Short Stories

“Think you’ll tie that boat up before dawn?” The slurred question was asked in a hostile tone. It came from within the shadows of an old shrimp boat to starboard. I glared in the voice’s direction but could only see the red ember of a cigarette.

 I was moving my new fishing boat to its future home at Dinner Key Marina. The night was hot and muggy… no wind and no moon. I had run aground once where the channel turned west and I didn’t. Given that I was in no mood for a shrimper or anyone else telling me how to secure my boat. “I guess we can’t all be old salts like you,” I replied. It was all I could come up with. The drunken shrimper muttered something, and I heard the click and hiss of another beer open.

 Several days later, I met my antagonist, slipmate, during a reluctant bout with sobriety. After introducing myself, he told me his name was Robert but everyone called him Bullshit Bob. I soon discovered that “everyone” was a wild group of shrimpers, alcoholics, homeless people and variants of the three. He earned his name through his colorful eloquence and gift of gab.

 Bob would come to be one of those unique people who enter your life, shake up your conception of the world and leave as abruptly as they came. In every respect, our lives and even our boats were contradictions.

 I was a professional. He was a shrimper. I worked during the day. He shrimped at night. My boat was a fiberglass offshore fishing machine. His was a wooden shrimp trawler designed to crawl around Biscayne Bay. I drank one beer per week. He drank a beer every thirty minutes. We did, however, share a love of the sea and boats.

 He became a nautical tutor to me, and I helped him navigate through W-4 forms and tax returns. He was fascinated by my boat and obsessed with the possibility of steering it at fifty miles per hour. I secretly wanted to crew on his shrimp boat trawling and picking shrimp by the Featherbed Bank.

 Over time, as we worked on our respective boats, he revealed his life to me. He was from Baton Rouge and had worked on oil rigs and freighters for most of his life. One unfortunate night in a New Orleans bar, a disgruntled customer stabbed him seven times, bringing him close to death. Bob recovered and somehow convinced a lawyer to sue the bar. He needed a change of scenery and used the judicial system’s interlude to relocate to Miami and possibly dry out.

 Bob gradually introduced his friends to me. Red was a Madison Avenue jingle writer who had written several mildly famous tunes. He was the dock jester, homeless and a raving alcoholic. He entertained with songs and stories and, in turn, his cronies rewarded him with beer. For poor performances he was rewarded with a punch. Judging by the color of his eye, I estimated Red gave a sub-par performance weekly.

 Maggie was a forty-five year old, ex-school teacher who sometimes had to prostitute herself to make ends meet. She had dignity, and after Bob told me of her troubles, she became the official boat waxer of Knot Accountable, my boat.

 Dawg was a mercenary who had killed for a living in Africa, or so it was said. I knew no one to question him about it. He was a ticking time bomb, and everyone gave him a wide berth. The only time he was aboard my boat, he grabbed a bonito that I was going to use for belly strips and ran off down the dock….. howling.

 There were others. Unemployed boat people scraping by. They were social misfits with a code of honor and social structure very different from those I grew up with in Miami.

 Bob became someone I admired. He was smart, literate and engaging. He instructed me on how to run a boat at night and taught me to shoot pool on a warped table with crooked cues. I watched him tear apart his ancient diesel and rebuild it by nightfall. He seemed to live on beer and slept on board his boat on a bunk that a tired dog would refuse.

 If Bob would conquer his alcoholism, he could own a fleet of shrimp boats. As it was, he owned a small share of his current boat and earned twenty-five dollars per night if the moon was full and the tide strong. I developed a plan to supplement his income by having him help me with minor projects on my boat. The extra money would allow him to eat well, and I would then try to convince him to alter his destructive course. 

 After completing his first job of installing a live well and a wash down pump, I asked him for his bill. “Pay me what you think the job was worth,” he replied. He caught me off guard with that remark, so I thought it over and I figured his labor was worth $25 per hour, resulting in a $100 fee.

 Bob went crazy. Called me a yuppie asshole. I yelled back, “Don’t ever call me a yuppie!” He was insulted at the charity I was offering. I argued a boatyard would charge the same or more, and he eventually accepted….. reluctantly. 

 That night I drove away from the docks feeling self-righteous and proud of my accomplishment. I knew he would eat well tonight because he promised, as a condition of employment, that he wouldn’t use his wages for drinking.

 I saw Bob the next day, and he was hammered. I asked angrily how much money he had left. With a crooked grin, he slowly pulled five tattered dollar bills from his pocket. I couldn’t believe he drank $95 worth of beer and told him so. His response brought me down to earth. He had used the money to repay several loans, advance several friends money for food and kept $20, which he obviously drank with. In his world of values, it was wrong to squander money on food if you owed others or if someone had a greater need than yourself.

 That day I quit trying to change Bob but always looked forward to talking about boats, life and other topics with him. 

 One Sunday afternoon he told me his lawyer had located him. He had a $75,000 check for Bob, but he must show up in New Orleans to sign the requisite paperwork. Bob had no money to travel with, so I offered to lend him the airfare. He declined.

 In honor of his pending departure, I granted his wish of piloting my boat wide open. I had put off his prior requests because I subconsciously thought he might throw me overboard and head to Cuba, where he heard rum was cheaper than beer. 

 We eased out of the slip at sunset and soon were moving across the bay at thirty knots. “Take the helm,” I shouted over the wind to Bob. He looked at me funny and said, “No thanks, Cap’n,” the way an unmarried man turns down an offer to hold a baby. He then yelled something about how his shrimp boat could pass us at our current speed.

 With that, I pushed the throttles to the console, trimmed the bow down and we roared through Stiltsville and back. We headed north and passed through Bear Cut and out to sea. He identified ocean-going tugs, freighters and other vessels by their running lights. He polished off a six-pack and looked like a kid enjoying an amusement park ride. As we headed towards port through Government Cut, he said, “Turn a few degrees to starboard, Cap’n, rocks ahead.” Sure enough, I was headed for the south jetty. Bob drunk was a better seaman than I was sober.

 Bob sold his share in the shrimper and managed to scrape together enough money to buy a derelict Volkswagen Beetle. My last vision of him was pulling away from the marina in a bleached green Bug with no windshield. Red was sandwiched in next to him. Both were wearing old ski goggles and drunken smiles. Over the whine of the little engine, you could hear the refrain of a deranged chewing gum commercial Red was working on……. their course was layed in for New Orleans.

 I miss my adventures with Bob. If the money didn’t kill him, I would sure like to go shrimping one night.