Fair Weather Friends

The cape was in sight when the front blew in; the cape a low, gray line on the horizon toward which In All Her Glory was aimed, but as sailors of every era have discovered, the sighting of land during a storm sometimes offers little more than the hopeful illusion of safety.

The three of them were not even sailors, not experienced ones anyway, rather they were friends who were literally learning the ropes, lines and sheets as they went. Five years removed from their law school graduation, In All Her Glory was the glue cementing that friendship. At 30’ in length she was a lovely little boat; a lightweight, yet ocean worthy sailer which built an almost unhealthy collective longing within the three young litigation up-and-comers for ever earlier Friday afternoons which could be stretched into ever longer weekends, a longing much stronger than their boat-less friends could ever imagine, as In All Her Glory was in every way superior to tailgating or golf. The friends had pitched in for her, two of them somewhat reluctantly and against their wives’ protestations. On occasion the friends set sail with their two wives and the bachelor’s most current girlfriend aboard, but more often than not it was just the three of them alone together on the open ocean with no destination in mind, as a destination wasn’t necessary. In fact, creating a finish line to cross wasn’t even desirable. The boat itself was enough for them; learning to sail her, to navigate her, to stow, steer, and dock her, teaming together to overcome her many quirks, and doing it together while learning to greater appreciate the strengths of the other two. In All Her Glory was that adventure which offset their mundane tax-law work lives, as the boat presented the trio with infinite obstacles to test both wits and muscle. She became more than a hobby to them. She was a seductress the three friends could share without intrigue or jealousy, that they could care for, admire, and discuss. She was the lover who would silently do their bidding, sailing them upon warm winds straight into a different sort of ecstasy so long as they treated her with the firm, knowing hands she requested of them.

For nearly a year now they’d been testing her abilities along with their own, starting slow, sticking to the bay’s calmer waters, but their anxieties were quickly overcome by pride the first time they found the courage to point her bow for open waters, and from that day there was no stopping them. Further out they sailed and longer there they stayed, so that encountering a squall had become inevitable, and here one was.

Byron was the bold one, his Nordic ancestry shining through in his silky, almost white hair atop chiseled and tanned features, Byron forever wanted the helm. Rarely wearing more than a pair of knee-length swim trunks while aboard, Byron had grown ever fitter, and ever browner over their weekends aboard ship, his hairless chest swelling in the salty air and his beard lightening until it nearly matched the whiteness of his hair. The boat had been Byron’s idea, but he didn’t flaunt the fact. Byron was simply happy to have her, and to have friends of like mind to sail her with.

Zac was the thoughtful one who quickly assumed the navigator’s role, spending much of his time below decks with a GPS and weather radio set up amidst maps with color coded pushpins which signified land, currents, and winds. Yet despite his time below, despite his loose and billowy shirts, and despite his wide brimmed hats, Zac’s paler skin had also tanned to a healthy bronze with steady exposure to sea and sun, his dark curls tipped at the ends now with brilliant natural highlights.

Javon was mostly just along for the ride, taking life as it came and learning from both of the others as he went, amazed that he’d wound up here at all, aboard this boat, 1/3 of it belonging to him, and with these two for friends. Javon had been raised on the east side of Norfolk by parents worthy of his adoration. Theirs had not been the best of neighborhoods to be sure, but it was certainly not the worst, either. Preston and Alicia Pitts had raised their boy well, modeling strong Christian values along with a curiosity to learn that their son Javon could not help but strive to emulate. These traits had earned him an athletic scholarship to Hampton College, where he’d promptly blown out his knee before his sophomore year. With football no longer even a pipe dream, Javon put his full attention into his studies and soon had his choice of graduate schools, from which he’d chosen William and Mary for it’s attractive law school, and for it’s close proximity to his home, as his mother was struggling alone now since Preston’s untimely death and her son’s empty nesting.

It was Byron began the friendship with Javon. They’d met playing intramural basketball, a league in which their three man team had handily won the College Cup trophy, Javon excelling at the point while Byron’s length and physicality dominated the post. Javon‘s innate skepticism of white people, with whom he had little experience, had made him resistant to Byron’s friendly and persistent overtures at the start, but Byron was one of those people whom it was nearly impossible to refuse, his frequent invitations bordering on insistence. “C’mon Javon, we’re going to the cafeteria”… or “Javon, meet us at the library at 7:00”… and “Hey Javon, I’m signing up for golf. Why don’t you sign up too? It’ll be a blast?”

Golf? Javon had never been golfing in his life! But it had been fun, hadn’t it? That was the best thing about hanging around with Byron, his constant energy and activity. He was always doing something, and in hanging around with Byron, Javon found new worlds opening up for him, worlds that made him realize that his mother had been right all along, that a kid from East Norfolk could belong and be accepted anywhere, even in some haughty country club, or marina.

And Zac was the pair’s tag along, at least in the beginning. Not athletic, Zac avoided those activities, but he made up for his lack of coordination by being smart, funny, and sociable. Zac was perhaps the most gifted socialite Javon had ever seen, being a natural talker with a working knowledge of nearly any subject. Zac was that rare nineteen year old with absolutely no lack of confidence in his ability to adapt to any social setting, whether it be speaking to a scholastic audience, or whether conquering the shyness of an unfamiliar but attractive co-ed, one on one.

Javon had tried to excuse himself that first time when Zac invited he and Byron to his parents’ home in Tampa for Spring Break. It would leave his mother another two weeks alone. Javon felt the need to be at his own home, to be with his mother, but again Byron was insistent, “Come with us Javon, we can play on some of the best golf courses in the world, and you are starting to hit the ball really well. Why would you not want to come?”

His mother had insisted as well, ”Go along with your friends, Baby-Ja. I’m fine! I enjoy being alone.” Though the lie caused her hand to shake as it hung up the phone.

And so, against his better judgement, Javon went along… and there he met Callie.

Like her older brother, Callie had an openness, an inner warmth and confidence that was palpable, like the way she held out not one, but both of her hands to him during their introduction, pulling him in closer from the very start, or the way her hand always seemed to find his bicep when she spoke to him, or the way she pressed her whole self against him for a selfie. Javon soon found himself wondering where she was when Callie wasn’t around, and when she might return? He fought these thoughts down though, despairing of the impossibility in them. She was Zac’s little sister, for goodness sake! But when it was time to go, and Javon felt bluer than blue, Callie found a time when they were alone to tell him good-bye, and to tell him she hoped he’d come back again, or that maybe she could even come up to Virginia sometime? He’d looked into her eyes then and known. This was the woman he would marry, the woman he would devote his life to, and it was amazing to gaze through her eyes, into her soul, and to find those same desires stirring inside her.

There had been more surprises too, like the warm smile on Zac’s father’s face while shaking his hand, and when Callie’s mother hugged his neck, making Javon feel as though he were already family. As the car was pulling away Zac had mused to him, “I think my sister likes you, bro.” With that sing-song statement Javon felt truly accepted. That was the moment when Javon understood there was much more here than just Callie worthy of loving.

The breeze changed as the clouds loomed closer, filling the sails and driving their speed, though not nearly fast enough as the storm overcame the tiny boat’s head start. The white clouds grayed, then blackened around them. Zac emerged from below as the sea swelled, his long sleeves whipped by the winds, his concern obvious, his eyes seeking a shoreline now hidden behind veils of windblown water.

”How far?” Byron’s voice carried to him through the gales.

”About three miles to shore, five to the bay, seven to the marina.”

Javon had to do the math in his head, as he was not yet fluent in the nautical language. Seven miles at ten knots… around five minutes per mile? Thirty-five or so minutes to the marina? Just as he formed his conclusion he was forced to brace against a harsh gust followed by a loud “pop” as the halyard snapped, allowing the head of the mainmast to sag down, effectively blocking the wind to the jib, causing the boat to stall in the now “high” sea. Byron reluctantly turned on the electric motor for steerage, understanding that the batteries would be needed later, to dock her. “Someone take the wheel,” he shouted! “I’m going up to fix her!”

”No! Stay there,” Javon shouted above the wind and waves. “I‘ve got it!”

The rings were slick with water, the visibility worsening by the minute. Just as Javon reached the line another gust snapped the mainstay, allowing the loose mainsail to blow outward, listing the boat over just in time for a seven foot wave to swamp over the decks, and spill into the cabin.

”Cut it off!” Javon heard the cry from below and complied, pulling a sailor’s multi-tool from his pocket and slicing through the lone length of halyard still attached to the mainsail. The sail fluttered out in the wind when he did, catching on the end of the jib before falling into the water beside the boat and sinking, tilting the boat over on it‘s starboard keel and effectively anchoring her down. Realizing their danger, all three men acted correctly, Javon scurrying down the mast, Byron lashing the ship’s wheel and racing for the trapped sail, and Zac rushing below to start the bilge pumps and to send a mayday signal. After the briefest hesitation Zac took the extra time to grab their life vests from the already submerged footlocker. “Shit-fuck!“ He thought aloud as he pulled them out. “Lindsay is going to fucking kill me!” His wife of two years had been adamant from the start that the boat was a bad idea. As was usual, where Zac had seen adventure, Lindsay had correctly seen danger.

When Zac emerged from the cabin it was to a sluggish starboard lean as the weight of sail and water drug In All Her Glory over. Byron was fighting with the sail, but the expression on his face told Zac all he needed to know. As Javon raced past him Zac shoved a life-vest into his gut like a football handoff. “Don’t be a dumb-ass! Put it on right now!”

Javon pushed his arms through the holes without bothering to zip it and ran to help Byron. Together the two managed to free the sail, but too late. The boat was laid over now, dark water rushing into her holds.

“What do we do?” Javon’s shout was heard by the other two, but no answer came, as neither had a good response.

Zac made his way over to the other two. It was obvious now that there was no saving In All Her Glory. Byron struggled into the wet vest handed him by Zac and smiled a reckless, what-the-fuck grin. “I guess we jump.”

”What?“ Zac hoped he’d heard incorrectly. There must be something else they could do.

”Yea.“ It was Javon this time. Looking around, the answer was obvious to him. They had to jump, didn’t they? “On three?”

The other two nodded in affirmation. “One!” He shouted.

”Two…”

The three friends, looking into one another’s eyes, shouted three in unison as they leapt into the sea.

The three were effectively away when In All Her Glory went down, very much as had the much larger ship in the movie “Titanic”; upside down, bow first, stern high as the friends watched, their hands held in a tight circle, not wanting one to be separated from the others. From the east they saw the lights of a Coast Guard Cutter slicing out from the bay towards them, the big ship looking indomitable to them as they bobbed on the rough sea’s ever changing heights.

Realizing that safety was near, the friends’ fears turned to giddiness at their new realization of life. “Damn guys! That was absolutely crazy!” Byron spit a stream of saltwater as he laughed.

Javon smiled too, but all he could think of was hugging Cassie when he got home to her, and how scared she would be when he told her. “Yea,“ he said. “Crazy is exactly the right word.”

The Coast Guard ship was closer now, they could hear it’s diesel throttling down it’s speed.

”Hey!” Byron became serious again. “You know, I heard that Jared Dicus is considering selling his Cessna and getting something bigger. What do you guys think about an airplane?”

”Think of what?” Javon was incredulous. “You can’t be serious?”

”Hell yea, I’m serious! What do you think, for real?”

”I have a better idea.” The cutter was now alongside the floating wreckage of In All Her Glory. Zac watched the uniformed men aboard her as they prepared a boat to send over the side to rescue them from what easily could have been their end. Zac’s voice was dead serious as he looked back at Byron, a crazy idea of Lindsay’s wiggling it’s way back into his brain.

“Maybe we should try something a little bit tamer, wild man. Say… you remember Lindsay’s friend Erica, don’t you? You know, the cute red-head who was doing that sexy dance thingie at Callie's party? She’s single you know, and I get it she can be a real handful sometimes, but I was discussing you with her the other day and she…”