Doug and Hank came home with that feral smell to them. Stoned and crazy, they darted around the apartment, hiding things, finding them and stashing them again. The drape on the front window next to the door had that face-high threadbare spot from Hank pulling it aside to peek into the street. The odd looks and strange chuckles between the two of them made my skin crawl. Nothing made sense 'til much later.
Doug was a Cajun, a very large black man with blue eyes and red nappy hair. His already wide, flat nose had been broken so many times that it only approximated a position in the middle of his face. One cauliflower ear seemed to have been stuck on the each side of his head as an afterthought, one higher than the other. His skin was the color of coffee with too much cream and marked with old pox scars all over the face and upper chest. A nasty knife scar wound it's way from his left nipple across his hairless stomach to disappear into the waistband of his jeans. At 6' 4", he looked wider than he was tall, but didn't carry an ounce of fat.
A truly mean son of a bitch, his ire was often aroused by an innocent glance from the other side of a smoky bar and he never hesitated to vent it on the first piss-willy to cross his path. Quick with a knife, even faster with his fists, he had left a trail of broken bones and slit muscle from New York to New Orleans.
He had killed his father when he was fourteen and spent the rest of his teen years in the Louisiana State prison in Algiers. Not that the judge didn't agree that his daddy needed killing, but he was concerned for the rest of society, those that didn't deserve to die, and the judge gave him all the time the law would allow. It was the first of his many visits to state run motels. A criminal to the core, he was more at home inside than out. Trapped, helpless victims were his favorite prey and prisons are full of those. I am convinced, to this day, his daddy's is not the only killing Doug is responsible for. He would talk about "going hunting" and then spend a week in a motel room in Miami. Strange place for a hunting trip.
Hank, on the other hand, was a Florida cracker from the old school, a cold-hearted man who didn't like anyone. Tall and thin, he had that tan, sandy haired, almost surfer look, shoulder length hair parted on the left side, the forelock always dropping across his eyes. Those narrow set eyes seemed to look through everything and everyone, past a hatchet-like nose, over a Kirk Douglas type cleft chin. His was a classic Fetal-Alcohol Syndrome face that, even when smiling, carried a barely hidden threat. Broad shoulders tapered to a slim waist, two long legs tipped with two of the largest feet in the world which were always shod in Dingo boots.
Hank wasn't a bigot. He hated everyone separately but equally. Blacks, Mexicans and all other comers were treated to his anger. Born in Panama City, Florida, he spoke with that nasal panhandle drawl/twang. Not Texan, not Alabama, a distinctive southern trailer trash accent that grated on the ears. His father had been in the tree surgery business since before he was born. When he was twelve, his father fell out of an Australian pine tree and broke his back, crippling him. Hank quit school and took over running the business and climbing the trees. A great tree surgeon that could nurse any broken or stunted plant back to health, he lacked even the most basic social skills. Hank was at his best when chasing mullet through a back bay, net weight in one hand and the other jumping between the throttle and the wheel, or topping a tree, spikes jammed into the trunk, standing almost straight out, swinging a chainsaw with complete abandon.
"Where the hell have you assholes been?" I asked.
"Makin money" Hank replied.
"Yeah, makin lots of money" Doug laughed "and copping some get-high."
"Shutup, you banjo lipped, blue gummed motherfucker." Hank snarled and shot a look at Doug that spoke volumes, "What he don't know, he can't tell."
Doug shrugged and muttered "Yeah, fuck you too, boss-man."
They went back to gathering things together, silent and tense now. The three-bedroom duplex was suddenly way too quiet and claustrophobic.
"I'm gonna shower, go to the Bindlestiff and get shit-faced, you guys going?" I asked and got no response, "Wednesday night… Ladies night… wall-to-wall pussy…" still no response. I left them in the living room stuffing brown lunch bags into a grocery sack.
While I was in the shower, I heard the stereo fire up Grand Funk Railroad full blast, speakers splitting, and I thought, "I gotta find another place to live!"
I had worked for Hank trimming trees and doing yard work off and on for three years. It wasn't terribly demanding work and he didn't care how stoned I got at work. Hank had won a contract with the Power Company, clearing and trimming beneath the transmission lines and had hired me to run the other truck. As long as I did my half-mile of line a day, he didn't give two shits what my crew and I did out there. He would wake me in the morning with a hot shot of meth, already fitted-up and ready to boot, then tie me off while I got off. Fortified for the morning, we would race off in different directions, blazing our way through Banyan, Pine and Brazilian pepper, using wino day labor for the heavy hauling and for gathering-up the branches and shoving them into the chipper. It was a very dangerous job, especially for those poor bastards that fed the chipper.
We used Asplunde scrap shredders, a trailer towed behind the lift truck with a four cylinder engine spinning a set of four blades at a thousand rpm's and a chute to push the small limbs and branches into. Once they caught, the machine would pull them into its maw, chopping the wood into small chips and blowing the chips through a funnel into the box on the back of the truck for easy dumping at the landfill. The whine of the spinning mandrill always set my teeth on edge, the sound giving the effect of fingernails on a chalkboard. Some suicidal impulse in me drew me towards the opening, staring and wondering what it would be like to be caught and shredded. Watching the winos stagger back and forth, seeing them shake like dogs shitting chicken bones, I speculated on which one of them was going to be pulled into the beast and spewed out onto the chip pile. I also wondered if I would report it or just drop them at the dump with the rest of the refuse. It didn't came to that, so I never had to find out, though I'm still not sure what I would have done.
Doug showed up about a month into the contract, just as the money started to flow. Hank leased another truck, we found some more winos, and since the contract was by the linear mile, more money came in. I didn't like Doug the first time I saw him. Frankly, he frightened me. No, he scared me shitless. I had fought all my life, in the street and in the ring, but I never enjoyed inflicting pain. I had even shot a man once and had cut a few, but only in self-defense. This was a man who took great delight in causing suffering and bragged about it, recounting tales of raping, beating and torturing fellow prisoners. It was a dark day that Hank offered him the extra bedroom in the apartment we shared.
Hank and I had an easy going relationship, we each did our own thing, going our separate ways when not working, meeting up in the morning to hit the job, occasionally borrowing his father's mullet skiff to net fish all night when the mullet were schooling. He didn't give me any shit about my bike and I didn't razz him about his boots. We each had our own crowd and there wasn't much overlap. All that changed with the arrival of Doug. A tense stress moved in with him, a blue elephant in the living room that we tried to ignore. It didn't help much that Doug kept making thinly veiled comments about how cute my butt was either. After hearing his prison stories, I slept with my back to the wall and kept my door locked.
Secret night runs to Miami, hushed conversations and interrupted arguments became the norm. The two of them were never seen apart. They started combining their crews and running the trucks under the same lines. I began to think there was more than friendship there, that maybe they had that weird prison fag thing going on, but I didn't pry. I really didn't want to know. I have found it best not to get involved with my roommate's love life, especially as a participant. Daddy always said, "Don't shit where you sleep." Besides, I don't do guys.
I had started to search for alternate accommodations, trying to find a house where I could park my bike in the living room without the landlord going nuts. Leaving my pan-head outside was not an option, so finding a house was proving difficult. It's not like my baby leaked any oil, I made sure of that by tightening the case screws daily and repacking the lifter tubes every month. If you own a pan head, you learn to make these things part of the morning ritual. Take a dump, get your coffee and tighten bolts. I could skip the coffee but the other two were absolutely required. Bikers earn the black residue under their nails, it's the price of a machine that always runs.
The Can had rented a small house on Tenth street south and I had made an offer on the spare room, but it was going to take him a month to get rid of the dude living in it, so I was stuck where I was. Patrick McCann had moved down from Detroit, looking for construction work and I had hired him to run the groundlings so I could run the bucket. We had similar tastes in reefer and women and traded pot and dates. Living in the same house would put a crimp in the date swapping but I was willing to make any sacrifice to get away from Doug.
"I'm getting closer to my home"
I came out of the bathroom, grabbed my helmet and headed toward the door when Hank called from the kitchen, "Mark, you want a line?"
Hell, I don't think I ever turned down a hit so I wandered in and found the two of them sitting at the table with a silver serving tray in the middle of it, a pile of white powder shining in the center of that. Pulling my buck knife from my wallet pocket, I neatly cut an inch long line from the heap and started chopping it, making sure to crush any chunks, then slid the blade back and forth, stretching the crystals into an even row.
"All the better to snort you with, HA HA HA HA HA!" A good wicked witch of the west, even if I did say so myself. "Coke, smack or speed?" I asked as I grabbed the straw and leaned over to hoover it up.
"Speed and that might be too much, even for you. We haven't stepped on it yet, so watch your nose." Hank looked smug, knowing how much I liked to zip along on crank.
I slammed the entire line up one nostril. I always thought it was better to keep the ruined sinus on one side, leaving the other for breathing.
"Weep-weep-weep oh-oh-oh-oh" I howled as I danced about the room and ran to the sink, drawing some water from the faucet my palm and lifting a bit with my finger to my nose, holding my head back and letting it run into the nostril to hasten the drain. "Oh MY Fucking God! That burns! Shit, Shit, Shit!"
Doug sat there and laughed maniacally, his eyes darting to and fro, pupils constricted to pinpoints. Hank's hands fluttered around on the ends of his arms as if he had caught a pair of powerful but clumsy butterflies, his knee bouncing till it damn near hit the underside of the table. I felt the methamphetamine start to crawl up my spine, the tension spreading across my shoulders then lifting the hair on my scalp. An involuntary shudder moved from my heart, out to my lungs, to my diaphragm, through my bowels, into my arms and legs to finish at my fingers and toes. Only my head did not move. ADD has its advantages, one of which is a high tolerance to stimulants.
To my mind, there was only one thing better than sex on acid and it had to be riding my motorcycle on speed.
"I'm gone, dudes." And with that I was out the door and on the scooter, kicking it to life, slapping the helmet onto my head with one hand as I opened the choke with the other. Lifting it into first with my toe, I eased out on the clutch and revved the engine, felt the horsepower surge between my legs, pulling me out into the street and around the corner before I stomped the gear shift into second as I accelerated to the light. A right against the light and I was heading north on US 41 into the black hole.
The black hole was a stretch of Main Street with no crossroads and no streetlights for about three miles. Naples was a fishing village at that time; a cracker filled town that folks came to for sport fishing or by mistake. A hundred and ten mile west of Miami, the only roads east were The Tamaimi Trail and Alligator Alley and both of them ran straight as a string through the largest grass swamp in the world, the Florida Everglades. Eighty miles of alligators, snakes and mosquitoes separated us from the teeming population on the East Coast and we liked it like that.
Naples also boasts the lowest elevation in the state of Florida and it has been said that every loose nut in the southeast United States eventually rolls downhill and ends up there. Of course, that can't be true, as I have met some loony folks from the southeast whom we didn't have the pleasure of hosting. I guess they weren't loose enough to make the slide.
The black hole is now lined with strip centers and malls, but that is now and this was then.
I opened the throttle and stepped through the gears, the wind rushing past my face almost as fast as the blood was roaring through it. I let off at eighty and coasted for a bit, enjoying the sexual sensation of the exhaust from the two cylinder engine thumping out the open pipes, the vibration entering through my balls and spreading throughout my body. The feeling of power and control, combined with the speed rush, came close to putting me over the edge.
Decelerating and downshifting, I made the U-turn at Vanderbilt Beach Road and headed back into town, back to the city limits and the Bindlestiff Tavern.
Marta Waples was an odd woman who lived alone in Aqualane Shores. My grandmother would never make a disparaging remark about someone's appearance but even she would have had to describe Marta as "not a pretty woman". Somewhere in that indeterminate place between fifty and seventy, she had an osteoporosis hump at the nape of her neck and a wrinkled wattle hung below her strong chin. Her lips were always in motion, constantly pursing and rolling as if she were trying to even-out the "come-fuck-me-red" lipstick adorning them, stretching and curling the deep creases that radiated away from the redness. Her worn teeth showed flecks of that same lipstick in a mouth that never smiled. Sharp and narrow set, her dark, nearly black eyes peered from under one bushy eyebrow, out of paired furrowed pits. That face was framed by perfect, bobbed blue hair, the product of weekly visits to the beauty salon in the lobby of The Beach Club Hotel. Her boney, thin body, always clad in a pastel shade of polyester double knit, jerked and moved like a Mexican skeleton puppet and seemed to be suspended from wires or strings, without the structural strength to support itself. Hanging from the sleeves were the hands, leathery and liver-spotted encrusted with gaudy cocktail rings, mostly emeralds and diamonds, gold loops and hoops, one or two on every finger. As old and withered as she was, an energy exuded from her, a determination that belied her appearance.
Money didn't seem to be a problem for her; she had paid cash for the house and a new Cadillac convertible, a large Chris-Craft cabin cruiser that was docked at The Olde Naples Yacht Club and membership in Moorings Golf and Country Club. Though rarely seen on the golf course, she was a regular for dinner at the Yacht Club, to the point that the waiters argued over who would get to wait on her and get the large tip she left. The bankers also courted her for her large investment holdings, stopping by the house, unannounced, until she made it perfectly clear that no one who invaded her privacy would get an iota of her attention, or her money.
Her yacht, Miassis Dragon, was her favorite toy. A thirty-eight foot, two stateroom model with dual Detroit diesel engines, she could back it into it's slip like a truck into a loading dock, never bumping the wharf. With both fuel tanks full, the Chris-Craft had a thousand-mile range, enough to make it to anywhere in the Caribbean and back, which made them very popular with smugglers. It's many nooks and small compartments, perfect for hiding valuable cargoes, were another big selling point. Marta often sailed off alone to parts unknown, staying gone for weeks at a time, generating a lot of speculation as to the source of her income.
I had seen her out on the fueling dock, in the grocery store or at the beach, and was struck by her direct gaze. I am a rather intimidating figure, looking more like a perpetrator than a victim. Large and always dressed in black, the diamond set in the large gold earring piercing my left ear lobe matched the stones in the gold teeth that filled the upper half of my smile. Most avert their eyes as I approach, but she never flinched, staring intently into my eyes until I looked away. I felt threatened in her presence, something that rarely happened with men and never with women. Man or woman, the small voice inside told me that this was a dangerous person.
The Bindlestiff had once been the home of the Farmer family. A rambling five bedroom ranch style house on a large lot just outside the city limits, it had been converted into a restaurant by the youngest daughter when her parents, along with all her older siblings, died in an head-on auto wreck half-way to Miami on the Trail. She lost it to a crooked partner, who renamed it "Lamarr's Inner Circle" and promptly lost it to an even more crooked partner, who sold it to some high school teachers who thought they would open it as a beer and wine tavern. They drank up all the operating capital and sold out, at ten cents on the dollar, to Mike Elo and Don Gary.
Don and Mike had given up their amateur drunk status in junior high and clearly understood what attracted young construction workers to a tavern, pretty girls and cheap beer. Pool and Foosball tables came in a distant third and fourth. Pickled eggs and pig's feet were the only food items on the menu. They got rid of the fancy glassware and stocked the bar with pint and quart mason jars. Barrels of roasted-in-the-shell peanuts left open in every room encouraged the patrons to throw the shells on the floor, soaking up the spills and slops and a quick sweeping at the end of the night got the floors as clean as was required. I wondered if they were a fire hazard but, as Mike pointed out, with all the beer that got spilled on them, you would need napalm to get the wet husks started.
Ladies drank free till eleven every night, which meant herds of drunken women stranded there until some friendly fellow took them home. Cheap perfume, tacky lame' dresses and bad makeup were all part of the unofficial dress code. Scattered into the mix were some of the wealthiest and most attractive young women in town, slumming with the bad boys, looking for some dirty love. Never one to shirk my duty, I drove quite a few home. One had to be careful, as you never knew whose daughter you were doing the nasty with. Her daddy could be a judge or a plumber and the consequences were dramatically different in each case.
The original owners had never bothered to lay out a parking lot, so the patrons pulled into the drive and parked wherever they could find a space in the front yard. Trees and hedges had been run over and trampled over the years, becoming lines of stumps and sparse, scraggly bushes. The grass became a monster truck mud pit whenever it rained, which was every day in the monsoon season, all of May to early August. Sunday morning invariably found a jumble of abandoned cars either left behind by drunks or mired in the muck.
A Bindlestiff is the staff a hobo ties his pack to and the sign out front carried the silhouette of the namesake and it's hobo. There was a path of solid ground from the street to the wide porch, winding along the pole fence, under the sign, past the three pines and ending at the handicapped ramp. It was a perfect way to get a motorcycle onto the verandah and out of the mud. Impressed the hell out of the women, too, because there wasn't enough space to turn the bike around, the only way off to ride down the steps, a tough task after a few beers.
Killing the engine, I kicked the stand out and eased the weight of the bike onto it as I swung my leg off the bike and straitened up. Removing my helmet I placed it over the headlight. I ran my fingers through my hair, looking in the small round mirror as I pulled the tangles out of my face. Ready, I entered the kingdom of Ale.
Stepping through the wide oak door into the front room, I sidled over to the cigarette machine and leaned on it to survey the crowd. Scattered about the room were tables with seashells, beer caps and old newspaper articles embedded in the clear polyester resin. Surrounding the tables were cheap ladder-back chairs, and seated in the chairs were my subjects. "Fat ones, small ones, short ones, tall ones, I love 'em all!" The music washed over me in waves, pounding hard rock blasting from the speakers hung from the corners of every room. The crack of a good pool break came from the north bedroom while the rattle and slap of Foos floated from the south bedroom. Mike looked up from the glasses sink at the bar and smiled, then turned and drew me a quart of Bud and had it in front of my stool before I could cross the 20 feet separating us.
"Evenin' son," Mike said, "picked your victim yet?"
"I kinda like the blonde playing pool with the prep over there." A tall, slim girl was leaned over the end of the nearest table, lining up a shot, showing the perfect pear shape of her ass in tight Levi's. Her long, lank hair kept dropping into her face and every time she reached to pull it back, the movement pulled her peasant blouse away from her body enough for the lower swell of her unbound breasts to be seen up her shirt. Nipples bobbed in and out of view. Her preppy boyfriend glowered as Mike and I tilted and ducked our heads to get a better view.
"Fuck him"
"Yeah, the little bastard doesn't know what to do with her."
Mike went back to stacking glasses and asked me, "How much speed you doin' tonight?"
"Enough."
"Got enough to share?"
"Nope. Was turned on at the house."
"Did I tell you about the article I read about the gnu they got at the Crandon Park Zoo?" he continued washing glasses and talking, without needing an answer from me. "Seems they bought a gnu from somewhere in Africa, you know, a big bird, kinda like an ostrich but smaller, and it seems it arrived a little bit early, so early in fact that the cage the zoo keepers had planned wasn't quite finished yet." He turned and started stacking the clean jars behind the taps. "They had the fence up and the shelter built but the pond area hadn't been tiled, though the tile and grout had been delivered and stacked in the cage, ready for installation." Drawing a pint for a lovely Hispanic woman, Mike never paused in his monologue. "The zookeepers talked it over and decided that there was no harm in putting the gnu into the unfinished cage, so in he went. Everyone went home for the night and when they arrived for work the next day they were all shocked to find the pool tiled with a beautiful mosaic of an African sunset across the bottom." Mike paused as he poured a glass of Spañada for the tall blonde, cheap wine for an inexpensive girl.
A small group had gathered at the end of the bar and was listening intently over the hum of the voices and the roar of the music, straining to hear Mike spin his tale. He ate it up, raising his voice so all could hear. Imagine, a bartender who enjoyed being the center of attention.
"Needless to say, all the folks were amazed and theories were tossed back and forth, from a talented burglar to alien intervention. Being scientists, all agreed to try to repeat the phenomenon, with every measuring and recording device available to the zoo focused on the cage. Luck being what it is, there happened to be another unfinished pool in the cage right next to the gnu's cage and it was decided to make the attempt there. Extra power was run to the area, lights were set up and aimed at the bird, cameras that could detect everything from infrared to ultraviolet were trained on the pool, and microphones were placed and hooked to recorders. The stage was set." The crowd had grown and someone had turned the music down, the better to hear the story. The blonde had forgotten her game of pool and along with it, her pool partner, who idly knocked balls around the table.
"Everyone withdrew and waited, watching the monitors and listening, muttering amongst themselves. Suddenly, there was a stir of excitement and all the public was hustled away from the center of activity. There in the cage, the gnu was busily spreading base mortar, carefully smoothing the underlayment to the drain in the bottom of the pool. He began to mix the mastic, troweling the goo out in yard square areas. He then started to break the different colored tiles into small pieces and laid the tile out, creating a mosaic of a pride of lions, tiny shards in an exquisite pattern with perfect grout lines. After mixing the grout, he filled the gaps so carefully he barely had to sponge off any excess."
"After an hour or so, the zoo director came to the front gate and held a press conference. "Ahem" he cleared his throat, "It seems that we got more of a bargain than we thought. Initially the zoo society assumed that we had bought a common gnu from South Africa, but upon closer examination, we have found we have purchased a new gnu and a tiler too.""
A collective groan rose from the group gathered at the end of the bar. Elo was famous for his "Shaggy Dog" stories and some realized that they had been caught again, those who understood the obscure reference to a nineteenth century presidential campaign, with the rest walking away baffled. The blonde smiled and went back to her boy and her game. I hadn't thought she would get it.
"Good" was all I could say between chuckles, as Mike smirked and continued to pour jars and pitchers full of cheap beer for the drunks.
With a masters in English and two years of law school, he was tending bar at night and skippering a sport fishing boat by day, neither occupation very intellectually demanding.
"Better to hang out with criminals as friends than criminals as clients" he once told me. I couldn't say as I disagreed with him. With the choice between sitting in an office listening to peoples problems and then having the responsibility to do something about them or standing at a bar and listening to peoples trouble but not having to do anything about it, I would have done the same.
At least being a barkeep is an honest job, you get to work with a better class of people and folks are always glad to see you. The same can't be said of being a lawyer.
He enters the bonus round every morning when he fires up the engines on the fishing boat and speeds along the beach, cast-netting billy-hoo and mullet for bait. He wears an old pair of cut-off jeans, flip-flop sandals, a Fighting Illinii sweatshirt with the arms hacked off at the shoulders. A pair of mirrored Ray Ban wrap-around sunglasses protects his eyes and a ratty Hole-in the Wall golf club bill cap covers the top of his head and shades his eyes. All of his skin that shows has that bronze roughness of a fisherman's over exposure to the sun, even the uncovered ends of his black hair, beard and mustache have been bleached to a dark red. He stands at the console, scanning the glassy surface of the Gulf for telltale ripples that will betray the presence of his prey.
The sunrise, pink in the eastern sky, turquoise gulf water shushing under the hull, the boat gray-hounding on the slight swell, cool damp air blowing salt spray into his face as he chases schools of fish into shallow water. Skimming past estates on the beach, each house half-hidden by Australian pines and palm trees behind seawalls and riprap barriers, in water barely deep enough to float the boat. He waves to early risers walking the beach collecting shells uncovered by last night's surf. Most of them are on doctor's orders, half an aspirin a day, plenty of water and try to avoid the inevitable fatal heart attack. All the cancer dancers, looking like Auschwitz survivors escaping into the coming sunlight, standing ankle deep in the gently lapping saltwater.
Cut the throttle grab the net, slipknot around his left wrist, loose coils of rope in the same fingers. Grab the ring at the center of the net and clutch the net bag two thirds of the way to the weights. Toss a few lead weights over the top of the left forearm, hold another lead in his right hand, twist back at the waist, turn back smoothly and throw it out, bringing the right hand over the left, starting the circular motion. The net, spinning and spreading into a lovely circle, drops over the school and quickly sinks to the sandy bottom. Jerking the line sharply, he pulls the boat towards the net as much as he pulls the net to the boat. The weight line is pulled into a knot by the spreaders, sealing any escape route while it creates a pouch that holds the bait trapped inside. Dumping the catch into the live wells built into the transom he then races back to the dock to pick up the amateurs and the cold beer. If he can get the customers to catch their limit and get them drunk, sunburnt and seasick early enough, it's back to the dock, clean the boat and fish and home for a nap before two in the afternoon. A working man needs his rest.
Marta swung the yacht under the Sunshine State Skyway, the twin girded spans stark against the thunderheads towering over the east end of the bay. Watching for anyone following too closely, she headed for the dock at the fish house on Davis Island. Early afternoon is a good time for traveling on the water, before the rain comes in and cools the air. The heavy rain will also cover a hasty retreat, making it impossible to follow a boat without being obvious. Visibility drops to a few hundred yards and radar becomes useless, any signal lost in the rain clutter.
With practiced precision, she turned the boat north, into the slight headwind and opened the throttles wider. The Miassis Dragon squatted, then surged ahead, floating up onto as much of a plane as the hull would allow. The open bay carried a light chop and the sound of it breaking against the bow mixed nicely with the roar of the engines.
Out of the bay and into the marked channel, she slowed and began to watch for traffic. It had taken three-quarters of an hour to cover the distance from the bridges to the point at MacDill AFB. Another twenty minutes up the east bay and she had found the spot to turn. Just as he had described it, the sunken freighter leaned over the pier, its rusting bow looming over the burned-out warehouse.
"Red on the right when returning!" She said quietly to herself as the markers slid past at a walking pace and she eased the boat to the right, allowing a good distance for the sailboat wandering to and fro across the channel. "Fucking kites think they own the ocean!"
She pulled into a narrow channel and dropped her speed a notch further. She didn't want to draw attention to her goal and the residents were fast to call the harbor patrol on wake violators. The weight of the deep hull almost carried her past the boathouse but, seeing it in time, she threw both engines into reverse and revved the motors, stopping the boat in it's tracks. Putting the right engine in forward and leaving the left in reverse, she worked the throttles, pivoting the Miassis Dragon, switching gear positions, halting, turning again. Gently, she backed the yacht into the shed and out of the view of prying eyes. Killing the motors, she scurried from the helm to the stern, tossing the halyard to a boy on the dock.
"Cinch it to that piling" she spat.
He caught the rope and threw a double loop around the piling at the rear of the slip while she ran to the bow, grabbed the forward line and hollered back to him, "Get your ass up here and tie this one off too! Lazy little bastard." The last was spoken almost under her breath but loud enough for him to hear.
"Where's your goddamn father? He was supposed to meet me. Jesus! He'll screw this up yet!" She disappeared below the deck and continued shouting at him. "Go get him. I don't have all day. I want to get the hell out of here." Her head popped over the gunwale as she screamed, "GO, dammit!"
The boy ran from the boathouse, looking over his shoulder, and vanished into the hedges lining the walk.
Marta started lifting the engine hatches and removing covers hidden below the diesels, pulling heavy plastic pouches out and spreading them on the remaining deck space.
She glanced up to see a tall Italian man staring down his nose at her.
"You're late."
"You're early."
"Give me the packages so I can get on the water. I have to be in Miami tomorrow and I plan to go through Lake Okeechobee so I don't arrive from the Key's. Coming in from the north draws a lot less attention."
He had turned and opened a dock box and began unloading brick-sized blocks, the foil and plastic wrapping hiding whatever was in them. He passed them over the side of the boat to her. Marta stacked the bricks in the plastic satchels she had left on the deck and as each was filled, she sealed the bags and stowed them in the compartments underneath the motors. Carefully replacing the covers, she smeared oil from the bilge on all the panels and put the engine hatches back in place.
"Tell Gino I 'm on my way."
"Yeah, I will, and … uh … do you have to be such a bitch to my son?"
"I don't want to see him and I don't want him to see me. This isn't a social visit. Business is business. If you were here when I got here, I would be gone by now. Be on time and I won't have to be a bitch."
He looked down and shook his head, " Yeah, right."
"Tell Gino I'll see him tomorrow."
With that she stepped to the console and started the engines, the diesels blowing dark soot into the water, then turned to the man and pointed at the lines.
"Cast me off."
He untied the ropes, threw them onto the deck and left without a glance back.
"Fuckin' cunt. I hope she sinks." A shortsighted curse, he had a half a million riding with this load.
She pushed the gear shifts forward, sliding the throttles open slightly, moving the boat out into the canal, repeating the process of turning in the narrow channel, then surging ahead, out into the bay. The pregnant clouds had begun to shed raindrops the size of nickels, the drumming on the deckhouse roof drowning out the noise of the diesels, shrouding her exit in gray. She headed south across the bay, under the bridges and out into the Gulf. Heading south she cut a course about ten miles off the coast.
As she passed lights of the houses on Sanibel and Pine Island, Marta began to scan the horizon for the bell buoy marking the entrance to the Caloosahatchee River. Spotting its red light blinking ahead and to starboard, she steered just left of the flashing and eased her speed, pointing the prow towards the next marker as she passed the buoy. The shrimp boats were lined up at the docks beneath the Estero bay bridge, gently swaying in the wake, the rigging of the nets ringing against their steel outriggers.
Steering north, out of the channel, she cut the engines and allowed the yacht to slow. She coasted into the lee of Sanibel Island and dropped anchor, making sure the boat wouldn't lose draught when the tide fell in the early hours of the morning.
Loneliness is a terrible thing, even if you have spent most of your life with it, but few places are lonelier than being just off shore, within sight and sound of the beach. The nearness of those people, the glimmering of the lights on the waves only accentuates the separation.
Some son-of-a-bitch doctor had decided to not decide whether Marta would be a boy or a girl, leaving her both and neither. Her mother declared that if that was what god wanted her to be, who were they to challenge god's will. She first became aware of the chasm between herself and humanity, when at four she dropped her drawers to swim with her cousins.
It was a hot July afternoon and the Ohio valley was filled with the stale smoke from the steel and coke mills. Her mother, Bessie, had left Marta in the care of cousin Helga at the lake house. Little more than a cottage, it stood on a bluff overlooking Lake Erie just east of Cleveland. Green vineyards and rose gardens surrounded the front of the house, while the back yard fell sharply away to the shore with a rickety stairway leading from the rear porch to the gravel beach. A picket fence with a double hung gate edged the rose garden and ended raggedly at the top of the cliff. All the wood to be seen was painted stark white except for the dark forest green trim and shutters.
Helga and Sara, the older of the children, came up with the skinny dipping idea, their intentions innocent, the summer heat and all. Down the stairs, clothing flying from their bodies, white skin flashing in the sun as they ran across the rocky beach to the cold water. No one noticed Marta in the rush over the sand and all the splashing play in the surf hid her difference but when they left the lake to retrieve their clothes, her secret was revealed to all. In her naivete, she walked out of the water, to where the other children were dressing and calmly picked up her underwear, shaking the sand out of them, and proceeded to hop around on one leg, trying to get the panties on. When she fell on her butt, legs askew, and her crotch spread for all her kin to see, they all saw.
The older children gasped, giggled and pointed, while the young ones just looked at her private spot curiously, wonderingly. She didn't understand what was wrong, though it was clear it was something about her. It slowly dawned on Marta that none of the other kids looked like her down there. Her curiosity aroused, she looked more closely. Some were flat there, the older girls starting to sprout a light patch of hair. Some had a small thing with a bag under it, shriveled from the cold lake water. No one had a flat place with just a thing.
Nothing was said as they left the beach and returned to the house, but Helga and Sara whispered and kept looking at Marta. Bursting through the screen door to the kitchen and finding their mothers drinking coffee at the table, the young ones milled around the fridge, clamoring for Kool-Aid. Bessie noticed the wet hair and dry clothing, put two and two together, coming up with four.
"Have you kids been swimming?"
"Oh, Yes, Aunt Bess!" Tina, the six-year-old piped up, "Did you know that Marta has a different thing than us?"
Her response was so sharp, all the children stopped in their tracks "Just what do you mean, "Her Thing"?"
"Well, her place, down there…."
"Don't ever speak of that again!" Bessie grabbed Marta by the arm and dragged her directly to the car.
The pain of being one-of-a-kind welled within her small chest and nearly burst her heart. Her mother and aunts scolded all the kids for skinny-dipping but Marta especially for she had exposed the family secret.
She managed to hide herself from most acquaintances, as she had no friends, until junior high. Phys-Ed is tough for most adolescents. For Marta it went well beyond tough. She had tried to hide her equipment, by then knowing that she had more than most. Always the last to hit the shower, wrapped tightly in a large towel, she learned to change from street clothes to gym suit and back without showing an inch of skin. Never easy on the eyes, Marta was soon the butt of jokes and rumors.
"What is she so stuck up about?"
"Her father tattooed a snake across her belly."
"She dresses like an old lady!"
"She is really a boy."
The last hurt more than all the others, cutting so close to the bone. Along with the physical ambiguity went a certain confusion about her sexual identity. Sometime her adolescent daydreams centered on Bob, the boy who sat in front of her in science and at other times the fantasies revolved around Cindy. Both were tall beautiful blondes and totally unattainable. She could see herself under Bob, looking up at his strong face, feeling his weight as her rode her to climax. She could also see herself on top of Cindy, pinning her plush body to the mattress, kissing those red lips as she stroked in and out of her. The aftermath of either dream was always the same, curling up with whichever, being held close, and feeling safe and wanted. Reality was very different.
Bat-wanger, morph, he-she, she heard all the names for one such as her... and never got used to it...