There's a moment — maybe it only lasts a second, but a moment sure enough — after the battle between your ship and the other one, the battle where you watched one your guys bite another guy's eyebrow (his whole freaking eyebrow!) off, when it's all over and you're back in your hammock reflecting on the day, remembering how, while everyone else was fighting, you were just kind of stomping around the deck waving your cutlass around, when you don't feel like the big, bad pirate you're supposed to be. What you feel like is a big, bad phony troubled by a big, bad question. And the question is this: Is there something wrong with me? Why can't I be better, more like eyebrow-biting guy?
You shove that thought back out of your mind just as fast as it entered, but weeks later it's still bugging you. You're thinking about it while you're polishing the cannonballs. You're thinking about it while you're gnawing on your salt pork. You're even thinking about it while you and Stinky Pete are putting hot irons to the feet of the prisoner — who is being very reluctant about disclosing the location of the gold. Stinky Pete, he's been in the pirate game even longer than you. You figure if anyone knows what's like to be in a funk, it's him.
"Hey, Stinky," you say, "did you ever think that maybe you weren't cut out for this?"
"What?" he says. "You mean torturing people? Well, in the Navy I dealt with rope, mostly. Coiling it, uncoiling it, tying knots. I know some pretty good knots, if you're curious." Which is so Stinky. You could be talking about scurvy or mermaids or getting harpooned and somehow he finds a way to make it about knots.
"No, I mean, the whole, uh, 'pirate lifestyle,'" you say, cringing so hard when you hear yourself say it that you almost drop the tongs.
"Pirate... lifestyle?! After all I've done for this crew?" Uh-oh. Now you've done it. "Tell me right now what snake is flicking his poison tongue about Stinky Pete. And if he can say it to my face we'll square off and see who the real pirate is!"
You try to talk Stinky down, explain what you were trying to say, when you hear an "eh-heh-hem." It's the prisoner, clearing his throat. It's been so long since the guy made a noise that you almost forgot he was there.
"I know what you mean, actually," says the prisoner. "My dad was a cooper and his dad was a cooper and, well, I didn't have to wonder what I'd be. My name is Cooper, for chrissakes — not that you asked." Even with the cloth sack on his head, you can tell he's making a big face about that. "But every barrel I make, it comes out all wrong. Too short or crooked or the staves don't match up."
"So what did you do?" you say.
"So I signed up with a merchant ship." The prisoner sighs. "As you can see, maybe I should've stuck with the barrels." And, well, you can't really argue with him there.
“Is there something wrong with me? Why can't I be better, more like eyebrow-biting guy?”
After that, you vow not to make the same mistake. You won't just stick with being a pirate, you'll be the greatest swashbuckler who's ever put on the striped bandana. And for a while, at least, you almost are. When it's time to dig for treasure, you dig a deeper, more exquisite hole than next two guys combined. When it's time to drink grog, you knock it back like it's the last barrel of grog on Earth. But if you're being honest, your heart's not in it, not really. Pretty soon, you're so exhausted by the whole charade that you start making excuses. When the guys say they're going into port to find wenches, you tell them that's okay, you'll check out the wench scene some other time. Before too long, it's just you and that question again. Am really I pirate, you wonder, or just some kid in a pirate costume?
This time, though, it's even worse. After making such a big effort, there's no way to hide that your pirating performance has gone right in the toilet. You're sure your mateys have noticed. There are certain signs. You hear laughter on the gun deck, but as soon you go down there, everybody gets real quiet, like the punchline just walked into the room. It gets so bad that you take to crawling inside one of the cannons in the middle of your watch. It's nice in there. In the cannon, there's no ship, no sea, no job. Just cold steel and a darkness that swallows you up like Jonah's whale. In the cannon, you can almost forget you exist.
The illusion is shattered by the bosun, who catches you in there when you're supposed to be swabbing the deck. The guy is obsessed with the subject, like an unswabbed deck (not the murders or the privateering) is the big crime that's gonna put nooses around all of your necks. Can't he — can't everyone — see how pointless it all is?
"Laddy," he says, "what in the slobbering sea lions are you doing in there?"
"Nothing," you say. "Thinking, I guess."
"Well ponder this, squid-bait: For every second you're not out of that cannon, you'll be earning a lash from the cat o' nine tails."
"No thanks," you tell him. "I like it in here."
It takes the bosun and three others to pull you out. By the time they bind your hands and start marching you up to the captain's quarters, you're over it, this whole lousy industry. You try to remember why you became a buccaneer in the first place and you can't think of a reason, at least not a good one. One thing's for sure, it wasn't the promise of adventure or riches or "pirate glory," whatever that means. No, if you're being honest about it, the draw was probably all the stuff that makes pirate life such a drag. The chaos, the uncertainty, the constant verbal abuse: these are old friends of yours. It's funny how that works. You spend your whole life trying to get out of the situation you're born in only to recreate it (down to the last, crummy detail) someplace else. In your case, a moldy, old pirate ship where everyone treats you like dirt.
“In the cannon, there's no ship, no sea, no job. Just cold steel and a darkness that swallows you up like Jonah's whale.”
When the group of you get to the captain's door, the bosun goes in first to discuss your fate, but there's no mystery about what happens next. You've already played this out in your head a hundred times. You can already feel that last step off the end of the plank, the one where solid wood gives way to 60 feet of air and the icy sea. The difference is that before it was the worst thing you could imagine. Now you can't wait to get off.
The bosun comes back out and then it's your turn. You walk through the door, hands still tied, and see the captain sitting at his desk scribbling away with that big ostrich feather.
"Come in, come in," he says. As you shuffle over to sit in a chair that would be kind of fancy (if it weren't for the bloodstains) the bosun closes the door behind you and the captain puts down his pen.
"You wanted to see me, sir?" you say, unable to drop the act in front of the boss, even now.
"Tell me, son, what do you think of me?"
"Sir?"
"As a captain, that is. Haven't I been good to you and the rest of the men? Made sure that the hardtack isn't too wormy, only boarded as many ships as we could handle? Some captains don't even have a proper grog rationing system." He shakes his head at the thought. "They give their crews water. Water! I've never done anything like that, have I?"
"Nay, sir."
"Then what's this I'm hearing about you sleeping in cannons? Why is the bosun or the first mate always bringing me some urgent crew business that has nothing to do with keeping the ship afloat and full of treasure?" The captain puts his big hat on the desk and starts rubbing the top of his head. You've never seen him without the hat on before. You notice how thin his hair is, with a bald spot in the middle as shiny and speckled as an abalone shell.
"I'm sick of it," he says, slapping the desk with both hands as he stands up. "Sick! Everyone thinks it's so easy, being the captain. Just 'avast this' and 'ahoy that' while you sit back and watch the gold roll in. Well it's not like that, it's not like that at all." The captain turns to look out the window behind him. For an uncomfortably long moment, he doesn't say anything and you're not sure if it's all over or you're supposed to talk or what.
"The bosun thinks I should have you hanged," he says finally. "As an example to the rest, that is. Instead, I'm giving you a choice." The captain nods over his shoulder. "On that desk is a letter stating that I resign from my position and name you as my successor. If you please, you can sign below my name. Or you can die. Up to you."
You've suddenly lost your bearings, like the captain's words transported you from solid ground to a ship in the middle of a storm. Out of all the ways you saw this going, you never imagined this one. You? Management material? All this time, you thought no one noticed the effort you were putting in, the high standard you held yourself to, the doubt it raised in your heart. But the captain did. He must have. Why else would he be offering you such a great honor?
You stand up and grab the pen with your rope-bound hands. "I'll do it!" you say.
Even after the old captain gathers everyone on the main deck for the staff update and rows off alone in that little dinghy, the men have some difficulty accepting the news. You could be standing right there, big hat and everything, and some dope will ask the first mate — who, last time, you checked, reports to you — what to do instead.
Fortunately, just a few executions seem to greatly improve the crew's comprehension. You're the boss now. If anyone doesn't like that, that's fine. They can take it up with Davy Jones.
It's an adjustment for sure, being in charge, but you're finding little tricks to make it work. Looking the part is easy. Embodying it is a lot harder. Sometimes, when the grog is running low and the men are whining and it's been weeks since you've captured so much as a single, lousy doubloon, you don't feel like the big, bad pirate captain you're supposed to be. You feel like that big, bad phony again. When that happens, all you need to do is dole out some lashings, remind your crew that if anyone should be hiding in a cannon, it's them.