Джон Сэйлз - Cruisers

From Zoetrope: All-Story

EMMETT TOSSES HIS BREAKFAST CRUMBS off the jetty and watches the shitfish rise to check them out. Blue-green, almost translucent, they wiggle listlessly in the shade of the hull all day and congregate at the surface near the vapor lights at night. “Shitfish got no ‘urry,” the locals say. “Just weat for somebody flush.”

He hands the plate back to Muriel onboard. “I’m going to see if Roderick is there yet.”

“He never comes in till eight.” Muriel drops the plate into the plastic suds bucket to soak.

“I thought maybe because of this Whitey and Edna deal —”

“He’ll probably sleep late. They called him down, it must have been what —?”

“Four-thirty.”

“See if the paper is in yet. And don’t make a nuisance of yourself.”

They get the Sunday edition of the St. Augustine paper once a week — news, want ads, employment, real estate, and funnies crammed into their little PO box at the marina office. Emmett needles Muriel for reading the obits first.

“There are people dying now,” he says, “who never died before.” Muriel pretends to ignore him.

They are moored in the section Emmett likes to call the Lesser Antilles, where most of the smaller liveaboards are concentrated and the walk to the security gates and harbormaster’s office is farthest. The shadow of the Ocean Breeze Lifestyles complex barely reaches them in the morning. The buildings went up rapidly, replacing the funky collection of waterfront businesses that had stood since before Emmett and Muriel came to stay, let the fun begin! says the banner strung up on opening day, still hanging a year later. There are several units left unoccupied. The marina itself is only two-thirds full, peak season a few weeks off, and many of the boats lie sheathed in blue vinyl, owners off the island or sleeping in town.

Bill and Lil are up on the Penobscot though, Bill prepping the cedar decking while Lil pries open a gallon of goldspar satin.

“Ahoy.”

Lil nods. “Morning, Emmett.”

“Still working this varnish farm, eh?”

Bill, grimly sandpapering the foredeck, snorts something like a hello. Bill and Lil are in their late fifties, small, sun-baked to a tobacco-stain brown with nearly identical short-cropped gray hair.

“You’re at it early.”

“Got to stay on top of these babies,” says Lil. “Lot of nasty stuff floating out there.” Emmett had seen them take her out only once, and then just for a two-hour shakedown. Lil had been a registered nurse and was still handy with a remedy if you had something more than a headache, while Bill taught high school and had nothing good to say about it.

“You folks up for the ruckus?”

“Slept right through it. Bill heard voices but thought it was those party people in the motor cruisers.”

“There were a dozen of them out there. Lights, stretchers —”

“We were dead to the world. Some wild stories were flying in the Crow’s Nest this morning. But you know rumors on this island.”

“It was the lights woke me up, not the sound,” says Emmett. “Of course Muriel says I’m deaf as a post.”

“I should be so lucky. This one” — Lil jerks her head toward the Scavenger, a daysailer owned by one of the locals — “has got his radio on all weekend. Rap music or whatever their version is called here. Makes Bill grind his teeth.”

Bill wraps fine-grade sandpaper around a wooden dowel and goes to work on the mahogany trim. He and Lil wear the same brand of T-shirt and shorts, Topsiders, matching hooded wind-breakers when they sit out at night. Emmett wonders if they swap clothes.

“I never figured — Whitey and Edna —”

Lil lays out her brushes. “I know. Edna was telling me just last week that they were looking into a condo here.”

“My wife is convinced you can’t live on a sportfisherman,” says Emmett. He can see the tuna tower of the Silver King, Whitey and Edna’s old Bertram, over the forest of masts. “Suppose they’ll auction it right away. Unless Whitey paid their mooring through the year.”

Lil frowns, staring at her varnish. “Condos. They must have been desperate.”

“Well — storm season comes around, some folks like solid ground under their beds. What do you hear about this Cedric?”

Cedric is the tropical storm curling in from the Atlantic, possibly mutating into the first hurricane of the summer.

Lil glances out over the channel. Clear blue sky, flat water. “It’ll blow itself out. Peaked too early.”

“It does hit, it’s gonna ruin your finish.”

Lil shrugs. “Best way to protect the wood.” She chooses a brush, riffling the bristles with her thumb. “No, you buy into that condo life, you’re ready to throw in the towel.”

“They’ve put up some real luxury boxes in the last few years.”

“The ones we looked at, that Pelican Cove outfit? They’d blow down like a stack of cards.”

Bill grimaces. “Pelican Cove.”

Lil jerks her head toward her husband. “Says he’d just as soon ride it out in the marina.”

“There’s gonna be a big one hits this island sooner or later, Cedric or no Cedric. I can’t say they’ve knocked themselves out preparing for it.”

“Cyannot stop de wind, mon,” mutters Bill, mimicking Roderick’s island lilt. “She come, she come.”

Lil dips the edge of her brush into the varnish, careful to avoid dripping as she starts to apply it. “We’ve been thinking about Curaçao.”

“Dutch people.”

“A lot of them speak English. And the prices are right.”

“What’s a rum collins?”

“Less than here, I can tell you that.”

“I suppose. Muriel and I talk about Mexico now and again.”

“Mañanaland.”

Emmett shrugs. “The peso just keeps falling. Our checks could go a lot further —”

Bill wipes the section he’s just sanded with a damp cloth. “Mexico,” he says. “One good case of the trots and you’re history.”

~ * ~

A fishing skiff with a pair of locals aboard chugs around the reef of auto tires that serves as a breakwater and heads for the fuel dock. The marina was nothing much when Emmett first tied up here twenty years ago, rickety, unpainted wood crusted with gull droppings. As the cruisers and their money grew in importance, the mosquito fleet had been driven to shallower harbor farther west and a French corporation built the new jetty and facilities. Now ramshackle boats like this might wander in illegally to sightsee among the yachts or hustle up charters, but when Roderick is on duty they don’t dare tie up. The man working the outboard waves lazily to Emmett and calls out.

“Golden Years,” he smiles. “Bringin’ the chat round.”

A lot of the locals call him by the name of the boat, and Muriel endures being hailed as Mrs. Golden Years. “Could be worse,” he likes to tell her. “If we had that catamaran on C Pier you’d be Betty Bazooka. “

Rut Adams is up on the flydeck of the Squire, nursing a bloody mary and training binoculars on the new arrival at the far end of the marina.

“Anything to report?”

Rut brings his binoculars down, his eyes taking a moment to adjust.

“Emmett. Caught me spying.”

“I don’t suppose they spend their time looking at us.”

It was just there one morning, looking more like a space-age hotel than a boat, dwarfing the Cheoy Lee and Broward hundred-footers in the Land of the Giants. A forty-plus sportfisherman was perched like a toy on the aft deck, and the heliport had been used once so quickly nobody saw who jumped in or out of the chopper.

“They got manned submersibles on that thing— those Jacques Cousteau things? Decompression chamber in the lazarette, satellite dish, large-format screen like a movie theater. Got two Jacuzzis, personal trainer, cook with a full staff —”