Chapter 13

useful eric

As the small dinghy rode over swells toward the Rosemary, Eric barely remembered the events between leaving Jedediah’s body on the ridge and descending with Nathan and Paul to the windward shore guarded by the Constantine and the Rosemary. After Samuel, Mr. Gary, and Captain Bellview saw them waving their arms on the beach, they sent the dinghy to transport Eric and his men back to the ships. Picking them up off the shore had not been simple, since the waves crashed into the windward side of the Montes de Oca island with an intimidating fierceness. Still, when they finally got past the breakers and to the anchorages of the Constantine and the Rosemary, cheers of jubilation broke out from everyone at the news.

After ensuring Eric’s safety, they sent a party of men back up to the ridge, guided by Nathan, to retrieve the body of Jedediah Willard. By the time they retrieved the body, the final captured pirate ship had been overhauled and prepared to sail, and it joined the Constantine and the Rosemary around the southern tip of the island, heading back to the cove where they left Lieutenants Curtis and Carroll. Upon entering the cove, their small fleet received a cannonade salute from the ships and cheers from the soldiers on shore, where they secured and transported the prisoner pirates to the ships in small boatloads.

While Eric appreciated the accolades, he still found himself unsettled as he observed the dinghy that detached itself from the shore and headed his way. The receding sunlight drained the color out of the water and island, transferring it to the clouds in a beautiful spread of fiery orange and dark purples.

Eric did not notice the display forming above him, only the approaching dinghy, which by now boasted the gray silhouette of a young woman near the bow of the boat, looking in his direction. Eric knew that he had abandoned Charlotte at a crucial moment in the day’s activities. While he had no regrets for his action, he cringed at the wrath that could only come from Charlotte as a result of his decision. The dinghy finally pulled up to amidships and the sailors helped Charlotte climb on board. Eric went from the quarterdeck down the stairs to amidships and by the time his foot had settled off the last stair, Charlotte emerged from the side onto the ship.

She gazed around uneasily, almost jittery. Her trembling eyes filed past each sailor, and then as Eric stepped forward, she saw him.

“Eric.” It was a breath, a thought turned to sound that barely escaped her lips. But Eric heard it and it jolted him. He expected a typical Charlotte berating, but before he could even think any further she staggered over to him and fell into his arms, gripping him tight.

Neither said another word for what seemed like minutes. They just held each other, and Charlotte kept her head buried in his chest. Not until Eric felt the moistness on his shirt did he realize that Charlotte had been crying. Still taken aback by a Charlotte that he had not known before, he held her tighter still. Though in a cove filled with activity and on a ship amid all of the bustle of one preparing to anchor, Charlotte and Eric were alone with each other.

Finally, Charlotte’s muffled voice spoke through his shirt, “I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Eric gazed forward at nothing.

“I know you knew what you are doing,” she started to lift her head up, “and I even encouraged you to face down Jedediah because I had full confidence in you. But when you left and I watched you go … well, I am still human after all.” She made a noble effort to smile through her drawn face. “I wondered, I … I had these obnoxious doubts, and I imagined the worst … I wondered if that was going to be the last time I would ever see you.” As she finished talking, her already moist eyes renewed their teary reservoir.

“I shouldn’t have left you like I did,” Eric said. “I should’ve told you on the boat.”

Charlotte shook her head, wiping her eyes. “You did everything right. Look around you. You’ve amassed a fleet here. It was nothing you did. I just … I’ve just grown intensely attached to you, Eric, and even though I knew I needed to let you go, it was hard to do.”

Eric about contradicted her to tell her how he still could have gone about it differently, but she saw his expression and cut him off. “But now, here you are all safe and sound, not a scratch on you. I don’t know what I was worried about.”

Eric laughed, his body still sore from the impact of Jedediah’s body rolling over his and a small itch on his back where Jedediah’s cutlass point had punctured his skin, “Well, not too deep of a scratch, at least.”

“And … Jedediah … ?” Charlotte then ventured.

“Gone. Done.” He pictured the frozen expression on Jedediah Willard’s face. “Dead.” His mind reviewed the whole experience and it exhausted him just thinking about it. Charlotte read his face, and he eventually noticed. So Eric grabbed her hands and led her up to the forecastle. There, the two sat against the railing and he told her everything, every last detail, every thought. He spoke with her until the stars dominated the black sky. Then they sat in silence for a while, glancing up at the stars.

They both tracked the moon rising past the high hills of the cove into the night sky. Eric looked at Charlotte and wondered if she could tell what he was thinking. Never one to disappoint, Charlotte removed her glance away from the moon’s pitted face and turned to Eric. “I just think that I should tell you that, with those two sailors coming to your aid in the last second—”

“I know,” Eric interrupted. “They didn’t just bail me out. It wasn’t just luck that I defeated Jedediah.” By the halting tones in his modest voice, Charlotte discerned the difficulty of Eric’s admission, but he voiced it anyway, saving her the trouble of doing it for him. “First of all, I defeated Jedediah already—he was only trying to even the score. And second of all, I remembered what you said about Captain Bellview, that it was because of me that he showed up to save the day. Well, those sailors told me that they were with me because of the bravery that they had supposedly seen me use. They even said that, when they were chasing Jedediah and me, they didn’t give up because they didn’t want to let me down. From that, Charlotte, I have to admit that their role in this whole affair can be at least partly attributed to me.”

Charlotte must have been smiling, but Eric felt too embarrassed to check. She fell quiet before speaking out. “Eric, if you keep on figuring stuff like this out, you’re not going to have any use for me anymore.” Eric nearly protested, but Charlotte continued, “The other interesting thing about the whole experience is that, once again, the thing to save you was not necessarily your skill, but your personality. The men admired your character, and that is why they helped you. Jedediah may have had all the pirating skills he needed, but his men never would’ve searched him out to help him on their own. They didn’t admire him; they feared him.” Charlotte gazed upwards musing. “Now we know that’s what happens when you put a natural-born pirate against his greatest foe, Eric. Identical skills, but the victory goes to the better person.”

Eric let this sink it. He realized that the truthfulness of her explanation left nothing for him to even add or detract. After a long while, he finally reasserted his gratitude for her insight.

Charlotte let more time pass in silence before saying, “Well, looking up at that moon reminds me that time in this place is limited.”

Happy to move beyond a conversation entirely about himself, Eric gauged the current phase of the moon, “Yep. Only a week more.” He thought for a moment before adding, “Only a week more and then it’s back to math class, driving tests, and,” his voice lowered, “mediocre Eric.”

Charlotte eyed Eric curiously, the moonlight painting his face with an unnatural white glow. “I said that time in this place is limited. I didn’t say it had to be for you.”

Though Eric had been studiously scanning the dark night before them, this comment forced his eyes back to Charlotte’s. “What do you mean?”

Charlotte reluctantly spoke, “You don’t have to go back, Eric.” Her voice hovered between them earnestly. “This doesn’t have to be a glimpse. If you don’t go back to the island where we came, you can stay and live in a world where you are the master of your own natural-born talent.”

Eric’s eyes widened. He had never anticipated this option since, in his mind, the whole experience had been temporary. For a brief moment, the thrill of having a daunting pirate foe in front of him, or standing at the helm of a ship just as it is preparing to engage with another, or feeling the weight of a sword balanced perfectly in his hand all rushed through his mind—that was what he had been born for.

The thought coursed through his body with every deep breath. What more could life offer than to be the master of that fate you were born for? How could he choose anything else? To command men who respected and trusted him because of his knowledge, to pore over maps and discover stratagems, to smell the sea air and feel the tug of currents and swell of the open sea—could he ever be truly happy with anything else?

And then the moment checked. Something in the back of his mind pushed to the forefront. While completely satisfied with the new friends and colleagues he had formed, Eric valued the small group of people who knew him when he considered himself useless—and they loved him regardless. “And my family?”

Charlotte looked at him wistfully. “Even if I had the ability to bring them here, they wouldn’t belong. Theirs are all different worlds, different times. If you chose to stay, you would choose a world for which you were born but a world without your family.”

The thrill came to a stop. “What about you?”

“I’m here now, it is true. But I can’t stay, Eric. I don’t belong here either. This is your world. And once I went back, there would be no coming to see you, since I can only travel to worlds with the person … and you’d already be here. I’d go back and stay. My place is with my family.”

Eric allowed his mind one last glimpse into the world that could be his—the ships, the wind, the chases, the excitement—and then he let it drift across the horizon of his mind. He glanced at Charlotte and even managed a wry smile. “A world without my family is no world at all … even if I’d be unexceptional there.”

Charlotte eyes reflected the whole of the night sky as she responded, “I thought I knew you well enough to guess your answer, but I had to give you the option.” She looked around at the ship and noted, “I’m sorry that you will have to leave it all. It must not be easy.” Eric said nothing, so she ventured, “But at least you can keep me company when we go back. I would have missed you terribly.”

Though at peace with his decision, Eric could not quell at least one pang of regret. “I think the hardest part will be to go back knowing that I could have been useful.”

At this comment, Charlotte shook herself out of a subdued mood. “Have you learned nothing on this whole adventure? Even now you’ll make that ridiculous claim that you are useless.”

Eric quickly went on the defensive. “No, I very, very much appreciated this experience. It showed me that I’m not destined to be useless. But you have to admit that I won’t be chasing down any pirates as soon as I get home.”

Charlotte shook her head condescendingly. “I guess I can still be of some use to you now. This takes us back to a conversation we had a long time ago. How many people are actually born at the right time and situation for their natural-born talent to be useful?”

“Not many,” Eric granted. “But I think I am particularly useless. Ryan Thompson, for example, isn’t anywhere near the right time or place for his buffalo hunting natural-born ability, but at least he has a football field, where that talent for throwing accurately and quickly can come in handy. There isn’t a sport at my school that requires fencing skills or outmaneuvering someone in a boat.”

Charlotte rolled her eyes. “It’s a good thing I like you or else I probably wouldn’t have the patience for this. You don’t just need to have the perfect skill that will match just right with a certain activity, Eric.” Charlotte sighed, and then, as if she were demonstrating the greatest amount of patience she could muster, she approached the conversation on a different tack. “What do you think George Washington was naturally born to do?”

Though the question came a bit out of the blue, Eric had a quick answer. “Be a general?”

“No,” Charlotte replied, “In fact, if my history teacher taught me correctly, he wasn’t all that great of a general, as far as tactics go.”

“Be a president of a country?”

“Nope. From what I understand, he never was too enthusiastic about being a president either, which wouldn’t fit for someone offered an opportunity to fulfill their natural-born talent.”

Eric groped for a minute. “Well, Washington was one of our greatest heroes so you’d think he’d have some pretty awesome natural-born ability. Let’s see. Wait a second, you’re probably trying to make the point that he wasn’t in the right time or place for it, so … oh, I know. A king or a ruler!”

Charlotte shook her head. “He was offered the opportunity for kingship and he turned it down. I’m betting if it was his natural-born talent, that would not have been such an easy thing to do.”

“You’ve studied up on him, haven’t you?”

“Washington is a pretty interesting case study in natural-born ability.”

Eric let his mind touch on some random ideas before he gave up, exasperated. “I’ll throw out these last guesses, and then you have to tell me: Pope, Pharaoh, or dogcatcher.”

The “dogcatcher” guess threw Charlotte off a bit as she denied his answers, but Eric just shrugged to show her that he really had no idea. She continued. “George Washington, as has been passed down from generations of natural-born talent seers, was a natural-born point guard.”

“Point guard?” Eric imagined in his mind a soldier guarding a certain station. “What kind of point would he guard?”

Charlotte took a deep breath. “He wasn’t born in the right time for his ability, Eric. Think more modern.”

Eric tried again, and then it dawned on him and he looked at Charlotte. “Point guard … you mean in basketball? He was naturally born to be a point guard on a basketball team?”

Charlotte nodded deliberately.

“But a point guard … that’s not even close to maintaining an army in a war or being the head of a new national government.”

“On the surface, no,” Charlotte responded. “But think more broadly. What skill would a point guard need to have?”

“Dribbling? Um … passing? Am I missing something here? Did Washington show tremendous passing skills with cannonballs or something?”

“Now you’re being silly. Those are specific talents. Step back more.”

Eric thought about some of his favorite basketball heroes and then focused in on the point guards. At first he just thought about the distinct basketball skills they had, but then he thought about a point guard’s job broadly. He slowly nodded his head. “The team leader. He directs the plays on the court. He finds the right people for the right job. He communicates the team’s needs to his players.”

Charlotte allowed a smile to come across her face. “Now are you starting to see? That man in the late eighteenth century, over six feet tall, athletically built, dexterous, was meant to command, not an army, but men on a court. He was meant to be a leader, not of a new emerging nation, but of a group of other guys in a game. George Washington was not born in the right time for his natural-born ability. But I’ll tell you one thing: I’m sure glad he wasn’t. Because, as entertaining as he probably would’ve been to watch at the head of a pro basketball team, I think that he proved much more, well, useful as one of the founding fathers of this nation.”

Charlotte’s lesson hit home pretty hard. Eric finished making her point for her. “And it wasn’t his skill in shooting a ball or running a court that came in handy. It was his leadership skill, the only real relevant skill from his natural-born ability. And he put that to use in the best way he could.” Eric allowed this thought to rest in his mind for a while. “Wow. That is truly inspirational, Charlotte.”

“Now do you see why it irritates me when you claim that you are useless?”

Eric smiled. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Now can we talk about how you could be useful?”

A whole new world opened up to Eric as he considered his abilities. “Let’s see, maybe a cargo ship captain …” but then he threw the idea out as soon as he thought of it. Not enough excitement for him or his talent. “No, no. Um … maybe a geographer of some sort.” He knew that he really liked maps, so that might be fun. But again, he didn’t quite feel as if that tapped into his true talents. Then he thought of one that he really liked, “What about a detective or a marshal? Chasing down criminals. Not in the ocean, granted, but it would all be about outsmarting my foes.” He liked the idea even more when he voiced it.

“That,” Charlotte said, “is a great one. And there are plenty more for you to consider as you get older. Sooner or later, if you don’t give yourself in to a life of uselessness, you’ll find something that may not be your natural-born ability, but that you’ll still be really good at, whether it’s a detective, a marshal, or something else.”

Eric allowed a long silence to tuck in around them as he soaked in this new life that Charlotte opened up before him—a life where he was useful. And he liked it.

“Charlotte,” he finally said. She turned to him. “I’m ready to go home.”

As ready as he might have been, the two still had a week before the moon reciprocated its cycle to the phase that would take them home. Eric took advantage of the time to bask as much in this world where he excelled as he could. He counseled often with Captain Bellview, Samuel, Lieutenant Curtis, and others as they arranged the new fleet of Port Raleigh. He also, at the insistence of those same men, aided in creating the type of defenses that would protect Port Raleigh from just about any pirate attack in the future. There was even an interesting episode involving the self-exiled Governor Rose, one which time and relevance will not permit an account of here. Regardless of what he was doing, Eric relished every moment, using all of his spare time trying to put his talent to use. Charlotte shadowed him everywhere, providing silent support—and spunky responses—when appropriate.

Before they knew it, they were giving their good-byes to their friends. Captain Bellview and Lieutenant Curtis managed to get the whole of Port Raleigh out for the occasion, the guns from the fort gave out sporadic salutes, and the men that had served under Captain Francis lined up for his final inspection. While a moving moment for Eric, he also found it embarrassing. He tried to hurry up the ceremonies as much as possible before he finally boarded the small fishing boat loaned to him.

There he said good-bye to a teary-eyed Mr. Gary. He shook the hand of Lieutenant Curtis, who nodded with the utmost respect. He firmly held the hand of Captain Bellview, who held back emotions as he thanked Eric for his mercy, and then he shook the hand of Samuel, who appeared to not know what he could possibly say to the man that had saved him and had been his close friend. So he said nothing and instead tugged Eric into an embrace. They clasped each other for a long time, but there was a brotherly comfort to it that consecrated the moment in their memories.

All of the gentlemen had respectful words for Charlotte, who received them politely, but impatiently. Her attitude only endeared them to her further.

Finally, the others stepped off the fishing boat, and, trusting to a steady breeze that hailed from the east-southeast, they pushed off the docks and left Port Raleigh for the last time. Eric gazed longingly at the ships lining the harbor: the stately Constantine and Metanoia, the converted pirate ships Redemption, Francis, and Charlotte (a homage which Charlotte outwardly scoffed but inwardly treasured). And finally, Eric looked longest at the small sloop, humbly nestled amongst the other dignified merchantmen and ships-of-the-line, the Rosemary. Eventually, as they rounded past the cape that held the fort, the sloop disappeared from sight and Eric managed to face forward.

The cruise to the small island that marked their entrance into the world passed mostly in silence, though not an awkward one. It was a silence of satisfaction. By the time they reached the island, the sun had just disappeared below the horizon, and twilight encroached upon the open, cloudless sky.

With all the skill of someone in his element, Eric anchored the boat in the precise spot where he and Charlotte first tumbled into the ocean, a stone’s throw away from the Rosemary. There they waited and discussed the future of Port Raleigh and their friends, speculating on what was to come. They did this until night fell completely, and then they started to talk about home and school and their families and speculated on their futures. After quite some time of this kind of talk, Eric gazed at the horizon and sensed, if not saw, a slight halo of light. “It’s time,” he announced.

Charlotte shifted so that she sat in front of him and grabbed his hands, looking deep into his eyes. He could tell that she was smiling, even though his eyes did not even dare to leave the grip of her gaze to check. The moon started to rise from its resting spot—its weak, white light fighting across the distance to glimmer off the black, lapping ocean water. As the two held hands and concentrated, Eric allowed his whole experience to flash through his mind as one, quick extended thought. Quick as it may have been, the review of these events presented Eric with a revelation and a question that had eluded him this whole time.

Charlotte must have noticed something had changed because she murmured, “What is it?”

“I just realized,” Eric said, his voice no louder than a whisper, “that when we talked about my victory over Jedediah, you mentioned that the two of us had identical skills. But that’s not true. The skills of a pirate hunter and a pirate are different. Sure, we might anticipate the other person’s skills, but our skills are not identical.”

Charlotte almost smiled. “Are you accusing me of being a liar or just inaccurate? I’m not sure I’d like either!”

Eric continued as if Charlotte had not said a thing. “But then I wondered if you really meant what you said: that we had identical skills. To have identical skills, it means that we’d need to have the same natural-born ability. If that’s true, it’d mean that this whole time I’ve really been a natural-born pirate and have used my piracy abilities for capturing one of my own kind, and you simply generously framed my ability as being a pirate hunter, even though it wasn’t the case …”

Charlotte somehow held back her growing urge to smile, “Or Jedediah was a natural-born pirate hunter and he used his ability to read pirates and their strategies to make him a formidable pirate in his own right.”

“So the question is,” Eric followed up, “about which of us did you lie?”

“Eric,” Charlotte said, “when I told you that you were a natural-born pirate hunter, I said that I was not lightly playing around. And I wasn’t. I take my own ability, and the trust that goes with it, very seriously. But just as your personality enhances your natural ability, it is my personality that has me look beyond just the natural-born ability of the person I’m looking at and take into account the character of that person as well. While your abilities or Jedediah’s abilities might have been naturally born to be either a pirate hunter or pirate, your personalities fit better with one or the other. Whether you were naturally born for it or not, Eric, you would’ve made a terrible pirate. You’re just too darn nice and you have no selfish ambitions.”

As soon as Charlotte imparted this explanation, Eric realized why he continued to trust her. It was silly of him to doubt her now. They sat for a moment of understanding as the moon attempted to complete its climb into the night sky. Eric knew he had a tiny bit of time left, so he figured it could not hurt to prompt one more question. “So,” he asked, almost sheepish in his digging, “which is it? Pirate hunter or pirate?”

Now Charlotte’s inevitable grin tore across her face. “Eric, does it really matter?”

Eric settled into a smile with a sigh. He knew that he was satisfied with what he knew now, with the person whose hands he held now, and just before the moon flicked its waning crescent tail above the horizon, he quipped, honestly, “Nah. It doesn’t matter.”