by Jim Nisbet
“I’ve never seen one.”
“In San Francisco, we have organic doughnuts.”
“I don’t doubt it. But why would Bahamians have them? Do doughnuts go with fish?”
“Not like cornbread does.”
“I’ve got an excellent recipe for cornbread. The secret is honey and buttermilk.”
“That’s two secrets.”
“Nah. Everybody uses buttermilk.”
“They do?”
“Carmen used to get her honey from a guy who kept hives in an orange grove way down on Cape Sable, just south of Whitewater Bay.”
“Who was Carmen?”
“That would be the Carmen whose kidney generated your five-thousand-dollar bailout.”
After a pause Tipsy asked, “Didn’t she have a couple of your children, too?”
“That she did.” Red cleared his throat.
“There must have been something going on there.”
“There was,” Red allowed. “At one time we couldn’t get enough of one another.” After a pause he added, “It seems like a very long time ago.”
“She died, I’m sorry to recall.”
“She died.”
“And the kids?”
Red shifted. “Your bony forehead is cutting off circulation to my arm.”
Tipsy didn’t move. “What are their names?”
“Pink, was the girl’s name.”
Tipsy smiled in the darkness. “Pink? Really?”
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. Well …”
“It was Carmen’s idea.”
“Was she a chip off her mother’s block?”
“She was—is—that. I guess she is, anyway. I haven’t laid eyes on her in a long time.”
“Why not?”
Red shrugged. “She took her mother’s death hard. Blamed it on me, even though she knew better. I guess she knew better. She was fourteen at the time. A tough age for a girl to lose her mother.”
“You don’t even know where she is?”
“Atlanta, last I heard. She went there after she got out of prison.”
“What?”
“Like I said.”
“How old is she?’
Red thought about it. “She must be in her late thirties by now.”
“She could be a mother.”
“That,” Red affirmed, “she well could be.”
“Which would make you a grandfather.”
“True story.” Red looked up and scratched the underside of his chin. “What about you?” he asked, lowering his hand. “You ever have kids?”
“We’re not through with your kids yet. What about the other one?”
“The boy. Ernesto. Che without calling him Che.”
Tipsy stirred and resettled. “I wouldn’t have figured you for that.”
“For what?”
“For naming your only son after a revolutionary icon.”
Red sucked a tooth. “Taking your points in order, it was Carmen who named him, since when is he my only son, and there’s at least two sides to that icon business.”
From somewhere across the water, far enough away for its source to be invisible, came the faint sound of a generator.
“Meteor.”
“Where?”
He pointed. “Right through the swan.”
She sighted along his arm. “There?” She pointed.
“That’s a satellite.”
“Really? You can see satellites?”
“They’re hard to get away from these days.”
“Then I missed the shooting star.”
He let his arm hand fall to her knee. “There will be another.”
Across the water, close to the horizon, a tiny flame erupted. “What’s that?”
Red squinted and chuckled. “That would be someone lighting their charcoal.”
She laughed. “A verifiable cosmic event.”
They watched the orange flare diminish until it disappeared.
“And where is Ernesto?”
Red said nothing.
“You don’t know?”
“I … lost track.”
“Do you even know if he’s alive, for chrissakes?”
“Last I heard, he was living in a dumpster in Orlando. Dope got him. It’s been … I guess it’s been ten years.” Red turned up his injured palm in the shadows and turned it down again. “Last time I saw him, I had to punch him out.”
“You punched out your own son?”
Red sighed. “I hadn’t seen or heard of him in at least a year. He showed up on the dock at something like eleven-thirty one night, out of his mind on crank, announced that he needed a thousand bucks, and that I was going to give it to him. We exchanged words about money and amphetamine-fueled filial piety and the next thing I knew, Ernesto pulled a knife on me. My own son. But a knife is a knife. I clocked him.” Red flexed the fingers covering her knee. “He was always after me to treat him like I’d treat any other man.”
“Sounds like that part worked out.”
“Yeah.”
They fell silent.
Hard by the boat, a fish jumped. Red glanced at the set. The rod couldn’t have been straighter if it were in the rack.
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Kids?”
“I skipped that phase.”
Red glanced her way in the darkness, then returned his gaze to the sky. “Nobody skips that phase.”
Tipsy looked out over the reef. “It was a funny combination of exclusionary circumstances. Early on it looked like a trap. Later the right guy was not in evidence. After that it looked like a lot of work, and for what? Just to take part in the big crap shoot. Look what you—” She didn’t finish the thought.
Red grunted.
“Plus, it’s another mouth to feed. And besides, I always maintained the illusion that I came to this planet to do something else besides breed.”
“Really? What else is there?”
“I don’t know. How about politics?”
Red didn’t think that was funny.
“Okay, fishing. How about fishing?”
“Now you’re talking. …”
After a leisurely breakfast they weighed anchor and trolled a rhumb line to a waypoint some twenty miles southwest of Man of War Channel. Tipsy watched the world go by. Soundings were never more than twenty-five or thirty feet, often much more shoal than that, with the bottom perfectly visible, along with schools of fish, forests of coral, sea fans, vast banks of white sand, and the occasional shark. Schools of little fish seemed to prefer the shade beneath Tunacide, and sometimes it was as if they were all traveling together. There were wrecks, too, and every now and again an eddy would swirl past choked with weed, bits of driftwood, a plastic sandal or water bottle or styrofoam cup, a cooler lid, a dead gull, a snarl of monofilament.
Red caught a bonito on a strip of uncooked bacon. They anchored, and he cleaned and cooked the fish; they ate it for lunch. He surprised her by presenting a beet salad alongside the grilled strips of fish and the ubiquitous bottle of ice cold Kaliq beer. She’d never tasted anything like it.
They never motored at more than four knots, often much more slowly, and after a while it became apparent to Tipsy that Red was in no hurry to get where they were going.
At the waypoint Red took the wheel from the automatic pilot and steered southeasterly until they found the next waypoint, some twelve or thirteen miles southwest of the eastern mouth of the channel. From there he watched the depth sounder and zigzagged a visual course among sand ridges and coral heads until they raised a couple of markers.
“We’ll gas up at Man of War Cay,” Red told her. “There’s one grocery and one restaurant. We’ll take a night off from our cooking, restock the dairy products, get a night’s sleep dockside, and start the crossing to Albert Town bright and early. Weather permitting.”
“How far is it?”
Red moved his chin at the chart. “You tell me.”
Two minutes later, and not without a touch of pride, she told him it was eighty-five nautical miles.
“A straight shot,” Red said. “But there’s shipping and a little smuggling, too. It’s best done by daylight. We can take it at eight knots, depending on sea conditions. It’s a blue water passage, so a good night’s sleep is in order. By the time you’re ten miles east of Man of War?” He moved his chin in that direction. “The bottom has dropped well over a mile.”
“Wow,” was all Tipsy could say.
“If you’re going to get seasick, that’s where it’ll happen.”
“I’m not going to get seasick.”
Red glanced at her. “You should try some of that aloe vera cream. From the green tube. You’re showing a little color.”
Tipsy frowned.
“Did you put on more sun block?” Red inquired tenderly.
Tipsy almost scowled, but she turned her back on him before she could do so. It had been a very long time since she could describe herself as smitten.
“I haven’t seen old Perry Joseph in a long time,” Red said. “It’s years since I’ve been out here. I wonder if he’s still alive?”
After his third query on channel sixteen, identifying only the vessel, Red got response. “Switch to 21.”
Red switched to 42. “Talk to me.”
“This is not an unexpected pleasure,” a voice stated flatly.
Red’s demeanor went serious, but his reply was neutral. “It is to me.”
“What’s your LOA?”
“Fifty-five feet.”
“Take a side-tie behind the paint shed,” came the reply. “Past the crane dock.”
Red nodded but said nothing. The other correspondent clicked his mic off and on and back off again. Transmission over.
Red thoughtfully clipped his microphone to the side of the radio.
“What’s that about?” Tipsy said.
“Not sure,” Red said. “You mind waiting aboard while I find out?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll wait aboard while you find out.”
“Thank you.”
There were all kinds of boats moored in and around Man of War Cay, in all kinds of condition. Some of them looked like they’d not sailed in years and might never sail again. Others looked as if they’d been delivered straight from a boat show. Still others looked like they’d seen every port in the world, with more to come.
When Red came back he looked less than carefree.
“Well?” she asked after he’d gotten aboard.
“Somebody asking after Charley,” Red said. “About two weeks ago.”
“Are they still around?”
Red lifted a shoulder.
“Who were they?’
“All Perry Joe knows is what they weren’t.”
“Which is?”
“Cops, feds, Interpol.”
“Just plain folks.” Tipsy studied him. “Does that make sense?”
Red chewed his lip. “Yes, unfortunately.”
“It’s a big ocean,” she said after a while.
“True story. Stupid,” he added abruptly, and he turned off the Send switch on Tunacide’s VIS unit. Since the engine wasn’t running the unit wasn’t sending, but still. He tapped the side of its chassis with a fingertip. “So why here,” he said, after a little consideration. “Of all places.”
“Why not?”
Red nodded thoughtfully. “If they started from Rum Cay, this would be a place to look.” He waved a hand without looking. “They’ve got more facilities here than most places.”
Tipsy raised an eyebrow. From where she stood, the place didn’t look like much. “Looking,” she said, “for Charley?”
Now Red studied her. “Who else?”
“For us, that’s who else.”
Red nodded.
Tipsy narrowed her eyes. “The logbook,” she said, “has been in your possession.”
Red nodded. “It still is. And, to answer your question, nobody else has seen it.”
“More to the point, who else knows about Albert Town?”
Red shook his head. “Nobody.”
Across the channel lay a schooner, though Tipsy wouldn’t know to call it that. She, the schooner, was eighty feet long and one hundred years old. Her decks were unfinished teak and her brightwork was oiled teak and the rest of her was painted black or forest green. Her spars were finished natural and her sails were neatly flaked into well-stitched canvas covers, also green. Her standing rig was taut and her running rigging was all modern synthetic rope and winches had been added. Between her main and fore masts rose an amply proportioned house, with windows and lace curtains and flared bronze dorad vents. Everything about her was perfect except for her name.
“Laburnam Villa. What kind of name is that?”
“There’s all kinds of vessels,” Red said, “and all kinds of people naming them.” His eye fell on the chart. “Let’s have a drink.”
Tipsy continued to study the schooner. “How much does a boat like that cost?”
“How much do you have?” Red said, not looking up from the chart. “And then some.”
A spout of water erupted from Laburnam Villa amidships, about a foot above the waterline.
“What’s that?”
“Bilge pump,” Red said.
“It leaks?”
“Wooden boats leak.” Red smiled and added, “Darling.”
“And Tunacide,” she asked after a pause. “Does Tunacide leak?”
Red nodded. “Not yet.”
They fueled Tunacide, bought some groceries, and ate conch fritters ashore in a deserted cafe. Red introduced Tipsy to nobody. At first light next morning, Tunacide cast off.
Within an hour, as Red had promised, they were motoring over a mile of blue water.
FORTY
AT LEAST SHE DOESN’T THINK I’M THE KIND OF GUY LAYING BACK IN CONVERSATION, over the evening meal or deep into the cocktails, just waiting for her to say something stupid so he can pounce, humiliate, deprecate.
Just last night she told me, “Quentin always said, you want to have a hot time with a guy? Go for the older ones. You’ll never look back. You know what?” She snuggles up to me. “He was right.”
When I was in my twenties I figured, a girl in her twenties? Forget it. Take this dime, call me in ten years. Girl needs experience, seasoning, a trip around the block. Three trips.
Damn. A waterspout. Innocuous black cloud. Low and long and southeast. Steady on. I haven’t seen a waterspout in …
Abruptly, the temperature began to drop. “Hey,” he yelled down the companionway, “Batten the forward skylight and all the portholes.” A glance at the barometer showed a falling needle. “Never mind the stuff on deck. I’ll get the stuff on deck.”
He touched up the autopilot and hustled astern. Bait bucket, ice chest, net, gaff—into the locker, hasp pegged shut. The wind picked up and brought with it an ominous whistling, which, in turn, rose in pitch. He unclipped the more expensive of the two rods, a Casa Vigía model, and backed into the house to sit facing aft in the pilot’s upholstered swivel chair while he reeled in several hundred feet of wire just as quickly as he could turn the crank. He was wondering whether this was a best use of his time when the jig jumped the transom, bounced off the flybridge ladder, and the wind hit.
He’d put Tunacide to steaming southerly of the spout’s apparent course. But the wind knocked the bow north and laid her on her port beam. Everything on the foredeck, suntan lotion, a chair, a towel, a pair of sunglasses, a cocktail glass, a cop novel, disappeared. Red dropped the rod to the deck between the pedestal of the command chair and the console, and overrode the steering. “Hang on!” he shouted over his shoulder, perhaps unnecessarily. “Forget everything else and hang on!” He could hardly hear himself above the screech. A wave reared up. Tunacide took it head on. The boat breasted the face at a steep angle. A protracted concatenation of crashes arose from the
galley. Behind him Tipsy did a good thing, grasping the railings at either side of the companionway and picking her feet up, so that she was gimbaled, as it were, but even so she became weightless and airborne as the bow dropped into the trough. When the stern rose to follow, Tunacide’s screws rattled in thin air, and the engines raced. The eighty-pound Danforth anchor snapped its gasket as if it were a length of string and became airborne, hovering above the bow as if weightless. When she buried her nose in the bottom of the trough and came to a near standstill, the anchor came back and smote a fine hole right through the deck just aft of the windlass. Now a wall of wind-borne water plus a sea engulfed the bow and perhaps a foot of brine washed over the deck, fore to aft. Water poured into the hole in the forward compartment, and as the thickness scoured amidships and rebounded off the taffrail, put about six inches of itself over the raised threshold of the cabin door, and down the companionway steps, wetting Tipsy to her knees, while flooding up to the footrest of the captain’s chair.
And just like that it was over. The shadow that had darkened the boat fled into the northeast, leaving Tunacide bathed in pure sunlight. The whistling diminished until it was indistinguishable from the sounds of three bilge pump diaphragms, the two Caterpillar V8s, and water pouring from every scupper.
Red turned to watch the weather go, and saw that the second rod and reel had gone with it. A pawnshop purchase, its loss didn’t command much regret. Easy come, thoroughly dramatic go. It was his own fault, too. He’d been caught out. A mere week, cruising the Great Bahama Bank, drinking and eating, fishing and V-berthing, navel- and stargazing, these must have reduced his vigilance to mush. This here now is the open sea, stupid, and all that your non-vigilance has cost you to date is the number two rig, a hole in your bow, and a deal of moisture below decks. Considering the broad scope of the possibilities, so far, so cheap. Ready to tighten up?
The wind dropped to a steady ten knots and the sea re-cohered into a long swell, both out of the southeast. Red was mindful of the conditions, but what stood out was Tipsy’s reaction at being caught clinging to the companionway handrails, with the water rising up to her knees and throwing capfuls higher than that.
She had grinned. A mad, maniacal grin, fit to suit any adventurer.