Until the Day Dawns

Inconspicuously situated on the southernmost end of the Louisiana coastline and only minutes from where the Mississippi River spill into the Gulf, Lafitte Cove was an incubator for native and indigenous flora, undomesticated animal and avian life, the perfect hideaway for a seafaring mariner from the Emerald Isles with French blood coursing through his veins, with strong ties to French aristocracy on his father’s side. He had made a vast fortune in the trade of various commodities with the far West and East, which also included human cargo from the Ivory Coast of Africa, and a few warm bodies from the Orient. The house he’d built on the Louisiana coast line was his retreat, a short but much needed jaunt on his way back to his homeland, and a stone’s throw from one of the busiest and largest commerce and trade ports in the Western Hemisphere: the Port of New Orleans, Louisiana. His most prized artifacts from his travels, bartered and traded along the route was housed in his Louisiana home. Artifacts he had acquired in the American colonies, during lay-overs in the northern Carib islands, canvassing settlements in Cape Horn and exploring South Pacific islands like Bora Bora and Easter Island. On a return voyage, a storm unlike one he’d never experienced before, with winds so fierce that they propelled a surge of water over the banks of the shoreline that crashed into his anchored ship and his house and swept away everything in its path. When the crewmen left aboard his beloved fated ship The Siren saw the depth and height of the wall of water being pushed towards them, it was inevitably too late for any chance of escape. Lafitte Cove, clandestinely named after himself, was inundated with sea water. His home ravaged and completely brought to ruin. The winds and surge had pummeled the area with such ferocity that it demolished the anchored schooner to smithereens taking with it several crewmen to a marshy grave, subsequently out to sea. As for the sixty souls that were chained in the bottom hull, miraculously they were able to make their way ashore with chains still bolted to splintered wood that had been torn from the baseboards and sidewalls of the ship. The time had come to pay the piper. And pay generously the mariner did. The mariner and a handful of seamen also survived, but the house along with a hoard of artifacts, plunder, and supplies were utterly destroyed, taken by the wind and the sea as payment for decades of safe passage. The rankled mariner, prompted by an innate propensity to mark his course as any skilled seaman would, shipwreck or otherwise, glanced at his compass first. It pointed due north. And then he checked the time. He took an oddly shaped burnished gold cryptic timepiece from his pocket—six angles and six sides—a raised image of an albatross, wings relaxed as though it were keeping watch and resting on its laurels; the timepiece was the only object left as evidence of his years as a wayfaring seaman. As he ran his finger over the image, words told to him many years ago came to mind—“This timepiece in the hand of a wayfaring man will bring fortune or misery to the one who builds his house on land or sand.” He stared blankly at the oddly shaped object in his hand. Like notes on a musical scale the old watchmaker’s voice flooded his memory and was as clear now as it was on the day when he spoke those words and had placed the timepiece into his hands standing on the docks in London before he was to set sail on another course to the colonies. Persuaded by curiosity and intrigue, the mariner invited the watchmaker to partake in a pint of black ale while he disclosed the history behind a watch that any numskull could see was solid gold. He cared nothing about the limerick spilling from the mouth of a washed-up old watchmaker with the best of his nautical miles behind him or the sniff of superstition oozing from the stanzas; though every seaman believed and clung to his own share of superstitious fables and tales told by other seafaring men—it was true—stranger things have happened at sea. But this had nothing to do with the sea. For the first time in his life, he didn’t have to flatter, manipulate, result to trickery, steal or pay more than twenty English pounds for something of value. This time, it fell into his hands with absolutely no coercion on his part! Besides, the old timer appeared to be already mad; a condition that befalls the elderly, or he had fallen on hard times and needed the shillings and the soft body of a young girl to keep him warm—maybe all three he thought as he lugged down the ale and glared at the old timer his brim shielding the amusement that danced in his eyes at his good fortune. He had an hour or two to kill which was a small sacrifice for what he had just received in return for the little wench he had gotten from the continent. The two of them sat at a corner table in a dimly lit dank hole-in-the-wall dockside tavern. The place reeked of body odor, cloves, and fermented hops, and the thick salty redolent fragrance of the sea that he knew so well. White stubble sprouted on a face pale from over exposure to lantern light and sea blue pupils receded behind sagging lids and involuntary squints every fifteen seconds. The old man leaned forward and eased into his story as the strong ale produced in the foremast of his mind a bygone time that if it weren’t for the gold piece, the mariner could give a splatter of spit to know. He knew that something as valuable as what he held in his hand had an interesting story behind it. The young mariner found comfort and a sense of purpose as he passed his fingers over the raised albatross on the cover. As he thought about his life since coming into possession of the timepiece, a spark ignited. He thought to himself “I will rebuild”. A toothy grin emerged as he shielded his face with one arm, signaling for the group of survivors to follow him, they trudged laboriously against explosive gusts of gale-force winds that impelled them forward. The rogue winds carrying sand and water, howled and thrashed against the band of storm weary seamen and former slaves as they moved further inland. By the time they reached the port in New Orleans, the storm had died down to nothing more than a pixie of a breeze like the ones that runs its fingers through the carpet of green grasses that covers his beloved homeland of Ireland or the caress of wildflowers that grows across the white cliffs of Dover back in his beloved England. Historically, the area had been a port for ships and because of its proximity to the English Channel, and long before he was born it had been a popular entry point of invasion from their enemies, thus becoming the first line of defense for his English brethren. He himself frequented the cliffs on his numerous travels, and on a clear day, the pristine beauty of the cliffs were visible from France.