The Sea Change

He came up to a rather rotund man at the bar.  Drinkers slid down to open up seats.  Lamont threw $2000 cash on the bar and said: “Give everyone in the house a drink!”

The bar was not packed.  Fortunately, I thought.

He sat down next to Matt Capone, and engaged him in lively conversation.  Capone was impressed.  “My ship is docked up the Hudson River” he told Capone.

“Come up to my room, and I’ll put on a clean shirt and tie, and we will go to New York now.”  Capone said to Lamont.

“Excellent,” the Captain agreed, “One of my crew will come along.”

Upstairs there was a picture on the wall of Mama, and her brood of violent sons--all with staring eyes and round faces with the look of dead fish.  Her name was Theresa, husband Gabriel.  Neapolitans from Italy.  The Capone Family!  Al had his expensive white felt hat on and stood out--white spats too.

“Al is dead three years now and buried in Mt. Carmel Cemetery.” Matt lamented.  “He was King of Chicago and had it all--and I had it all too.  No more now.  Left me in bad circumstances.  The cops harass me down on the street.  Have made me a police character.  Trying to drive me out of Chicago.  I’m not a bad guy.  It’s the name.  Why don’t they bother those maroons down there instead of me?”

“Just what did happen down there?”

“You should have the Captain describe fully to you what a Greybeard is.  It is a wave that comes across the sea for thousands of miles and builds up four times higher than the regular huge waves at the Horn.  It lifts your ship up to the sky and drops it down.  It has done many a seaman in, or is it down?  It can pitch-pole a ship end over end for a sure ending in the deeps of the sea.  In our case it rolled us over.  We were hanging in our safety ropes in the water--.and up on the side of the awful wave near the top.  It sure seemed the end.  The Captain was half under water in the wheelhouse, but as usual, full of his Command Confidence.  He is a Master of ships and of the sea.  Unlike any other captain, he feels through the ship to the sea below.  There was a split second or two when the prop got back into the water, and he opened our powerful motor up full when it did.  He bit into that wave and brought the ship back upright!  So we went down into the valley and back up on to a regular huge wave.  That was it.”

“No ship has ever come back up from being over.  So it was a miracle?” a reporter asked.

“It is the Captain who is a miracle.” I informed him.

Then, as reporters usually do, the reporter moved the challenge to a new area.  “You say you are peace corps people, but you run guns and put cannon on your ship?”

“It’s just plain necessary to defend yourself, and we do it for the people of Costa Rica too.  You can be the Good Guy in the world, and defend yourself so you can be.  You have to continue to exist to be the Good Guy.  We work for peace.”