Port Starbird (Storm Ketchum Adventures)

by Garrett Dennis

  Regarding longevity, it had once amused him to measure his life in terms of the number of dogs he'd had instead of in calendar years, but it was less amusing now that he might be a last-dog man, or at least a penultimate-dog man. There had always been dogs in his life, as far back as he could remember; and they'd always been loved; but as always he loved this last one the most.

  The dog abruptly rose up and started wagging excitedly. Ketch didn't restrain him, as the dog wouldn't leave the deck without permission. Ketch hadn't himself seen, heard, or smelled anything out of the ordinary, but he knew the dog was right and someone they knew was on the way. Sure enough, a minute later the Captain's pickup pulled into the graveled drive and parked next to Ketch's.

  "Hey, I see y'all finally got a date!" the Captain's voice blasted from his open window, flushing some small birds from the underbrush. He hopped down from the cab and lowered the tailgate. "Gimme a hand with this cooler. Len and Mario loaded 'er for me, and she's a heavy ole bitch even with nothin' in her."

  Ketch obliged while the dog waited on the deck. "So, are they coming then?" he asked.

  "Said so," the Captain replied. "Them and a couple beach bunnies that was hangin' around the boatyard, didn't know 'em offhand. Hope you don't mind." He made a show of squinting at Ketch. "There's somethin' different about you tonight, but I can't pin it down." He snapped his fingers. "I know! Did y'all get some action this afternoon?"

  "I guess we know what's on your mind this evening," Ketch observed with a tolerant smile. "No, that's fine if they all come. But maybe I should order some pizza? I don't know if we'll have enough fish." He grunted. "Why is this cooler so heavy? Let's just leave it down here by the grill."

  "I stuck some beer and flounder I had layin' around in there along with the cobia, brung some chips an' such too by the way. We'll have enough to eat. Think we should fire it up?"

  "I guess so. I told Kari we'd start grilling at six, and it must be about that time now." Ketch remembered the poor dog patiently waiting on the deck. "Jack, you can come!" he called, and the dog raced down the steps to greet the Captain. "I probably already have enough beer, you know."

  "Well, you never know, we'll have it if we need it. Besides, I like mine better. Hey, Jacky-boy!" The Captain gave the dog a brisk two-handed rubdown. "Kari's comin'? So you did get busy this afternoon after all, you dawg!" he grinned.

  "Knock it off," Ketch said, but good-naturedly. "Jack, you stay in the yard."

  "Hey, y'all!" Len walked into view, followed by Mario and not two, but three girls, a blond and two brunettes. Ketch had seen a couple of them around the boatyard now and again, but he didn't remember their names, if he'd ever known them. They looked to be in their mid-to-late twenties like their escorts, and were not hard on the eyes. The dog barked once, then trotted into the front yard to greet them.

  Mario pushed ahead of the others. "Ketch, this here is Barb, Joette, and Diana," he said, pointing them out as he named them. "Hope it was okay to bring 'em, Don said he thought it'd be okay," he added in a lower tone.

  "Of course," Ketch replied, "no problem, the more the merrier. We have plenty of everything." He stepped past Mario into the yard. "Ladies, welcome, it's nice to meet you. There are drinks in the fridge up on the deck there, and the door's open if you need anything else. Make yourselves at home."

  "Thank you kindly, Mister Ketchum, and thanks for havin' us," the blond one (Barb?) said. "Oh, and you too, Captain Manolin," she added - since he'd brought the fish, Ketch assumed. The other two muttered similar sentiments and headed for the steps.

  "You can call me Ketch."

  "And Don!" the Captain called from behind the grill. "We're skippin' the black ties tonight! Though we do serve fine wine here - y'all bring any?" he cawed. "Well, I see I got a pan and a kit. Hey Ketch, get me some tinfoil and butter when you get a chance, and I'll get these babies started. And you ladies, make yourselves useful in the kitchen! Remember, you don't have to be crazy to work here, we'll train ya! And you there, Len, grab me a beer out a that cooler!"

  "Aye-aye Cap'n!" Len grinned and saluted, cutting a somewhat comical figure in bib overalls with no shirt, and his scraggly beard, straw hat and glasses.

  "What's with you tonight? Y'all look like a dang farmer - all you need's a corncob pipe!" the Captain said to Len.

  "I got one, right here in my pocket!" Len replied, producing said object. "It ain't my fault, I ain't got to the laundrymat yet this week. Besides, I am a farmer." He passed a beer to the Captain and opened one for himself. "My daddy's got a tobacco farm back home in Tar Heel..."

  "Here you go, amigo," Mario said, dragging a lawn chair closer to the grill and handing Ketch a beer. "You take a load off, I'll go help the girls in the kitchen." Amigo, indeed - although Mario could speak Spanish and one of his parents had been born in Mexico, Ketch knew Mario had never been there.

  "Tinfoil and butter!" the Captain called after him.

  "There's tossed salad, pasta salad, and cookies in the fridge," Ketch added. One kept most everything that was edible in the refrigerator in these parts, to deter what the locals variously and euphemistically referred to as 'palmetto bugs', 'water bugs', and so on - cockroaches, in other words, which thrived in sultry environments. He hadn't yet seen any in his house, knock on wood, but he still fumigated periodically.

  Ketch eased into the lawn chair and twisted the cap off his bottle. This turned out to be a fine idea, he thought amidst the pleasant babble of voices. It was usually pretty quiet around here, which he also enjoyed, but sometimes too quiet. The dog settled next to him to wait for something good to happen with the grill, but then bounded up again as a weathered Outback pulled into the yard and popped its liftgate. He waited for Kari to start crossing the yard before sauntering out to meet her. "Kari, over here," Ketch called contentedly. Now that the best part of this day had arrived, the party was complete.

  "Jacky, I missed you this afternoon," she said, giving the dog a quick hug. "Ketch, here's your tank, I'll just set it down over here." She leaned it up against a post in a shady spot under the house. "Hey, Don," she said as she joined the group at the grill. "And you are?"

  "I'm Len. Nice to meet you, Kari."

  "Ketch, you shaved!" she exclaimed when she finally looked more closely at Ketch, who rose and motioned to the chair.

  "Here, have a seat and I'll get you some wine," Ketch directed. "Yes, I was getting tired of the beard, and I figured I'd better do it now before I got too burned."

  "You look ten years younger!" she marveled.

  "If you say so. But even if I were ten years younger, I'd still be twenty years older than you."

  "Ha! Flattery will get you - well, maybe somewhere, who knows?" she grinned. "But really, I'm older'n dirt already, and I've got the big four-oh comin' up next time around."

  "I'll have to teach you how to count in hexadecimal - then you could tell me you were twenty-eight and my math would be technically correct."

  "Huh? What's that?" Len asked.

  "Never mind, I'll explain later - or never," Ketch waved as he walked away. "First the wine."

  "And tinfoil and butter, dammit!" the Captain yelled.

  Ketch returned momentarily with a bottle, a wineglass, and a corkscrew (and foil and butter) and pulled up another lawn chair. Kari took the bottle from him and inspected it. "Is this the kind I like?" she asked. "I can't even read this label. What language is that? It doesn't look like anythin' I've ever seen." She removed the wrapper from the neck. "Huh - can't open it neither!"

  "The language is Euskara Batua. It's from the Basque regions of Spain and France. I think you'll like it," Ketch said, taking the bottle back from her and working the corkscrew. "I tasted it. It's not exactly the same as what you're used to, but it's close - and better, I think." He was glad he'd thought to remove the price tag.

  He poured her a glass. "Ooh, this is divine!" she shortly exclaimed. "I needed this! Where'd y'all find it? I'm gonna have to get me some of this!"

 
; "Hey Ketch," Len interrupted. "I been wonderin' about that life ring y'all got hangin' out front, and I keep forgettin' to ask. Why's it say 'Port Starbird' on it?"

  Thank you Len, Ketch thought. Kari couldn't afford to shop where he'd found that bottle - and neither could he really, other than for special occasions. "That's what I named my house," Ketch answered. Almost all of the houses in this town had names - the only thing that was unusual about the white life preserver with red lettering hanging on a nail next to the steps was the spelling, which Len had noticed.

  "Well, I know that, but I hate to tell you, it's spelt wrong, did you know that?"

  "No it ain't," the Captain said, and Kari concurred.

  Ketch explained. "The 'starboard' part is spelled the way it's supposed to be pronounced - and yes, it's also the way people often misspell it, and it's the basis of an old joke I know. I also wrote a song based on that joke."

  "No shit? I got to hear that!" Len declared.

  "If you mean the joke, okay. If you mean the song, I'll play it for you sometime - but not tonight."

  "Aw, come on, why not? What's the matter, you shy or somethin'? Y'all don't have to be shy with us."

  "Well, we'll see," Ketch relented. "Maybe after we eat, if I've had enough to drink. I'm not used to playing in front of strange people."

  "What, them girls up there? They ain't too strange. They'll think it's cool you wrote a song. Somebody get this man another beer!"

  The fish didn't take too long to cook, and when Mario called down that the table was set, the Captain carried the pan upstairs and the others trailed behind with the wine, the Captain's chips, and some of the Captain's beer (at his direction). The sides Ketch had bought earlier were laid out on a table on the screened deck off the kitchen. Everyone filled their plates and carried them out to the front deck to eat. The dog followed the food.

  As it turned out, they didn't have to wait until after dinner for their entertainment.

  "Well dang!" the Captain exploded after they'd all sat down. "Must a cut myself on somethin'! Gimme another napkin," he demanded, the one he'd wrapped around his finger already turning red.

  The younger girls all got up and rushed over to him. Joette took the Captain's hand in hers. "Huh, that's a good one," she said as the others looked on.

  "Let me see that," Kari said. She took his hand and removed the napkin. "It's not that bad, you don't need stitches. Go wash it off and I'll find you a band-aid."

  The Captain pulled his hand away. "Now you ladies quit your fussin', this ain't but a scratch," he protested. "See, it's slowin' down already." He wrapped a new napkin around the finger. "I never knowed a woman wouldn't worry herself to death over the silliest little thing," he complained with a wink at Ketch, obviously enjoying the attention nonetheless. He turned back to the women and continued, "Why, you should a seen some of the scrapes I got into back in the day, you'd like to had a heart attack! There was this one time back at the Turtle House, that's a place we used to go when I was stationed in Florida with the Coast Guard..."

  Here we go, Ketch thought.

  "This fella come in with a fish knife hangin' off his belt, with a blade 'bout as long as your forearm. Big ole coot, drunk as a skunk'n mean as a wild hog..."

  "Now you've done it," Ketch said to Kari.

  "Hush now, I don't think I've heard this one yet," she replied as she ate. "And pour me some more of that good stuff, if you please."

  The sky was starting to turn dusky now, and where the Captain was sitting the glow from the torches illuminated his face like a primitive spotlight as he hit his stride. "I knowed right off it was me he was after, and I'll admit I had it comin' after that night I spent with his woman. I never said I was no saint," he grinned. "Well, he come right up to me at the bar, and there was plenty a room, everybody else backed right off, I guess they knew too."

  " 'I figgered I'd find you here', he says. 'I ought to just kill you flat out, but I ain't about to spend the rest a my days in jail over the likes a you.' Then he lays that blade up on the bar, and he leans his elbow on the bar and puts his arm up."

  The Captain paused to spear some fish and take a drink. No one spoke and he took his time. He had their undivided attention now, and he knew it. Ketch had heard this one before, but the art was in the telling, and he was enjoying it just as much as everyone else.

  "And then he says, with poison in his voice, 'We're gonna do this civilized-like. I'm gonna wrestle y'all. If you win, you walk - and if I win I get to take one a your fingers, right here and now.' " The Captain stopped for another drink, and this time there were audible gasps from the women.

  "Well, I guess you didn't lose," Mario observed after doing a quick head count. "That's just crazy," Diana said, and Barb asked wide-eyed, "Y'all didn't really do it, did you?"

  "Well, listen," the Captain said, and continued with his tale.

  Ketch noticed that both he and the Captain had just about finished their current beers, so he went below to fetch a couple more, of the kind the Captain preferred. He'd miss a bit of the story, but not too much. He was pretty sure it was going to go on a little longer than it had the last time he'd heard it anyway. He returned in time to catch the end of the epic arm-wrestling match.

  "You lost?" Joette squealed.

  "Now hang on! Well I was damned if I was gonna let 'im get the best a me in front a all them people, so I called his bluff. I laid my left pinky on the bar and looked him straight in the eye. It was my bum hand a course, I wouldn't give him my right no matter what anybody thought, just in case. Well he looked right back at me, and the veins was still poppin' out a his head. And I never looked away, not even when he picked up that knife and raised it up to do the deed."

  The Captain looked around with satisfaction at his captive audience. He tipped his bottle up, then frowned and turned it upside-down. Joette glanced around frantically and saw the bottle Ketch was holding out for her. She grabbed it and gave it to the Captain, who leisurely twisted the cap off. "Well, what happened then?" she demanded, biting at a nail.

  The Captain took a long pull, then went on. "Well, like I said, I looked 'im straight in the eye. Just like I figured, he hesitated, and then he starts goin' green around the gills. Pretty soon he looks away and lowers his arm. 'I can't do it', he says."

  The tension had been eased as planned, and Ketch watched with interest as the Captain allowed everyone to let out a collective breath and start to relax.

  "But then he blows hisself up and he says, 'But if I ever hear tell a you and her again, next time you won't be so lucky, you dirty son of a bitch', and then he slings somebody's beer in my face, turns his back, and starts walkin' away." Here the Captain paused again to ingest some more fish. "Well, I couldn't let that go by, not in them days. 'Gutless', I says loud and clear. He stops dead at that. 'What did you say?' he says, and he turns back around. So I says it again, still lookin' right at 'im - 'Gutless'! And then I added on 'Pussy!', for good measure. Next thing I know, that blade comes flyin' 'cross the room, straight at me."

  "What happened? Did he cut you? What happened then?" The Captain let the agitated chorus run its course and winked at Ketch again as he slowly took another sip.

  "Well, I saw that blade comin' and I didn't move a inch, never even flinched. My eyes were pretty good back then and I figured it'd miss, but even so I figured it a little too close as it turned out." He took another quick chug. "Whenever we was out to sea they always give me midnight watch, you know, on account a my eyes, 'cause they knew what a good lookout I was. Why, one time I spotted a -"

  "What happened? What happened with the knife? What did you do then?" the chorus started again, protesting the turn the story was taking.

  "Okay, okay," the Captain said with a grin. "Well, like I said, I figured it a mite close, and I should a ducked, 'cause I damn near got myself kilt that night. 'Course, I was pretty well lickered up, but still. Anyway, I sat there, still lookin' right at 'im, and I heard that blade go singin' past right under my ear
, and right after I felt the blood runnin' down my neck. See, it nicked me, and it opened up pretty near a two-inch gash right here on the side a my neck." He tilted his head and displayed the scar for Joette, who now sat spellbound next to him.

  "Oh, it's true, look at this, y'all come look!" she said. There was some murmuring, whether the impressed kind or the merely polite kind Ketch couldn't tell for sure, though with this crew he strongly suspected the former. Then Len asked, "So what happened to that ole boy? Did he just leave after that?"

  "Oh, he left all right," the Captain emphatically answered. "I threw the sumbitch through the front window, and they called a doc to come stitch me up down at the precinct house later that night."

  "Ha!" Mario exclaimed.

  "But I'll tell y'all, I still never went over to that woman's place again. I may be crazy, but I ain't stupid," the Captain concluded.

  "Oh, man!" Joette breathed. Ketch noticed she'd pulled her chair right up next to the Captain's, and her free hand was resting on his knee.

  "Looks like he might've hooked one," Kari remarked quietly to Ketch in amusement. Ketch had to smile as well. How did he manage it, and at his age? It must be the tall tales. Some women were fascinated by the seafaring type, and some by men in uniform, and there were women who were selectively attracted to pirates and rogues, and there were those as well who were attracted to older men; and the Captain had been all of the above at one time or another.

  "So is all that really true? Did he really get that scar in a bar fight?" Kari asked.

  "Well," Ketch softly replied, "don't tell anyone, but I happen to know he accidentally hooked himself under that ear one time when he was fishing." Kari threw her head back and laughed. "But I imagine there was probably some kind of a fight. I think he was kind of wild in his younger days."