Shakedown
Is it possible to be "land-sick," the old man wondered, as he sat and stared out the window of his room at the beach and breakers beyond.
For someone long immune to seasickness, it seemed a valid question. The rolling seas were where he felt at home, so to have this view from the unmoving Old Sailors' Home was both comforting and cruel. It was little help that he spent his days here with fellow flotsam and jetsam of the Merchant Marine. Their oft-repeated tales, getting more exaggerated with time until they nearly matched his own improbable adventures, only reminded him of the life he could no longer have.
"You need to get dressed now," Alice said as she came into the room behind him. "You've got a visitor."
"Is it Scooner?" he asked. He couldn't think of anyone else it could be. All others he cared for were gone.
"You'll have to see for yourself," the large woman replied, smiling. She had long been a friend to this man, helped care for his adopted son -- now a sailor himself in the Navy. She then became an orderly at the Home as she was practically the only person who could put up with the salty old sailor.
With the usual amount of fuss, he dressed and was helped into the wheelchair by the ever-patient Alice.
As he wheeled into the common room, he looked eagerly for who would be there to see him. When his eyes beheld the hulking frame of his old rival, he nearly leaped out of the chair. "You!" he shouted, accusation in his tone.
"It's good to see you again," the big man said, standing literally hat in hand, with an odd look on his face -- shame? compassion? pity? The possibility it was the latter made the old man's blood boil.
"Et tu, Brutusk?" the old sailor drawled.
"I guess I had that coming," the big man said, "but you have to understand, this was for the best. You were a mess after -- after Olive passed -- and you were in no shape to run that old boat."
"That weren't just no 'old boat'," the old man shot back. "That was me home, me life, all I had after Olive..." he stopped short, wasn't about to cry in front of this traitor. They had become solid friends over the years, he had thought. Then after his wife's frail heart gave out -- breaking his -- old Bluto turned out to be heartless, putting the old Sailor Man in this landlubber hell. Now, seeing this enemy again... out of long habit he checked his pockets for his source of comfort.
Bluto smiled as he saw his old friend draw out the pouch. "Still chewin' that stuff?" he asked, hoping for a conversational tone.
The old man ignored him, carefully taking a pinch of the green leaves and stuffing them in his cheek. Ages ago, he suspected his tobacco habit caused the episode of partial facial paralysis from which he never fully recovered. He slowly weaned himself off the pipe, and since old habits die hard, kept spinach leaves in his chewing-tobacco pouch. Best thing was, he would tell himself, no need to spit.
"Mr. Popeye, Mr. Bluto is here to take you out," Alice said. "He's got something to show you."
"What's he got, that I wanna see?" the old man lasered his good eye at the orderly. She shot him a look back.
"If you must know, it's to see Swee'Pea," she said.
"He's made Commander," Bluto added.
"Not a Cap'n yet?" Popeye replied acidly.
"He's got charge of a ship," Bluto said. "It's not big, but it's bigger than your old tub. I'll take you to him."
Popeye felt obligated to protest further -- seeing Bluto again aroused old animosity -- but he made no effort to engage the chair's brakes as Alice wheeled him towards the front doors. Outside, he noticed first that Bluto now had a nice SUV, and then that another orderly was putting his suitcase in the back seat. "What's the meanin' of this?"
"You may be out of the home for a while," Bluto said. Popeye could sense that old up-to-something in his voice. He looked back to Alice, who seemed to have an odd look about her as well.
Well, whatever these two were up to was better than another day in the Home. On shaky legs, Popeye stood from the chair and carefully climbed into the passenger seat of Bluto's Jeep.
The ride into the Naval base was quiet and uneventful, Popeye silently kept his gaze in the direction of the ocean, whether he could actually see it or not. After a couple of checkpoints, they parked and a young sailor met them with a golf cart, which they rode to the pier where the warship sat waiting.
Popeye couldn't help but be in awe -- but after being away from the sea so long, a sloop with ragged sails would have made him giddy. Still, this -- the boy was in charge of all this?
A handsome man in crisp officer's uniform, little silver leaves showing his rank, stepped up to greet them. Popeye, no longer looking frail, stood ramrod straight, and snapped a salute.
Commander Scooner Boone saluted back, smiling. He had come a long way from the foundling everyone called Swee'Pea. "I'm glad you made it, Skipper," he said, using the title Popeye had insisted on rather than "dad."
The old sailor looked beyond his ward to the ship, practically salivating. "Permission to come aboard," he said.
"Permission granted," Cmdr. Boone answered. The next hours were spent in a stem-to-stern grand tour. Popeye never felt, or looked, so alive.
At one room, Bluto said, "And you'll be bunking here." Boone shot him a surprised glance. As Popeye stepped inside for a closer look, the other two men stepped aside to talk privately.
"What are you doing?" Boone asked in muted anger. "This wasn't part of the deal."
"It is now," Bluto said quietly but firmly. "I've pulled some strings. As a retired Captain in the Merchant Marine, with commendations from every president since Roosevelt, he's entitled to a bunk on your little shakedown cruise. All you're doin' is working out the bugs in this new boat, and showing yer young officers what the sea feels like. He won't be in the way, and might even teach these pups a thing or two."
"This isn't right," Boone said. "We'll be out to sea for weeks."
"And that's about how long he's got," Bluto interrupted.
The young Commander wanted to say more, but his heart caught in his throat.
"He was right," Bluto continued, "I betrayed him his true place by putting him in that home. Now the doctors say he's on his last voyage, and I'd rather he ride it on the seas than in a deck chair on the porch of the Sailors' Home. The sea is where he belongs; it's his home.
"Let him go home." As he spoke, Bluto's face was firm but his eyes were pleading.
Popeye stepped back into the hallway with a pleased look on his face. "Make sure yas put me on the duty rosker, Scoo- I mean Commander," he said. "Wanna pull my own weight around here." He glanced around and snorted. "Ya calls this ship-shape?"
His old friend and his adopted son silently watched him saunter away down the hall, singing a forgotten shanty to himself, the old spring bouncing in his step.
Swee'Pea sighed. "I'll have the galley bring on extra spinach."
- - - - -
This is my entry for LJ Idol Season 8, Week 19, topic: "et tu, Brute?"
NOTES: This being a Popeye fanfic, the story is mine but the characters are not. Bluto was indeed called "Brutus" in some of the cartoons (according to Wikipedia, this was due to concerns over trademark issues between companies with rights to the characters). Alice is "Alice the Goon," who originally served the Sea Hag, but switched sides and became Swee'Pea's nanny. The wikipedia entry for Swee'Pea included the overly long name Popeye gave him on his Christening, which started with "Scooner" and ended with Daniel Boone -- thus the name he enlisted under in the Navy. (That the little boy who never left the crawling-baby stage in the comics and cartoons took to the sea himself was a bit of conjecture on my part, but seemed appropriate.) If I've made any Naval goofs, please forgive me; I was in the landlubber military. P.S. Yes, I made the SUV a Jeep on purpose. =)