The Orphan Creed

I knew a little bit of their legends. I knew about the history of mariners and the relationship these gentle intelligent creatures of the sea had with seafarers. Many were the stories passed down of shipwrecks or sailors washed overboard who had been saved or taken to land by these graceful sentient beasts of the deep. I cringed at every shot and smiled at every shouted epithet. I knew it was the truth of his soul spilling from that filthy Nazi mouth. I knew when he swore, the vulgar ogre had missed again. “Keep swearing, you bastard,” I whispered to myself. “Keep missing; I hope the gun blows up in your face.” But it didn’t. The universe doesn’t work that way. It has other designs in mind. It takes the most heinous acts imaginable; perpetrated by the ugliest creatures in existence; and turns them into something beautiful. If nothing else, the universe is a study in balance; and when something is taken, something must be given. When something is found, something must be lost. It can be no other way. Hanz finally found his mark. I watched as the wounded dolphin leapt from the water and pin-tailed in a convulsing spiral into the clear blue of the warm waters of the southern reach. I watched the crimson red of its wound trace a bloody path like some ugly scarlet rope of stain into the depths. It was like someone had taken some obscene red ink and blotted it into a clear and cloudless sky. I don’t know how I got from the aft castle to the bow. All I remember is suddenly standing there smiling at Hanz. I was screaming inside. He thought I wanted to take a shot, maybe kill something; join the sport. I think in that moment I could have shot him. He thought I wanted to join in his cruelty. Most cruel people think that their cruelty is acceptable. Some of them actually find their cruelty humorous. Ask an orphan how funny it can be. That’s one of the reasons why I ran away. The mold had been cast. So I just smiled to Hanz and held out my hands. He smiled as he gave me the rifle. I took it; admired it for a moment; and then calmly threw it as hard and as far as I could into the ocean in the direction of the dolphin he had just killed. I’d seen the look a hundred times before. It is the incredulous face of disbelief. The look that immediately and viciously precedes the one of “Boy...you are about to get the biggest ass whipping you ever got.” I never had a problem calling the kettle black. Most orphans are good at that. They reach a point in their lives where they just know. Here it comes. “Boy, you done opened up a big old can of whip ass!” They get tired of being slapped down. They get tired of being slapped, punched, kicked. They know they are going to get it one way or the other so they might as well get something out of it. So they just start calling it the way they see it. My biggest problem was I didn’t know when to stop calling the kettle black. I got to the point where I would call the kettle black and blue. I suppose I deserved some of it. I provoked some of it. I was a smart ass. Maybe. But I know I didn’t deserve all of it. “Son, you got yourself a bad attitude. And I’m going to adjust it for you.” “I ain’t your son, Dad. Why don’t you just adjust yourself?” Maybe I should have thought twice on more than one occasion. Maybe I should have thought twice before heaving the rifle into the drink. Maybe. He hit me so hard he knocked me down. Loosened a few teeth. When I hit the steel of the deck; I was out cold like a cucumber. I don’t remember when I hit the water. I don’t know what happened to Hanz, or Andre, or the Chief Engineer after that. I remember floating in the wash and seeing Hanz grinning, laughing, and waving to me from the stern of the ship as I struggled in the wake. I remember thinking that he would probably beat his wife just a little bit harder that afternoon for my tossing his rifle into the ocean. I remember thinking that I was going to miss lunch, spit and all, and it would probably be dinnertime before anyone noticed I was missing. I wasn’t due on watch again until evening. I remember thinking I would probably drown before nightfall and that no one would really ever know that I had been murdered. The sea can be like that. Maybe that’s why I sought it out. It had a size to it that scared me when I looked into it. It reminded me of a hole I couldn’t fill with a handful of dirt. It had a depth to it that was beyond anyone’s knowing and it appealed to me in a way I still don’t understand. Maybe it has something to do with horizons and what lies beyond them. But I’ve always had a knack for being able to see just over the edge of them. I was lucky I came to when I hit the water or I would have drowned outright. Or maybe it wasn’t luck. Maybe it was just supposed to be. I remember watching the ship disappear over the horizon and feeling the same sense of loneliness I had felt walking away from that empty grave five years earlier. I didn’t think it was possible to feel a greater loneliness than I had felt that day. But I was wrong. I’ve been so wrong about so many things in my life that I’m still left with a world of questions. “All in good time,” she had said. “All in good time.”