A Pagan's Nightmare

by Ray Blackston

  “Catching a meal, man,” MC said, grimacing as he pulled hard on his pole.

  This was not a thorough enough answer for the Former Donald. He noted the lack of a captain. He noted the drift of the yacht. Then he licked his hand and pressed his hair flat, as if appearances mattered. “Are we outta fuel?”

  Lanny shook his head and helped MC to his feet. “Nope, just pausing to get some breakfast.”

  “How ‘bout we split the Reese’s in the fridge?”

  Though sweaty and preoccupied with his pole, MC used his head to point below deck. “I think our DJ buddy ate the Reese’s last night. I heard someone sneaking around in the kitchen ‘bout 4:00 a.m.”

  There was no more talking after that. MC had never fished in the ocean before, and he was stunned at the brute strength of whatever had bitten his chunk of O-positive mullet. He reared back and tugged on the pole. He tried to reel in the line but found its resistance staggering.

  Lanny reeled his own line out of the way, set his pole aside, and grabbed a gaff from beside the ice cooler. “You making any progress?”

  MC gritted his teeth and pulled. “Ain’t no fish getting the best of MC.”

  The Former Donald looked on amazed, not at the fishing but the fact that anyone would be up before 7:00 a.m., especially after stealing Castro’s yacht the previous night. The Former Donald was not much of a morning person. He worked the afternoon shift at the theme park, and never woke before 9:00 or 10:00.

  In a tangle of line and arms, MC and Lanny shouted instructions to each other. Then they reached over the stern with pole and gaff and hauled up something that very much resembled a shark. It flopped violently on the deck—until MC grabbed a block of ice from the freezer and smashed it on the fish’s head.

  With pride glistening on his young face, MC glanced up at the Former Donald. “How big you think this fish is?”

  The Former Donald estimated twenty pounds.

  Lanny nudged it with his foot and guessed sixteen.

  The fish flopped twice more. MC whopped it again with his ice brick.

  All three stood staring at the stunned fish until DJ Ned came up yawning from below deck. He walked back to the stern, eyed the catch, and muttered, “Twenty-one pounds, tops.”

  With an exaggerated frown, MC dismissed all guesses. He put his foot on the fish, posed like for a picture, and gave his personal estimate of ninety-seven pounds.

  Lanny found some scales in the tool locker and weighed the catch. “Eighteen and a half,” he said, turning the scales toward MC. “Enough for a few steaks, I’d say.”

  MC Deluxe, being from the inner city of Harlem, had little experience with Caribbean fish. “Urn, what exactly is that thing I just caught?”

  Ned yawned again before stooping to get a better look at the catch. “It’s a dogfish,” he said. “A type of shark… and it’s edible.”

  “I ain’t eatin’ no dogfish,” said MC. “My momma would never allow it.”

  Lanny put his arm around MC and spoke into his ear. “If it’s all we catch, then you’ll probably ask for seconds.”

  Three hours later, it was all they had caught.

  MC pulled his cold and stiffened dogfish from the cooler and held it up for all to see. “Don’t nobody tell me how to cook this fish. I can cook my own fish. And yes, I will share with everybody, even those of us who slept late. Even whoever it was who ate the Reese’s in the fridge. This is ‘cause I’m generous. And when I get my recording contract, I’ll still remember you little people. But right now, I gotta go play chef.” He gripped the tail of the dogfish and motioned for the others to clear the way. “Don’t nobody crowd me in the kitchen either. I get to cook my own fish my own way, not fried up and covered with onion rings like you southern guys do.”

  A hungry DJ Ned pointed toward the kitchen.“We don’t have any onion rings, MC. I looked.”

  “Still, I cook my own fish my own way.” With a firm grip on the tail, MC dragged the dogfish across the deck and hauled it to the yacht’s kitchen, which he was pleased to see contained a Jenn-Air range, a spice rack, and a set of expensive German cutlery.

  For two days they paralleled the Florida Coast, out of sight of land but not far from Boca Raton. Meals retrenched into sameness. At a rationed pace in the South Atlantic, they ate small portions of dogfish steak for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

  “I’m sick of dogfish,” said the Former Donald at the dinner table. “Can’t one of you guys catch a mangrove snapper? Perhaps a pompano?”

  He was strongly urged to hush—MC even pointed a fillet knife at him—and the men finished their meal in silence.

  After the meal, Lanny finally got his turn in the captain’s chair. He sat at the wheel alone, his mind solely on Miranda. He wanted her to be on this boat with him. Just the two of them, cruising the Caribbean and planning for happily-ever-after. For five hours he sat at the wheel and thought such thoughts. I’d be happy if we could just share a rowboat.

  It was only the cooler air of evening that awakened Lanny from his daydream. He summoned MC Deluxe to take over at the helm, and MC was more than happy to oblige.

  The gregarious rapper settled in to the chair, and the others gathered around him to discuss strategy. Land was still not visible, and soon a heated argument broke out over where to go ashore. They were now due east of Fort Pierce, Florida, some thirty miles off the coast.

  DJ Ned had insisted that Miami was the wrong choice—the first place authorities would be waiting. Ditto for the Keys. The Former Donald suggested they turn around and dock in Fort Lauderdale, reasoning that most of the rich folk were gone and so the city would be largely vacant. Plus, a yacht docking in Fort Lauderdale was quite common.

  “That’s still too close to Cuba,” Ned explained.

  Lanny said anywhere on Florida’s East Coast was fine with him. He just wanted to resume his search, to go look for clues among the retirement home and Bluewater Marina, maybe even return to Atlanta and look there.

  MC Deluxe turned from his captain’s chair. “But I wanna go all the way up the East Coast to Long Island. I can get to Harlem from there.”

  The disagreement continued into the red marble hot tub. Situated some twenty feet behind the captain’s chair, it was a nightly luxury for all aboard. To be able to peer out the back of the yacht while under the cover of an extended roof, to enjoy the smooth ride at sea along with soft ballads by a boy band, made for quite the memorable escape. Not a man on board had ever owned a hot tub. Not even DJ Ned, who could afford his own airplane.

  The calm seas put MC Deluxe in a better mood than his cohorts. While they sprawled in heated waters and defended their choices of where to go ashore, he turned from his captain duties and addressed them as one. “Do you guys realize that I’ve done almost everything for you since we escaped? Think about it. MC found the spare keys;MC bled on your mullet;MC caught you a dogfish;MC kilt the dogfish with a chunk of ice;MC cooked your dogfish steaks;MC even salt and peppered your dogfish. And now MC skippers you up the East Coast in his yacht. All this while you three Gilligans chill out in MC’s hot tub.”

  DJ Ned and the Former Donald kept their eyes shut and gave no reply.

  Lanny raised a hand from the tub and offered a thumbs-up. “You da man, MC.”

  Off and on for the next half hour the men argued about where to go ashore and what to do when they got there. One thing they all agreed upon—zealot-infested America was preferable to zealot-infested Cuba.

  More room to roam.

  So the foursome continued north, maintaining their distance at thirty miles offshore. They were soon due east of Daytona.

  Sometime after midnight, DJ Ned suggested Fernandina Beach, reminding all that the town was surrounded with rivers and estuaries and lots of marsh. “Plenty of waterways from which to sneak in and dock. Anybody got a problem with Fernandina Beach?” he asked the crew.

  Hungry again and tired of eating the same thing, everyone shook his head. Fernandina Beach it was.


  Around 2:00 a.m., Lanny went into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and noticed they were down to just one small chunk of steak. He returned to the hot tub and told the others of their situation. No one would admit to having eaten. Each man accused the other of eating more than his fair share, and so yet another argument broke out.

  The Former Donald was the worst. “Why can’t you guys catch anything?”

  Since the first morning at sea, no one had been able to nab another fish.

  Beyond them in the captain’s chair, MC Deluxe kept both hands on the chrome wheel, steering the vessel north through the warm Atlantic. After another hour at the helm he felt so comfortable in his role that he invented a new rap. He called it “I’m Da Skippuh,” and he rapped it to the stars, to the western Caribbean, anyone who cared to listen.

  “Back in the hood my homies stay proud.

  Their brother rock Cuba and he rock ‘em real loud.

  Nobody juke Harlem with the story I got—

  The night Young Deluxe stole Castro’s yacht.”

  For the chorus he turned and pointed at each man, his left hand still on the wheel, his knees bobbing to the beat. “I’m da Skippuh, yeah, yeah. I’m da Skippuh with my three Gilligans.”

  Lanny and the Former Donald clapped in mock approval. Then MC, back in his element, began the chorus again.

  And again.

  Oh, the repetition.

  At the fourth recital, Lanny and the Former Donald joined in.

  After the sixth, DJ Ned muttered he couldn’t take anymore and submerged himself in the hot tub.

  That’s when Lanny heard a siren echoing across the water.

  He scrambled out of the hot tub and stood at the railing and stared into the night.

  They were being chased.

  Dripping and scared and struggling to think, Lanny found a scope in the captain’s station. He peered behind the yacht and across dark seas.

  In the faint light from the quarter moon he saw them: Guards in black fatigues, ten of them perched on the bow of a Coast Guard cutter.

  And this time they had guns.

  21

  IN THEIR EXCITEMENT to steal the yacht, none of the four had remembered to change the name on the stern to the Cuban Conversion. Perhaps this would have changed the outcome. Perhaps not. After all, hiding a one-hundred ten-foot yacht that’s decorated primarily in Castro’s favorite color—red—is not as easy as one thinks.

  Although the Former Donald had conceived of the plan while white-washing Havana graffiti for the guards, he had failed to account for armed pursuers at sea. And behind them now, shouting through a bullhorn and brandishing rifles, were armed pursuers at sea.

  The Former Donald crouched with Lanny and DJ Ned behind the hot tub, afraid that shots would be fired any moment. Still at the helm, MC Deluxe pressed the throttle to full—which was no easy task, considering his body position. He too had dropped to his knees. He was now unable to see where he was steering but was nevertheless able to hold the wheel with his left hand and reach up for the throttle with his right. His shoulders began to cramp. It was like being on your knees on your kitchen floor and trying to wash dishes in the sink.

  “What now?” he shouted to the others.

  “Just go as fast as you can,” Lanny shouted back.

  “I’m at full throttle.”

  “Is there a fuller than full?”

  MC was about to reply when the bullhorn sounded.

  “BRINGETH THY VESSEL TO A STOP!” The words echoed across the ocean. “NOW!”

  MC glanced at Lanny, who turned to DJ Ned, who glared at the Former Donald and said, “What do we do now, O great planner of escapes?”

  The Former Donald appeared shocked that Ned could manage sarcasm at such a time, what with guards in black fatigues chasing them in a Coast Guard cutter, and Marvin the Apostle shouting through a bullhorn in the King James English.

  One thing was for sure—Fernandina Beach was out. While on a normal day it made for a fine place to sneak back into the continental U.S., it was not so good a port while being hotly pursued.

  At 4:05 a.m., MC Deluxe made a calculated decision not to stop. He turned the wheel slightly to the right and changed their bearings to north toward the coast of Georgia.

  That’s when the first bullet zipped overhead and into the night.

  “Just a warning shot over the stern,” said DJ Ned, trying to crouch his portly frame ever lower behind the hot tub.

  “I thought warning shots were always fired over the bow,” Lanny replied. His face was pressed against red marble, just above the Former Donald’s feet.

  Ned thought about this for a moment. “No, in Cuba, I think they fire over the stern.”

  The Former Donald, huddled between Ned and Lanny, his forehead on the floor, confirmed that in Cuba, warning shots were usually fired over the stern.

  But why was their vessel teetering to and fro? MC fought with the wheel, which all of a sudden had a mind of its own. The yacht rose high upon a wave and dropped heavily over the crest, causing Lanny to bite his lip. He spat saliva and blood. Wave after wave pounded the front and starboard sides. Rain began to fall. Then bigger rain. Then sheets of rain.

  Panic set in among the crew.

  Besides not accounting for the possibility of armed pursuers at sea, the Former Donald had also not considered the possibility of another August hurricane. “Didn’t anyone check the weather forecast before we left?” he asked the others.

  MC turned and frowned at the question.“Man, how could we check weather while locked in that dark room with all them prisoners who stank?”

  A huge wave slammed the starboard side and rocked the yacht. “Hurricane Hellacious,” said DJ Ned.

  “Actually,” said the Former Donald, “it would be named Hurricane Howard, although I’ll admit that it feels more like—”

  A second bullet split the air above the yacht. Ziiiing.

  Lanny was the only one who kept his senses. On his stomach he crawled around the hot tub and behind the captain’s quarters, to the stairs leading down to the stateroom. He disappeared below, then came back up two minutes later, still on his stomach.

  “Where’d you go?” DJ Ned whispered.

  Breathing hard, Lanny crawled back behind the hot tub. “To check the weather on Castro’s big-screen TV.”

  “And?”

  “And there’s a tropical storm, or maybe a tropical depression—I wasn’t clear on that part—east of Savannah, Georgia.”

  “And?”

  “And I heard the weather girl say ‘convection,’ ‘sub-tropical moisture,’ and ‘northwesterly movement.’ “

  “That means we’re heading right into it,” said the Former Donald, who, prior to his stint at the theme park, had flunked out of meteorology school.

  MC reached up and turned the wheel slightly to the right, then cut back on the throttle. The yacht rose high upon a wave and dropped hard. “Aw, man,” MC muttered to no one in particular. “We never had no hurricanes in Harlem. No warning shots neither.” The next wave lifted them higher than the last. “Where I come from, people shoot for real or they don’t shoot at all.”

  DJ Ned raised his bearded face from behind the hot tub to peer back at the Coast Guard cutter. The large waves and heavy rain had caused the cutter to fall farther behind, some two hundred yards perhaps. In addition, those same waves played havoc with the guards’ ability to aim their warning shots over the stern. The next shot wasn’t even close.

  While the waves pounded and the guards pursued, a third argument broke out aboard the yacht.

  “We gotta outrun ‘em,” Ned suggested.

  “But we’re down to our last eighth of a tank of fuel,” Lanny noted.

  “Just run us aground anywhere,” shouted the Former Donald, who feared drowning as much as bullets.

  MC felt seasick from all the ups and downs and lurching of the yacht. He rose from the floor for a moment and checked the electronic map above the steering wheel. “How about
Tybee Island, Georgia?”

  The crack of gunfire forced him back to the floor, hands covering his head.

  “Tybee Island sounds just fine,” said a young voice. But his was not the voice of any of the four.

  Lanny, the Former Donald, DJ Ned, and MC Deluxe all turned from behind the hot tub and the captain’s chair and glanced to the stairs leading up from below.

  DJ Ned was the first to recognize the young man. “Crackhead?”

  “It’s me, Ned.”

  “How did you—”

  Confused and frightened by the gunfire, the stringy haired Crack-head dropped to the floor. “While you guys were whitewashing graffiti the other night, I told the guards I was sick to my stomach. So when they told me to go relieve myself in an alley, I just started running toward the water. I dove in the ocean and swam down to the yacht. I must’ve climbed on board just before you guys did.”

  “Then you’re… a stowaway?”

  The resourceful Crackhead came crawling toward them. “I’ve been stowed away in the pink bedroom. In the closet with all the toys.”

  Ned nodded. He had rejected that room solely on the color scheme and had slept in the blue room instead. Then Ned thought back to the missing chunks of dogfish steak. “Did you eat those chunks of fish?”

  A fifth bullet zipped overhead, and everyone dove to the floor again. Crackhead crouched low behind the hot tub with the others. “Just three little pieces, Ned. I was starving.”

  DJ Ned tried to wrap himself in a ball. “The Reese’s?”

  “Ate that too… last night, I think.”

  “Man, you need a bath,” said Lanny.

  Crackhead sniffed his own underarm. “I was afraid that if I used the shower, someone would hear me. I didn’t know who was piloting the boat. . . until I heard someone rapping.”

  “That would be me,” MC said proudly, reaching up again for the wheel and throttle. “What you heard was my new single, titled ‘I’m Da Skippuh.’”

  A bullet pinged off the antennae above the captain’s quarters. MC immediately turned the yacht toward land. Through the rain and over the bow he saw a distant lighthouse.