I don’t want to complain too much about it but it did bump me to have Dad act like that toward Madison. When I showed up all I got was a nasty, damp blanket and half of a bunk. Now Dad’s making sure that everything is perfect for Madison. What about me?
During the next day, I was working pen patrol … alone again. Dad had been there for the first three minutes and then disappeared somewhere with ‘stuff he had to do’. Was it too much to ask that someone stay here in case I got into trouble? Sometimes sharks broke into pens … it wasn’t unheard of. We had a modified pole spear as part of our dock equipment for that reason. Whatever. It was lonely doing pen patrol like this. I was wishing for someone to show up and keep me company. I got my wish but it wasn’t what I expected.
As I neared the ladder for Pen 3 – I saw a pair of hairy legs dangling into the water. They didn’t look familiar and I felt a flash of anger. Trespassers received a dim welcome, especially when they put their grubby feet in our cash crop. I climbed out, ready to read someone the riot act. It was the Trash Man ... just sitting there and smoking a cigarette, gazing out toward the horizon like he had nothing better to do.
“What’re you doing here?” I asked, somewhat harshly.
“Nothing,” he said. “Your dad left and I thought you could use the help.”
“So what, you’re watching us?”
“I have my eyes open, Jim-Bob,” he said. “I don’t have to watch, I just have to see.” I hated that about adults … all they had to do was open their mouths and they were saying things that knocked the wind out of my argument sails.
“Good for you, I guess,” I said. “See anything interesting?”
“Maybe. Question is … how deep into it are you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said firmly. It was the truth. This guy thinks my Dad is doing something wrong and he isn't so it's like, leave us alone. If anyone knew anything about drugs, it had to be Trash Man. He sounded like he was hopped up on some goofballs. I was standing on the dock, opposite him, holding a towel and going through the motions of drying off. I was hoping to look busy so he’d leave.
He shrugged. “Maybe you don’t. But you should.” Without another word, he walked down the dock and disappeared. The whole scene would have been weird enough but Dad had returned from wherever he went and saw us talking.
“You come after my kid?” he asked sharply. I’d never heard him talk in that tone of voice and there was something vicious about it.
“Rick, don’t do this,” the Trash Man said. “I’m not coming after him but you know they will.” Dad’s expression changed and he grabbed Trash’s shirt front like he was going to hit him. “We can help you.”
Dad didn’t hit him but he almost threw him overboard. Grabbing the Trash Man’s meaty shoulder, he shoved him … hard. “Next time I see you or even think that I see you, you better know that it’s on,” he said. The Trash Man staggered a little but recovered and grinned at us both. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
“You’re in over your head, swabbie,” he said. “Better think it over.” Without waiting to see what Dad might throw at him, he turned and shuffled off down the dock. He picked a turn and then disappeared. Dad was glaring after the Trash Man so hard that he burned a hole in the air. I came up behind him – partly to ask what it was all about and partly to see if he was okay.
“Dad-“ I began but before I could do anything else he whipped around and stalked back to the Horner. He didn’t look around, look to see what I was about to say – anything. The cabin door on the Horner slammed … I didn’t bother checking to see if he locked it. That was the second time he took off and left me hanging today. I walked to the Gun Range, still dressed in my wet suit.
Miguel rustled up some spare clothes at the Gun Range and I changed in the head. He didn’t say anything after I told him the story, though. He just sat at the counter with his elbows making grooves in the old wooden bar. A jai alai match was in progress from Puerto Rico.
“Is my Dad okay?” I asked. Miguel smiled sadly
“When is Madison getting here?”
“She's leaving the dock tomorrow and she gets in tomorrow night. The thing is … I'm not sure she should be coming out anymore.”
“Oh … that's too bad,” he said. “I'm really excited about meeting her.”
I reached into the cooler and brought up a cane-sugar Coke; the kind they only sell down in Mexico. Madison would be on her way in the morning. I wanted to put a call into Mom and tell her to skip the trip with Madison and then book a boat ride for me back to shore. I asked Miguel if I could make a phone call.
He looked at me, still smiling sadly. “Phone’s broke, amigo,” he said. “Who you want to call, anyway?”
“My mom.”
“Why j’you wanna call her?”
“To tell her to not send Madison,” I said.
“Nah, you don’t wanna do that,” Miguel said. He started talking about some new fishing business that was partnering with Pac Fisheries. I wanted to scream at him about how my dad and some weird garbage man were about to have a gunfight right there on the dock and Miguel was calmly explaining the economics of the fishing industry. It was beyond surreal.
Did this just happen? I asked myself that question several times. What really happened, anyway? Dad just had a disagreement with some nut on the colony. It’s happened before; some of the weirdos needed more than a gentle reminder to keep their distance. Any other time this happened, I filed it under “Colony Loony Tunes” and forgot about it. Was I overreacting?
I hung out at the range for a long while, hoping to give Dad some time to not be there when I got back. The sun was dipping toward the horizon when I heard a loud alarm go off. It wasn’t far away and I think it was coming from the Phoenix. Immediately, the alarm was followed by the Ah-HOO-gah sound of an old-time ship’s klaxon from the Colony-wide speaker system. The effect on Miguel was immediate – he left his bar stool and ran back to climb to the upper deck.
I followed Miguel up to the top to see what he was looking at. He was scanning the horizon anxiously. The Colony PA system crackled and a voice started speaking – we normally didn’t hear from this thing outside of Steeplechase Day. They were cheap low-fidelity speakers, it was like listening to a drive through but these guys weren’t selling Whoppers. “Now all hands,” the PA boomed. “The colony is being approached. Keep all families indoors. Repeat, keep all families indoors. Colony Patrol, man your stations. Repeat: Colony Patrol, man your stations.” The klaxon stopped but then another alarm started, some electronic thing that sounded more modern and annoying.
I looked back toward the colony and was surprised at how quickly the docks had emptied. Every boat or ship was closed tight with shades drawn. The smell of cook fires and barbeque was still there, but the breeze would blow it all away in a few minutes. The usual waterfall of a hundred stereos and a thousand conversations had disappeared to be replaced by the wind and cries of a few seagulls.
When I looked back again, Miguel had disappeared. He hollered from below: “Jim, get in here!” I went below to see him at the gun cabinet.
He had it hauled out here from shore at some point – a light oak cabinet with feathered glass windows and a lighting system that he never used. 8 feet wide and covered with green felt inside, it held all the guns we rented and it was locked up when they weren’t in use. We checked guns in and out of this thing all day, it was really nice. Watching Miguel, I suddenly saw that there was more to the cabinet than I’d realized.
He fished a key out of his jeans and unlocked a small keyhole I’d never really noticed before. He swung the back panel of the cabinet open and inside was an entirely separate section of green felt. It was also full of guns, but not just rifles. He grunted as he pulled a large monster of a machine gun out and set it on the bar. Something with a skeletal shoulder stock and belt-fed ammo coming from the green metal box it had mounted underneath.
I heard someone enter the cabin and looked up t
o see Julian. He was out of breath from running and he was carrying both of his rifle cases. He nodded briefly and then he was outside and climbing to the top deck. “They’re coming in from the south,” he said over his shoulder.
Miguel reached into the hidden compartment again and pulled out an ammo box. He swept up the machine gun and gestured to the ammo box. “Grab that and come with me,” he commanded. I reached down to pick it up but it weighed a ton. It took two hands to hold while I crab-walked to the back deck.
“Com’on, com’on!” Miguel yelled impatiently. He helped me climb up to the top with the ultra-heavy canister. I could hear boats approaching – was that what everyone was yelling about? It sounded like a bunch of fishing boats … nothing to get excited about. As I set the ammo box down, I had a hand grip me by the arm and pull me down to the deck. The move scraped the heck out of my leg and I yelled.
No sympathy, a hand came down to slap me on my forehead. “Shut up,” Miguel hissed.
“Everyone’s got their panties in a wad,” I said, still gritting my teeth from the pain.
Julian lay in a prone position with his heavy rifle like he always does. Not even taking his eyes of the horizon, he snaked an arm out to rap me pretty hard on the head with his knuckles. “He said ‘quiet’,” he whispered harshly. “Now shut up.”
“We’re in a lot of trouble here, Jim,” Miguel said – maybe he was sorry for scraping my leg and then hitting me, but right there he just looked scared and that’s something I had never seen before. “Those aren’t just boats, pal. Those are pirates!”
Pirates? In this day and age, we’ve got pirates off the coast of Los Angeles? He had to be joking and I wanted to laugh in his face. Miguel pulled the bolt back on that monster gun and the sound of it shut my mouth. Heavy metal parts were clicking together with all the seriousness of a jail cell or a bank vault. It all sounds different when it’s happening right in front of you. Behind all these sounds continued the rising and falling wail of the ship alarm. It felt like a dream and I suddenly wanted to wake up.
The PA system spoke again, “Colony Patrol: man your stations. This is not a drill, repeat, not a drill. Bogies approaching. We are signaling proximity. Proximity signaling is now.” The pitch of the alarm changed to something else, the up-down-up-down of a ship’s collision alarm that Dad had told me about. You couldn’t miss it and it made my ears hurt after a minute.
Miguel nodded toward the front of the boat. “Get down back there and plug your ears, Jim.” I crawled on my belly to the little bar area he had set up there. I never noticed it before, but the top deck railings were kind of a weird two-layer setup. The original outer layer of steel railing had an inner cage system that was backed with chicken wire. In between the two were old bags. I reached out and tapped one … they were filled with sand – all of them. Funny, I’d never noticed that before.
The boats sounded closer now and I could see Julian and Miguel’s feet as they lay side by side facing out. The railing that’s usually there was folded down and they were quiet, not paying any attention to me. Miguel had put the machine gun aside and was looking out of a small pair of binoculars. Julian had said to me once that ‘this wasn’t the same as a spotter but better than nothing’.
“Colony Patrol, hold your fire,” the voice boomed again.
That’s when I knew this wasn’t a movie. Somewhere on the colony, at some point when I wasn’t there, they actually sat down and discussed shooting at people. Not only that, they had it all worked out like a fire drill. Hear the bell, grab a gun and prepare to kill someone. This wasn’t Afghanistan, this was the United States! Didn’t we have the Navy for this kind of thing?
“Hold your fire, please. Do not engage unless you receive fire.” The warning echoed throughout the colony, the sound of human beings going to war.
It didn’t hit me until later that night, when I was banging awake at the slightest sound, how quickly the world had changed. One minute, Dad and his buddies are being weird for the sake of weird. The next minute, one of the steadiest guys I know is looking through a rifle scope.
Is this real? Is this the Colony? Is this me, is this my life?
At that moment, hunkered down and holding my ears, my needs were very simple. I wanted the land, I wanted my Mom and I wanted to never see the colony again – not necessarily in that order. Coming out here, I had stepped across an invisible line that I didn’t know was there. Now I was in the most dangerous place I had ever been to in my entire life.
I could hear the boats … they were maybe 300 yards away. I couldn’t see them, I could only hear them … engines echoing in the little bowl of the back deck. Grumbly diesels and a lot more gas-powered motors. A few high-pitched PWC engines. It sounded like a convoy, nothing special, something I’d heard a few thousand times since coming here. That’s what I couldn’t get over: it was all so normal.
It took forever for the sound of the engines to leave us. I stayed down there, my legs cramping and then going to sleep. I guess they buzzed the colony before turning around and heading back south again. It probably took twenty minutes but it felt more like 20 years. The entire time, Miguel and Julian were like stone. They didn’t move at all. The alarm changed in pitch and the klaxon went away.
My legs were cramped and I had to pee. I didn’t dare move until Miguel turned to look back toward me. “You okay?” I nodded and he smiled grimly. “You’re a man today, boy.” He looked back toward the horizon and it was quiet for a minute, nothing to hear but the wind and the ship’s alarm. The wailing alarm eventually went silent and an eerie calm set in.
“Stand down, stand down,” the fuzzy voice said. “First, let me say: well done. Patrol captains report to the wardroom for a debrief … no later than 1730. Thank you for your cooperation – the alarm is now over.”
The echo rolled through the colony and it fell flat around my ears. The alarm was over. People were no longer trying to kill us. Life was normal. Adults are such liars. I wanted to piss myself and puke simultaneously. I could hear people slowly start to come outside again. Miguel hauled himself off the deck wearily, rolling his neck so that I could hear individual vertebrae pop. Julian rolled to a sitting position and picked up the rifle so he could cradle it in his lap.
“Come on out,” he said, not looking at me. I stood carefully, looking at the horizon, still trying to process what had just happened.
“No worries,” Miguel said. “They just buzzed us. They do that sometimes.”
“Buzzed us?” I said. “You guys had guns!”
“So did they. We have more.”
“Guns? Pirates?” I started to hyperventilate, like I did that day in the winter.
“Calm down, bud,” Julian said. “They’ve just stepped up their stuff in the last few months. We’ve all had to get used to it.” He explained how the colony was a pit stop for drugs and illegal aliens. Pac Fisheries was turning itself inside out to remove it but it hadn’t cleaned house yet.
“Why didn’t you guys tell me about this?” I asked. “Does my Dad know?” They shared a look and Julian busied himself putting the gun back in its case. Miguel disappeared below to re-lock the gun cabinet. No one ever answered my question.
I returned to the lounge. The gun cabinet looked like nothing had touched it and I saw why I hadn’t noticed the lock before – it was covered by a tiny circle of felt. You really had to look in order to see it. Miguel was wiping the counter with a rag and I asked him to use his ship-to-shore cell phone. Mine was still on the Horner and I didn’t want Mom to scream about the bill.
“Who you wanna call?” he asked again.
“My mom.” What a dumb question…
“You don’t wanna call her, Jim,” he said, smiling sadly.
“Why not?”
“Because.”
“Because why?” I finally screamed. “I want to go home! I want my sister to stay home. I want to catch the first boat or plane back to the mainland!”
Miguel’s reply scared me more than an
ything else that had happened today. “You’d never make it,” he shrugged.
“What do you mean, ‘never make it’,” I demanded.
“Just that,” he said. “They watch who leaves. You especially.”
“Me?” He just nodded. “Why me?” I was just a kid…who would spend that much time watching me, even if I was on a boat heading for shore? Why was I so important? The answer hit me and I was afraid to ask Miguel the next question.
“Miguel.” He looked up at me, smiling with a pained expression on his face. “What’s my Dad up to?”
Our current position is: 35° 5'54.83"N 120°40'11.77"W
Chapter Twelve – T-Minus 30
So let me tell you a story … it’ll help you understand the rest of what I’m about to say.
When my sister was 2 and I was 6, I asked my mom to shave my head so I could be like my little sister. Madison was diagnosed two months after her second birthday with a rare form of cancer, Ewing’s Sarcoma. The radiation therapy and other treatments meant that she lost her hair. My sole contribution to her recovery was asking to shave my head.
At the time, we three were living with my grandparents while Mom went to school and paid for it by doing nights at a video store over in Sunland. She was gunning for an MBA and finishing her third year and she was on track to graduate early when the doctor drops the atom bomb on us. Madison had bone cancer and she might lose her leg.
Nobody told me what was going on – I was six, after all. All the adults started acting weird: Mom and Grandma were crying and Grandpa was out in the back yard. Rather than let us see him cry, he was viciously attacking the lemon tree with an old pair of hedge clippers.
Mom had to quit her job and we spent days in different offices filing paperwork so that she could get her daughter treatment for her cancer. When you’re poor and you’re on state assistance, getting any kind of medical is difficult and when it’s cancer it is impossible.
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