Bad Spirits
By sean mcnulty
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The whales charged on with their discussion in the deep long after the storm had passed, and the winds had lightened and the sky was now a cool glassy night blue; and all the world might have just been battered senseless, yet somehow looked none the worse for it. Dolores Costello now drifted calmly in the moonlight as though not a thing had touched her, but if you had moved in closer, you would have seen she hadn’t sailed through the storm unscathed – though her wounds were minor, it must be said.
Captain Littlewood was out on the deck busily clearing up, checking for any sign of structural damage and so on, when something came over him and he was inspired to stop, and just listen. The whales had gotten hold of him. The move to pause was so abrupt that it was like he was responding to a phrase in their language. It was a movement in the air that suddenly and strangely his human ear recognised: the sound of loneliness. Out there, broad pulses reached through the expanse with a desperate frequency, the cries of a lost giant maybe. What had appeared at first to be conversation involving a number of whales was now, to Fergal’s learned ear at least, the soft moan of a single whale. The echo scattered the sound, making it resonate like the powerless and frightened laments of many.
Once he’d whipped her back to shape, the Captain thanked his vessel for her efforts in the day by tipping a little whiskey into the stern, one of many rituals his father had propagandised when he was a boy, and one he’d deemed quite reasonable up to now.
‘But, careful, not too much,’ his father was prone to instruct. ‘Don’t you be getting her plastered. And not you neither.’
This advice was reasonable too, but in the case of his own drinking at the wheel, Fergal was more romantic than reasonable, and could cite any number of rambunctious shanties in order to defend his position. Choosing to ignore the old man’s concerns didn’t exactly give him satisfaction, but disagreement had not been uncharted in their past. He pressed the naggin to his lips and ran back in his mind the most recent dispute. He had called round to the house a few months before for a game of draughts, the first time he’d called to see the old man in some time – Fergal had mostly chosen to stay well away since his mother died. Though there was an element of fear keeping him from visiting the house, the fear of retrospection, the truth of it was that there were other things going on in his life that his father didn’t know of. During the game of draughts, in which Fergal was losing miserably, par for the course, his father took to scolding him for his protracted grief.
‘Too long, son. Too long with your bad spirits.’
‘I’m well, stop your prattling.’
‘I know how you’re feeling, son. I’m here living in it everyday. Even this bloody draughtboard reminds me of her.’
‘Really? How so?’
‘It was always falling off the top of the cabinet when she was cleaning over there. And she’d be picking up all the pieces and giving me hell for not taping the box properly. So I have an idea of why you haven’t been coming round so much. This old shack is filled with memories. But we’re just going to have to get on with things, you know.’
‘What are you making a big fuss over? Just leave it.’
‘I’d just like to see you a bit more, son. More now than ever. I don’t want you to be hiding from me. Or from your mother either.’
‘Have you ever thought maybe there’s other things going on in my life?’
‘Oh, I do, for sure. I did the same work myself for many a year, didn’t I? As you should well know. But it never stopped me from getting home and spending the right amount of time with you and your mother.’
‘I’m not just talking about the boat. I have a life outside of that even, you know.’
‘What do you mean? You and Orla haven’t been fighting or something, have yiz?’
‘Maybe we have. It’s your move.’
‘Sure, how would I know that, son? I haven’t bloody seen you in ages. I don’t have a third eye.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it. It’s your move.’
‘How am I supposed to know what’s going on in your life if I never see ya, for the love of god?’
‘You’re a fukin’ dryshite, you know that,’ Fergal yelled, standing up so angrily that he knocked the draughtsboard into the air and the pieces gave the floor a fierce shelling. ‘I’m out of here. I’ll see you when I see you. And remember to tape that bloody box up.’
The moan of the whale diminished and finally it was gone. Fergal leaned over and popped another slug of whiskey into Dolores’ stern, then went back to the cabin, and lay face down on the floor.
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Comments
Lovely to see another piece
Lovely to see another piece of writing from you Sean - this one plunges the reader straight into something that feels very real - well done. Write more soon please!
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grief takes many form, but a
grief takes many form, but a draughtboard is alway a draught boad. I was reading one of our member's unpublished manuscripts about grief. There's lots of mileage in it. And more to come?
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