Ken Douglas - Ragged Man

“ You’re Captain Wolfe.”

“ At your service.”

“ Has anyone ever told you that you’re a brown-eyed handsome man?”

“ Not for a lot of years, but I’m glad to hear a pretty lady talk about these old bones in that light.”

“ You’re not so old and I’m not so pretty.” She smiled, becoming lost in his eyes.

“ I’m sixty-seven. Where I come from that’s old and you’re very pretty. On that I won’t be argued with.”

“ Okay, you’re old and I’m pretty. I’m also Ann, a friend of J.P.’s.”

“ You’re Rick’s wife?”

“ That’s me.”

“ Annie, tell him about the murders,” J.P. chimed in, interrupting.

“ Murders?” the captain questioned.

“ I’ll tell you all about it over one of those famous bacon and egg burgers I’ve heard so much about.”

“ I’ll show you to the galley,” the captain said.

Ann had never been on a sport fishing boat before and the notion that one would have a galley that resembled the inside of a roadside diner had never dawned on her. She wondered if the captain and Susan Spencer had something going. The decor in his galley wasn’t that much different than the decor in her diner.

Captain Wolfe yelled for the cook, then he apologized to Ann. “The galley is usually empty till we get out to sea, unless of course our good luck mascot comes on board.” He ruffled J.P.’s hair and the boy grinned wide. He would never need braces, Ann thought.

They watched the cook throw the extra bacon on the griddle and J.P. wiggled with anticipation when he heard the expectant sizzle the cold meat made against the hot surface.

“ God knows why, but he really loves our Seawolf breakfast burgers.” The captain smiled before shifting the subject, “Now, you were talking about murder?” As suddenly as it was there, the smile was gone.

“ Two of ’em,” J.P. said.

“ Let the lady tell it,” the captain softly said.

And Ann told him. She told him how Rick ran down the bum that had tried to kill J.P.’s mother, then she told him about the other one that had attacked Rick in the bait shop.

“ In your honest opinion, could your husband have done anything else than act the way he did?” the captain asked, when she finished with the story.

“ Not and have left Judy alive.”

“ How about after, in the store?”

“ I don’t think so. He wasn’t trying to kill the man. He was defending himself.”

“ Do you think he could have defended himself without hitting the man on the head?”

“ I don’t know, maybe, but he didn’t do it on purpose. Rick would never hurt anybody on purpose.”

“ He was in Vietnam,” J.P. said. “That bum picked on the wrong guy to mess with.”

“ Your husband was in Nam? He can’t be old enough.”

“ He’s fifty-seven.”

“ He doesn’t look much older than you,” the captain said, “and you can’t be a day over thirty.”

“ Off by fifteen years, but I love you for saying it.”

“ So not only is your husband a combat veteran, he’s also apparently in pretty good shape. That explains his quick reflexes and why he killed the man that attacked him. I would have acted the same.”

“ Really?” Ann said.

“ Yeah,” J.P. said, “Captain Wolfe was in Vietnam too. You don’t mess with guys like him and Rick.”

“ It that so?” Ann said to J.P., but it was Wolfe Stewart who answered.

“ When you’ve been in combat, you learn that when somebody is trying to kill you, you try and kill him first. If you live, it’s something you never forget.”

“ Can I go on deck and talk to the guys?” J.P. asked.

“ Sure, go ahead, we won’t be leaving right away. Take all the time you want.”

The boy scurried up the stairs to greet the fishermen on the deck above.

“ You’re not hanging around longer than usual on my account?” Ann asked the captain after J.P. was out of the galley.

“ You bet I am. It’s not everyday when a lady pretty as you, with a tale of murder on her lips and a pain in her eyes like I’ve never seen, takes the time to talk to old Wolfe Stewart.”

“ I’m glad my husband isn’t as perceptive as you.”

“ You want to tell me about it?”

“ I have cancer.”

“ How long?”

“ A few weeks, two months if I’m lucky.”

The captain rose from the table and shouted at the cook. “When J.P. comes back, feed him and tell him to wait, I’m taking the lady up on the bridge for a bit.”

For reasons Ann was unable to fathom, she felt a bond with the captain. He was loud, blusterous and lovable, all at the same time. She also couldn’t help notice that he was a man used to getting his way and, although he was a big man, he didn’t throw his weight around. People did what this man asked because they wanted to.

She followed him up to the bridge.

“ Careful going up,” he told her. “It can be slippery.” She felt him behind her as she went up the steep steps. When she reached the top, he showed her through a door that opened onto the bridge.

“ From up here you can see over the dunes.” She pointed. “That’s where Rick ran down the man that was after Judy.” She was able to see the spot down the beach where a small crowd surrounded the body, including two of the sheriff’s three deputies. “And that’s the store where that second wino attacked us.” She pointed to Singh’s Bait and Convenience Store.

They looked over the dunes for a few seconds, then she asked, “Why did you bring me up here?”

“ I wanted to show you this.” He showed her a framed photograph that was fixed to the bulkhead.

“ She’s very pretty.”

“ Was very pretty.”

“ I’m sorry.”

“ She’s been gone ten years now. She had cancer, like you, and like you she kept it from me. She wanted to spare me what she was going through and she managed to do it almost right up to the end.”

“ Why are you telling me this? You don’t even know me.”

“ I want to spare your husband the pain I suffered. I want to help you not to make the same mistake my wife made.”

“ I don’t understand,” she said, but she was beginning to.

“ It broke my heart when my wife died. It hurt more that she didn’t share it with me. We were a team, but she didn’t let me be there for her. It took me years to forgive her. Can you imagine that? She was dead and I couldn’t forgive her. If you love your husband and he loves you, tell him. Don’t let him waste time by going to a movie alone, or to a friend’s for a card game, or even out to buy a paper, when you should be spending what precious little time you have left together. That was the hardest to forgive, the time we missed, because she kept her illness from me.”

“ Captain Wolfe Stewart, you’re a perceptive man. You saw the pain in my eyes and knew I was hurting. How is it you didn’t see it in your wife?”

“ I don’t know. I suspect she worked very hard to conceal it from me, like you probably do to conceal it from your husband.”

“ That’s true. I don’t let down my guard for a second, for fear he’ll see through me.”

“ Tell him and you won’t have that problem.”

“ Thank you, Captain, I’ll think about it,” but she already knew she was going to tell Rick as soon as possible.

“ I like Rick. Why don’t you bring him fishing sometime, on me.”

“ Why thank you again, that would be nice, we’ll do it.”

After they left Wolfe Stewart and his boat, they came straight up the hill, even though Ann desperately wanted to go by the bait shop and find out what was going on, but she didn’t want to be responsible for dragging J.P. into any more unpleasantness than was necessary. He had already, in a space of a few hours, seen more than most see in a lifetime. If there was more evil afoot, she wanted to keep him out of it if she could.