Grandpa Dean's Wishing Well Stories

"The Wish-Granting Mermaid"

Charleston Lowcountry -
September 21, 1989

Lee and Walter were lifelong best friends. They grew up in Goose Creek until Walter’s parents moved to Mount Pleasant. Walter went to Wando High School there, and when Lee graduated from Goose Creek High, they both played football for the Citadel.

Walter was half-Gullah. Lee was half-Filipino. Walter was a wide receiver. Lee was quarterback. By senior year at the military college, they were known as the Half-Browns and broke every known school record on the football field.

After college, Lee married his high school sweetheart Wendy. And because his dad was retired navy, he followed the same path as his old man. He and Wendy had four sons, Ederik, Aliseo, Avery and Aiden. After ten years as a submariner, the lieutenant and his family left King’s Bay and returned to Charleston. There, Lee joined the naval reserve, but prepared himself for a civilian life.

Lee did not like to think that he was forced into shrimping, but his uncle had died and left his business to him. Lee renamed the two boats Wendy Bird, after his wife, and Lainey Bug, after his brand new baby daughter. He also owned part of a well-known retail fish market on Shem Creek.

His aunt and cousins ran that.

When Walter left college, he played for the Atlanta Falcons. He and his wife Lynn had two sons, Christopher and Tyler, and they lived in Atlanta until a severe injury at the end of his ninth season ended Walter’s pro football career. Although she never said it out loud, Lynn believed it was because of the Peterson family curse of bad luck. In January of 1989, after months of recovery, Walter moved his family back to Charleston to start over.

Lee asked Walter to be his partner in the new shrimping business, and with some of his pro-football money, Walter purchased a shrimp boat and named her Lynnie.

All was going well until that September, when Hurricane Hugo, a category four storm, was only hours away from coming ashore. They remembered Hurricane David back in 1979. Charleston survived that one just fine. Surely, Hugo couldn’t be much worse, they thought. It was much, much worse, and even with both Interstate lanes opened to the cars leaving Charleston, traffic moved at a crawl from the city.

Lee and Walter had put off making preparations for their business. The safety of their families was more important. Once Wendy and Lynnie were on their way to Atlanta, the partners of Lee-Wal Seafood Enterprises began getting docks, equipment, and buildings secured before the storm hit. They would move their vessels south to avoid Hugo’s northeast face and storm surge estimated to be 25 feet.

Walter and Gideon, his Gullah grandfather, were to pilot the Lynnie. Lee and Tom Willis were to take the Wendy Bird as Paul Cummings and his son took the Lainey Bug. Leading the way to the Rockville docks west of Kiawah, they bypassed the Intercoastal a parallel run south along the coast.

The three boats managed the rougher waters and wind as they entered Charleston Harbor. Marine radio broadcasts from Jacksonville warned that Hugo was coming in faster, and just as she hit the Atlantic, Lynnie began to lose power.

Her onboard generator smoked burning oil as both bilge pumps and the motor failed. When the vessel began to drift north and then back to the northeast, Walter lost sight of Wendy Bird and Lainey Bug. The marine radio failed. Water and wind moved Lynnie into a piling near Fort Sumter and cut a large gash in the starboard hull. As waves smashed over the wheelhouse, Lynnie took on water. She soon broke loose from her natural mooring against the fort and spun away from it.

A gust of wind blew Gideon overboard just as a large wave knocked Walter. As he descended, Walter wondered about his grandfather. For a moment, he saw a bright light and the figure of a woman. He wondered if his time had come.

Things were better for Lee and the others.

Hugo had forced them into the Ashley River. Lee was able to guide Wendy Bird and Lady Bug through the drawbridge and toward the riverside home of his old Citadel professor, Dr. Ford. They ran the vessels aground in a nearby marsh. With lines of rope woven for an emergency, they secured the boats to two angel oaks.

“Where are Walter and Gideon?” Lee shouted to Tom and Paul as they finished. “The Lynnie should have been forced into the Ashley River and passing us by now.”

Paul touched Lee’s arm. “We lost contact with Walter as soon as we hit the harbor,” he said. “We need shelter—”

As their sons looked on, the two men held Lee to keep him from going back into the storm. There wasn’t enough time for a rescue, not then. They would have to wait until the hurricane moved inland.

When the squalls brought winds less than eighty knots, Lee borrowed Dr. Ford’s twenty-six foot sea craft boat and headed toward the harbor. He could smell pine sap from all the trees Hugo had snapped like twigs, the first sign of the devastation he’d find in the morning.

The fast-moving spiral clouds above made a gap wide enough for stars and a bright moon to shine through. It was an eerie feeling. The river was choppy and the storm surge had brought in saltwater. Lee turned on his spotlight and pointed it forward. After only moments, Lee couldn’t believe his eyes.

The Lynnie was aground, stuck in four feet of water on Duck Island. The vessel had broken apart. Walter and Gideon, standing in water up to their knees, waved and yelled as Lee approached. Lee moved the bow of his craft close enough for Walter and Gideon to climb. They made the transfer safely and sat in silence as Lee radioed and took them back to Dr. Ford’s. After securing the smaller rescue craft, Lee, Walter and Gideon checked the lines on the shrimp boats, both closer to the house now that the river was higher.

They were fine, but Lee could care less about the boats. Inside the professor’s house, Lee hugged his best friend and shook hands with old Gideon. There were tears of joy, laughter, hugs, apologies and all the wonderful emotions of just being alive. There were also stories to tell in the candlelight, but Lee and Walter and Gideon waited for the others to go to sleep in their guest rooms.

Gideon was too tired to do much of anything but sip whiskey. Walter, however, could not stop talking about a wish-granting mermaid. “Granddad, tell him, tell Lee how we got here—you saw her too. I know you did.”

Saying nothing, Gideon only nodded.

Lee laughed. “I think you swallowed too much ocean, Walter,” he said. “Here, drink some more fresh water.”

“No, I’m not that dehydrated,” said Walter, drinking anyway. “We were pinned against the seawall of Sumter. We were knocked from the boat and fell into the water. I swear, a mermaid at the bottom told me to make a wish, and when I did, we were waving you down on Duck Island. It’s true, we did make—wishes—”

Lee no longer had to argue with Walter. He was fast asleep with an unfinished glass of filtered water on his chest. Removing it, Lee looked at Gideon and asked, “Now, what really happened out there?”

Finishing his whiskey, Gideon said, “Is the boy asleep?”

“Yes, sir,” said Lee.

“Well, he won’t remember any part of this tomorrow, so don’t bring it up to him again, hear?” said Gideon. “Lee, it’s true what he said. I saw a mermaid and made a wish, which was different than the one I knew my Walter would wish for. I know my grandson. I knew he’d wish for my safety without thinking of his own. I knew he’d be too concerned for me to remember you or his wife and kids. So I wished for clarity of mind to make three proper wishes, and that pretty little mermaid shook her head that I could. I wished for you to find us alive on Duck Island and then wished for Walter to forget he ever saw a mermaid.”

Lee laughed. “Gideon, you have the best stories, but you know I can’t believe that tall tale—I’m too old.”

“Oh, I know that, my boy,” said Gideon. “And so…”

“And so what?”

“So that’s why I made that third wish.”

“Which was?”

“To be able to convince you that we saw what we did.”

“How are you going to do that?” asked Lee.

“When I tell you something that you’ve never told another soul,” said the old man. “Your big secret.”

Laughing, Lee said, “I haven’t even told my wife that secret—Walter sure doesn’t know it.”

“Now you’ll know that we saw what we saw,” said Gideon. “You wanted to marry your wife the first time you ever saw her, so you prayed every night until you did. Took about thirteen years,” added Gideon, rising. “Well, thank you for the rescue and don’t worry, I won’t tell your secret.”

Shaking his head, Lee said, “How did—”

“Don’t matter when you won’t remember, either.”

“Ah, Gideon, why not?”

“Because you fools will somehow end up going out there to look for her first thing in the morning,” said Gideon, waving goodnight as he headed for Dr. Ford’s guest room.

Excited as he was, Lee was soon asleep in his cot.

The next morning, they all sat in the breakfast nook and sipped coffee cooked over the gas grill. No one mentioned the strange events of the night before, only how lucky they all were to be safe. Well, Lee thought it was funny that he and Walter both dreamed about a mermaid swimming in the waters around Fort Sumter.

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