Jeffery Kooistra: A Monster's Tale

“What about the fin?”

“Could have been something else.” “How about what happened in 1930? The research ship Dana brought up something in her nets. A Dr. Bruun dissected it and determined it was a six-foot-long larva of some kind of giant eel.”

“I never heard of that.”

“Neither did I until I looked. Science is often like that. But the bottom line is, it’s a big ocean. And there don’t have to be a whole lot of them in it. They could have been missed.”

Kelly sighed. “There don’t have to be any.” She put their drink glasses in the sink. “Stow your gear, sailor. You get the port cabin. The bow is mine. You’re not allowed in there unless I invite you.” She smiled. She noticed that he didn’t return it.

Even though he was almost twenty years her senior, he was handsome, and likable. And he had a driving passion, too. She liked that. OK, so he could find his ass with both hands. He might even get a chance to find hers, she thought.

The first few days of the expedition, as expected, were uneventful in terms of monster hunting, but pleasant in other ways, Fred had to admit. He’d come aboard in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and they’d set off down the chain of the Lesser Antilles. The Flying Witch really could fly, pulling fifty knots if need be, and Kelly enjoyed showing him just what her boat could do.

He asked her once how she’d managed to acquire such a fine boat. She’d frowned, then said, “I upheld my end of the bargain, and the man I got the boat from upheld his. And part of the deal was that I wouldn’t talk about it.” She took him below deck and showed him a closet, inside of which was a small arsenal, everything from pistols to a double-barrelled shotgun. “I also have a machine gun mounted on the bow. That’s that thing wrapped in canvas up there,” Kelly said. “I have these things for a reason. Piracy on the high seas isn’t dead yet.”

“Ever had to use any of this stuff?”

“No. But the Witch is my life. Nothing and no one is ever going to take her away from me.” The grim, determined passion in her answer Fred found revealing. This was more than a boat to Kelly. The Witch was home. But Kelly was young—Fred wondered what had happened to her previous home.

They stopped in Guadeloupe, and Kelly took him to a restaurant she knew. Another docking in Grenada allowed Fred to make it even by getting her a genuine souvenir of the invasion of three decades previous.

The Caribbean nights were spectacular. He’d never seen the sky so black nor the stars so capable of bejeweling the heavens.

It was hard for him not to think about Judy and Joy as he looked up, wondering if their souls really were out there somewhere. The accident that had taken his wife and daughter away was ten years behind him chronologically, but only chronologically.

Which left the final pleasure, that of the captain herself. She was spunky and sharp. And a tremendous delight to watch walking along the deck in clothing appropriate to the climate. Which only made it harder to conceal both the fact and the bitterness of his decade-long inability to close the emotional wound and put the past behind him. A few times he’d been certain that Kelly was open to an advance, to which he had studiously pretended obliviousness. Good thing he had work to do out here. Work had been his savior since the deaths.

They stopped in Trinidad to top off the batteries. “We’re good from here to Africa, now,” Kelly said after the charging cables were removed. “But we’ve been a little short of sea monsters so far.”

“Actually, the Lady was about a hundred miles off the north coast of Brazil when we had our encounter. I never expected to meet up with one in the Caribbean,” Fred said. He called up the charts at the nav station. “Here,” he said, pointing. “We’ll follow this course down the South American coast for a thousand miles. Then we’ll do a slow drunkard’s walk back toward the Lesser Antilles.”

Eight days without a bite, Kelly thought. Not from a sea monster, and certainly not from Fred. The failure of a sea serpent to show itself was expected. Fred’s failure to take advantage of his situation was not.

Contrary to what the sailors in every Caribbean port thought, Kelly was not a bed hopper. Her brief time as a stripper was not indicative of the girl she had been before, nor of the one she had become, though she rather enjoyed the image that had been attached to her. Still, her relationships tended to get physical very quickly. She was not one to put off the inevitable.

As the days slipped by, she’d found herself more and more attracted to her passenger. She’d been delighted along with him when his scanners seemed to pick up something big following below them, and shared his disappointment when the echo would simply dissipate into the deep blue. She laughed at his initial fear during his first ocean storm on such a small craft, but was impressed with how he overcame it and helped her secure the Witch for the weather.

He was a decent man, a genuinely nice guy, in a world that knew too few.

They were returning to Trinidad, would be there the next morning, when she caught up with Fred sitting with his feet hanging over the side. She sat next to him. “Looks like the mighty fisherman is heading back with an empty bucket,” she said.

“Sure does,” he replied. “Too bad, too. I really had my hopes up. I just hope the line will finance another venture like this.”

“So do I,” she said.

“You? I’m surprised. You never believed we’d find anything anyway.”

She paused a moment, then said: “But I did find something.” She reached to put her arm around his shoulders, and felt him stiffen and bristle.

She jumped up in frustration. “OK, what the hell is the matter? Are you married? You don’t have a ring! Are you really not attracted to me? What?”

“Fear,” he said, almost inaudibly.

“What?”

“I lost my wife and daughter in a car accident ten years ago and I haven’t been able to per—have a relationship since. Does that help? Yes, I find you attractive. Incredibly so. Any other man would fall all over himself to be with you.” The reemergence of long-suppressed anger and frustration had brought tears to his eyes.

She was able to hold him, then, in a warm embrace that promised nothing except that she understood and cared. He was invited into the bow that night.

And even though fears of impotence (memories from a relationship attempted too soon after the loss of his wife) went unrealized, for the first time in her life, Kelly understood how unimportant the physical side of love could be.

They docked the next morning in Port of Spain, Trinidad. While Kelly took care of the recharging, Fred left to head into town. He’d told her that he needed to contact the cruise line because he had an idea that might get them another charter right away.

After last night, Kelly was eager to give Fred his chance, though she wished he’d been more forthcoming about what his idea was.

He returned with a bounce in his step. Kelly hoped at least some of that bounce was the result of the fireworks from last night. “We’ve got another charter;” he said.

“Great. We leaving soon?”

“No. Not until next week. I’ve already got my plane ticket. I stopped at the airport on my way back.”

Kelly tried to take the news in stride. “You’re flying out from here? You aren’t even going back with me to Puerto Rico?”

He put his hands on her shoulders. “Listen. You’re very important to me, Kelly. I’ll be back. Soon. But I thought of something last night that may help me catch my sea serpent, and—”

Again her heart softened. “It’s OK,” she said. “Go and do what you have to do. I’ll wait for you here. But one thing…”