Ken Douglas - Scorpion

“ Is he?”

“ Usually.”

The day was fading away as they made their way through the bar toward the dock. There were a few tourists and locals gazing toward the setting sun, hoping to see the green flash, a group of yachties playing cards at one table, a foursome playing bridge at another. Palm trees swaying in the breeze grew along the fence that guarded the north side of the club, a rich housing development bordered on the south and with the road behind and the gulf in front, the yacht club was truly cut off from the daily grind of Trinidad. It was a world unto itself.

“ My boat’s at the end,” Ramsingh said as they left the bar and stepped onto the main dock.

Halyards clinked against aluminum masts, wind generators hummed, a local was hammering a board into the dock, replacing one that had rotted away. These sounds Broxton understood, but there was another, like a west Texas coyote howling long and high in the distance. He stopped and cocked his head, curious.

“ It’s the wind blowing through the roller furled mainsails. Spooky sounding. I don’t like it,” Ramsingh said. “I don’t know why people have them. I can see a roller furled headsail, but what do you do in a blow if the gear jams or the sail bunches up and you can’t get it through that slot in the mast?”

“ I don’t know,” Broxton said. He didn’t understand a word Ramsingh was saying.

“ Exactly,” Ramsingh said. “Give me a main you haul up and reef at the mast any day. It’s the only way.”

“ Sure,” Broxton said, convinced the prime minister was talking to build up his courage, because Ram had to know by now that he didn’t know the difference between port and starboard.

“ There she is, Gypsy Dancer.”

“ That’s it?” Broxton said.

“ That’s her,” Ramsingh said.

“ You’re kidding? We’re not taking that out there,” Broxton said, pointing to the ocean.

“ Yes we are.”

“ It’s so small.”

“ Not so small. My wife and I sailed her around the world.”

“ Shit.”

“ She’s twenty-seven feet and she sails like a witch.”

“ Shit,” Broxton said again.

“ Not scared are you?”

“ Yes.”

“ You’ll get over it,” Ramsingh said as he jumped onto the boat. “You’ll have to undo the lines, take them off those cleats as soon as I start the engine.”

“ Sure,” Broxton said. He shivered when the small inboard sprang to life, but he unwrapped the line from the cleats and jumped on board. They motored from the yacht club and Ramsingh pointed Gypsy Dancer toward the setting sun. When they were in deeper water he turned the boat back toward the club.

“ Are we going back?” Broxton said, almost wishing they were.

“ We have to face into the wind to raise the main.”

“ Oh, yeah, I forgot. Want me to take the wheel?”

“ Yes,” Ramsingh said, and he stepped up on the deck when Broxton relieved him. At the mast he fed the main halyard into a self-tailing winch and cranked it up. The snapping sounds the sail made as it flapped in the wind reminded Broxton of gunfire and he shuddered.

“ All right take her around,” Ramsingh said, stepping back into the cockpit.

Broxton spun the wheel to the right and kept the boat in the turn till the wind was at their back and Ramsingh shut off the engine. They sailed like that for a few minutes, the main powering the boat at three knots over a calm sea toward the glow on the horizon where the sun had been.

“ The end of the line,” the Rasta driver said as he pulled up in front of Drake Road.

“ Take us all the way in. Right up to the dinghy dock,” Dani said.

“ Your wish is my command,” he said, turning left onto the dirt track that led into the shipyard.

“ You’re not from here, are you?” Earl said.

“ Dallas, born and bred.”

“ Why here, driving a taxi bus?” Earl asked.

“ They’re not so up tight here. Live and let live. Try that back in the States.” The driver stopped the van in front of the dock.

“ I still don’t get it,” Earl said as he stepped out of the van.

“ Jah is love. It’s all I need,” the Rasta driver said, then he put the van in gear and sped off.

“ Holy shit, that’s some boat,” Earl said, as they were approaching Sea King.

“ Two million dollars of sixty-five foot steel boat. She really is the King of the Sea. Wait till you see the state room.”

“ It would be gorgeous if it wasn’t for those two giant hook things hanging off the ass end.”

“ Those are the dinghy davits and yes they do kind of ruin the lines, but my father wanted them as an extra safety feature, because he doesn’t believe in life rafts.”

“ Say that again.”

“ He doesn’t believe in life rafts. They have no motor or sails, you have no way to steer them. All you do is float around in the ocean and hope someone finds you. Those poles on each side, by the oars, connect to form a mast. Under the forward seat is a mast step that my father had build into the dinghy. The sail is under the rear seat. Those giant hooks, as you call them, are designed to raise the dinghy with an electric motor. In an emergency we can grab our get-a-way bags, lower the dinghy and be in it in seconds. So although the dinghy davits ruin the lines of the boat, I’ve learned to like them. Besides, it makes raising the dinghy oh so easy.”

The sun was down and stars were dotting the sky as Ramsingh unfurled the jib and they sailed downwind past the Five Island group. Then he turned so that the wind was crossing the starboard side at twenty knots. Gypsy Dancer responded by heeling over and her speed increased to seven knots.

“ This is pretty much our top speed,” Ramsingh said. “Once we get out there it’ll be choppy and we’ll be fighting a cross current. We’ll have bigger wind, spray in the face and maybe a little rain.”

“ Swell,” Broxton said.

“ You might want to take your shoes off.”

“ Sure.” Broxton kicked them off.

“ Okay, why don’t you take the wheel while I go below and get the life jackets and tethers.” A few minutes later Ramsingh was back. “All right, slip this on,” he said, handing Broxton a blue inflatable life vest. Broxton put it on. “If you wind up in the water, pull on the chord and the vest will inflate, but it won’t make any difference, you’ll die anyway, because I won’t be able to find you in the dark, so don’t fall off.”

“ You’re just full of glad tidings,” Broxton said.

“ And to aid you in staying on board we have these,” Ramsingh said, and he clipped a line to the front of his vest. Broxton watched as he clipped the other end to the binnacle. “Now you’re secured to the boat.”

“ You went around the world tied to the boat?”

“ Only when we were on deck after dark or in bad weather. Tonight we’re going to get both.”

Earl looked at the darkening sky as they motored toward Boca del Monos, Monkey’s Mouth, the westernmost and smallest of the four openings between Trinidad and Venezuela that separated the Gulf of Paria from the Caribbean Sea. This was his first time on a sailboat, but he’d raced plenty of speedboats across Lake Dallas, so he wasn’t worried about the crossing to Grenada. Nothing bad could happen on a boat that topped out at ten to twelve knots.

He settled himself back in the cockpit. Soon, he thought, they’d be through the opening and into the sea. Then they could put the boat on automatic pilot, go below and screw till sunup. Life was good and it was getting better.

“ You want to take the wheel while I let out the sails?”

“ Sure,” he said, getting up.

“ Just keep it pointed to the slot between the land on the right and the small island on the left.”