AUTHOR BIO   
Yvonne Lieblein’s debut novel, The Wheelhouse Café, was inspired by songs and stories her husband, Josh Horton, shared about years he spent as an ocean-going tugboat captain and musician. A musical soundtrack accompanies the book.

If you enjoy this chapter, you can find Yvonne Lieblein at  http://www.yvonnelieblein.com/   

                                        The Wheelhouse Cafe
                                
                            Prologue - Captain John Raymond
                                           Thursday, May 13, 1993

Sometimes there’s no difference between sea and sky. Gray meets gray at the horizon, a maddening backdrop for an endless tow. On the day Billy died, I was grateful for the bland seascape that surrounded the Alanna Rose as she motored across Long Island Sound, not wanting the sky to give the waves any reason to sparkle.

It didn’t help that I heard about Billy from a faceless voice over the VHF radio. It was the disconnected way I found out about everything out on the tug. Usually, I would imagine every sentence suspended in mid-air before it dissolved into the next one. But that morning, each word landed with a splat on the gray metal floor of the wheelhouse.

I forgot Little Hal was standing nearby until he put his hands on the wheel and nudged me aside, “Is the Billy on the Dacy they’re talking about your friend Billy?”

“Yeah, it’s Billy. Billy Mickelson,” I said, clenching and unclenching my fists to loosen up my cramped hands. How long had I been clutching the wheel like my life depended on it?

Little Hal picked up his plastic New York Mets cup without shifting his eyes and took a big sip of his latest obsession, Fanta Orange. Gray curls sprung out from under the Mets cap that never left his head, and he wore his usual uniform, putty-colored Carhartts and a faded red and black buffalo-check flannel. Little Hal was anything but little. He had a tall, wide, don’t-fuck-with-me build and was a pro at bobbing and weaving to navigate around the Alanna Rose without smacking his head.

In spite of his massive presence, Little Hal still managed to give me space in the wheelhouse. Most of the time I was there alone, but once in awhile someone would come up and annoy the living shit out of me. Little Hal, he knew how to be quiet. He didn’t rush to fill the silence with stories about a girlfriend’s ladybug tattoo or wax poetic about some vodka-induced fiasco.
  

I picked up the VHF mic to radio the Dacy Reinauer, hoping to fill in the blanks. The first mate said Billy must have tripped and fallen overboard. I closed my eyes tight when he said, “I mean, it’s not like he had any reason to jump.” A complete stranger was saying aloud the very thought I’d been trying to keep at bay since I heard Billy had been swallowed by the sea. 

Maybe he did trip and fall. Four in the morning is without a doubt the loneliest time on the tug -- a couple of guys on and everyone else already rocked to sleep or trying to get there. Billy and I were both plagued with our own versions of what could have been, might have been, would never be. We didn’t have any brilliant theories on how to banish abrasive thoughts, especially the really cruel ones that only hung around long enough for us to catch painful glimpses of dreams that always seemed just out of reach.  

Our game plan revolved around getting out of our racks and out of our heads. We looked for small doses of relief on deck surrounded by a cocoon of dark, uncomplicated silence. So yeah, sure, Billy’s disappearance could have been a distraction-fueled accident.     

I stretched out my arms and placed each hand one of the large glass panes that made the wheelhouse feel like an oversized, elevated fishbowl. Then I leaned forward to stare out at the sameness. I closed my eyes and reopened them slowly, wanting to see Billy float by with one hand wrapped around a bright orange life ring while the other waved wildly overhead.  

We’d just met for a few beers at Whiskey Wind when we were out in Greenport last month. Billy told me his heart was torn up. “This is the one that mattered,” he said. “I always thought we’d end up together. But, she’s not interested. So, game over.” 

Inspiration and advice don’t come naturally to me, so I didn’t have much to say. Billy ordered two shots of Mezcal and started twirling the cardboard coaster on the bar in front of him. We sat like that for a long while and then played a silent game of pool before I gave him a ride home. No doubt he was feeling bruised, but was he banged up enough to jump?

Little Hal tapped me on the shoulder and mumbled, “You don’t have to hang around up here. Why don’t you get some fresh air?”

“Thanks,” I said, though I didn’t plan to take him up on his offer. The wheelhouse was the only place I wanted to be. For almost 20 years, it’s felt most like home. 

I bent down to take my guitar out of its case, lyrics already running through my mind. Before I sat down, I grabbed my almost-empty mug and took a final swallow of coffee. I swear that shit always managed to taste better with age. It had real texture and layers thick enough to yield to a spoon and then cleave to each other again if I bothered to stir them up. There was a black, gritty ring inside the mug, evidence that the tide of coffee had ebbed since I’d poured it from a shaking silver pot at the beginning of my watch.

I clutched the mic and made the same announcement on a few different stations, “Wheelhouse Café. Channel 68.” Then, I cleared my throat and turned our VHF to that channel. Little Hal handed me a rubber band so I could key the mic before hanging it from the spotlight handle. “Today’s Wheelhouse Café is dedicated to Billy Mickelson,” I said. “Rest in peace, Billy. Rest in peace.” 

Was anybody listening? Didn’t know. Never knew. There was only one thing I could be sure of as the Alanna Rose motored toward New York Harbor that colorless morning -- anyone who tuned in would know that Billy was one of us, and in moments like these, we were all just sailors lost at sea.

Big Swell

Big swell rolling through the ocean 
tumbling on the beach.
Big swell rolling through sea 
big swell don’t mean that much to me.
Maybe you do, but I’m going anyway
just a small man on the ocean.
I’ve got things I’ve got to tow across the sea,
big swell have mercy on me.
I said, big swell have mercy on me. 
Big swell if you show no mercy, 
and keep me for yourself,
everything I told to my fine love
would make a lying man of me.
Well, told her how you fill me with purpose,
told her how you rock me to sleep.
I told her out here I don’t need control,
I just set my course and let ‘er run free. 
I can’t stay out here with you forever,
growing old before my time.
I need to spend some time in my fine baby’s arms 
and she needs to spend some in mine.
Big swell rolling through the sea
tumbling on the beach.
Big swell when you’re rolling through the ocean 
big swell have mercy on me. . . . {repeats}

 To hear Big Swell click here. 

                                                   Chapter One - Arden McHale
                                                       Sunday, May 16, 1993

Mother Nature, she’s one heartless bitch.

The sky should have been a gaping charcoal gray mouth spewing shards of rain to destroy any hint of spring – beheading tulips, drowning dainty spring lettuce, silencing bullfrogs. 

Instead, she had me wake beneath an expanse of vivid color, the blue from my childhood before blue had a name. She punctuated it with comma clouds, mocking reminders that the last 48 hours felt like a run-on sentence, and I knew better than to hope for a period or exclamation point to swoop in and put the brakes on my accelerating anxiety. The only thing I had to look forward to was an unending field of question marks.

I also knew better than to scan the sky for the morning star. No wish was going to change the fact that Billy was dead. He was dead when my mother showed up at my office on Thursday afternoon, handing me the news with a box of tissues before walking me out to the car she’d double-parked out front, and drove me the two hours from Manhattan to Greenport in silence, my head resting on her shoulder. He was dead when I passed out on Andromeda’s bow with thick, sob snot smeared across my face. And he was still dead in those first blurry seconds after the sun pried my eyes open, when my brain was still scrambled enough to wonder if my splitting headache was caused by an actual ax lodged in my forehead or the empty fifth of vodka in my hand.

I’d observed lots of women who embraced Mother Nature’s modus operandi -— mild and harmless on the surface with a cruel undertow at the ready to pull potential rivals under. My own mother had a very different playbook, embracing kindness and all its cousins even though that meant a lifetime of reinventing reality to give hope, compassion and patience a chance to survive. Case in point, Mom’s reaction to finding me sprawled out on the bow of my 21’ Herreshoff with the fingers of my right hand wrapped around an empty liquor bottle. 

“Arden, honey,” she said, trying to corral wayward wisps of her ash blonde hair with a flat palm. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Didn’t think you’d be up and at ‘em so early today.”

I was the polar opposite of up and at ‘em, unable to drum up the energy to speak even though I could sense Mom waiting for some sort of response.   

“It’s almost noon already,” she continued. “You always lose track of time when you’re sailing.” Pause. I peeked through almost-closed eyes to see what seemed more like a mirage of my mother, vibrating, transparent colors hovering over the dock. She looked at her watch, glanced over at me and then looked down again. “Are you riding over with us or do you have other plans?”

“What time . . . “ I started, knowing she couldn’t believe I’d just gotten back from a brisk morning sail and was stretched out to soak up the May sunshine.

“2. It’s 2 – 4,” Mom interrupted, her words spilling out in the quiet, nervous way they do when she was trying to pretend everything was fine when it most definitely was not. I tilted my face down to breathe in the makeshift blanket wrapped around me, Daddy’s faded navy, thermal-lined sweatshirt. 

“Oh, honey, I know this is unbearably painful for you,” she said, grabbing a starboard cleat to steady herself and squat down next to Andromeda. “Your eyes are just about swollen shut, and your face is a crusty mess. Come on in and take a hot shower. Or better yet, a long soak in the tub. You can use the lavender beads you gave me for Mother’s Day and . . .”

“Mom, Mom . . . stop. I’ll be OK.” I couldn’t listen any longer. 

The volume was turned all the way up – colors, sounds, Andromeda’s subtle bob. “I’ll head up soon. And remember what I’ve always told you: Your daughter will never be a soap opera actress. She only cries one way, and it just ain’t pretty.”

I summoned up that shred of humor to give my mother something to hold onto, something that let her believe I was steady enough for her to turn away and walk back up the dirt path to our house. She stood up slowly, still hesitant. “Your dad and I plan to get there right at 2. I imagine there’ll be a crowd.”

That’s right. I thought. I wasn’t the only one missing Billy. 

I was the only one he introduced to the half-abandoned, gloriously dangerous shipyard that ignited our childhood imaginations. And, the only one who understood and shared the “must-get-out-on-the-water-now!” mantra that lulled him to sleep at night and propelled him out of bed each morning. I was the only one he hadn’t spoken to for six weeks, since he wrapped a pearl bracelet around my wrist on my 30th birthday and confessed to secretly loving me so hard, for so long. 

And, I was the only one swept up in a choppy current of guilt, needing to know what could never be known – how Billy ended up swallowed by the sea. Not whether he tripped, slipped or got swept off the tugboat deck by a rogue wave, but if he chose to jump into the ocean’s dark promise of nothingness . . . because of me.