by Black, J. C.
I gave Jasmine a call, and she was upset that I hadn’t called since our first date. She said she didn’t want to see me again. So I continued to devote my time to school and the boatyard which kept me very busy. It took almost a month for me to save enough money to fix my fishing boat. And a couple more weeks after that before my brother and I would return to Sand Key and go night fishing again. Whenever my mother would ask me to bring home some fish for dinner. I would have to go fishing off the shrimp boat docks in Stock Island and hope I would catch enough fish for dinner. Sometimes it would take me all night but that was better than explaining how I almost sunk my boat off Sandy Key and young Tony was the one who pulled the trigger on my shotgun. My old man would kill me for being so irresponsible and letting my little brother get his hands on my shotgun. Mom of course would be clutching Tony to her chest and crying oh my baby, my poor little baby, I almost lost you. Then of course, pop would get mad about her being so protective over Tony, complaining how she is going to turn that boy into a damn sissy. I knew that they did not have to worry about him turning into a sissy. Shoot, he was always getting himself into one jam or another ever since he was a young boy. I will never forget when he was about three years old, how he had been watching superman cartoons on TV and the next thing I know he has his little superman cape on and he yelling for me to watch him.
“Look at me Chris I can fly.” He shouted as he bounced on the bed overwhelmed with excitement.
Before I could say a word, my little brother bounced right off the bed and thru the second story bedroom window, thank god I was able to catch him by his ankle and pull him to safety. The part I couldn’t believe was all he could do was laugh.
“Wow Chris that was fun can we do it again?” Tony said as he rolled on the bed laughing hysterically. Tony almost fell two stories to the concrete pavement below and the only thing on his mind is how much fun he had flying out the window.
Tony was almost eight years younger than I was, so I usually ended up watching him until my mother came home from work. I didn’t mind most of the time but like any teenager, I had things to do, especially during the week. Hell, I can remember one of the worst years of my life, I was playing high school football and I broke my arm during practice just before a big game. That meant that I would not be able to play and would have to sit the bench for the next several weeks. Well I knew the consequences of being injured and that was not so bad as long as I was able to go to my home games. Just as I was getting ready to go to the big Friday night game, my mother called me and said that she had to work late and asked if I would mind watching Tony until she came home. I reminded her tonight there was a football game. I told her that it started at seven o’clock, and she said that she should be done by then. And if she wasn’t home by the time I had to leave, just take him with me and she would pick him up at the stadium. After a bit of complaining, I agreed to take him with me and told her he would be sitting with the team and me. Well everything was going great; our team was winning by more than fourteen points. To make things even more exciting, there was the group of girls hanging around the bench talking to me. Actually, little Tony turned out to be quite a chick magnet and gave me an introduction with a girl that I have been wanting to take out all season. After a while of conversation and a little flirtation, I told my cute little groupie that I was going to get something to eat and asked her if she wanted anything. Time seemed to stop while she debated with herself weather she wanted a hotdog or a hamburger. Thank god, nobody mentioned that she could add a cheeseburger or fries into her quest for a decision. After what seemed like eternity, she finally decided to go with me to the concession stand so she could look at the menu. I looked at Tony and told him to come with us to get some hotdogs and he started whining that he wanted to watch the game. So I asked Charlie, one of my teammates if he would keep an eye on Tony while I ran up to the concession stand to grab some food.
“Only if you will get me a cheeseburger and please hurry up, I am starving.” He said with a big grin on his face.
“Don’t you want some fries to go along with your cheeseburger Charlie?” I said sarcastically, while trying to hide the fact that I was just teasing him.
“Hell Chris, don’t get all bent out of shape, it is only a cheeseburger, but since you are offering, I would love some fries too.” As I walked away, I couldn’t help but smile as I threw my hand up in a surrendering gesture.
“What is so funny Chris?” My little groupie asked with an inquisitive look on her face. “Oh, nothing, you would have to know Charlie to understand.” I swear I wasn’t gone more than five minutes before I heard a big commotion over by the bleachers. And of course, it was Tony; he had climbed to the top of the bleachers, fallen though the handrails and busted himself up pretty bad. These kinds of things seemed to follow him like a black cloud. Well needless to say, that was the last time my mother trusted me to baby sit little Tony on nights that I had a football game. High school was great though my junior and senior years, Key West High had a great football season and I was able to play first-string linebacker both years, it gave me a great reputation with the ladies.
After graduation, my dad asked me to work at the boatyard full time. I really wanted to go on to collage but due to my father’s health I decided to accept his request and take night classes at the junior college. This wasn’t what I had planned to do after graduation, but sometimes circumstance’s changes the direction of your life. After a few short years of hard work, my decision to go into the family business paid off. Not only was I making great money, but also at the beginning of every summer, we would refurbish one of the small freighters that we had salvaged during the previous year and I would get to deliver it to South America to the new owners. I hadn’t lost my love for the sea and this was one way that I could mix business with pleasure and of course, the proceeds from the sale quickly built up a nice nest egg in the bank. It wasn’t long before we could buy a second tugboat for our salvage business, which of course led Tony into studying for his captain’s license.
Key West was a great town, but like any small town that you spent your childhood growing up in, eventually you became tired of doing the same thing every weekend. Don’t get me wrong, my friends and I would raise hell driving up and down Duval Street, flirting with the girls and going to the bars on the weekend. But after a while, everything gets old and we would find ourselves on White Street Pier getting drunk and talking about how one of these Fridays we should just go to Miami Beach. After all Miami is where all the parties were. Then one Friday morning Louie called me at work. He said that he wanted to go to Miami this weekend. That I should call our buddy Alan and tell him to meet us at Captain Tony‘s Bar at three o’clock and we would leave from there. Our plan was to drive to Miami Beach and pick up some girls, which wasn’t hard to do for my brother and me. My brother Tony grew up into quite a good-looking guy, sandy blonde hair, brown eyes, and 5’10” and built like a brick shithouse. Me on the other hand, I am a bit taller than Tony. I am 6’1”, blue eyes and a bronze body from all the years working at the boatyard and I can surly can lift more than him in competition weights. I never had a problem with picking up women either, for some reason they always seemed to flock around Tony and me. My brother Frank however was already in a relationship with his high school sweetheart Maggie.
Well it didn’t take us long to figure out that the city girls in Miami were the same as small town island girls that we left back home. They would let us buy them drinks and spend a lot of money on them. But when it came to the end of the night, they went home with their girlfriends. The best we would get is maybe a kiss and if we were lucky, their phone number. So after hours of frustration and disappointment, we would gas up our cars and head back to our little island and our uneventful lives until Friday rolled around again. It didn’t take long before we would start getting that itch for excitement. Before we could change our minds the four of us would be back in our cars heading north on the road again, looking to raise hell in
the big city of Miami Beach. Louie who was the youngest of my group of friends would always leave his sixty-nine customized Road Runner at home and keep me company in my sixty-nine Cheval SS. Alan who was older than me by six months, would take his sixty-six Candy Apple Red GTO and of course Tony would ride with him. We all had really sweet muscle cars and we loved spending our hard-earned money collecting them. Some of these muscle cars were very hard to find these days and that makes it even more fun to own one. Hell, it took me almost a year to build my sixty-nine Cheval SS after I found the body up in North Carolina. I couldn’t believe that I found it. Some good ole country folk that I meet standing in line at Piggley Wiggly, which is a popular grocery store in them parts was talking to the guy in front of me. He was telling him how his wife was making him get rid of a sixty-nine Chevy that he had owned since high school. He went on to say that if he didn’t get the car out of the tobacco barn soon that his wife had threaten to have it hauled off to the junk yard. Well needless to say, it didn’t take me long to strike up deal with the old farmer that made him and his wife happy.
As summer progressed, our weekend getaways seemed to slow down. My main sidekick Louie owned a lobster boat and he had to build lobster traps for the upcoming season. Alan on the other hand was working his ass off at his father grocery store so he would have spending money for when he went to college in the fall. Alan’s dad was a hard ass that went to the school of hard knocks and made his money in the food businesses and didn’t believe in higher education. He was pretty upset when Alan told him that he wanted to go to Florida State in the fall. But his dad finally gave into Alan and agreed to pay for his tuition and books but refused to give Alan spending money, he made it very clear to Alan that if he wanted money to party with that he would have to save it himself. So as the weekend approach I found myself itching to hit that long lonely highway once again. So I would load up my car, fill her with gas and head north to Miami.
Chapter 4
As I drove north up the Florida Keys in my sixty-nine Cheval SS approaching Big Pine Key. A lonely redheaded female figure caught my eye in the near distance. She was standing on the northbound side of the two-lane highway with one hand on her hip and the other hand balled up in a fist with thumb in the air. Now I have seen hitchhikers before, but never one as young and beautiful as this one. Damn if her legs were any longer, she could play for the Miami Heat. She was wearing a little blue tube top that barely confined her ample young breast and a pair of short cut-off jeans that defined the roundness of her hips perfectly.
Now my mama always warned me about picking up hitchhikers, she told me that it would get me in trouble someday. For a moment, I considered what she had said, but, as I approached this beautiful redheaded damsel in distress, all logic went out the window at the sight of her bending over in her short cutoff jeans to pick up her cell phone that she had dropped on the ground. As I admired those long slim gorgeous legs, my mind went blank and all I could imagine was this beautiful woman sitting in my car next to me. In all my collective wisdom, instead of gently tapping on my brakes and slowing down my car, so I might offer this gorgeous hitchhiker a ride. I slammed on the brakes of my car and she started sliding sideways down the highway coming to a screeching halt just a couple of feet past her. I have to admit, if you wanted to impress a girl, there has to be a hundred better ways to do so, rather than almost running her over with your car. My car was facing sideways on the two-lane highway; it had skidded to a stop. I looked all around me and didn’t see my redheaded hitchhiker anywhere. Just when I thought that I had run her over and she might be under my car. I saw her in the rearview mirror sitting on the ground, just behind the rear bumper. Boy she looked pissed off.
I could see the fire coming out of her mouth as she stood up brushing the dirt off that beautiful ass of hers and muttering something to herself. I was stunned by her beauty as she approached the passenger window, I considered just putting my car in gear and getting the hell out of there. But as she leaned over into the driver side window, I knew it was too late to make a getaway.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Nothing is wrong me, what the hell is wrong with you? I thought to myself. No, I shouldn’t ask her that question, she looks like she is mad as hell at me already.
“Didn’t you see me standing here with my thumb out or were you to busy looking at my ass?” I just sat there, absorbing her verbal assault. My mind was racing with a dozen different answers to give her. Of course I seen you, why else would I have stopped, It wasn’t my fault that you bent over and almost made me wreak my car. No, I don’t think it would be wise to say anything like that to her either. She was infuriated with my silence and seems to be getting angrier by the minute. Why do you keep yelling at me, I am not deaf, I can hear you perfectly? Again running different scenarios through my mind without say a word. Of course, I did not know what to say to her outburst of anger. So I did what any man in my situation would do, I fumble with my keys trying to start my car and get the hell out of there. Her face started turning scarlet red, which highlighted her beautiful freckles and made me smile. Damn she is beautiful when she gets mad.
She yelled at me again. “Oh no you don’t, what the hell do you think you’re doing, you’re not going leave me standing out in this hot damn sun after almost running me over with your damn car, oh, and let’s not forget scarring the hell out of me.” I was trying real hard to understand her point of view, but the loud yelling got in the way of my using any logic, I thought if I just sat there and kept quite it might go away.
“Why do you think that I was trying to get out of here, you are scarring the hell out of me too?” I said, as I continued fumbling with my keys.
After a few moments of treacherous silence and thinking over what I should do next. I thought it might be safe to speak to the redheaded vixen. So I leaned over and asked her rather softly if she would like a ride to where ever she was going. Normally that would be a dumb thing to say to a hitchhiker, but under the circumstances, she could only be heading north and since I was driving to Miami anyway, I figured I would enjoy some company. At that point, she must have considered me harmless enough to reach for the door and slide her tight little butt into the bucket seat of my muscle car. Weather she wanted to admit it to herself or not, she happens to be riding in one of the fastest and sweetest muscle cars in all the Florida Keys. After I knew that she was not going to start hitting me, for almost making road kill out of her. I calmly ask her where she was going.
“Miami you dumb ass, where do you think I am going?” she blurts out.
Well this time with a very confused and hurt expression on my face, I look at her with my favorite sad puppy dog expression.
“I’m sorry if I scarred you back there but as I came around the bend, I wasn’t expecting to see anyone on the road and I guess I over reacted. I hope you are willing to forgive me because it could end up being a real long trip if you stayed mad at me for the next one hundred fifty miles.” She giggled and a moment or two passed before she looked up at me with a warm schoolgirl smile.
“I am not still mad at you, it’s just that the sun was starting to move towards the west and I was afraid that if I didn’t get a ride soon. I would be stuck out here on the highway all night by myself. So what do you say if I forget that you tried to run me over with this fine specimen of a car? And you forget that I wanted to cut your balls off and feed them to the sharks for scarring the hell out of me.”
Well at that moment, the thought of her caressing my balls in her warm soft hands seemed very enticing. So I sat there driving and daydreaming of the experience until I felt a sharp jab in my arm, as her fist recoiled for a second punch. I heard her screaming at me to stop the car. So once again, for the second time in one day I found myself slamming on the brakes of my car and skidding sideways down US1. Only this time, I am the one who is pissed off and it showed all over my face as my car came to a screeching to a halt. The thought of landing sideways and almost completely blocking both lanes o
f traffic on US1 infuriated me so much that I yelled at her to get the hell out of my car. I was so damn mad that my hands were shaking. I griped the steering wheel with one hand and pointed towards the door with my other hand just waiting for her to open her big mouth and say something smart-ass to me. Boy was I ready to let her have it. All she had to do was utter one little word and I would be ready for her.
I waited for what seemed like eternity and still she did not speak a word. Without any warning at all, she started bawling like a little girl who had just lost her best friend. Oh god, this is all I need, how the hell do I end up being the bad guy, when she almost caused us to have a wreak. I swear, I will never pick up another hitchhiker again, no matter how long her legs are. I decided to soften my tone with my unknown hitchhiker, hoping that a different approach would stop the flood of tears my little redheaded goddess pouring upon my plush leather seats.
“What on earth was that all about? One minute we were driving along and I am thinking about you forgiving me for scarring you. The next thing I know, you beating on me with your fist and yelling for me to stop the car. Damn woman you confuse the hell out of me.” She looked up at me and told me in a very meek fashion that she had been watching the expression on my face as I gazed over at her sitting with her legs drawn up to her chest. She knew at that moment the only thing I had on my mind was how soon I could get her in the back seat of my car. And all she could think of was how he doesn’t even know my name and he is already trying to get in my pants.