Port Starbird (Storm Ketchum Adventures)

by Garrett Dennis

  "So," Kari said, "you want to talk about it?"

  "About what?"

  "Whatever it is you're really up to here." Smiling, she added, "Seemed like Don wasn't buyin' what you were sellin', and I don't think I do either."

  "You guys are too astute for me," he said with a weak smile of his own. "You're right, there's more to it than meets the eye, but it's a long story and I'd rather tell you another time."

  "Promise?" she asked. Ketch nodded assent. "Okay then, I'll wait. But not forever," she mockingly warned. "And hey - I can keep my trap shut if I have to, just so's you know."

  So, he'd have to tell her, too, and soon. But not tonight. It was apparent to him that she had her own problems and something was bothering her; so for what remained of the evening, as long as his eyes could stay open, instead of talking he'd listen - a highly underrated skill, and one he fortunately happened to possess.

  ~ ~ ~

  7. There's seldom a happy ending when people fall in love.

  Kari emptied the remaining wine into her glass and put her feet up. Ketch went into the house. The dog, bleary-eyed now, followed him in and stretched out on the rug in front of the wood-burning stove - which was of course not in use at the moment, but this had become his favorite spot during their first winter here, and he was always comfortable there. As smart as he was (for a dog), when he was hot he'd also lie under a ceiling fan whether or not it was on, which Ketch found amusing; but perhaps the dog was engaging in wishful thinking or thinking ahead, or indirectly making a request that Ketch was too dumb to recognize.

  He came back out with two bottles of water and some headache medicine and sat down across from Kari. "Where's Jack, gone in to bed?" she asked. "It's been, what, a little more than three years now, but I still miss my dog."

  "I know how that feels," Ketch said. "Have you ever thought of getting another one? I always think I never will again, but then somehow I always do."

  "I don't know, I probably don't really have time for one anymore. What's that you've got there?"

  "Medicine. After you finish that wine, you'd better drink all of this, and take at least a couple of these as well," he said, cracking open one of the water bottles for himself. "Otherwise you might be sorry in the morning."

  "Yes, doctor," she said, rolling her eyes. "You are a doctor, right? I seem to recall you mentionin' that one time. Doctor Ketchum..."

  "I am, but not the kind you'll wish you had in the morning if you don't listen to me."

  "Okay, okay." She rolled her eyes again. "So what's on your mind? Besides your little project, I mean. You were actin' funny today, when you came to the shop."

  "Really?" What had he done differently? And how did they always know? "Oh, nothing for you to worry about. What's up with you? You're the one who's cleaning out my wine cellar," he joked.

  "You have a wine cellar? Where? Oh, you're kiddin' with me, okay." She took another gulp of wine. "Well, what's not up with me? I'm almost forty years old and I have no family because I spend all my time on my business, which is on the ropes most of the time, and I'm almost forty and still livin' month-to-month... I can't afford to hire anybody to help at the shop - and by the way I appreciate it when you help me out more'n you know, so thank you for that." Another quick gulp. "So I have to be at the shop all the time, and I got some folks signed up for classes, so I'll be able to pay my rent and probably fix my car again, it's makin' a funny noise, and hopefully I'll sell some gear so I can eat and keep the lights on at night. I don't know what'll happen next month - or next winter when it gets slow again if things don't pick up soon. Maybe I'll have to get another job." She paused again and this time emptied the glass.

  "Plus I'm not seein' Mick anymore, which I know is no big loss, you don't have to tell me though I know you'd like to. I'm pretty sure he was cheatin' on me anyway." She reached for the water bottle. "Followin' orders, see?" she said with a thin smile, then sighed. "I'm sorry, I'm babblin' again. I shouldn't be dumpin' on y'all, it's bad enough I conned you into a free bunk for the night - and I drank up all your wine too, which you mightn't have realized but I know it was expensive, and that was real nice of you and thank you again for that. God, that was good at least." She took a deep breath and loudly exhaled. "So that's the story of me."

  Cheating? On this one, this intelligent, vivacious, giving, hard-working woman, and the way she looked in the glow of the fading torchlight? Ketch stole a look into her bright green eyes. How could anyone be cruel to those eyes?

  "Are you done?" he rhetorically inquired. "Well then," he counted on his fingers, "first of all, I'm your friend, and you don't have to apologize for anything. Second, you're welcome to stay here anytime you need to." Well, at least for a little while. "And third, Mick isn't worth your time and you deserve better. And fourth - well, never mind that. And fifth, I can cover for you at the shop sometimes when you need a break - all you have to do is ask." He stopped counting. "Does he even have a job now?"

  "Mick? Who knows?" She sipped some water and popped a couple of the tablets. "But who cares? You're right about him. He was mean sometimes too, especially when he'd been drinkin'. I'm done with him." After a short silence she asked, "So what was the fourth thing? See, I'm not as wasted as you thought I was," she said with a wan smile.

  "Oh, I forget. Nothing."

  "Oh no, you can't do that! I'm already bein' patient on the one thing, so y'all come on now, out with it!"

  "Okay, okay," Ketch smiled. "Well, I was just going to say that wasn't all of the wine, I have more. But not tonight!" he added, putting his hands up in a stop sign. She laughed. "It's getting late, and you have things to do tomorrow, as I recall," he continued. "Allow me to show you to your quarters, mademoiselle." He rose and crooked an elbow for her. She laughed again and took it and they went inside.

  She sat down hard on the guest bed. "You'd get tired of me if I stayed here too often," she said. "Yeah, I heard that part too." She hiccupped. "They all do, you know, sooner or later."

  "Now, that's enough of that," Ketch said as he went off to get her a tailed dress shirt in lieu of a nightgown, which he had none of on hand. Go figure... The dog came in to check on her, then trotted back out and into Ketch's bedroom.

  After he'd gotten her straightened away, Ketch retreated to his bedroom as well and prepared to retire for the night. The dog was already slumbering blissfully on his own overstuffed bed on the floor beside Ketch's bed.

  As tired as he now was, he found he couldn't sleep. He rolled over and reached for his e-reader on the nightstand, hoping that might make him sleepy - but it didn't work, so after a while he put it away and sat up and thought. If he remembered correctly, he'd left his laptop on the table by the recliner in the living room, rather than on his desk in that extra bedroom as he usually did. He slipped his robe on and padded out there as quietly as he could, and found he was right.

  He sat in the recliner in the dark and booted the laptop, and when it was ready he brought up a browser window and returned to a page he'd earlier bookmarked about eminent domain.

  There were apparently lawyers who specialized in eminent domain cases. He supposed some might think him foolish for not retaining one, but he strongly suspected doing so would just be a waste of time and money. When people like Bob Ingram set their minds on something, especially in the 'good-old-boy' type of political climate he currently resided in, it was probably pretty much a done deal.

  What if he tried to stall Ingram by contesting the proposed compensation? Ketch read that this tactic wouldn't delay the seizure, because North Carolina law allows a 'quick-take' procedure in which the recipient gets the title to the property as soon as all the papers are filed, even if there's a compensation issue to be resolved in court. So, he thought, when Ingram pushes the button, the title would probably transfer immediately. He could possibly stall by instead contesting the legality of the seizure - but if Ingram had friends in high places, as he surely must given what Ketch already knew, that wouldn't help either.
>
  Ketch hadn't heard of anyone else trying to use these tactics around here - but as he'd noted earlier, he didn't know if any of them had had to go through the eminent domain process; in fact, based on what he'd heard from the Captain, it sounded like they'd all evidently caved and sold, and probably after consulting with their expensive and useless attorneys. He thought about asking around the neighborhood to see how others had fared, but he didn't know his neighbors very well - not because he was reclusive, but again, rather because most of them were absentee owners and the people in the houses at this time of year were vacationers who came and went a week or two at a time. He didn't know who owned the boatyard, just that it was some out-of-town outfit. There was one person he could maybe talk to, the old guy with the grandfathered mini-horse farm around the bend that the Captain had mentioned; he couldn't recall the man's name, but they'd spoken before in passing. But the Captain said that fellow had agreed to sell.

  Ah, here was a link to North Carolina General Statutes 40A. Interesting - there were separate articles in the statute for public and private condemnors; now why would that be, if the Assembly supposedly didn't generally allow seizures for private development, as he'd earlier read? He sighed aloud - goddamn lawyers... But here was a glimmer of light in the darkness. It appeared that if Ingram operated as a private condemnor, there'd be meetings (plural) of county commissioners to be scheduled, where Ketch could appeal and air his grievances. Not that it would probably help in the final analysis, since said commissioners would undoubtedly have Ingram's tentacles pulling at them, but it could eat up some time. And if Ingram somehow went the public condemnor route, Ketch would have a hundred and twenty days to answer the declaration, after which it looked like maybe he could do something, but he couldn't discern what exactly. Shouldn't he also have a hundred and twenty days the other way as well? It didn't say so here. Maybe he should pay for an hour or two with a lawyer after all? He at least needed to know how long he'd have to finish the work on the house, beyond the week Ingram had given him today - if that even still held, after he'd antagonized the man. It was good that Mario and Len could start helping with the foam blocks sooner rather than later.

  Now he was getting sleepy. This was just the tip of an iceberg, there were truckloads of material here he could read, but that was enough for tonight. But wait, what if he agreed to sell after all? Closings certainly seemed to take more time than people generally desired, and could be made to take even more time than strictly necessary. In either case, sale or seizure, Ingram didn't really want the house, since he'd just be demolishing it, so Ketch's plan for floating away in it shouldn't present any more legal difficulties either way. In fact, it would probably save Ingram some money, damn it. Which reminded him, he should start doing some research on squatting rights, as well as marine codes - which shouldn't apply to him, though, since his house wouldn't be motorized and should thus not be considered a houseboat...

  But damn it all, he didn't need any of this. Why couldn't people just live their own lives and let other people be? It's too bad he wasn't living on a houseboat, he thought, then he could just drive the damned thing somewhere else, maybe park it right down at the boatyard - but no, not the Kinnakeet Boatyard, that was on the chopping block as well. And no, not 'the damned thing' - his house, his house, a place he loved and that was the epicenter of his and Jack's formerly idyllic existence.

  He also needed to think more about how to get the house into the water. Add a steel frame to protect the blocks and roll it into the water on a flatbed, or maybe on some logs? Push it with a truck, or pull it with a tugboat? Were there tugs with a shallow enough draft for this sound? He'd have to get all of the existing utilities disconnected, and if he wanted to actually live in the house, learn how to rig it with standalone utilities. He'd have to use solar panels and/or wind power or a generator for electricity, probably propane for cooking and heating, make sure the wiring was waterproof, install chemical or composting or incinerating toilets, collect rainwater...

  Yes, he had a lot of work to do - but he could certainly 'camp out' in the house for a while if necessary, and he knew there were resources he could tap for help and advice. Beyond the small floating cabins he'd seen, like the ones on Powell Lake in British Columbia, and the floating house everyone had seen in Sleepless in Seattle, these days there was literally a whole world of floating houses out there, both single- and multiple-story, and many that were bigger and fancier than most folks knew. There were hundreds of them in Seattle now, hundreds more in San Francisco and on the Mississippi River in Minnesota, thousands in Portland, Oregon, a luxury floating home community that formed a suburb of Amsterdam, near-shore communities where the docks served as roads and the floating houses had driveways with cars parked in them elsewhere in Europe, a floating city that was being planned in the Maldives... The houses could be prefabricated or stick-built, and they floated courtesy of log floats, solid styrofoam encased in rubber, foam-filled pontoons, positive concrete, concrete pontoons, concrete and foam, wood and foam, polyethylene shells with solid core polystyrene block molded inside (like the ones he'd bought), fiberglass and envirofloat, whatever that was...

  Not for the first time, he hoped he'd made the right decision with the option he'd chosen. The foam blocks weren't as expensive as many of the other options, and he'd thought they were the most expedient and easiest way for him to go, i.e., the most DIY-friendly, given his locale and situation, and most importantly he'd thought they would work; and the engineer at the company (who had assured Ketch he was ethical and had encouraged Ketch to get a second opinion if he didn't believe him, which Ketch had not done) had agreed. But he still wondered if he should have gone with pontoons, so he clicked on another of his bookmarks, a company that sold individual pontoons as well as pontoon boats, and reviewed the data he found there on buoyancy, sizes, and cost. He discovered that he'd need too many of them, they wouldn't provide as much buoyancy, and they'd be more expensive and harder to install - just as he had the last time he'd checked.

  Okay, enough already, time to shut down. One more thought occurred to him - would he have to make an effort to contact the media to cover the event? Probably not - he imagined they'd be coming to him, once they found out what he was up to. Either way, he'd make sure he got some attention somehow if he had to. Though he really did love the house, his main goal after all was not to save it, but rather to make a point. If all went well, floating his house and squatting in the sound would constitute a statement and hopefully a high-profile protest or demonstration against eminent domain abuse in North Carolina, resulting in publicity that Ingram and others like him would hopefully find unwelcome.

  With a feeling of contumacious self-satisfaction, Ketch was starting to close windows when he heard the padding of more feet on the floor. "Hey y'all," a soft voice floated across the room to him, and an apparition with a white shirt, a familiar face, and bed hair started to materialize in the dark behind the glow of the screen. "Couldn't sleep? I'm kinda restless myself." She parked herself on an arm of the recliner and squinted down at the laptop. "What are y'all lookin' at there, porn?" she innocently asked.

  "No! Pontoon boats," Ketch dissembled, acutely aware of her proximity. He scootched away from her a bit to give her a little more space.

  "Pontoon boats?" She laughed. "Are you serious? I never would've guessed that in a million years! I swear, you've got to be the only man I've ever known that'd be sittin' in the dark alone half-naked in the middle of the night lookin' at pontoon boats online! I swear..." She giggled some more, then calmed down. "What do you need one of them for?" she asked.

  "I don't," Ketch said, and closed the lid of the laptop and yawned. "What time is it?"

  "I don't know," she answered. "And we probably don't want to know. Hey, you want a drink?"

  "Yes, thanks, why not? There's some juice in the fridge."

  "You know, a pontoon boat might be handy in the sound for trainin' dives," she called from the kitchen. The dog wandered out
to see what was going on, sniffed the air, and took a look around. No food. He turned and wearily shuffled back to his bed.

  "Maybe. Most of the sound would be too shallow, so they'd have buoyancy problems, but I know a couple of twenty-five-foot holes. The visibility might still be too poor, though." Ketch started recalling his own certification dive, back when he'd first learned. That was over thirty years ago now, when he'd been on vacation one time down at Wrightsville Beach, several hours south of here...

  They'd gone out to a sunken tugboat in fifty feet of water about three miles offshore. It was a brutally hot day and he'd overheated while donning his gear. Sitting on the gunwale with his back to the water and sweating inside his old-fashioned rubber wet suit, he'd started to wonder what on earth had possessed him to do this crazy thing. There was no land in sight, and when he looked down behind him all he could see was murky green water. The others were waiting for him at the anchor line and he was starting to hyperventilate.

  He'd practiced the prescribed rear entry from the side of the pool, but the height was greater here and the thought of letting himself fall backward into that unknown environment suddenly held little appeal. That was when the boat captain, a kindly soul, had approached him and solved the problem.

  "Are you all right?" he'd asked. A silent nod. "You don't feel sick?" A shake of the head. "Let's check your gear one more time." After a moment, "Everything looks good. Put the regulator in your mouth. Good. Now put your hand over your mask." Nervous compliance. "You'll feel better when you get in the water." And then he'd given Ketch a good hard shove and sent him on his way.