Celebrity Captain
This Week's Prompt
“They say a ship’s run aground over near Harper’s Cove,” said an old man in overalls, hanging up the corded phone. There was a sense of permanence about the Coast Rescue shack, between the scratched furniture and fading paint it looked as though it had sat there near the sea for ages. The midday salty air wisped through the open windows, gently rustling the loose papers on the man’s desk. “John says it’s a real doozy.”
“That's too bad, I was hoping to spend some time in town today,” Becky rolled her eyes, but smiled as she threw on her reflective red jacket. “Do you think we’ll need help from the mainland?”
“Nah, I don’t think so. Probably nothing you can’t handle,” he smiled back, with equal measures of pride and sadness. His own safety jacket was slowly collecting dust on the back of his chair.
“Thanks, Dad,” Becky said as she grabbed the keys off the wall. Stepping past the creaky screen door and off the porch, she could feel the August sun burning down. It was almost the off-season, when things would quiet down. The rolling crashes of the cobalt waves grew louder as she descended the wooden steps down to the rocky beach. It’d be a great day to go swimming, she thought, but duty calls. The tugboat by the dock rose and fell, and with the ease of expertise she climbed on and started the engine.
••.•´•.••My Part••.•´•.••
As Becky turned the tug away from the dock, into the bay and then headed for open water, she thought back to her childhood. She’d grown up aboard this tug, as her dad taught her everything he knew about captaining a vessel. The sea is definitely in her blood.
As a decorated U.S. Navy PT boat commander during WWII, Becky’s dad inspired her own illustrious career in the U.S. Coast Guard. She became the first female captain of a Hamilton-class cutter, and earned its Distinguished Service Medal before retiring to work with her dad, running the family business.
A radio update from him confirms that it’s the “Briny Betty,” a casino ship that runs gambling excursions out of Kilmeek Falls, a fairly large town in the area. She giggles because she knows the captain of that vessel. “This is going to be fun,” she says as her dad, (now laughing), tells her, “Yep, Jagoff Josh is in control.”
Josh imagines he’s a Kilmeek Falls celebrity as he greets passengers in his flashy uniform as they board his ship. Newbies always gush over meeting “The Captain,” (feeding his ego), while gamblers are just eager to get out there to gamble and either win or lose some money and then go back home.
When he worked as a harbor pilot nearly ten years earlier, he got fired after destroying an entire dock, which he attempted to blame on the engine room crew for not following his orders. The ship’s captain, first mate and crew disputed his story and an investigation proved they were right.
A couple of years after that, Josh had a job taking tourists on dolphin sighting cruises on a large pontoon boat. He got too close to some rocks. The pontoon on the port side was slashed underneath, and if he’d then gone into deeper water, the boat would have capsized and lives might have been lost.
Josh hated Becky’s dad, (and by association, Becky), because as the former Coast Guard Auxiliary Division Commander, he’d asked the Coast Guard to revoke Josh’s captain’s license.
As she neared the stranded ship, Becky radioed the bridge and asked for the captain. After an awkwardly long silence, a voice responded, “Captain Wilson; over.”
“Good afternoon Captain; we’re going to get hooked up here and we should have you free from the bar in under two hours. It’s a bit rough out here right now, so that’s gonna slow things down a bit; over.”
“The weather is why we’re stranded; over,” Captain Wilson replied.
Becky rolled her eyes. Marine warnings were issued that morning. A good captain wouldn’t have taken the ship out that day, but it shouldn’t have run aground anyway.
Finally, Becky got the ship freed.
“Well Captain, since you’ll certainly be pre-occupied, I’ll be keeping Joshua junior at home this week, kind of as a favor that you don’t deserve. Over and out.”
