When she left I watched her walk shoreward along the dock and saw her wave a couple of times to friends who called to her. I finished putting the reel back together, cursing Yates Brogan and Johnny Welch and that stupid restraint of mine that had at last landed me in the hopeless category of treasured friend to the woman I love.
I visited Chet in the hospital at eight o’clock that evening. The crisp white pillow made his chunky face look as red as old bricks. They were going to take out his appendix in the morning. We’d hoped to be able to wait until we were between charters, but this last time it had acted up just enough to alarm both of us a little.
“By Thursday,” he said, “I fly over and go to work.”
“So a marlin is a little green when it comes to gaff, and you pop open.”
“So I run the Gal and you handle the fish.”
“It would confuse the charter, boy. I’m the skill and you’re the muscle.”
“Skill? Who was it busted the piling at Frazier’s Hog Key?”
I got off that painful subject by telling him about the passengers I’d have the next day. Chet whistled through his broken tooth. “Don’t get too far from a marlin spike, Cap. Keep your mind on where the shark rifle is stowed. Brogan is a nut, and he’s mean. Why’d you let yourself in for a deal like that?”
“For laughs,” I said.
He looked at me, and I knew he knew why I’d agreed. He knew there was nothing Nan couldn’t ask of me. “Sure,” he said. “For laughs.” He grinned. “Lash Johnny to a cleat so as he don’t fall overboard before you clear the sea buoy.”
After I’d wished him luck he let me get as far as the door before he asked sternly, “You take that number three reel down?”
“Yes.”
“The drag is smooth now?”
“Seems to be.”
“Find some fish, Vince.”
“I’ll be looking.”
“And... don’t let her bother you too much, hear?”
“I’m just running the boat.”
Yates Brogan was first aboard Monday morning. I had the coffee on, and I’d just finished making up my bunk. He tossed his duffle bag in onto the bunk. He’s tall and hard, but the liquor has started to blur the hawk-lines of his face. I could smell the drink on him, and his eyes weren’t quite in focus, but he was steady on his feet.
“Good morning, Vincent,” he said in his mocking way. “You should be very happy to help such a deserving couple find their way back to bliss.”
“I’m going to Bimini. You’re paying for the ride.”
“Surly in the early? I’ve paid for it, lad,” he said, tucking ten fifties into my shirt pocket. “I thought you had a sentimental interest in the lady.”
“Knock it off, Brogan.”
“Nan just gets a little too impulsive sometimes. And then it doesn’t do a bit of good to knock her around. You have to reason with her and talk soft and sweet.”
As I was wondering if I could knock him all the way up onto the dock or if he’d drop between the boat and the pilings of the finger slip, he looked beyond me and the grin slid off his face.
“What the hell,” he said softly.
I turned and saw Nan and Johnny coming toward us. Johnny looked flushed, indignant and uncomfortable. Nan said good morning with icy formality. I took her gear. Johnny tried to come aboard with his after Nan was aboard and managed to hook a toe in my spring line and narrowly avoided landing flat on his face in the cockpit. As he recovered his balance, Brogan said, “Upsy daisy, pal. Back on the dock. The passenger list is complete.”
“Welch isn’t a passenger,” I said. “He’s crewing for me.”
Brogan turned and looked at me, and then he looked at Nan. He made a short ugly laughing sound and said, “Nice! Very cute, dear wife. Very conspiratorial. But what good will it do you?”
“Listen to me, Brogan!” Johnny said bravely.
“Please, dear boy. Not on an empty stomach.”
As Brogan turned away from him, Welch started to follow him, his big freckled fists clenched. “Get the lines, Welch,” I told him, and swung up to the flying bridge and kicked the two big GM 1271 TIs into rumbling life. I peered down and saw Welch making ineffectual motions while Nan was deftly taking in the lines. Brogan was pouring himself some coffee and looking amused. Welch’s next error was to try to shove us off, a type of assistance I do not need when I’m at the dual throttles of the Faraway Gal. I slid the stem away from the pilings just as he started to push, and if he hadn’t caught the base of an outrigger, he’d have gone over the side then and there. Brogan laughed at him, too long and too loud.
We left the big marina, went down the waterway and under the bridge and out through the pass into the Atlantic. As soon as I’d cleared the tide chop just outside the pass, Nan came up with coffee for me.
“Lovely morning,” she said with no conviction.
“Lovely people.” Brogan had moved forward along the boat deck as soon as we had begun to run dry beyond the chop, and he sat on the bow hatch looking forward, sipping his coffee. Johnny Welch sat slumped, gloomy, inert in the port fighting chair staring back toward the mainland. Neither of them could hear what we were saying.
“Yates is furious,” Nan said. “Maybe he thought he could really talk me into changing my mind. But as soon as he saw Johnny, he knew it wouldn’t work.”
“Take it a minute,” I said. I left my coffee there and went down and estimated how much to allow for the movement of the stream and the southeast wind in relation to cruising speed, and kicked it into automatic pilot. It held just where I wanted it the first time. I moved the starboard engine up a few revolutions to put it in better sync, and the course still held true. Then I went back up to my coffee and my ex-girl and the dazzle of the morning sun and the incredible indigo of the Gulf Stream, the skitter of flying fish, the long swells, the limber flex of the outriggers — all the components of my world, which on this day gave me no pleasure.
I ran at the most economical cruising speed, which would give us Bimini in four hours. Nan went down to the galley and fixed breakfast. I ate only because she had fixed it. Johnny Welch ate hugely. Nan nibbled. Yates Brogan refused food. He took more coffee, spiking it with black rum from a bottle out of his duffle bag, giving me a white meaningless smile as he did so. After Nan had cleaned up, Yates took her up on the bow. I sat on the transom splicing a new loop into one of my dock lines to replace one that had become frayed. I could hear little wisps of the angry discussion, fragmented words blown past me by the wind, muffled by the engine drone. I knew Johnny could hear it too. We avoided each other’s eyes.
Yates came back to the cockpit, unsmiling. As he went to pour more coffee and rum I stood up and looked forward. She sat up there, her back to me, and I could tell from her posture that she was crying. I sat down and continued working on the splice.
“Stop bullying her, Yates,” Johnny Welch said.
Yates came to stand near me and stare at Welch. “You touch my heart, boy. That woman is my wife.”
“Not for long.”
“And you’re standing by? You’re next in line? Johnny boy, are you sure she’s worth what I could do to you?”
Welch stared at him with a kind of dull wonder. Johnny is almost an all-American boy, except perhaps a shade too meaty, and with promise of becoming bald too soon. “What kind of an idea is that?”
“I might get cross with you, Johnny. I’ve looked you up. I could buy up some paper from people who’d be glad to sell. I could squeeze you, and it wouldn’t take much of a squeeze, would it?”
“You can’t scare me, Brogan.”
“I can’t? I’ve made you look highly nervous.” He turned to me. “Skipper, can I ride in your tuna tower?”