Did I tell you I was in Vietnam?
I did?
Okay, there I was, on my fourth stretch out (I kept signing up, liking that harbor-master job at the officers’ club far away from the front lines), and one of the native masseuses introduced me to her grandpa. Old codger sat cross-legged in a cave in a hill overlooking my yacht-club harbor. Grandpa rather reminded me of my uncle Joe, partly morphed into the Dalai Lama. The hermit came out of the silence when I handed over greenbacks.
What Paleface wanted?
I asked for guidance. Why not? Old Silver Long-hair was right there and who knows what those holybolies discover in their, what is it again? Transmutations? And lo and behold, the hermit, in a croaky voice, smiling benevolently, did come up with a high-level tidbit. “Grandpa wants you to know that the unforeseeable invariably happens,” my masseuse translated, “but the predictable hardly ever occurs.” She smiled and patted my cheek, “Grandpa wants you take care now, you hear?”
Now ain’t what the hermit said the truth?
Next thing, just after I got back to the harbor, my right leg got shredded along with four of my buddies’ entire bodies. The masseuse (who used to sing love songs to me) and her psychic grandpa vanished.
Jet planes from a nearby carrier applied napalm to any habitation overlooking the harbor. Our patrol, checking out the area, reported finding parts of enemy kids, women, and farm animals but no traces of any military folks or the grenade-firing gadget that had interfered with our pleasures.
After amputation I got flown stateside, and the Veterans Administration equipped me with a technological leg. A chaplain told me that Uncle Joe, having slipped on the ice and broken his skull, was no longer living. A captain in dress uniform saluted and said he felt sorry for my loss. Once my new leg hurt less I got a seat on a military plane flying to Bangor. A jeep took me to Bunkport. I moved back into Uncle Joe’s cabin and Larry the lawyer had me sign a form that I accepted everything Uncle Joe left me. There were no taxes, as Uncle had Larry set up some kind of trust. I did have to pay Larry.
Before I became his ward I knew Uncle Joe from saying hi whenever we happened to see each other, and saying yes, I wanted a hamburger. And two hot dogs. And a shake. “Thank you.”
Once I moved in he made sure I went to school and took me “naturing and maturing” on weekends. I learned local navigation and general boat tending in the You Too. We kept up appearances by doing some line fishing and we kept a few lobster traps going, but fish wasn’t Uncle’s first interest. “Fishing is regular work,” he told me. “There ain’t no money in regular work.” He looked at me furiously. “No pleasure either.”
Uncle and I used his snowmobile to hunt our yearly deer without the costly license. Again, once a year, he set me up to shoot a moose to stock our freezer and sell the surplus meat for cheap to Thirsty Dolphin buddies. Uncle wouldn’t have no dealings with substances, but we brought in loads of Cuban cigars (although he didn’t care for Castro) and excise-free cigarettes from nearby Canada, to sell to truckers aiming for “all them other states.” If the winter sea got rough we hitched a trailer-sled to his snowmobile to keep the business going. Depending on the season we took tourists for rides on water or snow, preferably when there was a storm brewing so they could be thankful for our bringing them back alive and hand over big tips. Uncle might give me a fiver once in a while so I could smoke cigarettes and get sick with my buddies. He also got me a bicycle, so I didn’t have to wait for the summer school bus, paid for decent clothes, taught me to cook muffins and lobsters and some strange spinach-and-egg dish, and got me the dog Millie as company when he was out. Millie was a comfort, like her descendant Tillie is now.
Later, when puberty hit, I did some break-ins in rich folks’ summer cabins to pay for dope and booze. Uncle grumbled. When Jacko, in between jail time, gave me the use of what he called a “found” muscle car that he completed with stolen license plates, Uncle lost the vehicle and boarded me out at a school at the far side of the state. I had to do yard work and house cleaning for bus money so I could get back to him for holidays. He was changing then. Getting old, he even forgot to get drunk sometimes, the cabin was dirtying up, and the You Too needed painting and fussing with the electronics. I got so busy helping out that I had no time to tend to my bad habits. When school was done I moved back to Bunkport and took care of him. When I got drafted Priscilla had a state nursing service take over. Priscilla claims I loved Uncle Joe, and I wouldn’t argue with such a powerful personality, but I never figured out what “love” means.
Uncle would have agreed. “Care about nothing and nothing will take care of you very nicely.” He did want me to do a good job on anything that might come up. “Just for the hell of it, Jimbo.” Tom Tipper taught likewise but left out the “good job.” Tom definitely tended to overdo negation, to the point where nihilistic insights led to disorderly euphoria and Sheriff, on occasion, had to transport a handcuffed Tom to a Bangor crisis center.
Father Mikey, when stopping off at the Thirsty Dolphin between services, told us about love being the Mystery. The Mystery, by its very nature, could not, the father said, be explained.
“Anyone wants to fight the Mystery?”
Silence in the Dolphin.
“Then the Mystery has won.”
Another triumph for the noble priest.
Uncle Joe said that’s what he liked about the Church. “It goes every which way, Nephew.” He sometimes went to Mass. “To be with the Mystery.”
When I asked whether Uncle would be in hell now, Father Mikey smiled. “What if he is? A well-organized man, Vetty, and Joe was just that, will be comfortable anywhere.”
Ah well. Me worry? But just to be sure, every clear full moon, I float flowers (in winter cedar branches) just off Snutty Nose Island, where Uncle liked to fish for cod, and once in a while caught one, and, because it was endangered, put it back carefully.
We floated his hat when the current and the wind were outward, again behind Snutty Nose Ledge and the island.
Same place where Jacko, couple of weeks after Uncle died, in a rowboat that he actually paid for, successfully overdosed on whiskey and heroin, after mailing a note to Sheriff. The note said where to collect the boat.
Jacko left a note pinned to his chest:
The crime story? you ask.
Two dead pirates aren’t enough for you? And now a suicide? A suicide is not a crime, you say. Okay. Here we go.
Crime story #1 (continued)
I was happy in the cabin that I cleaned up after Uncle’s death. New oak floors, new roof, new plumbing. Coastal art on the whitewashed walls, by up-and-coming Maine artists. I linseed-oiled the hand-hewn posts and beams. I enjoyed the view from Uncle’s sturdy bed on wheels, that I moved about so Tillie, who slept in my arm, could enjoy the best views. I always spent more than my disablement check, filling the hole with cash I found under a loose board in a walk-in closet.
Uncle’s savings, even with inflation, could last me a lifetime.
“I got all my needs covered,” I declared on a fourth beer.
“Oh dear,” Priscilla said. “That means you haven’t.”
An Abinaki Native American further down the counter, raising a forbidding hand, agreed. He told me to be careful. Had I heard about the invisible ever-present Thunderbirds, who trap happy humans into learning situations until the goddess Manitou steps out of the woods and takes us away altogether?
“You must be getting bored,” Deputy Sheriff Sycophant said. Deputy Dog thought so too.
Everybody agreed that contentment equals depression. As I mentioned before, it’s a bad thing to be happy.