The Chattanooga Writers’ Guild is excited to announce the winners of their March Nonfiction Contest.
This month’s theme was “Whispers.” The First-Place prize goes to Sue Carol Elvin with the submission “I’ll Take Two.” Honors for second place go to Rick Sapp for his entry “Whispering Infinity.”
Thanks to all who participated and special thanks to our talented nonfiction judge, Michelle Rogers!
First Place: Sue Carol Elvin
I'll Take Two
“Here. Pack this.” Trish placed the fashionable pink sundress, neatly folded, into my carry-on.
I decided not to argue this time but to take the damn dress, which—whispering to myself—I would never, in a million years, wear on the boat.
We blazed across the Florida peninsula via Alligator Alley, then up the west coast to Venice Beach in her 1986 Nissan Z. The T-tops sat securely in the trunk while our bags shifted insecurely on the back seat.
The marina was easy enough to find, but the sailboat was another matter. The dockmaster gave us a blank stare when I asked where the Jennessee was docked.
Spying the owner of the Jennessee approaching, he said, "Oh! You mean the Ja-NOOSE." The man with the blank stare was now laughing. Was it my pronunciation or my southern accent?
“Ahoy there.” Beth, our captain-instructor, stepped onto the pier.
After introducing ourselves to this vivacious, bleached blonde with the shortest pixie-cut hair I'd ever seen, we chatted as we made our way to the boat. Talk included our trip over, the name of the vessel, our interest in sailing, and hers in teaching—and why she taught only women. We learned, as we stowed our things, that the sailboat was co-owned by Beth and her husband (and the bank), who had a sailing school that catered to couples. After a short time, they realized that many of the wives and girlfriends had a serious interest in learning to sail, but they were intimidated. Most of the men belittled and bullied even those who had real potential.
Women for Sail was born, with Beth as captain and her best friend Kathleen—Captain Kath, as we student-crew called her—as co-captain. They were keeping an eye out for a potential third, relief captain.
The others arrived. It was an eclectic group: Mary Ann and her partner Susan were the serious ones. They wanted to own a sailboat and live aboard; Joanie, to whom everything was good fun, was on a dare; Trish (the Dish, as her last ex-husband called her) with her expectations of meeting men with money—and me. I only wanted to learn the basics so I could crew with experienced sailors and not be a complete idiot.
Kathleen floated in near midnight: tall, with reddish-brown hair, shy—and in love. She didn't say so, but Beth did.
“Ah, the 'ff' look.”
Beth looked around at our blank faces.
“Fresh fucked.” She seemed amazed that we hadn't known.
“See if I confide in you again,” Kath chided sheepishly as she blushed.
Trish and I were to share the V-berth, the forward part of the 39-foot Beneteau. We decided feet toward the higher, narrowing end was preferable, and for once, I was glad that Trish had insisted on bringing her own pillow—and mine. With the extra cushioning, our heads were almost level with our feet. The others went to their assigned bunks, and we all slept soundly with the gentle, whispering slap of the water on the starboard side of the boat.
The exciting first day started early with a hearty breakfast, which put us all in a good mood. Sharing cooking and cleanup responsibilities added to the camaraderie of the close quarters. Personality differences had not yet bludgeoned any hope of lasting friendships.
“Safety first—and there will be a test.” A refrain we were to hear ad infinitum from our two captains.
The U.S. Coast Guard safety requirements, we were shocked to learn, involved only one thing—life jackets: where they were stowed and how to put them on securely.
There were other measures sailors used to minimize bruises and/or stitches—like backing down ladders, keeping one hand on the boat, never standing in a coiled line (it may be uncoiling), and wearing sailing gloves when hauling in lines, especially in heavy wind. Most of this we learned after ignoring warnings from our captains.
We each had to demonstrate competency with a fire extinguisher before we could set sail. This was most important to Beth, as there was still a mortgage on the Jennessee. There was practice with the boat hook and life ring at the dock, but man-overboard drill had to wait for deeper water. The charts (called maps if you’re on land), with their mysterious circles and numbers, lay on the navigation table to be used in plotting our course.
Through the laughter, we made the menu, provisioned the boat, and prepared to shove off.
Getting out of the marina was our first real lesson. Weaving between the piers full of very expensive yachts was frightening, to say the least. After a few near misses, I was pleased to see that Mary Ann at the helm looked confident as the Jennessee motored out into the bay. When we passed a fishing boat, one man yelled, "I'll take two," referring to the name on the flag we flew from the mast. Women for Sail. It was a comment we would come to despise before our week was over.
Our first night on the water was rewarding. Susan set the anchor at a spot that I thought was less than perfect. After a delicious dinner—have I mentioned how hungry being on the water makes you?—we plotted our course.
The first hint of animosity among the crew came when I, as designated skipper, tried to hoist the anchor aboard the next morning. We had gone over the importance of knots, and certain ones— such as the one securing the bitter end of the anchor rode to the vessel—were more important than others. It was Joanie’s duty, but she was not good with knots and instead of asking for help she tied the loose end to the boat with a granny knot and threw the remaining line into the anchor well. It was no surprise to anyone that Joanie had to swim out to retrieve the heavy metal weight.
It was Trish’s turn at docking.
“Slow down—slow— slow down, oh shit!” Beth was heard just before the screeching sound of the boat scraping the edge of the concrete pier.
It was funny, but those of us who laughed got the full brunt of Trish’s ire.
We were all tired—tired of sleeping in cramped positions, tired from hauling lines, fighting wind, and managing the galley.
It was the man-overboard procedure that guaranteed all camaraderie had ended. The skipper, Mary Ann, was to maneuver the 39-foot sailboat in a figure-of-eight around the one who naively volunteered to go overboard—me. Joanie would throw the line; I would catch it and be pulled safely to the boat; Trish and Susan would help me to get aboard.
“Turn. Turn, Mary Ann. Do you know what a figure eight looks like?”
“Oh my god. Now she’s gonna run over the man-overboard.”
“Joanie, throw the line before she drowns. Not now, you’re too far away.”
“Pull. Not the leg. You’ll split her in two.”
These and other less professional exclamations were heard from our captains.
It was a disaster. Only the squall was worse—when the dinghy, being hauled behind the Jennessee, broke free and careened into a buoy before turning upside down and spilling all its contents.
“There goes our beer.”
“I wonder how much the fine is for dumping a weeks’ worth of garbage into the Gulf.
It was graduation day—D-Day, as Trish had called it from the start. Thank goodness man-overboard was an extra exercise and not a requirement for passing Sailing 101.
Sunburned, clutching our certificates of completion, we stepped off the boat: me in Trish’s pink sundress (I wore it after all), and Trish, with her sunglasses and hat. Proudly we made our way through the gauntlet of men who were silenced into reluctant admiration. Women for sail were now riding the crest of the wave and boy, it felt good.
Sue Carol Elvin majored and worked in accounting while writing stories for her four children and ten grandchildren. Now retired, she is settled in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with her husband Peter and their cat, Clawed. The Elvin’s enjoy bridge, attend music, theater, and dance when possible, and travel to England to visit Peter’s family. They attend the Unitarian Universalist Church in Ellijay, GA as well as Chattanooga. Clawed has been known to help Sue Carol write stories for her eight great-grands and they plan to continue for the foreseeable future.
Second Place: Rick Sapp
Whispering Infinity
The striped guppy, Poecilia reticulata, is neither the largest nor the most colorful fish in a reef community. It is so drab and insignificant that its predatory neighbors, prowling deep-water sharks and flashing barracuda, either overlook it or disdain hunting it. Were it not for blue lateral lines which integrate it into the sensory fabric of warm tropical waters, Poecilia reticulata might almost become invisible, translucent, in the incessant tidal wash of light and shadow.
What the tiny fish lacks in color and girth however, it more than makes up for in desire and determination. And on the reef, fulfilling one’s desire - which is after all the demure face of lust - requires commitment, even courage.
On the reef, desire is manifest in three activities: eating, avoiding being eaten and procreation. These are hardly choices, of course. The guppy cannot imagine, “I choose to not eat today” or “I don’t think I want to mate this season.” Desire is an imperative so interwoven into the guppy’s DNA, its persona - if such a trivial creature can possess individual characteristics — that to deny it for one careless moment means certain oblivion.
Consequently, Poecilia reticulata is no different than loggerhead sea turtles driven beyond the usual madness of Caretta genus’ lethargic persistence, and in the face of every natural and artificial obstacle, to lay eggs high on a white sand beach. Poecilia reticulata is no different than West Indian manatees which find winter shelter in the warm effluent of seaside nuclear reactors.
Each reef creature, indeed, every living creature is, in its own way, motivated by and a captive of desire.
Now, our particular guppy occupies a minute coral head that, for as long as he can defend it, belongs solely to him. Thus, patrolling in a continuous state of nervous agitation, he suddenly darts out to nip at and torment fish that might otherwise kill and eat him.
Despite his compact size, nature blessed this guppy with speed and reckless fearlessness. Its fragile fins, adjustable as the feathers of a diving falcon, maneuver forward-and-back, side-to-side in a miraculous evolutionary dance of survival. And in a creature so frail, in an environment so fraught with danger, its calculated audacity exceeds expectations.
The guppy’s attack, though startling, will not harm any chub or blue tang that might stray near its home. If there is little imagination in what passes for the guppy’s mind, it is equally true that what it knows is exquisite. Like the fragile mockingbird driving a raven away from fallen chicks, the guppy inherently appreciates that bold, agile effort will put to flight enemies many times its size.
Bravado insulates the inconsequential animal from the swirl of eating and being eaten, killing and being killed, the endless slashing, whirling, ripping struggle that takes place every moment in tropical waters. Among the fountains of stag-horn and pillar coral, between the living crusts of yellow brain coral polyps, vanishing in the blue-green surge of tidal water and filtered light of sun and moon and stars, that effort is endless and altogether necessary. Without it, without a balanced scorecard of winners and losers, the reef itself would soon cease to exist.
Recently, guppy lured a female to his niche and their mutual desire, that of the male and the female, created scores of newborns. Most wandered or were swept away from the safety of the coral and were devoured. A few only escaped to the shelter of tiny folds in the living rock. And of those, only a few - a dozen or so - would live to mate. Most would not learn fast enough to escape the grasp of octopus or lion-fish.
On the opposite side of the reef a juvenile rainbow parrot fish, Scarus guacamaia, has sensed the electric presence of a cruising barracuda and spun beneath a jutting wing of table coral. The move is lightning-fast, but had the barracuda been hungry and desirous of a meal, the parrot fish would certainly have died. The barracuda’s gift of slashing speed, its place atop the food pyramid of the reef community, frequently outweighs a parrot’s ability to remain alive, if such outcomes can be judged by common measures.
In the instance of predator and prey, universal direction is not always obvious. In the life of an individual creature anything might, in theory, be possible, but to the reef organism, direction is circular, never linear.
Barracuda often kills and eats parrot fish, killing being incidental to its mission, which is only to satisfy desire, to fulfill the requirements of its natural program. Any debris of its scorching attack is feast for dozens of fellow reef citizens, plants and animals living just beyond the bite of barracuda’s teeth, barracuda being ounce-for-ounce the most able killers in the world, tropical residents whose mission is to kill and kill again without remorse or moral hindrance until it too is eventually destroyed.
So the parrot fled but, because life on the great barrier exists in dynamic stability, it soon reappeared and proceeded on another circuit of the reef, nipping among the sponges and detritus for a morsel of food, an interesting odor or any strange texture to deposit in its memory. Old as the rocks themselves the parrot’s was a pattern of thousands of generations, unvarying and potentially immortal.
The parrot possessed a complete set of nerves and a brain, of sorts. Whether it contemplated itself with an individual ego apart from parrots back to the beginning of its line or was simply a replaceable part of the reef no different in that respect or more important than fan coral, only more mobile, was an unanswered question in the eternal tidal surge.
While no member of the shallow community spoke or sang in words that terrestrial species could understand or whether they considered the web in which they were entwined, each organism communicated with a myriad of chemical and electrical symbols. Thus, for a listener with the proper equipment, biological or electronic, reef noise could be magic, unfathomable, thunderous.
By spinning roots around a spot on the reef, surviving countless bacterial infections and the careless flippers of scuba divers, a colony of sea fan coral will meld with a range of organisms, microbial parasites and eels, algae and sponges that feed on and nourish one another. As it prospers, all prosper, even as this anchor tenant of a few square inches of living space strangles hundreds of other creatures in a relentless struggle for that spot in the filtered light.
Driven from its customary circuit by the passage of the barracuda, the parrot fish notices the coral bud which the striped guppy calls home. The bud emits an aura too healthy for the parrot to ignore.
The parrot flutters toward the budding coral head, picks at tiny sea creatures, bounces, darts forward and backward as it samples this living smorgasbord. Without hesitation, guppy darts out to harass it, whispering fins quivering in a display of elemental courage and excitement.
Here, all movement has meaning, conveys threat or opportunity, from the rare drive-by of a pod of whales to the ceaseless filtering of water by angelic flocks of jellyfish. Thus guppy meets the intrusion of this parrot with a blistering challenge, but unless its microscopic teeth scratch the parrot’s eyeball there is no danger, nothing to cause the greater fish alarm. Nevertheless, in the watery world wherein energy is captured and treasured and only rarely converted into aggression — and then cautiously or driven by overwhelming need — guppy’s miniature assault is startling.
The parrot backs the length of its body from the coral head, its own fins fluttering like a hummingbird’s gossamer wings. This coral lump possesses nothing that the finned vertebrate, exotic in its own shimmering patchwork of blues and yellows, cannot find elsewhere. Still, there is a sense of inertia in its movement, hesitation, as if a dozen-million years of evolution propel it forward regardless of circumstances or consequences.
And so perhaps more from genetic irritation or a moment of reflexive response beyond its usual capacity, the parrot fish lunges toward the guppy. Its feathered fins ripple faster than the human eye can measure and this forces the audacious, but dainty fish to flash backward into its coral cavern.
Maybe it understood that the parrot’s attack was only bluster, or maybe not. That, and the guppy was not yet prepared to die, although they never are.
The parrot lunges once more, half-heartedly, and then dithers away.
The striped guppy resumes its patrol. The swirl of tidal waters through the coral cleans and grooms its fins as surely as a preening parrot prepares for flight. In a moment neither fish recalls the event itself or holds the other in memory except as an instinct that will never perish.
Rick Sapp is a freelance writer who lives in Chattanooga with his wife, a musician, and two Australian shepherd dogs.
The Monthly Contests rotate through a pattern of Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction throughout the year, with a new theme each month.
Go to chattanoogawritersguild.org and scroll down to "Latest News" to view the genre and theme for each month.
This contest is free to enter for members of the Chattanooga Writers’ Guild. To become a member, click HERE.