Captains Outrageous (10 page)

“You said that. How bad is the news on the other side of it?”

“Not that bad.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Go ahead … Wait. Why me, man? Can’t you just save these for someone who cares? I hate jokes. You always do this when I’m sick or injured. Which, come to think of it, when I’m around you, is pretty frequent. I got to tell you, Hap. I been thinkin’ I want to put my feet up some. Know what I’m saying?”

“You want to put your feet up.”

“I mean, I love you, brother, but there’s something about us, when we mix together, it makes shit. Know what I’m sayin’?”

“I do.”

“Maybe we could call one another, have lunch, go to a movie. Double-date. Me and John. You and whoever … But man, we plan something big together, I seem to always get shot, knifed, beat, et cetera. And come to think of it, you look pretty good. You aren’t cut up or banged up.”

“I got a few bumps. And hey, I been on the bad end before. Don’t make yourself too special. Now the joke. There’s this cowboy—”

“ ‘Shit. Go for it.”

“—and he’s captured by Indians. The chief says, It’s the custom of our tribe to give the condemned man three days of granted wishes. Stuff besides ‘I want to go home.’ That kind of thing.”

“This sucks already. You can’t tell a joke to save your life.”

“So, the chief says, Cowboy, you got three days and a wish a day. Use them wisely. What do you want first? Cowboy says, Let me talk to my horse.

“Cowboy calls his horse over, whispers in the horse’s ear, horse thunders off, and just before sundown the horse shows up with a beautiful redhead on its back.”

“Man or woman?”

“In my story it’s a woman. Has to be for the story to work. You’ll see.”

“All right.”

“Cowboy takes the redhead into the tent and they make love, he puts her on the horse, and the horse thunders off, taking the redhead back to town. Or wherever.

“Next day. Oh yeah. The horse has come back. That’s important.”

Leonard sighed.

“Chief says, This is your second day, your second wish. What’ll it be? Cowboy says, Let me talk to my horse. He whispers in the horse’s ear, and off thunders the horse.

“Near dark, horse shows up with a beautiful blonde on its back. Cowboy and the blonde go into the tent where he’s held captive, and make love. He puts the blonde on the horse, and the horse takes her away.”

“Don’t forget the horse comes back again … Am I right?”

“Yeah. The horse comes back. So, the horse is back, and it’s the last day, and the chief says, Pick this wish wisely, cowboy, because it’s your last.

“The cowboy sighs, says, Let me talk to my horse. He calls the horse over and grabs it by the ears and puts his face close to the horse’s face. He says to the horse, Listen, stupid. Read my lips. POSSE. POSSE.”

I paused.

“Yeah,” Leonard said. “So.”

“Think about it …”

“Oh, I get it. Now isn’t that funny. The horse thought he was saying pussy. You heteros are just full of fuckin’ fun. Hap, I want to go home. Tell me what happened with the phone call.”

I told him.

“You got us a room in town, though, right?”

“That’s right.”

“So the worst is a little delay?”

“Well, yes. But …”

“Oh, shit. No.”

“Don’t panic.”

“Don’t hesitate.”

“I’m supposed to call Charlie tomorrow. He’s setting things up. But way I see it, Ferdinand saved our lives. You’re out of it anyway. Why don’t I sort of help them out on the boat.”

“You can’t even float a paper boat, Hap, let alone go out on the ocean and fish. Didn’t you learn anything from our short cruise?”

“Yeah, don’t insult the guy at the ship’s restaurant. You’re blaming me, but think about who really got us into this mess.”

“It was your idea to go on a cruise.”

“Actually, it was John’s.”

“You’re right. When we get home we’ll kill him.”

“I bet he’s watching that
Kung Fu
thing right now.”

“Could be. Or he’s taping it. Him and Charlie probably call each other up and talk about the characters.”

“You see, Leonard, way I see it is, I can at least volunteer to be a deckhand till the old man gets better. It’s a bad wound, worse than yours, but he can probably get around in a few days. Beatrice and I can take care of business till then. And there’s another thing.”

“There always is.”

“Ferdinand owes some money.”

“Define ‘owes some money.’ ”

“I think I should help you to the outdoor convenience.”

“I didn’t ask to go.”

“I think you should go anyway.”

“Well, actually, I do need to go.”

“Good, that way I can tell you in private.”

Leonard rolled to the side of the bed. “Hell, I can walk by myself. I feel a lot better.”

“But you’ll humor me.”

“If I must.”

Leonard put on his shoes. I put my arm around him and helped him outside. It was fairly dark and the moon was up and it was a fragmented moon. Clouds scuttled across the sky and in the distance I saw sheet lightning rage across the horizon. You could smell rain in the air, but it was still some distance away.

As we walked, I told Leonard the story Beatrice told me. He went inside the outhouse, and I stood outside, leaning on it, talking to him, finishing up my story through a split in the walls.

“Let me see,” Leonard said. “She went to the States, and her father provided the money with a bad loan. She got a degree, but then felt sorry for her father. She was being driven by an inner force to return and do traditional Mexican woman things. And now she’s in a tight spot with someone named Juan Miguel who might kill her and sell her bones to research, and she’s going to pay a big chunk of the money by sponsoring a three-day fishing trip to a secret place where fish live, but the old man doesn’t seem to go there on a regular basis even if he is living on crumbs and owes a gangster thousands of dollars. Duh.”

“Maybe it’s just worth more to him to go there when he’s got rich tourists. It could be like that.”

“And when I come out of this outhouse I could be white, bowlegged, and have a vagina, but it isn’t likely. Bottom line is, you’re gonna help her, aren’t you. And, of course, you would like me to help.”

“That sounds about right. Hurry up, man, it stinks.”

“You think it’s rough out there, you ought to be in here.”

“What d’you say, Leonard? Shall we help?”

“I say when it comes to women you are so goddamn dumb as to make a box of tenpenny nails seem high on the IQ scale.”

“You think she trained a shark to attack her father so she could get me on their boat and make a work slave of me?”

“No. It’s broader than that. Damn. This catalogue is not a good idea. Maybe they could at least spring for some toilet paper. I think I ripped myself.”

A moment later Leonard came out of the outhouse. I put my arm around him and started helping him back to the house, even though he didn’t need the help. We went slowly so we could continue talking.

“You will wash your hands at the house, won’t you?” I said.

“Just the one I wipe with. Which, by the way, is the one I have around your shoulder right now.”

There was one little sad tree in the yard, and we went over to that. It was only a little taller than we were. Its limbs were gray and scaly, like a snake shedding its skin; they were spread out wide, like gapped fingers in the moonlight.

Leonard leaned against the tree’s bent trunk. He said, “As your queer friend, I don’t have the same blind side to women you do. A queer can look at things head-on, my honky. Least as far as men and women go.”

“How is Beatrice, a woman I just met, giving me the screw? Outside of the actual screw, I mean.”

“She’s one of life’s victims. Woe is me. Everything happens to her. I think her father, nice man that he is, may not have his head on just right either. Call it a hunch.

“Look. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad she and her father helped us, but I say tomorrow morning we head into town and get that hotel room and plan our way out of here.”

“Well, she hasn’t exactly asked me to help. Maybe she doesn’t even want me to help. She even told me she wants me and you out of here tomorrow. Probably because all of this coming down. But I think with her father on crutches, she might need some help. That’s all I think there is to it.”

“If she doesn’t want you to help, then don’t. Don’t force it.”

“I just hate to see anyone bullied.”

“I promise you, this whole business she’s telling you, it’s got a light coating of slime on it. Maybe she doesn’t intend for you to get involved. Maybe she knows the whole thing sucks the big old donkey dick. I don’t know. But it’s not our business. So let’s just walk away.”

I stood quiet for a moment. I looked at Leonard leaning against the tree. He wouldn’t be much help anyway. Not by tomorrow. Did I really need to run off and help Beatrice and her father pay a debt that wasn’t mine? She wasn’t even my woman. Not really. She had said so herself.

“You know what, Leonard? I’m gonna fool you. I’m gonna do just what you say. For once. You’re right. This isn’t our problem.”

15

E
ARLY NEXT MORNING
it was very humid and I awoke sweaty. I had been given a pallet on the floor in the room where Leonard slept in the bed. Beatrice had slept on a pallet in the kitchen, and the old man had slept in her bed.

In the middle of the night I awoke to see her standing at the open doorway of the room where Leonard and I slept. She wore a thin white thigh-high nightgown. Her legs were dark and sexy in the shadows. She smiled when she realized I was looking at her. I could smell her perfume from where I lay. It smelled dry and earthy.

I got up, she took my hand. We went to her pallet in the kitchen. Beatrice was soft and sweet and I only thought of Brett a little.

Before daylight, I returned to the room where Leonard lay wide awake.

“You’re so bad,” he said.

“You said it,” I said, and lay down on my pallet and went to sleep.

It wasn’t a good sleep. When I awoke I was exhausted and my bones felt as if they had been sawed up, put in a blender, then poured back into my body. I was sweaty. I rose and wrapped up my blankets and pillow and put them on the bed next to Leonard. Who, of course, was snoring like a man who had just won the lottery.

I slowly moved my body, heard my knees and ankles and hips pop. I got up and limped about. I didn’t find Beatrice.

The old man was in the kitchen. He was on his crutches by the stove. The kitchen smelled of coffee and something baking. The aroma filled my head and made my stomach growl.

“I am baking some bread for breakfast,” Ferdinand said. “I have some butter. We can eat it together. Maybe your friend will be hungry then. Is he doing better?”

“Much better, thanks to you. He ought to be up and around today.”

“It was not too bad a wound. He lost some blood. That was the most of it. The blood. I wish I had a steak to feed him. Steak is good when you lose blood. I know a man down the road who owes me a goat. Perhaps later we can get him to give me the goat and we can butcher it and cook it. It is not a steak, but it is meat.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “Where is Beatrice?”

“She has gone into the town,” Ferdinand said. Like Beatrice, I loved hearing him talk. It was musical even when he spoke English. He spoke nearly perfect English. But the way he emphasized or accented certain words made it sound so unique. I liked the way he looked too. The way I would have thought Hemingway’s Santiago must have looked in
The Old Man and the Sea
.

“She said she will come back for you,” Ferdinand said.

I was thinking about the boat gig she told me about. What had happened to that? I couldn’t help myself, I said, “Not to meddle, but didn’t she tell me she had an important job that the two of you were to do today?”

“You are right. We are supposed to do a job. I have told her I cannot. Even though we must and it is important. We cannot. She has gone to tell the men we cannot and that we must delay the job if they will delay. Otherwise, no job. Did she tell you the job?”

“Very little,” I said.

“I would like to do the job. It pays well, but I cannot. This is the first time in twenty-five years I have been injured that I do not fix it myself. Like I fix your friend.”

“You did a good job.”

“I am too old. I cannot fix myself. I cannot deal with it the way I once did.”

“No reason to.”

“I do a lot of things, allow a lot of things now that I would not allow before. I am nowhere the man I once was.”

The old man’s gaze took a position over my shoulder. I turned and saw Leonard shuffling in. He found a chair and sat.

Leonard said, “I don’t know if I thanked you properly or not, sir. But thank you. You did us both a great favor. You’re good with that machete.”

“The machete was part of my life growing up. For work, for play, and for fighting.”

“Play?” Leonard asked.

“Play fighting. We fought using the flat of the blade. The art of machete fighting is nearly lost, my friend.”

“I can see that,” Leonard said.

The old man smiled.

When the bread was done it came out flat and blackened in spots. We put some real butter on it and had coffee. It wasn’t a gourmet meal, but it wasn’t bad either.

We sat around the table and talked about this and that, the weather, life, women. I didn’t mention Beatrice, of course, but from the way the old man looked at me, it was obvious he knew what his daughter and I had been doing. Once he stared at me long enough and hard enough I added too much sugar to my coffee.

When we finished all of that coffee, he brewed us more and we drank that, and by noon he had found a bottle of wine and was drinking heavily from that.

Neither Leonard nor I touched the wine.

About two o’clock Ferdinand passed out in his chair and Leonard and I put him in his bed, took off his shoes, and propped a pillow under his head.

“I like the old bastard,” Leonard said. “He tells good stories.”

“He’s worried,” I said. “He’s trying to put his mind on other things.”

“There you go worrying about other people’s problems again.”

“You said you like him.”

“I said I like him. I didn’t say I wanted to raise him. We get home, I’ll buy you your own old man. Better yet, you can take care of me. Hold my balls up while I wash.”

“That’ll be the day.”

We went back to the kitchen and got the last of the coffee. We had already gone through two pots, and now, with another cup of coffee poured up, I felt as if I might be able to levitate, in an agitated sort of way, of course.

There were a couple of chairs on the front porch, so we went out there and sipped our coffee. It was hot outside and the coffee made us sweat twice as bad.

We hadn’t been out there long when we saw a dust cloud coming from the south, a red clay swirl against a bright hot sky. Pretty soon, out of the cloud, came Beatrice in the van. When she braked to a stop, the dust continued on, as if it had disgorged her. It passed over the house and made us duck our heads and cough. When I looked up there was a coating of it over what remained of my coffee. I leaned out of my chair, past the edge of the porch, and poured it in the dirt.

Beatrice practically leaped from the car. Her hair was up. She wore jeans and an oversized red shirt with white deck shoes. There was a sweat line around her neck and sweat blooms under her arms. She saw us on the porch, sauntered over a little too casually.

“How are you this morning?” she asked.

We both answered in the affirmative.

“And you?” I said.

“Well enough. Are you ready to go into town?”

“I suppose we are. Maybe you could show us a store or two where we can buy a few things. We left some stuff at the other hotel, but we haven’t the inclination to go back for it.”

“Some bellhop is wearing Hap’s new underwear right now,” Leonard said.

“I will just check on my father, wash a little, change clothes, then we will go.”

She rushed inside quickly, as if she might burst into tears at any moment. I started to follow. Leonard took hold of my arm.

“Leave it be, buddy. It’s not your problem. You can’t solve everyone’s problems. Look at it this way. You can’t even solve your own.”

“Point,” I said. “Damn good point.”

A little later, when Beatrice had herself together, looking fresh in a blue blouse, she drove Leonard and me into town, to the hotel where I had rented us a room.

After Beatrice had gone up with us to see our room, which though not fancy was nice, I walked her back to her car.

She opened the door, said, “You have been very kind.”

“I have to say the same.”

“I have been loving, have I not?”

“You have.”

“No complaints?”

“No complaints,” I said. “You’ll give our best to your father?”

“Of course,” she said.

She got in the car, pulled the door to. The window was open, she leaned out of it.

“I think, in another time, things could have been different,” she said.

I wasn’t sure I wanted them to be that different. I liked her, but I didn’t love her. I loved Brett, goddamn me.

Still, I couldn’t help myself. “How did it go?”

“Go?”

“You know. With the men who wanted to rent your boat?”

“You don’t want to know,” she said, and I saw a tear well up in her eye. I started to push it, remembered Leonard’s advice.

“Whatever you say,” I said.

“Goodbye, Hap.”

“Goodbye, Beatrice.”

She drove away, and I thought that was the end of it.