Scorpion in the Sea

by P. T. Deutermann

  The front bar of Hampton’s was where the tourists went; the back bar, separated from the main dining room by the kitchens, was reserved for locals, and the bartender, an enormous black man called Siam, made sure that this rule was observed. The day he had moved onto the houseboat, nearly a year and half ago, Mike had decided to check out the action at Hampton’s. He had gone into the tourist bar with Hooker on his shoulder. The hostess had been flustered by the bird, and especially after Hooker started up with his salty language. She had told Mike he had to leave because no pets were allowed in the restaurant. Mike had objected on general principles, and then Hooker helped things out by proclaiming a word which genuinely embarrassed the waitress at the top of his durable lungs. The waitress had called Siam, who doubled as bouncer. Upon discovering that the offending customer was almost as big as he was, and being even more intrigued by the parrot’s language, Siam had invited Mike to the back bar. He later told Mike he was curious as to the extent of the bird’s vocabulary, cursing being something of a fine art in Siam’s opinion. Siam and Hooker had compared notes on profanity apparently to Siam’s satisfaction. The bartender then tried to pet the parrot, who promptly took a chunk out of his hand, much to the delight of the regulars. Mike had been a local ever since. Thereafter Siam had great fun trying to induce the uninitiated to go down and pet Hooker on the head. He also kept a small, wooden box with a towel stuffed in it under the bar for those occasions when Hooker drank too much and passed out.

  Mike used the side entrance near the kitchen into Hampton’s, thereby avoiding the fancier front foyer. The back bar was a small, plain room, with only five booths along the water side, and a long bar with a steel foot rail made from the steam exhaust piping of the original ferry, and stools running down the length of the landward side. Most of the long wall on the waterway side was glass, which overlooked a railed deck, and a floating pontoon to which boats could tie up. Waterborne regulars could moor to the pontoon and come directly into the back bar for a beer if they wanted to. Behind and above the bar ran panels of mirrored glass, which let the serious drinkers enjoy the view outside without having to execute dangerous maneuvers on their barstools.

  Siam was polishing glasses and ignoring the one other customer when Mike came in. When he spotted Hooker, Siam got out the wooden box and slid it down the bar, and began mixing a gin and tonic for Mike, putting in extra lime. Hooker was partial to lime. Mike took a seat at the end of the bar, and waited for Mayfield. He wondered if he should call the ship, to make sure the shut down of the main plant was going all right. The Chief Engineer would stay aboard until fires were pulled under the two boilers and the ship was on shore power. Another good deal for the snipes, to stay aboard after everyone else went on liberty. He decided to give it another hour, so as not to appear that he was worried about what was going on in the ship, even though he usually was. Mayfield banged through the side door, and yelled for a beer. He spotted Mike and joined him at the end of the bar.

  “Hello, you ugly fuckin’ bird,” he rasped, scowling at Hooker.

  “Fuck your Mama,” squawked Hooker, aiming a bomb at Mayfield’s right boot. Mayfield shied his boot away at the last instant. He smelled of sweat, fish, bourbon and diesel oil in equal proportions.

  “Dirty little fucker,” he said. “Hey, Siam, this fucking bird just crapped on the deck, for Chrissakes. What kinda place you runnin’ here, anyway.”

  Siam just shook his head; he was not much for conversation. Mike had been letting Hooker suck on the gin and tonic for a few minutes, and the parrot was now rapidly developing a starboard list. A cocktail waitress came in from the front bar to get a steel tray of ice, saw the wobbly parrot staggering around the bar, and shook her head disapprovingly. Mike, figuring enough was enough, laid Hooker down in the towel box, where he promptly closed his eyes and passed out in a heap of feathers. Mayfield looked over into the box.

  “You’re gonna kill off that little fucker, he keeps drinkin’ like that,” said Mayfield,.

  “Hasn’t hurt you any, best I can see,” replied Mike.

  “I’ve been going to sea longer; toughens up your liver and lights. What’s happening with the fucking Navy these days? I thought I saw number 920 out there along the Stream the other day.”

  “You sure did. Some wiseass called in a report of seeing a submarine out there, and we were elected to go see. You don’t happen to know who that was, do you?”

  “Yeah, I do. It was Maxie Barr on the Brenda. He called me about it the other morning on the marine; him and me sailed in the Liberties in Willy Twice, so he figured I’d recognize a U-boat if I saw it. And he said it was a fucking U-boat, came up on the surface, sorta halfway up, and then went back down again. Scared the shit outa him.”

  “He called it a U-boat?”

  “I just said that, didn’t I? Yeah, he called it a U-boat. Said them fucking Nazis were back, and that he was gonna tell the Navy, get somebody out there to kick their asses.”

  Mike stared at his drink, shaking his head. It was almost dark outside; the lights in the bar were reflecting against the glass, dimming the silhouettes of the boats along the waterway. Siam eased down the bar.

  “Hit ’em again?” he asked, tipping his chin at their glasses.

  “Yeah,” said Mayfield. “But give this sailorboy a sody pop, so he stops getting his parrot fucked up. Lookit that bag a shit in there, that’s disgraceful.” Hooker opened one eye, yawned, and went back under.

  “Well, we went out there and spent the night killing fish with the sonar,” said Mike. “I think Maxie must be getting the DT’s or something. If he did see a submarine, then it was a diesel boat from that description. We don’t even own any more diesel boats.”

  “Them fuckin’ Russians, now, they got diesel boats, yeah?”

  “Yeah, but they don’t send diesel boats across the pond to fart around in U.S. waters—they might send one of their big nukes, but, man, you won’t ever see a nuke on the surface like that.”

  Mayfield nodded. “Well, he saw something out there; he was jibberin’ like a goddamn Portigee on that radio.”

  Siam brought their refills. The bar was starting to fill up, as the crewmen from the fishing boats gathered for some serious drinking. Mike didn’t need another drink, but it was Friday, and it was bad manners to refuse. He would now have to buy Mayfield a drink, so he slowed it down to make the next round a single.

  “Navy gonna keep looking?” asked Mayfield. His tone of voice was indifferent but his old eyes were serious as he looked sideways at Mike.

  Mike shook his head slowly. “Nope. We didn’t even file a report on it. If a Navy unit doesn’t make the sighting, it never happened.”

  “Shit. Just like the fuckin’ cops,” grumbled Mayfield. “Some asshole cuts you off on the road, you get his license, report it, cops give ya the same story. We don’t see, we can’t write it.”

  Mike agreed. “Well, that’s how it is. You catch that U-boat in your nets, bring his ass in, we’ll seize his butt and take all the credit.”

  He looked at Mayfield for an instant, and then both said, simultaneously, “Just like the cops.”

  They laughed. Mike finished his drink and ordered another beer for Mayfield, leaving money on the bar. He stood up, and picked up the parrot, cradling the inebriated bird in his left elbow.

  “You want a fish?” asked Mayfield, over his shoulder.

  “Sure.”

  “See Jack; he’s got some nice snappers in the chill box.”

  “Appreciate it, Cap. And look out for U-boats.”

  Mayfield finished off his second beer, and started in on the third. Wiping a line of foam off his upper lip, Mayfield belched loudly. “I’ll do her, Michael. Count on it.”

  Mike left the bar and headed back down the sand road along the commercial piers. He stopped by the Rosie III, where Jack, the cleanup man, was hosing down the after deck, blowing bits of fish, viscera, and seaweed from the nets through the limber holes along the deck. A few hundred s
eagulls swirled overhead in the spotlights. Jack pointed with his chin indicating that Mike should help himself. Mike went into the deckhouse to the ancient refrigerator that was secured to the bulkhead by flimsy looking chains, and picked out a nice one and a half pound red snapper, stuck his finger through its gills, and headed back out on deck to the gangway. Buddy handed him a plastic bag with a dozen large shrimps.

  “Kept too many for me to eat,” he yelled over the noise of the gulls.

  Mike thanked him, and carried his fish and bag of shrimp back to the marina, Hooker sleeping soundly in the crook of his arm. It was almost fully dark as he walked down the sand road toward the marina; a pair of tourists going towards the restaurant gave him a strange look.

  Back on board the Lucky Bag, he put Hooker in a duplicate of the box in the bar to sleep it off in the lounge, and cleaned the shrimp and fish in the galley. He walked back to the short ladder leading up to the back porch, where he turned on the gas grill set up on bricks. Returning to the galley, he put the cleaned shrimp in a glass plate and poured Catalina dressing over them; he brushed down the fish with olive oil. He removed a half loaf of old French bread and a bottle of Kendall Jackson Chardonnay from the refrigerator, uncorked it, grabbed a glass and the fish, and headed back out to the porch deck. He settled back in a deep rattan chair, waiting for the grill to heat, and enjoyed a glass of wine while he watched the boats go by in the dark.

  He picked up the phone and dialed the ship’s number and told the OOD to have the Command Duty Officer call him back. He sat back in the creaking chair, and sipped some wine. Maybe later he would slip down to one of the clubs along the waterway, see what was shaking. Or see if the big blonde next door had been serious; or maybe he would just eat his fish and hit the rack. A week at sea, with countless calls about contacts at night and ship exercises early in the morning, was taking more of a toll than it had when he was a Lieutenant. The phone rang, and the CDO gave him a status report on the plant. Mike dictated a wrapup message on the submarine search, which the CDO promised to have out that evening. When the grill was hot, he put the bread in one corner and then placed a well blackened cake rack criss-cross on top of the steel grill. He broiled the marinated shrimp for two minutes on one side, a minute on the other, before picking them off the grill. He then raised the grill, turned down the heat and put the snapper on.

  He sat back on the porch while the snapper slow roasted, and thought about the mythical submarine while snacking on the shrimp. A U-boat. Maxie had apparently used the term U-boat. Both Maxie and Chris Mayfield had served in the convoys during the big war; they would know what a U-boat was supposed to look like; Mayfield had told him that he had seen one on the surface after a destroyer had cracked it open with depth charges. He said it had looked like a gutted big fish rolling on the surface, all covered in red rust, and blowing diesel oil and bodies out of huge gash in her side before tipping up her bows and sliding out of sight. Mike knew that modern nuclear powered submarines didn’t look anything like that; even modern diesel-electrics tended to be streamlined and tail finned like the nukes. Except for the older Russian boats, which were, after all, copies of the last class the Nazis had put out in 1945 before their thousand year Reich derailed.

  He poured some more wine, went back to the lounge to check on Hooker, and came back out to the porch deck. He turned the snapper over. A U-boat. He had hoped to hear a vivid tale about a big something coming up out of the water in morning twilight, something a drunk or a near-sighted old man who had been up all night might feasibly confuse with a surfacing submarine. But if Maxie had called it a U-boat, then he had seen something else altogether.

  He retrieved the fish and the hot bread from the grill onto a wooden platter, broke out some lemon wedges and a doubtful looking tomato from the refrigerator, and returned to the table on the screened porch to have his dinner. The traffic on the river had thinned out by now, with only an occasional small boat putting by in the dark, the faint noise of its engine competing with the sound of bugs flying into the screen. He washed up after dinner, thought briefly about going out, and decided to call it a day instead. Definitely showing his age, he thought.

  TEN

  The Mayport Marina, Sunday, 13 April, evening

  Mike unlimbered himself from his cramped position on the pier up under the bow of the Lucky Bag, and began to gather up his painting materials. He had spent three hours attacking a section of paint along the waterline that had begun to peel. The section had started off being three feet long, and had grown, as such projects do, to a ten foot long scraping, sanding, undercoating, and finishing effort which ended up taking the entire afternoon.

  He was ready for a beer. The late afternoon sun was still hot, and he had the beginnings of a headache from the turpentine he was using to clean up. His hands were covered in paint, and his body glistened with sweat over the sunblock he used on his chest and back.

  He heard a low wolf whistle from across the pier. Looking over, he saw two guys in a sloop staring at someone at the end of the bulkhead dock. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he was surprised to see Diane Martinson standing at the top of the steps, some fifty feet away. Coming down the steps was her husband, the Chief of Staff. Diane was dressed in a tight, white skirt and sleeveless blouse, with some kind of colored scarf in her hair. The low angle of the sun illuminated more of her figure than she probably realized. She was wearing dark glasses, and was standing next to the gatepost at the top of the steps. She was fooling with something in her purse, oblivious to the interested looks she was attracting.

  Her husband walked gingerly across the float to the Lucky Bag, concentrating on where he was putting his feet. Mike stood there as he approached, feeling slightly uncomfortable dressed only in his bathing suit and sneakers. The Chief of Staff was decked out in a white linen summer suit, complete with boater. While many American men would have looked faintly ridiculous in such an outfit, Captain Martinson presented himself with sufficient style to carry it off. He paused about twenty feet from the Lucky Bag to turn around and wait for his wife. She gave him a long look, and then, with evident reluctance, started down the stairs to the float. Captain Martinson waited for her, and then together they made their way towards the houseboat. Martinson looked the Lucky Bag over as they approached.

  “So this is the famous houseboat, eh?” he said.

  “Yes, Sir,” replied Mike, glancing over Martinson’s shoulder at Diane.

  She was clearly uncomfortable, and Mike wondered if it had anything to do with his working uniform of the day. She seemed to be trying not to look at him. Having made daily use of the Goldsborough’s weight room for the past year and half, Mike knew he cut a manly enough figure, but he still sucked in his gut an inch or so. He wondered if she remembered their encounter in the doorway at the club. The Chief of Staff was saying something.

  “We were going to dinner at Hampton’s, and I thought I’d stop by to chat for just a second. Did you get to talk to any of the fishing people about that sub sighting report?”

  Mike put down his paintbrush, and picked up a rag to begin wiping his hands. “Yes, Sir, I did, although not to the guy who made the sighting—he’s still out there. From what Chris Mayfield tells me—he’s sort of the senior fishing boat skipper around here—the guy swears he saw a U-boat. He specifically used that term.”

  Diane was definitely looking right at him now; or maybe he was just imagining it; her eyes were hidden behind by the sunglasses.

  “A U-boat,” said Martinson, musingly. “Strange term to use, unless the individual is fairly well along in age.”

  “Maxie Barr is the Skipper who made the sighting. He’s probably Chris’ age, late sixties, maybe seventy. I guess he’s old enough to have seen a U-boat in the big war.”

  Diane was standing nervously behind her husband, looking out over the waterway now at the parade of boats. The two men in the sloop next door were staring openly at her, making no attempt to be discreet about it. Mike pulled himself back with
some effort to what Martinson was saying.

  “Well, if in fact he did see something, then we’re talking about a conventional boat, not a nuke,” reflected Martinson, looking thoughtfully out over the waterway.

  Then he became aware that his wife was fidgeting behind him. He frowned. He had asked her to accompany him to the houseboat but she had been strangely reluctant. Mike felt foolish standing there with more sweat than clothes on, his hands still covered in turpentine, as an awkward silence developed.

  “Diane, This is Commander, or rather, Captain Michael Montgomery, CO of Goldsborough. Michael, my wife, Diane.”

  Diane took off her sunglasses and stepped around her husband to nod at Mike.

  “Captain,” she said, quietly, looking not quite at his face.

  Mike smiled and looked at her directly, and suddenly her eyes flashed recognition. Mike had the feeling that she did remember him, but was trying to hide it.

  “Diane,” he said. “I’d shake hands, but—” He held up his paint covered hands.

  She gave him an awkward smile, but said nothing.

  “You’re rather famous amongst the destroyer Captains, Michael,” said Martinson. “Living in sybaritic splendor aboard this grand old boat. You must spend many an hour on maintenance, especially with a wooden hull.”

  “Yes, Sir. Chipping paint tends to dilute the splendor somewhat. Would you like a tour?”

  “J.W., we have to go; the reservations—” interjected Diane, looking over her shoulder at the restaurant in the distance as if it might escape.

  “I’m sure they’ll hold the table, Diane,” said Martinson. “Yes, I’d love to see it. If you don’t mind the intrusion, that is.”

  “No intrusion at all; it’s actually quite a comfortable home. C’mon aboard.”