The Brotherhood of Pirates

by William Gilkerson

  “Well, then, there we are,” he said, grinning at me, and there was so much to say, I could say nothing. He told Noel to slip the line he was holding, gave a helm order to Meg, hoisted the jib, and held it backed. Merry began to fill away. Meg waved, the captain saluted. Under her sheeted jib, Merry began to steal forward and into the fog. In a moment her image was only a ghost, and then it merged with the night entirely.

  “Where can I address a letter?” I called.

  “The seas,” came his return shout, out of the darkness.

  20

  Afterwards

  MERRY’S QUIET DEPARTURE was unnoticed in the hubbub of Tuesday, “Bloody Tuesday,” as it was dubbed by a headline-writer for the Baywater Beacon a month or two later, when things really started to heat up. As the citizens of Grey Rocks emerged into the morning mists for their day’s business, they were greeted with innumerable copies of a little poster tacked to telephone poles, taped to storefronts, inserted into doorways and mailboxes:

  AN OPEN QUESTION!

  In the community of Grey Rocks and beyond, a pattern of questionable incidents and practices has been well known to most local residents for some years. The following list of ten recent examples comprises only a handful among many. The open question is: Why have the following never come under official scrutiny? Why have no investigations been made? Who is responsible?

  There followed the ten promised examples, all well-known incidents that were questionable indeed, all brushed under the rug. The burning of the Moehners’ abandoned farmhouse on Boxing Day was mentioned, along with its huge insurance payoff. Roy Moehner’s property improvements at public expense was one of the points.

  No direct accusation was made, just the recurring question, where were the reports on these matters? The lumping of everything, and condensing it, suggested a whole junk pile of graft, theft, and corruption, mostly in Roy Moehner’s lap, by implication. Everybody knew it was there anyway. Nova Scotians are very studied at not having to deal with things that are not seen, which takes a very selective seeing process.

  But there wasn’t any not seeing what the captain left like a well-fused grenade. He’d kept me out of it, but I knew he had done it. He had learned everything in the barbershop and the post office, and the Sou’wester Beverage Room bar, and he had hung it all out like a load of bad laundry, on a foggy night, with Noel Nauss helping.

  The thing was a political bomb, and it didn’t take long to get into the newspapers, including the Halifax papers, and even one in Ottawa, which did an editorial about it. A big part of the interest was in who had written and circulated the original broadside. It was signed only “A Citizen.” Many names were offered during the rumblings that ensued, but never his. Nor could the printing shop be found that had produced the explosive broadsides. I realised I had signed for their delivery in Boston.

  “I would have helped put the posters up,” I told Noel Nauss the next time I saw him. He just nodded.

  As to Roy Moehner, on that same memorable morning of the posters, the postmistress found a piece of mail, seemingly dropped by accident under the big mailbox in front of the post office. It was a manila envelope addressed to Roy Moehner; somehow it had gotten kicked under the box, stepped on underfoot, and torn in such a way that allowed its contents to be seen by anybody who was curious, as many were. The mauled envelope contained a cheaply printed photo magazine that went so far beyond any notion of decency as to incite immediate indignation among all the ladies at the post office, as well as everybody else who saw it. By the end of the day, quite a number of people had, and the envelope’s tear had become enlarged enough that the magazine could be removed, to reveal contents even more outrageous than its cover.

  I never saw it, but an amazing number of people did, including a postal inspector who came to see if it fell under the obscenity laws. It definitely did. Roy Moehner vigorously denied any knowledge of the dreadful thing, and there was no way to attach it to him, except by its address. He was of course attached, in many minds (on top of everything else that was falling on him). In the end, Roy Moehner was busy for a long time trying to untangle himself from the wreckage caused by the captain’s grenades, much too busy to think about us any more, and the Admiral Anson Inn entered another of its periods of prosperity.

  On that same Tuesday, the authorities in suits and ties showed up looking for Captain Charles Johnson. Upon being told that he was on his way to the Caribbean, they visited Tom, who told them the same thing, and their further investigations were frustrated by the general distraction going on around the post office and the town hall. They drove away, leaving their cards again, and that’s the last we heard of it.

  True to his promise, the captain did not write. Nor did Meg. In the weeks, then the months, following his departure, he and Meg were the subject of endless family conversation and speculation. Where in Ireland might they be? We got the atlas out, and there were dozens of ports, too many to start sending letters to, although I did write him a letter, in the middle of a snowstorm, on the anniversary of our cannon caper. He was in my mind all the time. I reported on the successful aftermath of his broadside, and the relief it had brought the inn. His travel story had been published in enough newspapers to give the old place a real boost. The Saturday night concert series was to be the subject of a radio show. Meg’s replacements had worked out fine, although, of course, they weren’t Meg.

  I was able to report to him that I was learning how better to deal with the Moehner kids, and that I was writing another pirate essay for my first term paper in high school, and that I had finished reading his book. “Your book,” that’s what I called it. I passed along Jenny’s regards, mentioning that she had decided for sure he was both a hypnotist and an avatar. Noel Nauss had become a regular customer at the inn, coming to all the concerts, where he dined, listened to the music, drank a predictable four beers, and waited for the Moehner boys to come back, which they didn’t. He seemed to have appointed himself as our protector, unnecessarily, because Robin had quit his job with the police force, and was helping Mother run the inn full time. They had found a depth in their friendship, and had become engaged to be married, which was my biggest news. We were all very happy about it, and come spring we would fire a salute from the cannon for the wedding. We could get black powder from the sporting goods store in Baywater. I had learned a dozen tunes on my pennywhistle.

  The letter ended when I ran out of things to talk about, and I stopped on a feeble note, imploring him to write to us and let us know that they had weathered the North Atlantic, and were okay. I sent it to the one place I could think of where he might get it: The Ailsa Craig Company, Ltd., which had moved from Scotland to England. I obtained the address, and posted the letter, marked: “Hold for delivery to Capt. Chas. Johnson, Yacht Merry Adventure arrival date unknown. Hold!”

  I don’t know whether he ever got it, but he did send us something, either he or Meg. Around two years later, we received by mail a package from a tourist hotel in Mahon on the Isle of Minorca, in the Mediterranean Sea. It was professionally wrapped by a commercial photographer, and the only note attached was a caption: “Pirate Party,” with the date, the name of the hotel, and the word “Prepaid.”

  From the picture, it was a pirate party indeed, with a bunch of tourists in a fancy ballroom, dressed up in costumes, mostly feeling no pain. On first look, it passed me by that two of the musicians behind the people in the group photo had a familiar look; but then, there was Meg, dressed in a low bodice, with her red hair exploding around her face; and there was the captain, wearing a paper pirate hat, his lips to his pennywhistle. My eye had gone past him because in the photo he looked appreciably younger than I remembered. But there was no mistake about it. The picture gave us dinner conversation for a long time to come.

  Many years went by before I sent him a second letter, which went with an invitation to my wedding with Jenny. I addressed it c/o Poste Restante, Nevis, BWI, on the off chance that it might get to him if and when he g
ot around to anchoring there, if he hadn’t already, to bury the thighbone of his friend. I have no reason to expect that he ever got that letter either.

  He did let me know that he remembered me, however. Around the time of my twenty-fifth birthday, I received by an international courier service a flat envelope with a customs document listing: “1 souvenir medallion—gift. Value one dollar.” The sender was C. Johnson, with a latitude and longitude somewhere off Africa, although the parcel was shipped from Galway. In it was no less than the gold doubloon that Edward Teach had taken out of a Spanish treasure wreck, and which I had held in my hand during my life’s most terrifying moment.

  Whether or not the valuable old coin itself has any magical power, or whether it was just a real prop for the story that went with it, I cannot say. However, in all the years that have passed since that time, I have not wanted to hold it in my hand and close my eyes. Jenny has tried it, plenty of times, never without making me nervous.

  I have wondered about his promise to visit me again. In order to make good on that, he will indeed have to be getting younger, or at least no older. While I was sailing with my son one day, a summer fog bank pounced on us, obscuring the universe, giving me a chance to brush up on my navigation.

  “Look!” said James, and I raised my eyes from my chart just in time to see a wraith of an old yacht with dark sails that I took for Merry, but when I steered to intercept, it was a different antique boat. If it had been him, I speculated, would he now be younger than me? I can hear the laugh that would have gotten out of him. I hear it often, going about my life.

  Nor do I ever miss an opportunity to look seaward, whenever I’m sailing, or walking on a beach, or sitting behind a rain-lashed window, gazing out over a harbour entrance where Merry Adventure could appear, foaming on the crest of an incoming wave. The season makes no difference to my vigil. I have been an avid watcher of snow squalls for years, particularly during November, when the first hard northeaster raises a sea that breaks along the bar, churning up golden sand, then surges into the harbour, making all of the boats tug and jerk at their moorings with a great restlessness.

  Author’s Note

  Understandably, the publisher feels obliged to categorise this as a work of fiction, although it does contain certain truths. Most of these will be left to the reader’s discernment, but in historical fact there was indeed a Captain Charles Johnson, it should be noted, or at least somebody who used that name. According to the British Dictionary of National Biography, the name is “most likely an assumed one.” Most of the entry is concerned with several early editions of his famous book.

  Johnson’s History of the Pirates (to use its short title) has seldom, if ever, been out of print since its first edition was produced in 1724. It remains to this day the cornerstone source on the subject. True to the captain’s prophecy, recent generations of historians have confirmed its verity, at least in the original edition, in a level of detail that makes it hard to see how the author could have known this information unless he had been there.

  There are historical problems with some of the later expanded editions, to which material has been added by subsequent writers, not the work of the original author. That person, whoever he was, does leave a few undeniable impressions. First, he was a sailor, intimately familiar with the technical vocabulary of a sea captain; he was an educated man, a philosopher, a humourist, and a dedicated historian. Many modern historians suspect that the author was indeed an ex-pirate, which would certainly explain much, including his use of a nom de plume.

  As to any Johnson/Defoe connection, in 1988 two scholars and biographers, P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens, mortally challenged John Robert Moore’s 1939 theories as to “Captain Charles Johnson” being one of Daniel Defoe’s pen names. With publication of their own study, The Canonisation of Daniel Defoe, they demolished many of Moore’s precepts, including the alleged Defoe-Johnson linkage.

  Johnson’s actual, historical identity remains a very great mystery.

  About the Author

  Award-winning author William Gilkerson is a sailor, painter, journalist, historian, and adventurer. He is the author of the novel Ultimate Voyage, as well as ten nonfiction books on nautical topics, and his paintings are internationally acknowledged to be among the finest contemporary maritime art. He lives with his family on the shores of Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, where he sails his ancient cutter, Elly.

  THE BROTHERHOOD OF PIRATES

  AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 446 43230 3

  Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK

  A Penguin Random House Company

  This ebook edition published 2011

  Copyright © William Gilkerson, 2006

  First published in the US as Pirate’s Passage by Trumpeter Books,

  an imprint of Shambhala Publications, Inc.

  Corgi Books 9780552557191 2006

  The right of William Gilkerson to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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