On a Lee Shore 10 - The Doomed Village

  Jose Vasquez Mirobal lived in the small village of Guasimalito hidden in the northern Andean foothills, 150 kilometers south of Medellin.  He was 84 years old.  His family had been here as long as any of them knew and life had not changed as long as any of them could remember.  They owned a small swatch of land, carved out of the rugged, wooded slopes, where they grew coffee, by hand, hiking the five kilometers up from the village each day during the growing season to tend the plants and carrying the yield down on their backs at harvest.  With his craggy, brown skin and stooped posture, Jose looked like he had been whittled from the stock of one of the plants he tended. On Sundays, he went to mass at the village church, Nuestra Senora de la Asuncion, lit candles to the Virgin and prayed to be blessed with favorable weather.


    At his age, Jose couldn’t help much on the farm - and nobody expected him to.  Still, each day, while the coffee was maturing, he would hike up to the fields and walk among the plants and inspect their progress, picking a bean here and bean there, rolling them in his hands and pressing them to his face to inhale the aroma.  Whatever opinion he formed of the development or quality of the crops in the course of his inspection, he never passed it along to anyone.  In fact, he never spoke at all.


    On this particular day Jose, taking his cue from the sun low in the sky, began his journey back down to the village.  Through the woods at the south end of the fields, he picked his way between the rocks and trees and fallen moldering branches and leaves splashed by the late day sunlight, the steamy aroma of rain and flowers strong in his nostrils, vines like snakes reticulated in the green-draped canopy overhead.  At the clearing, he could see down the hill to the village set against more lush hills and far in the distance the mountain peaks, snow-covered even at this time of year.  He removed his cap and mopped the sweat from his forehead.  Smoke from a hundred cooking fires spiraled up and hovered low over the houses of the village and in the tall trees nearby.  He hobbled on, down a path worn in the wildflower-laden grass, to the stream.  The stream was the last obstacle before the village road and he crossed it each day with care.  The year before he had fallen at the ford and split his head open on a rock, forfeiting the next day’s trip up to the groves.


    While it may be tempting to find his life appealing in its simplicity, Jose and his fellow villagers live hard, almost unbearable, lives.  Beyond the threat of disease and injury common in their environment, many endure dull pain from toothache, parasitic infections and bones and muscles ground down by the constant work required to survive.  Then, of course, there were the troubles that seem to punctuate the entire history of their country.  When Jose was a young man he had lived through the series of civil wars known as La Violencia, that took his father and an uncle, and later the reign of the cocaine cartels, first Medellin and then Cali, each taking the lives of relatives, the former his only son.  Like rural peoples in similar areas of the world, the villagers of Guasimalito don’t look to science or sociology to explain their problems, they find more satisfactory explanations in religion and the secret wisdom of their cultures.  And so it would be with the new trouble about to start.


    Jose shuffled his way down the main street of his village and stopped outside the public house where the men of the village gathered at the end of the day.  All the chairs on the patio outside were taken so he took a seat on a wooden crate on the dusty outskirts of the gathered group of men deep in conversation smoking and sipping beer and aguardiente.


    “Good evening, Jose,” someone said.  Jose looked up and smiled but did not reply.


    “It was as if whatever did it wanted those parts in particular.  I hear they were removed as if by someone who was very skilled with a knife.” 


    “I’m telling you… those are the most beneficial parts to eat.  The liver and the heart.  It’s sure to mean that whatever did this, did it for sustenance.” 


    “So we’re supposed to believe they were eaten?”


    “How else is it to be explained?”


    “You are the most extraordinary ghoul!  Only a madman could speak this way.  Eating the remains of the dead!  One should be more delicate when discussing such matters.  Remember that the family are old friends of my family.”


    “But there are evil spirits in the forest.”


    “Certainly.”


    It was the same topic as the night before and the night before that.  Jose settled into his seat, reached into his pocket and retrieved a wad of paper folded around several leaves of his beloved Nievo tobacco.  He rolled a cigarette from a portion sparingly chosen, placed it in his mouth and lit it.  


    “To me, it’s clear that this was done as a warning or a punishment, by the cartels or the revolutionaries.”


    “Nothing has been heard from them in this area for years.  But I have heard that one of the victim’s mother was a fortune-teller.  Perhaps a witch and a whore.  Although I don‘t know what man would want a whore that looks like her.”


    “I would want a whore that looks like Maria Estelle…”


    Some of the men laughed.   Most remained disdainfully quiet, causing the young man who made the comment to blush deep red.


    “Didn’t I hear that she could be hired to make incantations on people as revenge?”


    “It is sad. Young people always suffer when their parents become involved in such things.”


     “Foo!  The buñuelos here do not taste as good as they used to.”


    “And besides that village did not contribute as it should have to the fiesta of St. Fermin.  In general, their young people do not attend mass and several of their groves were hit by the blight last year.“


    The young daughter of the man who owned the public house brought a glass of beer to Jose.  He gave her a coin.


    “But what about San Esmeralda?  They had a victim there and they have the most beautiful church in 100 kilometers and their priest lives like a rich man.”


    “A priest should not live as a rich man.  That’s a sin in itself.”


    Jose took a deep draught of the beer and a deep drag of the Nievo.


    “A priest should devote himself to doing good, organizing the fiestas and visiting the sick.  So that men like us can concern ourselves with making money.”


    “I‘m suspicious of ordinary men who ‘do good‘.  Look at the missionaries who came to the village this morning.  Spending their own money to give the children injections of medicine and taking blood from so many people.  Just to study them?  To prevent sickness?   There is nothing free.  What is the real reason they do this?”


    “There’s not much money in what we do anymore.  The big coffee plantations hog too much of the market and the politicians line their pockets with the profit.”


    “You say that every night.  Stop talking about it and light a candle to St. Fermin at the church.  That will keep your crops healthy.  Is that not true, Jose?”


    He’d heard enough.  Jose got up, smiled, put his glass down, wiped the corners of this mouth with the back of his hand, placed his cap back on his head and started toward home.


    “Good Night, Jose.”


    In the morgue at police headquarters in the city of Medellin, Detective Lieutenant Lino Pinzon, stood next to the city coroner over a slab holding the cold body of a young man.  The young man’s body had been opened neatly from crotch to throat.  He’d seen violent death before but he knew this was different.  This was the ninth victim he’d seen in this condition.  How many more were there that hadn’t been found?  People were always disappearing in this country and  lately, the blame had been reflexively placed on the revolutionaries using terror tactics to keep potential sources of intelligence to the police quiet.    


    He stood lost in thought.  There were two central facts in the case that he hadn’t put together yet - mostly because there were few people who would talk to him and the ones that did gave him the same distraught tales of forest demons and unlit candles.   The two central facts were:  a group of missionaries would visit a village providing medical care and testing to the villagers and then young people would disappear and turn up in the same condition as the young man lying before him. 


    By the time he put the two facts together, it would be too late for Jose’s village.


  

On a Lee Shore 9 - A Death

 Her jeep screeched to a halt in the parking lot outside John Steven’s and they both hopped out.


   “I’m not sure why you have to drive like that.”


   “Because I’m hungry and I haven’t eaten anything all day.”


    As they started walking, another car pulled in and the driver got out.


    “Hey, there’s someone I want you to meet.  Of course, you should know her already since she owns the place three doors down.  But, seeing how you never get out…  Hey Paula!”


    They met in the middle of the parking lot and exchanged greetings.  Cara introduced Paula to her father and mentioned, apropos of nothing, that he was a writer.  It was just this sort of awkwardness that never failed to elicit an eye roll from him, but she persisted in making a big show of it, ticking off a few of his well-known titles and awards for good measure.  He knew his daughter well.  Well enough, in fact, to realize that she was doing this on purpose just to see him squirm.  Paula, seeming to know exactly what was going on, graciously diffused the tension by a show of polite interest and the three continued toward the restaurant together. 




   Cara noticed her father’s mood brightening as they chatted on their way through the lot covered with pine needles and overhung by Spanish Moss, which spilled from writhing live oaks overhead.  Entering the whitewashed shanty-style building, their voices blended with the clatter of dishes and silverware, music and the droning banter of customers.  Paula said she'd try to catch up with them later before starting for a table where a man sat waiting.  Cara and her father put in for a table for two before dodging their way through the tables in the dining room toward the bar in the back.


    At the bar, she ordered a dirty martini and her father a double Maker‘s Mark.  They sat and drank quietly together and, as the alcohol did its work making them serene and complacent, she noticed him stealing glances toward Paula’s table.  She could understand.  Certainly Paula was attractive from whatever distance one chose to look at her, but upon drawing closer, one could experience the full affect of her beauty:  her alluring blue eyes swept by iridescent shoulder-length blonde hair, nearly perfect skin and the peculiarly seductive shape of her mouth.  Cara could just hear the purple prose that her father was conjuring as he contemplated Paula furtively from his seat at the bar.  What made it worse for him was her obvious intelligence, and it had been clear that every word she had spoken in her lilting soprano during the short trip from the parking lot had stuck like a blade in his heart.


    Another round of drinks and their table was ready.  They barely spoke as they set upon their food quenching the queasy effect of lowered blood sugar left by hunger and alcohol.  They had a few more drinks and, when the food was gone, stared placidly ahead like over-grazed cattle.


    “Holy hell!  It’s Cara and her dad!  Who the hell let them in here?!  This is my place and I say who gets in here.”


  


    They both turned but they need‘nt have, they both instantly recognized Katie’s giggly voice coming from the bar.  Somehow she had gotten in past them, unnoticed.  Shannon and two guys from Saints and Sinners, Jeremy and Chris, were in there with her.


    “Come here, you guys, give me some sugar.  You too, Dad,” Katie cooed.


    “Yeah, sugar…” added Shannon.  “Sugar is what we need over here.”


    The two got up from their table and headed back toward the bar carrying their drinks.  Katie darted out and threw herself into her father’s best friend’s arms.  He hugged her tight and kissed her lightly on the forehead.  She looked up at him and he brushed her blonde hair away from her face.  “Kathleen, my dear, adoptive daughter… it’s been way too long…” Cara went up and put her arm around Shannon.


    “God! I can't escape you people anywhere,” she said.


    “Why don’t you come to the beach anymore, Dad?” asked Katie.


    “Why would anyone want to escape us,” said Shannon.  “Isn’t the whole attraction of living here the opportunity to hang with us?”


    “I don’t know.  I’m working all the time these days.  Although, I know if I spent more time at the beach observing your antics, I’d probably have much more material for writing realistic-sounding dialog.  I’ll try to get out there later this week.”


    “What’s everyone drinking?” said Chris.  “I don’t want any interruptions in the flow of alcohol.  Not after spending all afternoon etching koi fish and tribal armbands into tourists' milky white flesh.”


    “Amstel Lite.”


    “Another martini.”


    “Old Granddad 114.”


    “ How appropriate.”


    “Anchor Steam.”


    “Gray Goose.”


    “That’s all a buncha crap, fucking foo-foo drinks.  A round of Cuervo Gold shots.  It’s my call because I’m buying.  If you don’t like it, don’t drink it.  And if you don’t drink it, well then the hell with you!”


    “What the fuck?  Will you just shut up?!  You think it’s funny to say that sorta stuff, but it’s not,” Cara shot back.  “But go ahead and buy.  No one's gonna stop you.”


    The shots came and down they went.  Another round and down it went.  Lots of cheerful talk.  Another round and down it went.  And so it went, until…


    “Oh God.  It’s Miles.  He’s really not here, is he?  mutha fffuh...  He’s gonna know I had the day off and I’m gonna have to listen to his shit.  What the hell do I do?  Dammit, I do what I wanna do…” Cara mumbled to herself as Miles started toward her.  “Why is he here?  I picked this place specifically so he wouldn’t be here.”


    “Hey sweetie…  I didn't expect to see you,” he said.


    “How was Key West?” she asked.  “Did you take care of your dad’s real-estate deal?”


  


    “Uh.. Oh, it went okay.  It took all day to convince them to except the original terms of the deal.  They didn’t like the flooring.  It’s bamboo and they wanted red oak.”


    Cara looked at him quizzically.  "Huh.  He’s gonna stick with it," she thought to herself.  "What’s up with the elaborate lie?  What's he hiding?"  She knew from talking to Katie that he hadn’t been in Key West at all but up in Layton at Swan’s Wharf.


    “I figured you’d be at the Parrot tonight,” said Miles.


    “I took the day off.  I didn’t feel well when I got up this morning."  She took a step back from her own lies and was amazed at them.  “God, I’m no better than him.  What a couple we make.” So she set it all aside for the moment and they lost themselves in the effervescent, meandering type of conversation that lovers allow themselves.  He really could be a sweet guy.


    “Do you need another one?”


    “Sure.”


    They talked on.


    There comes a time in the course of drunken reverie when space and time become muddled.  Colors are visible but seem unattached to discrete objects.  Voices pull loose from their owners and move here and there of their own accord.  The continuity of events breaks down and the before becomes the after and the after before.


    “Do you need another one?”


    “Katie is talking to Chris.  ‘Please, if they want koi fish, give ‘em koi fish and stop yer bitching'.  'No, it’s not so bad the first few you do, but do you know how many koi fish I’ve done?  I looked it up - seventy-five and I‘m only twenty-six.  People celebrate marriages, births; memorialize their dead loved ones with that shit.  Think about it!’  Some fat guy offering to buy Katie a drink…  I’ve never seen him before.  Rejected.  Jeremy is talking to Shannon and she has her hand on his leg.  Hmmm… now that’s something new.  ‘That’s why I only work part-time, working with ignorant people sucks.  I’d rather be poor.’ Shannon said that.”


    “Do you need another one?”


    “Miles…  Where’s Miles?  Where’s Daddy.  He was here just a minute ago.  She scanned the room for him.  Over there… talking to Paula.  Yes!  How did that happen?  Her brother?  Oh, the guy she was eating with was her brother… not a date.  Nice.  Perfect.  Well, of course, Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein were lesbians… and yeah the expatriates were refreshing after the late Victorians.  E.M. Forester is for girls… and everything Ernest Hemingway ever wrote was homoerotic.  Big man… bullfight aficionado.  If there‘s anything gayer than a bullfight I don‘t know what it is.   I think Ezra Pound and John Dos Passos are complete crap.  Me too.  Ulysses - the best novel of the 20th century?  He thinks so too.  God, this is perfect!  They’re talking books.  I’ve never seen him talk to a woman about books and look interested.  He’s smoking a cigar and she’s smiling, looking up at him with those big blue eyes.  Holy shit… she just took a big puff off his cigar… off the spitty butt end of his cigar.  And he’s laughing…  she’s laughing.  Their knees are touching.  Who am I talking to?  Apparently, no one…”


    “Look at me!  I’m Marilyn Monroe and Cara’s dad is John F. Kennedy!”  Katie blurted out from somewhere in the room.


    “Miles?”


    “You gotta stop calling me that,” he laughed.  “I told you my name is Mark.”


    “Oh yeah, sorry…”


    “Hey, if you’ve gotta bite someone, come take a bite out of me!”  Shannon’s voice said from the opposite end of the room from where Shannon was sitting.


    “Do you need another one?”


    “My sweet sister.  I love you, Cara.  I hope we‘re together for the rest of my life.”  Katie flung arms around her neck.  “Are you okay honey?”


    “Does anyone need another one?”


    “What is it like to be the only sober person in room full of drunken people?  Drunks are normal to other drunks.  But not to a sober person.  Like someone watching a circus.  Clowns and elephants and performers swinging from the rafters, falling into nets.  Sick demented clowns.  The sober person in the room.  The watcher in the woods.  The catcher in the rye.  The silent observer.  The voyeur.“


Her mood darkened and some incomprehensible terror crept into her and settled in around her shoulders.  Are you okay honey?  “Shannon?”  She was sure it was Shannon but Shannon was across the room talking to Jeremy.  “Is there a sober person in the room?”  She stopped and willed her mind clear.  The fog dispersed for a moment.  “Yes, there is.  He is.”  Miles.  “Miles.”  She hadn’t seen Miles accept another drink all night, since the one he'd sipped slowly during their conversion.  He was sitting at the other end of the bar, watching, his eyes were locked on Katie and he seemed to be trying to listen to what she was saying.  Breaking his stare, his eyes darted to the fat man, sitting a few barstools down, and the fat man met his gaze.  There was only a slight nod of the head and a look as if to say,  “Her.”  And the fog enveloped her again.


    “Does anyone need another one?”


    “I'm buying.”


    “Does anyone need another one?”


    Cara felt guilty.  Everyone else had been buying all night.  “I’m buying… What does everyone want?” she asked.  No response.  She felt sandy pavement and pine needles against her knees and heard her father’s voice.  The parking lot wheeled around her.


    “Come on, honey, let me help you into the car.  From now on I think you should leave the heavy drinking to us drunks.”  She heard the seat belt click around her and then Katie’s voice.


    “Don’t worry about it.  I’m over off of 24th.  I can make it.  Leave me alone,” she laughed. “You guys be careful on the road.”


    The tropical night, a wake for the tropical day past.  The deceased is embalmed, wrapped in misty winding sheets, laid out on a bier and prepared for the crypt.  Overhead a watchful eye, red with mourning, looks on over a world seething with life and death. “Keep silent.  Show respect for the dead.  Hang crape on the doorframes. Burn incense in the mangroves. Wind and waves, give us a dirge.”


Katie shuffled along the side streets between buildings, past darkened doorways and into the alley that led over to 24th street.  Her eyes struggled to adjust to the dark.  A noise.  The outline of a large man blocked the dim light at the end of the alley.  “God, you scared me, what  the…” A crushing blow from behind.  She sank to the ground, dead.


  

On a Lee Shore 8 - Miles Lies

As long as she could remember she had collected photographs.  She didn’t quite understand why.  Perhaps to bring continuity to a life where it was sometimes lacking.  When she was a kid she could spend hours leafing through photo albums - then actual books that she could hold in her hands - now, of course, just files on her computer.  She never particularly liked taking pictures because that meant fumbling with a camera or her phone and interrupting the fun she was having or the spell she had fallen under admiring some new and wonderful thing.  It also meant coercing her companions to gather around, composing a shot and other socially unnatural acts that she loathed.  So she mostly got them from other people who took the trouble to do those things.


“Another problem with taking your own pictures is that you’re never in any of them,” she always said.


 She had accumulated quite a few back in the city, but now when she browsed through them she was startled by her own face peering back at her from laptop screen through a thick mask of paint crowned by hair highlighted in a half-dozen shades of blonde.


“I look like a raccoon”, she thought.


By now she had reverted back to who she had been.  Her skin had reacquired the patina that the sun bestows upon all its worshippers and, after a few weeks of cringing at the widening dark stripe around her part, she’d finally dyed her hair back to her natural brown.  In New York, if she broke a sweat on the subway coming home from work, she’d strip down, hit the shower and freshen up first thing upon entering her apartment.  Now she was accustomed to the coating of natural oils and salts that softened and seasoned her skin.  She rarely wore makeup and she rarely fixed her hair.  The assimilation was complete.


Most days she got up around ten, hit the beach, read a little, hung out with whoever happened to be there, maybe took a nap and was over at the Boiled Parrot by one.  Today after working a double-shift, she had the day off, but the ritual of going to the beach would still be observed.  The beach was only a short walk from the bungalow - three-quarters of a mile down an unpaved road guarded by Buttonwood and Coco Plum, across the causeway and up and over the wooden steps that bridged the dunes.


In the early afternoon, the beach is usually too hot for the ocean breeze to give relief by itself.  So as soon as she arrived, she pulled off her shorts and shirt and headed toward the water in the suit that was always beneath her clothes.  Quickening her step as she hit the surf, she dove into the breakers, re-emerged on the surface, tilted her head toward the sun and pushed her hair back from her face.  The sun was hot and the water was as warm as blood.  She relaxed in the blue water up to her shoulders and floated up and down with the waves as they rolled in.   Three pelicans in a line passed by in a low glide over the water less than fifty yards out.


Down the beach a bit, she could see Katie and Shannon. 


Katie Corcoran had been Cara's closest friend as long as she could remember, more like a sister.  When they were young, Katie lived with her father, Dylan, in a house on Tavernier key that Cara and her father quite often visited during Cara's summers with her father.   Dylan was an old army buddy of Cara's father, fellow sailor and fellow writer.  The two men broke into their profession at the same time and both experienced success, although Dylan's career never reached the stratospheric levels that Cara's father's had.  Dylan Corcoran had authored several well-received works on military history while Cara's father mastered fiction.  Cara and Katie were inseparable then and had remained close friends into adulthood.   Katie father had been murdered under still unresolved circumstances a few years back, leaving Katie his estate worth several million dollars.


 Rich as she was, Katie didn't concern herself with a career or even a job.  She spent her time with her friends and her on-again-off-again boyfriend, Johnny Quinn.  But from time to time she would get a job at a bar or restaurant just to make new friends, even working a few months at the Boiled Parrot a year or so ago.  Katie was the type of person who, although intelligent, never questioned or explored the people around her or their motives beyond certain limits.  She was a bit like a stuffed animal, Cara would admit to herself when she allowed herself to think objectively.  Cara loved her just the same, Katie was always there and provided her security without any probing questions.  Blonde and bouncy, Katie had the kind of innocent good looks that made people say that she would always look the same - even when she was eighty years old.


If there was one word that described Shannon Wirth it was cynic, but an insightful and loyal cynic, not at all self-absorbed like most cynics are.  Katie may have been Cara's sister, but Shannon had become was her mentor and second self.  Shannon assessed life and its vagaries with a brutal honesty that Cara often needed.  The daughter of a wealthy, Jewish family from Long Island, Shannon never aspired to a conventional life and left home at the first opportunity.  Working her way down the east coast, living in practically every beach town from Atlantic City to Miami, she had come to light in the Keys, on  Marathon where Cara and her father lived, but Shannon lived in town while Cara and her father lived on remoter Boot Key.  Shannon’s place was on 26th street above a tattoo and piercing shop called Saints & Sinners, where she worked part-time, and an adult bookstore called The Talk of the Town; her balcony overlooked a place between the buildings where junkies shot up and drunks slept it off.  She didn’t have to live there, she just did.


Cara waded ashore, retrieved her shirt, shorts and towel and headed up the beach toward the two girls.  Katie greeted her.


“That’s quite a show you’re puttin’ on there, girl.  I could see your goods from here when you were still in the water.”


“Yeah, this is supposed to be a respectable beach where people can bring their children,” added Shannon.


They were referring to her white bikini.  Cara groaned, spread her towel out and flopped on her belly onto it.


“I got it from Victoria’s Secret.  The description on the website neglected to mention that it was see-through.  I was gonna return it, but I never got around to it.  Miles likes it though.”


“I’ll guess he does,” Shannon said.  “… And speaking of Miles, where is he and what are you doing here so late?”


“I’ve got the day off and… I didn’t tell him about it.  Anyway, he said he was going to be down in Key West working on a real-estate deal for his father today.”


“Key West???” exclaimed Katie.


“Yeah, why?”


“Because, I saw him this morning up in Layton at Swan’s Wharf - the real nice marina next to the one where John keeps his boat.   Johnny and I spent the night on his boat last night and this morning when we’re walking back up to his car, there’s Miles.”


“That’s what I like to see - honesty in a relationship.  You lie to him about having a day off, he lies to you about where he’s going to be,” said Shannon.


“Well, I didn’t actually lie… I just didn’t tell him I had the day off.  If I tell him he wants to monopolize the whole day.”


The three of them lay still for a while in the sun before Katie broke the silence.  “Here’s the weird thing, though.  So Miles is over at Swan’s Wharf, but he was on this huge, I mean freakin’ enormous, private yacht - I mean his Dad’s is big, but this….  Anyway he’s helping a few other guys unload containers off it.  And, one of the guys I remember meeting a few years back and I'm pretty sure he's a cop.


“So I yelled over to Miles.  And you shoulda seen the look he shot back at me.  He looked surprised, scared and pissed all at the same time.  So I just waved and walked away.  I was shocked - good ‘ol chill Miles, I’d never seen that side of him.”


“I’ve seen it,” Cara said sympathetically.  “…and I hate it when he’s like that.  I would’ve been shocked just see him working.  That’s something I’ve never seen before.”


When Katie spoke, Cara had already been half asleep.  Now she closed her eyes again and drifted off.

On a Lee Shore 7 - On The Jetty

“Is she still here?”    

“Nope, she left.  Showered up and left.”   

“Was she singing?”  

“Yep.”  

Cara stood on the end of the jetty next to her father, her back to the inlet.  Her father remained in the pose that she had observed from the house, pulling on a big Cohiba, relishing the smoke in his mouth before blowing it out.   There are plenty more where that one came from.   Just ninety miles south, the coast of Cuba is dotted with wooden shacks filled with fat women who roll five hundred a day on their ample sweaty thighs.  Their shacks burn down occasionally and have to be rebuilt, but nobody cares, it’s just part of life.      Beside him sat a glass of Zacapa - straight up.  Playfully she backed up to the edge of the jetty until only the parts of her feet from her arch to her toes remained on the wooden planks; her heels out over the water.  She rose and fell as she straightened and bent her ankles, using up energy in meaningless ways as young people often do.  Her father sipped his rum.  

“What would you do if I knocked you off into the water?” he said.  

“I’d fall in, but… I’d make you pay.  If not now then later.”  

“But the point is… I could do it.  You’re powerless to stop me.”  

She rolled her eyes.  They were silent for a moment.  Then he broke the silence.  “Because she’s not complicated and I like to listen to her chatter.  And besides when she stays over she leaves such a nice scent on the pillow. ”

“What??”

“You were going to ask me why I like to spend time with Monica.”

“No I wasn’t.”  

“Yes, you were.”  

She turned around and the hot, salty breeze, tinged with the scent of dead fish and fermenting mud, hit her as it blew in off the water.   Looking south she could see down to the mouth of the inlet and out into the ocean flecked with early afternoon whitecaps.  A shrimp boat bobbed up and down as it churned its way west to east, from the Caribbean to the Atlantic and on into oblivion, as porpoises, like wraiths, rollicked in its wake.   

“Uncomplicated is a kind way of putting it.  Shallow and childish is more accurate.”

“Maybe…  though nobody’s ever accused me of being kind…” He paused.  “So if she were deep and mature… that would make you happy?  Or do you think it would it make me happy?”   

“Well, wouldn’t it?”  

“Are you sure that 'deep and mature' is a good thing?  I dunno.  It’s probably not a good idea to put too much thought into things.  Life‘ll punish you for looking too closely at it.”  

“Huh?”      

“Listen, I appreciate your concern, but really I’m okay… Shallow people are a hobby of mine.  They flock to me.  Some people collect fine cigars, scotches, bourbons, rums, wine, cars… you know...  She’s really quite exceptional.  Have you ever heard her talk?  She can talk about whatever… forever... I really don’t know where she gets all the material.”    

“She knows you’re not listening to her.”  

“That’s fine.  As long as she doesn’t get in my face about it I can pretend like I don’t know she knows.”  

Another pause.   He took a sip of the rum, pulled slowly on his cigar, then turned and looked directly into her eyes and asked,

“So how’s Miles?”  

“Are you comparing Miles to Monica?”

“Yes… yes I am.”  

“God, you’re exhausting. “

She stared into the reeds on the other side of the inlet for a minute, then said,  “Miles says his father knows you.”  

“Mike Mariposa.  Yeah…”  

“Jake says he’s connected…  Is he?”

She felt embarrassed.  Connected?!  What a cliché.  A friend of ours?   A member of the outfit?  She searched for a more sophisticated-sounding term but nothing came.  

“Connected?”  He laughed.  “I guess most people assume that because he‘s Colombian… you know, Pablo Escobar, the cartels and all that…  But… being Columbian doesn‘t necessarily make you a criminal any more than being Polish makes you stupid.”

She left it at that.    

“Listen Dad, when do you think we’ll get out sailing again?”  

“We just had the boat out last week.”  

“I don’t mean that.  I’m talking about a long trip.  Like the time we did the Leewards when I was a kid.”  

“You’re still a kid.”  

“Maybe across the Gulf to Mobile like we did all those times before I moved to New York.  Or over to Nassau or down to the Virgins.”

“The boat needs some work before it’d be ready for that.  That canvas has been reefed one too many times.”  

“So let’s get it done.  Nothing’s going on around here.  Let’s go.”  

He smiled.  “You’ve been here, what? Five, six months and you still you haven’t given in to the inertia.  I got too much writing to do.  Barry's expecting another few chapters this month.  It’s been a while since I’ve sent him anything and… I’ll tell you the truth, I’ve been tired lately, I’m not sure I’m up to a trip like that.”  

“You??  A few years ago you couldn’t go a few months without getting Caribbean fever, now you’re not ready for it?  What the hell?  What happened to the guy who was always talking about doing an ocean passage?”  

His eyes focused for a second, then, fending her off, he said, “Let’s go out and get something to eat.  Maybe head up to Layton and go to Breton’s?”  

“Okay Daddy.  I’m going to head over to the beach for a while.  We’ll go when I get back.  But Breton’s sucks, let’s go to the John Steven‘s.”

“Whatever you want.”

Football

What can trump a football Sunday?  Ready for some football Monday?
That's our game in all its glory, steeped in gladiator lore.
Ghost of Red Grange gallops slashing, James Brown into safeties smashing.
19 for the touchdown passing.  Ray attacks on third and four.
Legendary Vince Lombardi led The Pack in days of yore.
Raymond Berry for the score!

No sport suits its season better, jersey, jacket over sweater.
Boorish fans rant rash expletives o'er a ref's prepost'rous call.
Fullback blocks, the hits are graphic, QB sticks the ball in traffic.
Smell of beer is gently wafting, wafting 'round the frigid bowl.
"Beer Man, gimme two!!", I yell.  Their kicker shanks the tying goal.
I stay sober...  on the whole.

So at last it's football season, like we need another a reason
To spend hours yelling, dozing, sometimes cursing on the couch
Often times our sets haranguing, 'neath a team flag window hanging.
As the D-backs swarming, ganging, banging into Manning.  Ouch!
"Bad play calling!", we may mutter.  Slamming into Brady.  Ouch!
You can feel it on the couch.

In a blighted urban section, grills are tended with affection.
Block on block of tailgate parties, burgers, brats, and kegs of beer.
Children bloated to their gills, throw errant footballs into grills.
Yelling, laughing, eating, drinking, drinking ere they don their gear.
Stow away that pasta salad, crab dip, pickles, football's near!
"It's our year, so grab your gear!"

What could make a father prouder? Stalk the sidelines, holler louder.
Than the son who's now a player, catching passes from the slot.
Even though his son's no starter, sure he'll be the next Chris Carter.
Girlfriend cheering, mother cringing, cringing as he takes a shot.
Baby boy his mother cuddled, cringing as he takes a shot.
Football sometimes hurts a lot.

Av'rage Joes can find expression with a fantasy obsession.
Drafting, trading, crafting, perfect football teams in cyberspace.
In the office, smack talk making, jabs at last weeks' losers taking.
Sunday's here and soon their aching, waking ready for the race.
Lovingly their rosters making, every player in his place.
This week they're not losing face.

Sports are healthy for a marriage, often marriage shrinks disparage
Football's savage brand of play, for causing spousal turbulence.
But hanging with the kids and wife, can make us lead a closer life.
Common int'rests suppress strife, closeness is the best defense
Against such problems as distraction, boredom, quarrels, violence.
Sometimes doctors can be dense.

As for me, I'm living, dying with the Ravens losing, crying.
She and I await each season, for the game we both adore.
Racing home at churches' ending.  Dinner and the kickoff blending.
First blood in the game portending a glorious win in store.
Pummeling the hated Steelers, wanting that and nothing more.
Quoth the Ravens, "Nothing more..."

On a Lee Shore 6 - Two Salt-Encrusted Glasses

“One-a these mornings, you gonna rise up singin’.  Then you’ll spread your wings and you’ll take the sky.  But until that morning, there’s-a nuthin’ can harm you, with daddy and mammy standin’ by.” Billie seeped like smoke from the incandescent interior of the bungalow, framed in the darkness of the tropical night, as she approached.  Pink moon and swaying palms overhead.

“Digital formats retain the pop and hiss of the original 78s.  Thank God.  Otherwise, the place wouldn’t have that 1930s, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammet look-and-feel Daddy was going for.  Who’s he think he is anyway?  Bogart?”

He’d wanted this place his whole life.  The words would come better, quicker in a place like this.   Not so many distractions.  Life distilled to its essential core.  Uncluttered.  She remembered the first time she’d read any of his stuff - poking around on his computer wondering what all the fuss was about.  The agents, the critics, the women and, of course, the money.  She was young then and she left still wondering.  Later on, she understood.    

The door creaked open and she stepped in onto the oak-planked floor under a ceiling fan rotating lanquidly overhead, cooling the bungalow's sultry interior.  Lights on, his laptop still open, the door to his bedroom closed, two salt-encrusted glasses, the smell of a woman in the room.  “Christ, he’s got someone in there again.  God, I hope it’s not Monica.  Whatever.  I’m too tired to think about it.”

She figured sleep should come easily as tired as she was.  She showered away the day’s wear and tear, turned out the lights, shut off the music and crawled into bed musing on Old Walter and an embryonic vision of an escape onto open water.  

A sweep of the hour hand later her eyes slowly opened to the full force of daylight trickling through her wide metal blinds.  She glanced over at the clock.  Noon.  There was no activity in the outer rooms.

“I hope this means Ms. Whoever-the-Hell is gone.”

She got up.  From her doorway she could see him at the end of the jetty, feet dangling, hunched over, scribbling into a notebook.  Writing down words and phrases as they popped into his mind - he did this almost constantly.  Later he’d sprinkle them in as he worked on his manuscript.

“It’s probably like 104 out there.  He likes the heat.  Sits out there all the time. The hotter the better.  Hot like the Sahara, hot like fucking Rangoon.  He must like to get dehydrated too, drinking the hard stuff outside in weather like this.  A form of self-punishment, self-denial.  Penance for a sinful life.  Daddy would do well in a medieval monastery.  He’d be the guy wearing the hair shirt.  He’d be the guy sitting in the middle of the swamp for days on end letting bugs eat him.”  

As she emerged from her bedroom, a tall blonde in a sleeveless t-shirt, short bike pants and running shoes came through the front door.  “Oh for God’s sake…  it’s Monica,” she muttered to herself.  

“Hey Monica.”  

“Geez Cara!  You scared the shit out of me.  What are you doing here?”  She paused to catch her breath.  “Did Jake figure he could run the Parrot for one day on his own?”  

“Yeah, I guess.  Gave me the day off anyway…”  

“Where’s your dad?  He wasn’t up when I went out.”

“Out there.  On the jetty writing.”  

“Well, then I’ll just clean up and get out of here - once that starts that there‘s no reaching him.  He‘ll sit there for hours - like a pelican on a pylon.  Doesn‘t even know I‘m here.”

She watched as Monica headed into the bathroom.  She started for the kitchen and a cup of coffee.

“My bathroom.  My Daddy’s bathroom.  Our bathroom.  Gross.  My towels!  Got to remember not to use used towels.  Might dry off with one that she’s used, after she’s been…   Stop right there.  Too disgusting to think about.  Is this the one that sings in the shower?  I think it is.”

A few minutes later, singing, soft but perceptible oozed from the bathroom and into Cara’s consciousness as Monica, naked and ensconced in steam, began her performance to an audience of unappreciative bathroom tiles.

“Nice!  We’re channeling Martina McBride today. ”  

“How old is Monica anyway?  Late 30s?  Younger than Daddy.  Not too bright.  Well, who can tell?  Attractive - in a well-seasoned, high-mileage way.  Hot body.  Must do a million crunches a day.  All girl.  Why does he hang out with these women?  Stupid question.  Shallow as hell.  Daddy never did care too much for smart women.  Says he does, but I know better.  He’ll like them for a while - until they start to challenge him or try to change him - then he’ll just shut down on them.  He’d never admit it, but he prefers that they have him up on a pedestal.  The brilliant writer.  None of them has even read any of his books.  Most of them don’t read books, period.  They just know he’s written books.  Books!  Whole books for Christ’s sake!  Know he knows things.  Ah, the aura of sophistication.  They like that he drinks too much too.  The brilliant man with feet of clay.  The flawed hero.  The recluse.  The little boy man.  There’s nothing a Monica loves better:  a famous man to be seen with and a sick little boy to mother.”

On a Lee Shore 5 - The Dark Beach

“By the time they got us off that god-forsaken strip of land, we’d been there three days…  three days! No water, no food, no nothing!  And all the while the lights of St. Thomas, 20 miles west, just mocking us, just fucking mocking us…”

Old Walter, ripped on Green Label, telling the story he always told at closing time in a vain attempt to delay his ejection.  Why couldn’t he change it up for once and give us a different story?  Just part of the atmosphere, she supposed.  No one could do an Ernest Hemingway impersonation like an old man in the Keys.  Manny, the bouncer pushed Walter toward the door, the old man’s heavy footsteps echoing across the broad planks of the emptied room.  Good Night Walter.  See you tomorrow.  If not, we’ll know you’re dead.  A half hour later, her key spun in the lock and The Boiled Parrot was closed for the night - nothing left inside but the smell of beer, grain and grape and the ghosts of drunken patrons.

A few quick steps round back, down the long cinder path, the rioting vegetation pawing at her beneath the sodden blanket of heavy night air, and onto the footbridge across the mangrove swamp.  Moving fast to outrun the mosquitoes, she made her way toward the patches of gray light between the scrub trees that marked the entrance to the dunes and the beach.  The elegant smell of rotting wood and earth and the buzz of cicadas gave sudden way to the salt spray, sand and lighter, cooler air and the pounding of the surf.  Myles was there.  The red beacon of his cigarette glowed and dimmed near his spectral form.

She moved up on him, then dropped down and crept the last few yards on her stomach in the sand, undetected, stopping just behind his head.  She paused and enjoyed the moment, her head only inches behind his, then blew her flowery breath onto the back of his ear.  He started, shuddered and spun around, wrapped her up tightly and gently dragged her alongside of him down into the sand still warm from the day‘s sun.   He shuddered again in anticipation.  One o’clock in the morning.  The dark beach.  A few small bungalows, some just white forms burrowed back into the trees, others with one last light on, muffled voices, barely audible.  Sunday night, no… Monday morning.  Her friends back in New York were sleeping fitfully awaiting their 6 AM alarms.  She was here.  They laughed.   Myles suited her purpose... for now.

An hour or so later, she left the beach, spent, and headed back up over the causeway to her father’s place.  Old Walter might be on to something, she thought.  His overwrought pirate tales of sailing the Caribbean still sustained him.  Well… being pickled in Green Label must have something to do with it. She remembered back a decade or so when she was just a teenager, before her father had gone so hard to the bottle.  She could remember him crouched on the bow of their sailboat adjusting the tide rigging, his skin darkened by his long-since merged freckles.  If he gave her anything, it was great memories.