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LUFFING
by Ron Fleshman
Near the edge of the chart, I see that my course was not random
but zigzag: now with the wind, now against. Through the long glass
of hindsight, I am aware that many of my decisions to come about
were not as independent as I had thought but were influenced by
another person.
I remember most of them but some more than others, and Al was
one of these. He was squat with a thick neck, mud brown hair and a
face like a broken fist. At 19, I didn't think about another guy's
appearance but looking back now, I realize that Al was an ugly monkey
by any standard.
We were sailors drinking warm beer at a sidewalk cafe ten minutes
from Nice. The Mediterranean, the vacant cobalt sky, the pastel tinted
houses snugged into the hills, the warm French sun -- all of it a
grand picture postcard.
A family came and sat at the largest table. A father, mother, two
little boys, and a beautiful woman of perhaps 17, perhaps 18. Oh. Every
woman is beautiful at that age, and possibly Frenchwomen are even more
beautiful. This one was. Forever.
I stared. Al moved. He said "See you back at the ship" and he got up
and he went to the big table and he smiled at the father and he smiled
at the mother and he waved his hands and he smiled some more and he kept
waving his hands and smiling -- and the father motioned for him to sit
and Al pulled up a chair and he sat down right next to the beautiful
young woman. Just like that.
He knew less pidgin French than I did: enough to order a beer or
a plate of steak and eggs, enough to find a brothel. The family would
dismiss him surely. Surely, they did not.
The next day when Al returned to the ship I asked about her. He
smiled. I asked if she spoke English and he said, smiling, "I am
teaching her." And he did.
My course changed then though I did not have true heading until four
years later, in another postcard country on another sunny afternoon,
when I vaulted a stone wall and ran after a beautiful young woman. She
was much too fine, so I married her. Al would have smiled.
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Copyright 1994 Ron Fleshman
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Ron Fleshman is a retired Navy Chief (Destroyerman) and, for thirty-
five years, the happy companion to the former Tamara Miron of Tel Aviv.
Ron's writing has appeared in various publications, including HUSTLER,
MODERN SHORT STORIES, ESPIONAGE, and WRITER'S DIGEST.
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