TALES FROM THE CARIBBEAN

Dave (everybody called him Shark Boy), and Ryan kicked off their boat moccasins and laid back on the port and starboard cushions while they talked about reoccurring dreams. Ryan, it seems, was having one particular dream that really troubled him.

It always started with him hearing, in his dream, the disembodied voice of his dearly departed uncle saying, “Look to the East.” When he looked, he saw what appeared to be a pitch-black tropical storm approaching from the East. While his mind was making a list of things he should batten down, he would suddenly realize that it was not an ordinary storm, but a single huge black wave, a tsunami more than a hundred feet high with a white ridge at its top edge and lightning strikes arcing in its ugly curl. He would find himself paralyzed by panic and fear as his mind computed the futility and hopelessness of his situation, and then he would awake. He would lie there in a cold sweat, so badly shaken that any further sleep was impossible.

“What could it mean?” he asked.

Dave remained silent for quite some time and finally suggested that Ryan should share his dream with Mona and Catrina Analusleiscu, because the Gypsy sisters were specialists in every kind of mysterious phenomena.

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“My Dad said all human beings have fear,” he added, “and that we must face it, or be destroyed. But he also taught me that most of the time, we don’t have to face fear alone, because we can share it with another human being and that neuters the boogieman.”

“I asked him about the night he faced hurricane Marilyn’s 150 mph winds alone aboard his yawl Hirondelle; he suffered eleven knockdowns that night. It took him a long time to answer, but after a while he said, ‘I wasn’t alone that night, there was an unseen spirit with me who kept saying, It’s not how many times you get knocked down, it’s how many times you can get back up.’”

“The monk was listening to us talk, and he nodded and commented, ‘Fear knocked at the door, faith answered, and nobody was there.’ He said people who live by real faith in an Almighty, Numinous Higher Power who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent can face any fear, and fart in the devil’s face.”

The two young sailors drifted into deep slumber as the nightlights twinkled and shooting stars streaked through the night sky above them.

No sooner, it seemed, had they fallen asleep when the Caribbean sun began to peek above the horizon and defeat the darkness. Dave rubbed the sleep from his eyes and remembered that he still had his mother’s dinghy. He slipped quietly over the rail of Ryan’s boat, removed the dinghy’s painter from an aft cleat and returned to the Dream Weaver to wake up his mother. She was supposed to have a sunrise cruise today, and he hoped they too had overslept.

Dave’s Mom was not feeling well when she awoke and she snapped at him, “Where have you been?”

Dave ignored her mood and cheerfully suggested that she get herself around while he went ashore and picked up her clients. As luck had it the clients had partied late too, and were just arriving at the ferry dock when he got there. Dave loaded them three at a time into the dinghy and took them out to Dream Weaver.

By the time he had ferried all of them out to his Mom’s boat she was in a better mood. Dave’s plan was to have them drop him off at Lovango on their early sail so he could check on the hungry monk. His mother however had other plans: she wanted him to stay onboard and help her with the sails, winches, and helm while she entertained the clients. Bloody Mary’s were the order of the day, she told him—some hair of the dog that bit them the night before. Dave was feeling more and more frustrated; these never-ending tasks were keeping him from his search for the lost pirate treasure.

And there was something else on his mind also. The night before, Ryan had talked at such length about his own reoccurring dream, that they had fallen asleep before Dave could tell Ryan about his. His dream was not fearful but curious.

For several nights in succession he dreamed that he was standing near Lovango’s highest bluff looking towards the sea when he noticed puffs of smoke coming from a rock pile about 20 feet from the edge of the cliff. As he approached the puffs of smoke, he smelled a mysterious musty smell and realized that it wasn’t smoke but puffs of dust coming up from the ground. Whenever the wind gusted it blew plumes of dust from beneath the ground up through the rock pile. But then he would wake up before he could find out what was making this happen. To be continued …