Death by Water

by Alessandro Manzetti

  June couldn’t help but ask, “What’s the catch?”

  “Catch?”

  “Come on, Captain. You been trying to get in my pants for as long as I remember, and nobody pays fifty an hour to paint a boat. If that pay comes along with me being your nookie, then forget it.”

  Kupjack threw his old bearded fat face back and cackled like a witch. “Aw, girl, you’re a riot, you are! ’Tis true, I was randy in my day, and gals followed my dick down the street like it was the Pied fuckin’ Piper, and with good reason. But them days is gone. I’m old as Moses and fat as Buddha, and I’m so filled with liquor they won’t even need ta embalm me when I die. Shee-it, if ya wanna know the truth, I can beat my dick like a red-headed stepson and I still can’t get it hard enough to spit.”

  June sighed. “Actually, Captain, I didn’t need to know the truth with that amount of detail.”

  “Believe you me, ain’t nothin’ I’d like more’n to bury my hardwood in a gal’s tail and hump till she come so hard her eyeballs switch sockets, but, no, I’se afraid it’d be easier fer me to shoot pool with a piece’a over-cooked spaghetti. And the diabetes just make it worse.” The old salty dog lifted one leg, pulled up a pant cuff, and displayed a discolored ankle close to six inches thick. “Damn shit make my ankles get all swole up big around as a Russer liverwurst, and that keeps the dick down too. Say, speakin’ of liverwurst, is it true what I heard? That you got up’n fired from the deli for jack-hammerin’ a liverwurst in and out’a your joy-trail?”

  “No!” June exploded. “It’s NOT!”

  Kupjack shrugged lackadaisically. “Nothin’ ta be ’shamed of, hon. Woman got every right to stick anything she want in her sauce-box, whether it be a liverwurst, a french bread, a bowling pin, one’a them big rolls’a cookie dough, a rotisserie chick— ”

  “I get the picture!” June yelled, her face turning evermore pink.

  “Anyway, sweetie, the paint’s on the deck’n the boat’s unlocked, start right away if ya like. You need anything”—he jerked a thumb backward—“I’ll be in the bar.”

  That’s it? Just like that, I’ve got a fifty-buck-an-hour job?

  It seemed so.

  “Uh, thanks, Captain.”

  “Shore thing, sugar,” he said, limping down the ramp. “Oh, I forgot. Do belowdecks first, ’cos I ain’t picked up the exterior paint yet, plus I gotta get my hoist repaired,” and then he hobbled toward the bar.

  June walked down to the slip for the forty-two-foot Gwendylyn Rose, an old rattletrap but still chugging after decades. A pyramid of one-gallon paint cans sat stacked before the gang-ladder. All the supplies she’d need were right there as well, in a stationary storage locker. There was no time like the present so she pried the lid off a can, squatted down, and began to stir. Her first coherent thought to herself was a familiar one: Shit, I’m horny as fuck! June’s sudden good fortune put her in a great mood, and when she was in a great mood…the juices got to flowing. I must be a sex maniac, she concluded, her sex already damp, even though I never have sex with anything but vibrators, sausages, and vegetables. The paint, epoxy-based, was hard to stir, yet the exertion didn’t consciously occur to her. I’m an orgasm addict, I guess, and she supposed there were worse things to be. The position of her squat pressed the crotch of her cutoffs firm against her already throbbing pubis. What I wouldn’t give for a man right now, a great big fuckin’ HUNK of a man with a dick the size of a baby’s leg and balls like duck eggs. Yes, something like that sliding into her and banging in and out like a bilge-pump piston would be just what the doctor ordered. So dense was this desire that she felt very tempted to take a break, go belowdecks, and give her “honey pot” a workover. She could get her fist in there no problem, and only a few twists would be required to set off a powder-keg orgasm. But, no, with my luck someone would see…And that would be even worse than her previous humiliation at the deli.

  She got back to stirring, and—

  Oh fuck. Not again.

  That Cosmo article wasn’t kidding about women in their forties. Her hormones must be overflowing, for the squat and the continued pressure of the crotch of her shorts pressing against her “secret garden” continued to titillate her. Again she mused of her phantom suitor, the faceless armature of over-muscular flesh, legs wide and hard as railroad ties, and dinner-plate-sized hands manipulating her like a sack of packing peanuts, flinging off her top, hauling off her shorts, and laying her out on her belly like a specimen. Her butt cheeks were parted, then—

  Kurrrrrrr-HOCK!

  —a golf-ball-sized wad of spit landed right on her anus. No, not there! she thought. No, not there!

  Her mental plea was answered by the prompt insertion of that perfect, throbbing, heavily veined tennis-ball-can-sized cock. June’s cheeks billowed; just the first thrust squashed the wind out of her. But once the mindless rhythm got going—

  Yes, there! she thought. Yes, there!

  Indeed, it felt like an arm going right up her butt. Was it actually prodding the bottom of her stomach? It occurred to June, in this peculiar moment of abstraction, that sometimes what a woman wanted more than anything was simply to be filled, to be used as a container of flesh and be crammed to the top, to be stuffed like a turkey until there was no more room to stuff anything more.

  And if that’s what women really wanted, that’s what June was getting in the midst of this sopping, cringing, nerve-suckling fantasy.

  Her heady glee could only be reflected by one word: Fuck!

  The prodigious erection pistoned in and out, and the fact that it did so with no regard for her at all only made it more delicious. Her suitor’s need had denuded her of all identity: she was no longer a thinking, living American woman; she was a squirming, flinching, mindless thing that was taken to be used solely as a receptacle for the phantom’s animal lust.

  And that was just fine with June! My butt’s being plungered like a gas station toilet…and I LOVE it!

  The phantom must’ve weighed four hundred pounds, and all of it was muscle, and when it lay down flat it squashed June like a Twinkie under cinderblock (if he’d been filled with cream, like a Twinkie, it would be all over the place now!). All her breath was vised out of her; her tongue jutted. Every ounce of strength was required to wedge her hand under her belly and inch it toward her steaming sex, and she knew all it would take was a single press of her fingertip against her gorged clitoris and that would be that: Orgasm City.

  Still, the brainless suitor humped her butt without relent. June’s finger was two inches away, one inch, a half-inch—

  Almost, almost…

  —and just as the contact she craved would be achieved…

  “Hey, girl, I say that’s one mighty fine tail you’se stickin’ out there!”

  The marauding voice shattered the fantasy, and the gates to Orgasm City were slammed shut.

  Shit! Who the—

  June, transported back to the dull reality of her life in general and the even duller task of stirring a gallon of marine paint on the foredeck of this old rattletrap fishing boat, fired her glare behind her and down.

  It was Rummy, the neighborhood dock bum, grinning toothless through a rust-colored beard that encompassed most of his face and scratching the crotch of dungarees that probably hadn’t been washed in a year.

  “It’s rude to stare at people, Rummy!” she yelled.

  “Gal with a butt like that make it hard not to, umm-hmm! Look like you had somethin’ naughty goin’ on in yer head, the ways you was squirmin’ and moanin’ and— ”

  “As a matter of fact I did, and you just ruined it!” she barked and kept stirring.

  “Well then what say you’n me go belowdecks and pick up where ya left off?”

  What say you drink your own piss instead, June thought in a rage. “What do you want, Rummy?”

  “’Sides you? Nothin’, girl. Only I wanted ta ask if you heard ’bout Kupjack, but I guess ya have, seein’ how you’re workin’ for him now.”

&nbs
p; “Brilliant observation, and, yeah, I heard he was back in town.”

  “Naw, naw, that ain’t what I meant. I meant about Kelly Point.”

  June grimaced, stirring away. The paint was like taffy. “What about Kelly Point?”

  When Rummy scratched his beard, a snowstorm of dandruff fell. “Well, accordin’ to the local talk, that be where Kupjack just come back from, then he drop his crew off on Brewer Island. But when he pulls in here there weren’t nothin’ in his hold. Was bone dry’s what the dockmaster say. Then Kupjack up’n pay cash for that new Caddie and start spendin’ money like Donald Strump…or whatever his name is. Donald Gates?”

  June stopped stirring and whipped around. “Wait a minute. First I heard is was Devil’s Reef, then Dunedin Reef, and now you’re telling me he just came back from Kelly Point, and that he dropped his crew off a Brewer Island. Well, I heard it was St. Mary’s Island after I heard it was Kent Island. What the hell’s going on?”

  “Gold, that’s what.”

  June looked at him cockeyed. “Say again?”

  “That’s what I heard my own self…’twas gold he come back with, and it must’ve been a fair amount ’cos he walked out of the gold exchange in Salisbury this morning with a hundred grand, cash.”

  June frowned. “Even if that’s true, Rummy, how would you know?”

  The man patted dust off his corroded shirt. “Simple. My sister works there. She told me.”

  In a town like this, June knew that most every bit of information communicated amongst the local population was ninety-nine-percent grapevine. “Fine, Rummy, but I still don’t believe it.”

  “Then where’d Kupjack get the money?”

  It’s a good question, but…“I don’t care,” she resolved, then squatted back down to her stirring.

  “And where is everybody?” Rummy continued the conjecture. The question was followed by a tinkling sound.

  “What do you mean, where is— ” but then June winced. Rummy was standing right there on the dockwalk in broad daylight, urinating into the water. “At least turn around when you do that, Rummy!”

  “Oh, shee-it, sorry,” he said. Were flies actually buzzing around his exposed penis? He put it away but, without surprise, didn’t even pull his zipper up. “Look around. Notice anything strange about the marina?”

  It took June several moments to blink away the vision of Rummy’s unwashed-for-years dick. But then, as her eyes surveyed the long expanse of boat-slips…

  Damn near every boat is GONE…“Where’d everyone go?”

  “Where you think?” Rummy replied. “They all high-tailed it to Kelly Point, to look for that stash of gold Kupjack found. Probably a lot more there.” Rummy stepped down off the dock, into a small dinghy, which was where he usually slept. “’S’where I’m a-goin’ now, I ain’t no dummy. You wanna come with me?” he added with a crack of enthusiasm.

  “No,” she said. “No, thank you.”

  “All’s right then. See ya later.”

  Hope not, June thought at her cynical best. Rummy pulled a cord, started a small outboard motor, and puttered out to the bay.

  This is some weird shit going on here, she thought. Devil’s Reef, Dunedin Reef, Kelly Point, Kent Island, St. Mary’s Island, crackjaw, hagfish, etc. Every time I heard one thing, I hear another thing completely different. And…

  She stared at the thought. Gold?

  She’d never heard of one speck of gold in these parts, ever. But it was odd about Kupjack’s sudden spending spree. The only thing tighter than Kupjack’s wallet was a bull’s ass in fly season. And now that she thought of it, why would he have bought a gold Cadillac, of all colors? It looked like shit.

  Salty sea-foam towns like this all had their local legends, but the subject of gold did not fit into any of them. No hidden treasure, no pirates, no sunken Spanish galleons.

  The paint was stirred, and the sun was cooking her back. She lugged the paint can down to the companionway steps to the first cabin. Her mind kept swimming in questions as she opened the portholes to get some cross breeze. Wouldn’t it be funny as shit if I found a gold coin down here? Then—

  “Oww!”

  In a split second, she’d stepped on something and fallen—thunk!—right on her butt. She’d need to get some lights on down here; it was too dark, and…

  What did I trip over?

  She squinted, patting her hand around on the floor. There was nothing—No! Her hand landed on something cool, hard, and irregular. Was it a piece of glazed porcelain? It felt smooth, polished.

  June picked it up and took it to the sunlight slanting in from a porthole.

  And stared.

  What the fuck IS it?

  It was a six- or seven-inch long metallic object with rounded edges and a not-quite-symmetrical contour. The only thing she could think to compare it to would be a Baby Ruth bar, but of course Baby Ruth bars were not made of solid gold.

  This thing was.

  It’s a gold ingot or something! June deduced. That old fuck Kupjack really DID find gold!

  June’s heart pattered. She paced back and forth, wide-eyed. This thing in her hand was obviously only a tiny bit of the entire stash Kupjack had found. Like when you bite into a sandwich and a crumb of bread falls to the floor, came a weighty simile. And with the price of gold over a thousand dollars an ounce, here was the nest egg poor June had never gotten even after a life of hard, honest work. And she knew one thing for sure: This fuckin’ Baby Ruth bar is coming home with ME.

  Stealing, schmeeling. It wasn’t hers, no, but finder’s keepers. Kupjack has ENOUGH gold and he sure as shit knows where there’s more. So…fuck him. She put the gold bar/piece/ingot/whatever it was in her pocket. But, even though she now possessed a small fortune, she’d still have to paint the damn boat or else Kupjack would be suspicious. The piece in her pocket he’d dropped unnoticed, but if she quit on the spot—

  He’ll know I found something.

  Therefore, she resolved to get to work and make it seem that everything was normal, yet as she prepared to retrieve the dropcloths, rollers, etc., the most natural thought occurred to her:

  Maybe there’s more. Maybe there are a few more pieces lying around that Kupjack dropped and didn’t notice!

  Some inner monitor went off in her brain which said, You’ve got enough. Don’t be greedy, and to this monitor she promptly replied, Fuck off.

  On hands and knees, she proceeded, patting the ancient floor in every dark corner, and it must be said that the excitement derived from finding a chunk of pure gold combined with the excitement of possibly finding more…June was not surprised to find the “purse of her loins” beating like a heart and drenching her crotch; and though her mind was quite set on gold, part of her cognizance was overwhelmed by imagery of the most lusty sort: dicks in her mouth, dicks in her butt, dicks in her “honey bucket.” All these things and more poured over her mind’s eye, and one imaginary cock after another dumped great plumes of sperm in her and on her. June was so horny, as a matter of fact, that she had to force herself not to stick her hand down her shorts for some stimulation of a more substantial nature. Masturbate later, you horn dog! Right now you’re looking for gold!

  But, lo, in her extensive, knee-dirtying search, no gold was to be found. However she did discover one beer cap, a cigar butt, an M&M (a green one), and—

  Yuck!

  —a rubber glove with brown index finger. It was clear how the good Captain Kupjack utilized his spare time.

  She moved on, next, to a tiny storage closet, which she felt inclined to skip but for some reason didn’t.

  Perhaps she should have.

  She unlatched the narrow door, and—

  Holy motherfucking FUCK!

  —out spilled a veritable pile of skeletons. Easily the bones of four men were in evidence, and she didn’t need to be a scholar of Euclidean calculus to realize that the bones constituted Kupjack’s “crew.” June naturally ejected herself from the compartment in a split second
, but a split second was enough to digest the horror’s details.

  The skeletons still had their clothes on, the fabric of which seemed half corroded. One would think that the men had rotted down to bare bones while the clothing remained, but how could this be? There was no stench of death at all, if anything just a pleasant sea scent. The eye-socket of one victim remained filled by a glass eye. This could only be Tommy Ray Swain, a local deadbeat fishing hand who liked to pop the eye out at the bar and put in people’s drinks, not an activity which was met with any levity. June had fucked him once in high school but wished she hadn’t. For one thing, she’d received no orgasm for her efforts, for another, she got a UTI.

  But that was another story.

  The bones were clean, too, scrapless. Not a single sinew of flesh, tendon, or cartilage could be found on any of them.

  Be that as it may, June ran her ninety-pound ass out of there as fast as her coltish legs could carry her. She tore across the main cabin, shot herself up the companionway steps, grabbed the door latch, and—

  Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK!

  The door was locked!

  It must’ve locked by itself when she’d come down. She kicked at it ferociously. It didn’t budge. Then…

  What the FUCK?!

  And errant glance out the porthole on the door showed her this:

  Good ole Kupjack sitting in the captain’s chair in the wheelhouse, swigging a bottle of Wild Turkey.

  How could he not have heard me kicking the door, the old fuck? And with that thought, June POUNDED on the door with all her might. “Hey!” she shrieked. “I locked myself in! Open the door!”

  Kupjack made no motion, no response.

  And only then did June realize that the door couldn’t be locked accidentally from the outside. It was a deadbolt which required a key…

  “YOU FAT DRUNK PERVERT MOTHERFUCKER!” she bellowed. “YOU LOCKED ME IN!”

  At this, Kupjack turned around in the chair, faced the outside of the door, and waved, grinning, right at June.