Chapter One
It was a calm day on Tortuga. No cuttings, no brawls, no catfights. Bootstrap Bill Turner lifted his head up out of the muck. How long had he lain there? No matter.He sat up and looked around. Why was it so quiet today? Normally when he arose from one of those run soaked slumbers he found himself amongst heaps of bodies. Some would be dead...some alive...barely. Others would be like him, unawares of what had happened in the prior blackout.
Not today, though. Today it was as if he wasn't even in Tortuga. It was as if he was back home in London there under that quiet sky dotted with large and creamy clouds. When it was quiet like this he could remember his home.
It was on a day like this one that he told his wife, Chandra, that he would be leaving on a merchant ship. He'd promised her that this voyage would bring about enough money for her to buy back her father's farm. The first two years of their marriage had been joyous. The last three had been plagued with the financial problems of her family when her father fell ill.
She'd pushed aside his blonde hair and kissed him. "Oh, Bill. come back even if you don't have enough money to buy it."
Chandra sobbed softly and looked down at their 2-year-old son. "So help me, if you don't hurry back, I'll come and drag you back by that pony tail."
And so it was that Bill would watch her and his son shrink into the distance as he embarked on his Maiden Voyage.
Suddenly he was drowning! What? Who? "Curse you for breathing! I'll be cutting ye where ye be standing!"
He met with a hearty laugh and a quick hand to pull him to his feet before he could pull his knife. It was his friend Jack, back from who knew where. Bill had become his fast friend under dire circumstances.
"Jack! Where ye been man?"
Jack was nursing a wound on his forearm. "Now, Bill, there you go, fretting like a woman. Haven't you learned yet that no man knows where Jack Sparrow roams?"
Bill was all wet now. And even though he was living in these conditions, he still maintained an Englishman's penchant for cleanliness...at least most days.
"Jack, I'm going to find some dry clothes and a bath, lets walk."
"That suits me just fine, Bill, as I'll be wanting to tell you about my latest venture. A venture that will make us so rich we'll never to work again."
Ah, Jack, what now? I really need to find a ship that will pay me enough to sail home. I've not heard from Chandra or my boy in a year. I worry."
Jack's eye's softed in that way that they did when he could feel another's pain. They quickly steeled though.
"Bill, word is that there is an island with gold a plenty. But it can only be found by those who already knows where 'tis. I aim to get me a ship, a crew and that treasure. When I do I will be the most feared pirate in the entire Caribbean."
"Pirate," Bill flinched, "I hate the word."
You be hating the word, Bill, but that's what you be." spouted Jack.
"No!" Bill stopped in his steps...balling up his fists and shaking them at his friend.
"I'll never be that. What I be is a man in desperate times. A man doing what he must to make his way back to his kin."
Sensing his friend's mounting dispair, Jack eased back, lighting his pipe and plopping on a cat house step.
"Bill, you know I admire a person who does what is necessary. Besides, you're one of the best pirates I know. Good to the code you are...but you are a pirate."
Bill dropped his head and squatted to the ground beside Jack. "But it didn't start out that way. I came out on these waters with the best of intentions."
Jack gleamed an evil smile. "And you know what they say about intentions, Mate, and the roads they pave."
"Yeah, Jack, I know." Bill stood up straight and rubbed his brow. "Where's me hammock? he asked and half declared. "I need sleep unencumbered by strong drink, when I come off a drunk I'm just as tired as when I first went to sleep."
Jack popped up off the step.He was spry. His neat and masculine body tight and tan. His hair black like the night...his eyes piercing. Women found them hypnotic. Men found those same eyes menacing.
"We'll talk later,then, when his majesty is feeling better, eh?"
Bill always hated it when Jack talked to him like that.
Jack hated it when Bill whined and felt sorry for himself."He's had it too good in his life,"thought Jack,"privilege,it is the downfall of many men. I'll not have that problem to blame for me faults. I've already started the living without it."
Indeed he had. Jack was one of the young Buccaneers who made his life in Tortuga. Sometimes privateers and sometimes pirates, they lived in a community full of vices. Jack had been living here...If you could all it that... for 15 years already. It didn't begin in Tortuga but had ended up here. A youngster on board the HMS Victorious he and his ran afoul of French privateers. Jack was on watch when the attack took place. He blamed himself for being slow to beat quarters.
No matter. They were defeated and imprisoned. Officers all died rather than turn. But it was his own captain who said..."Now, Jonathon Sparks...you are a fine officer. But I tell you this,keep your life. Don't die for God and Country like I am about to do. God and Country cannot save you out here in the graveyard of the sea." And then he put his hand on 10 year old Jack's head, "No matter what flag you fly under make a difference."
And when it was done, he was the sole survivor of the HMS Victorious. Them what had looted,burned, and murdered took him in. They taught him what they knew of the sea and of privateering. At first it was a bizarre existence and then Jack could remember nothing else and no other life before this one. And now as he stared into the sun he thought, "No need remebering the past it can't save you today...Bill would be best to be realizing that, now."
Bill, meantime had, other things to worry with. It would seem that he'd spent all of his money in the preceding rum fest...included in that money was what he owed his landlady, Miss Tiabelle Humbly. And Mizz Tia wouldn't be hearing that today. Bill eased up the back stairs and was given away by a squeak and a crack.
"Beel, is dat you sneakin' up me' back stair?" Mizz Tia bellowed.
"Yeah, Mizz Tia." Bill cowered.
"Beel, ya knows ya owes me de coin for dis week..and las' week...and de week befo' dat!"
Suddenly she was at the top of the stairs lumbering over Bill, who by comparison was taller but not weighing so much more.
"I know Mizz Tia, but I...I..." he stammered. What could he tell her this time? He'd promised to do better. He'd promised he'd get some work. He'd told her how he'd planned to start chopping trees if he couldn't sail off soon.
He climbed a little more half expecting her to throw him back down. She'd done it before and today would be no different. When this mulatto-French woman was angry, her wrath didn't stop short of her tongue. She was a sturdy one. A face so handsome and a physique that was stronger than many men. Her hair slicked back and rarely did she fuss with ribbons. Mizz Tia didn't have time for that. Bill knew if she got hold to him he was done...so he backed down and then all at once stumbled. Off he went tumbling!"
"Oh, Beel, ya done stumbled over that stupid bootstrap agin!"She laughed. She came to the bottom of the landing and helped him to his feet.
"Up with ya now! Ya needs new boots, mon! Good I don't depend on rent to eat! Starve waiting on you to sail and bring back a decent booty. Ya need new boots, Beel."
As she hauled him up to his room...Bill could only mumble, "Can't take these boots off...my Chandra...she gave 'em to me...bad bootstrap and all."