Pretty Little Bones

They Say the Captain Goes Down with the Ship

They Say the Captain Goes Down with the Ship

Ava's grandfather used to have a large stick he went on walks with. He found it in the woods one day and decided it would be perfect to use as a cane when he took his dogs hunting.

He called it his walking stick and everyone praised it as though he were some sort of genius. But it was just a goddamn stick. A walking stick.

For years it sat by his front door, proudly displayed for everyone to see. If it was gone that meant he was too.

It was smooth. He'd peeled all the bark off and everyone admired the strange red and brown streaks of the stick underneath. You'd never find another like it, he swore. Large enough to hold his weight but small enough to carry.

It was perfection to him and simply background whitespace to everyone else. They said it was beautiful in a weird, unique way, but that was about it.

It was a lot like Ava, I guess.

She was pretty in a weird way, with her gray eyes and blonde waves. And the way she lied about everything.

But that wasn't their only similarity.

Sometimes the walking stick would splinter his hand and he'd swear despite swearing that he never said "fuck" or "damn". But he would when it would leave a trace of itself in his skin.

Then it was all goddammits and this fucking sticks.

But it was okay, because he swore he never said words like those. Besides, he went to church and that supposedly made things okay.

It made what he said okay. It made what happened to Ava okay. Everything could be forgiven if you just went to church. If there was a God, He'd have to beg her forgiveness after all the things he made okay.

Ava had a way of leaving her mark on people too, whether they knew it or not.

She had a way of hanging under their flesh and haunting them with subtle slivers of her memory.

He put duct tape on the end he held on to and I wished there was something of Ava to hold onto.

She seemed to slip out of anyone's grasp, always leaving that fatal little mark when she went.

Her grandpa always said duct tape would fix anything, but that was the one thing Ava never believed.

Duct tape didn't fix her.

Everything else she listened to intently. It was just that one piece of advice that she never believed.

I never really understood why she had so much faith in what he told her.

He was mean to her. Always teasing her about the gap in her baby teeth or the cleft in her chin. He made fun of the way her waves were always twisted and occasionally her bangs were cut a little crooked.

Her fingers were too long and her legs too fat, he told her.

But she loved him.

I never understood why she loved him.

Sure, he loved her too. All the things he said were jokes he used to cover up his kindness. But they were so cruel to such a tiny little girl.

When he died she never once shed a tear for him. That was their thing: they were cold to each other and I never understood the logic.

But I knew it tore her world apart when he died.

She always pinpointed that day as the day her life ended.

From that point forward nothing was the same. She fought a new battle every day and never knew how to handle it, because he was gone. He left a hole in her mother that ripped her marriage in two.

He tore Ava's family apart even years after his last breath. The wound was slow and smoldered left the biggest scar Ava had ever earned. He haunted them day in and day out until the world was different. The world was cold and cruel and not because it loved her.

It was because life wasn't fair.

And for a man that made such an impact on her, she never talked about him. I hardly remembered him.

What I did remember was that he was a large man with an even larger voice and a sweet musk that permeated the room long after he'd left. Sometimes he smelled like beer—like my dad—but he swore he didn't drink. Only enough that he could ask for forgiveness on Sunday and everything would be okay again.

I remembered what a cold man he was. A long service in the Vietnam conflict had left him hardened and humorless.

His teasing Ava was his way of telling her he loved her.

But it was all so cruel.

I think that's what she loved about him. He never said what he meant.

He never talked about what it was like to be a soldier. He never said much about any of the men in his platoon and he never painted pictures about all the things he saw.

He didn't talk about the children that tried to blow up his camp. He didn't talk about the Agent Orange that left him with ungodly health problems.

And he never told Ava he loved her despite the fact that he really did. He loved her more than anyone else.

Sometimes I wondered if that was where Ava had learned to lie. Maybe she'd picked up her tricks from him. The little lies she told must have been written by his own tongue, she was just borrowing the words like any good artist does.

Always saying that it wasn't a big deal.

Always mentioning that there was nothing to talk about.

Always pretending her health problems weren't a disease she contracted from the carelessness of others.

Always making everyone believe that there wasn't constantly a war playing in her mind.

I guess that was why she loved him so much.

Because he taught her to lie.

And lying was the only thing that kept Ava going.