“Yeah,” I answered bitterly.
“Tell you what,” he said. “You do this favor for me and I’ll make it worth your while.” We were both silent for a while – I was considering what Greg had in mind. I’d watched enough movies to know that the drug dealers would kill the guy who was doing the favor as often as they rewarded them. Would he try to hurt me?
Stuff like this that drove me crazy about Dad. How could he put me in this situation? I was angry and scared. Whenever Dad involved me in something it was always at the last minute and always moving too quickly. It was like trying to dance but whoops they’re doing a Salsa and you only know how to tango and oops you need to carry this refrigerator and oh no! you just remembered that you have some term paper you really should be working on and come on, come on…why is everything taking you so long?!
We passed the next hour listening to the monotonous drone of the engines. I’d like to say we discussed the politics of the colony, thoughtfully discussed different methods of water desalinization and came up with a clever but thoughtful way to end violence in Palestine. I counted the beer mats he had thumb-tacked to the wall over the galley passthru. Greg disappeared into the wheelhouse to alter course and I thumbed through an old Sports Illustrated that he had lying around. The sky was reddening and the sun was almost to the horizon when he reappeared.
“We’re pulling up in ten minutes,” he said. “Remember what I said – make the cop believe you're mad but don't fill out a report.” We tied off at the dock more or less in the 10 minutes he promised. At once, his attitude changed. He became snappish and withdrawn – if he said anything at all to me it was at a bark. “Don’t drop the fender yet!” he hollered. Then he yelled even louder when I was late dropping it over the side. “Now, now! Do it now!” he almost screamed. Who was this maniac?
Holding me roughly by the arm, he marched me up the dock to the little shack the Policia kept. I didn’t understand enough Spanish to catch what he said but got the gist from his gestures. He was all but screaming as he gestured to me and then to the town. Even the cops, who apparently knew him, were impressed. Finally, one took me by the arm and started off down the street.
“He says you lost your wallet, right kid?” the cop asked. I was surprised, thinking that no one besides me and Greg would be speaking English. So much for that.
“Yeah.” I nodded.
“You were at Los Perrito púrpura today?”
I had to think about it…the Perrito púrpura? The Purple Puppy? Sounded like a head shop. I said, “Yeah” again and we started off with no more conversation. We arrived there less than a few minutes later – it wasn’t a head shop.
The Purple Puppy was a bar – you could hear the music and noise from three blocks away; from a block away it was almost deafening. The place was a large, open-air cantina. The place was closed and shuttered in the daylight – now those shutters were open and it seemed like half of Ensenada was inside. In the middle of the place was a large oval bar manned by five or six people. White tourists were doing tequila shooters and a live mariachi band was going like it was Cinco de Mayo. The cop (his badge said ‘Ruiz’) and I went inside to the bartender, where he shouted to make himself understood to the bartender. This was the scariest part of the trip – what if the bartender wasn’t in on it?
My heart sank when the bartender shrugged and shook his head. I didn't have to speak Spanish to understand that: I don’t know what the kid is talking about. The cop looked back at me, trying to make up his mind about something and then asked another question. The bartender called up someone else – this smoking hot Mexican lady who was on the other side of the bar. She nodded immediately and disappeared behind the bar for a second before holding up a red Velcro wallet.
Officer Ruiz shouted something at me but the brassy trumpet obscured it. I shouted “What?” and he yelled back. “Is it yours?” I nodded and screamed “Yeah!” He nodded his thanks to the bartenders and we headed off back to the dock. Home free … or so I thought.
It was late and I had a hard time remembering all the twists and turns we’d just taken. This cop wasn't giving a tour … he took the quickest route back to the cantina. I was completely lost and hoping he wouldn’t simply drop me to find my way back to the dock. We were going down an alley that looked familiar when the cop caught me by the scruff of my neck and shoved me against the wall.
I banged loudly into loose sheet metal – the place was an old Quonset hut painted lime green. In a flash he had his baton out and was shoving it into the base of my skull. He started frisking me roughly – did he think I had a gun?
“All right, kid,” he hissed. “Let me see your real wallet.” He continued frisking me, looking for anything in my pockets. “I know your fren’ Greg…he’s always up to something. Com’on – show me the real wallet.” He continued searching … started sticking his finger inside the waistline of my jeans. I felt like I was being strip-searched. Maybe that was next.
After a minute, not finding anything, he grabbed the wallet I got from the bar back and opened it, looking for something. The wallet had a few dollars in it and in his anger it flew open. A few paper dollars fluttered out onto the ground. Even though I was terrified, a small part of my brain said someone will be happy when they find that tomorrow.
“This is your wallet?” he said angrily. “This your wallet?” I was petrified, I could only nod dumbly. “Then where’s your ID, kid?” In his anger, his accent was getting thicker. “ID” sounded like “Aye-Deeuh”. “Where’s your ID? All you American kids have an ID.” Still being scared, all I could do was shake my head. This really pissed him off. He shoved me back into the corrugated sheet metal again and started searching all over again. He missed something in his first pass – his hand brushed something in my jacket pocket.
I could hear him almost gasp in surprise – he physically tore the passport right out of my jacket. It was a cheap windbreaker, but his rough treatment was so shocking that I almost burst into tears. The cops in the US had never treated me like this – even when I was at my worst, waking up hungover or coming down handcuffed to a hospital bed.
He stared at my passport for a long time – looking from the picture to my face. I stumbled onto the perfect solution by dumb luck. Of course I wouldn’t have my ID – why else would I have brought a passport? He didn’t even bother asking, just closed it quietly and handed it back to me. No apology, no explanation. He started forward, silently leading the way back to the boat.
Greg was reading from the old Sport's Illustrated as we walked down the gangplank. “Get your wallet, kid?” he asked as he stood. I nodded, afraid to say anything in front of the cop. Greg’s eyes dropped to my torn jacket and it was all the explanation he needed.
He looked back up at the cop and something unspoken passed between them. All I could see was Greg’s eyes, but they turned cold and hard. “Now that,” he said, “was uncalled for … that wasn’t nice at all.” A few more seconds passed and then Greg looked toward me. “Let’s go.” I stepped aboard the boat; the engines were idling quietly and he had them humming in no time heading toward home.
I sat in the wheelhouse, my head back against the bulkhead, just processing what had just happened. Greg broke the silence first.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He looked at me from gazing outside the front windows. “I’m real sorry.” He told me how it shouldn’t have happened – that the whole deal was with the cops and that the one who took me to the bar was the one who was gunning recently for a bigger chunk of the profit. He’d been turned down and was now looking for any excuse to bust Greg.
The boat trip back, all 15 hours of it, was done in silence. Greg tried to get some conversation going but I was beyond talking. I sat in the wheelhouse, morosely staring out to sea. I was still trying to process everything that had just happened or what could have happened.
I couldn't defend what I did to get shipped out here and I wasn’t proud of it. But everything I did before I came out here seemed like a wet fart next to
the dangerous crap Dad was into. What were they smuggling and why did it need our second trip? Why didn’t they warn me about El Capitan Loco?
I felt like Dad should have warned me. He acts like he knows everything … was some advance warning out of line?
I had questions but I didn’t know who to ask. It seemed like the wrong time to start asking a guy like Greg. For all I knew, he was more dangerous than that cop. He gave up trying to talk. Maybe he felt bad about putting me into that situation … maybe he didn’t think about it at all. He didn’t volunteer the information and I didn’t ask.
I don’t know if Greg called ahead but it didn’t really matter. When we docked, Dad wasn’t there to meet us. It was a cold, dank morning just before eight and the walk back to the Horner was lonely and miserable. I could hear the bells of the marker buoys gently tolling and I felt like I was the only one awake, the only one alive, on the colony at that moment. The wind was blowing the fog over us and I could hear the fog signal begin to sound on the Phoenix.
Coming up to the Horner, a single light was on in the main cabin. I slipped inside to find Dad asleep on the couch, watching the feed. He had waited up for me but slept through me coming home. I didn’t wake him, didn’t cover him up or do anything … I just went to my bunk where I slipped off into a dreamless, exhausted sleep. The blowing wind moaned through the door leading to the rear deck. The perfect end to a perfect day for me.
Our current position is: 34°22'43.21"N 120°27'26.16"W
Chapter Seven – The Boys of Summer
I ended my summer on the Colony with my arms wrapped around my knees and sitting with my back to the wall in a cracked vinyl chair. No, I wasn't in jail, but close. I was in the Greyhound station in Oxnard. The bus was leaving in 8 minutes but I wouldn’t be on it. Mom was driving up from West Covina to get me.
My stomach rumbled and I did my best to ignore it ... there wasn’t any money for food and I didn’t want to deal with the creepy guy behind the counter any more than I already had. I had to borrow the phone to call my mother for a ride home and he had stared at me the entire time. Mom knew something was wrong when she heard my voice. All she said was “I’ll be there in a few hours” after my 30-second explanation and then she hung up. With no money in my pockets, only my ID, I was about the saddest kid in town. What a way to end the summer.
After the Ensenada run and Steeplechase, the summer started to wind down. I don’t know about you but summer vacation always starts dragging for me between the end of July and the middle of August.
There were a few interesting things that happened. Mitch Cutter came around again with some new scams he wanted me to get in on. Our Steeplechase fight was forgotten and he needed someone with the interest and talent for making old electronic gadgets work again. I was hosing off from pen patrol on a random Tuesday when he appeared, munching on an apple. “You do IT stuff, right?”
I turned around, surprised. No hello, no 'nice to see you'. One second Mitch wasn't there and the next he was. “Sure … sometimes.”
“You're going back soon, right?”
“Yeah.” Soon I'd be hoisting a sea-bag for another 12-hour ride back to shore. I didn't know how I was going to feel about it. Even Madison's emails from home, describing the trip to Disneyland and Vegas seemed washed-out and dull. I had spent my summer doing a man's work - hauling fish and living on the sea. Waving for the camera next to Goofy seemed corny and lame by comparison.
“So how about teaching me how to fix computers? I'll cut you in for a piece of whatever I make.” Mitch carefully tossed his apple core into the water away from our nets. It made sense to me. If I wasn't there my regular customers would go out and find the next kid who showed up.
“How will you pay me?” I asked.
“Through your Dad, through Miguel. Whatever you want.”
Huh … sounded interesting. I was still cautious about Mitch, though. He was cheerful and friendly on the surface but he had a mean streak. The bitter commentary about Dad and the Steeplechase debacle was one example. Some boats banned Mitch from their presence and spoke cautiously about me because of the association. Mitch was about commerce and as long as the deal was solid, there was no problem. If the deal went south, he wasn't above some payback. It was in everyone's interest to keep that from happening.
Above all, Mitch was a cusser. My mom had her moments and Dad certainly never held back. Mitch’s parents were from the South and his dad had worked on an oil rig for 12 years. His dad swore like the Enduring Freedom vet he was and his down-home Bible Belt Fundamentalist mom reminded Mitch almost constantly that ‘if he talked like his daddy he'd go to Hell.’ The solution to the problem for Mitch was to swear out of his mother's earshot and life went on as normal. He developed a personal monologue called "The 20 Things Wrong With This World" that he recited for me on a number of occasions. I felt it was the most acute and articulate use of coarse language I'd ever listened to.
Near the end of the summer, Mitch took delivery of some old junk. One of the lesser-known weirdos, Crazy Addie, had been collecting it for years. Addie was all set to toss it overboard one night and his neighbors were concerned. Just before violence ensued, Mitch slid up and declared his interest in selling and/or donating the junk after I'd fixed it and the problem was solved. He conned me into helping him haul what amounted to a truckload of random electronic parts out of Addie’s boat. Then we sorted it for trash or repair. We were supposed to figure out what each thing was and whether it was worth anything. This is how we ended up being disk jockeys for a radio station on the Colony for about an hour.
The unit had an old battery and when I replaced it with a new 9-volt the power LED glowed. I tossed it onto the "Keep" pile. It had no label and I had to ask Crazy Addie what it was. "It's a broadcast unit," was the reply. "You can use it to transmit over FM." I immediately saw the opportunity and Mitch did as well. A radio station would be a money-maker since the Colony was well out of range of any land-based FM stations.
Our first and last broadcast was a disaster. After several days of testing to determine the range of the radio transmitter, we pushed ahead with stapling and taping cheap fliers announcing the new station's existence. My wrist and fingers were sore from writing "104.5 - COLONYVOICE" onto hundreds of 'borrowed' sheets of white paper. We stayed up all night creating music playlists and talking about what we would say. Privately, I was terrified from stage fright but Mitch seemed confident the whole thing would go perfectly.
It did not. Twenty minutes after six, when we had been talking for 20 minutes about nothing (I hadn't realized that radio patter required actual preparation and there were a lot of awkward silences during that time) that Mitch's stateroom door flew open. Mitch’s mother entered the room, shouting incoherently. For those listening at that hour, they heard Mitch's mother screaming about 'devil music' and Mitch yelling for his mom to get out of his room. Mitch was so upset that his voice started cracking and I forgot to cut the microphones off. I took the first opportunity to leave the ship but I could hear the argument echoing through random radio tuners as I returned to the Horner. More than a few groups of people were thoroughly enjoying Mitch's social implosion.
The radio station ended the same day it started and Mitch never mentioned it again. I was curious about the fate of the broadcast unit. Mitch said “It was an experiment, it’s gone” and that was that. We moved full-steam ahead into the 'computer guy' business. I spent a lot of time taking Mitch on calls and teaching him basic troubleshooting.
The last day of the summer finally arrived. I climbed out of the water that day and spat my regulator out for the last time. Dad and I were both quiet. No major chores, Dad and I spent the day together talking about what I’d be doing when I returned to the mainland and going back to school.
There was still a lot of talk about Jessica Cho: the bad news had finally arrived a week ago. A week in the ICU, another month doing physical therapy later and the prognosis came back. She wouldn’t be doing any walking, any
time soon. What's worse, while her parents were at her bedside they went into default on a couple of mortgages. The Cho Family quietly packed their things and returned to the mainland. The boat itself returned to the possession of Pacific Fisheries and would probably be used to break in newcomers.
I noticed something weird happened, just as they were leaving. The boat was leaving from the Phoenix and had to make its way through the Maze. The original Steeplechase route was gone now and the route had been moved back to normal. Ignacio, the boat skipper who first brought me out to the Colony was giving them a lift back home, free of charge. As the vessel swung around in a neat little circle to point the way it had come in, people were lining the docks and waving their good-byes.
It was kind of touching … the route of the Maze was lined with people who wanted to wanted to see them off. Maybe it was like when you grew up in a neighborhood and they all came out to shake your hand when you moved away, I don’t know.
“It’s not right,” I said, watching the Chos depart. Dad let some time pass and all we could hear was the grumbly diesel farting its way out of the Maze and into the open ocean.
“No,” Dad replied. “No, it isn’t. They're going to turn the boat into a shakedown shack. Worst part of it is: no insurance and no help from Pac Fish.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Pac Fish makes them all sign waivers before the Steeplechase,” Dad said. “They get hurt, it’s on them. They know it, too. The amount of money coming back from the race is worth the risk and others just do it for pride.” He cracked a can of beer open and took a pull before continuing. “I heard they gave Alex a token payment for his trouble. Maybe four or five grand – it wouldn’t even cover a day of what it costs to have that little girl in a hospital bed.” Dad snorted bitterly.
Insurance and health care were things that I didn’t think very much about. You get hurt, you need a checkup, Mom or Dad take you to the doctor and all you have to do is be brave and take that lollipop they give you. Dad was talking about money and doctors and waivers – it was all over my head. “Don’t you guys have insurance out here?”
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