A Captain's Duty

What do you mean, ‘my tribe’?”
    He laughed, like How could someone not know what his tribe was?
    “Your tribe, your people.”
    I was still half-gasping for breath. Now you want to chat? But anything to keep his mind off murder.
    “I told you I’m an American.”
    He shook his head.
    “No, that’s your nationality. What’s your tribe ?”
    “I’m Irish.”
    “Ah, Irish,” he said.
    He shook his head.
    “Irish, you trouble. You a pain in the ass, Irish.”
    I nodded. “You got that right.”
    He nodded. Then something changed in his eyes and he jerked up on the rope. I gasped, pulling my hands back down.
    All of a sudden, BOOOOM . There was a white flash of stars in my eyes and my head drooped forward.
    I thought I was dead. But I wasn’t. Blood was trickling down my hands and onto the rope. Musso flinched.
    “Don’t do it!” he screamed.
    Tall Guy emerged from behind me, the gun in his hand. His shoulders were slumping and his head was down. His whole body expressed total dejection. As Musso cursed me, Tall Guy went to the front of the lifeboat and just collapsed.
    What just happened? I thought. Did he shoot and miss? Or did he just whack me with the butt of the gun? I couldn’t figure it out. The sensation was so much more powerful than the taps he’d been giving me before. He had to have fired.
    The Leader spoke up. “No action, no action. In three hours we will untie you.”
    I was happy to be alive. But I was pissed, too.
    “What did you do?” I yelled up to the Leader.
    “Shut up,” he said.
    “You tried to kill me?”
    The Leader turned his head and spat.
    “Shut up.”
    “Oh, you mean, ‘Please be quiet, Captain.’”
    I heard Musso snicker at that. Even the Leader cracked a smile. That was the first and last I’d get out of him.
    “You trouble, Irish,” said Musso. “Yeah. You a problem.”
    I didn’t know if they’d tried to kill me or if it was a mock execution. If it was a mind game, it’d been pretty damn convincing. My head was still ringing and the blood was still trickling down my face. But why bluff with me when I had no control over the ransom? And why was Tall Guy looking like he’d failed at something very important? It didn’t make sense.
    I decided I had to get ready in case they tried again.
    I started to stay my good-byes to my family. I called up Andrea’s face in my mind and I spoke to her like we were sitting at the dining room table at our farmhouse in Vermont. I could see everything—the view of the yard through the dining room window, which runs to a field of tall grass and then backs up to a hill covered with pine.
    I said, “Ange, I’m sorry for the call you’re going to get. The one that wakes you up at four in the morning and you already know what they’re going to tell you before they say a word.” I saw her answering the phone, afraid, and tears came to my eyes. I wanted to spare her that pain but I couldn’t. I said, “I love you. I know you’ll cry for a few days but you’ll be all right.” I knew Andrea was a strong person, and I thought, She’ll be okay. Maybe in a month or three months, she’ll be over the worst of it.
    Then I thought of Mariah. She is like her mother, emotional as an Italian opera but, deep down, independent and strong. “Be yourself,” I said to her. “Stay strong, because I’ll always love you.” I knew she’d cry a lot longer, and be deeply affected by it, but eventually she’d come through.
    I came to Dan. This was where I almost lost it completely. Dan is a lot like I was at his age, tough on the outside but still searching. He hides his pain. He’s not as open as his mother or his sister. And I heard his voice saying, “Oh, I don’t have a dad, my father’s never home. He’s always at sea. He doesn’t love me.” That just went through me like a sharp knife. Because I knew he said it to cover up the pain of my not being there. I worried about Dan more than anyone else.
    “God,” I said to myself, “please give him the strength to get through this.” Because I didn’t know if he could. I didn’t want that thought—“My father doesn’t love me”—to be his last thought of me before I died. I didn’t want him passing down to his kids the belief that his father didn’t care about him or mess up his relationship with his kids when he had them.
    I bowed my head. I didn’t want the pirates to see my face. I moved on to something more practical. “Ange, don’t sell the