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 Isaiah Jones versus the Sea (A 21st Century Odyssey) Key West to the Bahamas; SIDEWAYS an unplanned trip to Cuba 

Chapter 6 pt 1″     

Days 7-15: Explore Key West, Florida           

Enjoy your time exploring Key West.           

First Quarter Moon: Occurs around Day 8.           

Day 16: Depart from Key West, Florida to San Juan, Puerto Rico           

Approximate Distance: 800 nautical miles           

Estimated Sailing Time: 4 to 6 days           

Sail southeast from Key West to San Juan, Puerto Rico.   

Key West to Bahamas; SIDEWAYS an unplanned trip to Cuba     

   Naomi Galatea Cabbala watched the young black boy through the portal as he slept stretched out on a bench below deck midship. The middle-aged white woman of Cuban American ancestry expertly sailed the boy’s sloop through the darkness from the comfort of the center cockpit, lines expertly rigged to aft by the boy to control the boat without having to climb out onto the deck. She was accustomed to sailing catamarans; this monohull with the titanium alloy integrated keel and hull being constructed one solid piece of metal was both lighter and tougher than steel, her keel stepped rotating mast ran through the deck all the way down to the fin keel. She was built for stability and durability as well as speed.

The Prototype Monarch Ti-44 was a wave smashing beast in that regard. Knowing the boy intended to leave the Caribbean for blue water and cross the Atlantic, she was glad that he had chosen this boat. The SS Exodus glided silently over the cool azure waters riding the winds towards Cuba. Naomi was two decades older than the kid who now slept in the cabin below with the big white puppy now curled up beside him. She wasn’t as old as his mother, but too old to have any romantic interest in the kid.       

The tall, deeply tanned brunette gently touched the bandages taped to her left side with her fingertips; when she pressed the wound lightly, she grimaced with pain. Coño! She exclaimed in the darkness; the bullet wound was healing, but the blood-soaked bandages would need to be changed soon. Luckily, the slug had passed clean through without hitting bone or any major organs this time. Naomi had seen the news stories interviewing Isaiah’s family and friends on the evening news the previous week. The introspective 16-year-old math prodigy had sailed away with his big black cruiser on what the media was now dubbing a pilgrimage to Africa. She shook her head as she grinned. “Fucking talking heads.”     

   The Catholic school girl in her understood this; she smiled now, thinking of Hemingway’s the Old Man and the Sea. When she read it, she always defaults imagined the boy as being black and looking like Isaiah, she wondered what his story was. What adventures had the boy Manolin? Of course, he is never described as being black, (white readers will assume he is white also, even if a writer makes a character black, white readers will white wash them in their imaginations as they read…see the story of Rue in ‘The Hunger Games’ a character that is described by the author as black in the novel but the majority of white readers race swapped subconsciously in their imaginations.

And the only mention of any black man in Ernesto’s story is when the old man reminisces about defeating the “Negro of Cienfuegos” in an epic 2-day arm-wrestling match. Naomi always interpreted the subtext of that passage as being reactionary to the monumental legacy of real-life Black fighters at the height of segregation beginning with Jack Johnson complete and total dominance and later the rise of Joe Lewis at a time when being the heavyweight champ was the ultimate symbol of manhood, strength, and machismo thus the white fighter subconsciously reinforcing white supremacy.

Once the black fighter stepped into the ring the days of the great white hope were over. Hemmingway knew there would be no more white champions. So, he creates a white paper champion who best the negro in his fiction where none existed in real life. This subtle racism is the subtext of this trope later it would be revived when Sylvester Stallone did the same thing with the Rocky movies. Isaiah was no fiction; he was here and real as gravity, alone on his own real-life adventure. Man vs. Man, Man vs. Nature, Man vs. God, which is the same as Man vs. Himself.       

   My god, Naomi thought nostalgically, there is nothing like that first time at sea alone. Every sailor remembers that feeling of purest joy, wonder, and possibility of the horizons. It was better than sex; it was better than heroin. She recalled the reporters interviewing a pretty light brown girl that lived next door to his family, the girl obviously adored him, and Naomi assumed she was the girlfriend. Aeon had spent the summer with him sleeping on the boat nights and working on it during the day. She flew to San Diego at the end of summer to start college. The news reporter commented that she was impressed by her graduating high school two years earlier than her peers. She laughed as she informed the reporter and the audience that Isaiah had already completed college.

At the end of the interview, she quickly added the name of a GoFundMe she started to raise money for his fees, repair cost, and supplies. Of course,    Isaiah knew nothing of these things as he sailed only using the VHF radio, the only thing he used the internet for other than work and school was to check the weather. He focused on the mainsail and jib and the boom, the genoa, the cresting waves, the salty spray, and the speed of the current, the sounds of a well-trimmed mainsail devouring the wind. She smiled; the boy was born with salt water in his veins.       

   The ship’s name, given to it by the original owner who aided in its design and build in Galveston where he lived rather than Turkey where the company who inspired the ship’s design built their ships. The SS Exodus was media gold; oh, the obligatory appeal to authority with the use of a Bible verse in their story. Immediately black southern Baptist churches began to take collections for him during services. The story of his and his mother’s survival and his sister’s tragic death at sea 10 years previously. HBCUs held rallies and fundraisers on his behalf even though he did not attend an HBCU.

The New York Times published an in-depth think piece front-page cover of a boat sailing east across the Atlantic into the rising sun penned by the esteemed author Alice Walker who focused on how the boy’s journey spoke to the deepest unarticulated yearnings secreted in the hearts and souls of black folks all over America throughout the diaspora and even resonated in the hearts of his people in the motherland. There is within all peoples a deep desire to know the lands of your peoples, to hear their voice speaking the language of your ancestors as you walk down a street and see nothing but the beautiful faces of your brothers and sisters. It was not unusual for children of the diaspora to fall to their knees weeping tears of joy when first visiting Africa.

The employees at the international airport were accustomed to seeing black american men and women kiss the ground on arrival. This would be the first time they lived in a place where their race was welcomed and they could live with no fear of police being called on you weaponizing your blackness your otherness because here they are the other. A paradigm shift in the consciousness of a peoples is occurring I hope I live to see the end of his journey through the dark passage into the light. No one ever questioned the heartfelt desire of white European Jews to return to the historical lands of their ancestors. I suspect that this is a common feeling that haunts the souls of all displaced peoples and yet it is of a unique circumstance in the black Americans. Good Lord, the boy even shared a name with a prophet.     

Isaiah knew none of these things; she discovered he only watched the weather checked into work and school on his computer and, so he knew nothing of his newfound and growing fame. The previous evening, they aired an interview with an old white man, a veterinarian in Key West he had befriended while picking up supplies in Florida, and there was more media celebration when they found out he had named the dog he rescued Starbuck.

She hit the motherlode when she found the story of how he and his mother surviving the 2011 sinking of the SS Horizon Disparu 10 years ago.  Losing his twin sister 5-year-old Emily Elisabeth Jones, along with 28 other passengers and crew, in the 21st century’s greatest maritime catastrophe in the Mediterranean. Then there were the videos posted by Mara the night of the party in Key West, in the coming years when the freelance journalist Gail Anne Stevens won the Peabody award for journalism, she would thank all the kids who celebrated with Isaiah Jones the night he spent in Key West.

The videos Beatrix and Mara uploaded of Isaiah, Electra, and Carlos singing an acoustic cover of Lil Nas X ‘Old Town Road’ and Isaiahs hilarious rendition of The Passenger had several millions of views in a few days and would grow to 100 million in the weeks and months to come, kids all over america and the world where already beginning to wear their hair in cornrows, dressing in all white ensembles and riding long boards.

Viewership of the movie ‘Tombstone’ spiked as millions speculated in internet chat rooms and in the comments sections about the love hate relationship between Isaiah and Electra. Beatrix and Mara made more in tips and the café was busier than ever despite the pandemic, even though they were both vaccinated they maintained social distance with strangers they served at work and wore bedazzled masks adorned with smiley faces, hearts, and stars, and rainbows around the restaurant’s customers.    

   The videos of the Key West party onboard the SS Exodus posted by Beatrix, Mara and their friends gained social media traction going viral overnight. The neo nazi propagandist Faux News sent one of their reporters to do a hit piece on the Key West kids. The bigots’ network was offended by the very idea of a black boy on a yacht with what looked like white girls. 

The reporter only interviewed one old white man who was moored a few boats down from the party aboard the Exodus. The old man started by complaining about all the goddamned noise the kids were making that night. “I was gonna call the police but then I heard the kid say he could sing the chorus to the Passenger in any language and I dang near fell overboard I was laughing so hard. Russian La, la, la la la la la la!” The old MAGA hatted skipper got a case of the giggles and they had to end the interview. The Faux New reporter was not happy.      

   Naomi would make certain Isaiah was well supplied when they reached her slip in Havana. When Isaiah finally awoke, he found the strange white woman topside in the cockpit. She adjusted their course a few degrees leeward, luffing the bow into more wind. The excess flapping of the main ceased as the wind filled sail grew silent and the ship picked up a half knots speed.      

   “What’s your name?” the gangly green-eyed kid asked as he opened the first aid kit, preparing to tend to her injuries. Turn around he ordered as he kneeled between her legs examining the gunshot wound in the strange woman’s right side, the bandages he had applied while she was unconscious after he found her adrift in a dinghy were ready to be removed. “This is going to hurt.” he warned as he quickly pulled the tape off of her blood-soaked gauze and bandages. “ICaron!” she exclaimed. “Told ya.” he said as he continued cleaning and disinfecting the wound before he applied fresh gauze and bandages.      

“Thanks kid the dark-haired woman grimaced, my name is Naomi, Naomi Galatea Caballa.”      

“I am Isaiah, Isaiah Jones, my friends call me Izzy.”    

“Nice to meet cha’, where you from Captain Jones?” she asked flashing a broad smile, pretending not to recognize him as she pushed a lock of windblown hair from her face.      

“I’m from Dallas, but we set sail out of the port of Galveston 2 weeks ago.”    

“Well, Skip, I’m curious what makes a kid from a totally landlocked city like Dallas, Texas want to live on anchor?”      

“Freedom.” Isaiah replied with a grin, as he continued to bandage her wounds. “When I was 5 years old, I heard a story on the BBC about a 14-year-old girl from Holland who sued the government to be able to sail around the world alone. Laura Dekker’s story never left my mind and cemented one idea in my tiny five-year-old skull: sailing equals freedom. I read her book ‘One Girl, One Dream,’ and I fell in love.”      

“That’s understandable; she’s a very pretty girl.”      

“I fell even more deeply in love with sailing, specifically the idea of solo sailing, he laughed. “I’m not attracted to her, he laughed, personally, I find blondes repellent.”      

“Ah, I had no idea. I guess I just assumed since your mother is a white woman.”      

“My mom’s hair is red, but naturally curly like yours,” he smiled, “she is a very attractive woman, but she’s not as pretty as you.”      

Naomi smiled. Was he hitting on her, she wondered? No, he just says what he thinks, it was just an observation; he wasn’t trying to put the moves on her.      

“You know how some things make a person beautiful, like a great singing voice or being an accomplished musician or exceptional athlete? It makes some people more attractive?” he asked curiously.      

“Yeah, that is true,” Naomi agreed, “I fell in love with Tracy Chapman because I love her music, and I know she is not an attractive woman by any standard. But just the sight of her makes my heart go pitter-patter. I’m not into Butch Dyk@s but I’d do Tracy Chapman she laughed.”      

  Isaiah laughed, “while all my friends were into superhero movies, Star Wars and the Pirates of the Caribbean, I never cared much for fiction about sailing; only the real thing satisfied my hunger for adventures at sea. After I finished Dekker, I read Tania Aebi’s ‘Maiden Voyage’. Then Teddy Seymour the first black man to solo circumnavigate the globe used the Panama Canal but, Bill Pickney sailed the Horne, they reminded me a lot of my dad, grandfather, and uncles, they all served in the United States Marine Corps.       

I graduated university last spring and landed a job right away consulting for an outfit in Galveston. The guy who built this boat was an old internet sailing friend for years, Beaumont was planning on circumnavigating the globe in this ship, before he had a stroke and lost too much mobility to sail her. So, he sold her to me for a small fraction of her actual retail price.” He just wanted her to have a good home with someone who understood her and would put her to good use. Old sailors are funny like that.” He said wistfully.      

Naomi smiled at the gangly green-eyed boy. “People that are driven by their passion are often generous when it comes to sharing their passion with others.”       

“I used the money I made working to help get her ready for the long blue-water voyage across the Atlantic to Africa. Worked on her until I was ready to collapse most nights after work last summer. My best friend Aeon and her girl friend Penny flew down to Galveston the week after my parents returned to Dallas after driving me down to the coast and inspecting the ship personally while she was still in dry dock. My mom is a sailor and dad’s an engineer so if those two approve of a ship, then she’s seaworthy in the worst.

I met Penelope when I was a student on my first day at university. We graduated the same year; we studied together and ate lunch together. My parents really took a liking to her and invited her to travel with us on our annual summer sailing trip, most times we island hopped around the Caribbean but last year we went to Mexico Puerto Vallarta. I think the place they normally leased boats from in the Bahamas was still on lock down.

I had no idea that Penny and Aeon were together until I saw them over the summer break; they both lived with me and Starbuck on the boat over the break. With those two around, working on the boat didn’t feel like work at all. They kept themselves busy being the ultimate tourists during the day and walked Starbuck while I was working. Penny insisted I watch this old 80s movie ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’, then afterward they took me out for a night on the town.

They had reserved a suite at the Marriott Marquis Houston Hotel in the middle of downtown. After three months living on the boat with me, the girls wanted to soak in bubble baths and go to museums and dine in the finest restaurants and take in a show ‘Tenet’. So, for the weekend, I got to be their Cameron, they were Ferris and Sloane. Aeon and Penney are both good at making sure I took breaks to do fun stuff instead of obsessively working on my boat. The two of them flew back San Diego in time for Aeon to start school, while I kept working on the boat in my spare time.”      

  “Wait,” Naomi said, derailing his train of thought, “Aeon was dating both of you at the same time?”      

“Yeah.”      

   “So, they were like your little harem,” she laughed. “Big Pimping.”      

   “No,” he laughed nervously, suddenly embarrassed, “it wasn’t like that. I never had sex with Penelope. We’re just study buddies. We all slept together in the same bed on my boat all summer, but I never had sex with Penny, sex was one on one with me and Aeon. Growing up I had seen her with girls before, so I know when she’s into a girl, and they were into each other. Penny was more like an au pair as far as our families were concerned. They worried I would have trouble making friends at college, and Penny made sure I had an escort to social events on campus.”       

  “I mentioned that I was preparing to sail across the Atlantic to my coworkers during a Zoom conference I discovered that several of the engineers were sailors as well. A few even owned their own boats, a company full of engineers in a port city; it’s logical, most of them had speedboats and motorized fishing boats, they were all knowledgeable seamen, and in general, they were just good folks. And like me they enjoyed building stuff.

They would show up at the docks with coolers full of ice-cold beer after work or on the weekends to help me work on the Exodus. Occasionally we lost track of time and ended up pulling all-nighters. Aeon and Penny would fire up the grill and cook burgers and knockwurst to serve our guests for supper. Other nights we would just call Grub hub and have dinner delivered. The girls enjoyed entertaining our guests, Aeon and Penelope both liked having company and were overjoyed I managed to make friends with the old-timers at the job.”      

Just How old were these gear heads?  Naomi asked.    

I think the youngest were in their mid 30s, the oldest was in his late 60s, but most were 50ish.       

Carone, I’m only 36, do you think I’m an old timer?      

I think you’re beautiful. He said with a grin.       

You are a silver tongue devil mi Nene.      

I wasn’t going to fall for that old trap. Isaiah grinned. I was born at night, but I wasn’t born last night.       

“So, this girlfriend, what does she look like?” she asked, still not telling him about what she learned about him from the news story.      

“Her name is Aeon Gabriella Zavala; her dad’s Filipino, and her mom is Dominican. She’s has the most beautiful curly jet-black hair she wears in afro puffs, caramel-colored skin, dark-brown eyes that look almost black. Thick about five foot six inches, 130 pounds, and she wears vintage cat eyeglasses for her stigmatism. We grew up being homeschooled together mostly by our parents. But we never even so much as kissed until my birthday party last May; that was 8 months ago. Before then, she was more like a play cousin or sister; just the goofy kid next door with a pool in their backyard that I did my homework with. We always got along well enough together and liked each other, but we were best friends and we told each other everything growing up.”      

“Before me, she dated mostly girls. I don’t know why, but she decided to sleep with me that night, and it just felt right. We make sense together; she knew it before I did because, well, she’s smarter than me.”      

Naomi laughed, “I can see why she chose you.”      

“What about you, soldier? How did you end up on a raft in the middle of the sea with a bullet hole in your gut?” Isaiah asked still on his knees between her thighs his as he completed taping her bandages. “You were in the army; that tattoo is special forces, not a lot of y’all around. My parents are both lifers retired Navy and Marine Corps veterans, they got a friend, lives on his catamaran in Puerto Vallarta; we visited him a few times when I was a kid; he has a similar skull and dagger with the same caption ‘death before dishonor.’ I noticed you have a half a dozen old scars that are long healed, gunshot wounds. The healed-over laceration might be shrapnel, but with that ranger tatt, my guess would be a knife.” He said speculatively as he eyed the tattoo above her left bicep.      

   Her eyes followed his to where they rested on the tattoo; “That was a long time ago, M’hijo.”      

“Ah,” he said with a sage-like visage, “I see, so you’re a merc now? They call you military contractors these days,” he chuckled.      

   “Miraa, I am not a contractor; I am a freebooter, Jefe.”      

A freelancer?      

Naomi grinned looking at him out of the corner of her eye, I am a freelancer, but I said FREEBOOTER: buccaneer, privateer, corsair, raider, marauder, plunderer, rover, looter, robber, a pirate.     

Isaiah suddenly erupted with laughter. “You’re the Pirate of the Caribbean,” he said, rolling with laughter.      

“Miraa, there are not a lot of options for someone with my skill sets. After my discharge, I could have hooked up with Halliburton or Blackwater or whoever; but I was never going to be a cop for anyone, and while the cartels may pay top dollar for ex-soldiers like me, they are too unpredictable.”      

   “Why did they kick you out of the army?”      

    These days I like to think of myself as the Robinhood of the sea, Naomi said ignoring his question. we rob wealthy people, old East Coast money, very old money, if you know the type, cruising the islands.”      

     Isaiah stopped laughing. Only the sound of the bow cleaving through the blue water, the song of the waves and the chorus of the wake, and the wind filled the darkness under the sails could be heard in the night air.    

    Naomi sighed, then continued, “As far as how I got shot goes that’s a long story. Normally we are in and out, gone with no one the wiser, but things went sideways on the last job.” He stared at her face as she spoke, staring into the darkness beyond the bow. “We were sneaking onto a 40 ft catamaran that night. We had our eyes on the ship all day, only saw the white 50 something couple. We waited until they headed to shore in their dinghy, about an hour before sunset; both were on the dinghy when they headed to shore. We boarded their boat, but there was someone else on board, someone we hadn’t seen on the deck.”      

“When the two of us entered the cabin, a man opened fire with a handgun, a 9 mm. The first round struck  in the chest at point-blank range. Milo returned fire with his Israeli-made machine pistol and as he and the sailor both began shooting wildly. For a moment, within the humid confines of the small space, it was as if the air was made of lead. Then, the explosion!  a stray bullet hit a gas tank, and the ship’s cabin burst into flames. I was behind his body protected me from the fireball, but the force of the concussion threw me back out of the cabin onto the steps of the companionway. I made my way topside and got off the catamaran and back into our dinghy.

As I climbed into the boat, I felt the pain in my side, and realized I had been shot. I saw the catamaran going down, devoured in flames, the fire dancing in the darkness before I blacked out. When I woke up, I was below deck, on your bed naked with my wounds bandaged. You were sound asleep but your dogo kept me company, so I got dressed in the clothes you left out for me and came up here to the cockpit.” “And Thanks, but why didn’t you call the coast guard or turn me in to the authorities?”      

“I got my own reasons for not wanting to talk to cops. If you were going to pull any shit with me, you would have done it by now. Since you didn’t kill me or my dog while we slept, I figure we cool. I might hate pirates,” Isaiah said with a toothy grin, “but I ain’t no snitch.”      

  They both laughed.      

   “Ouch, it hurts when I laugh,” Naomi said, her wide smile shining in the glow of the star light.      

   “Get something to eat,” he drawled. “I’ll take the wheel.” and then get some rest, ma’am,” Take one of the antibiotics in the pill bottle on the table in the galley.       

They changed seats, and Starbuck decided she was now obsessed with Naomi’s bare feet. The puppy sat at her feet, nibbling on the dark-haired woman’s perfectly manicured toes with nails painted the same neon pink as her fingernails.      

“What’s her name?” she asked as she reached down to scratch behind the pup’s ears.      

   “That’s my first mate, Starbuck,” he said, smiling. The puppy continued to nibble at Naomi’s toes.      

“She’s adorable, but maybe you should have named her Quintin; she is obsessed with feet.”      

   They both laughed.      

  “Ouch,” she grimaced, “still hurts to laugh.” She said, smiling through the pain. “Good night, skipper; wake me if you see the lights of Havana.”      

  “Good night, ma’am,” he said, trimming the main a bit, picking up about a half knot as the sails tightened. She was impressed. Naomi disappeared into the cabins below deck for the evening, the puppy at her heels.      

   “¡Buen trabajo, nene!” Naomi whispered, “Good job, baby boy!”    

-About the author

JD Cloudy’s poetry has disappeared in the literary journals; Fatfizz, Mad Swirl, Texas Beat Anthology, Danse Macabre, Du Jour, and Death List Five. He has won no literary awards, entered no slam competitions, and never completed college. He lives to write in Dallas, Tx