Captains Outrageous

by Joe R. Lansdale

  I did. I took another. It wasn’t easy swallowing them dry, but now that I had found my bed again, and was clinging to it like a raft, I couldn’t bring myself to let go and make for the bathroom.

  Frank truth of it was, I was scared blind, shitless, and paralyzed. No argument. When it comes to the baddest sonofabitch on the block, nature wins hands down every time. Well, nature and that eighteen-year-old guy I had fought.

  It wasn’t until early morning that the ship ceased to pitch. I had felt horrible all night, slept fitfully, even whimpered a bit. Leonard had whimpered too, so I felt better about it. My manhood was still intact, because he wouldn’t tell if I didn’t.

  Leonard slept while I washed up, brushed my teeth, and started for the deck. On the way up, I discovered a middle-aged woman and two children sleeping on the landing near the hatch door that led outside. The woman sat up from the pallet she had made and looked at me as I reached the door.

  “We nearly sank last night,” she said. “I thought it would be better if we were close to the lifeboats.”

  “It was scary,” I said, “but not that bad.” I was braver, now that it was all over.

  “Oh, yes it was,” she said.

  One of the children, a little girl, lifted up on an elbow. A teddy bear tumbled out of her covers. She looked about nine. She said, “Mama said fuck.”

  “Dear,” the woman said. “Ssshhhhh.”

  “I said it several times last night myself,” I said. “Some other things too.”

  The woman gave me a nervous grin. The little girl smiled. The other kid, girl or boy, I couldn’t tell way the kid was wrapped up in the covers, didn’t wake up. I went out on deck.

  It was clear now. The water was bright blue and so was the sky and the sun was a great fat wafer of burning gold. The shadow of the ship lay on the clear water like an organized coat of oil. It fled with us as we pushed onward, probably running about twenty-two knots.

  There were others on the deck, leaning against the rail like me, and there were some in lawn chairs against the wall of the deck, and there was a young couple with chairs close together, kissing, looking as if at any moment they might strip and go for broke. No one looked as if anything had been out of the ordinary last night. And truthfully, it probably had not. For a landlubber like me, a big wave seen at a distance is frightening enough, let alone knocking and swinging about a ship I’m in. For all I knew, the crew might well have found it relaxing, like a rocking chair.

  While I was standing there, looking out at the water, Big Bill came up and lit a cigar. “That was some night,” he said.

  I turned and smiled at him. He was dressed in blue jeans, a cowboy shirt with the sleeves rolled, and house shoes. His gray hair coiled and rumpled in the wind like some invisible hand wadding up stringy cotton.

  “I’ll say it was some night. I lost my lobster.”

  “Not much of a loss. Sort of ruined the honeymoon atmosphere in our cabin, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. We were just down to business when all that started. Pretty soon were just two naked bodies rolling around on the floor clutching at each other saying shit.”

  “Worse ways to go,” I said.

  “I suppose that’s true. I got upset, got dressed, came out for a look, like it would do me good to know. Waves were washing all along the deck here. Scary. I went back in and up front and outside. Waves were jumping over the deck, way up there. It was one spooky experience, I guarantee. Cigar?”

  “No thanks.”

  Leonard came on deck then. He greeted Bill, who offered him a cigar.

  “Is it Cuban?” Leonard asked.

  “Nope. Not this one.”

  Leonard took it and lit it. He said, “You know there’s a woman behind the door there, on the stair landing with two kids?”

  “Saw her when I came out,” I said.

  “Me too,” said Bill. “She was there last night when I came out for a look. I was surprised they hadn’t locked the doors. Safety seems a little scant to me.”

  “Her little girl informed me Mama had said fuck,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Leonard said, “she told me the same thing.”

  “Me too,” Big Bill said. “You know, this cruise stuff sucks. I’m excited for when we get to Mexico and dock. I want to get some land under my feet and an enchilada in my mouth, wash it down with some tequila. Me and Mama might like to dance too. You know, I was out here early to smoke, and they were pushing a covered body along the deck in a wheelchair, took it through that door over there.”

  “No shit?” Leonard asked.

  “No shit. I asked one of the crew what happened. He said an old guy died last night. Apparently the old fella had taken this cruise several times, thought he’d like to do it one last time, and last time it was.”

  “I can’t believe anybody does this on purpose twice,” Leonard said.

  “He croaked in all that high seas business,” Bill said. “My guess is it scared him to death. They got him in a meat locker or something down below.”

  “I can see it now,” Leonard said. “A sheet-covered corpse in a wheelchair in the food freezer with our dinner lobster and a bag of green peas in his lap.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t the rough seas killed him,” I said. “Maybe it was the food.”

  On that note, we went to eat breakfast in the buffet dining area.

  * * *

  Later in the day we shot skeet off the back of the ship. If there’s one thing I can do it’s hit a target with almost any kind of long gun. Leonard did fair, but I was really on, and me and Leonard got to betting with Big Bill and this other guy, a Yankee named Dave who looked to be about sixty and turned out to be my and Leonard’s age, late forties.

  I made about ten dollars off the deal, and Leonard made five. We used our gains to buy drinks for all of us in the bar. I was the only one not drinking liquor. We sat and drank and talked for a while. It wasn’t anything special, just talk. Bill and the Yankee were all right if you didn’t have to see them on a daily basis. Then again, there’s days I feel that way about all Yankees, but I promise I’m trying to get over it.

  Later in the day Leonard and I walked around the ship, bored to death. Finally we holed up in our cabin and read. I read from a good Larry McMurtry book about the size of a cement block. Leonard read from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and laughed out loud a lot.

  We had dinner in the buffet room that night. Leonard had made his point and didn’t care if he pissed the doorman off again or not.

  The food wasn’t any worse or any better than where we had eaten the night before, just more casual. I couldn’t help but think about that dead guy, maybe in the food locker. Did they have a morgue on board? Maybe. Surely people died on these things now and then. Perhaps more than now and then.

  We went to a bad floor show later. I had seen better high school productions. It was a tribute to rock and roll with a Filipino rock and roll band that had probably learned its material that afternoon. Little Richard would have had a heart attack, and I bet Buddy Holly was rolling over in his grave.

  The singers were so awful they hurt my feelings and their dancing was a bit more like contained stumbling to music. I noticed however that I kept my eye on one of the female dancers who wore only feathers and had big tits, and I got to thinking about what Leonard had told me, and I had to sit there and do some deep soul searching. I kept my eyes on the tits just the same. I can get over bad dancing.

  That night the sea was rough again, but not as rough as the night before. I went up once to check the night seas, and on the landing was the lady and her kids and the teddy bear. The kids seemed to think this was all great fun, but the mother had her back against the wall and she had carried a trash can out with her and she had that in her lap, puking. The teddy bear was hanging tough.

  I opened the door, but when a mist of sea washed into my face, I closed it. Wasn’t anything I wanted to see out there. I had taken to carrying a packet of Dramamine in my pocket, and I gave it to t
he lady and her kids.

  “It takes time to work,” I said, “but it does work. It won’t do anything for being scared, however. You know, you’d really be more comfortable in your cabin.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am. You’re the boss.”

  I went downstairs and to bed. About midnight I began to think the woman had the right idea. Perhaps I should get our trash can and go up and join her to be close to the lifeboats. The sea really began to pitch us.

  When morning crept up the sea still tossed but the day was bright and things seemed less frightening. About midday we came to the coast of Mexico. It was a thin strip of brown in the distance.

  The sea was bad and the ship could not go into shore, as there was no proper place for it to dock. The ship anchored and they sent out from shore what they called a tender—a small boat to haul us tourists in.

  While we were waiting on the tender, we saw the snotty doorman from the dining area. He looked at us, then stuck his hand out to Leonard.

  “I’m sorry about the other night.”

  Leonard nodded, stuck out his hand to accept the apology.

  They shook. No one offered to shake my hand. I felt kind of left out.

  The guy said, “Going ashore, huh?”

  “Oh yeah,” Leonard said. “What time do we need to come back?”

  The man paused as if remembering.

  “Four-thirty.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  “Yeah. Well. Have a good time.”

  “Sure.”

  The guy went down the corridor.

  I said, “He’s all right, I guess.”

  “No, he’s still an asshole.”

  I had been to Mexico many times, but never this spot, so I was reasonably interested in going ashore. Besides, I was ready to do anything to get off the ship, and I thought maybe Leonard and I might get a good meal in a restaurant or café. We went to the purser’s desk, signed up for a tour to some Mayan ruins called Tulum, then got in the departure line.

  The tender tossed up alongside the ship and we had to walk out to the side of it on a rickety collapsible dock and try to jump on board when it wasn’t leaping too high or too low on the waves. A woman nearly caught her leg between the boat and the ship but pulled it back just in time to the delighted screams and yells of those on our little platform and those who had already boarded the tender.

  More screams and sighs came when a kid, eight or nine, tore lose from his parents and leaped when the tender went down and landed on deck with a thud and got up laughing. When his mom and dad got on board the tender they promptly whipped his ass to the delight of us all.

  An elderly man vomited over the side and a young woman I had my eye on lost her straw hat to the wind. It hit the ocean, the waves leaped on it, and it was gone. I could have jumped in the water to save it so I could be her knight in shining armor and maybe get laid.

  I balanced the idea.

  Big waves.

  Pussy.

  Big waves.

  Pussy.

  Naw. Waves too big. Pussy uncertain. She might just thank me. And the idea of drowning with a woman’s straw hat in my hand didn’t appeal to me.

  One thing, though, she didn’t have big tits. I’d have to tell Leonard that later as an example of my maturity. I wouldn’t mention the dancer from last night and what I had thought about her.

  On board, Leonard and I seated ourselves next to Big Bill and his wife. We were then borne by a chugging motor and churning waves toward shore, tailed by black diesel smoke.

  There were lots of folks throwing up over the side and one idiot thought a log floating in the water was a whale and started screaming about it. When the log bumped against the boat he shut up and looked straight ahead like maybe he had spotted an important smoke signal in the distance that only he could translate.

  Our tender pilot seemed oblivious to it all. Logs. Whales. He didn’t give a shit. He was probably more concerned about capsizing. Two guys with blankets and trinkets wandered about trying to sell them to us. No bites from anyone, but that didn’t stop them from making the rounds several times, the prices dropping dramatically with each tour.

  I looked back at our ship. A real cruise ship was anchored not far from it. It looked twice as big as the Titanic. Our ship looked like some kind of fishing lure next to it.

  I wondered if that poor woman and her children on the landing were coming ashore with their trash can on the next tender. I wondered why I had ever thought this would be fun.

  I wondered what Brett was doing right now. I wondered if she wondered what I was doing. I wondered if Tillie was making big bucks pulling the train in Tyler. I wondered about that poor girl in the hospital with her face stomped in.

  Hell, I didn’t have it so bad.

  10

  IT WAS A SHORT ROUGH TRIP in high seas but we finally edged alongside the dock and got off to the sound of one woman praying.

  The two guys with the blankets got off too and walked alongside us. They hadn’t even noticed the pitch of the sea. You would have thought they had been on a rocking horse. The price for their goods, which was in American dollars, continued to drop dramatically as we walked.

  Still, no bites from us or anybody. Their wares were damn near free by the time we stepped off the dock onto land. They went away with their stuff, dissolved into the crowd as if they had never been.

  Tough way to make a buck.

  It felt funny standing on solid land after being at sea for a couple of days. Funny, but good.

  Leonard and I walked along looking at people and sights like the tourists we were. We stopped in a cantina and had some food. When we got up to leave, I saw the woman from the boat who had lost her hat. She had her dark hair tied back and was tall and quite lovely in white shorts and a blue halter top, had one of those Audrey Hepburn necks.

  On the way out I put on my best smile as we walked by her table, said, “I saw what happened to your hat.”

  A string of hair had fallen out of her ’do and across her forehead. She looked up at me with dark sensitive eyes, said in a voice that even in Brooklyn would make you wince, “No shit. Who didn’t?”

  Guess she wasn’t looking for love.

  We went out and along the boardwalk by the sea. I had sort of hoped, foolishly, of course, that Leonard would let it slide.

  “Well sir,” he said, “it’s good to see you haven’t lost your touch with women.”

  Playa del Carmen is a fishing village on its way to becoming a resort spot, a kind of Mayan Riviera, but not quite. Underneath it all, behind and betwixt the new hotels, is still the small Mexican fishing village that it has always been.

  We did the Tulum tour. Went out there by bus. It was about an hour from Playa del Carmen. There was lots of scrubby land and little shacks with tin roofs along the way. All I could think was there wasn’t enough shade. It wasn’t like where I came from, East Texas, wooded and wet. It was like South or West Texas. Bleak. Why had this land become populated? Had someone actually thought: Hell, ain’t this great. Let’s just stop here. To me, it looked like the spot where the devil went to shit.

  Far as I’m concerned, any place you can see unobstructed by trees farther than you can throw a rock makes me nervous.

  Maybe that was it. It had had trees, then some industrious types had come along, cut down the trees, killed the wildlife, fucked what they couldn’t kill, and stayed because they were too tired to do anything else. Or a wheel came off a cart or something.

  We stopped at a couple of places where you could buy straw sombreros and the rare artwork of the area: little carved trinkets that said MEXICO on them. They were turned out in droves for all of Mexico and shipped across country by truck, but when you talked to anyone there, they were, to hear them tell it, the only ones who had these little items and they had of course all been made by hand, their very own hands. Since two or three feet away was another vendor with the same stuff, you had to wonder if they actually thought anyon
e really believed this.

  They had some pretty neat chess sets carved out of obsidian, and I looked at those but didn’t buy. I didn’t need it and didn’t want to carry it. Leonard bought a sombrero. It had a big wide band that read: MEXICO. He insisted on wearing it, even on the bus. He looked like an idiot.

  Tulum was neat. It was built by the Mayans on a cliff overlooking the Caribbean. It was a fortress city, and you could certainly see how it served its purpose. A mountain goat would have needed grappling equipment just to start up the side of the cliff next to the sea. Before time took its toll, the city must have been quite snug with this barrier at its back and the great buildings of solid stones all around to protect it.

  There was a temple called El Castillo that had two columns depicting serpents, and a real serpent, a large lizard that looked as if he might do close-ups for dinosaur movies, was crouched on the stone floor next to one of the columns. He looked at us in that slow lizard way, seemed to say, Hey Mack, you’re invading my home.

  Or maybe, like us, he was just a tourist and thought we were one of the sights.

  We spent a couple hours there looking at the ruins, thinking about how the people there must have lived, then we took the bus back.

  We still had a couple hours till four-thirty, so we went walking, looking at the sights, such as they were. Leonard needed to go to the local post office to buy a card and stamp so he could mail a little note to John. It was a real chore just getting one of the two workers there, a man and a woman, to come to the desk. They had a private conversation going and appeared in no hurry to stop it. They turned and looked at us like we were intruding, and went on with their conversation.

  “How do you say, Hey dickhead, in Spanish?” Leonard asked me.

  Finally the guy came over. Leonard made a few gestures, indicating what he wanted. The worker spoke to him in English, grinning as he did it. He then explained how to say dickhead in Spanish.