Walk in Faith, and Eat When You're Hungry:: The Jesuit on Steroids

Walk in Faith, and Eat

When You’re Hungry:

The Jesuit on Steroids

David Fredette

Copyright © 2015 by David Fredette.

Library of Congress Control Number:          2015901052

ISBN:          Hardcover          978-1-5035-3746-0

                    Softcover            978-1-5035-3748-4

                    eBook                 978-1-5035-3747-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 01/21/2015

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Contents

Chapter 1   A Floating Song

Chapter 2   Blame

Chapter 3   Beyond Closure

Chapter 4   Investments

Author Biography

Dedicated to my parents:

Robert John, and

Doris Fredette.

I will cherish our time

together,

always, and forever.

This is a loosely based story.

Hence, the names have been

changed to protect the innocent.

Chapter 1

A Floating Song

S o, there I am, thinking to myself, I am wasted, and I can’t find my way home. (Blind Faith.) It was aboard, what seemed like, a United Nations ship, the M/V Sparrow . A majority of British officers, the unlicensed, were of Filipino descent, and there were several Filipino officers. Yours truly, Peter Leduc, I was the sole American.

It’s funny. They think that we Americans are all rich. They are asking for twenty bucks, as if I came out on this crude carrier just for bragging rights. I have to scratch out a living too! The Filipinos would have housemaids, in the Philippines, working for four dollars an hour. I can barely pay rent, at sixteen. Who are the real rich guys?

The Brit’s expenses were similar to ours, however. They are good seamen. What is expected from an island nation? Both them and the Filipinos had a sense of humor, which is as coveted as fresh water in this industry. You have to learn how to roll with the punches, as they say.

For instance, Leo, the Filipino third engineer, would grill me, a fourth, whenever he relieved my watch. I just respectfully took it. But he was my best friend at a training seminar in France, between tours. Could do no wrong then. You see, I think, experience is the currency aboard vessels of maritime tradition, until we reach port at least. Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC’s) rarely have much port time. They are usually loading or unloading crude oil about fifty miles offshore. The only financing to be done, as a crew member, involves the tab.

Simply walk into the officer’s lounge, sit at the bar, and ask for a cold one. I will serve and then mark an X next to your name in a log book. The payroll gets debited at the end of the month. Yes, I was assigned the bartending duties on each tour I sailed. Only two.

They had an ironic approval of the Milwaukee’s Best, I ordered, in Galveston. I mean, after all the Beck’s they had been used to three months prior. That’s good because I stocked up for the next two months.

Oh, yeah, I had to work on the Sparrow. Like I previously mentioned, I pulled the twelve to four watch in the engine room. When things broke, during these four hours, I had to fix them. If I could not, I was supposed to call the chief engineer. Now that I think of it, I was fortunate, never having to reach out and touch that certain someone. Not to insinuate that I didn’t have my fair share of complications. Nonetheless, things tended to be more tame between loading and unloading or vice versa. The thirty thousand shaft horsepower steam plant had to be in full operation while unloading. Cool sea temperatures were appreciated for a smooth engine-room performance. Off the coast of Nigeria, the engineering space would get upward of 125 degrees Fahrenheit. Air compressors would overheat and trip off-line. We needed 250 psi air to start the main engines, as well as 150 psi to keep up with all the control actuation. However, when we would go around the Cape of Good Hope, the engineers would be in a state of wrench-turning limbo. It was a time to cherish.

I only had a general knowledge of where we were, at any given time. Hence, I could only tell about what body of water, but I couldn’t tell you if the vessel was fifty or five hundred miles from our destination. I tracked our voyage by whether we were loading or unloading and through the use of a calendar. For instance, it took seven weeks to lighter at the Louisiana Offshore Oil Platform (LOOP), cross the Atlantic, travel to Nigeria, load, and then return to the LOOP. The powers that be would schedule this voyage, so there would be peak spot oil prices by the time we started loading again.

I can remember taking the elevator down to the engine room before each watch and having this almost overwhelming sense of a Paradise Lost, down in the bowels to do my time, with a devastating heat and a jungle of the most unnatural vibrating noises. I didn’t fully grasp this reality—the reality that seafarers have to face, in order to pay child support, and/or alimony, at the required seafarers pay rate. I only knew that I could not keep this up for an eternity. It was this realm that had my undivided attention for the entire four months I had to be aboard.

Nevertheless, I caught the Sparrow three days after Thanksgiving in 1995. I was supposed to leave on Thanksgiving Day but had left my passport in my safety deposit box. I had just gotten engaged a few days prior. Thank God for the lull times on that voyage, because if it had not been for them, I would most likely still be out there