Jon Barrie never took his mother out to lunch, so it was fitting that on the day he picked up her ashes from the crematorium that he finally fulfilled this obligation. Down the road along the St. Petersburg’s boardwalk was Pirate Fest, and the harbor was rife with swashbuckling cosplayers of all ages. Little kids were dressed in baggy trousers and loose, cotton shirts while grown men adorned themselves in fake jewelry and very little clothing to show off their skull and crossbones tattoos to the scantily clad women who walked their Golden Doodles in flowing skirts and bikini tops. Yes, a jolly-roger of a good time was had by all at Pirate Fest. As Jon, urn in hand, dodged people, he remembered how these festivities were very much looked down upon by his mother. She had a disdain for silliness.
At a small taco shop run by some locals, Jon snuck in and found an empty seat at the bar. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but perhaps a special lunch with his mother was the perfect occasion to do something out of the ordinary. He nestled the urn between his knees and waved to the bartender, who wore an eyepatch.
“What’s your poison?” the bartender said.
Above the bottles of liquor a large sign in chalk read: $4 SPECIAL LONG ISLAND ICED TEA.
“I’ll do the special,” Jon said.
“Aye, aye, Captain,” the bartender said, lifting the eye-patch to reveal his other deep brown iris.
The tables were full because of pirate karaoke, and across the room, a small stage housed wannabe bard after bard singing songs about the sea. Scrawny men wore white tanks with hand-drawn sharpie stripes across the front. They sang of drunken sailors, failing to ever answer the question of what exactly they did with the inebriated crew. Jon listened to a jolly, rotund man with a ukulele incomprehensibly detail blowing a man down. What happens at sea must stay at sea.
Then a girl took center stage, hair red and cut like a pixie’s. As she stepped to the mic, her face blushed and accentuated the freckles on her face. Ruby. Her friends, young and pixie-ish too, cheered. The blush faded, and she began to sing. A siren.
We swear by rote for want of more
Leave her, Johnny, leave her.
Maybe Jon could have handled the behemoth of negativity that was his mother if the rest of his life was more exciting. He sold insurance. Protected others property instead of capturing any of his own. This pixie girl resembled Amelia, a woman he used to date and was the most recent source of small excitement Jon stumbled upon in life. She had a natural raspy voice that conveyed sarcasm every time she spoke. The last time they were together, she went to use the restroom in the middle of a horror movie, promised she would be right back, then never returned.
Was it the movie? Jon texted her.
I need space. Amelia texted back. After that, she never responded to his follow up requests for another date.
Want another burger?
You can choose the movie…
Or, his last message: My mom died.
The entire thread left unanswered, but unmistakably, read.
When Ruby belted the last minor note about leaving, Jon stood and clapped, invigorated by the siren’s voice and the Long Island he’d downed in the meantime. The eyes of the patrons all turned to him, even Ruby’s. A slight grin came across her face as others joined in the applause. Jon had never felt so alive.
“Big fan?” the bartender said.
“Ruby is a good singer,” Jon said.
“Ruby?”
Next on the stage, a fellow in his mid-50’s wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap shared the legend of Captain Bill, a pirate who crashed his ship onto the shores of St. Pete beach in search of the Fountain of Youth. The man said that Bill was indeed the highest-ranking captain of these shores. Not necessarily because of his conquests, but the amount of people he has enchanted after his demise. It was said that because the time of his death coincided with a great green flash that Bill was confined to these shores until he found the proper partner to set sail and continue his adventures. “All ye needed to do was be worthy,” said the pragmatic boomer, “and together Cap’n Bill and ye would strike down yer biggest foe.”
Ruby, the siren, walked to the bar and asked ole one-eye for a margarita.
This was his chance. “Aye, let me buy a drink for the goddess of song,” Jon said. As he stepped from his seat to reach for his wallet, he forgot his mother, and the urn slipped from his thighs and crashed on the ground. Ash filled the air. “Oh no.”
The bartender coughed, rushed to find a broom and dustpan.
“What was in that?” Red said, covering her mouth.
“Ah lass, don’t be afraid of a lil spilled blood,” Jon said, moving the chair but unable to bend down and scoop his mother’s ashes, amid clumps of dried salsa and broken tortilla chips back into the urn. When he tried, a shard of porcelain sliced Jon’s hand.
The bartender returned with another worker who took over with the broom. “Maybe it’s time to go, pal?” he said.
Upon being escorted from the bar, Jon turned and watched as the hostess swept up stray tortilla chips into the dustpan, seasoned with the saltiness of his mother’s ashes. As she emptied it into the trash, the lowering sun cast a glow upon the particles in the air. Ruby vanished to her table of friends as more drinks were poured as notes of accordions and six-stringed guitars were played on stage, and “a swig for me and a pour for thee,” but Jon had drunk his heart.
The cut in his palm gave Jon a sense of feeling. A newfound sense of exhilaration that he was determined to pursue. Jon walked down the boardwalk, pushed his way through the crowd of pretend pirates. The piercings in their cartilage were not authentic. Just clip-ons and plastic, flaked after years of use at the same festival. Booths of vendors lined either side of the walkway down the pier. Jon peered at their so-called treasures, the craft fair of 3D printed swill, bought today and discarded at Goodwill around Christmastime. Scurvy dogs, the lot of them—to Jon’s eyes.
Perhaps he had never really used his eyes. Under a Jolly Roger flag, spotted from bleach, stood an assortment of swords for $10 each, a hand painted wooden plank that dangled from a fishing line above the entryway read “cash only.” But a real pirate need pay for nothing. The attendant, busy with his phone, didn’t even notice as Jon slipped free the shiny blade and tucked it to his pants.
Past the boardwalk as the sun sank over the crashing waves, the beach began to clear. The last sunbathers took selfies. Seagulls commandeered leftover garbage. Jon leaned against a bench until a bellowing boat horn came from the open ocean, and not three-hundred feet away lay the docks. Avast, it was the call of olde Poseidon himself! A setting sun, one last chance to seize the horizon, his freedom.
The dock was quiet as he browsed the gallery. Speed boats marked with Instagram handles or silhouettes of mud-flap characters filled most of the spots. A couple of wee cabin cruisers took up the remaining spaces, decorated with string patio lights and slides that curved from the top deck down into the fathoms below. Near the end of the expansive dock, a 30-foot Gaff Cutter sailboat - Le Bijou. An antique vessel pulled from the pages of history. Meant for the sea.
A small door stood between Jon and Le Bijou. Chicken wire and a padlock. That lock and door was meant for intruders. Jon was no intruder, so he hopped the gate. Welcome aboard, matey.
Jon untied the moorings, thick ropes and buoys that kept the boat anchored. As he did so, the waves grew louder, matching the beating of his heart. Amongst them, faint cries of seabirds, and a creaking, a thumping, steady along the shadowy starboard side.
“A sword to a gunfight, Jon? Ye either brave or a blunder.” The feather on the brim of his hat flitted in the wind. Captain Bill smiled, flashing his golden tooth in the moonlight. In the yellow-tinted eyes, cataracts like the sails of a ghost ship maneuvering through memories.
“What are you doing here?”
From the door over Bill’s shoulder emerged a bald, spectacled man. Jon hadn’t even heard him.
“I’ll be taking yer ship,” Jon said, revealing his sword. “It’ll be off the plank with you.”
The bald man removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes as if he just woke from a nap. “Look, is this some kind of prank?”
Jon shook his head. “No, sir, I’m a pirate.”
Captain Bill pulled out a tobacco pipe and struck his match. He exhaled a puff of smoke directly into Jon’s ear, standing at his shoulder, ready for battle. “Arrr. You’re going to let this cabin boy boss ye around like a paddle boat in a squall? I thought I had come to sail with a man.”
“Son, that’s enough,” the bald man said, pulling a pistol from the holster at his side. “You need to leave now.”
But before he could cock the six-shooter, Jon leapt and swung, dealing a heavy blow to the man’s neck that felled him to the floor. The man spoke no more.
It had to be done, Jon knew, as he moved to the steering wheel. His ethos—a boat.
Captain Bill chuckled. “Good on you, boy! First thing you’ve done right under this full moon. There’s treasure in blood.”
A shot rang from behind. The sharp pain in Jon’s side caused him to slide to his knees, then onto his back, where he bled. Captain Bill took the wheel, cackled in between sips of grog from his canteen. They sailed away from the docks, out into the open ocean, and somehow the sheets blew away in the wind. Vanished, like his mother’s pulse on the oximeter. Rocking back and forth with the pull of the tide, Jon peered up into the sky. The night called, impersonating his mother’s voice, “I love you, but I don’t like you very much.”
Clouds, the moon, and Jon’s vision a blur. Nothing is free, boy. There be brigs on the sea, too. Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me. His pulse lost to the depths.
Sam Reilly is a writer based in Nashville, TN. He earned his undergraduate degree in English from MTSU and his MFA in Creative Writing from the low residency program at UC Riverside - Palm Desert. Sam works as an English Instructor at Motlow State Community College. Though he mainly focuses on writing for the performing arts, his fiction can he found in Quail Bell Magazine and he has contributed to The Coachella Review along with several other online magazines.
The mental image of someone's ashes on some chips made me gag. Nasty as hell. Great job!