The Cursed Doubloon

I hate pirates. Drunken ones are the worst, always making a ruckus while I’m trying to sleep. I am surrounded by them on this cursed ship. To a bystander I’m sure I look to be somewhat of a hostage on board, standing amongst the reckless crew in my long cotton dress with my hair done up in curls. But these bilge rats are not holding me against my will at all. In fact, I am a willing participant. It stumps me as to why at times, but I
chose
to live among these dreadful men.

My father is the worst of them. William “Grog Blossom” Hayes is his name, and his face is more often than not laced with the crimson color of a night fit with too much rum. It’s a terrible embarrassment, being the daughter of a disreputable drunken pirate. But he is my father and I feel that looking after him is my burden to bear.

What’s sad is my father didn’t used to be a belligerent drunk. He was quite the interesting man in his day, starting out his life course as a privateer and making ample amounts of money to provide for my mother and me. He did well at it for a while, but like so many privateers before him he eventually succumbed to the romanticized dream of finding the Cursed Doubloon.

And that he did. He left privateering behind and turned pirate, commandeering a ship during one of his raids and setting off with a handful of his loyal friends in search of the cursed Spanish coin. Hearing rumors that Captain Elijah Hornbrooke was in possession of it last, they sailed across the Barbary Coast in search of him. My mother and I didn’t hear from him for months. We presumed him to be dead.

Then one day he finally returned to us, pushing open the door to our home and stumbling inside with a parrot on his shoulder and a bag of doubloons in his hand. “I’ve found the Cursed Doubloon!” he yelled. My mother and I wrapped our arms around him, but he didn’t hug us back. Instead he dropped to the floor and dumped the bag of gold coins around our feet. “We be rich! And there be plenty more than this tucked away from the eyes of them thieven’ picaroons. I even hid it from me crew. I be dolin’ it out to them accordin’ly.”

“Where have you been all this time?” my mother asked, trying not to be swayed by his lack of interest in seeing us. “We’ve been worried sick about you. And what do you mean there’s more?”

He leaned forward onto his elbows and began counting out his loot, stacking piles high in front of his face. “I’ve hidden me treasure.

Yes, me treasure is hidden. Hidden from all who dare to take me Cursed Doubloon. Have at it now, ye rapscallions. Try yer best to get me treasure . . .” My father was rambling and not making very much sense. He was far from being the great man that he was before he left us.

I met eyes with my mother and her brows joined together with concern. “William, my love,” she said above him. “What is the bird for? I thought you hated birds.”

“She be me saving grace.”

“You named her Grace? After me?” I asked.

“No, no, no,” he said, sitting back on his heels and taking a break from his counting. “The bird be named Melody after me beauty, your mother.”

My mother blushed, and for a moment we both saw him returning to his usual self. “You named it after me, my love?”

“Aye. This bird knows all me secrets, such as you.”

“Why does a bird need to know your secrets, my love? Isn’t that what I am for?”

He sat silent for a moment and looked up at the both of us standing before him, eagerly waiting to hear whatever words he was going to spill out. His face washed over with disappointment as he leaned back down on his elbows and went to counting his coins once more. “Me mind isn’t remembering things like it used to,” he confessed quietly. “I told me bird some things that I can’t remember now.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Like where I hid me treasure.”

“You mean you already lost the treasure?” my mother blurted.

“No, I didn’t lose me treasure. Melody knows where it be hidden.”

“Then ask the bird where it’s at then!”

“I, I can’t. There be a secret word I have to tell her before she tells me where the location be. The word is no longer in me mind.”

“So you forgot the secret word that you have to tell your silly bird in order for her to tell you where you hid your treasure?”

“Aye.”

“I can’t believe you, William,” she fumed. “First, you just left us here with barely any warning about where your whereabouts were to be, then we don’t hear from you for months, and now you’re back and all you care about is that horrid Cursed Doubloon and this money that was acquired by your thieving hands! And you don’t even know where the rest of it is hidden at that!”

“Don’t ye be cursin’ me doubloon!” he said, jumping up and meeting face to face with her. “The Cursed Doubloon made this all to be! We be rich now!”

“I don’t care about being rich, William. I want my husband back! Look at you. You were once a privateer, and now you’re just a filthy pirate. You don’t even speak the same anymore!”

“But look,” he said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a tarnished-looking doubloon. “It be just as beautiful as ye, me beauty.”

We all stared down at the gold coin sitting in the middle of the palm of his hand. The Cursed Doubloon. I had heard about it all my life. Pirates strived to get it and acquire the power it delivered to their souls. It made them mad. Cursed. But they needed it. It was quite ugly, actually, with its crimson-stained edges and scratched surface. I expected it to possess some sort of rare jewel in its body or something to make it stand out amongst the other doubloons. Now that it was in front of me I wasn’t very impressed. But the legend says that it’s the mind of certain men and captains that it possesses, not women or anyone else. So I guess it was right that I didn’t fancy it.

My mother’s eyes began welling up with tears. “You aren’t the same, William. Please, come back to me.” She lifted her slender hands to his bearded face. “Are you in there my love?”

His eyes shifted back and forth in her stare. “Aye, I be here, Melody. I be here to protect this doubloon with me life.”

Her eyes closed and a single tear rolled down her cheek. “Okay then,” she gave in. “Let’s get you cleaned up and get some food in your stomach.” When her eyes opened she saw that his were cast down at the doubloon. Her spirit fell as her hands left his face and fell to her apron. My mother was filled with sadness; my father was filled with a curse.

The months that followed his return were hell. The curse affected him slowly, taking his memories one by one. He became distant with me and my mother. His days were spent pillaging other vessels, trying to find the mother lode once more. But he knew no amount of loot that he stole would amount to the treasure that was given to him by the Cursed Doubloon. He became obsessed with trying to find it.

When the sun fell from the sky each night he would drink until he passed out. Eventually he stopped coming home completely. He made his ship,
The Fog Chaser
, his new home. I would visit him on it often, only to find him talking to the parrot on his shoulder, trying to convince her to tell him where he hid his booty.

My mother never came to see him. It was too painful for her to watch his obsession consume the man that he was. He didn’t care for either of us anymore. We were no longer his heart’s desire.

The last time I saw real emotion in my father’s eyes was when the curse took my mother away. In our large town she was the only person to become ill with yellow fever. Even I didn’t succumb to the horrible infection, and I was at her bedside night and day. My father took responsibility, saying it was just another part of the curse revealing itself, and that I would surely be next. The day we laid her to rest in the earth my father cried and damned the Cursed Doubloon for the first time.

After that I didn’t know what to do. I missed my mother terribly and felt so alone. My father was all I had left, even though he was a shell of a man and wasn’t at all the person I knew. So I resolved to take care of him in his delicate condition, moving aboard
The Fog Chaser
and trying to live a normal life among the mess of pirates that surrounded me.

* * *

“Fasten the deadlights!” I yelled into the wind. A few of my fellow shipmates grabbed the shutters and began covering the cabin’s windows to protect them from breaking. The approaching storm was coming in quickly and beginning to unsettle the ship, and I wasn’t about to let the curse do any more damage than it already had to the pathetic vessel that it was.

“Where the Captain be?” one of the men yelled in my direction.

I looked around the length of the deck. He was nowhere in sight. “I don’t know where he is. Do you see him?” The rain was pelting at our heads and the waves were growing angrier with each passing minute. “We need to find that bloody idiot before we’re thrown overboard!”

“There he be!”

We all turned our attention toward the front of the ship. There he was on the middle of the bowsprit, hanging on for dear life as he dangled over the violent water.

“Oh dear god,” I moaned. “Somebody get him off of that thing before he gets himself killed!”

The men rushed to the bow and pulled on his coattail, coaxing him into getting down. “Let me be!” he yelled back at them. “I’ll be droppin’ all of ye off at the execution dock if ye don’t let me be!” His crew obeyed his command and let him go, scattering about and going back to the duties they were handling before the interruption.

“For heaven’s sake,” I puffed. I let go of the main sail and stumbled my way up to the bow. “Get down from there you fool!”

“Never! I be taken down with me ship like an honorable pirate!”

“Father, get off of there now and take charge of your ship or I swear on my mother’s life I will release Melody into this storm and you’ll never find your blasted treasure!”

He looked back at me, his black hair blowing across his face and for a moment hiding his eyes. “Aye Aye, Grace.” He scooted down slowly, being careful not to be thrown into the waves before making it back on deck. “Ye know, me child,” he said while steadying himself and running a calloused hand down the length of his scraggly beard, “ye be the only person alive that can talk to me that way and still be breathin’ the sea air.”

I grabbed a hold of the mast next to me. “Yes Father, I know. But it is obvious that you are drunk and we need you right now. So please, do your duties to your men.”

He laced his fingers behind his back and sucked his teeth before walking away, the movement of the ship having seemingly no effect on his steps. “Alright crew! We be ridin’ this storm out!”

As the hour passed the storm raged on. The rain finally subsided but the wind didn’t. Instead it contributed to the giant waves that were slamming against the ship and threatening to overturn it. I grew sick from the movement and heaved overboard while holding onto the side, silently praying for the wind to stop or at least blow the doubloons curse away from us. For a moment I thought my prayer had been answered, because the wind seized. But it then changed its course and took us by surprise, striking against another part of the ship and tossing all of us to the floor. I pulled myself up and grabbed onto the side once more, only to be met by a thick blanket of incoming fog.

“Damn ye curse!” my father yelled at the grey mass. “
The Fog Chaser
will not be brought down by ye, I can promise ye that!”

I looked to John, my father’s closest companion and somewhat of a quartermaster, who happened to be holding on close to where I was. “John, what shall we do? The storm is too much for us all to handle. I’m too sick to even—”

My sentence was cut short at the sound of a man’s voice cutting through the sharpness of the wind. Our heads turned in its direction and we listened, straining to hear more of what sounded to be singing.

“Someone be singin’!” John said.

My father’s eyes lit up with fear. “It be Sirens! The mermaids have found me ship!”

“No Father, it can’t be a Siren. It’s a man’s voice.”

“Heave to! We mustn’t sail any further!”

The mystery voice was intoxicating. It was deep and masculine yet sounded as whimsical as a fairy’s magical flute. Something was telling me the melodic song coming from the other side of the fog was nothing to be feared. I had to convince everyone around me as well. “Father listen to me! Sirens are mermaids. That sounds to be a man’s voice singing the song.”

“Everyone shut yer mouths,” he replied.

The wind died down and the ship drifted into the blanket of fog, devouring us all as we sat in silence. Once again, the faint sound of a man’s song hung in the air.

“Listen!” John hushed.

“
Though she be sailing the ocean blue,

She comes to me and she sails right through;

And never shall she fear the great deep,

Because safe her ship I will keep.”

“See Father, I told you. It’s a man singing a song. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“I be cursed. It may be a man or a Siren posin’ as a man. I’m turnin’ the ship around.”