The Journalist

by G L Rockey

Mary said, “You gotta be kidding.”

  Zack pulled the Jeep into a sandy driveway and stopped. He breathed deep the tropical air. Bright sun light bathed a small pink house. It looked different in the daylight, but this was the place, no doubt about it. He and Jim had met Joe Case and Kim here, just last Sunday.

  “Looks like nobody’s home,” Mary said.

  Zack stepped out of the Jeep, Mary followed and they walked to the house. The roof, for the most part, gone, windows broken, some were missing entirely. Weed and grass grew a foot high.

  Zack said, “I don’t understand it. This is the house, just a week ago, Jim and I were here.”

  “You sure? Looks like nobody has lived in this house for a hundred years.”

  Back at Brown’s Marina, when he asked about Joe Case, the little pink house, all Zack got were silent stares.

  Perplexed, before boarding Veracity, he spotted an aged man—tanned, white beard, smoldering cigarette hanging from his lower lip—fishing from the dock. The man had just caught a good-size fish. The fish flapped as he took the hook from its mouth.

  Zack ask him about the little house, the couple who lived there. Throwing the fish back in the water, the fisherman smiled and pointed toward the northern sky.

  “What’s that mean?” Mary said.

  The man puffed his cigarette and told of bright lights, noises in the night, a strange bright object over the island just a week ago. Smiling, he pulled a Pi baseball hat from his pocket and put it on.

  Grabbing Zack’s arm, Mary said, “Let’s get the hey out of here.”

  Zack said, “No, wait, I”

  “Now.”

  Veracity’s engines started, Zack at the wheel, Mary untied the lines, jumped on board, and Zack, easing the craft out to sea, said, “Mary, you may think I’m crazy”

  “Could you rephrase that?”

  “I think Joe Case was”

  “Was what?”

  “Think about it, moving mountains, one day gravity, next day none”

  “Never mind that ‘you may think I’m crazy.’”

  “You explain Case then.”

  “How ’bout ‘fruitcake.’”

  “Whatever, but I think some revolutionary butter and eggs movement is afoot.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You know, money, the wealth, spreading it around, something’s afoot.”

  “My foot,” she rolled her eyes.

  “But how do you explain”

  “Zack, it’s been a long week, we’ve both been working very hard”

  “Never.”

  Chapter Sixty One

  2:15 p.m. EST

  Heading Veracity west-southwest, the Atlantic smooth as a pond, Zack calculated his position to be roughly five miles due east of Pompano Marina. He throttled back then shut down the gurgling engines. The sea gently slapped the craft’s sides.

  Mary stepped up from the cabin. She wore a one-piece white bathing suit with tiny straps hanging loose over her shoulders. After a long look, Zack pinched his wrist then tipped his baseball cap back.

  “It’s almost depraved. Forgive me, but how I do enjoy this.”

  “You mean me or Veracity?”

  “Both.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You most.”

  Mary glanced at his black T-shirt and faded jeans. “Going to put your trunks on?”

  “I’m comfortable.”

  “Look like a priest.”

  “Thanks.” Zack listened to the gentle swells of the calmed ocean caress the side of the boat. He looked toward the shoreline—there, yet always out of sight, he thought.

  “We’re there,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “When the shoreline is gone, I know I’m far enough out.”

  “You’re always far enough out.”

  “I meant the shoreline.”

  “It’s there, just out of sight,” Mary said.

  “So, too, are many things.”

  “A-plus.”

  “Thank you.” Zack moved to the aft trolling chair and began to stick a fishing hook through a shrimp but decided against it.

  “You want to fish?” he asked.

  “Nah.”

  “Me neither.” He cast the baitless line into the ocean, secured the pole in a holder and leaned back in the trolling chair. “I need to put some pieces together.”

  “You do that. I’m going up top, read, get some sun.” Mary opened the ice chest and retrieved two bottles of Bohemia. “I know you want one.”

  “You know everything.”

  “I do know a lot, and” she opened the beer, “I got a boat ride.”

  “That what it’s all about?”

  “Yep.” She handed him a beer.

  “Thanks.”

  Mary began layering a thick coating of suntan oil on her arms and legs. “Need any of this?”

  “Never use it.”

  “You’ll get melanoma.”

  “You watch too much TV.”

  Zack felt the wind singing over the water, picking up moisture, blowing over the bow. There was a storm in the wind, far off to the east, toward Africa. He sniffed the wind.

  Mary noticed him sensing something. “What is it?”

  “Storm, good way off, we have some time.”

  “Good, do my back.”

  Zack squeezed lotion on her back and smoothed it over her shoulders.

  “Nice back, huh?” Mary said.

  “Enough lotion?”

  “Enough. Thanks, going up top, read.”

  He watched her climb to the top deck. “Don’t fall off.”

  She turned, caught him looking. “Don’t you fall in.”

  He waved her off, took a drink of beer and sat in his trolling chair. The events of the hectic week catching up with him, rummaging through the past, he closed his eyes. Veracity gently riding the calm ocean, he dozed off and dreamed:

  A sudden swell rocked the boat; and just inside the stern, a younger man stood. He looked like—yes, it was Jocko—Zack, years earlier.

  Zack greeted him. Jocko, how are you?

  Should not have dropped out.

  I didn’t have a choice, remember? They kicked me out, what can I sayobedience.

  I thought it was something else.

  It was many things. You know, but the doubting thing hung me up more than once.

  Jocko, looking omniscient: It’s me, Zack.

  Zack said, You know, if I had stayed in the priesthood, I’d probably be a bishop by now.

  You keep saying that. I doubt it, but maybe this was the other plan and it turned out better.

  Jocko resembled Joe Case for a brief moment; then Zack said, It’s not that there is nobody out there that’s scarythat’s easy. Well, kind of easy. The really scary stuff begins if there is somebody out there. Think about it.

  Yes. And what are you going to say if there is?

  Probably best for me to say nothing, just get on my fat face and shut up. Anyway, how are you?

  I’m fine, you’ve gained a little weight.

  You lost a little. What are you doing here?

  I heard you talking and wanted to chime in.

  Yes. So, what do you think about all this?

  It’s a big ocean.

  I meant last week, that video of Lande’s, this freedom of the press thing?

  Inalienable rights.

  People have those, not the press—that’s the premise, anyway.

  Sometimes the press gets that mixed up, Jocko said.

  Beware, dear friend. If you say that anathema too loud some press people will have you singing soprano in the boy’s choir.

  Nevertheless, it’s true.

  You know what I thinkI think it’s all about money.

  I guess.

  Beno is the answer—a better wayeconomic hybridabandon the insane growth-curve.

  Very hard sellthe growth-line thing is brutal.

  There must be a better way.
/>   I guess it depends on how you view all this.

  A third presence came on board, and with it a rank smell, then a voice: You’re making too much out of tiny little nonsense things.

  Recognizing the odor, Zack shouted, “You Get off my boat, you magnificent stinking son of a bitch, you”

  Awake he heard Mary thumping the cabin top. “Boca, who are you shouting at?”

  “I was snoozing, must have been talking in my sleep.”

  “Well, could you please keep it down?”

  “Sorry. You thirsty?”

  “Yes.”

  He went to the ice chest, retrieved a beer, opened it and passed it to her outstretched hand.

  Touching his fingers, she said, “Thanks. Hungry yet?”

  “In a bit.”

  “Let me know. I have something for you.”

  “I know, baloney sandwiches.”

  “Besides that.”

  “Oh, what?”

  “Later.” She went back to her reading.

  Zack watched a school of dolphins breaking the water’s surface. He remembered the many dreams he had of swimming with Mary.

  He looked at a cigar Joe Case had given him last week. He lit the cigar. Puffing, he thought maybe he should write some of this strange recent history down for a future essay. He retrieved an eight-by-twelve yellow pad from the cabin, went back to his trolling chair, sat then stopped.

  “Tweedledum. The hell with it,” he said. “Nobody would believe it anyway.”

  He tossed the tablet down and guzzled some beer. “Think I’ll do some fishing.”

  He puffed his cigar, picked up his fishing pole, reeled in and prepared to cast.

  “What is that?” Mary looked over the edge of the cabin roof.

  “A fishing pole.”

  “In your mouth.”

  “Cigar. Want one?”

  “No.” She looked at his baitless fishing hook and pointed. “You’ll need some bait on that hook.”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky.” He threw the line out and secured the pole. A clap of thunder rumbled the air and the wind came up, gusting over Veracity. The storm he had smelled earlier had moved in more quickly than anticipated and now began to encompass the ocean around them.

  “Better come down,” he said to Mary.

  She did, and in a moment, she was next to him. He sensed a calming oneness with her, himself, and the sea.

  “You feel that?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Epiphany.” Zack held her close and a presence surrounded them like a sweater on a chilly night. He wanted to stay there forever, to be gone from the lie, to sleep in a deep peace, but he heard the voice again. No, you don’t. And he wasn’t sure about anything except that he knew he had to go back to the chaos. The truth, like the invisible shoreline, must be in there somewhere.

  Lightning and thunder increased. He began to pull his baitless hook in but stopped at a tugging on the line. He looked with hope at Mary. “I think we got something.”

  “You think?”

  “Yes.” He pulled the line in but there was nothing. “I thought”

  She squeezed his hand. “We better go in.”

  He went forward with her, started the engines and headed east toward Pompano Marina.

  Chapter Sixty Two

  Veracity safely moored in her slip at Pompano Marina, the storm passed, the sun shining, Zack secured the last stern line and joined Mary on the aft deck.

  He said, “Well, that’s that, better get you home. Maybe we can stop at The Tea Company, get something to eat.”

  Mary smiled. “Remember, I said I had something for you?”

  “I don’t feel like a baloney sandwich, let’s go to The Tea Company.”

  She rolled her eyes and presented Zack a small black box.

  “What’s this?”

  “Open it.”

  He did and looked at two gold bands. “What’s this?”

  “I’m proposing.”

  “You’re what?”

  “You heard me.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “We’re getting married.”

  “You just can’t”

  “Not ‘you’—we.”

  “But you just can’tit isn’t a boat ride, you know.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t you have to have a license or something?”

  “Ninty-five bucks, check, cash, money order”

  “I’m not walking down any aislethe aisle roof will cave in.”

  “No aisle, Clerk of Court.”

  “Isn’t there some kind of waiting period?”

  “I’m in with the Court Clerk, cousin of Chief Manny.”

  “But”

  “You’re going to have to come up with another thirty-dollar fee, plus you might want to tip the clerk.”

  “But”

  “Have to take a four-hour premarital course, but they might waive it since you’re, you know former cloth.”

  “But”

  “I’ve already made an appointment, tomorrow, nine in the morning.

  “What about?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you have toisn’t there a blood test?”

  “Abolished 1986and we don’t need parental consent.”

  “Butwhere will we live?”

  She looked around Veracity and smiled.

  The End

  GL Rockey books also published by Books We Love

  Truths of the Heart

  Time and Chance

  Bats in the Belfry, Bells in the Attic

  About the Author

  G. L. Rockey has three other works published by Books We Love. TIME & CHANCE, a mystery/suspense set in Nashville; TRUTH’S OF THE HEART a literary romance and Bats in the Belfry, Bells in the Attic, a collection of short stories.

  GL Rockey has also published a nonfiction book entitled, From The Back Of The House: Memories Of A Steak House Clan.

  Reviews/more at www.glrockey.com

  Rockey is currently at work on a fourth romance novel, FIVE STAR REVIEW.

  From the Publisher