Pirata

by Patrick Hasburgh

  “Oh, god,” Meagan said, and closed her eyes.

  “You didn’t kill Winsor—and I never should have let you believe that you had. I’m very sorry.”

  Meagan squinted and squeezed my hands.

  “He was still alive when we took him out in the boat,” I said. “Maybe we could’ve saved him—but we didn’t . . .”

  I kissed her on the cheek.

  “So don’t drag that around with you for the rest of your life. Leave it down here with me.”

  Then I turned, and I walked out of the terminal.

  47

  I hadn’t had any sleep since the surf comp at El Tigre, which was only the day before—but felt like last Christmas. I was deeply fried. Once I saw United Flight 806 lift off safely into the sky, I honked my horn twice and drove home.

  I slept eight hours straight. It was dark out when I woke up, and I was starving. I looked out the window, and I could see the orphaned dog sitting under the higuera. She looked lonely. I decided to take her with me to go grab a bite. The mutt really was a beauty, so I figured I’d keep her, at least until . . . until Meagan came back?

  So I named her Tilly—the rescued dog that could win Best in Show in Mexico.

  Tilly walked to my right and just in front of me. She was well trained. I never once had to tug on the surf leash that I was using as a dog lead. I wondered how such a well-behaved dog had ended up in Sabanita. Meagan’s ex probably rescued her from some wealthy Mexican’s backyard—so he could pass himself off as a compassionate gringo.

  We turned south on the beach. The lights of El Gecko were blazing about a half mile down the sand. It was probably the only place open, and I had been feeling shitty about dropping out of Sarah’s life without any kind of an explanation. It wasn’t like what happened was a serious hookup, but two old tugs who had crashed together in the night shouldn’t have to worry about navigating away from each other. Sabanita was too small a pond.

  I took my usual table and put my feet up on the short concrete beach wall. Tilly sat down next to me—straight and royal. She looked like the kind of girl who could ride English. I should probably stop tying her to a tree.

  A señorita I had never seen at El Gecko poured me some ice water and put down a bowl of chips and some salsa. It was a nice touch, and a new one. Maybe this joint had changed ownership.

  “Gracias,” I said. But the new girl only smiled.

  I craned my neck to see if I could spot Sarah, but I didn’t see her. There was a couple canoodling at a corner table, doing tequila shots and whistling lime seeds into each other’s mouths. Other than that, the joint was empty.

  I’d ordered the relleno especial and had pretty much slammed all of it but the frijoles when I saw Sarah walk out of the kitchen. I barely recognized her. She was newly blond with a bit of a tan, and was wrapped in white linen. I was stunned by how pretty she was.

  “Sarah,” I called out.

  I smiled and waved. She looked at me, hesitating for just a second.

  “Amigo,” Sarah said, finally.

  Amigo?

  Sarah came over to my table and kissed me on each cheek—quick and Euro-trashy.

  “I am so sorry I disappeared on you,” I said. “But I was on this surf trip to El Tigre, and then I—”

  “Hey, no worries, Nico,” Sarah said, glancing back toward the kitchen and faking a smile.

  Nico?

  And I was waiting for her to notice my eye.

  “Yeah, well, it’s a shitty thing to do,” I said.

  “It’s fine.”

  At first I thought I was making Sarah nervous, but then this just started to feel awkward.

  “What do you think of my eye?” I asked, a little too loud.

  “Oh, my god,” Sarah said, “I knew something looked different. I thought you maybe got a new haircut.”

  “Thanks for noticing,” I said.

  Apparently, I’d lost a little juice with this lady.

  “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “Look, Nick, if you want to party, I’m out of the business.”

  “I don’t want to party,” I said. “I just felt like seeing you.”

  “That’s nice,” she said. “But I’m not really seeing people anymore.”

  Or most of my juice, actually. Sarah looked to the kitchen again and held up a finger. Then she turned back to me.

  “Nick, I owe you, I know,” Sarah said, and then slid out a thin fold of peso bills she had tucked under her wrist bandanna. She counted out ten and handed them to me.

  “I’m not here for the money,” I said. “Keep it.”

  “I pay my debts,” she said.

  I quickly put the money in my pocket. It felt like we were being watched.

  “You opened me up and let me feel real again, Nick,” she continued. “And I will always be indebted to you for that.”

  “I’m happy I was able to help out,” I said.

  Sarah’s linen top was so sheer I could see the tattoo of the unicorn she had on her stomach, although the last time I saw it, it had looked like a rhinoceros. She must’ve been on a fast.

  She looked pretty trim—and then Sarah pointed to a large diamond ring on her left hand.

  “I got married, Nick.”

  What?

  “To who?” I was stunned—but I probably shouldn’t have been.

  “Fernando,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Castilian now.”

  “Who’s Fernando?”

  “Nando,” she said, pointing at the kitchen.

  The only guy I could see was the cook who’d been cooking at El Gecko since my first meal here six years ago. He was still wearing the same T-shirt—but it had finally been washed, and his Che Guevara mustache was trimmed to match his slicked-backed, pitch-black hair. Nando suddenly looked like Zorro.

  “The cook?”

  “He’d been chasing me for years,” Sarah said. “When I finally stopped running, he caught me.” She was proud of herself. “But Nando’s not just the cook. His family owns most of the beachfront in Sabanita.”

  “So you’re rich?”

  “Not exactly,” she said, tossing her hair. “But I do have my own business now.”

  “Let me guess—jewelry,” I said, figuring Sarah for one of the few gringos in town who would be nuts enough to buy Meagan’s plastic chair.

  “Detox Yoga,” Sarah said.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “It can cure cancer,” Sarah said.

  “How about incredulousness?”

  Sarah laughed. “Never lose that sense of humor, Pirata.”

  She waved at Nando, and he blew her a kiss. I gave him the finger.

  “It’s all I got,” I said.

  Then I stood up and shook Sarah’s hand.

  “You make a lovely couple.”

  “We do,” she said.

  48

  I was sitting on a hunk of driftwood and staring out at my little piece of the Pacific just north of town. I could see lightning on the horizon. The shore break was big, cresting and then crashing, bashing thousands of stones onto the beach as they nicked off little pieces of each other, making sand.

  I might have been coming off my Epilim, because it felt a little like I was experiencing another absence seizure, those mini-space-outs that only last about a minute—but they put me in the ozone. If I saw a plane crash during one of these, I wouldn’t remember it.

  It was probably what was happening when I hit that tree with my son in the front seat. Grand mals have more drama, but absence seizures are more insidious. It’s hard to tell when someone is having an absence seizure. It can just look like they’re daydreaming.

  Or maybe my current mental thickness was just the blowback from losing Jade and Obsidian, and getting dumped by Meagan. I was kind of bouncing between bumming and blacking out—like everything was moving forward, but I was still going backward. I mean, Jesus, even my drug dealer had retired—and then gotten married. I really was on my own.

  I whistled for Tilly a
nd then panicked a little until I could make out her shadow sniffing around a beach wall made of boulders. From the sounds of her growling and digging, I could tell that she had something trapped.

  There was an ungodly croaking sound. And whatever it was, I didn’t want Tilly to get stung on the nose. A lot of lethal shit shows up at night in Mexico, and I would hate for anything to happen to my new roommate.

  “Easy, girl,” I said. “Leave it alone.”

  But Tilly was really agitated, so I jogged over and then freaked.

  What was croaking—and almost croaked—was my old friend Señor Pelícano. His broken wing had been chewed off, and the poor bastard was basically featherless.

  I probably should have let Tilly put him out of his misery, but I didn’t want her first lesson from me to be that it’s okay to kill birds on the beach.

  “Leave him alone, Tilly,” I commanded. Sure enough, she backed off.

  I still had the surf leash in my hand, so I tied Tilly up to my driftwood bench.

  “Stay,” I said.

  Tilly sat down.

  I went back to the pelican. It was hideous—skinny and bleeding. Part of its bill had been broken off, there was a hole in its pouch, and most of the webbing had been torn from its toes.

  I needed to suck it up and wring the bird’s neck. I couldn’t let it keep suffering like this. I was ashamed I hadn’t ended this bird’s agony back when it was being harassed by the stray beach dogs.

  I picked up the pelican, gently gathering its remaining wing in my left hand and folding it back to its body. I cradled my other hand underneath the dying bird’s bare belly. He was squishy and slippery and leaking pus. I wasn’t very good at this. I gagged.

  I’d never done any neck wringing. I didn’t have a clue about how to do it. I knew it involved grabbing the bird around its neck and then swinging it in a circle, which seemed horrifying. I tried it anyway, but apparently too slowly, so all I did was splatter myself with bloody pus—and a glob of this awfulness actually landed inside my mouth.

  Blech!

  I gagged again—and then just hurled the dying pelican into the sea. There. I was done with it.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that,” I said to Tilly as I spat into the sand and spritzed my mouth with ocean water. But just as I was about to untie her leash, I heard a croak. And then a splash.

  And then more splashing and croaking. This must have been Rasputin’s pet pelican. I sat down to wait for the reaper, hoping it wouldn’t take too much longer and that something would eat the old bird. I had the over/under at five minutes. I looked over at my new dog.

  “I’ll take the under,” I said.

  But the splashing and croaking continued and then got even louder. Tilly started to bark.

  “Just go with it, señor. It’s time. Don’t fight it.”

  Easy for me to say.

  “Shit,” I said.

  I stood up and kicked off my flip-flops, pulled off my T-shirt, and dove over the shore break. I started swimming hard toward the sound of the croaks. I couldn’t see a thing.

  “Where are you, Señor Pelícano?” I shouted, as insane as it sounded.

  The croaking was now farther out to sea, which shouldn’t have surprised me, because this end of the beach is infamous for its riptide. But the ocean was my home; I wasn’t worried.

  I heard more splashing, and I swam faster. The croak was now a cry. I did notice now, though, that the lights from town were dimmer and a little farther away.

  “I’m here,” I said.

  I had to bob up and down between swells, but I was finally able to reach for the bird.

  The pelican was about three feet tall and would’ve had a five-foot wingspan if one of them hadn’t been gnawed off. Its bill was nearly half that long. I had watched these magnificently cartoonish creatures guzzle foot-long bota fish in one gulp. But when I lifted this dying bird gently by the neck, all I could think of was a broken umbrella.

  I probably should have just held the big bird underwater until he drowned, but I couldn’t even do that. I was going to have to swim back to shore and let Tilly finish him off. At least I would be teaching her about the survival of the fittest.

  But there was no way I’d be able to swim back to shore with one arm, not while holding a dying pelican in the other. In fact, the riptide was so strong that there was a possibility that I might not make it back even using both arms. I was pretty sure I was being swept out to sea. And it was pitch-black.

  This wasn’t good.

  “Tilly!!!” I wailed.

  I started to sidestroke, trying to break out of the rip’s surging current. I knew I should swim parallel to shore and then power toward the beach once the riptide released me. If I didn’t break through, I’d be swirled back out to sea. Which was what kept happening.

  I should have let go of the bird. But I couldn’t.

  It occurred to me as I fought to hold on to this dying bird that I might drown, an idea I found as ridiculous as it was terrifying. I tried to imagine what Jade and Obsidian might think. I hated the thought of leaving them with the memory that I was a shitty waterman. And then I wondered if my son would ever know what happened to his dad.

  I heard more splashing and croaking, but it wasn’t Mr. Pelícano. He was high and dry in my hand—and the croaking was mine. The splashing was Tilly. She was swimming out to rescue me, trailing the surf leash and the chunk of driftwood behind her. My new best friend circled around me, and I was able to grab the leash.

  “Good girl,” I gasped.

  I delicately put the pelican aboard the driftwood and then frog-kicked and pushed as Tilly dog-paddled us sideways out of the rip and then toward shore.

  It was after midnight when I was finally able to roust Sabanita’s one and only veterinarian. And he was really pissed off when he found out why.

  Dr. Ramos was in his underwear, and I could smell beer on his breath. I might have prematurely ignited his morning hangover. He didn’t speak much English, but he didn’t have to.

  “I can’t kill this pelican,” I said.

  Dr. Ramos nodded slowly.

  “Could you do it for me?” I asked.

  “¿Por qué?”

  “He’s suffering.”

  I handed him the pelican.

  “How much you pay?” Dr. Ramos asked.

  “Whatever it takes,” I said. “Just do it.”

  That might not have been the smartest thing to say to an animal health-care provider in Mexico, but at that moment I was pretty happy just to be alive—and relieved that Señor Pelícano’s blood would be on someone else’s hands.

  49

  Early the next morning, I took Tilly for a run on the beach. We made it all the way to where I’d almost been drowned by Señor Pelícano and then back to town for a smoothie at the Magic Mango, a popular gringo hangout on the plaza that specialized in two-thousand-calorie avocado-and-coconut milkshakes. It was off-season, so I was the only customer.

  It poured rain for the rest of the day and kept raining for the next two weeks.

  Most mornings I surfed head-high muddy Surprises while Tilly waited patiently for me on the beach. During afternoons, I took extralong siestas and tried to dream up new menus for the Wave of the Day. The local rivers were peaking, and tormenta had just about finished flushing Sabanita’s excess trash into the Pacific.

  “Slow down, Tilly,” I said as I juggled my board and reached for her to steady myself. The runoff into Surprises was still raging from a predawn thunderstorm, and it had flooded the path to the beach. But the sky had cleared—first light was crystal. No wind, and the waves sounded exactly right.

  We made it to the sand and looked out to sea as lines of perfect head-high cleaners stacked up and then released toward shore. Tilly pointed—someone really had trained this dog.

  “I see her,” I said.

  And there she was, the 1975 ISP longboard champ, gracefully paddling into the silky face of a perfect left. Sarah stepped back on her Red F
in, wheeled the board into a textbook cutback, and then cross-stepped up to its nose—standing tall and hanging ten. I watched her in awe. It was true. She surfed like a champion.

  “Let’s go,” I finally said to Tilly, and we slipped away unnoticed, leaving Sarah alone in her world.

  If I missed a morning surf, I’d skip the siesta and head straight to the Wave of the Day. I had to admit that during Meagan’s brief tenure in the cantina business, she had done a hell of a job. There wasn’t that much for me to do. The toilets flushed and the lights stayed on.

  The Wi-Fi had been activated, so I’d signed up for Facebook. I was hoping that the boys might friend me. But so far they had not. It bummed me out, but deep down, I knew what was going on. Having started over from scratch myself, I knew the kind of relationships that had to be severed.

  I decided to change the name of the bar to Pirata’s. The Wave of the Day was a kook slogan that you see on countless surf school T-shirts and coffee mugs. And it was also impossible for me to say it out loud without thinking of Meagan and the boys—and that bang stick and Winsor with a spear through his chest.

  I drove up to Home Depot in PV and bought a four-by-eight-foot sheet of plywood. I painted it in the Mexican colors—to match my Meagan tattoo and to attract the local loyalists.

  In the center of the middle white stripe, I fancied up Pirata’s in an amateur attempt at Old English. It was nearly unreadable. I also drew a pirate with an eye patch and a Captain Jack Sparrow bandanna.

  “I think pirate is spelled with an e at the end,” a man said.

  I turned and saw a guy standing in the doorway, but he was backlit by the sun, so it was hard to make him out.

  “It’s pee-rah-tah,” I said, phonetically. “Which is how you say pirate in Spanish. And it’s spelled with two a’s.”

  “Well, that’s how you can spot the tourists, I guess,” he said, moving just inside the door.

  I got a better look at him. He was wearing a blue windbreaker and hard-soled brown shoes—and had short hair and long pants.