author of Two Years Before the Mast recorded seeing it in the 1830s.

But Dave had never before seen it with his own eyes. Perhaps he should call the sisters on his cell phone and warn them about it. What if he didn’t, and it set Rosa’s Star on fire?

As Dave sat frozen in indecision he heard another noise born out of chaos and disharmony. It was Big Jessie’s powerboat, and his Mom was on board. Her normally soft, respectful voice was boisterous and condescending, and she clearly had a snoot full of alcohol. Dave’s mood suddenly swung from the curious, mysterious and sublime, to frustration, disappointment and inner rage. To be continued.