M/V DON CARLOS
With little to occupy them in port, Gerritt Maas and Victor Pope had taken to walking the ship twice a day. Maas had been to Casablanca previously, but the city’s exotic reputation held little interest for the former SEAL. He preferred to exercise, walk, and talk.
The Dutch skipper tapped his pipe bowl and regarded the American. Maas finally felt comfortable enough to ask a personal question. “Victor, I understand that you considered becoming a priest before the Navy.”
Pope thought, He’s been talking to Derringer. “That’s right.”
“Could I ask why you changed your mind?”
“Oh, there’s a couple of reasons. Even after the Second Vatican Council I was willing to consider the priesthood, but eventually it just wasn’t the same church anymore.”
“When was the Vatican Council?”
“It sat from 1962 to ’65. John XXIII and Paul VI.”
“My God. You couldn’t have been born yet!”
Pope laughed. “Well, there were other reasons. In my early twenties I thought about spending the rest of my life celibate, and it just wasn’t for me.” He gave a rare grin. “Besides, neither the Jesuits nor Benedictines issue firearms.”
They continued walking aft, momentarily content to pace in silence. Then Maas said, “Sometimes the occupation finds the man. Like me. I grew up in a farming family—had no interest in the sea until a friend’s father took me sailing.”
Pope nodded quietly. Approaching the stern, he said, “I always enjoyed athletics, competition, and shooting. The SEALs seemed the biggest challenge. But sometimes…”
“Yes?”
“Well, sometimes I wish I could just do the job, you know? Without the responsibility. Sometimes I wish I could just be like … them.” He gestured toward Bosco and Breezy, sitting on a tarp spread on the fantail.
The two friends were still practicing their pirate routine while cleaning the M-60s. According to one’s perspective, either they had perfected the act beyond all reasoning, or it still needed a great deal of work.
Bosco set aside a spare barrel, cocked a squinty eye at his partner, and pitched his voice into a low, gravelly octave somewhere between Wally Beery and Yosemite Sam. “Aye, matey, when we took the Tarabulus, the decks ran red!”
In a poor Johnny Depp imitation, Breezy replied, “Avast! You’re the second best pirate I ever saw.”
“Second best? Why’s that?”
Breezy explained, “You need a peg leg and a parrot named Carl Bob.”
“Well, matey, next time we’re ashore for grog, we can go shopping at a pet store. But by Davy Jones’s locker, I’m keeping both me legs.”
At that clue, the friends broke into something resembling a song:
“Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest.
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest!
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
The mate was fixed by the bosun’s pike,
The bosun brained with a marlinspike
And cooky’s throat was marked belike,
It had been gripped by fingers ten;
And there they lay, all good dead men
Like break o’day in a boozing ken.
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!”
Unseen by the latter-day buccaneers, Victor Pope regarded the happy youngsters and envied their buoyant emotions. He knew that the mood would not last long.