Tales From The Passage:
Every stretch of water has two shores, and the only way to reach the second is to leave the first. These notes are for anyone standing on that first shore—pockets light, heart heavier—wondering if work and wonder can share the same berth.
THE PASSAGE
Episode 1 — Ketchikan ⟶ Sitka, Summer 1988
A deckhand’s diary by Everett Anderson WilliamsPrologue | Fare North of Free
I had twenty‑four dollars in my wallet and a play rattling around in my head—too heavy for a backpack, too light for the ferry fare.
When Captain Lou muttered, “Need hands more than tickets,” I swapped the price of passage for three days of rope burn, galley duty, and whatever else his
62‑foot wooden lady—M/V Ardent—could dream up. Four guest cabins, one fo’c’sle for five green crew members, and a three‑legged dog named Gunner who
kept watch with a single eye and a metronomic tail‑thump.
If art is born of constraint, the Ardent was a floating womb.
Day 1 | Ketchikan & Dixon Entrance
0600 — Creek Street drizzle
The tourists were still nursing hangovers when we cast off. I coiled the spring line backward and earned my first glare from Bosun Marlene—sharp enough
to fillet salmon.
We nosed north into Clarence Strait, the water iron‑flat, clouds drooping like theatre curtains waiting for their cue.
Passengers
The Rileys — retired schoolteachers photographing every waking moment, including me mopping the head.
Ms. Imani — a birder with binoculars the size of hope.
Jarrett & Cruz — Seattle tech yuppies before the term existed; they brought a fax machine “for emergencies.”
Mrs. Natsukawa — grandmother, never without her sketchbook.
Gunner — honorary guest, paid in jerky.
1600 — Kasaan Bay
We anchored so the guests could gape at the longhouse poles. My job: shuttle them ashore in the skiff. Gunner insisted on riding bow—ears like prayer flags.
While they toured carvings older than America’s collective memory, I scrubbed kelp from the prop guard and rehearsed a monologue to the gulls. Gunner
offered notes in the form of one decisive bark—better dramaturgy than most grad courses.
Day 2 | Chatham Strait & Peril
0400 — Watch shift
Fog as thick as unspoken love. Radar whispering, bell tolling every two minutes. I poured coffee that tasted of engine oil, counted beats between the swells, and imagined them as drum hits in a song nobody would ever play.
Mid‑morning, the sun broke through—and so did Jarrett’s patience; the fax refused a satellite handshake. He cursed technology, the new sin of Prometheus.
Captain Lou handed him a chart and said, “Try analog.”
Somewhere in that exchange I heard the first chords of a future scene: city boys lost at sea, paper map bleeding in the rain.
Evening — Peril Strait
They don’t call it Peril for laughs. Tidal rapids clutched our keel like a critic hugging an opinion. Bosun Marlene barked orders I only half understood, yet my
hands obeyed—line, cleat, line, cleat—until the Ardent slid into calmer water.
At supper the captain toasted “safe passes and second chances.” Gunner licked spilled gravy off my boot; I decided that counted as applause.
Day 3 | Salisbury Sound & Sitka
Dawn — Surge Narrows
Amethyst light over Baranof peaks. Ms. Imani spotted a pair of marbled murrelets and swore she could hear their wings whistle. I listened harder and felt
my own pulse sync with the prop wash.
1200 — Approach to Sitka
O’Connell Bridge rose like a proscenium arch. The Rileys cried; Mrs. Natsukawa sketched Gunner poised on the bow—hero of a silent epic.
I hosed salt from the decks, trying to sluice off the feeling that something had shifted inside my rib cage.
Arrival log
Distance: ≈ 300 nm
Coffee pots drained: 9
Lines coiled correctly (eventually): many
New scars: 2 (one knuckle, one idea)
Captain Lou pressed two hundred dollars into my palm—hazard pay, he called it. I tried to refuse; he reminded me the ship ran on barter and kindness.
That night in Sitka I rented a room above the Sheffield Bar, ordered a Rainier, and opened my notebook to a blank page titled “Sawdust Hearts.” The Ardent
horn blew in the distance—another story soon departing.
Somewhere between Ketchikan and Sitka I had traded a ticket for a direction, and perhaps the opening riff of a play that would one day set plywood stages
on fire.
Epilogue | Why The Passage?
Every stretch of water has two shores, and the only way to reach the second is to leave the first. These notes are for anyone standing on that first shore—pockets light, heart heavier—wondering if work and wonder can share the same berth.Tomorrow the Ardent is slated to nose back out—north through Glacier Bay, then on to Juneau and the ragged rails of Skagway. Captain Lou says there’s an open bunk if "the salt’s still in your veins, kid." It is.Until the next crossing,
E.A.W.The Fables of Everett Anderson Williams -
Wildly Unverified Accounts from a Semi-Reliable Narrator - Himself
THE PASSAGE
Episode 2 — Sitka ⟶ Glacier Bay ⟶ Juneau,
A deckhand’s diary by Everett Anderson Williams - Summer 1988
Prelude | Salt in the Veins
Sleep was a rumor. I slipped out of the Pioneer Bar at 0200, my breath ghosting beneath the streetlamps, salt still crystallized on my boots. The Ardent’s mast lights winked from her slip in the channel like a seasoned co‑conspirator. I traced the long Lincoln Street loop around St. Michael’s, paused at the four‑way stop, then wandered up to Castle Hill. A buoy’s foghorn sighed once, and the town settled into a hush—until a raven cut the stillness, begging for either breakfast or to critique my thoughts. The first blade of dawn slid between the mountains and a low‑lurking pressure system. By 0500 I’d collected my backpack and stepped back aboard—pockets lighter, heart fuller in the best possible way.
Captain Lou: “Didn’t think you’d show.” Me: “Couldn’t ignore the rattle in my blood.” Lou (grinning): “Good. Glacier ice’ll cool it.”
New manifest: three days northward, threading narrow passages and unpronounceable bays, finally slipping into Juneau to swap guests and gain provisions.
Day 4 | Sitka Sound & Cross Sound
0600 — Departure Gunner greeted me with a half‑spin, half‑limp, tail whacking the capstan. Clouds piled high like wet cordwood. Bosun Marlene handed me the deck brush in lieu of a welcome.
Crew Additions
Max — college kid on summer break, hired as “science interpreter,” already seasick at the dock.
Chef Lena — took over galley; speaks in haiku and chili‑powder.
1700 — Icy Strait A pod of humpbacks lunged‑fed fifty yards off port. Guests gasped; Captain Lou cut engines. The water rolled like black velvet. I swear I felt the reverberation in my molars—low‑frequency theatre.
Day 5 | Glacier Bay National Park
0800 — Bartlett Cove Rangers boarded to check permits. One, Arliss, carried a carved raven staff and stories older than Shakespeare. He pointed to the forest and said, “Everything you need to know about time is written in the rings.” I pocketed the line.
1200 — Johns Hopkins Inlet We threaded through brash ice the color of candle smoke. Calving thunder cracked the afternoon; each berg rolled like scenery flats changing between acts. Gunner barked at every splash, convinced the glacier was taunting him.
2200 — Lamplight on the Aft Deck Chef Lena passed around mugs of cedar tea. Max, finally upright, charted plankton samples under red light. I jotted dialogue about a man arguing with a glacier—nature heckling hubris.
Day 6 | Lynn Canal & Juneau
0300 — Choke Point
Fuel filter clogged; engine coughed like a veteran smoker. Lou’s knuckles went white on the wrench; Marlene held the flashlight; I prayed to whichever sea god
handles petty mechanical irony. Filter cleared, throttle purred. The night seemed to stretch endlessly, as if reaching into another dimension, even with dawn just an
hour away.
1100 — Approaching Juneau
Rain stitched the water silver. The Mendenhall Glacier glowed blue in the distance, a backstage light behind scrim. Guests crowded the bow; each camera raised
flashed in the mid-morning light.
1400 — Juneau Harbor
Lines fast, engines idle. Gunner disembarked first—business to tend to on shore. Captain Lou slapped my shoulder: “We off‑load, re‑load, and head for Skagway at
first light.”
I nodded, salt still fizzing under my skin.
Log & Lessons
Nautical miles since Sitka: ≈ 220
Icebergs dodged: countless; one kissed the paint
Humpback breaches: 3
Haiku from Chef Lena: 5 (two food‑related, three existential)
New bruises: 1 (fuel hatch argument)
One ranger’s farewell echoed all night: “Glaciers remember what people forget.”
I lay in my bunk composing an answer. Maybe a play isn’t a monument; maybe it’s an echo chamber big enough to keep memory alive.
Tomorrow: Skagway’s ragged rails. And beyond that, who knows—maybe the Yukon if the Ardent keeps tempting me. The salt is still in my veins; the story is still at sea.Until the horizon shifts again,
-E.A.W.
The Fables of Everett Anderson Williams - Wildly Unverified Accounts from a Semi-Reliable Narrator - Himself
The Passage
Episode 3 — Juneau ⟶ Haines ⟶ Skagway ⟶ Yakutat
The Fables of Everett Anderson Williams - Wildly Unverified Accounts from a Semi-Reliable Narrator - Himself
A deckhand’s diary by Everett Anderson Williams - Summer 1988
Interlude | Wake Memory
I didn’t grow up on boats. My earliest stages had trapdoors and curtain pulls, not bulkheads and cleats. But
somewhere between missed cues and middling reviews, I started craving something unlit, unscripted.
Theatres and vessels both rely on tension: lines held just tight enough to keep the structure intact. You let one go
slack, and everything starts to drift. When I came to Alaska, I didn’t know whether I was running toward something
or away from everything else—but the ferry from Bellingham to Ketchikan might as well have been crossing oceans.
Captain Lou says you can’t fake being crew. The boat knows. It either folds you in or spits you out. So far, The Ardent is keeping me in the cast. I take that as a sign.
Day 7 | Juneau Turnaround & Lynn Canal
0600 — South Franklin Dock
We off-loaded six very happy passengers, refueled, took on dry goods and six new guests:
A honeymoon couple from Dayton.
A retired hydrologist with a field journal full of doodles.
Twin college photographers with matching windbreakers and completely different attitudes.
A novelist researching a book titled “The Last Frontier (for Real This Time).”
Gunner sniffed them all like a customs officer with a sense of humor.
1000 — Departure
Lines cast. A breeze off the Gastineau Channel made the halyards clatter like backstage chains. I lashed down loose
gear and checked the tension on the skiff hoist—Max had overestimated his knot confidence again. The Ardent
hummed north through gray-green water while Chef Lena recited a breakfast haiku:
Steel gray morning hush
Toast burns, coffee boils over
Storms start small like this.
Day 8 | Haines & Taiya Inlet
0800 — Haines Pier
Mist peeled off the Chilkat Mountains like gauze from a healed wound. We tied up for provisions and dropped mail at
the dock office. Guests wandered into town for souvenir wool and smoked salmon vacuum-packs.
1200 — Battery Point Trail (Shore Leave)
Lou gave me an hour, so I hiked to Battery Point alone. The trees leaned like old actors waiting for their cue. On the
return leg, I sat on a driftwood bench and wrote two pages of a one-act I’ll probably never finish—about a man who
sees ghosts but only on boats.
1800 — Taiya Inlet
We threaded back into the inlet under long streaks of evening light. The water flattened to glass, interrupted only by
diving murres and the ripple of our own reflection.
Day 9 | Skagway & the Red Onion Curtain Call
0700 — Docking in Skagway
Skagway welcomed us with Klondike kitsch and the clatter of the tourist train winding into the hills. I helped secure
the bow line and jumped ashore for errands: propane tanks, ice, and a replacement radio battery that took me into
four different shops and two unrelated arguments about state taxes.
1100 — The Red Onion Saloon
The novelist insisted on visiting. Inside, the bar smelled of old perfume, sawdust, and drama. A woman in corset and
petticoats read off a cocktail list like a casting call. A piano player crooned a ragtime tune while the photographers
snapped photos they’ll never develop. Someone mistook me for a performer. I didn’t correct them.
1700 — Departure
The guests were rosy-cheeked and overfed. I rigged fenders, coiled the aft line twice because I liked the symmetry.
Lou sipped something strong in a tin mug and said, “Next stop, edge of the world.”
Day 10 | Yakutat Bay & Hubbard Glacier
0400 — Graveyard Watch
Fog thick as blackout curtains. The radar blinked like a nervous understudy. I kept my eyes on the green sweep and
listened to the rhythmic thud of waves like the slow count-in before a final scene.
0900 — Approaching Hubbard Glacier
Blue beyond blue, like a shattered stage wall. The ice calved mid-morning with the sound of an orchestra
falling into a pit. Guests gasped. Gunner barked. I imagined the glacier was bowing at the end of an act written over
centuries.
1300 — Yakutat Harbor
We made port under steady drizzle. I helped restock the galley and listened to Max argue with Lena about where
salmon really go to spawn. She won, as usual. That night I slept better than I had in weeks, rocked by the dock and
the knowledge that the journey wasn’t close to over.
Log & Lessons
Nautical miles since Juneau: ≈ 350
New bruises: 2 (winch elbow & coffee spill incident)
Glacier calvings witnessed: 3
Barroom misidentifications: 1
Haiku by Chef Lena: 3 (plus one limerick, unprintable)
Unfinished plays started: 2
Sleep achieved: debatable
One of the photographers asked me, “Do you ever forget you’re on a boat?”
I said, “Only when I’m writing—or when I’m finally starting to feel like I belong here.”
The Ardent pulls out tomorrow for Icy Bay, maybe Cordova. There’s a rumor we’ll pass Elfin Cove. I hope it’s true. It
sounds like a place where you might remember what you forgot to become.
Until the salt recedes,
- E.A.W.
The Passage
Episode 4 — Yakutat ⟶ Icy Bay ⟶ Elfin Cove ⟶ Cordova
Late Summer 1988
A deckhand’s diary by Everett Anderson Williams
Prologue | The Fables of Everett Anderson Williams
Wildly Unverified Accounts from a Semi-Reliable Narrator – Himself
Let’s admit something upfront: memory, like weather, shifts with pressure. What follows may be wholly factual, or merely
well-rehearsed. Truth in Alaska, like theatre, is less about accuracy than impact. And if I embellish? It’s only because I didn’t
know then that anyone might care to listen now. I’ve sailed a thousand miles on the Ardent, but the greater distance has
been internal. Somewhere between Sitka and Cordova, a question began echoing louder than the boat’s engines: What does
any of this mean? Not just the whales and ice and storms, but my presence in the middle of it all—this accidental odyssey,
cast in a part I never auditioned for.
So this chapter isn’t just a log. It’s a fable, the kind you tell yourself when the shore grows distant and the stars won’t shut up.
But you can’t stop listening.
Day 11 | Yakutat to Icy Bay — “The Drift”
0430 – Departure
Mist hung over the bay like secondhand doubt. Captain Lou, nursing a tin mug and some unspoken history, said only, “Dead
calm. Could go either way.” I took that as both weather report and philosophy.
1100 – Brash Ice, Icy Bay
The bergs here were smaller, fractured like forgotten dialogue. Lena called it “intermission ice,” and we drifted among them
in slow circles, letting the guests take photos and breathe in whatever hush the sea allows.
Max claimed he saw a spirit bear onshore. I didn’t see it, but I believed him—because some stories deserve belief more than
scrutiny.
Interlude | How I Got Here (Part Two)
There was a moment in college when I almost left theatre behind. I’d been cast in a play called “No Exit,” and it felt like truth
—not the text, but the experience: windowless, stifling, recursive. I remember thinking: If I have to keep pretending in rooms
like this, I’ll vanish.
So I took a job painting sets for a touring maritime exhibit. One day, I found myself building a miniature dock for a diorama
of Dutch Harbor. I stared at that tiny ocean and thought, why not the real thing?
The leap from footlights to tide charts isn’t far. Both are ruled by cues and timing. Both reward presence. Both demand that
you pay attention or risk going overboard. And both, if done right, teach you who you are when no one’s watching.
Day 12 | Elfin Cove — “The Monologue”
1500 – Shore Leave
Elfin Cove is barely a whisper between Sitka spruce and tide. A boardwalk replaces Main Street; ravens outnumber people. I
walked it alone, notebook in one hand, a halibut sandwich in the other.
Then, out of nowhere, I met an old fisherman named Abel who recited King Lear like it was scripture. He said the sea helped
him remember lines he'd forgotten when sober. He also claimed he once ferried Edward Albee from Tenakee to Hoonah,
but no one could verify that.
We talked for hours, and at the end he said, “You’re not here to fish or crew. You’re here to remember.”
I didn’t ask what.
Day 13 | Cordova — “Finale in Fog Minor”
0600 – Entering Orca Inlet
Fog hugged the water so close we could’ve kissed it. Marlene steered while Lou charted the narrows. I stood watch, invisible
even to myself. Cordova appeared like a stage set lit from behind—a false town or a real dream.
1400 – Docked at Cordova
Final guest changeover. Lena baked gingerbread for the send-off. The new crowd was louder, brasher, wearing cologne that
made the boat sneeze. I knew I wouldn’t stay aboard. Something had shifted in me—or maybe just settled.
Lou gave me a sideways look and said, “You thinking about jumping ship?”
I nodded.
“Well,” he said, “then you’d better write the next act.”
Log & Lessons
Miles since Yakutat: ≈ 260
Spirit bears spotted: 1 (allegedly)
Shakespeare quotes from strangers: 6
Stories believed: all of them
Goodbyes muttered: too many
Answers found: none
Better questions: a few
Final Entry | On Leaving the Ardent
When I stepped off the Ardent in Cordova, it wasn’t triumph or heartbreak—it was curtain. The kind of ending that feels earned, not resolved.
I still had salt in my veins, but I also had something else: a story. Not finished, but fermenting. The way good ones do. They say a boat stays with you
long after you leave it. So do roles. So do mistakes. So do friends with three legs and cooks who speak in haiku.
I may return. The Ardent sails without me for now, but I left a little piece of myself coiled in her lines. Maybe the next tide will bring me back.
Until then, I’ll write it all down—every wildly unverifiable account.
- Everett Anderson Williams
The Passage
Wildly Unverified Accounts from a Semi-Reliable Narrator – Himself
Episode 5 — West of the Curtain
Aboard the M/V Harland
Late Autumn, 1988
A deckhand’s diary by Everett Anderson WilliamsPrologue | Why Attu?
Two months since I stepped off the Ardent in Cordova, salt still in my boots and too many goodbyes coiled in my chest. I told myself I’d stick to land for a while—try a stagehand job in Anchorage, finish a draft of Sawdust Hearts/Bleeding Through the Fog, maybe finally call my father back.Instead, I found myself loading crates onto a low-slung supply freighter bound for the far western Aleutians.
The destination: Attu.
A name that doesn’t show up on most maps, but whose silence echoes loud if you know your history.Attu was the site of one of World War II’s most brutal and least-known battles. The only ground combat fought on U.S. soil. Wind-scoured, fog-wrapped, nearly forgotten. And that was the pull.I wasn’t chasing ghosts. Not exactly.
But I wanted to walk a place where the world cracked open and never quite closed again.
And maybe—just maybe—figure out how to write something true about it.Day 1 | Dutch Harbor Departure
0530 – Underway
Boarded the M/V Harland in a sleetstorm, wearing a borrowed parka and the wrong gloves. The crew consisted of:Captain Rhys – Welsh, taciturn, reads Nabokov at the helm.First Mate Sal – chain-smokes and fixes everything with duct tape and a sigh.Cook Milo – former line chef in Barrow. Thinks seasoning is a liberal conspiracy.Deckhands – two. One named Joey. The other doesn’t speak but plays harmonica like a man exorcising his past.
We carry fuel drums, dry goods, medical kits, and a crate labeled SURPLUS / VINTAGE – HANDLE W/ CARE.
I didn’t ask.Interlude | A Scribbled Scene
I started jotting lines again.
Not from the world around me, but from a character I can’t shake:
a young private left behind on Attu after the war ended—
kept alive by habit, birdsong, and the memory of a girl whose name he mispronounced.It’s not a proper play yet. Just side notes scrawled in the margins of Grunge America’s fourth act.
But I think he’s waiting for me out there, somewhere beyond the fog.
So I write to meet him.Day 3 | Adak to Kiska
1000 – Open Water
Swells rise like bad decisions. My bunk feels like a confession booth at sea. Joey claims he saw a submarine off the port bow. Captain Rhys muttered, “Some memories don’t sink.”1700 – Kiska
We anchored offshore. The wind howled through what’s left of the Japanese submarine base—overgrown, rusted, and riddled with Arctic foxes. I hiked partway up the ridge, stepping past old batteries and beer cans from men who came after the war to remember, and stayed just long enough to forget again.Day 4 | Approaching Attu
0400 – Fog Like a Curtain
The radar is our only vision. A wall of vapor so dense it could hide whole empires.
Captain Rhys says Attu only shows itself to the stubborn or the stupid.
I volunteer as both.0800 – Landfall (Barely)
There’s no dock. Just a rusted remnant of pier and a faint trail that disappears into moss and mist.I stepped onto Attu’s shore like entering a hush that had lasted forty-five years.
Nothing moved.
The silence was a sound.I stood at the top of a ridge overlooking Massacre Bay, where the wind made no promises and the earth kept every secret.
I pulled out my notebook and wrote:
This is not a battlefield. It’s a stage, long closed, still echoing the lines.
I don’t know if that makes it sacred or forgotten.And then a thought rose, uninvited but firm:Should I even dare to write about a war I was not a part of?
Should this all be left behind as a warning, or a tragedy?
What right do I have to turn others’ suffering into scenes, or shape memory into metaphor?There were no answers on that ridge.
Only wind.
Only weight.Log & Lessons
Nautical miles traveled: ~1,400
WWII relics encountered: countless
War ghosts confronted: 1 (possibly myself)
Play scenes drafted: 3
Harmonicas heard at sunset: 2
Questions answered: 0
Questions asked: many
Rain: sideways, constant, personal
Final Notes | A Play on the Horizon
Back aboard the Harland, I reread my notes and realized: the soldier I’d been writing wasn’t alone.
He had a radio that never worked.
A crow that visited every morning.
And a memory of theatre back home—one performance he never got to finish.Maybe it’s a ghost story.
Maybe it’s a war play.
Maybe it’s just another wildly unverified account.But I think I’ll call it:West of the Curtain A memory play in one act and many voices.
I don’t know when it’ll be finished.
But I know it began here—
Where the fog writes the opening stage directions,
And the sea holds the last line.— E.A.W.
The Passage
Wildly Unverified Accounts from a Semi-Reliable Narrator – Himself
Episode 6 — Driftwood & Memory
Kodiak to Cordova
Early Winter, 1988
A deckhand’s diary by Everett Anderson Williams
Prologue | After Attu
Attu didn’t follow me, not exactly.
But I didn’t leave it behind either.
When the Harland turned east, my body did too—but something in my chest still faced west, like a
weathervane unwilling to yield.
We stopped in Adak for fuel, then hugged the southern coast back toward Kodiak.
I didn’t speak much.
Didn’t write much either, aside from fragments—lines I didn’t understand at the time:
The ocean remembers everything you forget to grieve.
Snow falls sideways on a war that never ended.
A stage, a rifle, a long unanswered call.
Cook Milo asked if I was working on a ghost story.
I said, “Maybe.”
He said, “They’re all ghost stories.”
Day 2 | Kodiak
0730 – Dockside
Stepped off the Harland and onto Kodiak’s cold, wet pavement. There was a coffee shop two blocks inland
where a retired crab fisherman named Cheryl served espresso with a side of local myth. She’d lost three
boats and two husbands, in that order.
She said I looked like I needed a warm drink or a new direction.
I took both.
I wrote for hours in a back booth, sketching the first act of West of the Curtain on a napkin. It starts with wind,
not dialogue. The kind of wind that carries regret across oceans.
Interlude | A Message from the Middle
In the Kodiak public library, I mailed myself a letter:
To E.A.W., wherever he ends up,
Don’t forget the silence on Attu. Don’t rush to fill it.
And if you ever rewrite history, do it with reverence—not ambition.
I haven’t decided if I’ll open it when it arrives.
Day 4 | Onboard the M/V Blue Alder
Captain Rhys found me again. Turns out The Harland wasn’t done with me—just trading cargo for company.
We were headed toward Cordova, with a load of diesel barrels, snowmobile parts, and one cage containing a
goat named Travis.
Same fog. Different ghosts.
Day 5 | At Sea
The sea here is slower. More meditative.
Fewer whales, more seabirds.
I watched a gull ride a thermal like a monologue barely holding its arc.
I think I finally understand what I’ve been doing all these weeks:
chasing fragments.
Grasping for the story between stories.
I’m not here for the war.
I’m here for what remains in the silence after it ends.
For the characters left off stage.
For the driftwood stories.
Day 6 | Cordova Arrival
1330 – Dock Ties Fast
Cordova: muddy boots, rusted trucks, and seagulls with opinions.
I stayed at a fisherman's hostel where someone played blues guitar until 2 a.m.
I dreamed of a stage set adrift on the ocean—planks held together by barnacles and hope. No audience.
No curtain. Just wind, lines whispered to the waves.
Log & Lessons
New nautical miles: ~500
Coffee cups consumed: 9
Napkins turned into scenes: 4
Goats encountered: 1
Personal ghosts: quiet (for now)
Letter to self: mailed, unopened
Next heading: uncertain
Final Notes | A Play, Maybe
West of the Curtain continues to unfold like sea charts I haven’t yet learned to read. I don’t know where it’s
going—but I know it needs to be told.
Not to dramatize suffering. But to catch its echo.
To remind us what silence can say.
Tomorrow I’ll try to find work on another vessel.
Someplace new.
Someplace quieter.
Because the salt hasn’t left me.
And the passage isn’t over.
— E.A.W.
The Passage
Episode 7 — The Sound of Returning
Cordova → Juneau → Sitka → Ketchikan
Early Winter, 1988 - A deckhand’s diary by Everett Anderson Williams
Prologue | The Ardent Returns or The Pier Where Things Begin Again
Cordova Harbor in early winter smells like rust, diesel, and frozen halibut.
I’d been killing time on borrowed boots and less borrowed thoughts—waiting for something to pull me forward again.I didn’t plan it.
I never do.And then, like a line tossed from a dream:
The M/V Ardent.Tied up at dock seven, salt-streaked and barnacle-kissed. Her running lights dim, but steady. A ship that remembers you even when you’ve forgotten yourself.I hadn’t seen her since Glacier Bay in late summer.She looked older, but so did I. And somehow more real.It was like bumping into a childhood friend after the funeral of someone you both once loved.Day 0 | Return Without Ceremony
I didn’t approach right away.Not because I was nervous, but because I wasn’t sure I was allowed to feel what I felt.I stood across the harbor road drinking a watery coffee, watching the crew offload crates of root vegetables and mail sacks. I saw Clyde—still limping, still talking to himself. A new deckhand I didn’t recognize was hosing down fish bins. No Gunner. Maybe retired. Or moved ashore.Marlene spotted me first.
Still in her orange slicker, still barking orders, still slicing through deck chaos like a blade through sea foam.
She paused mid-coil and gave me a nod that doubled as both greeting and job interview.And then:
Captain Lou, descending the wheelhouse steps like it was still July. A bit grayer. A bit slower. But unmistakable.He looked over once and nodded like we were in mid-conversation.The snow let up. The water stilled.Captain Lou didn’t ask where I’d been.
He just said:“We’re down a man. You still know how to coil a line?”I said, “Better than I know what day it is.”He grinned.Five minutes later, I was on the manifest again.Captain Lou: “Sitka run—then down to Ketchikan if the weather holds. You know the drill.”Me: “Do I ever not?”The story—whatever it had become—had circled back to page one.Same play.Different act.Day 1 | Below Deck, Above the Past
The crew bunk still smelled like cedar and diesel.
I found a pair of gloves I’d left in July. They hadn’t moved.
Neither had the ache in my ribs from where I slipped hauling a crab pot that summer.The Ardent wasn’t just a boat.She was a reminder that the world was wide and stitched together by water.
That movement could be a kind of healing.
That some stages float.Diesel and salt | Back Where I Belong, For Now
There’s a sound a boat makes when you step aboard again after time away.
It’s not the creak of the deck or the snap of the lines.
It’s subtler.
Like a sigh. Or a welcome. Or maybe your own heartbeat slowing to meet the rhythm you forgot you loved.The Ardent didn’t ask where I’d gone or what I’d learned.
She just floated there, steady as memory.And so I’m back—
Not as a lost man,
But as one who's still listening.The Passage continues.
Because home, it seems, isn’t a place.
It’s a vessel that waits.I fell asleep to the hum of the generator, lulled not by exhaustion, but belonging.We departed Cordova before dawn.
Guests aboard: six.Including an older couple from Seattle, two biology grad students from Boise, and a divorced commercial fisherman named Buck.And one unexpected spark.Interlude | The Guest with the Smile
Her name was Eliza, mid-thirties, traveling with her mother as a kind of post-divorce reset.She wore a dark green wool coat and read Joan Didion on the foredeck, hair tied up, eyes wary but curious.We met during a supply handoff in Valdez.
She handed me a thermos of coffee with a raised eyebrow and said,"You look like someone with a lot of thoughts and no one to tell them to."I said, "That’s why I became a playwright."She laughed.And for three days, we spoke in fragments—little exchanges over railing views and shared glances in the galley.A kindness of timing. Nothing expected. Everything noticed.Day 3 | Juneau
By the time we reached Juneau, snow was falling sideways.Marlene and I offloaded two pallets of dry goods.Captain Lou refueled.I ducked into a bookstore on Franklin Street and found a dog-eared copy of Death of a Salesman.I opened to the middle and scribbled a line from Grunge America in the margin:“It’s not that the dream died—it’s that no one paid the cover charge to keep it alive.”I hadn’t touched the script in weeks. But here, on this trip, something stirred.
A vision of that stage that has yet to happen, and how it will break every rule.Punk chords. Chain link fencing.The American flag, spray-painted and torn.Dialogue like drum fills.Monologues shouted over distortion pedals.People called it chaotic.Some said it was sacred.All I know is, it mattered.Maybe it still does.Day 4 | Sitka Sound
We slid into Sitka Harbor under low fog and creaking winch lines.The same town where this whole thing started for me, months ago.Eliza and I walked the shoreline after dinner, boots crunching frost and silence between us.She said she was flying home from Ketchikan, but wasn’t in a rush.That night, while the rest of the boat slept, she knocked on the galley door with two mugs of tea and a question:"What’s the play you’re not writing?"I didn’t answer.
But I kissed her.
Not because I had answers.
But because some moments deserve punctuation.Day 5 | Ketchikan Arrival
The trip ended like most voyages do: with the quiet chaos of departure.
Luggage thumped. Radios squawked. Paperwork rustled.Eliza squeezed my hand. No promises.Just an understanding.She boarded a seaplane.I stayed aboard the Ardent, helping Marlene inventory rope and gasket seals.Captain Lou tossed me an oil-stained rag and said:
“You off again? Or sticking around this time?”I looked at the dock. The mountains.
And the sea that still had more to say.“Let’s see what the next tide brings.”Log & Lessons
Miles traveled: 630Pages added to Grunge America (Redux): 12Kisses: 1Regrets: 0Coffee thermoses shared: 3Number of plays not being written: at least 2Number of plays becoming something else entirely: maybe 1Stage directions for life: TBD
Final Notes | A Stage Still Afloat
The Ardent has never felt more like home.
Not because it’s comfortable.
But because it keeps you honest. Keeps you moving.
Eliza left with a line of mine in her notebook.
I stayed with one of hers in my mind:
“What’s the play you’re not writing?”
Maybe I’ll find it.
Or maybe I’ll live it.
Either way, the passage continues.
— E.A.W. 
The Passage
Episode 8 — Northbound Echoes
Ketchikan → Prince Rupert → Beyond
Early Spring, 1989
A deckhand’s diary by Everett Anderson Williams
Prologue | The Next Tide
I stayed with The Ardent, stayed with Marlene’s steady sarcasm, stayed with Lou’s gruff silences and moments of questionably factual stories. Stayed with the sea.
And yet, something had shifted.
The pages I’d scribbled for Turn of a new decade rattled in my duffel like loose bolts.
Every line demanded more.
Maybe that’s what Eliza left me:
permission to begin.
Day 1 | South from Ketchikan
Guests disembarked, new ones boarded. Families with too much luggage, a fisherman’s widow with none.
Marlene caught me staring at the dock where Eliza’s plane had gone.
Marlene: “You look like someone left the stove on.”
Me: “Maybe I did.”
Marlene: “Then best to keep moving. Sea doesn’t wait.”
By noon, we were threading Tongass Narrows, the gulls heckling us like unpaid critics.
Day 2 | Quiet Miles
The weather turned, drizzle soft as stage fog. I found myself back in the galley during downtime, washing mugs, humming under my breath.
Not sea shanties.
Not hymns.
Journey.
“Don’t Stop Believin’,” slow and steady against the clink of enamel cups. I followed the beat the way I’d told the bar crowd to weeks earlier.
Words rose with it. Dialogue fragments. Half-monologues. Cindy, Jace, the unnamed boy in flannel—they came alive again, clearer than before.
For the first time, I thought: this might actually work.
Day 3 | Prince Rupert
We tied up for supplies. I walked into town, carrying a dog-eared copy of the draft.
At a café by the tracks, I ordered weak coffee and mailed a packet south. Not to an agent, not to a theatre. To Eliza.
Inside the envelope:
The new draft.
A single note: “You asked what I wasn’t writing. Here it is. Don’t let me off easy.”
The clerk weighed it, stamped it, tossed it in the bin.
It felt like a curtain had risen, even if no one was watching.
Day 4 | Back Aboard
That night in the crew mess, Lou grunted over the charts.
Lou: “So what now, Williams? You staying with the sea, or chasing words?”
Me: “Maybe both.”
Marlene: “God help us. He’ll be writing stage directions for the bilge pumps.”
Laughter. Small, but real.
Log & Lessons
Miles logged since Ketchikan: 220
Draft pages mailed: 1 packet, fragile contents
Cups washed: ~40
Songs hummed: 3 (all out of tune)
Moments of doubt: too many
Moments of resolve: one, but it mattered
Final Notes | Northbound Echoes
I don’t know if Eliza will ever write back.
I don’t know if Turn of a new decade will ever leave the page.
But I know this:
Every tide carries you somewhere new.
Every voice—whether from a jukebox, a crewmate, or your own stubborn pen—can be a compass.
And maybe the only way forward is to keep writing, keep sailing, and keep believing.
The passage continues.
Northbound. Southbound. Always somewhere.
— E.A.W.
The Passage: Episode 8½ — Notes from the Galley
Interior: Train galley. Late. The car hums like a distant dream. Everett wipes down a cutting board, stacks steel bowls with a little too much precision. Outside, snow blurs the landscape. Whitehorse is still ahead. He hums the “Porkchop Express” theme quietly under his breath. Then, his voice—steady, wry, tired—comes in like a remembered journal entry.
EVERETT (V.O.):
There’s a kind of loneliness to scrubbing dishes in motion.
You move forward, but your mind drifts back.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about playwrights.
beat
Not the gods, not the geniuses. The rest of us. The ones dragging words across the page like nets behind boats, hoping something worth keeping shows up.
I wrote a list once, on a napkin in Prince Rupert.
It started like this:
(He recites from memory. Dry. Knowing.)
1. Self-centered narcissists.
2. Studied at a school with a name but never studied people.
3. Get stuck on themes like gum on a boot.
4. Write about places they’ve only read about.
5. Think every play needs a love triangle or a gun.
6. Mistake “clever” for “true.”
7. Use the stage to preach instead of ask.
8. Every character is just them in a hat.
9. Cast for girlfriends.
10. Did I mention narcissists?
He chuckles, gently shaking his head.
It’s not fair, maybe.
But I’ve met most of them.
Hell, I’ve been most of them—on the wrong nights.
beat
But there’s another list. One I don’t talk about as much.
Wrote this one in a hotel room in Haines, right after Cindy’s monologue clicked.
(This time his tone softens, almost reverent.)
1. They listen. Not just to dialogue, but to silence.
2. They’ve been broke, and they know how to make do.
3. They make a town feel like a living character.
4. They trust a pause.
5. They rewrite like they’re digging for water.
6. They steal from life without leaving bruises.
7. They’re not afraid of being disliked.
8. They can make you laugh while your chest aches.
9. They write people, not arguments.
10. They tell the truth—the deep, messy, recognizable kind.
Everett sets down the sponge. Wipes his hands slowly.
EVERETT (V.O.):
I think this play started because I got tired of pretending I wasn’t scared of being ordinary.
Because even if no one reads it...
Even if Eliza never writes back...
At least I said what I meant.
He reaches into his duffel, pulls out another dog-eared copy of the play. Holds it like something breakable. Then places it into an envelope already addressed.
EVERETT (V.O.):
One more copy into the world.
Another paper boat in the river.
Fade out on the train disappearing into the frozen dark, lights dimmed, snow chasing the rails.
Here's Episode 9 of The Passage, titled “North by Northwest”, as he trades tides for train tracks, maritime memories for the steady hum of wheels through boreal wilderness. He doesn’t know why he’s going to Whitehorse—only that something’s pulling him there. Maybe it’s the rhythm. Maybe it’s the silence. Maybe it’s the echo of something he hasn’t written yet.
The Passage
Episode 9 — North by Northwest
Prince Rupert → Whitehorse
Late Winter, 1989
A deckhand’s diary (or train jockey) by Everett Anderson Williams
Prologue | Goodbye to Salt
There was no ceremony when I left the Ardent.
No final toast. No dramatic line.
Just a shared nod with Marlene as she coiled line for the next voyage.
Captain Lou didn’t even turn from the helm.
I disembarked in Prince Rupert with a duffel, a half-finished play, and the smell of diesel still folded in my jacket.
I’d been on the water for months.
I loved it.
But the tide inside me had changed.
It wasn’t wanderlust exactly.
It was more like a question I didn’t yet know how to ask.
So I turned inland.
Day 2 | Railways & Rituals
I found work washing dishes in the narrow galley car of a Canadian National railliner—cutlery clattering like jazz as the Rockies unspooled outside.
My bunk was thin.
My pay was thinner.
But the movement felt familiar.
The head cook, Garvey, had two rules:
Never burn the bacon.
Always hum something while drying.
So I hummed.
Mostly movie themes.
Sometimes fragments of half-written monologues.
And more than once, the Porkchop Express theme from Big Trouble in Little China—that synthy, off-kilter anthem of ridiculous swagger and unexpected heroism.
Garvey asked if I was a musician.
I said, “Something like that.”
Day 3 | Somewhere Near Fraser Lake
The pine trees blurred by like forgotten names.
I started writing again.
Not Grunge America (Redux).
Something else.
A character named Jasper, riding westward to escape a memory that keeps showing up in bus stations and shoe stores.
I don’t know who Jasper is yet.
But he talks like a man who’s been underwater too long.
Maybe he’s me.
Maybe not.
I wrote the first scene on the back of an old Canadian Tire receipt:
Lights up on a train. Empty except for a man holding a photo. He’s humming, not a song, but the echo of one. He looks out the window and says: “Even the trees are running from something.”
Day 4 | Whitehorse Arrival
We rolled into Whitehorse under a sky that looked brushed in graphite.
Snow on the rails.
Coffee on my sleeve.
Mind racing.
I stepped off the train and didn’t know where to go.
So I didn’t.
I just stood there.
Breathing.
A woman passed me on the platform and said, “You look like someone who followed an idea too far and got exactly where he needed to be.”
I said, “You might be right.”
She smiled.
Walked on.
Interlude | The Northern Quiet
I found a bunk at a small hostel above a hardware store.
In the common room, someone was playing Leonard Cohen through dusty speakers.
I pulled out my notebook and jotted a single sentence:
The story isn’t what happens. It’s what lingers after.
That night, I dreamed I was performing on a frozen lake.
No stage. No lights.
Just an audience of elk.
And I didn’t know my lines.
But no one seemed to mind.
Log & Lessons
Dishes washed: ~350
Tips received: 2 (both in the form of songs)
Train miles traveled: ~950
New characters invented: 1
Plays completed: 0
Questions answered: none
But something feels closer.
Final Notes | The Road Still Unfolds
Whitehorse isn’t where this ends.
But it might be where something begins.
There’s talk of a road north—to Dawson, to Inuvik.
Or maybe I’ll find a theater here.
A pub stage.
A chorus line of frostbitten monologues.
For now, I’m staying still.
Not because I’m tired,
But because sometimes, the play begins only when the curtain doesn’t rise.
The passage continues.
Even if I’ve traded waves for wheels.
— E.A.W.
This is a pivotal moment in The Passage, when Everett Anderson Williams stops drifting and feels. When the sea of movement he’s been floating on pulls him inward, and what he finds there is the first raw seed of Grunge America—not yet fully formed, but trembling with urgency, aching to be written.
Here is:
The Passage
Episode 10 — Tuesday’s Gone
Whitehorse, Yukon Territory
Late Winter, 1989
A deckhand’s diary by Everett Anderson Williams
Prologue | What Breaks Through
It wasn’t dramatic.
It wasn’t theatrical.
There were no voices from God, no signs in the sky, no muse in red lipstick.
Just a small room.
Peeling wallpaper.
An old tape deck on the windowsill.
And a song.
I was supposed to be looking for work.
Maybe find a stagehand gig or something with the CBC.
But the cold had pushed me inward.
And a man can only spend so many nights writing bad monologues before he cracks open or curls up.
So I laid back on the bed.
Put on a cassette someone left behind in the hostel swap bin.
And as “Tuesday’s Gone” came on, slow and sad and sure, something… loosened.
Interlude | The Moment Before the Word
There was this line in the song:
"Train roll on, many miles from my home…"
And suddenly I wasn’t in Whitehorse anymore.
I was in every bus station I’d ever passed through.
Every loading dock I’d slept on.
Every theater that closed too soon.
Every friend I’d left behind.
Every version of myself I thought I’d outgrown.
I felt like a kid again.
Not in the good way.
In the aching, “what-the-hell-happened-to-us?” kind of way.
And I cried.
Quietly.
No sobbing. No howling.
Just a steady, necessary release. Like fog lifting.
The Scribbled Beginning
I pulled out my notebook.
The one I always said was for "ideas," but mostly used to sketch half-finished maps and draw seagulls.
I wrote:
ACT I, Scene I — A boy with no name in a flannel shirt stares into a broken TV in the corner of a laundromat. A sign reads: “No soap, no hope.” Outside, someone is spray-painting the word DREAM across the wall of a pawn shop.
Soundtrack: Mudhoney, early.
Lighting: fluorescent and unforgiving.
Tone: raw, unfiltered, American as a wound.
And it kept coming.
Characters, places, rhythms.
Cindy with her bleached hair and sticker-covered guitar.
Jace, the ex-Marine who now teaches poetry and sells pills.
The manager of the 24-hour convenience store who swears he's seen angels on the roof during lightning storms.
Every line was a question we forgot to ask in the ‘80s.
Every beat a reminder that change doesn't come like a parade—it comes like a cough in the middle of a love song.
Log & Lessons
Hours since I pressed play: ~6
Pages written: 17
Title circled in thick black ink: GRUNGE AMERICA
Notes in the margin: “Tone = rage + tenderness + confusion”
Number of plays I’ll write after this: Who knows
Number of selves I had to lose to write it: at least two
Is Tuesday gone? Maybe. But something stayed.
Final Notes | A Play, A Prayer
It’s not done.
Not even close.
But something opened.
I didn’t try to write about America.
I tried to write about me, and I ended up with all of it.
The flannel. The fear. The fire inside people who’ve been told they’re too angry or too loud or too off-key.
And I’ll be damned if that’s not America in 1990.
A scream under the static.
A heart still beating under piles of VHS tapes and broken walkmans.
Grunge America isn’t a title.
It’s a dare.
And I just took it.
— E.A.W.