Brad had showered but not shaved today, after completing the installation of a new 12-volt compressor for his built-in icebox. He checked himself out in the mirror of his cramped “head,” or bathroom, and rubbed his one-day whiskers. Not too bad, not bad enough to warrant a high speed shave, which might leave him with a nick that could still be bleeding when Ranya arrived.
He didn’t look thirty, he thought. He had just the first hint of lines around his blue eyes, and he believed he could still pass for twenty-seven or so, not that he really wanted to. He wondered if he seemed old to a college-age girl. He did not feel old, in spite of hitting “the big three-oh.”
He considered cologne, but decided against it. This was not a date; this was comforting someone who had lost her father. But he did change from his old paint and varnish-stained cutoffs to clean khaki shorts, and a nice blue and white Hawaiian shirt. Then he did a quick straightening-up of his boat’s interior, grateful that his refurbishing was nearly complete, and the power cords and paint cans were gone. He didn’t want Ranya to think that he was an actual ogre, even if he lived alone on a boat on the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp. Not that he was considering putting the moves on her, not on the day her father was killed…
Still…she was young and she was attractive, with a pretty face and a curvy figure, at least what he had been able to see of it. She certainly filled a tight pair of blue jeans very nicely. He had a vivid image of her climbing over the fence before him, and he’d liked what he had seen, very much. Best of all, she rode motorcycles and knew her way around guns, so she was certainly no “princess,” a type Brad had no time for. Who knows, maybe she’d like to sail to the islands, and forget her sorrows under the warm Caribbean sun…
No, she was just coming over because she needed to talk, and had no one else to talk to.
But there was no denying it. Whether she was in mourning or not, she was a very attractive girl…
****
Ranya steered her way carefully down the oyster-shell road in second gear until she came around the last big tractor shed, and Brad Fallon’s boat came into view in her headlight beam. It was bigger than she had imagined, long and low and gleaming like an ivory dagger beneath the limbs of an oak. Soft golden light glowed from a row of oblong portholes along the sides of the low cabin, and shined up from the deck hatches. The river was only about a hundred yards wide here. Marshland and Spanish moss-draped cypress trees extending into the Great Dismal Swamp began on the opposite shore. A steady breeze from the north moved the oak tree’s branches, and the yacht shifted restlessly against its dock lines.
Brad stood up in his cockpit in her headlight’s glare as she shut down her machine. She pulled off her helmet, shook her long hair down over her shoulders, and walked onto the small wooden dock that ran along the riverbank.
“Welcome to Guajira, my humble home. Please come aboard. And yes, she really is a sailboat, or at least she will be next week, I hope.”
“Should I take off my boots? I don’t want to leave any marks on your deck.”
“Don’t worry about it. Who’s going to notice any more marks, with all these leaves and crud from the tree?”
Ranya stepped across onto the boat through an open gate in the white lifelines. Soft jazz music was playing, coming out of speakers in the cockpit and from down below.
“Can I get you something to drink? I have beer, but I can open bottle of wine, or make a drink, whatever you’d like.”
“Rum and coke?”
“That sounds great; I think I’ll have the same thing.” Brad slipped down below. His galley was by the companionway steps, and while he fixed their drinks Ranya sat on a cushioned cockpit bench seat looking around at the outside of the boat and also down inside.
“What does Guajira mean? Did you name her?”
“No, she was named Guajira when I bought her. Sailors are pretty superstitious, and they say that it’s bad luck to change a boat’s name. But I liked the name anyway, so I kept it.”
“What doe it mean?” she asked. “It’s Spanish, right?”
“Guajira means a few different things. It means a kind of a peasant girl, and it’s also the name of a wild Indian tribe in South America. The Guajira Peninsula is where they live; it’s sort of a no-man’s-land between Venezuela and Colombia. Did you ever see the movie Papillon?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Well, it’s in the movie. It’s one of the places that Steve McQueen stayed, after he escaped from Devil’s Island.”
“I guess you’re lucky that you bought a boat with a name you like. I like it too. But what if it was named ‘Rust Bucket’ or something? Would you have changed it? Are you superstitious?”
“Not really. Well, maybe a little.” Brad laughed. “I mean, I’ll put a silver coin under the new mast when I raise it next week; that’s pretty much mandatory. Just for luck.”
Ranya thought he had a great smile, and his blue eyes seemed to light up. She had made the right decision to visit his boat; he was cheering her up in spite of the ache that she felt.
“Cheers.” He passed up her rum and coke in a tall glass. “You wanted to know if I’m superstitious. Well I’ll tell you one thing I won’t do: I won’t start a voyage on a Friday. Any sailor that does that is tempting fate. That’s just asking for trouble.”
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely. I’m not really superstitious, and I don’t care about black cats or walking under ladders, but no real sailor ever starts a voyage on Friday. That’s not a superstition, that’s a whole other thing… You just don’t mock King Neptune. Out there, he’s in charge. Starting a voyage on a Friday, well, that’s just not something you do.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Sort of. But I won’t start a voyage on a Friday. That’s just begging for trouble. Ask any ocean sailor, they’ll tell you the same thing.”
Ranya couldn’t decide if he was pulling her leg or being serious. “Mind if I see down below? I’m curious to see what a sailboat like this is like inside”
“Of course, come on down. I’ve done a lot of work on her, but I’m not much of a carpenter, and I’m definitely not Martha Stewart. Guajira’s a K-44, a racer-cruiser, but more on the racer side. There wasn’t too much of an interior to begin with, and her owners raced her hard, and well, she needed some home improvements.”
Ranya went below, Brad moved out of her way from the galley to give her room. There were four wide steps on a varnished teak ladder with handrails on the side. The interior was mostly cream-colored surfaces with varnished teak moldings and accents, softened with cozy royal blue cushions and curtains.
Across from the galley and a little forward, on the right side of the main cabin, was a teak dinette table in its own little nook, with cushioned seating around it on three sides. On the tabletop, there was a large chart of the Caribbean under a thin sheet of plexiglass, which was cut to fit just inside of a little wooden rail that ran around the edge of the table. Ranya correctly guessed that the little rail was to keep dishes from sliding off the table at sea. Even though she could feel the boat moving, rolling slightly at its dock, it didn’t make her feel uncomfortable. She took her jean jacket off and hung it on a hook. She intentionally exposed the butt of her pistol, which was sticking out above her wide black leather belt against the black t-shirt she was wearing. She was curious to see Brad’s reaction, it would tell her a lot about him.
He made a joke about it. “Hey, you won’t need that around me, I promise!”
“Sorry, I guess I’m kind of paranoid lately.”
“I wouldn’t call it paranoid, not after what you’ve been through. I’d call it intelligent. I keep my .44 ready too. Up there.” He pointed forward to his V-berth sleeping compartment.
Ranya eased out her .45, still cocked and locked with the hammer back, and laid it carefully into a narrow shelf full of paperbacks and CD’s, which was built against the boat’s hull above the dinette table. This shelf also had
a teak railing on its open side, as did most of the tables and shelves on the boat. She thought it was handy; it kept a pistol or anything else that size out of sight but within easy reach. She was rapidly becoming impressed with how cleverly the built-in furnishings on the yacht were arranged, like the parts of a 3D puzzle.
She sat down behind the dinette table to look at the chart. Brad carried over their drinks and sat along the forward side of the table, careful not to crowd her. She wanted company, but not closeness, and Brad was being careful to give her some space, which she appreciated. The chart covered the Bahamas, and the Caribbean Islands from the latitude of Florida to Venezuela.
“That’s going to be my universe for a while, maybe a year at least. Cheers.” They both sipped their dark rum and cokes from matching heavy glass tumblers. The smooth jazz sounds filled the interior of the yacht, occasionally their glances met above the chart, their eyes locking briefly and then quickly looking away. Ranya thought he had gorgeous eyes, dazzling deep blue. In another time and place she would have loved to stare into them.
“The last two summers I’ve worked as an ocean lifeguard in Virginia Beach,” Ranya said. “I’d sit up in my stand and watch sailboats going past. I always wondered what kind of people were on them, and where they were going.”
“Most of them are just out for a day sail, for just a few hours. But some of them might be setting out to cross an ocean, or even to sail around the world.”
“Are you? Setting out to sail around the world?”
“I don’t know… First I want to cruise the Bahamas and the Caribbean, and then sail on down to Venezuela. After that, I’ll have to decide if I’m going through the canal to the Pacific, or staying in the Caribbean, or maybe heading down to Brazil…or coming back to the States. I’m going to play it by ear. And then you have to factor in the hurricane season. That’s a big part of the planning, because Venezuela is just under the hurricane belt.”
“But isn’t it hurricane season now? Aren’t you going to wait until it’s over?”
“Good question. I was planning on taking it slow and coast hopping down to Florida, staying close to safe harbors until after hurricane season, but with the feds on my case…I’m kind of getting anxious to get out of their reach. Ever since last Sunday a lot of really weird stuff has been happening, and its getting way too close to me.”
“Not as close as it got to me.”
“I’m sorry, that was really stupid of me…”
“…Forget it.”
“It’s just… None of this seems accidental any more. Ever since the Stadium Massacre, it just hasn’t, it’s just, I don’t know… It’s just not what it seems, it’s not what people think it is.”
“Well that stadium job was pure bullshit, you do realize that, don’t you?” asked Ranya.
“Yeah, of course, I mean, well anybody with a three-digit IQ knows that. I think it was all done on purpose, it was a set-up. To get the herd stampeding, the way that Indians used to stampede buffalo herds over cliffs. The sniper stampeded the herd in the stadium, and now the whole country’s getting stampeded the same way.”
Ranya sighed and leaned back against the cushions behind her. “Oh thank God, I’m glad to hear you say that. I thought I was the only one who thought that way. Everybody I know at school, at UVA, they all believe what they see on TV is the gospel truth. They all think the ‘militias’ did it, and they all support the gun ban one-hundred percent. They think the semi-auto ban’s a great idea, only it doesn’t go far enough! They’d ban everything! They think only cops and the army should have any guns at all, can you believe it? If they only knew my father was a gun dealer…”
“Ranya, this just isn’t the same America I grew up in any more. I mean, we have all these Arab terrorists running around, but instead of focusing on the real threat, they’d rather be politically correct, and take everybody’s guns away.”
“Hey, I’m an Arab, did you know that? I’m Christian Lebanese, but I’m 100% Arab. But I know what you meant to say, you meant Muslims.”
“I’m sorry Ranya, again. I’m really putting my foot in my mouth tonight… I’m not really as stupid as I must sound. I know the difference between Arabs and Muslims. Not all Arabs are Muslims, and not all Muslims are Arabs.”
“That’s right. And nobody’s suffered under the Muslims more than the Christians in Lebanon. That’s why my parents moved to America in the first place. But the government’s still stuck in the PC mode, it’s still in denial. They’re afraid to come out and say what we all know: a hell of a lot of Muslims are just plain crazy at batshit.”
Brad asked, “So, do they really want to stop terrorism, or just turn America into a police state? If they really wanted to stop terrorism, they’d go after the real threat, and they still won’t even say there’s a problem with Muslims. And now they’re trying to frame up white ‘militias’ as the next big terrorist threat. Why? I just don’t understand it, and I’m not sticking around to find out what’s going to happen next.”
“Where are you going to go that’s any better? Some banana republic where they’ll take your boat and throw you in jail, if you don’t bribe the right people?”
“They’ll do that here. The FBI or the BATF or who ever George really works for, they’re threatening to take my money and my passport if I won’t be an informant. What do you call that? And just look at what they did to your father! Face it, America is turning into a banana republic right here, just a great big banana republic. Laws don’t mean anything any more, and the Constitution’s become a joke. Laws are just whatever a couple of left wing radical judges say they are. I think this country’s gone past the point of no return.”
“Well that may be so, but I still think we should fight back.”
“How? You can’t stop it.”
“You might be right, but I’m still going to try! I mean, it’s like what Phil Carson said: if America goes down, there won’t be anywhere left to hide. Anyway, I’m not leaving. My parents escaped to this country, and it’s still the freest country there is. If America goes down…”
“America is going down, isn’t that obvious? And if most Americans want to live in a police state, well, I can’t stop them.”
“Well I’m still going to stay and fight it. Maybe because there’s one big difference between us.”
Brad looked straight at her. “What’s that?”
“They killed my father. I’m not letting it slide, and I’m not running away. Somebody’s going to pay for killing my father!”
“I’m not ‘running away’, I’m just giving up on this country. Well, for a while, anyway. There’s a difference.”
“If you say so. But I’m staying, and I’m fighting, somehow… Hey, it’s about time for the news—does that little TV work inside of here?”
Brad got up, moved across the boat, and retrieved the little Panasonic from a shelf, and then he set it on the dinette table and plugged its cord into a 12-volt “cigarette lighter” style outlet in the galley.
The Friday night outbreak of arson attacks against the gun stores was the lead story on all the local stations. Ranya twisted the dial between the local network affiliates, wondering if Freedom Arms would appear, but it didn’t. The in-studio anchors were alternating with younger “stand up” info babes and blow-dried hunks in front of burned and ruined stores. The operative word on all channels was “backlash.” It was accepted at face value that the attacks across Tidewater Virginia were a result of fed-up local citizens on an anti-gun vigilante rampage.
Brad and Ranya caught part of a middle-aged black man’s impassioned tirade. The title on the screen identified him as “Imam Sheik Ali bin Muhamed.” The station was running some video taken earlier in the day of the Imam standing in front of a storefront mosque in downtown Portsmouth, just to the west of Norfolk. He was wearing a long white robe and a white caftan and was surrounded by a dozen grim-faced young black men in dark conservative suits and sunglasses wearing long overcoats, who were standing
at what looked like the military “parade rest” position. The Imam gestured wildly as he shouted.
****
“These so-called attacks, they were not attacks; they were purely self-defensive in nature! Certainly, they were at least as self-defensive as when the mighty United States Air Force bombed innocent Muslim cities in Afghanistan and Iraq, killing old men, women, and helpless baby children! What happened last night was self-defense by the community against the vile and vicious merchants of death, merchants of death who have been feeding on the blood of our people, pushing the tools of death on our people! So I feel no sorrow for their loss, for they can not ever repay the sorrow and pain which they have inflicted on our people with their white devils’ tools of death! Now they have met their righteous fate, all praise be to Allah, peace be upon him!”
****
Ranya was burning inside. “Look at those bastards! ‘Merchants of death’! All of those guys are packing. They say they hate guns, but they’re all carrying them.”
“How can you tell?” asked Brad.
“Trust me—I was raised in a gun store. We sold holsters every day, we taught the concealed carry license course, I can spot a gun. But those guys are packing serious stuff, big stuff, pistol grip shotguns I’d say. They’re hardly bothering to hide it! And you don’t see the cops hassling them either. I wonder if any of them were the same guys who burned our place down? I wonder who paid them, the FBI or the ATF?”
She was livid, and violently twisted the channel dial. She stopped briefly on the next local channel. They were replaying for the hundredth time the signature video footage of the massacre: victims tumbling in a human avalanche from the upper decks of the stadium.
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