“He’s hopeless,” Miguel said. “Guy was a sniper for the Marines and he brought that gun in from somewhere – it’s completely illegal back on shore. Now he spends too much time lying on my roof and not enough pulling fish out of the water.”
“Not what you said the last time they swung by through here,” Julian responded obscurely. He got up from his prone position and stood. He ignored both of us and set to work packing up his weapons.
After a quick demo on how to work the clay launcher and where the pigeons were stored, Miguel put me back on the counter and I stayed there for another three hours. “Sit here,” he instructed, pointing to a worn red Naugahyde bar stool. The top had been cracked and replaced with many layers of ancient duct tape. He didn’t speak to me again for that entire period. He changed the channel to a Spanish news station and we watched the President’s speech, dubbed in Espanol, before moving onto whatever else he cared to punch up.
The sky was darkening when Miguel released me. Sitting on the bar stool gave me a stiff back and a numb butt. He fished out a twenty and handed to me. “Go,” he said.
“Twenty bucks?” I was shocked. Did he really think I was going to go for this?
He looked confused. “You still here?” he asked. “Get going – tell your Dad I want to talk to him about that thing tomorrow.” I was pissed and about fifty things ran through my mind that I wanted to say, including what he could do with that bill. It was probably poor manners on my part to cuss out a business associate of my Dad. After all, how much can you argue with a guy who owns his own gun range?
His instructions didn’t make any sense to me. “What ‘thing’?”
“He’ll know. Good work … catch you around sometime.” It took me half an hour and asking for directions three times before I made it back to the Horner.
Dad was eating a microwave ramen bowl, smoking and reading a copy of The Art of War when I came inside. “The working man returns,” he commented. “How’d it go?”
“Okay,” I said, barely able to contain myself. “Why didn’t you tell me you ‘rented’ me out?”
He looked at me over the cigarette. “Does it bother you when I do things like that without telling you?”
“Yeah.”
“Karma,” he said.
“Huh?”
He sighed and looked back down at his book. “Look it up, Jim.”
Our current position is: 33°57'59.26"N 120°16'50.08"W
Chapter Three - Career Opportunities
We’re passing between the Santa Rosa and San Miguel Islands right now. Maybe this is a bad idea but I know nothing about sailing and something inside me wants very, very badly to be near land. It’s stupid to get hung up on being near shore. After I pass these islands, we’re right back out in the water again and heading north toward the coast beyond. I don’t have much of a strategy … I wanted to stay away from Los Angeles and anywhere else that sounded like trouble. I’m watching our depth gauge to make sure I don’t bottom out or something so … wish me luck. Where was I …
Things started to settle into a routine after that first week. I went through the SCUBA safety course they put on at the Phoenix and Dad let me start practicing with the hookah rig. I got my feet wet, literally, with the underwater part of Pen Patrol and we quickly got to the point where he became my line tender and I did all of the swimming.
About three weeks after I arrived, so did the sun. We had a weeklong heat wave out here. Out on the ocean, the sun is merciless. The colony was almost silent for the three hours after lunch except for the grinding of air conditioners. The Horner did have an air conditioner but unfortunately, it had seen better days. The compressor motor had seized up and, according to Dad, a replacement was out of our price range.
We tried to make things livable. We rescheduled pen patrol on the hottest parts of the day. Dad had to sit under this huge golf umbrella the entire time and he felt like it made him look stupid. The hookah line was a problem, too. It had never worked really well - Dad bought it second hand and never had it checked for maintenance. I was getting light-headed from all the time but he kept insisting that the line was perfectly fine. Then one day I almost fainted.
“Such a pansy,” Dad grumbled. I was taking two or three times as long to finish my chores and we were losing daylight that Dad wanted to use to get to the other errands. When I didn’t stop ‘farting around’ he got so mad that he ordered me out, right then and there. He took the hookah line and mask from me and dove into Pen 2 to catch up on what I was falling behind on. I sat there next to his signal line watching the bubbles come to the surface. It took a few minutes before I noticed something was wrong. I felt the first tug and tugged back, to let dad know I was there. Then, I felt a second tug...and then a third that was much weaker.
I knew what three tugs meant: Dad was in trouble. I started hauling in on the signal line but weight was too much - it was cheap nylon cord and not there for hauling in almost two hundred pounds of weight. It sank right into the meat of my hands and left purple streaks across my palms. Seconds ticked by and still no sign of Dad. I finally saw Naked Yoga Guy in the boat across the way and screamed for his help. He came running up to where I was a few seconds later.
“Okay, slow and easy,” he commanded. “Here, I got it.” He took the rope from me and started hauling in. He was able to hold the cord without hurting himself – I thought that was a pretty neat trick – and for an old guy he had a surprising amount of strength. Dad’s face was gray when he broke the surface a few moments later.
Dad was too weak to swim to the ladder … I was shocked at how bad he looked. NYG and I had to dive in to pull him out. There was a certain surreal quality to the rescue … It was scary but nobody was panicking. Yoga Guy tucked his arm under Dad’s armpits like a pro and pulled him along while all I could do was paddle along behind them.
Once on deck, I was going to run for the infirmary but NYG stopped me. There was no sense calling for a medic, he explained. Hookah mishaps were a fact of life and a medic was only useful if the victim wasn’t breathing. The medic could revive them if he got there in time, or provide a body bag if he wasn’t. Naked Yoga Guy stayed with us until Dad was able to sit up on his own and then returned to his interrupted day on the Key West Forever. Dad complained about having a blinding headache and that was the end of pen patrol for the day.
Dad didn’t say anything until almost bedtime. I wasn’t sure if he was angry at being saved by Naked Yoga Guy or if he felt guilty because he didn’t believe me. For me, I was upset because Dad had come so close to dying and everyone was just kind of ‘meh’. My Dad almost died – didn’t anyone care? In any case, Dad finally broke down and bought a new hookah rig. Pen patrol was down to what we could accomplish by free-diving while we waited a week for the new rig to show up.
But back to this heat wave – it was miserable. The sun was beating on us like never ending heavy-metal drum solo. We slathered sunscreen and continually soaked our clothing but it only helped so much. The Horner’s insulation was old and collected heat like an oven. It seeped out so slowly that we continued to bake indoors long after the sun had set.
I tried making a swamp cooler. I found some plans online and we built a cooler made out of several box fans, an old ice chest and several dozen meters of clear plastic tubing. An old aquarium pump sat in the ice chest amid several bags of ice and water. The cooled water was pumped out of the chest and through a series of pipes that were zip-tied in tight circles around the intake the fan. After it finished with one fan, it moved onto the next. The by the time the water had reached the far end (and therefore was at its warmest) it was at the front of the fan stack. It worked … sort of.
I barely wore clothes during the day. After chores, I took to stripping down to my underwear and a t-shirt for a nap under the sunshade on the flying bridge. Dad always knew where the air conditioners were working and I wouldn’t see him until things had cooled off. Sometimes I went with him but you had to balance being cool versus be
ing under Dad’s constant attention. Even when he wasn’t being a taskmaster, it just seemed like he kept you busier. He’d remember every chore I forgot and rarely missed a chance to find ‘new and novel ways for me to demonstrate my value to society.’
“What does that even mean?” I argued, the second time I heard him say it.
“You’re here to prove that you’re worth something,” he said in a fatherly tone of voice. “Don’t forget, I have to provide updates to your probation officer. I’d like to be able to say that you’re well on your way to being a productive member of society.” Whatever, Dad. Call it what you want but all it meant to me is work, work and more work.
After the third or fourth day like this, he was gone and I had declared it to be a day for enjoying some peace and quiet. Dad would be gone for hours … I caught a shower and decided to give sleeping naked outside a try. I was about to drift off to sleep when I was suddenly interrupted.
“Excuse me,” a voice called from somewhere below. I quickly wrapped a towel around myself and moved to the railing. Down below, an older woman in a wetsuit and snorkel had surfaced and was treading water between the Horner and the Key West.
“Yeah?” I asked. Whether she could see me or not, I couldn’t tell, but it was awkward to be talking to people when you were almost naked and I wanted her to go away. She was cheerfully oblivious and the questions continued.
“Which boat is this?”
“The Horner C,” I answered.
“Oh,” she said. “I was doing my afternoon swim and got lost – is this on C or D ring?”
“E Ring,” I said. Man, was she lost. Even I knew which ring I was on.
“I swam right underneath a whole dock,” she exclaimed. She waved cheerfully and splashed away. Just as she dipped under the water she goes, “Nice butt, by the way.”
Oh God …
I decided to get dressed and go for a walk, maybe somewhere far away from the boat so I could pretend I was never there and the lady was making it all up. The heat was still miserable so I decided to find Dad and started with the Gun Range. I never had trouble finding my way there – I just had to listen for the shots.
It was cool when I walked in. The lounge had this old blue AstroTurf left over from a mini-golf course in Mexico. A soccer game was going and Ranchero music was playing from somewhere outside. I saw some faded words still visible in the carpeting I didn’t notice the last time but I couldn’t translate them.
“It says ‘Please stay off the statues and windmills’.” I turned to see Miguel finishing the longneck he had brought in from outside. He fished another out of an ice-water-filled washtub and wiped the rim of the bottle with his Senor Frog’s tank top. “Greetings, Jamie Santiago. Que paso?”
“Have you seen my Dad?”
“I may have observed him from time to time,” he replied with some weird, elaborate courtesy. He was already buzzed and it was ten in the morning. “You wanna know where he is? It’ll cost you.”
“Aw, come on, man. It’s hot outside.”
He grinned and jerked his head toward the rear. “He’s out back – grab yourself a Coke.”
Dad was plinking some .22 rifle at the armored target boat Miguel would rent out from time to time. It was fun to watch if you were out of ammo or bored - it towed a complex floating target structure that Miguel had rigged up. “There he is,” he said to me when I saw him. “Done for the day?”
“Yeah,” I said. I didn’t know who the swimming lady was and I was hoping Dad didn’t, either. I didn’t’ want to him that I was done for the day but I couldn’t go back home … Not yet, at least. I didn’t want to say that I was bored. I learned quickly: telling him that would get me something like “Fine - You’re working over on the Herman’s Hermit” and then I would be on some old sloop scrubbing decks all day. Sometimes money was involved but other times he would just go “Ya gotta let me get you back on that one.” He never told me ahead of time whether I was getting paid or not.
“If you’re free, how about a paid gig this time?”
“Really?” I was shocked. Dad was actually talking money this time.
“Sure,” I got you a gig on the Phoenix Grill with a friend – you’ll be working for him starting tomorrow.”
I brightened a bit – the grill was a popular spot and I had stopped by for a burger once. I didn’t know that Dad was friends with the people who ran it or that he was working on getting me a job there but it didn’t matter. I mean, obviously, it had something do with Dad and his scams. That was the only reason I was working at the Gun Range. Dad was trying to get something going with Miguel but he refused to say what it was. Dad told me one time that his scams were based on the ‘pickle test’ method of business development.
“It’s like this, Jim,” he said, picking up a couple of pickle chips from the counter where we were making burgers one night. He flipped both pickles straight out where they smacked against the window. Slowly, they began to slide downward.
“You take an idea and throw it against the wall,” Dad continued. “If it sticks or it slides down, that tells you how good it is. If it’s a good idea – you go with it. If it isn’t, you let it go and pick something else.” Grabbing the pickles before they hit the sill, he popped them into his mouth and then cleaned the window with the front of his t-shirt.
“That’s disgusting,” I said.
“That’s economics.” He went on to describe some of the schemes he had been involved in. Dad and Miguel would occasionally run supplies in from the mainland. Other times people would abandon their stuff sometimes and head for shore – he would go through it, sell off the interesting items and dump the rest.
“Remember that guy who collects the rainwater? You saw him your first day.” I nodded. “He has to get that water before anyone else does and make sure that it’s drinkable. Not a big profit margin.
“There are easier dollars to be made,” Dad explained. “But they’re usually illegal. I try to avoid that … it’s never worth the hassle. It’s a lot easier to make money if you already have it. You can do stuff like invest in other boats and buy stock in the Pacific Fisheries company.” Dad grinned weakly. “I don’t have that kind of capital to throw around.”
Dad’s plans seemed to be centered on his friends: Miguel, Marie the Plant Lady and his fat Hawaiian friend. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me but then, not much about this place did. His little lecture was probably designed to make everything clear to me but everything actually made less sense after that. Did everything have to be so dramatic, Dad? Skip the prop-comic act and just tell me what we’re doing out here, please.
I admit: I wanted to come out here. But from the second I hit the deck here until now, I’ve been rolling from one zany misadventure to the next. Not exactly what I would call a stable atmosphere. I was out here because I didn’t have any choice – what was Dad’s excuse?
Dad, being the joker he is, told me that you started at the Grill as ‘cabin slave’ and slowly worked your way up. The next morning I walked into the Grill, ready for some hard work to find a fat Mexican kid smoking and reading a girlie mag at the cash register.
He was nonchalantly leafing through a truly hideous photo spread – trashy blondes with bad skin – while looking out at the roiling mass of the colony going through another day. I could smell a dozen cook fires and grills going – mixed with the salt air, barbeque smells wonderful. “Um, hi,” I said uncertainly. He looked up, bewildered. “I’m Jim…I guess I work here.” The kid’s response was to fart. Loud.
“I’m Riley,” he said. “First off…oh, geeze!” He ran toward me as if pursued by monsters. I was a little slow to respond until it hit me…the worst fart I had ever smelled. Gagging, I ran for the fresh air.
“It wasn’t me!” Riley said indignantly. “The sewer main is backed up again!”
“I’ve heard that before,” a voice behind me said, making me jump. A small white guy was standing there with a cigarette butt dangling perilously from his l
ower lip. I hadn’t heard anyone come from behind me – usually the iron deck vibrates with footfalls and noise all day long. He was skinny and looked like someone who belonged on the Megan’s Law database. He stepped inside the grill and immediately opened the refrigerator. He studied the cans of beer inside and then checked a tally chart next to the cash register. Satisfied that any missing cans were paid for by customers, he popped one open.
“Ever worked a grill before?” he punctuated his question with a burp.
“We grill all the time on the boat,” I replied.
“Fine. You’re the grill man, then,” he said. To the Mexican kid, Riley, he said, “I guess you’re free, then.” The kid smiled happily and busied himself with prepping the front. What made him so happy?
“You’re Jim, right?” he asked. I nodded. He took a sweat-stained painter’s cap off of his head and ran a cheap black comb through what was left of his gray hair. “Jeb Francis,” he introduced himself. “The walking stink over there is Riley.”
Riley bristled. “Mom said you weren’t supposed to call me that!”
“She says a lot of things,” Jeb replied. He opened the door and stood well clear, allowing the air to circulate. His not-so-friendly eyes gave the horizon another sweep. “Your dad said you know how to work. Hope he’s right.” Having decided that it was safe enough, or maybe that time was wasting, Jeb began the job training.
The orientation lasted five whole minutes. “Clean this. Stock that. Register works like this. Don’t give me any crap – I can get five kids to replace you. Any questions?” He hadn’t looked at me once since he arrived and even then, I wish he didn’t. Like I said, he didn’t look friendly. I shook my head. Jeb nodded and disappeared through the flip-up section of the counter. He sauntered off in search of another pack of cigarettes.
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