# Where are you, Morning Watis?



## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

I first met Morning's sister, Helen, when I was anchored at Gulfito, in Costa Rica. She was part of the crew of a 90 foot Baltic Trader, converted into a three masted square-rigger. To all intense and purpose, she made out to be an old-fashioned pirate ship, with Maltese crosses on her course sails, and even flew a black skull and crossbones from the peak of her mainmast.
When the crew came ashore in their longboat, they were all dressed in pirate getup, as if they'd just stepped off the stage at a 'Pirates of Penzance' performance. They were strutting about like the crew of Black Beard's ship, with lots of 'ahs' and 'yo ho ho's, and one of them even had a live parrot on his shoulder, that he'd trained to say, 'pieces of eight'.
I sat at a table at 'Old Jim's' bar, on his man-made island, around the bay from the small town and sugar wharf. He had a genuine wooden peg-leg, as he'd lost his leg in the Second World War at 'The Battle for Guadalcanal', and was as intrigued as I was at this impromptu performance.
The member of their crew with a parrot on his shoulder came up to my table and asked me what yacht I was off... there were no bulk-carriers on the quay loading sugar at the time. I told him, "The pirate ship, anchored in the middle of the harbour." He laughed along with some of the other crew and said they were off the black pirate ship.
"Not the plastic pirate ship!" I told him. "The big rusty one anchored outside of you. We don't go banging around the harbour, firing off bamboo canons... we use machine-guns and rocket-launchers."
That shut them up, and they sloped off to the far corner of the bar. After a while, the parrot-man and a young girl came up to me and introduced themselves. He was the captain of the square-rigger, and she was Helen. They explained to us that they had sailed from San Francisco, and were on their way to the Caribbean to charter their ship.
I told them, "Your ship would be more suited for the 'booze-cruise' business, as there are many such ships employed in this trade."
Helen jumped ship in Panama, and sailed with a young fellow on his 35 foot yacht. His girlfriend had just left him, homesick for her mother and family, and she stepped right into her shoes. They set out to cross the Pacific Ocean to French Polynesia, then through the South Seas to Australia.
I met up with them at Suvorov Atoll, where we were salvaging all the usable equipment from a wrecked Korean long-liner, right up on her side on the southern side of the lagoon. Morning had joined her sister on their voyage at Papeete, in Tahiti, after suffering a nervous breakdown.
She was a live-in palliative care nurse, and the old lady she had been caring for had finally given up her fight against cancer and had died after two years. Morning didn't grieve for her dying, as that was already expected, but because she had left her after being best friends together for that two years.
We were all naked and smeared with dirty oil, even all the girls in my crew, as we removed every piece of usable or saleable equipment from the wrecked long-liner. I invited them for dinner on Debut, and Helen and her boyfriend were a little embarrassed by the open nakedness on board my ship. Only Morning joined in and removed her clothing, but drawing the line at removing her knickers.
I next saw her in Pago Pago, when she came on board my ship, anchored out in the harbour. They had taken their yacht up on the slip for repairs, and to re-antifoul her bottom. She asked me if they could borrow a hose to clean off the growth on the bottom of their yacht. I told her that I'd fix her up with one with a spray-nozzle on the end, and would bring it over to them in an hour or so. She returned to the slipway in her small motorised inflatable dingy to wait for me.
When I arrived at the slipway, she was on her own on board the yacht. She was keen to show me around the small Bermudian sloop, especially her own cabin at the rear of the yacht. She moved on board Debut, staying with me in my cabin, and told me all about herself.
She came from St. Louise, although she now lived in California, staying in the houses of her patients. She was short, of slight build, with pert breasts, just large enough to fill the palm of my hand. Her bright red hair hung down her back in curls to her shoulders-blades, and to her breasts in front of her. Like most red-heads, her skin was milky-white, almost opaque like porcelain or bone-china, and flawless without the slightest trace of freckles. She was absolutely gorgeous. She cried her eyes out as she lay in my arms the first night, and told me about the emptiness she felt in her heart after the old lady had died, leaving her all on her own.
Each morning, I took her ashore to the slipway about ten, to help her sister and her boyfriend work on their yacht. I would collect her for lunch, spending an hour or so in bed with her after we'd eaten. I'd then drop her at the slipway again until collecting her to return to my ship. She slept in my arms in my double bunk, after reliving over and over again the grief she had suffered when the old lady had died.
After a week, their yacht was slid down into the harbour and then tied up alongside Debut for a few days. I took her to Sadie Thompson's Bar at the Rainmaker Hotel for our last meal together, then on to a nightclub to dance the evening away. Just before they sailed westward with their yacht to Western Samoa, I took Morning with Helen to the airport to catch her flight back to Los Angeles, in the States. She had contacted her nursing agency by phone at the Post Office, and was offered a new assignment. I kissed her goodbye and watched her walk down the ramp to the tarmac, and out to her plane. I never saw or heard from her again.
Get in touch, Morning. We only spent a week together in Pago Pago, in the South Seas, but it was a week I'll never forget. All my love to you, Cpt Dick Brooks.


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## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

*Where are you, Morning?*

The short story I originally wrote for Morning was my second entry for The Richard and Judy literary completion in the early 1990's, titled 'The Nurse'. All the best, Cpt Dick Brooks.


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