by Bob Rich
William climbed aboard and off they went in silence. They ran south for a while before Cole turned left and ran past a dockside restaurant on the left called Papa Joe’s under the Indian Key Bridge, then past Bud and Mary’s Marina. They drove through a channel and out into the ocean, where Cole turned right and headed down the shoreline for a place called Long Key. Once there, he cut the engine and poled onto a white sand flat. Remembering his conversation with his father the night before about permit, William guessed that Cole felt they’d have a decent chance to see one here.
Once there, Leo took his position on the bow with William right behind him and Cole standing vigil on the poling platform. William could feel Cole’s eyes burning holes in his back. He didn’t care; he was watching his father letting out line and taking a few practice casts. The rain was coming down heavily now, but even in the downpour and at seventy-five years of age, Leo’s casting looked graceful and effortless.
Rain pelted the surface and turned the water murky with sand and silt. Ominous thunder rolled in the background, sometimes preceded by jagged bolts of lightning. Catching a permit under these conditions, William thought, might be mission impossible.
It didn’t help that Cole was ignoring the job at hand and glaring at William from his perch.
“Hold on,” Leo said. “I think I see a spiky little tail over by that mangrove shoot.”
William wondered if it was wishful thinking by the old man, and Cole must have been feeling the same way because William was sure that no one on Cole’s boat had ever spotted a fish before he did. But Leo cast anyway and laid a crab fly down softly in the vicinity of where he said he’d seen a tail.
Holding his rod tip down, he bumped the fly once and a large oblong-shaped fish pounced all over it. He came tight immediately and arched his rod as the big permit took off across the flat, fighting to reach deeper water.
“Stick it to ’em!” Cole said, jumping down from the platform. “This is our tournament-winning fish. Nobody could’ve caught anything sooner in this weather. Keep some good pressure and don’t let him get over that edge.”
Leo played the fish perfectly and had it up to the side of the boat in about fifteen minutes. Cole grabbed the net, and William grabbed the camera. Then Cole scooped the fish into the boat on the first try and laid it on the deck for William to photograph. He held the big permit up for Leo’s inspection.
William and Cole thought the old man must be thrilled but when he turned his weather-beaten face toward them they could see, despite the rain, that he’d been crying.
“Gotta be thirty pounds, congratulations,” William said, trying to lighten the moment. But immediately Leo seemed to be seized by a sharp and sudden pain. His eyes became glassy as his fishing rod fell out of his wrinkled hands and he clutched his chest.
“Dad!” Cole and William said in unison and rushed to the bow to catch him as he collapsed.
With rain falling in his pale eyes, he looked up at their bruised faces and said in a whisper, “My boys . . . my wild, wild boys.” Their father’s eyes fixed in the distance.
• • •
Back in the little rowboat, in the middle of Loch Loon with their fishing lines in the water, William turned his head so that his young grandson wouldn’t see his tears.
“Did your dad die, Grandpa?” Kyle asked him.
“Yes, yes he did, Kyle,” he told him. “Leo Burns McKay, my father, your great-grandfather.”
“I’m so sorry, Grandpa,” the boy said. “I know what it feels like to be abandoned by your father.”
This snapped William from his sadness, and he said, “Kyle, my father never abandoned me, and neither did yours. Things happened in their lives that they couldn’t handle, but it was not us they were running from.”
“That’s what Mom says, too,” Kyle said, “but I keep thinking maybe if I’d done more around the house or worked harder in school or did better in sports . . . maybe my dad wouldn’t have left me.”
“Listen, Kyle, you’re a good person on the way to becoming a fine young man. Part of growing up is learning that some things are out of our control and they just happen. The mark of a good man or a good woman is how they deal with adversity.”
“What do you mean, Grandpa?”
“Well, things happen in people’s lives that they just can’t handle. Sometimes married people grow apart. This isn’t about you. As hard as it seems, you just have to be there for your mom and for your dad.”
“But it’s not fair!” Kyle said.
“I know how you feel, son, but no one ever said that life is fair.”
“But,” the boy said with tears welling up in his eyes, “I love my dad and I thought he loved me. We used to go places together and do things together and talk. He used to call me his best buddy. Then he just left. We didn’t talk about it at all. He just did it.”
Kyle was crying hard, now. “He’ll probably get married again and have more children . . . another best buddy, and he’ll forget all about me. It just makes me so angry that I never want to talk to him again.”
“Listen, Kyle, you will always be his firstborn and he’ll always love you,” William said. “If you don’t mind a little advice from someone who knows, don’t shut him out of your heart and don’t judge him. Just try to understand him and talk to him about how you feel. It will help you. I know. My father hurt me, and I got angry with him and lost a lot of time that we could have been friends. I’ll always regret that.”
Kyle calmed a little, sniffled twice, ran the back of his hand across his eyes, and cleared his throat. The water lapped against the boat, and something about the peaceful sound stopped his crying altogether.
After a long while, Kyle sensed William needed to get back to his story, so he said, “What happened next in the Keys, Grandpa?”
William was suddenly very proud of how the boy was able to look beyond his own hurt. He was growing up just fine.
“Well, we did all we could think of to save our dad,” William said. “Cole grabbed his VHF radio and called the coast guard, throwing the permit back in the water as they patched us through to a nine-one-one operator. We arranged to rush him to the closest dock to our location and the EMT was there as we pulled in. Their team leader checked his pulse, found none, and pronounced him dead on the scene. They transported his body to Mariners Hospital. Cole and I drove back to the dock in silence.”
CHAPTER 17
THE REQUEST
The tournament was over. They’d won it and didn’t even turn in their score sheets. The goal that the three of them had been pursuing for three days with such passion just didn’t seem important anymore.
William drove his dad’s truck over to his house and fed his dog. Like all great and loyal pets, Dorado seemed to know that something was wrong. Instead of going to his bed, the old dog went right over to Leo’s favorite chair, flopped down in front of it, and waited, watching the front door.
William called his assistant, Arnelle, told her what happened, and asked her if she could help him with arrangements. Half an hour later, Arnelle called back and said that she had spoken with the local magistrate, a woman named Mrs. Reno, who knew all about what had happened. Mrs. Reno had also said that she was a friend of William’s dad and that she had scheduled a memorial service three days from then at 3:00 p.m. at the Presbyterian church. She also wanted the two boys to meet her in her office afterward to go over the will.
“Okay,” William told her, then asked if she would overnight him some clothes and have Captain Harding standing by at the Marathon Airport so he could get out of there ASAP after the meeting.
“Yes, sir,” she said. “Anything else I can help you with?”
“Yeah,” William said, “please call my friend Marty Cooper at Motorola, and tell him that they need to waterproof their mobile phones.”
“What?” Arnelle said.
“Never mind,” William said.
• • •
A funeral in a church was a real anomaly in
the Keys, where most of the locals were cremated and their ashes scattered on the Florida Bay with a flotilla of boats carrying family, friends, and neighbors forming a waterbound congregation. Looking around the small Presbyterian church, it was obvious that many of the congregants had never been there before, except maybe for an occasional Christmas or Easter service.
Reverend Spalding presided over the service, and from his remarks, it was clear that Leo had been a stranger to him. Perhaps the world’s worst choir was backed by an organist who must have been ninety-five years old. The highlight of the service was a harmonica solo of “Amazing Grace” by a guide friend of Leo’s, Captain Jimmy Cauthorn.
Once the service was over, William headed to Mrs. Reno’s. He had been dreading it all day but knew he had to be there. At the funeral he’d seen Cole across the aisle, but the two of them had ignored each other pretty much. William arrived first and was shown to a small upstairs office above the thatch-roofed gin mill. He could hear muffled music from the jukebox in the bar below. He looked around the office. On her desk was a small plaque that read: MRS. RENO—ISLAMORADA MAGISTRATE. Behind her desk on the wall was a beautiful mount of a jumping sailfish. Certificates of all kinds and pictures crowded her walls—pictures of Mrs. Reno with anglers, with fish, with dignitaries, and several with his dad and Cole.
Cole walked in with Mrs. Reno. She took her seat behind her desk while Cole and William sat in front of her like unruly kids called into the principal’s office. Nothing was said.
Mrs. Reno stared at both of them for a moment. Eventually, she reached into a Publix Market shopping bag sitting beside her desk and pulled out a sealed bottle of Glenturret filled with ashes, with baling wire wound around the neck, fashioned into a handle.
She put the bottle on the desk right in front of the brothers and said, “There he is, just like he wanted, his ashes in a bottle of his favorite whiskey.”
Neither man said anything.
“Are you two listening?” Mrs. Reno said.
“Yes,” William said. Cole nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Excuse me, Cole, are you listening?” Mrs. Reno asked again.
“Yeah,” Cole said. “Can we just get on with it?”
“It’s your father’s last wishes, for Christ’s sake. You have somewhere important you need to be?”
This seemed to wake them both up a bit, and after a pause, Mrs. Reno began to read the letter.
“It is my last earthly wish that my cremated ashes will be scattered far offshore at Cay Sal Bank by my two sons.”
“That’s bullshit,” Cole interrupted. “The old man must have been out of his mind! There’s no way I’m takin’ this cream puff to Cay Sal.”
“The whole thing’s ridiculous,” William chimed in. “I’m leaving.”
He stood up and reached across for the bottle of ashes on Mrs. Reno’s desk.
Cole also jumped up and grabbed his wrist. “What the hell you think you’re doing?” Cole shouted at him. “You ain’t takin’ that!”
“You better let go of my wrist, pal, while you still can,” William said.
By now they were nose-to-nose, their father’s ashes between them. “Nobody cares who you are here, rich boy,” Cole growled. “You can’t buy whatever you want, and you want to know the truth?”
“I think I’ve figured out the truth, you conch bastard,” William shouted back.
“Well, the truth is, you’re nothing,” Cole said. “The only thing you got in this world is dough, and money don’t mean shit to me. And it didn’t mean shit to him, either, so you better believe me when I tell you, you’re not taking his ashes.”
“Shut up, Cole!” Mrs. Reno shouted. “Just shut up both of you. You both make me sick. Sick and sad. So the man had secrets; we’ve all got secrets. Does that mean you don’t honor his last wishes? Nobody’s perfect, nobody let alone the two of you it seems. But you could show some respect and maybe even a little compassion.”
The two men stopped glaring at each other, and Cole finally let go of William’s wrist.
“He was your father, for God’s sake. You two need to bury the hatchet, if only for a day. Do right by your dad. If you can’t do that, there’s no hope for either of you.”
Mrs. Reno picked up the bottle of ashes and put it in her desk drawer.
“Now you two go think about that. Think about what kind of men you are. His ashes will be here in the morning.”
Evening was coming by the time William got back to his dad’s place, and the crickets were already beginning to chirp. He stood looking at the old conch house for a while then loosened his tie and sat down on the front porch steps to think. Suddenly, the screen door creaked behind him, and he saw Dorado limping out onto the porch.
The old dog whimpered and William said, “Come here, boy.” Dorado lowered his head and came over to him, flopped down and put his head in his lap. William held him close.
They stayed that way for a while until William pushed Dorado back toward the house and his bed in Leo’s room. As they entered the bedroom, William flipped on the lights and was amazed at what he saw. Just as the walls of his father’s bathroom were covered with pictures, so, too, were the walls of his bedroom. But these weren’t fishing pictures—these were family pictures of them when they lived together. There were pictures of his mom and dad at their wedding, a picture of his father in his office on Wall Street, several formal pictures of them together—father, mother, and son. There was a picture of William at graduation from West Point, being confirmed at the church, and one of his dad and him fishing together in a small boat on a lake—Loch Loon.
William sat on his dad’s bed with his head on his hands. Dorado stayed by his feet, looking up at the man crying.
• • •
Meanwhile, with the sun setting through broken clouds on the Florida Bay and gentle breezes blowing out of the southwest, Cole was alone on his skiff pulling crab traps. He stood on the bow, reached over, and grabbed hold of a white marker buoy marked D&C. Hand over hand, he started retrieving the heavy line from the depths until he could pull in the wooden trap.
With the trap on his deck, he opened the lid and counted six large crabs inside. All of a sudden he stopped, almost as if someone had knocked the wind out of him.
He slumped to the floor of his skiff and slowly pulled a clipboard from his center console. On the clipboard was a tally sheet with two columns of handwritten numbers. The heading above one column read COLE and above the other, DAD.
Cole hugged the clipboard to his chest and buried his face in his arms.
• • •
The next morning William was up at dawn, dressed in fishing clothes. After putting Dorado out with food and water, he got in his dad’s truck, made one stop at Mrs. Reno’s, and then drove to the Lorelei. Deep blue stratus clouds drifted across a brilliant red sunrise as he walked straight to Cole’s slip, carrying the bottle of his father’s ashes and the rosewood dueling pistol box.
Cole had gotten up early, too. He was standing amid ten crab traps, which he had been scrubbing before putting them in storage.
Cole looked up at William carrying the bottle and asked, “How the hell’d you get that?”
“I promised Mrs. Reno I’d follow our father’s last wish, today . . . now . . . and then I’m out of here.”
“There’s a storm coming and Cay Sal Bank is more than fifty miles away,” Cole said, adding, “How’s a tenderfoot like you gonna find his way out there and back?”
“Well, that’s where you come in,” William said. “You want to help me?”
Cole thought for a minute then said, “Sure. I’ve been thinking, too, and I can’t let you do this without me.”
“Well, let’s go then,” William said, “right now. Let’s do this.”
“Okay,” Cole said, “but my boat’s way too small for this trip. Dad had a thirty-four-footer that’s parked on the other side of the harbor. I fueled it last week thinking he and I would go offshore fishing after that fat
her–son tourney. It’s an old clunker but should be able to make the trip.”
Then he asked, “What’s in the box?”
“It’s . . . it’s a surprise maybe for later,” William answered.
“Well, let’s go then,” Cole said.
CHAPTER 18
CAY SAL BANK
On the other side of the harbor the old wooden boat with KEYS DISEASE written across the transom sat bobbing in the water. Appropriate name, William thought. The two men climbed aboard, and William realized quickly that it was a spartan craft, with a fishing cockpit in the stern and one step up into a small salon with a couch. There were a few chairs and a tiny galley, and up front there was a single “stateroom” with two berths adjoining a small head.
The controls were up top on the bridge, which was accessed by climbing a six-stepped ladder. The boat also had outriggers on each side, long aluminum poles that were locked in the upward position but could be lowered to hold line for offshore fishing. It was the kind of boat northerners called a cabin cruiser but the locals called a sportfish.
Cole took the ashes, climbed up to the bridge, and fired up the single gas engine. It started right away but smoked badly. William cast off the lines and they were on their way.
Storm clouds were building on the horizon as they headed out to sea, Cole at the controls on the bridge and William standing in the cockpit. Laughing gulls flew over their outriggers, squawking as they passed the headpin. William looked back and saw Islamorada begin to disappear in the distance. He looked inside the salon and saw the rosewood box secure on one of the old chairs where he’d put it.
“I’m gonna have a drink,” Cole shouted down, “how ’bout you?”
“Yeah, sure,” William said, “why not?”
“Look under the port berth in the stateroom,” Cole said. “There’s a case left of the rum that Dad and I smuggled back from Havana last year when we were fishing a marlin tournament. How ’bout bringing a couple bottles up?”
“Aye, aye,” William said, thinking how strange it was to hear someone else call his father dad.