Stretching her legs out on the bench, she dug the tube in the box again. After a moment, she offered it to me.
“I don’t know, Kat. I don’t think it’s safe.”
“We’re on the ocean, old man,” she said, raising her white sunglasses and winking. “What are you gonna run into?”
Before I could respond, she put the tube in my hand. “I promise, this won’t be like what you smoked before.”
I looked in the end of the little tube. The shredded gray-green pot didn’t even fill the tip. It looked like about the same amount that Wilson Carmichael had me smoke that one time. I’d been trying to infiltrate his group and had to do it to fit in. This was different. I wasn’t being forced.
“I don’t think so,” I said, pushing the tube back toward her.
“Jesse, there’s not enough in there to do much of anything. It’s just a taste. This weed is very mellow and will put you in touch with this boat like you’ve never been before. I promise you won’t get hooked or anything like that.”
Looking at the tube again, I reached over and took her lighter. I lit it just as she had and with the first small puff, I felt a hot ash hit my tongue. I spat the ash out and inhaled deeply, trying to make sure I got a lot of clean, salty air in my lungs at the same time. The only other time I’d done this, it was extremely harsh, and I’d felt like I was going to cough up a lung.
Exhaling, I felt like a wave of cool water washed over my face and head. I couldn’t help it; I smiled.
“See,” Kat said, putting the little tube away. “Half a bat is all it ever takes a newbie.”
The feeling was both intense and relaxing at the same time. Kind of like a shot of really good eighteen-year-old rum. I looked over at Kat, relaxing in a supine position with her arm draped across the cockpit combing. I remembered the first time I’d taken the helm of this boat. Charity had been relaxing in the exact same position.
“How long does it last?” I asked.
“Not long,” she said, not looking toward me. “Look out there over the bow. Let your eyes and mind drift toward the horizon. Feel the ride.”
Looking out over the foredeck, which was canted a few degrees off horizontal, I watched the horizon rise and fall, as Salty Dog rode up the shoulder of one glassy wave after another. Occasionally, the cleaving of a wave caused a mist of sparkling water to cascade out over the glassy water. The scene was hypnotic. It would be, even without the pot, I knew. But somehow, my mood was elevated, and the scenery of the deep, blue sea all around us, with puffy white clouds stark against the clear azure sky, seemed to take on a different character.
I began to feel the tiny pull and give of the wheel as we crested each wave and accelerated ever so slightly down from the crest. I felt like I was an integral part of the boat.
I smiled again, feeling the rising sun on the side of face and the taste of seawater on my lips. A broad reach and a following sea. A fine vessel beneath my feet and a pretty girl for company.
“I listened to you playing last night,” I said, my own voice sounding like someone else speaking. “You’re really good.”
Kat smiled, but kept her eyes on the far horizon. “I picked it up when I was little,” she said. “Dad played in a band.”
I noticed that she’d mentioned her father several times, but never her mother. I asked about her.
“She’s a stay-at-home mom; blond and very pretty. Dad’s seven years older than she is and calls her his trophy wife. I have a little brother, still at home. I left as soon as I turned eighteen.”
Marley began singing a song about skanking, another tune I was familiar with. When he sang about taking a lift, I nearly laughed. I knew that he’d died nearly twenty years ago. Kat probably hadn’t even started school then, and I’d been on my first tour in the Marine Corps. I guessed it was still island slang for getting high.
The math was suddenly hard. The view of the horizon over the bow, the neat clean lines of my new vessel, and the wind in my face were a distraction. She’d been on her own for six years, I guessed.
“Mind if I get some sun?” she asked.
I lost track of how long I’d been calculating her years alone, and how much money it would take to live without a job. “Sure,” I replied.
Kat rose from the bench and moved forward along the starboard side deck, one hand on the cable rail. I worried for a minute. We should both be wearing flotation and using safety harnesses attached to the jack line that encircled the cabin. My worry quickly dissolved as Kat reached the foremast and wiggled out of her shorts. She wore a bikini bottom under her shorts. Then she reached behind her back, tugged the strings of her top, and pulled it off over her head, dropping it and her shorts into the starboard storage box. Stepping quickly up onto the boom, Kat leaned back against the mainsail, facing the sun, now a good fifteen degrees above the horizon. It wasn’t hard to see why she had no tan lines.
At first, I was aghast. I couldn’t figure out her intention. My heart quickly slowed, my mind accepting her for what she seemed right at that moment. A young woman, enjoying life on her own terms.
I grinned as Marley began singing a pleading song that I’d also heard many times, asking someone to please not rock his boat.
And you should know, you should know by now, dat I like it like dis.
Improvise, adapt, and overcome. The mantra of the Corps. How does a middle-aged man adapt to a young, half-naked woman lying on his mainsail?
But really, what was there to adapt to? I looked beyond Kat at the horizon, felt the surge in the wheel when riding the face of a low roller, and could smell and taste the sea.
It all came together in a hypnotic display to all five senses. Six, if you counted the spirit. I could sense how those first mariners might have felt when leaving the safety of a harbor. The doubt and anxiety of venturing into the unknown. But the only half-naked women they took to sea were the figureheads on their bowsprits.
“That comfortable?” I shouted forward.
“Set the autopilot and come see for yourself!”
So, I did. Within a minute, I’d stripped off my shirt and joined her. I was never one for sunbathing. I get enough sun just being out in it most of the time, without seeking to intentionally deepen my tan.
Kat moved out on the boom a little farther, allowing me room nearer the mast. Once I was standing beside her, I relaxed, putting most of my weight on the sail. It felt kind of like laying in a hammock.
The wind passed over both of us, tugging at our hair and my shorts. We couldn’t see where the boat was going, but like she said, it was the ocean and nothing was around for miles.
“Chillaxed?” she asked, touching my forearm.
Somehow, the touch didn’t feel sexual at all, even with her half-naked, lounging on the sailcloth just inches to my right. I could feel the movement of the boat through my feet and all down my back and legs, resting against the mainsail. The constant movement of the sail felt like an all-over massage, lulling my mind away from any dread or apprehension.
“Perfectly appropriate word choice,” I replied, watching the horizon rise and fall with each roller we crossed.
My breathing had long since synched with Salty Dog’s motion. Occasionally, a wave would catch the bow as it was going downward and send a fine mist into the air, sweeping back and cooling my face and skin with its touch.
“I told you, old man.”
I didn’t take the comment as a dig or insult. I am old. And suddenly I realized that maybe it didn’t matter. Though I’d only met this young woman, I was thinking of her as nothing but a fellow traveler who just happened to be female and very liberated about herself.
That familiar feeling I’d had when I first looked at her in the light returned. I recalled running into a woman several years ago, someone I’d known all through my school years. As a kid, she’d been sort of gangly, all knees and elbows. She wore braces all t
hrough the fourth grade. She was a friendly girl—not ugly, but not pretty. She liked fishing, boating, and hanging out with the other kids in our neighborhood, mostly boys.
I’d been on emergency leave, home for Pap’s funeral. She came, as did most of the folks in our neighborhood, young and old. My eyes told me she’d been a late bloomer; she was drop-dead gorgeous. But, my mind still saw the gangly adolescent girl who liked to tell fart jokes and could out-fish most of the boys.
I looked over at Kat, with neither desire or embarrassment. She just seemed familiar somehow.
After about twenty minutes, I felt like it was time to get out of the sun and turn to the serious matter of sailing. My back was sweating, and the mellow feeling the pot had given me was beginning to wear off. I didn’t feel the need to repeat it. Nor did I discount the possibility.
“It’s herb,” Kat said, reading my thoughts, but not moving her head. “God put it on the Earth; it’s a part of the Earth and grows inside her. It draws all it needs from the Earth. How we use the things God gives is up to each of us, Jesse. If eyeglasses enhance failing vision, is using them wrong? The herb enhances your inner vision. So how could it possibly be a bad thing?”
“In moderation,” I said.
“Of course. Drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags. That’s from the Bible, you know.”
As I stepped down off the boom, my body suddenly felt leaden and heavy, as if I’d awakened from a long nap. I went back to the helm as Kat put her clothes back on.
Dropping down onto the bench beside me, she looked at the instrument panel. “Wow, almost two hours in the sun? That might have been a bit much. But it felt good, and morning light isn’t as strong as midday.”
“Two hours?” I said, startled. I looked down at the clock and GPS. We were twenty miles out of Nassau, nearly halfway to Chub Cay. I knew I hadn’t fallen asleep. I remembered the whole experience with perfect clarity. Yet, I’d lost over an hour of time. Or had it lost me?
In the cupholder, my sat-phone blinked that I had an incoming message. I picked it up.
Arrived. Leaving at first light. Hope you find what you’re searching for - Andrew
A rain squall arrived while we were still five miles out, moving in the same general direction. Not a howling storm, just the typical downpour associated with tropical and sub-tropical waters. As the sun heats a land mass, be it a continent or an island, it creates an updraft. The updraft pulls in cooler air from the sea, air heavily laden with moisture from evaporation. As the humid air rises into the atmosphere, pressure and temperature decrease, causing the vapor to condense into raindrops, which fall back to the ground, flow down a river, and back into the sea, to do it all over again. Wash, rinse, repeat.
The wind died to almost nothing, as fat raindrops pelted the deck and beat out a rhythm on the Bimini top. Kat and I were soaked to the skin by the time we got the sails down and the engine running. But it was a warm day, so I didn’t care. I’d been wet before, and so far I hadn’t drowned.
In Okinawa, I had a platoon sergeant who always said, “If it ain’t rainin’, we ain’t trainin’.” Sergeant Russ Livingston loved to play in the rain. So I just took it in stride, knowing that a fresh towel was right inside the cabin.
Surprisingly, Kat seemed to revel in the sudden downpour, leaving the relatively dry cockpit and dancing on the foredeck in the rain. She raised her face to the sky, like a kid trying to catch raindrops. I was beginning to think she was a bit nuts. But she was fun to be around, and an excellent sailor.
The crossing had been uneventful up to then, except for the pot and half-nude sunbathing. We’d eaten lunch under sail and talked about the pot experience and a variety of other things. Kat struck me as a very intelligent, though quirky, young lady. We’d listened to music from Victor’s CD collection, which contained quite a few artists Kat said were some of her trop-rock favorites. She’d even brought the old guitar up on deck to play along with the songs she knew. I found myself enjoying the stories the musicians sang about, stories of sailing, beaches, bars, and women. And I found I still loved sailing.
We finally idled into the anchorage with the rain still falling. Kat directed me past a few boats lying at anchor, toward a small building on stilts. It looked like there were slips for maybe twenty boats, and only a handful of those were occupied.
A man and woman walked out onto the pier, waving and directing us to a slip away from the other boats. Neither was wearing rain gear.
The man’s hair and beard were neatly trimmed. He was dressed only in red and black baggies hanging low on his hips. The woman wore shorts and a tank top, which was plastered to her skin by the rain. Her hair was dark blond and soaked, hanging loose around her face. Water dripped from the ends whenever she moved her head. Both were slim to the point of malnourishment, much like Kat. But the sinewy lines in the man’s abdomen and arms told me these were people who lived primarily from the sea. A very low-fat diet.
With the bow line in her hand, Kat stepped off the boat and into an embrace with her two friends. They quickly broke apart and helped get Salty Dog into the slip with practiced ease.
After shutting off the engine, I stepped down to the dock, Finn at my side. Finn’s mostly yellow lab, so the rain meant nothing to him at all.
The man came forward and offered his hand. When I took it, he pulled me in for a man-hug and a quick pat on the back. “Name’s Brayden, mate. Welcome to Chub.”
He was an Aussie, or Kiwi maybe. His attitude was one of genuine warmth and openness.
“Jesse,” I replied, as the woman stepped up and hugged me tightly.
“Thanks for bringing Kat out of the clutches of that den of vipers they call Nassau,” she said stepping back. “And the douche bag she’s been hanging with. I’m Macie; short for Mackenzie. Will you be staying over for a while?”
She was a friendly woman, probably in her early thirties. I detected a touch of a New England accent in her voice
“Not sure,” I replied. “At least for the night. Maybe two.”
“You can pay as you go here,” she said. “But don’t be surprised if a night or two doesn’t turn into a month. When I first came here, it was just to lay over for two days. That was two years ago. Is your dog good with other dogs?”
“He’s sometimes a little goofy,” I replied. “But he’s never hurt anything other than clams.”
“My dog’s running around here somewhere,” Macie said, reaching down to give Finn a scratch. “He’s a little old but loves to run and play.”
The rain abruptly stopped, the same way it had started. After a short moment, the sun came out, and steam immediately began to rise from the dock planks.
“Don’t like the weather on Chub?” Brayden said, raising his arms wide, palms up. “Just wait a few minutes.”
Finn whined and looked up at me.
“Go ahead,” I told him. “But stay close.”
He trotted toward shore ahead of us. Then, with his nose to the ground, he tore off toward a stand of trees behind the building, following a zigzag course.
I followed Kat and her friends as we walked toward the office. Kat was the younger of the three, but only by a handful of years. All three were within an inch in height, about five-seven. And all were probably within thirty pounds in weight, none over one-fifty.
The marina office was small, just a corner of a building that was also small. The rest of the building had shelves of stuff boaters needed, as well as a few canned and boxed foods. It was the only building for several hundred yards. Some scattered homes, raised high on stilted legs, were beyond the stand of trees Finn had run toward.
A chalkboard beside the counter showed the tides, predicted wind speed, and temperature for the day—but it was a day in June, more than half a year ago.
“The slip’s fifty dollars,” Macie said, drying her hands and face on a tow
el. She passed out more from beneath the counter. “Extra days are thirty a day for as long as you want, or one-fifty a week in advance, or if the bug sinks his teeth deep into you, four hundred a month. Mooring balls are fifty a month, and anchoring’s free. We don’t have any amenities, but that’s not why people come here.”
“Sounds reasonable,” I said, taking a small roll of bills from my pocket, and counting out four twenties. “What’s the main attraction?”
“Care for a beer, mate?” Brayden asked. “It’s close enough to five. We’re right on the north end of the TOTO. Big game fishing’s the name of the game.”
I noticed right away that I was already being accepted differently than I had been in other marinas and anchorages aboard the Revenge. Or maybe these folks were just friendlier. I knew billfish were the big trophy catch in the Tongue of the Ocean, but not until early summer. So, a bona-fide marlin fishing machine like Gaspar’s Revenge just wouldn’t be running around out here this time of year. Indeed, every boat I’d encountered was a sailboat or slow-moving trawler.
When summer arrived, this little marina would probably be full of boats just like the Revenge. Even then, I didn’t think the locals would be as open and hospitable to tourists and charter crews. This time of year, the only people around would be like Savannah: cruisers.
“Sure,” I replied, accepting the dripping Kalik that he pulled from a cooler. He passed out two more, before getting his own.
“Lessee, it’s Thursday, right?” Brayden asked Macie.
“Wednesday,” Kat corrected him.
“Better still! It’s lobster night.” He turned toward me. “A bunch of us will be getting together around a fire on the sand when the sun gets low. Cruisers and boat bums, mostly. Care to join us?”
“Don’t mind if I do,” I replied. “Who’s supplying the lobster?”
“Me and you, if you’re game, mate. Pick you up at your boat in twenty minutes, eh?”
“Sounds great,” I said, then turned toward Kat. “Want me to bring your bags up?”
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