Bootstrap Bill Turner

There's a certain peace with the sea. Anyone, anyone who has been drawn to it since the time they were lads always had that surge of knowledge when standing on the long stretch of sand, knowing then and there where they wanted to be for the rest of their life.

Those who were children of privilege entered lawful professions, traders, merchants, sailors. Honest sailors who returned to their families, and lived a life of love and warmth, if not prosperity.

Of course, there always were those whose work was of a different…persuasion.

They are horrid people, awful men who do nothing but pillage, burn and slaughter, stealing other's livelihoods and shattering lives. I despise those men.

I hate them because of what they made me. One of them.

I left my darling son and my beautiful wife, the boy younger than my age when my own father died. For that I will never forgive myself.

My wife and I struggled for years to conceive a child, foiled each time by a wicked twist of fate.

Fate, it seems, never liked me.

We both grew older, and the prospect dwindled away into nothingness. With the final, dying hope that one day we might have children running amuck 'round our feet, our love grew cold. Meaningless. Lifeless.

Our attempts grew spaced apart, each time more desperate and less intimate than the last. She would turn her countenance away from me as we went through the actions; chilled, wet, salty teardrops sailed down her cheeks like rivulets of gentle sea-rain.

Finally we stopped entirely, going through our daily routine without a word to one another. I would spend my nights out in taverns or with my mates, unwilling to retreat back to the place I once felt happy to call my home.

My friends all joked and spoke scornfully of my marriage, claiming that it was my first mistake, just like theirs. But they were wrong.

So wrong.

I did love her. Once I did; very much so. It was only when we both discovered she was utterly barren, fruitless, did our relationship begin to disintegrate.

We both blamed the other, as we should not have, and so we both fell to ruin.

There was one misty night that I staggered home, drunk, and flung open the door. My wife rose to her feet, chocolate brown locks -now entwined with a few strands of silver- cascading limply over her shoulders, moisture in her eyes.

I paid no attention to her, thinking her a silly woman crying over the smallest trifle.

But she was beautiful, ah, so beautiful, and with an unearthly grace she floated to me, gently caressing my cheek and whispering, "I've missed my monthly course."

I turned to her fully and spat, "You are imagining it again, woman! It was what you said last time."

How dare she act so falsely? There was no hope for us; I was clearly impotent, she was barren, a cursed relationship from the start. What we shared in the beginning was nothing more than youthful passion, casual lust personified, I imagined.

She smiled wistfully and shook her head, looking down and enfolding my hands in hers.

"No! No. This time it is true; I know it. I know it truly." Something about the way she said those ordinary words sobered me up, rekindled a spark of the fire that we both had lost long ago.

The damage that was done was done, never like before were we, never fully repaired. Something died between us, but there was affection nonetheless as we looked upon one another nine months later, holding our son, William, in our arms.

Despite this impossible new life, this heavenly child, my old drinking habits refused to be quelled.

Twelve years later, every night, as before, I would leave our home, heading steadily down the track to the harbor, city lights twinkling in the evening gloom.

It was there that I ran into my old friend, Captain Jack Sparrow.

He was assembling a crew, planning to head to the Caribbean, seeking fortune and a lifetime's supply of riches. Apparently, after the sinking of his beloved ship, the Wicked Wench, a new and very similar vessel came into his command mysteriously, though he spoke not of the reasons how.

This new ship…was the Black Pearl.

It was aptly named, for when he guided me to its berth, the Pearl's beautiful black sails took my breath away.

"Bill," he whispered in my ear, "For old time's sake?"

Jack, still a man in his youth, was not old as I. I, who still so recently it seemed, gained that one final addition to my family that I have worked for, for so long.

But the promise of fortune was alluring, and I became distracted, and not even William was able to shake me from my evil thoughts of adventure and fortune.

I'd pirated before with Jack, but gave that life up when I first met the woman I would soon make my wife. My life on land -no matter how close to the sea- was stifling. I thought that I didn't want a family anymore. William was growing up into a fine young man, and would be well off on his own, soon out of the house and into an apprenticeship, with good luck.

I was getting older, my bones stiffening more and more.

I thought that it was time to go.

I was an idiot.

During supper one night, I interrupted the silence of the meal, remarking casually, "I met an old friend today."

My wife's gaze remained fixated on her food and said, "Aye, what of it?"

William glanced up and observed me with his mother's eyes, saying nothing. I found his steady stare unnerving. Clearing my throat, I continued.

"And he told me of life in the Caribbean."

William said nothing still.

"Apparently, this year, merchant sailors have made a fortune on their trades."

The clinking of cutlery on shoddy bowls of stew was the answer that greeted me. My wife looked up now, wary and alert, sipping her soup cautiously, eyes locked on mine.

I avoided her stern gaze.

"My job at the shop brings in barely enough funds to support us. I supposed that I'd sign up for a short term, and I'd-"

"You'd leave your wife and babe!" My wife was screaming suddenly, bowl and cutlery clattering noisily to the floor. She stood up abruptly, eyes wild. "Don't you dare leave us now, William Turner! Not after we tried so hard!" Water was streaming down her cheeks, dribbling down her chin.

I was shouting too, wanting the woman to just be quiet, for once. In my rage, I didn't notice young William disappear quietly out the door, heading for the cove down by the sea where he always went when he needed to be alone.

I stormed out of the house in a rage, tearing down the steep path on the cliffside as fast as I could, my wife shrieking hysterically at the threshold of our cottage, helpless to do anything else.

I never looked back.

Hours later, when things had quieted, and the sky lightened to the pale blue of near dawn, I crept back to the house, past my slumbering wife, and into the next room, kissing my boy, my sweet William one last, final goodbye.

I left with Jack Sparrow that morning.

Now, I'll never see my son again, not unless he dies at sea. But I pray every single day that it won't be his destiny. I pray that my son will live long and in comfort, finding a bride who he'll love…and who will love him back until the day that he dies.

It wasn't fair of me to leave a boy on the cusp of manhood, tossing him away so quickly like an old toy. I spent all that time striving to help make life spring out from between my wife's loins, but it seems like I thought it no more important than my own, wasted life. I treated him that way.

I'm a failed pirate, a failed husband, and it pains me most of all my mistakes in life…a failed father.

Perhaps I was never meant to be a father. Perhaps I cheated fate, and so this service aboard the Dutchman in my righteous punishment for hurting my son so.

If that is the truth, then this will be the only decision I will never regret.