Salty Sky (10 page)

The girls didn’t understand why five o’clock happy hours ended so punctually in big cities. But they were Southern girls; a train schedule never dictated their day.

Joe enjoyed the smell of Ashley’s shampoo. Was it vanilla, coconut, or something totally different? Didn’t matter, he liked it. It relaxed him. He zoned out of the conversation, then answered some questions about the boat, about growing up in Brooklyn, normal get-to-know-you stuff. They asked about the changes to New York City—from good to bad and back to good—or if not good, at least safe but still with some character.

One of the girls had worked in a Brooklyn hospital. She jogged the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan before work, stretched in Battery Park, and jogged back. She went with friends to Peter Luger Steak House once. They didn’t know you had to pay cash, which had made the end of the night a little tense. She went to a seafood bar under the bridge, where beer was sold in thirty-six-ounce Styrofoam cups and the walls were lined with cut ties.

Ashley laughed, “Y’all think those ties belonged to Wall Street
interns? They didn’t notice their coworkers stuffing ties in their pockets as they walked in.”

Joe laughed back, “The pups probably couldn’t decide if they were more afraid of Mom asking where their Brooks Brothers Christmas present was or of returning to the office improperly attired.”

The nurse who had worked in Brooklyn added, “I think the ties got cut off at guys’ retirement parties.”

The conversation drifted along. Joe showed pictures of his kids and grandkids on his phone. He realized the girls must have known about his wife, because that topic was never raised. He answered questions about business. Joe moved his hands so much when he talked that someone suggested they play charades. They went in a circle and tried to act out movie titles.

Joe started with
Taxi Driver
, which took the girls a while to get because they’d never heard of it. One of the girls did
Avatar
. Another did
Harry Potter
. Ashley went with
Titanic
. They did books next. The first girl spanked her bottom and then humped the coffee table. The other girls shouted out
Fifty Shades of Grey
. Joe had to have the book explained to him. He let the explaining, which was a group charade in itself, go on longer than needed.

Tony returned with two young guys—well, fortyish guys, distinctly younger than Joe or Tony and distinctly older than the trainers. They were flushed with sun and beer. They struck Joe as stand-up guys. They must have struck Tony that way too, and Tony usually called it right.

The not-so-young guys were on a bachelor party trip. The one with the sunburned feet was the betrothed—Blake. Not to his first bride. They took seats, and the captain mixed their drinks. Their manners were good, and they waited for the others to refill their glasses before they drank. Their accents were Southern but not country. Outside of a few
y’alls
and one
dadgummit
, Joe figured they’d have carried a barroom conversation in the city with no problem.

Sweat from his glass beaded and dripped over Joe’s fingers when he picked up his drink. With Tony back and the new guys needing seats, Ashley scooted herself farther under Joe’s arm. The bachelor was in the cups and locked into a conversation with one of the other girls. The nonbachelor, Van, showed a quick wit and good cadence on his delivery. He and Tony bantered back and forth.

“So why does someone from New York or New Jersey—or do they just call it Jersey now—have to choose either Nets-Jets-Mets-Islanders or Knicks-Giants-Yankees-Rangers? What type of self-hating person would choose the Nets-Jets-Mets-Islanders? None of those teams win, and half those teams don’t even play in New York. It’s like someone from North Carolina rooting for the Bullets—I mean Wizards—Panthers-Braves-Hurricanes.”

“Yeah, I’ve been hearing for years there are some nice cities here in North Carolina. So I visited Charlotte and Raleigh, and the people are all real nice. But where is the city?”

Lunge. Parry.

Another tanned fortyish guy with a round face and glasses peeked his head up the ladder.

“Joe, Tony, girls. Meet our compatriot, Barry.”

“Barry, you look an honorable sort. What are you doing consorting with these two? Look at this lush you’re traveling with. He’s rubbing thighs with a maiden who I’m pretty sure is not his bride-to-be. And don’t get me started on this other piece of work.”

“Is he sharing a few opinions?”

“Does the pope wear a funny hat? Have a drink. Maybe you can improve the conversation.”

Everyone shifted around to make room. Ashley’s full body now pressed against Joe’s side. His arm had fallen asleep. It wasn’t enough to make him move. His bladder was full. That wasn’t enough to get him to move either.

Barry pointed out the runabout that brought him onboard, Van,
and Blake waved to their friends aboard it, who weren’t looking up. One guy and two girls were dancing on the runabout. A second guy—tall and muscled, with his shirt off and floral board shorts—was fiddling with the engine. Joe watched him hop into the water and clear finishing line from his prop.

After one drink, the tanned, round-faced man (Barry, was it?) motivated the bachelor and the nonbachelor to get moving. The nurses were ready to get into town and left with them. The runabout looked overloaded casting off. Joe took the opportunity to descend the ladder and use the head.

He chatted with the trainers, but didn’t find any common interest other than the logistics of when they were going to shore and where they were docking. Joe watched the trainers play hearts for a couple of minutes. After seeing the queen of spades mishandled two hands in a row, he moved on.

Why did they want the party if they were going to play cards? It struck Joe that these guys, behind their big talk, were more comfortable looking aloof than engaging with the world around them. They were cool in appearance but terrified the world would see through them if they risked reaching out. That nugget of insight put their behavior in a different light. He figured after a few more drinks, they would break character and give themselves the excuse of “being hammered,” as they called it, if they failed.

Joe scanned the main deck. Tony was chatting up a woman with a minimal outfit and a sly smile. Joe thought that if she’d had pale winter skin, a sweatshirt, and dungarees, Tony wouldn’t have noticed her. That wasn’t right; he reconsidered. Tony noticed everyone. He was a true gentleman—in the important ways, at least. But the tone of his conversation would have been a lot different without glimpses of bronzed nipple in the strappy bikini.

Turning the other way, Joe began to search out the owners of the boats rafted alongside them. He introduced himself, met some good people and some who took advantage of good people. He let
everyone know he was pulling anchor pretty soon and that he hoped to see them at the bar tonight. With notice given, he retired to the flybridge and prepared a cocktail for the sunset.

When Joe was midway through his drink, Tony came up the ladder. No words spoken, he made his own drink and sat next to Joe, watching the orange light sink into the tree line behind the marsh. Below, the last of the rafters tossed off their lines and headed somewhere else. Sitting, watching night take over, and with Ashley’s scent embedded in his memory, Joe felt like he was beginning a journey.

9

ASHLEY GOT UP
early on Saturday, hoping to get a jog in before the day’s travel. Joe, Tony, and the captain were already up and about when she came out of the cabin. They were preparing to cast off. The Atlantic was too stirred up for travel. Instead, they doubled back south on the Intracoastal a short ways and anchored offshore an uninhabited island of small sand dunes.

She watched Joe swan dive off the front of the boat into the water and swim toward the sand dunes. Something pleasant brought a smile to her face: The dive and his strokes looked like the old black-and-white Tarzan movies or TV shows, or whatever they had been. She’d always seen them on TV on Saturday mornings. Saturday mornings in her house, before everyone woke up and whatever trouble the day would bring started, was her favorite time at home—probably the only time she actually liked being at home.

Following that mental thread took her too far down the memory trail. The memories that came next took the light out of her and made it hard for her to breathe.

Why had her mother stayed with her father? Because she was a drunk? Her mother knew what he was. Was it because she didn’t want to leave the double-wide trailer parked at the front of the mobile home park where her husband worked? Because she didn’t want to
burn that last bridge she hadn’t burned? Was it just because he needed her so badly in his chest-pounding, bullying way?

Why did her father need her mother so much? When the booze faded her looks, did he still feel like more of a man for having her with him? When he sat on the porch in his white plastic chair and shot bottles pinned to the clothesline, did he need her to see how good a shot he was? During his evening rounds in the mobile home park, collecting rent door to door with a pistol in the small of his back, another strapped on his ankle, and a blackjack on his side, did he want her to see how tough he was? Was that why he had her inch their red Ford Ranger along behind him while he made his rounds?

Ashley sat in the front seat for many of these trips. She had watched her father collect money from their neighbors. Or intimidate them if things weren’t as they should be.

Kids yelled out, “Momma, rent man here,” when they saw him coming. Nobody had a checking account. Some paid with money orders. Most used cash. Her father stuffed the money orders and cash in a fanny pack strapped across his stomach.

Sometimes, folks disappeared on him in the middle of the night, leaving a balance and a trashed trailer. Her father fixed, cleaned, and rented the trailers. Some folks didn’t pay and wouldn’t leave until her father marched them out. More than once, he needed the pistol to get them to leave. Waiting for an indifferent court system wasn’t his style. Despite his obvious weapons and ability to use them, a full fanny pack of cash was a strong motivator for the hungry to take risks. More than once, she had heard the commotion of would-be robbers paying for their efforts.

He was good at his job. He could sell. He could fix things. He could collect. She knew his problem wasn’t his skills. It wasn’t good tenants, bad tenants, or muggers. His problems were, in the language of the preacher at the Primitive Baptist Church they went to on the first Sunday of each month, the demons inside him. He fed his
demons, and they grew strong. Greed made him skim cash from the owner, and pride made it so he couldn’t stand to even hide what he was doing. She’d hear him say to her mother, “Weren’t for me, he wouldn’t get nuthin’ out of this place. I’d say he owes me this little extra and then some.”

When Ashley was thirteen, he’d had the job for seven years. By then, his records showed each week that he collected more than he turned over. He wanted the owner to know he wasn’t stealing from the tenants; he was stealing from
him
—the owner, his boss. For a while, he kept an extra hundred dollars a week. That grew to an extra five hundred dollars.

Finally, in front of the house, the owner showed up with two deputies. Ashley was getting off the school bus. She saw her father cuffed and marched to the cruiser. She saw her mother come around the side of the house. From a hundred yards off, she recognized her glazed eyes. Her mother half concealed a pistol at her side. Ashley froze. Her mother raised the pistol. Ashley didn’t know whether she was going to shoot the sheriff’s men, the owner, her father, or herself. She hoped she wouldn’t fire at anybody.

Her mother fired at the owner. She missed. A deputy tackled her. The pistol slid through the dust under the lattice that edged the bottom of their mobile home.

As her parents were put in the back of the car, Ashley walked past her double-wide, eyes straight ahead. She followed the figure-eight loop around the park. The other kids ran to tell what had happened. She heard a door open and someone yell, “Rent man’s wife shot the lawman! There’s blood everywhere!” The story grew. Folks came out of their trailers for a looksee.

When she felt too many eyeballs, she climbed a post and jumped the barbed wire fence separating the park from the ranchland next door. She stayed out of sight on the ranch until dark, and then headed for the road so she wouldn’t have to walk past all the trailers. Along
the road, she walked in the dry drainage ditch. She lay flat when she saw headlights.

She returned to the trailer park. Her home was unlocked, so she sat in the dark in her mother’s cloth recliner and crushed a pack of Newports. It felt peaceful in the empty house. She kept the lights out. She pulled on a bathrobe that was on the floor beside her, reclined back, and slept.

She didn’t go to school the next day, and nobody came to check on her. She grabbed a newspaper from a neighbor’s patio to see whether her parents were in it. They weren’t.