Miss Ava Lee
Posted by Kelly Marshall Fuller | Posted in Kelly's Corner | Posted on 07-07-2011
Tagged Under : Georgetown, ghosts, hauntings, history, ships, shrimp boats, south carolina
Captain leans his head against the battered hull of his trawler,
”Miss Ava Lee.”
A bitter wind whips around him, as his burly hands replace nails and add paint to his old friend- a full-bodied woman who has carried him since 1979.
“Why do you do it it Captain?”
He seems to hear the unspoken question in the howl of the rising wind.
He is waiting for spring.
It will be a time when another season of being on the open water will beckon him like a siren call from the sea.
There’s no money in it.
He knows his love will kill him before too long.
Captain shrugs his shoulders and swigs his beer.
“”It’s in my blood,” he mutters to himself. ”“I guess I’ll be here forever.”
Miss Ava Lee has the pointed tips of an ancient Viking ship.
The boat seems ready to carry the Captain’s body in a blaze to the next world.
Captain turns away and puts his palms on Miss Ava Lee.
”Gotta take care of you, or you’ll leave me in the bottom of the ocean,” he says.
Captain whispers a prayer for Miss Ava, the love of his life.
A priest waves a blessing at them each year, as they leave Jeremy Creek in McClellanville.
Captain prays for a prevailing wind that will carry him with the tide, towards full creeks swimming with life.
”I just bet a lot of them wish they were me,” he says.
