Good Girl

 

September, 29th of, in the two thousand and nineteenth year of our Lord, she departed.  Loaded with threep-niner-wan shipping containers, app. Too-niner-fower trailers and cars and a crew of 33 souls she left Jaxport and I farewelled her.  Seemed only right as I’d helped to load her with those containers and trailers and cars.  Lashed it all down.  I always farewell a ship I’ve loaded.  Call it superstition (it ain’t, everything is God) or, more likely, a habit.  Gave her a pat with a Bon Voyage, be a good girl and went on with my workday fully expecting to see her again.  Ain’t that always the way with females?  Still I say it regularly, can’t remember when I ain’t.  Every time I left for a tour in the Big Sandbox I said to the (now ex) fiance Be a good girl accompanied by a pat on her ass.  

    She was on her way to Puerto Rico.  A gentleman never asks a female’s weight or age.  Didn’t have to ask.  I knew she was forty years old and I knew her gross, net and deadweight tonnage.  I knew her GT, NT and DWT, her golf tango, her november tango and her delta whiskey tango, so I knew everything about her weight.  Kind of like how females are measured:  bust, waist, hips.  It’s always a trio, ain’t it?  The female body is a trifecta.

    Didn’t like that her name had a masculine article.  At first she was simply named after her primary destination:  Puerto Rico - some imagination whoever christened her had, right? - then Northern Lights - a little injection of imagination, alright - then El Faro, the lighthouse.  Still I never liked the masculine article.  Used to it, didn’t like it.  Same as I’m obviously used to sissy being named Michael.  Mama and her husband married super early and had kids super late so their first born was given the Hebrew name gift from God without bothering to feminize its spelling.  

    anyway

    El Faro departed Blount Island at night.  I remember I worked almost 14 hrs that day.  Loaded her, patted her, told her to be a good girl and on October, 2nd of she was declared missing.  Three days later she was declared sunk.  

 

    Stepped outside for a smoke and stayed outside for ten minutes watching a helicopter do revolutions over my neighborhood.  At one point it hovered for half a minute.  Sounded like a lawnmower in the sky.  Hmmmmm . . . not military, maybe perhaps could be police or local news?  

    Anyway

 

    I read all the news about her, read two books about her.  Did I fail her?  Did I not lash down her cargo properly, good enough?  Did I contribute to her listing into a sinking.  To her death and the deaths of her crew.  Zero survivors.  She encountered Hurricane Joaquin.  But if I had done my job better would she have survived the listing?  Did she do her damndest to be a good girl but sunk because I wasn’t a good enough boy?  Everything I’ve read disputes my wondering but it still lingers clings fastens.  The investigation went all the way to Washington, the capital, not the state and no blame was placed on us, we who loaded her and saw her off.  

    Still the lingering and the fastening and the clinging and the wondering.  Still remains the smacking of the conscious:  if you had only done a better job.  Same with casualties in war.  If only you - you, the top ranked enlisted man - had done a better job.  If only you - you, who burdened her with cargo and secured it - did you, really?  

    

Here lies a grey lady

    a battered lady

    another queen of 

    the deep

 

    Is she now sleeping?

    

    Is she now weeping?

 

    Her death will I forever

    keep?

 

    I can’t trust that she will be the

    last

 

    I can’t promise that all after her

    will return

 

    I can pray that there never again 

    will be

    a grey lady

    an elegant lady

    to sink unwittingly into the sea

 

    And to the thirty-three souls lost

    with her

    may God’s blessing be

 

    On the surface mine is a menial physical blue-collar job.  Laboring with body more than with mind.  I am not the working-at-the-desk office kind and the most blessed return I receive is when a grey lady, an elegant lady returns from her voyage over the ocean, the seas.  

    I don’t mind testing my body.  What is it - just a shell for my soul, right?  So the smack whack impact of being blasted from a vehicle has = backaches, headaches, what-the-fuck-is-happening mental aches, still I am attached just like El Faro.  All my parts function.  

    And there it is -

    Did my parts function well enough for her?

    I send pat farewell them all.  Every girl who moors in a berth that I’m attending.  Be a good girl.  Return with your crew and if you don’t rest easy with the remorse that I’m sending.  They’re my girls.  I am fastened to their femininity.  I worry over their welfare.  My girls.  Out there.  

    Return to me.

    Return

    To

    Me

    Me who knows your age and your weight.  Me.  I possess you at my discretion.  Send you off with apprehension.  Be a good girl.