I like water. Something about it attracts me, like a pleasant experience that I want to always have. I think that water likes me, too, because when I pee the water always holds back as if it doesn’t want to leave me.
I’ve always liked being near water, especially at the creek that is in the back yard of my parent’s home. I used to spend a lot of time there when I was a kid. I can still feel the coolness of my bare feet while wading in the creek. Water offers a mysterious, magnetic, mesmerism so that I find myself reluctant to pull away or get pulled away.
Perhaps that is one reason that I enlisted in the Navy. Even salt water has its attractions for me. Water can take you places; you travel to your enchanted dreams.
However, I disliked a certain kind of salt water and that’s the salt water of my sweat. Vietnam enveloped me with overwhelming sweat (like every soldier and sailor there). My salty sweat literally engulfed my body, every day and night, from head to feet. But ocean salt water is welcomed. When I was discharged from the Navy, and departed the Navy base at Camp Tien Sha, Danang, I was hoping to catch a Navy ship back to the states. A plane was much faster, but the water had me in its grip, and I had no place to get to and all the time in the world not to get there.
As a matter of fact, I liked the water so much that I always had to live close to a body of water: creek, river,pond, lake, ocean. When I retired from my teaching job, I moved my family to Norfolk, Virginia. There’s a Navy base there and its close to the Outer Banks in North Carolina, an hour away. It was there that I finally realized my dream of having a sailboat. I’d been saving money for years for both retirement and for my dream.
One of the first things I did after purchasing a house was to buy a sailboat. I had been saving for years so that I could afford a sailboat, in good shape, with a cabin and in fairly good shape, too. I bought a 28 foot sailboat. It had a cabin with a small, below deck area for two benches and a fold-to-the-wall table. Each bench folded out to make a bed. There was also a microwave and small refrigerator.
Sandy, my wife, pitched-in so it only took a month or so to complete the minor jobs: getting new sails, painting the outside of the boat as well as the inside of the cabin and getting the stench of fish out of the cabin.
Sandy and I (kids all grown up and gone) planned our maiden voyage for the coming Saturday. We used the previous days to get ready and organized. It seemed as if it took a year for Saturday to arrive. Friday night we packed lightly (it was only a trip for a few hours). Then, early Saturday morning we drove to the sailboat and off we went.
The weather was nice with a sunny, blue sky, calm water, and a mild breeze. There were not many boats out in the water and the ones that had stayed close to the harbor. That was unusual, but good for us because we would be alone on a private voyage. I had a small motor that took us out into the harbor, then we raised the sail. The boat leaped forward when the wind suddenly filled the sail like a deep inhaling fills your lungs. The boat leaped forward when the wind filled the sail. It was a stronger breeze than I had expected. The boat’s lunge made Sandy fall on her ass, but no harm was done. I was holding onto the mast, so I didn’t go down.
We sailed out to sea for a couple of miles where we stopped, and I pulled down the sail. Except for slowly drifting we were basically stationary on the calm water. I felt triumphant, exhilarated as I looked at Sandy, then I looked out to sea and saw thousands of miles of beautiful water.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Sandy go below deck into the cabin. Maybe she did get hurt, I thought. Before I could check on her, she came topside smiling broadly, and carrying a bottle of wine and two glasses. Soon our glasses were full and the celebration began. Another bottle of wine appeared, and the frequency of giggles, laughing and kisses increased. Unfortunately, we must have had too much wine because we both got drowsy, so we dozed on a deck bench.
Unknown to us, as we slept, unexpected bad weather set in. I had been warned that the Cape Hatteras area is notorious for its sudden storms. I was too excited about the sailboat to pay much attention. After all, the weather during the week had been terrific.
The rocking and bouncing of the boat due to the rough waves and high winds woke us up. We were both startled. That, at first, left us confused about what had happened and what was not happening. My head cleared and I ran to the stairs to get topside, with Sandy close behind me, when the sailboat suddenly shook violently as a wave hit us hard on the starboard side.
Sandy and I crashed into the railing and the wall where it was attached. The next thing I knew, I was flying backwards into Sandy and towards the cabin’s deck.
I don’t know how long it was before I woke, dizzy and dazed. My thoughts and actions were temporarily scrambled. However, I found myself lying on the bed instead of the bench. I thought that Sandy must have helped me off the floor and onto the bed. As I tried to rise, I banged my head on the metal shelf that hung above my bed. It contained the communication and navigation equipment. I already had a headache, but now my head was throbbing, painfully. The light bothered me, as it often does, when I have a bad headache so I placed my palms over my eyes.
A gentle hand pushed me back down. I could feel the wetness of Sandy’s hand on my shoulder. I was only half-conscious, but I felt a cool, wet cloth being placed over my forehead and eyes. Then I heard Sandy whisper, “The cloth will cool your forehead. The coolness of the cloth over your eyes will also help ease the headache. Sleep is what you need.” Then I was gently pushed down to the pillow. I felt the wetness again as my head sank into the soft pillow.
I fell back to sleep quickly, even though I did not want to, because there were jobs to do and Sandy to help. But I couldn’t have been asleep long when, again, Sandy touched me on my shoulder to wake me up. She pulled the wet cloth away from my eyes and I woke up slowly.
Sandy asked, “Are you ok? Are you hurt?”
“Headache,” I replied, then, “The boat?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t been topside yet.”
I noticed that Sandy’s feet made a squishing sound as if she were walking in water. She was, and it puzzled me. Looking down at the wet floor I saw isolated puddles, the water in them was not moving much. So, I knew that we were back in a calm sea. The storm is over, I thought, still somewhat dazed. I looked at Sandy. She did not appear to be hurt, but I asked her just to make sure.
“Just a sore back. Nothing serious,” she responded.
“Thanks for getting me into bed and applying the cool cloth. It really was soothing and lessened the intensity of my headache.”
Sandy looked at me as if I were delirious. She furrowed her forehead and said, “What are you talking about? I just woke up and came over here to wake you up. I woke up in bed, just like you, and with a wet cloth over my eyes and forehead. Hell, I thought you had taken care of me.”
“But I thought that you had taken care of me.”
I don’t know what Sandy was thinking at that moment, but I was thinking “WTF!”
We looked at each other and could see the confusion easily via our facial expressions.
Just then we heard a splash in the water, as if something from the boat had fallen overboard. We rushed topside and looked around. Neither of us saw anything until Sandy shouted, “Look there!” She pointed over the port side of the boat.
“A ball?” I said, curiously.
Sandy giggled. “A ball with hair? A hairball?” she laughed.
I squinted and saw that the ball was really a face. A female face. She was waving to Sandy and I. How strange, I thought. Sandy remained quiet, just staring at her.
Then Sandy and I heard a loud voice shouting, “I hope that the both of you will be well now. No real damage to the boat that I could see. The storm was not as strong as predicted.”
Speechless, we could only stare at her as she began to dive. Her head, chest and back were now below the water, but the lower part of her body was above water, then she disappeared.
We gasped as we looked at the unbelievable. We saw the lower part of her body.
We turned face to face and said to each other, “Mermaid.”
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