I got a knock on my door around 22:00. It was Danny. Like most of my deckhands, Danny is a runaway.

When you buy a ticket on any cruise, a good majority of the crew taking care of you are runaways. Sure, a few of them are just kids who grew up in a healthy environment with a love for the sea, but for the most part, cruise ship staff are all on board because they ran away from home and they knew a cruise ship would take them even further away from their parents than a Greyhound bus.

Danny found my ocean liner at the dock one early summer day and he tugged on my jacket. I looked down and saw a teenager’s face wearing a bruise in the shape of a grown man’s fist. Danny asked me if there was room for an able-bodied kid willing to do his best.

He’s been with me for five years now. For Danny, and all these kids, my ship is the home they never had. It’s the home they maintain themselves. Danny wants to do his best, which is why he’s addicted to pills.

“I just took some to give me more energy,” he told me. “To do a better job and make sure the passengers are having the vacation they’ll never forget. But then I started taking more and more. And the guy selling them is increasing his prices every day.”

I asked Danny to give me the name of the steward who’s dealing. Then I held Danny tight to my bosom and asked him if he can do me a favor and be strong while he lets those pills go.

“I need you, kiddo,” I said. “This boat isn’t kept afloat by me alone. Without you, we sink. I need the real you, Danny. So take two days and sweat those pills out of your system, then get back to work.”

Danny agreed. The second-to-last thing he wants to do is disappoint me. The last thing would be to disappoint the ship.

I walked Danny back to his quarters and tucked him in.

“Sing to me?” he whimpered.

He’d more than earned a lullaby. So I sat on the edge of his bed, summoned up my mom voice, and sang the one about the sea captain who fell in love with a wharf maid on a brief island stop in the pacific, and he tried to get back to her but a storm overtook him.

Once Danny was asleep, I crept from his room quiet as a mouse. Then I headed down to that pill-pushing steward’s cabin. I dragged him out into the hall making sure to make enough noise that I woke up everyone within earshot.

They all came out into the hallway, in their pajamas and robes and various states of undress. My crew. My kids. They all stood there quietly, respectfully, and they watched me lay that pill-pusher down on the carpeted hallway floor, spread-eagle on his belly. Then they watched me use the fat end of a fire extinguisher to break both that pill-pusher’s hands.