Salty Sky

by Seth Coker

  The trainers and the nurses were gone when they got home. Joe came across a small urge to track them down and have a couple of nightcaps with Ashley.

  THE TRAINERS WERE in their tight black uniforms, cologne applied and waiting by the time Ashley was ready to go out. The girls hadn’t seen much of them that day. Occasionally, Gino tried to awkwardly claim possession of one of Ashley’s friends. The intent seemed more a signal to his friends than to hers; her friend was, aside from polite interaction, unresponsive.

  Generally, the guys spent the day in their staterooms watching movies, only coming out to sunbathe for a couple of hours. Now they were drinking vodka tonics. The captain poured pinot grigio for the girls, and they had sunset cocktails while he brought out a tray of snacks.

  For dinner, they went to a seafood restaurant. A five-piece reggae band played the outside seating area, where there were around thirty people eating dinner and listening to the music. Ashley wondered how much the guys in the band were making for these couple of hours; they were really good. How many times did U2 play for thirty people before they started selling out football stadiums? Maybe that’s how her business would have to start.

  After the band finished, the girls walked back over the bridge to the island marina. On the way, they passed the trainers, who were following their ears to a dance club across the street. Back on the boat, the girls locked their cabin door and were asleep before midnight.

  A secretive knock woke Ashley and her friends. She looked at her phone: three thirty in the morning. The knock became less timid. It grew persistent, even a little angry. The girls, used to sleeping in hospital break rooms, covered their heads and went back to sleep.

  7

  ON SATURDAY MORNING, Barry went for chicken and biscuits and Jay stocked libations while Cale prepped the vessel. He lowered the boat off the lift, topped off the gas tanks from a plastic can, and primed the fuel line. He unlocked the shed, pulled out a funboard, a longboard, and bait from the freezer and loaded them on the Whaler. He added two paddleboards, then fit six surfcasters into the holders welded onto the aluminum rail above the helm.

  The veins in his temples pulsed with each step, and the humidity took its toll. His fingers were fatter than Milwaukee’s juiciest bratwursts. At one point, Cale found himself holding the day’s bait—packs of frozen shrimp and ballyhoo—against the side of his head. He pondered how many times today he’d wonder why he smelled rotten fish. He tossed the bait in the boat’s well and sprayed his head with a hose.

  The passengers finally loaded at a quarter to noon. Jimmy sat on the end of the dock, his head cocked to the side.

  “Sorry, J-man. Hold down the fort.”

  Hurricane Arlene was hammering Bermuda, but that was good news for the surf report: The sea buoys showed waves four to six feet high, spaced fifteen seconds apart outside Masonboro. That was as close to Waikiki as the East Coast got.

  Cale started the Mercuries and slipped into the channel. The first low bridge was a half mile south. A sailboat under motor and a tug pushing a barge of pine mulch both slowed for the noon opening.

  Cale wondered how a pine tree could be cut down, mulched, put on a barge, put on a truck, put in a bag, put back in a truck, put in a store, and sold off the shelf for two dollars a bag? What did the guy who sold the tree get? How does three Abraham Lincolns sound? Copper, not paper.

  The same thought with bananas. If a bunch three thousand miles away from the trees was bought for two dollars, how much did that guy get paid to shimmy up the trunk and get them down? Cale figured this mental threading was what all pilots did when autopilot had the wheel.

  The boom of two Marine Corps Harrier jets grabbed everyone’s attention. The jets crossed paths with a floatplane. It would have been a direct hit if they weren’t separated by twenty thousand vertical feet.

  Jay asked, “Have you flown those?”

  His friends always fished to see if he secretly made bombing runs for the military. Knowing Jay meant the Harrier, Cale answered, “Yeah, I’ve flown floatplanes. Except for the landing, it’s about as exciting as driving a pontoon boat.”

  Watching the floatplane brought back an old memory. While he was flying one in the Keys, he had spotted a cigarette boat in the hook of a small mangrove island. A cigarette boat was de facto suspicious. They were super uncomfortable, expensive to operate, and really, really fast. Their cargo tended to also be expensive and illegal. But hiding one in the mangroves? Come on.

  Cale’s passenger, Agent Gonzalez, nodded downward and said, “Pilot, buzz the treetops.”

  They did three loops without finding any sign of life.

  Cale picked up the radio and called the patrol boat in the area, “This is Aerial One, looking for Deep Blue. Over.”

  “This is Deep Blue. Proceed Aerial One. Over.”

  “This is Aerial One. We have a cigarette boat stashed in the bite on the island just south of Picnic Island. Over.”

  “This is Deep Blue. Roger that. We are ten minutes out. Over.”

  Picnic Island had a shallow beach, a few palms for shade, and a forgiving sandbar as its only barrier to approach. It was a popular spot for a family beach day. The mangrove island where the cigarette boat was tethered looked uninhabitable and lacked either a local or formal name.

  “This is Deep Blue. Per the charts, we can’t access the bite until the tide rises. We should be deep enough in three hours. Over.”

  Cale was about to acknowledge they’d maintain surveillance until then when Agent Gonzalez picked up the radio. “This is Aerial One. Roger that. Is the … lagoon … clear for us to land? Over.”

  Deep Blue said the lagoon was reef free after the channel, so if Cale thought he could land in the lagoon, he should be clear. Cale double-checked his charts. He buzzed the mangroves again and inspected his runway.

  As the plane turned around again, Agent Gonzalez asked, “Pilot, any reason not to touch down in the lagoon?”

  This was a unique situation. Cale was in charge of the operation of the plane, the safety of his passenger, and the condition of the vessel. But Gonzalez was the operational superior. So if safety in landing wasn’t the issue, Cale’s thoughts about the safety of investigating the cigarette boat didn’t matter.

  Cale responded, “Sir, I think the plane can safely land as far as trees, wind, and reefs are concerned.”

  “Then let’s get down there.”

  “Sir, any reason we can’t keep an eye on this site and wait until Deep Blue can check things out with our support?” Cale left unsaid that they would be checking things out with no support.

  Gonzalez replied, “Pilot, let’s get on that pond and unravel this mystery.”

  A democracy was not an effective organization, but a dictatorship could effectively move you in the wrong direction very quickly—which was where, with his vote torn up—Cale thought they were headed. Gonzalez, he assumed, was rehearsing for his next press conference.

  Cale cut down hard over the mangroves and landed with a small splash. The runway he’d chosen led away from the cigarette boat into the middle of the lagoon.

  After the plane’s momentum dissipated, he turned and brought the plane slowly back toward the mangroves. There was still no movement on the cigarette boat. There was little wind, and Cale cut the engine and coasted toward the trees. Gonzalez got on the loudspeaker.

  “This is the United States Drug Enforcement Agency. We have a plane and patrol boat in the area. We need to come aboard your craft. Please come out and identify yourself.”

  There was no response. Maybe it was abandoned or stashed for later. Or perhaps the four Haitians hiding with their Kalashnikovs’ scopes on the plane’s cockpit didn’t understand English.

  Thirty yards from the trees, the plane coasted to a stop. No Haitians yet. Cale unbuckled, pulled on a bulletproof vest, grabbed a collapsible bone fishing pole, and opened the door so he could push the plane the rest of the way. When he stepped onto the pontoon, he knew. The smell of a large dec
aying mammal was unmistakable. They looked anyway. They both threw up. Cale pushed the plane back and waited for the tide to rise and their friends to tow the vessel out. A great industry, the drug trade. You rarely had to worry about retirement benefits.

  Seeing today’s floatplane in the sky, the smell came back to him, and bile rose up in his throat. He took his eyes off the sky, cut the Whaler’s wake, slipped past the waiting boats, and went under the bridge. The channel broadened, and he pushed the throttle down. The Whaler planed, and he trimmed the Mercs up. The sun, salt spray, and wind cut Cale’s hangover.

  The channel narrowed. The clearance on the next bridge was nineteen feet, and marinas blanketed both banks. The mate on a forty-two-foot Hatteras sport fisher heading north lowered the boat’s antennas to squeeze under the bridge rather than wait for the half-past noon opening. The west bank’s bar was slinging beers, tequila shots, steamed shrimp, and fried fish sandwiches. At the east bank’s, a guitar man entertained the shrimp-and-grits crowd. The fuel docks had boats rafted up and waiting.

  Normally, sport fishers plied the inlet separating Harbor Island from the seven miles of uninhabited sand, saw grass, and turtle nests of Masonboro Island. Today, the high seas advisory kept all but the charter fishers docked. Why did someone who got on a boat every third year think an eight-hour trip to the Gulf Stream in high seas would be fun? The wahoo may bite, and if you weren’t chumming the waters, you might reel a few in. You’d get—say—fifteen minutes of excitement over eight hours. Even those lucky few would feel compressed spines the whole drive back to Ohio. Hemingway fished the Caribbean for a reason.

  On Masonboro’s west coast, the waters were calm. Runabouts tossed cinder block anchors in the shallows, and their passengers waded in the eighty-degree water. The beaches were covered in canned beers, baseball hats, bikinis, menthols, tattoos, and dogs. In the deeper water, a seventy-two-foot Ferretti with Long Island port of call markings sat at anchor, with midsize local cabin cruisers bobbing on either side. Dance music pounded from its decks, and liquor bottles lined its mid-deck bar.

  Cale dropped a hook off the bow. Blake and Van wanted to stay with the Whaler to fish. Phil wanted to explore a bit. Dan and Jay took paddleboards to sweat it out. Barry and Cale grabbed surfboards and headed across the island.

  At first sight, the ocean confirmed the buoys’ report: chest- to head-high swells, nicely spaced. The jetty and its turbid water and bull sharks were a mile north. Cale really didn’t like bull sharks—too much testosterone. Every two hundred yards, a surfer pod gathered past the break. Longboarders, far out, caught open swells, while those on short boards chased fully formed curls closer to shore.

  Cale took a board of his own, waded through the whitewater, duck dived a breaker, and paddled into the lineup. Breathing hard, his hangover forgotten, he watched a set form, slipped into position, picked the second wave, waited one-two-three, and paddled. The wave was a left arm break, the board angled down the line, and he rode from the curl onto the face and popped back to the curl. The swell built as the water got shallower, and he got three more turns in before popping over the lip as the break caught him.

  The blue sky, consistent waves, no wind, and no chop made ten minutes flow smoothly into an hour, an afternoon. At one point, bobbing in the waves, Cale noticed three bikinis walking on the beach. The tall blonde in the middle looked like she was here to shoot Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue. The muscles of her long legs flexed with each step. Thin straps connected the triangles of her black bikini, which covered her most private areas and highlighted her fit, tan, feminine figure. An hour later, Cale noticed the girls again coming back up the beach. He rode a wave all the way into the whitewater to get a better look at the goddess. Except for his realization that she was his daughters’ age, the closer look was worth the hard paddle back through the breaking waves.

  Barry took his board back to the boat and brought over a surfcaster and a cooler. Pods of surfers left, appeared, and left again. At five, Cale rolled up the leash. His calves were sunburned, his nipples raw, and his elbows aching. His orthopedist had told him he had bursitis in his left elbow. That sounded to him like something you got in middle age. (Kind of like having an orthopedist.) Wincing, Cale pulled off his rash guard, reached past the twenty-five-inch red drum in the cooler, and slipped a can into a koozie.

  The low tide had doubled the width of the beach. Three drinks later, the guys headed for the Whaler. A bikinied mom whose kids were with their dad for the weekend floated next to the Whaler in a life jacket, sipping not her first Natural Light of the day. On second glance, Cale recognized Phil floating beside her, hiding underneath a wide-brimmed hat he hadn’t possessed earlier.

  Barry asked, “Have you seen the rest of our crew?”

  The mom pointed, “Two of your friends went to the big cabin cruiser. I haven’t seen any others.”

  Phil climbed aboard the Whaler and grabbed two beers. He asked the mom, “You want a fresh one?”

  She climbed aboard for her drink. And sure, she accepted Phil’s offer of a ride to the bar. Which bar? Did it matter? Was it appropriate to be there in just a bikini? Why wouldn’t it be? The place was on the water, after all.

  She hollered to her friends. Her younger dental technician coworker—equally lit, less endowed but with a flatter stomach—joined up. The guys whose beers they had consumed all afternoon gave Phil the evil eye.

  Barry pulled the anchor onboard. The Whaler’s bow was aground and the passengers moved to the stern to help it release. A wading Phil pushed the bow. Cale trimmed the engines down, reversed the props, and the sand released. Phil wallowed aboard, head and belly first, his legs kicking in the air. He scraped his way across the bow.

  Six boats were rafted to the Ferretti. Several liquor bottles now rolled empty on the deck. Bronzed and burned skin was everywhere. Girls in bikinis or Daisy Dukes pulsed to synthesized rhythms. Shirtless dudes grooved off beat. Three massive bodybuilders with deep tans and permafrowns, guffawed like morning DJs and played cards in the shade of the flybridge.

  Blake, Barry, and Van were on the flybridge with two Tommy Bahama types and three girls in sundresses. Despite the dress, Cale recognized his goddess from the beach and involuntarily waved. Her head tilted to the side, but she smiled and waved back. Cale found himself involuntarily smiling. He also found himself wondering about this mix of old Italian men sitting with beautiful women above a ladder where three young mastiffs guarded the approach. He tried to remember whether this size Ferretti cost three or four million.

  Cale cut the props and knotted onto a Sea Ray’s stern cleats. Barry crossed the tie-ups to the Ferretti. Phil, Mom, and Mom’s young coworker improvised a dance floor while they waited. Cale, feeling awkward over the wave-and-smile combo, looked for things to fix on the Whaler. Twenty minutes later, Blake and the guys crossed the gunwale with plastic tumblers and the flybridge girls. The goddess smiled at Cale as she boarded. Angst crept over him as he started the engines, cast off, and pointed north.

  8

  A DESIRE TO avoid the massive expense of hurricane season insurance on the yacht had pushed Joe to take this trip up the eastern seaboard. Now he was docked in Harbor Island, North Carolina, where hurricane-induced ocean swells were too big for cruising. The stop-and-go of the inland waterway drove him nuts, so their trip would make it no further today. Joe was positive Fort Lauderdale was whitecap free.

  As Ashley came out of the aft stateroom just after sunrise, his cynical mood lifted and he grinned.

  “Happy Saturday, Joe,” she sang out to him.

  “To you as well. Did we wake you?”

  “No, I had plenty of sleep.”

  The poor trainers, Joe thought, were apparently so close but still so far. Since Joe didn’t want to fight Arlene’s waves, he asked the captain to find an anchorage where they could feel the breeze. They cast off, the captain eased from the slip, fast idled less than a mile, and anchored off the north end of a state park. Joe unbuttoned his
shirt, knotted the waist tie of his swim trunks, and dove off the bowsprit. He swam the hundred yards to the shallows with his head above water, doing frog strokes. He waded ashore, squishing the clay-like sand between his toes, his seventy-three-year-old lungs only slightly out of breath. The predawn fishermen were returning from the ocean side and loading their boats to head home for breakfast.

  Joe walked east, then left the trail and climbed a dune. The ocean advanced in long swells. It looked like a Hawaiian postcard filled with mid-Atlantic green water. He looked west and saw Tony standing on the dive platform, tossing bread to seagulls, and chatting up the nurses. No sign of the trainers. He looked to the south. The island was a long, narrow strip of sand, kind of like Fire Island but without the parking lots and volleyball courts. He looked north past the jetty and saw marinas, condos, and boatyards across the channel. Beyond that, he glimpsed the backs of three-story houses on the beach that were built over carports tall enough to protect them from flooding. The breeze felt great.

  Two old-timers sat on coolers. They drank coffee from thermos lids and savored tinfoil-wrapped bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches. They’d had decent luck, mostly blues. A drum over thirty inches had to be thrown back. A couple of ladyfish. One tarpon that broke the lightweight tackle.

  The sand was rougher on the Atlantic side, the tide low but incoming. The big seas washed up new sea wood. Thousands of barnacles clinging to a former pylon gasped for water. Joe picked up a few shells that caught his eye and tossed them into the water.

  He walked north, toward the jetty, and watched a fisherman drag a three-foot shark out of the water. Surfers bobbed in the waves a hundred yards out. A pelican dive-bombed a bait ball in between the surfers and the fisherman. For not the first time, he wondered why people surfed jetties. Were the waves that different? A pair of paddle-boarders stroked into the swells as they came out the inlet. Everyone and everything was crowding the jetty.