We are excited to announce the winner of the June 2024 Chattanooga Writers' Guild Monthly Contest is S.T. Grange with the submission "My Trip" and runner-up is Sue Carol Elvin with the submission "Mopping My Way To Africa."
My Trip
I drove my rented Chevy past the Stanley Hotel, famous as the Overlook Hotel from The Shining, and down along the little road into Rocky Mountain National Park. I flashed my overnight pass to the geriatric volunteer at the entrance and went on through. I had a pass for a two night stay at some campsite. I hadn’t bothered to check the location of the campsite because I had no intention of ever visiting. I had no sleeping bag, no tent, no food, and only a 24 ounce bottle of water that I’d shoplifted from a gas station. I hadn’t come to the park to camp. I’d come to die.
My entire life I’d taken it for granted that I would commit suicide. I’d known I was depressed since I was a little boy, sitting on my grandma’s fake leather couch watching television. I’d seen a commercial for Zoloft, a sad blob bouncing along in the rain. The commercial described the symptoms of depression and I thought to myself, my God, that’s me. I never told anyone. I was embarrassed, ashamed. I didn’t want to be sick, and I especially didn’t want to be sick in the head. So I decided to live, take as much as I could take, and be done with it. Leave before the party ended. I didn’t want to stick around too long, make everyone else as sick of me as I was.
And anyway, growing old always seemed incredibly gauche, and at twenty seven I could feel thirty breathing on my neck, followed closely by middle age. My girlfriend had dumped me, I had no job and no prospects, and even when I’d had both a job and a girlfriend I hadn’t been happy. I didn’t know how to be happy, didn’t know how to pursue what I wanted. So I figured now was the time.
Even in my state, I couldn’t deny the beauty of the landscape. The world seems bigger in Colorado than it does back east, the air seems cleaner. I’d never realized before how claustrophobic my hometown seemed. The snowy peaks, the lakes that shined like glass in the sun, it all seemed closer to God than anywhere I’d been. This must have been what Eden was like. But the beauty didn’t make me happy. In fact, it made my depression worse. I looked at all the beauty that surrounded me and I thought to myself, I could have been born here, this could be all I’d ever known. So many special places in this world, so much beauty, and I’d been born locked out of it. I felt like I’d been born in the mud, I felt like a peasant peeking inside of a palace and becoming conscious of my class.
I parked the car and left the keys inside, walked away without bothering to lock it. I was sure the rental car company would understand once they found my corpse. I started my hike without a look back, without a care in the world.
I’ve never been much of a planner, and I made the plan to end my life with about as much thought as I’d given to everything else in my life, which is to say very little. I didn’t bother sticking to any paths, just waded my way through the tall grasses. I was encircled by tall jagged mountains, mountains unlike anything I’d ever seen before. My plan was to ascend one of them and jump off. Nothing fancy, I wasn’t so theatrical as to think that I needed to find the highest point before jumping. Anything fatal would do.
In my pocket I had five joints that I bought from some dispensary in Denver. Every fifteen minutes or so I’d stop and puff on one. There was no one around me to care. It was late fall and growing cold, the winds whipping down from the mountains and shearing through my coat. The weed kept me warm, or kept me from caring that I was cold. At one point on my walk I saw a moose. It was about a football field away. I stopped and watched it for a long time, watched it bend its neck gracefully to drink from a stream. It seemed like a thing from outside of time, a creature that could live a thousand years, a thing that would only die if it so chose. It seemed noble, nobler than any man could ever be. I loved it, I loved it for being beautiful. But I hated it too, I hated it because it was better than me, more perfect by far.
I walked and walked and walked. It had been morning when I left and I walked until dusk. I had stumbled upon a path and began to follow it, up and up and up, through naked trees that I could not identify, standing like silent sentinels along the path. Eventually I got so high that there were no trees. The sun had gone down. I wouldn’t have been able to see the path had it not been for the multitude of stars in the sky, luminous like the chorus of heaven announcing Christ’s birth to the shepherds of the field.
The path had become steep, and I was worn out. I was constantly stopping alongside the path, curling into a ball, trying to get warm. Every time I got up it was more difficult, every time I was a little bit
stiffer in the leg. But I kept going.
Finally I got to an overlook. I couldn’t say how high I was. High enough to see Estes Park in the distance, little tiny points of man-made light twinkling in the distance. I sat shivering on a boulder and looked at the sheer drop beneath me. I couldn’t see the bottom, but something in me knew this
was the place I’d been looking for.
Unbidden, a story from Sunday school came to my mind. Christ in the wilderness, and the adversary tempting him, taking him to a high place and daring him to jump, telling him that surely angels would catch him.
And what will happen to me, I thought. Angels would catch Christ, but what about me?
I sat there for a long time and wondered what would happen.
What will happen when I land?
I didn’t die that day, of course. I left Rocky Mountain National Park the next morning, blind to the beauty around me. I drove all the way back to Denver and eventually I made my way back home and told no one of my experience, told no one of my plan.
It’s been years since my trip to Colorado and every circumstance in my life is completely different than it was back then. But I am not different. I am still followed by a black dog. Sometimes he is at my heel
and sometimes he seems far behind me, but he is always there. He will never leave me. Jonah learned that you cannot escape God, you cannot outrun Him. I have learned that you cannot outrun yourself.
When night has fallen and the light pollution in my town has obscured the stars, made them a dirty smear across the sky, and I’m sitting on my back porch chain smoking cigarettes, watching the smoke dissipate like the hours and days and months and years of our lives, I think back to that night, that freezing night and that hard rock beneath me and those beautiful stars hanging in the firmament.
And I can’t help but think, what would have happened once I landed?
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S.T. Grange was born in New Orleans, LA and grew up aboard his father's shrimp boat. He now spends his time spoiling his children and playing the piano.
Mopping My Way To Africa
It's September, and Peter is phoning from Guam—or is it Japan?—at 4:00 a.m. Again.
"Hello, dear. Did I wake you? I just had a brainstorm. How about working on a ship with me? Prep cook maybe? Nothing hard." Peter is tired. I can tell he is desperate to be home.
By the time Peter phones again, this time from another port, I am a long way through the series of hoops necessary to becoming a "sister" (Seafarers International Union jargon for "member") and obtaining a Z-card (the must-have document) from the United States Coast Guard. While I'm at it, they—the union recruiter and the shipping company recruiter hereinafter referred to as they—said I might as well go for my STCW certification.
I pass all requirements during the week-long course. First Aid, which includes CPR; Personal Survival Skills; Safety and Social Responsibility; and Firefighting.
Peter is home! And frustrated. "If everything is approved," he asks, "why don't you have your Z-card?"
Only the US Coast Guard can remedy this.
The ship to which we are assigned is leaving for Africa on December 9, and they are worried. The Noble Star won't leave port unless all workers carry the proper documentation.
"If we can't get your Z-card soon, I will be the S.A. on this ship," the company half of they tells me. He doesn't sound pleased at the prospect.
"What's an S.A.?" I ask the union half of they when reporting the progress, or lack thereof.
"A steward assistant," I am told.
"What does a steward assistant do?" I ask, stupidly.
"Assist the steward" is the answer from the union half of they.
"And what does the steward do? "Now he is irritated. He barks into the phone over what sounds like the crumpling up of paperwork. "Oversees the steward department."
"Sanitation," he finally admits.
I stare at the Z-card I've just been handed. It looks just like my driver's license.
At the port we find our ship unloaded, thus high out of the water. As I look up to the landing at the top of the gangway, which seems miles away, I get my first glimpse of my boss: arms folded, no expression whatsoever. She seems to be evaluating my every step. She's dressed in pristine white. White shirt, white pants, white shoes . . . such a contrast to her beautiful dark skin. And small dangling earrings. I love dangling earrings.
Beside her a slight, tanned, very young man in a T-shirt and jeans says, "Hello, my name is Captain Brown, and this is Chief Steward Deborah."
She smiles and holds out her hand. "Dee," she says, and I am instantly relieved. We have the same accent. After all, we are (according to the union) "sisters" on this ship.
"Your main job is keeping the decks clean." I visualize cleaning the outside decks with a power sprayer as Dee continues. "The inside decks. A, B, C, and D, especially A." The vision of the power sprayer disappears, replaced by a mop. "And in addition . . . this is the pantry. You will set up for all three meals here on this counter; keep coffee made at all times for the crew of thirty-plus, less when we leave port, as well as Kool-Aid in this ten-gallon cooler and water in the other one. This area must be kept clean at all times. .No, there is no dishwasher. You know what I mean?" That's how Dee ends every sentence. That or "You hear me now?"
It's 6:00 a.m. day three. Dee's choice of music—rap, gospel, or Mariah (Oh please, not Mariah again)—is full blast. I'm impressing Dee with my enthusiasm for the job. Sweep two mess halls, both lounges, and the pantry, thoroughly; then mop; empty overflowing ashtrays; wipe tables; clean the pantry counter (it only looks like the night crew had a food fight); wash the dishes; then set up for breakfast. Bring up all the fruit and melons and juices (the heavy stuff Peter said I wouldn't carry). And ice—did I mention ice? More trips down and back up.
Breakfast starts at seven thirty. I'm exhausted. But I manage a "How is everything?" to the crew.
"Any hot sauce?" is the reply.
The sore muscles in my calf quiver then balk as I begin the familiar trek below. CRAMP. Maybe if I walk on my heels . . .
We sail to Houston for loading.
Houston is wet. Track, track, track. It's impossible to keep the entrance mopped but I don't know this so I try. And there are ashes on the floor.
"Where's the designated smoking area?" I ask our newly arrived replacement captain.
"The entire five hundred fifty feet of ship?" I repeat, stunned.
"Well, not on deck when taking on bunkers"—this is fueling—is his response to my response.
It is 5:45 a.m. and I have discovered that by going out the aft exit near our cabin, I can get down the outside slippery-wet metal stairs and be at the galley door in less than one minute. Going the other way takes too long, and I am desperate for a shortcut. I need more time. Still, the mopping is slow. Too slow.
The old saying "The faster I go, the behinder I get" now has a personal ring to it.
At lunch break I sit with Peter outside on the wooden bench on A deck, behind the galley. We watch the white wake part the blue-gray water.
Another book, this one by Toni Morrison, waits unopened while I soak my feet in the little tub I bought in Houston. It vibrates. My blisters are now turning into calluses. Does Epsom salts relieve stink as well as the soreness? I wonder.
"I'm so glad my father can't see me now," I say to Peter. "His whole life he wanted his girls to have a good education so we could get a good job. Janitor was not what he had in mind."
Peter is contrite. He apologizes over and over. "I didn't know."
I no longer cry in the night.
It's Monday. The chief's room is to be cleaned: vacuumed, mopped, linens changed, toilet scrubbed.
"Ten minutes. In and out in ten minutes, twenty minutes tops." Dee is dead serious. "When I had your job, blah, blah, blah . . . you hear me now? If you don't finish this morning, you finish this afternoon."
If I miss both my breaks, I think.
Tuesday and the laundry rooms must be scrubbed. First with the scrub brush—no, not the small one on hands and knees, the one with the long handle. The ship rocks and the gallons of water on the floor won't go into the drain; it collects at the other end and must be mopped up. The mop is heavier than usual; I can't lift it into the bucket or even pull the yellow handle to squeeze it out. Poe, one of the Filipino fitters, is putting in his wash. He lifts and squeezes the mop easily, then empties the bucket.
"You don't look so good," he says kindly.
It is Christmas and Dee is in a decorating frenzy. The entire ship is strung with Christmas lights and doodads, and there are stockings on a fake chimney. Dee is in hog heaven. The dancing Santa sings "A Holly Jolly Christmas" in Burl Ives's voice until we all want to scream. Zaldy, the electrician, finally unplugs it (amid cheers from the unlicensed) and we get a reprieve for a few days until Dee discovers this. Burl the Santa sings well into the New Year.
By 8:00 p.m. I'm in the shower. Too tired to move with the rolling ship, I lean against the wall and wait for the water to sway back to port. Cleanliness is very underrated.
At breaktime Peter and I sit in our spot on the wooden bench behind the galley. The Caribbean is a beautiful blue, and when we reach the gray, murky South Atlantic I am sad. Song of Solomon now sits on the shelf with books I have finished. Another one I will share with Dee.
The ship heads southeast: latitude 14 degrees 24.2N and longitude 061 degrees 22.7W.
Still, the ocean is not lovely. Not like our beloved Bahamian waters.
At 6:00 a.m. I take time on the landing to gaze at the predawn sky. It is bright with stars and planets. I will borrow the star book from Mike, the deck cadet. It was my Christmas present to him for helping empty the slop.
I feel a difference. Africa is closer.
ETA is 11:00 a.m. Most of the crew has made this trip many times, carrying US AID. They are not impressed. At my ten o'clock break, I rush out to see the pilot boat pushing us into the harbor. Through the humid mist I see land. A land, I am to learn, of broken promises and beautiful people.
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Sue Carol Elvin is retired, living with her husband, Peter in Chattanooga, TN and writing. Her first book is now in the publishing process. A story for fifth graders, two fantasy characters collect memories of the lives of people over a span of 120 years. She has had poems and a short story printed in her college literary magazine. Sue Carol has been writing and telling stories for many years to her children and grandchildren and now, great grandchildren. Her very successful second marriage to Peter gets the credit (or blame) for not pursuing writing as a career.
The Monthly Contests rotate through a pattern of Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction throughout the year, with a new theme each month.
Go to the Monthly Contest Series Info page to view the genre and theme for each month.
This contest is free to enter for members of the Chattanooga Writers’ Guild. To become a member, click HERE.