Spooky Sailing Stories: The Freemantle Pork Chop
By Mark Pearce
My brother and I had our gaff-rigged ketch the Jean Dee in the Fremantle wooden boat show. One of the exhibiting yacht’s crew got as drunk as skunks and ran amuck all afternoon. Then an ambulance arrived and carted one of them away.
After dark, our moored-up the boat moves and we hear footsteps down the deck and straight-in comes one of the drunken crew. So I ask him, “Is your mate ok?”
“No, he’s dead. Don’t worry about that!” he says.
We couldn’t get rid of him. He said he was a Vietnam vet and told us he could kill us all, carrying on like a pork chop. The conversation was walking on egg shells. The man was clearly dangerous.
My brother Daniel took off to the phone box and called the police. The guy was taken off the Jean Dee and, with a struggle, taken away!
A very memorable boat festival. The first held in Fremantle, Western Australia. •SCA•
Nice story, but not too scary. I will write one which I think will scare the socks off of most people, about a fellow I knew who got involved with cocaine and did not realize he overdosed and was dead. They found him too late on the cabin floor days after he died. I had to clean up the blood puddle he caused to get the boat ready to sell for his parents. I was also asked to carry his body bag to the coroners station wagon, becasue they sent a woman incapable of lifting his heavy body. To this day I can remember the awful feeling and sounds of his fluids slosshing around inside the body bag as I carried him to her car. Months passed before Steve knocked on my boat, as he used to do, when he needed something using his tell tale knock; two fast knocks with a slower one to follow. pleading with me through the companionway to convince others he was still alive, but I knew better and so did he. I remember my surprise when I told him he was dead, as he argued he was still alive, claiming he just had one-too-many. Then I told him my story of carrying him to the coroner's car. As slowly as he was there he became translucent as the sun filled the day with its sunlight. Then he was gone, all but a faint voice I could barely hear. He repeated, "No, I am here, I am here and I am sorry I made you do what you did. I am sorry, but I am still here."
Finally I convinced him to go to the light, where we all must go, and I added, you are one of those who still need to be forgiven for leaving too early and undone. I never forgot that moment and learned about others whose life was taken too quickly and too soon did not depart for the light to go on. Years later while sailing alone in the Bay where he and I sailed many, many times, Steve appeared to me for the last time to tell me he was okay and thanked me for being his friend. I turned away and then back and he was gone from that moment on. Now and then I hear his signature knock and an emptiness to follow, just to let me know he is still around after traveling to the light.
I was with you until you wrote, "...carrying on like a pork chop. The conversation was walking on egg shells...."
What is 'carrying on like a pork chop?' What am I missing?
How does a conversation 'walk on eggshells?'
And here I had thought it was people that felt like they had to walk on eggshells . . .