A Crew of One

A scruffy face stared at its image reflected back by the glossy coating of the magazine. His photo hadn’t made the cover, but the words, “A MODERN-DAY ISHMAEL – The story of Morgan Lewis” cut through his mirrored chin. The ghost of a smile touched his lips as he gathered the sheaf of common envelopes from the mailbox and started back toward the house.

The mailbox flicked itself closed and a voice called out from the neighboring driveway, “Morgan! Sage and I are so excited to get out on the water next week!” Doris hopped excitedly out of the car. “We’re finally gonna do it!”

Morgan smiled back, “I’m looking forward to it. My customers are usually strangers, and they aren’t all as friendly as you folks.” His smile grew more genuine when he saw a light blush spread across her cheeks.

“Well, have a good evening and a good weekend.” The young woman strolled to her front door. Morgan, too, started again toward his home, but this time his eyes followed the car Doris had arrived in. It returned to the street with a gentle hum and sped off to pick up some new charge.

He thought of the rivers of such cars cycling endlessly throughout the city, the county, the country, the world. The automation is freeing, isn’t it? Freedom to work, to rest, to play while you are whisked from here to there, to yet another there. A freedom within the lines. The blood flowing smoothly but still restricted to the veins and arteries of a great machine.

Morgan tossed the envelopes carelessly onto the credenza and brought the magazine into a cozy living room before sinking into the recliner. Just when he levered the footrest into place, the lights came on, supplementing the last rays of sunlight and giving Morgan just the right amount of light for reading. He opened the first page of the magazine and a small, light blue envelope dropped onto his lap.

My dear friend Morgan

was written in unmistakable dictapen script across the face. He already knew it was from Francis who had spent the previous summer with Morgan taking many trips and many notes on the art of manual seafaring. The brief note read in more faux-cursive:

I had hoped to give you this magazine in person, but I’m afraid our schedules don’t align these days. I was so excited to have my article approved and I truly hope you’ll enjoy it!

Morgan skimmed through the following platitudes that constituted a note that was both genuine and utterly bland. And yet, he could not resist the third smile of the evening pushing through, this one more bittersweet than anything.

He had enjoyed that summer with Francis much more than he had expected to. The kid had trouble with his sea legs at first, but eventually Francis got the basics of sailing Morgan’s yawl. Francis had even learned some of the subtleties of tiny sail and steering adjustments that were normally handled by computers. Seeing Francis’s skills, Morgan had perhaps fooled himself that the youth would stick with it, that the interest in sailing was more than the source of a journal story – the counterevidence now rested loosely in his hand.

The perfunctory note was set aside, and the magazine was flipped to the relevant article. It was quite flattering, with Francis painting a picture of Morgan as a grizzled salt and keeper of ancient secrets. While others used computers and tiny motors to survive the sea, Morgan used intuition and grit. While others sipped champagne and cruised along the charted routes, Morgan’s calloused hands tugged at the lines and his craft wandered the great waters freely (although he wasn’t opposed to an occasional stereotypical slug of rum).

How romantic.

The article closed by noting that there was no other person in the world who could sail anything larger than a dinghy without computer assistance. This was presented as praise, but Morgan sighed with half contentment and half resentment as the article contained no call for others to learn. Perhaps he was a relic, a curiosity, a theme park attraction. But how could he complain? No one cared to learn more than the simplest basics and the tours paid his bills.

He didn’t consider himself old, but he felt it. The man rose from his chair to eat his dinner while skimming the other half-interesting articles of the magazine. At a reasonable time, he went to bed.

Morgan awoke before first light to a brisk air running through his window. The irregular hum of early Saturday traffic nudged at his chilled ears until he finally slid out of bed. Morgan dressed himself in his unprofessional boat garb and headed into the kitchen looking much the caricature of an old New England fisherman, less the white beard and pipe.

The coffee machine lit up as he entered, displaying its twenty or so options. The sleepy sailor had tried them all and none was quite right, so he resigned himself to the Almond Milk Latte option with a half-spoonful of sugar. As the machine buzzed and poured out the light mud into the mug on the table, Morgan’s gaze turned toward the window.

Darkness slowly gave in to the awkward colors of nascent day. Morgan perused the magazine once again while he sipped his coffee before noticing for the first time that it had been published several months ago. All that time and Francis hadn’t tried to contact him again? Morgan thought back and couldn’t remember any recent uptick in business either. Ah, well.

As he finished his coffee, he looked back out the window once more. The sky had settled on an anodyne red. Eyes locked on the clouds in the window for another moment, a final, sardonic smile crept across his face.

With a few quick taps on a computer screen, a car was summoned and Morgan was whisked out to the dockyard. He filled his lungs with salty air just as the sun peeked over the horizon and bounded down the ramp to his yawl.

Morgan was always pleased to take customers out on the larger ships, of course – showing them the ropes and shouting simple orders as they ran the tour route – but there was a charm and a magic to the smaller yacht. For Morgan the yawl was perfect: a boat small enough to singlehand, but large enough to have some real power. As he approached her hull, she was dazzling with her many scuffs and moderately weathered wood.

Quickly, covers came off, rigging was prepared, and dock ties finally released the beauty from her boat slip. Morgan guided the ship out of the harbor under engine power and felt the familiar rush of the ocean wind nipping his face. This time the crisp sea air felt just as the first time he had felt it. It was a wonderful feeling, but this time he did not smile, and he did not know why he did not smile.

The engine was cut, the sails went up and the happy couple were yanked forward by the growing wind. Morgan followed the sea lanes at first, to get away from the shore, but his fingers itched for the moment when he would turn the wheel and steer them out to… anywhere. Perhaps toward the island today. To the side no one ever saw anymore. Yes, that sounded good.

Once sufficiently far from the mainland, they did exactly that. The speed, the power, the hull cutting through and over the swells; Morgan felt them all within his body. He hardly noticed the clouds gathering and the sky darkening as the island grew larger in his vision. But he knew. He knew without noticing.

After two hours, Morgan had melded with the boat and the sails. He adjusted cunningham when they needed, tugged on the vang, eased out the sheets just so. Actions performed automatically, every single day, which had become ancient knowledge. It had been upwind all the way out and Morgan prepared the vessel to round the island to starboard.

The swells had grown to enormous size, and the winds had whipped up into a fury, but Morgan paid them little mind. He was the ship and he had to move. As they turned past the wind, it shifted just enough to catch Morgan too early and the booms zipped over the deck, pulling the boat down onto its starboard side. Swells crashed against the bottom of the hull and dark water flooded onto the deck.

The island cliffs loomed nearby as Morgan struggled to make adjustments to right his beautiful yawl. A storm like this was not a particularly devastating storm, by any metric, but a single man against a storm like this had little power to combat it. And so, the boat flooded and capsized near to the windward side of the rocky cliffs.

He had his lifejacket and a flare, and all the standard safety equipment, but Morgan knew they were about as useful as his attempt to right the boat had been. The boat’s radio system would automatically send out a distress signal, and the coast guard would rush out, but they would still be too far from a place so divergent from the typical routes.

The chaos of the whitecaps and the wind were too much to fight. There was no use trying to return to a capsized boat in this weather. The oppressive danger of the situation brought clarity to Morgan’s mind. Another smile (so that morning’s had not been his last!) exploded onto his face, this one of absolute acceptance. He beamed at the futility before him.

The sailor who was not old – yet felt it – knew what would come. The waters would carry him to the rock. The step after was more ambiguous: a single, merciful strike or a brutal struggle. After that it was a complete unknown. Whether his body would be found or lost beneath the waves, forced down by the pressing storm, he could not know.