The narrative I wrote that is exhibited on this website was originally an assignment I received in my English class. The purpose of the assignment was to develop the skills and techniques necessary to use dialogue in a story. My story was inspired by a passage of Caesar’s The Gallic War. While Caesar and his troops land off the shore of Britain, many of the men are hesitant to venture out onto the new terrain. One man, the soldier in charge of carrying the legionary standard, calls out to the troops to take action and “jump down” into the water. It is this spirit of courage and action that I try to convey through my story.
Desilite
The Aquilifer was not an old vessel, but each of the ten crew members aboard would retell each new story they created as though it were a thing of myth and legend. At the center of each tale sat the Captain, Julian. He was the one who had made The Aquilifer the most respected fishing boat in his small town on the southern coast of Alaska.
His mother and father raised him on their fishing boat, The Tenth. He grew up thinly veiled in salt and knowing how to read waves and wind better than the morning paper. In time, he acquired his own boat, and it wasn’t until then that he became the respectable man he was known to be.
Julian and his father ventured out on a day where the sky was dusted with clouds and the wind whipped the waves into the peaks of creamy, blue frosting. While headed back into harbour, they happened upon a patch of debris. Julian was changing course to maneuver around it when his father told him to turn back.
“Why?” Julian asked.
“We can clear out some of this rubbish, besides, it’s not like we don’t have the space,” he says, glancing back at the nets, barely speckled with fish.
“One wrong move might damage the ship.”
“Best not make a wrong move,” he laughed, “it’s mostly small clumps of plastic, we’ll be fine. Just go slow.” With a sigh, Julian steered the boat back amongst the garbage, slowing and eventually turning the engine off.
“Grab one of the empty nets,” Julian’s father directed. As slowly and methodically as they would move if they were actually fishing, they dragged the nets through the frigid water. Before long, the tapping and clinking of objects against the hull softened to the lapping of waves, and instead of being disappointingly empty of fish, the deck was disappointingly full of trash.
“I’ll probably get more for this plastic at the recycling center than I will for my measly haul.”
“You’d probably get more of a haul if there was less plastic, clearing it out does more than one good thing.”
“Ok, Dad, I’ll keep that in mind, now that we’ve lost the rest of the day, can we please just head back home?” With Julian’s impatience apparent, his father scanned the surrounding waves one last time before nodding. Julian turned to restart the engine.
“Wait, did you see that?” His father points off toward the horizon, which sat empty.
“There’s nothing to see….” Julian trailed off as he saw what caught his father’s interest. Across what was left of the debris field, something was rising above the waves. A geyser.
“We should check it out,” suggested his father.
“We need to be back at the harbor in time to unload our catch, and also clear out this trash, “ Julian said while kicking at a stray bag that had blown across the deck.
“It’s a bit late in the season to be seeing any whales this far north, most of the population should have migrated south by now.”
“Fascinating, now let’s get going.”
“Julian.” His father glared, until finally he relented.
“Fine.” The engine growled like a dog woken prematurely from a nap. Not ten minutes had passed before they came across the source. Wrapped in a torn net and surrounded by a swirling nest of debris, a whale spouted and struggled.
“Woah,” was all Julian could muster.
“We need to do something,” his father immediately began surveying the situation. “It looks like I might need to jump down to cut the net from its fins,” he went on to retrieve a knife from the supplies.
“Are you crazy? It’s way too dangerous to get that close to it, not to mention the temperature of the water. There’s nothing we can do for it,” Julian responded, completely flabbergasted.
“Julian, don’t tell me you are perfectly capable of leaving this animal here, without even attempting to help,” it was his father’s turn to be astonished. “Have I taught you nothing?”
Julian looked from the trapped whale to his father. His father had always been a rather eccentric man, most of the town considered him to be at least borderline insane. The only reason they put up with it was because he always brought in the best and biggest hauls of fish.
“Bring the boat as close as possible.”
“I want you to know I am completely and overwhelmingly against this.”
“Yeah, yeah, just be ready to pull me back up once I’m done.” Before Julian could protest any further, his father entered the water, shoes off, a knife in hand, and kicked his way to the larger mammal struggling in the water.
Each time the whale stilled, he swam forward and severed a portion of the netting. The whale slowly became liberated, but Julian’s father was becoming encumbered by his own numb limbs. When the whale ultimately flopped away, Julian had already begun pulling his father back toward the boat.
“This is insanity, we have to get back now,” Julian dumped every blanket and jacket he could find onto his father before steering the boat toward the harbour at full speed.
“This is just another day in a long life of being cold and wet, it won’t kill me now.”
“It very well could. Hurry up and dry yourself off, you won’t get any warmer if you’re still sopping wet.”
“Why couldn’t you show this same concern for the whale?”
Julian turned to look at his shivering father.
“Why should I?”
“Why shouldn’t you?” Julian could think of any number of reasons, starting with the skin on his father’s extremities, which he was certain was carrying a blue tint.
“It’s dangerous.”
“Anything can be dangerous, yet you still do plenty of things. The potential for danger shouldn’t keep you from going about your live, and it should never keep you from helping anyone, or anything, you can.”
After they had made it back to harbour and Julian had made sure his father got dry and warm, he returned to his ship to deal with the fish and rubbish. Gathering up rubble, he thought about how his day had gone. From the very beginning, his father had gone out of his way to do things that needn’t be done. Collecting trash, saving an animal, Julian was sure that had they spent more time on the water, he would have found something else to improve.
The more he thought, the more he realized that his father had done this his entire life. When someone in town needed something fixed, they came to his father. His father was the kind of person who always stopped by with a bowl of soup when he heard a friend was sick. Heck, he had even pulled cats from some trees. He was your everyday hero.
Julian had been around this his entire life, and never thought twice about his father’s readiness to help. Julian supposed he just hadn’t yet seen an gesture quite as grand as that day’s whale rescue.
The sun was setting as Julian began walking down Main Street. A river that fed into the harbour ran parallel to the street. He crossed over the street and continued walking until he came across the pedestrian’s bridge. At its base he turned and saw a family on the banks of the river. Trails were woven throughout the town, and on the clearer evenings, families would often walk them.
Turning to cross the bridge he realized the family wasn’t walking, but running, all the while pointing at something in the river. Maybe they’re racing boats down the river, Julian thought, but out of the corner of his eye he saw a dark shape much too big to be a toy boat. Someone’s fallen in!
Julian stared, unsure of what to do. They were drifting farther and farther from the family now sprinting across the banks. He stood frozen for another moment, then realized that they were headed to float straight under the bridge.
He wasn’t sure what he would do, but he knew he could do something. And so, Julian ran down to the edge of the river to join the race against the current.