Rising Spirit

by Wayne Stinnett

  Kamren smiled at his common-law wife. “There’s a beautiful twenty-mile stretch of the A.T. that I don’t think either of us has hiked in years; we can be there in an hour.”

  Sandra smiled, rose from the bed, and flung her arms around Kamren’s neck. “You really know how to woo a girl.”

  They changed into more suitable attire for hiking, gathered their things, and were soon on I-64, heading east. Traffic was light as they crossed the valley toward the eastern ridge and began the long, uphill grade. Exiting the interstate at Rockfish Gap, they drove east on U.S. 250 for less than a mile, then made the turn to access Skyline Drive, heading north. A few minutes later, Kamren turned off at the Rockfish Gap Entrance Station—one of many entrances to the Appalachian Trail.

  “God, I hated being around all those people,” Sandra said, pulling her backpack from the trunk of the car. “Could you believe some of those backwoods farmers?”

  Kamren looked around as he pulled his much larger pack from the trunk. The parking area was small, with room for only a dozen or so cars. It was nearly full. “This time of year, there won’t be any shortage of people on the trail either.”

  “Yes,” Sandra agreed, shrugging into her pack. “But at least they’ll be our kind of people.”

  Kamren closed the trunk and took Sandra’s hand, leading her toward an opening in the underbrush. “I think the judge’s ruling might have made us a little unpopular in town,” he conceded.

  Sandra laughed. “You think?”

  As the attractive couple entered the woods, they turned left, heading north on the famous trail.

  A moment later, an old, blue GMC pickup pulled into the parking area and the driver steered into a vacant spot just past Kamren’s rental car.

  Two men got out of the truck, both of them starting to show signs of age. They wore jeans and work shirts and neither had a backpack, nor did they carry any sort of camping gear. One man had a shaved head. He looked around and, not seeing anyone, nodded toward the gap in the brush. The two men disappeared into the woods a few minutes after the couple.

  It’d been two years since the storm and nobody in the Florida Keys called it Hurricane Irma anymore. At some point in the future, I felt sure the name would return, as new storms filled more recent collective memories. In the Bahamas the general term now had a different meaning and a different name, after Hurricane Dorian destroyed much of the Abacos just three months ago. As had happened in the Keys, the media moved on to other stories, even though the devastation has only barely begun to be cleaned up. It would be years before those islands recovered.

  But for now, here in the Keys, if someone mentioned “the storm,” you knew which one they were talking about.

  Though there were still signs of Irma’s destruction everywhere, most of the folks who lived in the Middle Keys had returned to a somewhat normal pace. The outpouring of compassion in the first weeks and months after the storm had nearly evaporated, even though the need was still there. Some folks would simply never recover.

  I’d done my part. I’d helped those who were hurt or displaced, I’d put people to work, injecting much needed cash into the community when most were out of work. Businesses closed and some never reopened. But the employees; the locals who’d lived here all their lives, or like me, who’d visited and decided to stay and put down roots, needed an income. They needed help. Anyone who could walk helped those who couldn’t. Anyone with food or shelter shared it with those who had suddenly been left with nothing. I’d joined in, working for days before I even thought about starting on my own home.

  That was when people came to help me. I could have handled it on my own. I’d built everything on my island once before and had planned to do so again. But they came by the dozens and offered help. I’d gladly paid them, though they were the kind of people who would have helped for free. And I didn’t take “no thanks” for an answer. It had been a really simple matter: I had the money and others needed it. So, I hired anyone and everyone and paid them according to their need. None would accept a handout, but all were willing to work.

  With the help of friends like Deuce Livingston, Rusty Thurman, John Wilson, and Jack Armstrong, along with dozens of others, we’d removed everything from my island that the storm had wrecked and begun the work of rebuilding.

  Ambrosia, the primary research vessel for Armstrong Research, had remained anchored in the mouth of Harbor Channel for two months, just past Mac Travis’s island. She served as the mother ship, with enough building material on board to get the job done, plus housing for the workers. At 199 feet, she dwarfed the biggest boat I’d ever seen in this part of the Gulf of Mexico.

  The damage to my island hadn’t been as bad as it had been just a few miles down island. The eye of the storm had passed just five miles to the west of my island, but it had crossed US-1 on Cudjoe Key, blasting it, Summerland Key, and Ramrod Key with winds in excess of 100 miles per hour.

  My home, as well as the other three structures on my island, had been solidly built. Flood waters had damaged the other three houses, and all four had their roofs blown off. One bunkhouse had been swept from its foundation. But the walls, floors, and the heavy pilings the other three houses had been built on were mostly undamaged.

  Sitting on the deck with Finn, I gazed out across my island. My daughter and son-in-law, Kim and Marty, had lived in one of the converted bunkhouses on the north side of the island. It had been ruined, and the other bunkhouse completely destroyed except for the floor and pier points.

  The new houses we’d built on the existing pilings were higher and sturdier, built ten feet off the ground and to modern hurricane standards. Mine was four feet higher than the others, to allow room to dock my boats beneath it. The only structural damage to my house had been the loss of the roof, the big doors to the dock area caved in, and some siding ripped away around the lower half.

  Jimmy’s house was rebuilt in the same way as the bunkhouses. He’d been my first mate for years aboard my charter fishing and diving vessel, Gaspar’s Revenge. He and his girlfriend, Naomi, now split their time between my island and her place in Marathon. But Jimmy still came out to my island every day, while Naomi worked as the daytime bartender at the Rusty Anchor.

  Kim and Marty had been transferred to a Fish and Wildlife office in Miami last year. They mostly lived on the mainland, in a small bungalow they rented in Coconut Grove, not far from their office. But they spent as much of their free time as they could down here. The western bunkhouse was now their home, a little two-bedroom house with a porch off the bedrooms that had a great view across the mangroves toward the setting sun.

  The eastern bunkhouse was still just that, a bunkhouse for fishermen. It was a stipulation in the sale of the island that it be maintained as a fish camp for twenty years. The end of that term was fast approaching. It was purely a utilitarian structure, furnished with just the six sets of bunkbeds, an empty desk, and a bathroom.

  Sara came out of my house and handed me a beer, taking a seat beside me on the bench. “What time do you want to head down there?”

  We were going to the Rusty Anchor for a grand reopening celebration and Thanksgiving dinner all rolled into one.

  “We don’t have to leave right away,” I said, as Sara leaned against my shoulder. “I don’t like being the first to arrive.”

  My friend, Rusty Thurman, had only closed the doors of the Anchor for two days; just before and immediately after the storm. Not even that long, really. He’d housed quite a few displaced people in his home and his bar all during the storm.

  The Anchor was the hub for local business and gossip and had become the rallying point for the cleanup effort after the storm. It had sustained little damage, but Rusty and I agreed it needed some attention. His wife, Sidney, was all in favor of a complete makeover. But Rusty and I decided we wanted to maintain that old-time Conch vibe. Being part owner, I kicked in half the cost for a full r
enovation of the property. It’d taken two years, working on just one section at a time, so as to keep the place open during remodeling, but it was finally finished. The work on the bar itself, and the little open-air kitchen attached to the back, was performed at night, then cleaned and ready for business by morning.

  “You just don’t like being around a bunch of people,” Sara said.

  “Not true,” I replied defensively. “I have friends I like to hang around with.”

  Sara Patrick and I had been together for a couple of years now. She was a widow when we met, and neither of us was looking for a relationship at the time. We’d become close friends and co-workers, enjoyed each other’s company, and had eventually started a monogamous physical relationship that was satisfying to both of us. There were times when one of us would be called away for weeks, or sometimes months, and neither of us wanted the stress of an emotional relationship.

  She playfully punched my ribs. “Deuce, Jimmy, Rusty, and my dad. Everyone else you simply tolerate.”

  “Also, not true,” I said with a grin. “There are a lot of people I don’t tolerate at all. But I guess we should go on down there.”

  Finn rose from the deck and stretched, then shook his big head. I thought he’d been napping, but as usual, he was just waiting on the go word. Finn was mostly Labrador Retriever, but he had a little Short-haired Pointer mixed in, as well. At ten years old, he wasn’t as fast as he once was, but he still got around well. His favorite word was go; go fishing, go for a boat ride, go diving for clams, go to the Rusty Anchor.

  “We’re staying aboard in the marina tonight?” Sara asked, as we both rose.

  Finn danced his way toward the door to the house, his claws clicking on the teak deck.

  “Yeah. I don’t want to come back out here in the dark after drinking.”

  “Good,” Sara said, with a come-on look. “I like that big bed on Salty Dog.”

  When we re-entered the house, I locked the door behind us. Originally, there had been an exterior access door to the docking area under the house. But after an intruder got inside just before the storm, I decided to forego that luxury when rebuilding.

  The exterior walls around the boathouse were concrete now, all the way down to the bedrock, and the only access to the lower level and my boats was from inside the house, and the big double doors at water level. In a pinch, I could swim under the outer boat doors, but they reached to within a couple of feet of the bottom. I’d had to do just that a few times already, having left my keys in the house.

  I’d rebuilt my house to nearly the same proportions and design as it had originally been. My Pap often told me, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and the simplicity of my old house was what worked for me. It had one big open room in front, and a bedroom and bathroom in back, which together made up the total one thousand square feet, the same dimensions as the other three houses. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

  The front room was a combination living room, dining room, kitchen, and work area. It was slightly smaller than the original, due to the new stairs going down to the boathouse. They ran the length of the front room’s back wall. The stairs were narrow, but Finn had no trouble with them. He couldn’t climb the metal ladder the stairs had replaced, though.

  Moments later, the three of us idled out from under the house. I clicked the button on the key fob and the big doors slowly closed as we motored into Harbor Channel. I turned northeast and brought the little Grady-White center-console up onto the step, navigating the narrow cut that ran out of the channel with ease. Then I turned south and increased speed.

  Finn stood in front of the console with his front paws up on the casting deck, his ears flapping in the wind. He was a boat dog, and never tired of going for a ride.

  It only took twenty minutes to reach the Seven Mile Bridge and another ten to swing around Sister Rock and turn into the canal to the Rusty Anchor Marina.

  Part of the redevelopment of the property had been to dredge the canal back to its original depth and width and lengthen the seawalls on both sides. To do that, the wrecked boat ramp had to be moved further to the east. Rusty now had room for a lot more boats, and as we entered the canal, I could see that nearly every slip was taken.

  My Formosa ketch, Salty Dog, was tied up at the near end, closest to the sea, with my amphibian airplane, Island Hopper, tied down on shore right next to her. The two had a combined age of 103 years, but both were in like-new condition and carried modern electronics.

  I idled up to the dock, which extended a few feet beyond the Dog’s bow and allowed Finn and Sara to step up onto the planks. She quickly snugged the line around the last dock cleat and waited for me to line the much smaller Grady up between the Dog’s bowsprit and the dock. I shifted to reverse and turned the wheel to the right to swing the stern around toward shore. With no cleat to tie to, I just tied a line off to the cranse iron at the end of the bowsprit, while Sara secured the bow line. It was close, but there was at least a foot between the Grady’s gunwale and the Dog’s dolphin striker. I shut down the engine and used the bobstay to climb up onto the bowsprit, where I went aft to turn on the breakers so the air conditioning would cool the boat’s interior.

  After I joined Sara on the dock, we walked toward the newly renovated bar at the far end of the canal. Finn ran off toward the backyard, looking for someone to play with.

  Rusty had expanded the outside deck, wrapping it around the side nearest the docks, and extending it farther out into the backyard. The new stage on the southwest corner of the deck was elevated two feet and covered with a big blue triangle of heavy sailcloth. When someone was performing, they didn’t have to stare into the setting sun.

  The side deck was also covered in sailcloth, arranged in alternating triangles of red and blue, while the back deck still had tables with individual white umbrellas, though they were newer. Rufus’s partially enclosed kitchen was also enlarged, and Rufus had brought his niece from Jamaica over to work and train as his assistant.

  Rufus was a wiry little Jamaican man, with a shaved head and gap-toothed smile. He’d been Rusty’s chef since he’d retired from a five-star restaurant in Negril about twenty years ago. He’d seemed old and wizened then, but nobody knew just how old he was. I figure he had to be pushing the eighty-year mark.

  The Rusty Anchor Restaurant could now serve about a hundred people outside, and another fifty inside, though the inside was primarily the Rusty Anchor Bar.

  There was evidence of Sidney and Naomi’s input here and there—Naomi was Sid’s niece. Though still a locals sort of place, Sidney had convinced Rusty that “local” didn’t have to mean just Marathon. With the number of people the two of them knew up and down the hundred-mile-long archipelago, they could draw in a much bigger crowd. Sidney booked entertainment and advertised the length of the Keys and soon, the Rusty Anchor had become a lot busier and more profitable than it’d ever been. But it still held firmly to that old Conch spirit. Rusty ran the bar, Sid ran the restaurant, and they both ran the marina.

  As we strolled along the dock, we said hello to a few people we met and stopped to talk to Deuce and his wife, Julie, aboard their Whitby ketch, the James Caird. Julie was Rusty’s only child, and she and Deuce now had a pair of tow-headed boys, who were nowhere in sight.

  “Where’s Trey and Jim?” I asked, accepting the offered beer from the cockpit.

  The couple had honored both their fathers in naming the boys. Deuce’s full name was Russel Livingston, Junior and that name was passed on to the oldest boy, who logically became Trey. Had Russ, Senior still been around, I think he would have liked being the Ace in the threesome. The younger boy was given Rusty’s first name, James.

  “They took off with buckets a couple of hours ago,” Julie replied.

  “Said they were going to find treasure,” Deuce added. Then he turned to Sara. “How’s your dad?”

  Sara’s
father, John Wilson, had suffered a heart attack during the summer and had to spend nearly a week in the hospital. He’d stayed with me and Jimmy on the island during the rebuild, while most of our other friends and hired contractors went back to Marathon each night or stayed aboard Ambrosia. At seventy-four, he’d worked right along with us, setting a grueling pace for some of the younger workers who were half or a third his age. The heart attack was mild and it had happened quite unexpectedly the week after we’d declared the island fully habitable and he’d returned home.

  “He’s a pain in his doctor’s butt,” Sara replied. “Stubborn as a mule and twice as thick-headed. But he’s doing a lot better, thanks.”

  Deuce and I owned a security consulting business in Key Largo. His dad and I had served together in the Marines and Deuce was once a Navy SEAL officer. He and I had worked together for Homeland Security for a time. Both of us, along with the people we employed, also did contract work for an oceanographic research company on occasion, as did Julie, Sara, and John. But what we did for Armstrong Research seldom had anything to do with science.

  Spotting Rusty on the back deck, I yelled and waved him over. He turned and shouted something through the open back door. Sidney came out, and together they made their way toward the James Caird, followed by Kim and Marty.

  To say that Rusty and Sid were an unusual pair would be an understatement. Rusty was five-six and, though he’d lost a good bit of weight recently, he still tipped the scales at nearly three hundred pounds. His head had always been bald, and his bushy red beard was about half gray now. Sid was five or six inches taller, and a good hundred pounds lighter. She’d been a Playboy bunny in her early years, and still had the looks, with piles of auburn hair and a ready, gleaming smile.

  “When’s this party supposed to get started?” I asked, shaking my old friend’s hand and pulling him in for a man hug.

  “Jimmy’s gonna open the gate in about an hour,” Rusty replied. “But a lot of people are already here.”