Even when I was living in our big
fine home on the river, I never liked it. It just wasn't me. I'm a
carpenter. We live in simple dwellings, we nail-slingers, spaces
often unfinished, as we like to continually shape and mold our
dwellings to reflect the next bounty of found materials and time off.
Not my shack behind the Crooked Angel. This is a place on the
waiting list of destruction and there will be no reprieve.
My home with Mona had been a place
of, if not joy, (or reprieve) at least it was suitable for
entertaining and influence, two tools that suited my ex-wife to a
(stop...I was going to say “to a tee” but I have no idea what
that means) So here is what happens next: My Uncle Old Phil Stine
and his beloved dog Ruby followed me across the parking lot behind
the Crooked Angel Saloon over to the old surf shack where I was
currently crashing. Ruby Tuesday ran ahead and kicked the door open
with her front paws. She knew just how to do it; there was no lock
on the door and a few hundred feet away, the waves, calm just a
little bit before, were picking up.
The Moon, hanging there doing
nothing, had a mind of its own, laughing and joking around as the
Moon is known to do, and as for me, I knew the plot was about to
thicken. My head hurt and also: here was Old Fucking Phil Stine.
“Uh, Uncle, I don't think I have
anything to offer to drink.” I shuffled a little (a lot) drunkenly
towards the refrigerator at the back of the shotgun shack. It was a
symbolic dance, I wasn't even sure if the damned refrigerator was
plugged in. Opening the door (carrying my lame act all the way) I
was a bit stunned to see a light come on (inside the icebox) and
also, there were a couple dozen Red Stripe beers (cans) in there
along with some kind of a pretty luscious-looking sushi tray and one
of those pseudo-caterer cold cuts and vegetable trays from the Publix
Deli.
“ I took the liberty of stocking
some provisions, Blix.”
“Like for a journey, Uncle?”
“Let's call it a small voyage.”
I underhand tossed him a beer, a little hard. Maybe another guy
would have thought I was trying to hit him in the head with a full
can of beer but Old Phil Stine snatched it so fast it looked natural,
popped it open with one hand and drained half the can in one motion.
It looked like one of those videos of astronauts that we see from the
Space Station in slow stop action...except this was all so quick that
if I didn't already know what was going to happen I might not have
noticed it at all.
“Do I have anything to say about
this?”
“Of course you do, as long as it
is yes.” I cracked a Red Stripe for myself and another for Miss
Ruby. I put my best bowl down on the floor and poured the beer in
fast, making a lot of foam. That's how she likes it. Here at my
shack she will snuff and snort through the foam and guzzle her beer
like a wild hog. This is the only place she is allowed to be a pig.
Me and her go back a ways.
“OK, then, yes. Let's hook up
in the morning after I get a little sleep and I'll do it, you already
knew that.”
“Oh, it has to be tonight, Blix.
I need you and the Bitch to take me out to the hundred foot line to
meet a boat.”
What a big surprise. Me and
Uncle Phil...
“I don't do that anymore, Phil.
You know that.”
“This ain't that, lad. I have
to have a quick conversation with a man on a boat and we come back
in. No contraband, no nothing.”
“Why don't you take the Shadow?”
“Because the people I'm dodging
know about the Shadow. They also know Blix Dixon likes to get wasted
and launch his boat on big-moon nights and wander aimlessly around
out there.” Well, that much was true. I didn't inherit this
damned failing enterprise called my life; I fucked it up
methodically, one step at a time. Some of it involved moonlight boat
trips. And trouble.
I looked at Ruby Tuesday. She
must be mostly yellow lab, because she has that shape and that
friendly-goofy smile of the labs; and yet, those dogs can also show
a noble demeanor that gives pause, and makes us glad that dogs are
our friends. Not Ruby Tuesday. If Ruby were a human she would be a
pawn broker or a bounty hunter.
“Will you keep an eye on the
house, Ruby?” I asked. “Me and your buddy are going for a night
sail.”
More smiles from the yellow dog.
