A LIFE SO CHANGED
Chapter Five

July 10, 1998

Southampton, Florida. It is almost noon on sailing day. A crowd of hundreds blackens the pier next to Titanic like ants on a jelly sandwich.

A gorgeous burgundy Renault touring car swings into the frame, hanging from a loading crane. It is lowered toward hatch number two.

On the pier, horse-drawn vehicles, motorcars, and lorries move slowly through the dense throng. The atmosphere is one of excitement and general giddiness. People embrace in tearful farewells, or wave and shout bon voyage wishes to friends and family on the decks above.

"Big boat, huh?" asked a man to his little girl on his shoulders.

"Daddy, it’s a ship."

"You’re right."

The little girl is holding a porcelain doll, and the face of the doll was the same to the one under the sea in the present. Suddenly, she looks over his shoulder.

A white van, that has Southampton Baptist Church painted red on both sides, is pushing its way through the crowd with another car, a light blue Ford station wagon. Its license plate on the front says the same as the van, and several other cars along with it.

People are streaming to board the ship, jostling with hustling seamen and stokers, porters, and barking White Star Line officials.

The station wagon stops, and a Titanic crew scurries to open the back door for a young woman dressed in a stunning purple and white suit, with an enormous purple hat. She is twenty, and beautiful, but sad, and she had brown eyes, just like Rose, but this time she has dyed copper auburn hair.

It is the woman in the drawing. Rose. She looks up at the ship, taking it in with cool appraisal. She steps ahead so the people she rode with can come out.

A man steps out of the driver’s seat with a broad smile on his face. It’s her father. Cal. He’s forty-nine, and very handsome for his age, with sea blue eyes.

"I don’t see what all the fuss is about. It doesn’t look any bigger than the Mauritania." She turned to her father.

"You can talk about some things, Rose, but not about Titanic. It’s over hundred feet longer than the Mauritania, and far more luxurious."

Cal turns to face his wife. Ruth Black. She’s forty-seven. She has piercing green eyes and dyed auburn hair, too.

"Our daughter is much too hard to impress." Ruth laughs.

Then more people from the car come out. On Rose’s side, a girl of thirteen goes up to Cal. Her name is Lea Carson. She’s her good friend. She is wearing the same enormous hat, only hers is green.

"So, this is the ship they say is unsinkable?" asked Lea to Cal.

"It is unsinkable."

A White Star Line porter scurries toward them, harried by last minute loading. "Sir, sir...sir?"

"Yes?" asked Cal.

"You’ll have to check your baggage through the main terminal. It's around that way sir--"

"Yes, please see David Parrish." David Parrish is an Assistant Pastor, and in charge of the trip.

"Oh, yes. Thank you."

Parrish comes up to him and guilds him to the suitcases. "All the trunks from that car there. Twelve from here and the van to the parlor suite rooms B-52 and B-54. The girls’/boys’ room is B-52. The men’s/women’s room is B-54 and the safe in B-52."

The White Star man whistles frantically for some cargo-handlers nearby who came running.

Cal quickly checks his watch.

"Ladies, we’d better hurry."

With them are two more girls. Jenna Hill. She is Rose’s best friend, and also lives with them. She’s twenty also. Next is Leann Carson. She’s Lea’s sister. She’s sixteen.

Cal indicates the way toward the first class gangway. They move into the crowd. The rest of the group from the van and cars follows them.

Rose turns from Jenna, who is walking besides her to Lea.

"My coat, Lea?"

"I'm wearing it."

Rose laughs. She forgot that she let Lea borrow it. The coat is beautiful. It has black lace all around the collar and sleeves. The rest is a beige color.

Cal is weaving between vehicles and handcarts, hurrying passengers, mostly second class and steerage and well wishers. Most of the first class passengers are avoiding the smelly press of the dockside crowd by using an elevated boarding bridge, twenty feet above.

They pass a line of steerage passengers in their coarse wool and tweeds, queued up inside movable barriers like cattle in a chute. A health officer examines their heads one by one, checking scalp and eyelashes for lice.

They pass a well-dressed young man holding the handle of his cam recorder mounted on a tripod. Naniel Marvin (whose father founded the Biograph Film Studio) is filming his young bride in front of the Titanic. Molly Marvin stands stiffly and smiles, self-conscious.

"Look up at the ship, darling, that's it. You're amazed! You can't believe how big it is! Like a mountain. That's great."

Molly Marvin, without an acting fiber in her body, does a bad Clara Bow pantomime of awe, hands raised.

Cal is jostled by two yelling steerage boys who shove past him. And he is bumped again a second later by the boys' father.

"Excuse me," said Cal.

"Sorry, sir," said the man, pushing on after his kids, shouting.

"I hope he straightens out those kids by spanking them."

"Honestly, Cal, if you weren't forever booking everything at the last instant, we could have gone through the terminal instead of running along the dock like some squalid immigrant family," said Ruth.

"All part of my plan, sweetheart. At any rate, it was my sweetpea's beauty rituals which made us late." Cal looks at Rose, making her feel guilty.

Sweetpea is his pet name for her. She hates it, but he loves it.

"You told me to change."

"I couldn't let you wear that black dress. It makes you look like a whore with those slits."

"I felt like black. Besides, I love that dress."

Cal guides them out of the path of a horse-drawn wagon loaded down with two tons of Oxford marmalade, in wooden cases, for Titanic's victualling department. Cal takes Rose’s arm, and escorts her. He sees her sadness.

"Here I've pulled every string I could to book us on the grandest ship in history, in her most luxurious suites...and you act as if you're going to your execution."

Rose looks up as the hull of Titanic looms over them...a great iron wall, Bible black and severe. Cal motions her forward, and she enters the gangway to the D deck doors with a sense of overwhelming dread.

Rose: "It was the ship of dreams...to everyone else. To me, it was a slave ship, taking me to the Bahamas in chains."

Cal’s arm closes possessively over her arm. He escorts her up the gangway, and the black hull of Titanic swallows them.

Rose: "Outwardly, we were raised to be Christian girls, and proper women should be. Inside, I was screaming."

*****

A screaming blast from the mighty triple steam horns on Titanic’s funnels, bellowing their departure warning.

A view of the Titanic from several blocks away, towering above the terminal buildings like the skyline of a city. The steamer’s whistle echoes across Southampton.

Inside a smoky bar, near Titanic, a poker game is in progress. Four men, in working class clothes, playing a very serious hand of poker.

Jack Dawson and Fabrizio De Rossi, both twenty-two, exchange a glance as the other two players, Olaf and Sven, argue in Swedish.

Jack, a free-spirited man with his light blond hair a little long in the front. His clothes are rumpled from sleeping in them. He’s also an artist and has adopted the Bohemian style of the art scene in Paris.

He is also very self-possessed and sure-footed for twenty-two, having lived on his own since seventeen. It’s the man from Rose’s flashbacks.

The two Swedes continue their sullen argument, in Swedish.

"Jack, you are pazzo. You bet everything we have," said Fabrizio.

"When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose." He leaned close to Fabrizio.

"You moron. I can’t believe you bet our tickets," said Olaf in Swedish.

"You lost our money. I'm just trying to get it back. Now shut up and take a card," Sven said in Swedish.

"Sven?" asked Jack.

"Hit."

Jack takes a card and, face down, gives it to Sven. Then he takes one card and slips it into his hand. On Jack’s eyes. They betray nothing. Fabrizio licking his lips nervously as he refuses a card.

A stack is in the middle of the table. Bills and coins from four countries. This has been going on for a while. Sitting on top of the money are two third class tickets for RMS TITANIC. The Titanic's whistle blows again. Final warning.

"All right. The moment of truth, boys. Somebody’s life’s about to change. Fabrizio?" said Jack, after he put down his cigarette.

Fabrizio puts his cards down.

"Niente," said Jack.

"Niente."

"Olaf?" asked Jack.

Olaf puts his cards down.

"Nothing. Sven?"

Sven puts his cards down. Jack looks like he lost the game. "Uh-oh...two pair...I’m sorry, Fabrizio."

"What sorry? Ma va fa’n culo. You bet all our money."

"I’m sorry, cause you’re not gonna see your mom again for a long time..."

Fabrizio looks at Jack with confusion. Jack slaps his cards down. "Cause you’re going to Bahamas! Full house, boys! Yahoo!"

"Porca Madonna! YEEAAAAA!" shouted Fabrizio, taking the tickets.

The table explodes into shouting in several languages. Jack rakes in the money. Olaf balls up one huge farmer’s fist and takes a hold of Jack’s shirt. He says something in Swedish.

Jack thinks he’s going to hit him, but Olaf swings around and punches Sven, who flops backward onto the floor and sits there, looking shocked.

Olaf forgets Jack and Fabrizio, who are so excited about their winning.

"We go to another adventure!" said Fabrizio to Jack, who takes the tickets and kisses them.

"We’re going to the Bahamas!" He hugs Fabrizio.

"I go to Bahamas!" said Fabrizio to the crowd.

"No, mate," said the bartender. "Titanic go to Bahamas. In five minutes."

The clock, on the wall behind the bartender, read 11:55 AM.

"Oh, shit! Come on, Fabri!" Jack grabbed their stuff. "Come on."

They run to the door.

Chapter Six
Stories