The Talking Mime
Chapter I
Down the California Coast
We picked up a mooring buoy at the north end of Monterey Bay offshore of a little tourist town called Capitola where gourmet coffee prices would make a New Yorker blush and there are more men wearing pony tails than women. Capitola was the first stop in our annual summer sojourn southward along the California coast aboard our 45-foot sailing ketch, Rocinante, which seemed as tired as we were after fighting the wind and waves from San Francisco Bay in a rolling night voyage.
We had pulled in after a bouncy ride that the National Weather Service had said wasn't happening — even as we we're being tossed about on 12-foot swells with 30-knot winds pushing from all over the compass. It was just before 8 a.m. on July 6th, past the July 4th madness that passes for boating on San Francisco Bay and my wife Nym and I had taken turns hand-steering through the sloppy seas, unwilling to trust our autopilot, which had begun making strange groaning noises just off Pillar Point at Half Moon Bay.
Our twin teenage sons, Jacob and Jerrod, had slept below like mummies oblivious to the roar of the water around them through the entire night. Our calico cat Thompson, short for Hunter S. Thompson, had also slept through the trip, hiding somewhere below.
We had left in the early evening, enveloped in a thick fog inside San Francisco Bay which stayed with us out along the coast, laying low on the water even with the wind. It would have been a night of glorious sailing had we been willing to sail much farther out from the coast, but I was determined to make Monterey Bay by morning. The radar scope did its usual yeoman service, picking out a handful of freighters and a few fishing boats as we drew a line from the sea buoys and San Francisco Entrance to an imaginary point I had drawn on my chart three miles off the Santa Cruz headlands.
I had glanced behind me and was warming my hands on my coffee mug — trying desperately to visualize a sunny day at the Santa Cruz Harbor beach — when out of nowhere it seemed, I was staring at a huge wooden bowsprit that I recognized in a frightening moment as California's official tallship, the twin-masted Californian.
The Californian came out of the night straight at us from behind, sans any running lights and sailing at a good 12-15 knots, forcing me to turn sharply, almost causing a serious broach in the tall waves. I swore loudly enough to raise the whole crew out of their warm bunks, or maybe it was just the sudden lurch, but it was over quickly as we sped south and the Californian roared south, too. The twinge of seasickness I had felt was gone as I hailed the Californian on the VHF radio to tell them their lights were out and to report the near miss. But my call was only answered by static and a Portuguese fisherman who was lonely and commiserated with me about the close call.
I had almost forgotten about it as we cleaned the cockpit out, the debris of spilled coffee and snacks from the night passage hidden about cracks in the teak and on the fiberglass. I was watching forward, where the bowline was made fast from our cleats to one of several dozen firmly anchored buoys owned by the city when I saw a very ugly relative of Jonathan Livingston Seagull semi-crash-land near the anchor windlass on the bowsprit of the boat, extending over the water.
That a seagull — with or without poor navigational skills — decided to take up residence on the bow of Rocinante was not unusual. In our slip in San Francisco's City Marina, right next to the world famous St. Francis Yacht Club, gulls were always circling the area, watching for the leftovers from the meals of our twins, neither of whom would be allowed in Emily Post's home — let alone at her dinner table. But I had watched the bow and bowsprit take several tons of water on the trip down as we plunged through several troughs that almost stopped us completely in the rough seas. Some seriously sticky macaroni and cheese must be up there, I thought.
"Maybe he's hurt?" Nym asked, poking her head up from the hatchway and looking forward at our guest. A caregiver of epic proportions, Nym has at times taken in birds and more than a few stray animals into the house and nursed them back to health. "He's pretty ratty looking even for a male gull," she said.
I went back to scrubbing the cockpit, wondering if it was going to be open season on the male species today. Nym had made several comments during the night about the lack of hygiene in the forward head that the boys and I shared whenever we took an extended voyage, giving her the larger, and certainly generally cleaner, aft head and shower area for herself.
"Alex," she said, "The gull has something in his mouth. Oops, he dropped it. I bet it's a flying fish that landed up when we rounded the point."
I watched the gull pirouette around forward, but my vision was blocked by rigging and lines, dinghies and assorted paraphernalia that was part and parcel of our cruising equipment whenever we ventured out the Golden Gate. Nym always complained that we looked like a bunch of gypsies and heaven help the crew member — or captain — who left a towel hanging over a rail when we left the dock.
Our twin-boy demolition team roused from their snoring reverie when they heard mention of fish and realized that a live seagull was nearly at arms length, just above their heads through the hatch from the V-berth where they slept. Rocinante is a traditional, center cockpit rig, which gives her a nice v-berth (for the boys) a spacious central cabin with a galley, table and salon and my navigation station, complete with GPS, a computer, weatherfax, and several radios, including a Ham set purchased last year. The boat's aft cabin, with a double bed, desk, and private head is the reserve for Nym and I, far enough away from the bow when the boys want to stay awake, and far enough away to sleep in tidily in the morning when they opted to get up early to head out on some adventure.
Neither of the 15-year-olds could be considered a naturalist, but they had spent a good part of their summers in recent years scraping seagull droppings off boats in the harbor to make money for their small sailing skiff, Sancho Panza," new CDs or to treat our 15-year-old neighbor girl to a burger. She overlooks their neanderthal eating habits, if they're paying the bill. The boat took most of their money, because, like their father, they enjoyed the puttering on the boat that costs so much money, and while cheap in some ways, would never consider cutting a corner when it came to boat equipment.
"Dad! Is he still there?"
I peered forward from the cockpit where the gull was shaking something pretty large in his mouth but his huge rump blocked a good view of it from the cockpit in the center of the boat. ""He's up there, but I don't know for how long," I shouted down, hoping to get either boy out of the bunks so I could talk them into helping me wash down the decks.
Normally early risers, both boys had perfected sleeping in with a science that bordered on precision when we were traveling, recognizing that there are jobs that need to be done on boats at all hours, but early in the morning there were more than normal. And having just completed an all-night passage, there was plenty to go around.
The forward hatch, located about ten feet from where the gull was perched, began to slowly lift, blocking my view entirely, and I wondered if this gull would take off quickly when he saw the twins malicious eyes. Finally it was up all the way, standing up straight and I could see someone's fingers on the outside edge as they pulled themselves up out of the bunks.
I felt the boat lurch from a passing motorboat wake and leaned down in the cockpit, looking at a row of peanuts (my favorite on-watch snack which had found their way to form a perfect circle in one of two large drain screens in the floor of the cockpit, blocking the salt water I was splashing from draining out.
I was actually thinking some peanuts might taste good with the fresh coffee I could smell from the galley when I was interrupted.
"DAD!
DAD...
JESUS CHRIST!
DAD!"
The forward hatch over the boys' cabin dropped like a stone back to the deck and as I shot down the companionway ladder headed for the V-berth, I noted that the gull was still shaking his prize, but I was concerned about some disaster forward that probably included a badly pinched finger — or worse — in the bunks.
Nym beat me by seconds, her slender five foot, two inch frame well-suited for quick motion in the small spaces below. I huffed into the cabin, banging my head slightly on the six-foot overhang, swearing, then catching myself because unless somebody was seriously hurt, the loud "Jesus Christ" that had reverberated across the water to half the boats around us was going to call for at least some stern talk.
"I hope Jesus Christ himself is on the bow, or else..." I bellowed.
A look from Nym told me to stop there, and I didn't like the look on either of the boys' faces.
"Dad, that seagull's got a hand and some guts in its mouth," Jerrod said. "No shit, Dad."
Jacob looked a little uncomfortable with his brother's observation - and the shit - but didn't dispute it. "It's gross, Dad. Take a look."
We had played enough practical jokes on each other that I knew I was somehow being set up, but as I require them to be good sports, I went along, hoping it would be over quickly because I was exhausted from the night voyage and was looking forward to a day of sleeping and reading — in that order.
I inched forward, stepping up on the bunk so I could lift the hatch, laughing silently that two boys who once watched all of the Friday the 13th movies in an all-day movie marathon with their friends would think I would be so gullible that I would believe they would be intimidated by something in the mouth of a seagull — mostly likely the insides of a tuna or some other fish killed by a shark. As I inched it open, the gull ran by on the deck, trying to take off heading for the cockpit.
"Shit," I yelled, dropping the hatch and tumbling down with Nym and the boys, who were now laughing. "Let's go see this critter. Whatever he has is too heavy to fly with."
As we extricated ourselves from the bunk, the boys pulled their sleeping bags around them unzipped while Nym moved up into the cockpit. "He's back on the aft deck," Nym says. "No! There he goes forward again."
"ALEX!"
I was still trying to get clear of the V-berth debris of clothes, shoes and empty potato chip bags and Pepsi cans when Nym shouted. She was still standing on the ladder, and I saw the gull skitter by the main cabin portholes, back up the bow and out near the end of the bowsprit where I had first spied him. Nym hadn't moved, and without the entanglements of the two boys, I jumped up on the bunk and popped the hatch like it was submarine.
I had had enough aerobics, the fatigue of the all-night sail beginning to sink me. "Alex, be careful," Nym shouted.
Careful? I wondered if she was in on the joke, whatever it was. Our practical jokes were sometimes pretty grotesque, but part of the unwritten Cameron family joke code was that although you could make a total ass out of someone, they could not get physically injured in the process.
I edged up out of the hatch, reminding myself that I really wanted to trim down to 175 pounds this summer from the high 190s I'd crept up to since last fall. Since I had turned 45, the spare tire around my stomach came and went without much warning. A week of pizza and beer — and no exercise — could mean as much as a 10-pound gain. And it took a lot more than a single week to get rid of the same poundage.
The gull was startled by my quick ascent and struggled, dropping his prize finally but not without a screech that hurt my ears. I also saw him drop a present from his hind end for the boys to clean near the end of the bowsprit, but the thing that had been in his mouth was just ahead of me as I slid out on all fours to look where the gull had been.
It was certainly no flying fish or tuna that this gull had had in its mouth.
And it certainly looked like a human hand.
I mentally congratulated the boys on their adeptness. This thing was far more realistic than any dimestore Halloween joke I had ever seen. This was far better than Jerrod's last attempt to convince me that he had a broken arm, a dramatic skit one evening when he came home from a snow-skiing expedition that was completely plausible — until he yanked the case off his arm and declared that he was miraculously cured.
Ahead I saw the gull, which had returned to the very end of the bowsprit leaving its prize between us. He was ten feet away, eyeing me the same way a dog does when you take away its bone as I took a lot closer look at what I thought the boys had tossed on the deck.
I wished later I hadn't looked quite so close.
The hand was neatly severed at the wrist, pecked out in spots, though still relatively intact. But the detail that ultimately triggered a gag reflex in my throat, sending last night's coffee, snacks and a half jar of peanuts onto the deck was a beautiful ring, polished by its exposure to salt water, — a ring I would later tell police was at least two-carats and smartly displayed on the ring finger, at least the stub that was left of it.
It seemed the joke was on me, but I wasn't laughing.
NEXT UP: The Harbormaster
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