“Sadie, I—”
“When you let them kill Paw?” I practically shriek. Bright lights flash through our tent as lightning bursts all around us.
“Sadie!” my mother snaps, but I’m not listening to her, not seeing the lightning, not caring about the way my father’s face has drooped like the wax on a melting candle.
Wet or not, storm or not, I don’t care. I bash through the tent flaps and out into the thunder and lightning.
Chapter Five
Huck
“My son!” my father bellows, his face beaming with something I’ve never seen before. Excitement? Sort of. Happiness? Definitely. Pride? Aye! There it is. My father’s face is full of pride. And I think it’s for me.
The crowd cheers, but my father, Admiral Jones, waves his hands to silence them. “Thank you all for coming. This is an important day for me, for my family, for my son.” More cheers. “Today my son, Huck Jones, becomes a man!”
The roars are deafening but I barely hear them because I’m basking under the glow of my father’s pride. But then I have a thought that makes me go numb:
Is it real?
My father once taught me that part of being a leader is being what people expect you to be. “Isn’t that lying?” I had asked, remembering how my mother always told me never to lie, no matter what the circumstances. “No,” Father had said, smiling broadly, “it’s leadership.”
Is that what he’s doing now? Pretending to be proud of his son because that’s what’s expected of him on my fourteenth birthday?
But still.
It’s wonderful seeing him like this—the best feeling in the world. The numbness fades because I don’t care whether he’s lying, or just being a leader, or whatever. For right now, he’s proud of me.
“May I present to you…my son…Lieutenant Jones!” He pulls his sword out, hilt branded with the mark of The Merman’s Daughter, and I do the same, my sword matching his
(Except I lost the fight with the bilge rat.)
(And my father never loses.)
and we raise our swords above our heads, and I feel full of power and strength, and for the first time in my life I’m fearless, and I can do anything, conquer anything, and I’m ready,
(I think.)
ready to become a man.
No, I am a man. Lieutenant Jones.
Someone starts singing…
“Yo, ho, on land or at sea; yo, ho, get down on your knees…”
…and soon we’re all singing, me and my father included, his proud arm around me—only no…no, it’s just me and Cain.
“Yo, ho, we’ll fight to the end; yo, ho, we’ll fight cuz we’re men!”
My father’s gone.
But I don’t care because he was proud of me tonight and he’s a busy, important man and I can’t expect him to stick around for a silly party that’s all for me. So I keep singing and smiling and my friends come up and shake my hand like I’m something, someone bigger than them, because I am.
I’m a man.
And then the grog starts flowing and I’m allowed to have a few burning—and if I’m being honest, quite disgusting—sips this time, because I’m of age and I’m a lieutenant now, so who would stop me anyway?
But father’s not here.
But I don’t care because the grog has sent warmth through my belly and the stars are shining even though there’s lightning flashing off yonder in storm country. And the white sails are full and it’s a perfect night for sailing. And—and—
—father’s not here.
I take another sip of grog and force it down.
Someone picks me up, Cain I think, and throws me off onto the lower decks where eager hands await to catch me, to hold me up, to pass me around like a hero’s welcome. And I’m laughing and my friends are fighting through the crowd alongside me, laughing with me. Suddenly I realize: one of the worst days of my life has become one of the best nights of my life. Maybe even the best night.
A night to remember.
~~~
“Uhhh,” I moan the next morning, blinking in the dark of my cabin.
Why is someone hammering on my head?
I reach up, swat at whichever friend is playing the trick on me, waking me up with repeated knocks on my skull. But no one’s there and my hands whoosh through the empty air.
I feel around for the dark drapes covering my cabin window, pull them aside, squint when the circular beam of light hits me full in the face. The sun is way above the horizon and I’m late. Very late. Not a good start for my first day as a man.
And my head—oh, my aching head. I drank way too much grog, stayed up way too late. “Just one more song,” the men kept saying and I wasn’t about to deny them. Not on my night. Not when the jokes about me and the bilge rat had ended hours earlier.
Someone knocks on the door. “Lieutenant Jones?” a voice says.
They’re looking for my father, but he’s not a lieutenant. “Admiral Jones,” I correct, pulling my pillow over my head to drown out the continued knocking by the confused sailor.
“That’s your father’s name,” the voice says, and I realize it’s Cain and he’s talking about me, because
(Aye, I’m a lieutenant now, aren’t I?)
“Come in,” I say, my voice raspy.
I hear the cabin door swing open and I peek out from beneath my pillow to see Cain, dressed in his dirty blue uniform, smiling like he’s the one who just became a man. “You alive?” he asks.
“Barely,” I say. “But I’ve got a headache the size of the ship’s hull.”
“I bet,” Cain says. “I think you might’ve overdone it a little.” He’s still smiling like my headache is the funniest joke of the yar.
I groan in response. Then ask, “Why are you here anyway?”
With those five words, his smile vanishes as if it was never there in the first place. He runs a hand through his long, dark hair. “It’s time,” he says.
“Time for what?” I mutter.
“Time to go.”
A shudder passes through me and I have to clutch my stomach because something’s roiling in there, threatening to come back up. Still wearing my clothes from the night before, I stagger to my feet, stomp past Cain, climb the stairs three at a time, smashing my shoulder into the wooden wall when the ship lurches and my stomach along with it.
The sun warms my skin when I burst out into the fresh air, but it doesn’t help. I’ve got to get to the side. I rush starboard because the boat’s edge is closer on that side, and because my father is port and stops talking to the rudderman when he sees me, shooting glares in my direction that hold none of the false pride I saw from him last night.
Barely, barely, I make it to the railing before I throw everything up: last night’s supper, the obscene amounts of grog I drank, my manhood. All of it splashes down the side of the ship, leaving a trail of pink in the water, which is quickly swallowed up by the sharp-tooths thrashing below.
My loss is their gain, I guess.
Hanging my thundering head over the side, I just breathe, holding back my hair with one hand so the stream of drool from my mouth doesn’t soil it, the endless rocking of the ship doing little to help the nausea. Nearby, someone laughs. Then someone else. My ears open and I hear their jokes. “The little man can’t even hold his ale,” one says, laughing loudly. “He won’t last a minute on the Sailors’ Mayhem,” the other voice adds, chuckling.
My head snaps up, not from the jokes, which I’ve grown used to, but because of what the second man said. Sailors’ Mayhem? A ship name, one I know all too well. Its reputation precedes it. The worst ship in the fleet, requiring constant repairs, the Mayhem, as it’s known, is home to the outcasts of the outcasts, the sailors who can’t seem to fit in on any of the other ships.
But I won’t be going there.
My father wouldn’t do such a thing.