I said, "Can this be the same sweaty woman I ran with? No. It's impossible."
Janet seemed pleased and chagrined all at once. "This was all their idea, Doc. I mean it. I don't even own a gown ... I don't have one with me, I mean. So Rhonda, she insisted on loaning me one of hers. Then we had to spend half the night altering it, trying to get the hem even—"
"And drinking wine!" Rhonda hooted.
"I didn't drink nearly as much as JoAnn did. You either."
"Janet honey, no one ever drinks as much wine as JoAnn does. Doc, you should have seen the three of us. None of us knows a thing about
sewing, but there we were, trying to measure this, trim that, poking ourselves with needles. Then JoAnn started telling those raunchy jokes of hers!"
"I didn't even try the dress on until about midnight," Janet said. Then she looked at Rhonda; a friendly expression of mock threat. "If I look as stupid as I feel—"
I took Janet by the elbow, then held her away as if inspecting. After a critical pause, I said, "You look great. I mean it." I did, too. Janet had lived isolated and alone on her dumpy Holiday Mansion houseboat long enough. Didn't mix, didn't fraternize. Now, finally, she was allowing herself to be accepted into the marina community. She looked happy, and I felt happy for her.
"Ladies," I said, "if you look toward the picnic table, you will notice that Mack is already serving himself. That wouldn't be so bad, but Jeth is next in line. Jeth will eat anything, but he prefers shrimp. We'd better hurry, or the only thing left will be little bits of shell and Styrofoam."
I extended my arm to Janet. She wagged her eyebrows at Rhonda, then allowed herself to be escorted.
Mack opened the marina gates at around eight, thereby allowing a steady flow of locals and lost tourists to join the party. The locals wanted to inspect the damage caused by the explosion. Most of them had done that on Friday, but now they wanted to do it on a social basis. The tourists just wanted to have fun. They did—except for a dour young French couple who showed up asking to see "ze attrac-she-uns." Someone had apparently told them about the party and, due to a miscommunication, they had expected Perbcot to be the island's version of Epcot.
As Jeth Nicholes watched them stalk away, he said, "Jesus Christ, them French people are so dense you couldn't climb 'em with an ice ax. Know what I heard? They'll piss right in the sink, you give them a chance. French people, I mean."
At about nine, I was sitting with Janet—she was telling me about a conservation project for which she had volunteered; the St. Joe River cleanup. In northwest Ohio?—when Nels approached me, saying, "Doc, you got a minute?" Felix Blane, all six feet six inches and 250-some pounds of him, stood directly behind Nels, shadowing us both from the dock lights.
It wasn't ideal timing. Janet was finally starting to open up a little, starting to talk about herself instead of relying on me to carry the conversation. It wasn't that she sat there mutely. But she knew how to deflect attention from herself by asking leading questions; timing them so that I, or someone else, was always in the process of answering. As a result, I hadn't learned much about her. She was from Ohio—which I knew. She was in her mid-thirties—which I had guessed from her taste in music. She'd never spent any time around boats—no surprise. She had taught biology and chemistry at a high school near her home—I hadn't known that—and she was just telling me about the conservation project on the St. Joseph River when Nels interrupted.
I said, "I want to talk to you guys, but—"
"Doc, please go ahead. Really. I need to . . . check on something anyway." That quick, Janet was up and gone, as if glad for the opportunity to escape.
Nels watched her walk away, shrugged, and said, "Sorry, Doc. I didn't mean to chase her off. She seems like a nice girl."
I said, "She is."
Felix said, "I told you we should'a waited." Then to me, he explained, "This big dumb ass forgets that he scares most men and just about all women. The way he looks; just the sight of him."
Among men, hyperbole and character assassination mark the parameters of friendship. I found it heartening that I was still included.
Nels said, "You want to go after her, we'll wait. Whenever you got the time."
"Nope. She's just a friend."
Felix said, "Well, go ahead then, Nels. Spit it out."
Nels was suddenly uneasy; having a hard time getting started. Finally, he said, "It's like this, Doc. I was wrong to say to you what I said the other day. I was pissed off about my skiff, and you were a handy target. Shit, I felt like unloading on somebody, and there you were."
I said, "Don't worry about it. It was a tough day for all of us." I started to stick out my hand, but Felix interceded.
"Tell im the rest of it, Nels, before you go to shaking hands.''
Nels fixed him with a sour look. We had been sitting beneath the porch that shelters the bait tanks. Now Nels stood and motioned with his head, telling me he wanted to get away from the people who were milling around. As we walked toward the end of the T-dock, he said abruptly, "I did something stupid the other night. Thursday night."
I said, "Oh?"
"Yeah, and I want to be right up-front about it. There's this thing that happened."
What had happened was that Nels, distraught about his boat and his money problems, had gotten falling-down drunk.
"I don't know how much I drank," he said. "A lot. Way too much. I hit about every bar on the island. One thing about being a drunk, you never lack for company. I talked to people I knew, and I talked to a lot of people I didn't know and hope to hell I never see again."
Felix said, "That's what Nels needs to tell you. That night? I was standing guard duty. We told you we were going to start patrolling the marina? So I'm sitting on the dock, my thumb up my butt, feeling like an idiot. I'm carry a shotgun around. Shit, a weapon. It was like Highway One, back in Danang. That's how long it's been since I've carried anything. Except I'm doing it at Dinkin's Bay, where the only dangerous thing around is Jeth, who might walk out on his balcony to say hello, then fall on me, he's so clumsy. I mean, it's stupid."
Nels said, "Damn it, don't start. We've still got to keep a guard. I don't even have a boat left, and I think so."
Felix said, "Yeah, well, the point is, Nels is like an hour overdue for his shift, when this big-wheel truck comes barreling down the road—"
I said, "A pickup truck?"
"A pickup, yeah. It's like one in the morning. I'm dozing, I'm cold, I've got to take an all-time hellish dump, and I wake up with this vehicle charging me. Jesus Christ, Doc, first thing that pops in my mind is it's Sir Charles. Mr. Sapper about to come down hard, and the only general order I can remember is: If it flies, it dies. You know? It startled me. I'm thinking it's a bunch of dinks until I'm full awake, which is the only reason Captain Nelson Esterline here didn't get himself waxed."
Felix was having fun with the story—he had an incongruously high laugh for a man his size—but Nels wasn't enjoying it. He seemed increasingly sheepish. I wanted to hear more about the pickup truck, and tried to hurry him along. "Whose truck?"
Nels said, "I don't know. I'm in a bar, then I'm in their truck, and they're bringing me to the marina because I'm late to relieve Felix. That's what I remember. There were three of them, I guess. I don't remember any names." He looked at Felix. "Is that right? Three?"