by R. P. Lester
That leech goes forth into the world to smoke/shoot/snort/eat their product.
Aforementioned leech eventually squanders their product.
Repeat.
Save for prostitution, it’s the most scrupulous industry in the world.
Not often, but occasionally, someone would come over to my place with no money and a jones that can’t be understood until you see it. Pouring sweat like they just ran a 10K in Hell; eyes glassy from the last intake of their preferred poison; and they couldn’t keep still if somebody had threatened the life of their firstborn.
I had no qualms helping out a good customer. Depending on who it was, I’d give them a taste for free just to ease the pain. Of course, my magnanimity was conditional. It was quietly understood that I was to be reimbursed the next time they came around for a purchase. Otherwise, our business was concluded. (Didn’t matter. The city I lived in was full of drugs. If they burned me they knew they could score somewhere else.)
It goes without saying that if the individual had failed to pay me for previous assistance, there was a middle finger and a 9mm shoved in their face. They were on their own. Barring that, I’d do it. When I was in that viper’s pit of a life, I’d ran out of drugs plenty of times myself and knew the discomfort of withdrawal. However, if an honest customer came to me hurting, aching, and needing just a couple of pills or a few lines to tide them over, I was never so bastardly as to say, “Fuck you. That’s your problem.”
It’s a damn shame the legitimate business world doesn’t share my charitable views.
***
I was in a period of abstinence from narcotics. These spurts came around every so often but never lasted more than six months. When I got tired of doing and selling drugs, I’d clean up to pass a toxicology screen for employment.
It was during one of these stretches that I went to work on boats. I don’t mean that I constructed or tooled on them. I mean I worked on the boats. I was a deckhand, employed by a company who ran tugboats on the Mississippi River, and crew boats, whose main function was to pick up crews from or deliver them to oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. In addition to these vessels, the company had a fleet of supply boats that brought fresh materials to the rigs and carted away soiled.....supplies.
The business was started by a retired boat captain sometime in the mid-70s. His first tugboat was similar to a real one in the sense that it wouldn’t sink in a body of water. That’s it. By all accounts it was little more than a big raft lashed together with hope and bubble gum. Over many lean years of scrimping, saving, and securing lucrative contracts, he and his earlier employees began to amass a parade of seaworthy crafts. Approximately twenty years after The Airy Flatulence was christened into service, I filled out my application for employment. By the time I went to work, the company had an impressive fleet of over one-hundred-and-fifty vessels, becoming one of the premier offshore suppliers in the world.
***
I’d be a liar if I said there were some aspects of the job I didn’t like, my favorite of which was sunrise on the water.
My shift was from midnight to noon. When a new day came around, I’d drop whatever I was doing to bathe in the majesty. Depending on our direction, I’d post up at port or starboard with a full mug of coffee, chainsmoking, leaning on the rail and greeting the splendor with dolphins squealing just a short distance from my footing. Sometimes we were tied to a rig, sometimes not. If we were in motion, I’d remove my orange hardhat and let the breeze whip over my bald head as I awed at nature’s free glory. Daybreak seemed to last forever out there. I’d lose track of time staring at the wonderment, enraptured by one of God’s greatest creations.
Poets and authors use elaborate language to describe first blush for their readers. Everybody has seen portrayals in film and television. But Lord, one never knows how Heavenly the aurora can be until you’ve felt its warmth from the turquoise waters of the Gulf.
I’d never seen the rays of the sun until then. The birth of a new morning sent everlasting beams of yellow slashing through cumulus clouds threatening to dwarf its greatness. The coming light filtered through the atmosphere to glow purple, blue, and orange over the water. Every morning in the middle of my shift, I was reminded of how small we really are. All of us. We’re nothing compared to the illustrious ball of energy that heats the Earth. I’m still upset I never had a camera—that I didn’t have the talent to capture the moment with paint on canvas. The breathtaking sunrises of the Gulf are what I remember most about my time on the waves. They were the most unforgettable moments of the experience.
Well, that and plummeting fifteen feet to my near-death on the bow of a tugboat.
***
Everybody, from new-hires to seasoned vets, wanted to work on the crew or supply boats, leaving vacuums on the tugs. Instead of saying “No” to a portion of these requests, the oh-so-knowledgeable heads of Human Resources tried to please all the people all the time. And it worked: everybody was pleased except for guys like me who were stripped of their beautiful sunrises and sent to work on the goddamn tugboats in the Mighty Mississip’.
One day I showed up to a satellite office in Laplace. I was shocked to learn that I was going to be working on the river for a while. They told me I was going to be a “swing man.” If I’d been in a fetish club, that shit would’ve been awesome. But life is not Studio 54. The definition herein meant that I’d be in the Gulf for a few hitches, but spend most of my time on the tuggers pushing barges full of gravel or rotting corn. It was a demotion of sorts.
I was standing in an executive’s office with my bag thrown over my shoulder when I got the news. His name was Lonnie Langerhand and he was the owner’s great-nephew. I was one-hundred-and-thirty pounds heavier, five inches taller, a year older, and spoke three octaves lower than him. He was known throughout the company as a sniveling little power monger.
I asked him why I was being moved around. He never looked up from the papers on his desk and dismissively said, “Shit rolls downhill, Innis. It’s just the way it is.”
No one had ever said that to me before. I didn’t like it. Not only am I not shit, but if someone’s going to tell me that it needs to come harder than a Mickey Mouse impersonation. I began to imagine Lonnie’s head rolling down a hill and smiled at the vision. He interrupted my daydream when he added that instead of my standard two weeks, I’d be out for three because the tugs ran at a different schedule.
This threw a monkey wrench in my plans.
“The thing is, Lonnie, I can’t do that, man. I ran over some broken glass and nails that one of your maintenance crews dropped in the parking lot. It flattened my two front tires. I already called a mechanic here in town to ask him if he could do anything. He said that he’d tow my car and have new tires mounted, but that I’d have to pick it up as soon as I came in because he was leaving on vacation the next day. He won’t be back for two weeks after that.”
Lonnie looked up from his desk with annoyance. “What’s that got to do with me?”
I could see he was pissed because I’d left little wonder as to who was responsible for my punctured property. Thing is, I didn’t actually see the trucks do it. Otherwise, I would’ve pitched a bitch and gone over his head to have the company pay for my new Michelins. But I knew it was the yardhands; everybody from the captains to the office secretary knew they dropped shit in the lot all the time.
Whatever. Oompa Loompas could’ve slashed my tires and it still wouldn’t have changed the fact that I had a major issue.
“Dude, do you see my problem? I only have a day to get my ride back before he leaves. I’d planned on being out two weeks and that’s what I told him. If I’m gone for three, that puts me stranded here for seven days waiting for him to get back from his vacation. How in the hell am I supposed to get home?” Laplace is about thirty miles west of New Orleans, one-hundred-and-eighty miles away from where I lived at the time.
That smug cocksucker snorted and looked at me like I’d come to have an in-depth conver
sation about the color of the new office carpet.
Without a hint of pity, he said, “That’s your problem. Now get on the tug, Coxman.”
Your mama can tug my Coxman, motherfucker.
The boat was waiting for me at the dock about a hundred yards from the office. I stomped down the stairs, cursing the whole way. I threw my bag on the planks first, then climbed aboard. The other deckhand was leaning on the rail stern-side smoking a Black & Mild. I introduced myself and we untied the ropes.
I was in a pickle. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but apparently I had three weeks to think about it. The diesel engines rumbled to life to take us down the choppy fall current.
***
Two weeks in.
I’d spent fourteen days on the river and I still had a situation to deal with once we made it back to land for crew change. It was fine; at least then I’d be away from a drunkard steering inestimable tons of metal and a man who made my skin crawl. Fretting as I was over lodging and transportation, my mental condition was worsened by a boat captain who took nips from a silver flask and a deckhand who, evidently, had just been released from a ten-year prison stretch for drugging men in gay bars and raping them in their homes (I slept in my cabin with the door locked and chained). How in the hell either one of these guys were hired to work in one of the most hazardous fields on the planet still beats the shit out of me.
It was a sunny afternoon near New Orleans. We were “making up tow,” which in layman’s terms means we were tying barges together for a delivery down river. At times, a tugboat can push up to a dozen barges to its destination. For this trip, we were moving eight. I think they contained beans and sand.
Making up tow is a painstaking, dangerous process. I always compared it to piecing a jigsaw puzzle with rusty containers. It goes like so:
The tug picking up the order arrives at a dock to find a collection of barges that have been deposited by another crew. It’s their job to ferret through the mass and pick out which ones to haul. This is done by jibing the identifying numbers painted on the barges with the manifest. Once the paperwork and markings are in sync, the captain opens full throttle to close the gap between the bow and a lateral side of a random barge, gunning the engine to hold his position when necessary. Then the morons deckhands hike up steps located on the bow with barge ropes slung over their shoulders. At the top is a platform about four-feet-by-four-feet, give or take. A pole jutting skyward from the center of the platform is used as a buttress while waiting for the boat to position itself. When the bumpers of the tug are flush, leaving no crevices for a man to fall through, they step to the deck of the barge with their ropes and pray they make it.
The window to execute this maneuver is very small. Just because the bow is flush one second doesn’t mean it’ll stay that way for two. Currents and wind both play a hand in how long the Gully of Death remains closed. I’ve seen a couple of guys fall and get crushed between boat and barge. Either that, or they were swept away by the current. Both demises are tragic and ugly.
The ropes we used for tying the barges together were an inch-and-a-half in diameter and up to fifty feet in length. Big, thick marine ropes. And I’m not going to sugarcoat it, good people, the things were goddamn cumbersome. Your body’s equilibrium is off with just one coiled around a shoulder. With two, imbalance becomes less of a concern, though you still have to walk up stairs and jump to a fucking barge with around a hundred pounds of extra weight. I was strong, and heaving two ropes had never been an issue for me. So much so, in fact, that at the last minute I decided to carry three so I wouldn’t have to make another trip to the boat deck. My cockiness directly contributed to my upcoming dilemma, though it was mostly a drunk tugboat captain.
After ascending the steps to their apex, I was ready to jump. My partner had already made his leap of faith. I was braced to the pole, steadying against the boat’s teeter-totter motions. Once everything was in place, I signaled to the skipper that I was going aboard. He signaled a “Go” and I began to step across. Just then, I heard the sonofabitch gun it so the port side—my side—drifted away from the barge. For an instant, I looked like a flag of fear, my left arm and leg extended outward, perched precariously over the Mississippi River with the tips of my right fingers barely clinging to the pole and the toes of my right foot on the platform. Had I let go right then, I would’ve plunged into the red, churning water. The third rope hanging over my right shoulder provided enough centrifugal force to swing my body eighty degrees inward to the boat. Before I knew what’d happened, three-hundred-and-thirty pounds of screaming organ donor were dangling over the winch and bow rail.
I was screwed, man. Falling from the platform was imminent, for my fingertips were slipping from the pole. I had milliseconds to make a choice: a) release the pole and land on the rail, possibly breaking every bone on my right side, or b) release the pole and land on a tugboat winch, definitely breaking every bone on my right side, as well as my neck, brain, spirit, and rest of my body. The former seemed a better option.
As the bumper sticker says, I Let Go and Let God.
***
I don’t want to expound too much on the impact. I mean, what do you think it felt like? It sucked. But if you’re parched for a description, let’s say it was equivalent to a gang of tweaking biker bitches clubbing me with molten sledge hammers.
I’d like to focus primarily on the grace with which I careened toward the deck. I have to tell the truth—the fall itself was mystical. Magical. Fantastical, even. I felt like a buzzard swooping down to snatch a lone bunny who’d strayed from the family, like a rider on the world’s coolest roller coaster—only without the benefits of a cart, handrails, or motorized tracks to foster a sense of protection. If I’d had the presence of mind to do it, I would’ve screamed “FUCK YEEEEEAAAAAHHHH!” on the way down. But visions of death and paralysis filled my mind.
And it was a gusty silence.
***
I didn’t black out. When I tried to stand, I wished I had.
When I gathered my wits, the first thing I saw was the huge winch just inches from my face. I also discovered that I was alone. Neither the captain nor my sex-offending coworker had seen a fucking thing. I later learned that the boat’s operator was sipping his Johnnie Walker Red Label during my descent. The other deckhand had been three barges over.
I did a push-up from the moldy deck and collapsed from pain. The throbbing on the right side of my body spread to my left. It was so intense I thought that every bone, from shoulder to foot, was a powdery mass swimming in chunks of torn muscle. But subsequent x-rays showed that I was whole inside. No fractures. Not even one. How I didn’t break anything is still an unsolvable miracle to this day, though I’m not one to kick a gift horse in the mouth.
My second attempt to stand proved successful. Forcing a painful walk hobble to the “house”—the center of the craft where the kitchen, sleeping quarters, etc., are located—I slowly made my way up two flights of stairs to the wheelhouse and found that sorry, no-good, negligent bastard of a boozehound leaned back in his chair with his silver flask tipped at high altitude.
“What in the hell are you doing drinking, you fucking lush?!”
He jumped in his captain’s chair when I yelled, dropping his flask along with any acceptable explanation for his heedlessness.
“You gunned it and yanked the boat away when I was stepping off! You goddamned seafaring hag!!” I wish I had a recording of the profanity that fell from my normally pious tongue. I think I even made up some shit.
After my tirade, he said, “Damn, man! What you mean you fell from the platform?! There’s no way you did that, man! You’d be dead right now!”
“You loopy fuckin’ coonass! Look!” I angrily stripped down to my cock-and-balls to show that sixty-something barfly the hemisphere of my body that’d started to turn every hue of black, purple, and sickly blue. Standing in the wheelhouse in all my birthday glory, the skipper’s disbelief was nullified and he ceased his pr
otestations.
I told that sonofabitch to have a pot of coffee. I was done.
“Take me back to the office, motherfucker! I’m done!”
Fuck ‘em. I was done.
I half walked, half fell back down the stairs to my cabin and assessed the damage in a mirror. The scent of freeze-dried Taster’s Choice soon wafted from the kitchen below. Shortly thereafter, I felt the boat reversing away from the barge. When the date-rapist came to offer me a cup of coffee—which I flatly refused—he said that El Capitan was sitting at the controls looking like a little boy who’d gotten a spanking in front of his friends.
That souse didn’t know it, but his real ass whipping was yet to come.
***
“You want us to do what?!”
“I want you to pay for my tires, my hotel room, and every meal I eat while I convalesce, Lonnie. Do it, or I’ll sue your fuckin’ tits off for letting this drunk asshole operate a tugboat!”
It was two days after we’d moored. We were in Lonnie’s office—me, the rapist, the captain, and Langerhand. After a visit to the company doctor to confirm the extent of my injuries, I was given crutches by his nurse and pertinent information from a battle-scarred first mate in the company. Apparently, the captain was known as an alcoholic who went out every hitch with a few bottles. He’d been doing it for years, but this was the first time his haphazardness ever resulted in an incident. Thank the Creator, I wasn’t dead. My biggest boo-boo was a caboodle of busted blood vessels on the flank of my right thigh running to my knee. It looked like a huge skin sack floating between my junk and asscheek. The doc said my tissues would absorb the fluid over time.
I’ll take that over “mineral analysis of the Mississippi River bed” any day of the week.