Moe Lane

I figured out what was wrong! I mean, with the entire story structure. It should go a lot more smoothly now.

They say you don’t forget your first ship, and they’re right. The Paulie Girl wasn’t the biggest ship, or the newest; you could see from her hull and her deck that she was used to hard work and harder weather. Despite all that the crew could do — and didn’t we work her over, on the regular! — she was stubborn, and sometimes sulky. But her lines were clean, and she wore the rust lightly. She was a tough bitch, our Paulie. She’d take whatever you threw at her, and then spit it right back in your eye.

God, I loved her the moment I clapped eyes on her.

…

God, but this boat is a piece of shit, Ted thought.

I’m still trying to figure out elements of this story, honestly. Like the middle of it.

Being locked up with the rest of the crew wasn’t great, but at least they weren’t aiming guns at him. Just some stares. Ted couldn’t decide if it was because he was the only American on the crew, or just the newest one. Then again, either would do.

When he told the story about the capture later — more accurately, when he told a story about the capture later — Ted would always make it sound like there was a plan, right from the start. Some of these guys, it wasn’t their first rodeo, he’d say. They knew what was gonna go down, if the pirates didn’t get what they wanted. We knew we had to be ready for anything. Then he’d say, Me? I was a snot-nosed kid back then, so I just shut up and did what they told me to. And it worked, didn’t it? We got through it okay, and the bad guys didn’t. After a while, he almost started believing all those lies himself, except for the last one. He didn’t get through it okay. Not. At. All.

To start with, there was no plan. And that was fine, from Ted’s point of view. Heroics wasn’t even close to being on his agenda. The freighter paid him to held sail the ship, and the ship wasn’t sailing. They wanted anything more right now, they could renegotiate his contract.