Mama Gets Hitched

by Deborah Sharp

  “She’s eighty-six, Mace. At that age, anything is serious.”

  “I’ll ask Mama to add her name to the prayer list down at Abundant Forgiveness, Love and Charity Chapel.”

  “Thanks. Can’t hurt. I know a lot of the old ladies at Saint John Bosco in Little Havana have been lighting candles, too.”

  He shifted on the passenger seat. Tapped his fingers on one knee. “How much farther?”

  “We’re almost there. But if you need to take a whiz, I can pull over into the weeds.”

  His lip curled. “As inviting as that sounds, I don’t have to go. I’m just trying to remember where the fish camp is. There aren’t many landmarks out here. Everything looks the same.”

  “Unlike Miami, where all the strip malls and condos display such unique and interesting differences.”

  Now, why did I say that? Did I want to start a fight?

  “I think we’ve already established that Miami is evil and ugly—though millions of tourists a year might dispute that—and that Himmarshee is paradise. If you don’t mind snakes, bugs, and accents so thick no one can understand a word people up here are saying.”

  “Accents?” I raised an eyebrow. “At least we speak English!”

  “Marginally.”

  I thought of Carlos, with his precise diction and careful grooming, meeting up with Darryl, with his muddy bare feet and redneck growl. I couldn’t help it, I started to laugh.

  “Son, jest wait ’til we git to that camp,” I drawled. “You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.”

  Before long, the Jeep was rattling over the ruts in the dirt driveway. This time, I noticed that somebody had used the fish camp’s metal sign for target practice. Whoever had done it was a pretty good shot, too. Blue sky showed through a hole where the eyeball of a largemouth bass used to be.

  “Where’s the lake?” Carlos asked.

  “Can’t see it from here. The shoreline’s behind a dike, at least thirty feet tall. Two hurricanes in the 1920s killed a couple of thousand people out here, which made the government sit up and pay attention to flood control.”

  I dipped my chin toward the boat dock as we passed by. “You get into the lake by taking one of those boats and traveling the rim canal.”

  He frowned. “They don’t look very seaworthy.”

  “Well, nobody plans to take them to sea. This isn’t exactly ocean-fishing out here, Carlos. Most everybody at a camp like this one would just load in a cooler of beer and some bait and shove off.”

  As he cast another glance over his shoulder at the boats, I scanned the dock and the fish cleaning table. No sign of Darryl.

  As we approached the cabins, I felt a vibration through my left boot in the floor board of the Jeep. Rolling down my window, I got a blast of Rabe’s oldies rock. If the boy was going to indulge his inner head banger, he really should learn to balance the treble and the bass.

  Carlos grimaced and stuck a finger in his left ear. “¡Ay, Dios! What is that?”

  “Megadeth,” I answered. “Countdown to Extinction.”

  He shot me a skeptical look.

  “What can I say?” I shrugged. “I went through a brief arena rock phase in college.”

  Slash, the dog, barked from the porch. I could barely hear him over the music. Rabe stepped out of the door to Cabin No. 7, wiping his hands on a red mechanic’s rag. He leaned to turn down the boom box, which sat on the warped wooden floor of the cabin’s porch.

  I tooted my horn twice, and waved out the window. Rabe walked down the steps into the bright sun, squinting at us from under his worn straw cowboy hat. He gave a slight nod, and commanded the hound to stay.

  As Carlos and I got out of the Jeep, Rabe glanced over each shoulder. Then he plodded toward us across the weed-filled yard.

  I made quick introductions. As they shook hands, Carlos’ eyes narrowed, taking measure of the younger man. Rabe towered over him, but he had none of the chest-puffing posture of some big men. His face was blank; neither friendly nor hostile. If anything, he seemed a bit nervous, eyes darting from the camp’s entrance, to the cabins, to the boat dock.

  I wondered if that was leftover from childhood, when Rabe must always have worried about what corner Darryl would come around next.

  “I told Detective Martinez how you and I talked,” I said. “He’s very interested in finding your stepfather.”

  His gaze lit on Carlos’ eyes. “Yeah, that’s what I figured when I heard you were out here yesterday askin’ questions. I told Darryl you’d want to talk to him, and all. ’Bout an hour ago, though, he said he planned to go fishin’ off Osprey Bay Island. Said if you wanted to see him, you could take a boat and come on out there.”

  “Can we get there by car?”

  Rabe looked at me, local to local.

  “No,” he said slowly. “It’s an island. In the lake. You get there by boat.”

  I saw a flicker in Carlos’ eyes. Annoyance at being talked down to? Something else?

  “We’ll wait for him here,” he announced.

  Rabe shrugged. “Suit yourself. Be a long wait. Darryl usually don’t come in until close to sunset.”

  My watch said it was twenty-two minutes past noon.

  “I can’t stay here all day, Carlos. I’ve got work to do at the park. Plus, Mama will truss me up and shove me in the oven like a Thanksgiving turkey if I’m late for her bridal shower.”

  I thought about our agenda of shower games. Maybe sticking my head in the oven wasn’t a bad alternative.

  Carlos surveyed the boats next to the dock. “Are there life jackets?”

  Rabe and I exchanged a glance.

  “Yeah, we keep ’em under the seat up front. But the boats at that dock belong to guests. You’d be taking the camp’s boat. It’s pulled up over yonder next to the chickee hut, at the dock by the beach.”

  “A beach?” I said.

  “Yep. Unusual for these parts.” His voice swelled with pride. “We hauled in a bunch of sand and made a fake shoreline on the canal for when we have cookouts and such.”

  “Was that Darryl’s idea?” I asked.

  Rabe spit on the ground. “No way. My mom and I have been pretty much running this place. All Darryl does is drink, brawl, and fish.”

  Carlos pressed his lips together. Swallowed again. “Will the camp’s boat be any newer than those at the dock?”

  “Do you have a problem with boats?” I asked.

  “I don’t have a problem. I’m just not crazy about being on the water.”

  “You’re Cuban. You lived in Miami. And you don’t like the water?”

  “Not every Cuban comes to the United States on a raft, Mace. My family is from the interior, the island’s agricultural region. We were always cattle people, not coastal people.”

  Rabe dug into his pocket, and extracted a green tin of chewing tobacco. He offered some to Carlos, who declined the hospitable gesture.

  “Listen,” Rabe said, as he tucked a pinch beneath his bottom lip. “The boat’ll be fine. It gets a lot of use. Nobody’s gotten hurt yet.”

  “Always a first time,” Carlos grumbled.

  “For real, man.” Rabe’s grin revealed the dark tobacco staining his bottom teeth. “You’ll be fine.”

  Finally, Carlos nodded his assent.

  “Good, then.” Darryl’s stepson stuck his hands in his overall pockets and turned toward the beach. “Y’all can follow me.”

  Navigating slowly through a lock leading to Lake Okeechobee, I broke into the Gilligan’s Island theme song from behind the boat’s wheel: “Well, sit right down and hear a tale …”

  By the time I reached the verse about the ill-fated three-hour cruise, storm clouds had gathered on Carlos’ face.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Couldn’t resist.”

  As we hit open water, several moments passed in silence as I opened the throttle, familiarized myself with the give in the steering, and settled as comfortably as possible in the elevated captain’s chair behind the wheel. There was a big r
ip on the seat’s plastic upholstery, and I felt a damp spot from the soaked stuffing spreading across the butt of my work pants.

  The fish camp’s boat was a 16-foot fiberglass skiff, and only half as crappy as some of the vessels we’d seen at the dock. Carlos sat in the front, on the flat surface of the bow, facing me. I spotted a fish hawk pass overhead, fat prey squirming in its talons.

  “Better watch out.” I pointed skyward. “If that osprey drops his dinner, it might knock you out. Talk about your unidentified flying objects.”

  Carlos barely raised his eyes. Not even a chuckle. He sat stiffly, his fingertips touching a life vest next to him. There’d only been one vest in the hold. It was mildewed, ratty-looking, and faded by the sun from orange almost to white. Darryl apparently wasn’t big on strict compliance with Coast Guard safety standards. I’d handed the sole life jacket to Carlos.

  Frowning, he pinched it between two fingers and held it out for inspection. Even from the back of the boat, near the stern, I could smell the fish stink on it.

  “Just keep it within reach,” I’d told him. “I don’t think we’ll be hitting any icebergs.”

  Now, we were heading into a notoriously shallow area of the lake. I tilted the motor up, bringing the propeller closer to the surface and away from the sharp rocks and thick grasses that lurked below. The boat’s flat bottom was a blessing. When the lake was low, I’d seen many vessels with V-shaped hulls run aground in these waters.

  As soon as we were through the shallows, I lowered the prop and throttled up again. Carlos scanned the vast surface. “All I see is lake. Where’s this Ostrich Island?”

  “Osprey.” I bit back a smile. Outsiders! “It’s not much farther.”

  The motor purred. The boat might not look like much, but Rabe knew his way around an engine. Though ancient, the Evinrude seemed to be in tip-top shape. The breeze was picking up. Puffy white clouds skidded across a brilliant sky. The wind gave the lake a bit of a chop. The boat thudded over the waves, making for a bumpy ride.

  “If—you’d—slow—down—it might—be—a—little—smoother.” Carlos’ words stuttered out in time to the boat’s bounces.

  “If I slow down, we might not catch up to Darryl.”

  The boat pounded the water. I glanced at him. His face was white.

  “You don’t get sick, do you? This chop’s not much, but I know Marty gets seasick staring at a glass of water.”

  “I’m not sick.” He clamped his lips shut.

  “If you say so. But you might want to sit back here, where you can look forward. And if you do feel queasy at all, it helps to stare at a fixed point on the horizon.” I gestured to the far distance, where blue sky met the dark waters of the lake.

  “How—thud—do you find a fixed point—thud—when you feel like you’re strapped to a basketball—thud—in full dribble?”

  I looked at my watch. “We’re maybe fifteen to twenty minutes away.”

  “You didn’t tell me we’d be navigating the entire lake.”

  “Not even close. Lake Okeechobee is thirty miles from east to west; about the same from north to south. After Lake Michigan, it’s the second-biggest freshwater lake that lies entirely within the continental United States.”

  “Very impressive, professor, even though I’ve heard the stats before.” He turned his head right and then left. “It’s still too much water for me.”

  With an almost imperceptible shudder, he cast his eyes down to the deck.

  We were silent for a bit; me watching the compass on the console and the shapes of the clouds crowding the sky; Carlos apparently memorizing the squiggly lines running through the boat’s fiberglass finish.

  When the engine sputtered, his head jerked up. “What’s that?”

  It sputtered again and then coughed.

  “Crap,” I said. “It sounds like we’re out of gas.”

  He grabbed for the life vest.

  “No worries. I checked the second tank before we left. It’s full.” I shut off the motor. “It’ll just take a couple of minutes for me to change the fuel line to the full tank.”

  I was busy, tending to the tanks, pumping the gas, starting the engine to get us underway again.

  “Mace?” Carlos said.

  “Hmm?”

  “Is there supposed to be water back there, inside the boat?”

  “Well, a little water is normal. It might be rainwater from that storm a couple days ago. Or maybe some spray from the wake.”

  “I’m not talking about a little water. I’m talking about a lot.”

  I felt a tiny stab of fear. “C’mon over here and take the wheel. And don’t worry, Carlos. Everything’s fine.”

  A moment later, I’d revised that assessment. “Shit.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  I stooped at the transom, where earlier I’d seen the boat plug securely stuck into the drain hole when we set off from Darryl’s camp. Now, the plug was missing. When I stopped the boat to change the tanks, water had flooded in. It swirled now around my boots, soaking the toes.

  “We’ve taken on some water.” I tried to squeeze out all inflection, making it a simple declaration of fact. Neither good nor bad.

  “What?!” His voice rose. The boat lurched right as he jumped up from the seat, his shoes hitting a flooded deck. He stared for a long moment at the water eddying around his feet.

  “We’ll probably be all right as long as we keep moving,” I said. “The water should drain out.”

  I don’t think he even heard me. His breath was coming in ragged gasps.

  “This cannot be happening again.” Staring at the flooded deck, his eyes were huge; the color gone from his face.

  He stepped away from the wheel. I grabbed it. He moved to the bow, struggling to don the stinking life vest. The frayed strap with a clasp at the end fell apart in his hand. The fear in his eyes scared me. I’d never seen this man when he wasn’t in control of his emotions.

  “Hang on, Carlos. We need to keep moving.”

  I put a hand on his arm. He shook it off. And then he gave a short nod, almost to himself. He leaned down, removed a revolver from an ankle holster, and laid it carefully on the console.

  “You don’t understand. I cannot stay on this boat.”

  I had one hand on the wheel, my other arm reaching out to him as he stepped toward the bow. “Wait, Carlos … I …”

  I’d barely gotten out those words before he climbed up, shut his eyes, and crossed himself. Then he stepped over the side, dropping feet first into the dark waters of Lake Okeechobee.

  Carlos’ arms flailed. The unclasped life vest floated up, tight against his neck. Water splashed wildly. I cut the engine and stretched out on the bow, reaching a hand toward him.

  “Look at me!” I yelled. “Right here! Look at me.”

  Panicked, he paid no attention, just kept fighting the lake. The thrashing motion of his arms whipped up the water around him, like a hurricane’s surge. His head went under.

  I stood on the bow, wiggled out of my T-shirt and boots, and went in after him. It took just a moment or two to reach the spot where he’d gone down. I grabbed his shirt collar and pulled him back up, still fighting.

  “Carlos!”

  As he turned his head to the sound of my shout, his chin barely grazed the surface of the lake.

  “Stop struggling! You’re okay. Just stand up.”

  His brows drew together in a question. The windmill of his arms slowed. Realization slowly dawned.

  “The lake is shallow,” I said. “You’re less likely to drown out here than to get attacked by a gator. And with the way you’re splashing around, one of these big boys is going to mistake you for a distressed animal. He’ll make you his dinner.”

  Standing now, he untangled the vest from around his neck. A sheepish look crept across his face.

  “Walk around to the back of the boat with me. I’ll show you where to climb in.”

  “But the boat’s sinking.”

 
; “Not yet. But the longer we stay stopped in the water, the more likely that is. Even if it does sink, we’ll scuttle the piece of crap. We can probably wade all the way to shore.”

  I scanned the lake, saw no other boat traffic on this weekday. Where were the weekend anglers, the “bassholes,” when we needed them?

  “Good thing you didn’t jump in with your gun,” I said. “We can use it to scare away the gators.”

  Casting an uneasy glance over each shoulder, he hurried after me to the stern.

  “I guess I looked pretty stupid, jumping over.”

  I’d seen real terror in his eyes. Nothing stupid about that. “Not at all,” I said.

  Where had that fear of boats and his blinding panic come from? I wasn’t going to ask him. He’d tell me when he was ready.

  Once we were onboard, I quickly searched through a bin below the console. A bottle opener. Bug spray. An extra set of keys. A screwdriver. And then, success.

  “This is what we need.” I held up a spare plug. “As we get underway, bail as quickly as you can with that bait bucket. If we can get moving, the boat will angle up on plane, and the water should drain.”

  I started the engine as Carlos set to work. His confidence seemed to grow with each bucketful of water he tossed overboard. The lighter we got, the faster we went, until water streamed out through the open hole.

  “Can you navigate again, while I see if I can get the plug in?” I asked. “We’re headed back to the camp, so just keep the compass pointing east.”

  Grabbing the wheel with new assurance, he turned his face toward the sun. It seemed like he’d faced some awful fear, and was grateful to have survived to see daylight again.

  I leaned over the transom, felt for the drain hole, and worked the plug in with the heel of my hand. “I got it!” I finally yelled. “Hallelujah.”

  I saw Carlos’ shoulders relax. I was still soaked, and the rush of the wind felt cold. I stripped off my wet bra and was about to shrug back into my dry T-shirt, when he turned his head to say something. I couldn’t help but notice how his eyes flickered across my breasts. I quickly pulled my shirt over my body.

  He’d seen me naked before, of course. But for some reason I felt embarrassed. I found a nylon jacket under the bench seat, and tossed it to him.