Thin Slice of Life

Chapter 30

“How the hell did you get a shrimp boat through these shallows, Charlie?” asked Jake as he carefully maneuvered his Bertram over a shell bottom reef in Ayers Bay. “I’ve never seen the tide this high and I’m still skimming the bottom here.” Raul was perched on the bow intently studying the shoreline, hoping to be the first one to spot the outriggers of the Ramrod. Charlie leaned out over the boat’s flying bridge, scanning the surrounding marsh with binoculars and growing more despondent by the minute. For four hours they had been searching for the shrimp boat. Earlier that morning Marisol had dropped Charlie off at Jake’s boat in Rockport Harbor. He had agreed to let her use his truck so she insisted he take the stolen bicycle for transportation. “Try not to look suspicious,” she’d said with a forced smile. Their ardor of the previous night had cooled considerably and neither one of them knew quite what to say to each other. It had been an awkward morning. “Jake, I think the storm pushed half the water in San Antonio Bay through here,” Charlie replied. “The Queen Mary could have floated these bays.” CHAPTER 30 200 30| “Didn’t you say Bao’s crew boat went down just before you ran aground?” asked Jake. “Yeah. The best I can figure, that would’ve happened right back there somewhere,” he said, pointing to a spoil bank about a hundred yards behind them, “Near Snake Island. It must have gone down in the deep water in the Intracoastal. Otherwise, we should’ve seen it.” “Or somebody already salvaged it,” Jake suggested. “Maybe,” said Charlie. Jake guided his boat back into the Intracoastal channel and increased his speed. “One more pass, Charlie?” Charlie remained silent, not wanting to quit. A few minutes later Raul cried out excitedly from the bow. “Look Charlie, this is where we crawled, recuerdas? I remember the post with the white sign.” He pointed to a piling that poked out of the marsh at a 45-degree angle. A broken white board was bolted to the post, which currently served as a perch for a brown pelican. “I remember because I think, if the wind blow that post over, it blow us over for sure!” Raul said, laughing. Jake let his eyes follow the path that Charlie and the boy must have used to crawl to the observation tower that rose in the distance, barely visible, hundreds of yards away. What a horror that must have been, he thought. But Charlie wasn’t interested in reliving their hurricane ordeal; he looked the other direction, calculating where the shrimp boat would have run aground in the marsh before the storm forced him and Raul to abandon it. “Let’s anchor over there, Jake. At the mouth of that lake,” said Charlie. “I think it’s time to get our feet wet.” His voice sounded tentative; he was afraid of what they would find. But it was far worse than what Charlie had feared. They had expected a foundered and capsized—but salvageable—boat. But the Ramrod lay one hundred feet from the natural shoreline of Mustang Lake, a blackened husk resting on its side in the tall marsh grass. The metal outriggers, cable rigging and masts were scattered across the scorched remains, collapsed where the heat had weakened their supports. Trawling nets had melted into tar-like globs over the surface of the deck. A bitter, acrid smell filled the air. 201 |30 The sight of the burned-out wreck made Charlie physically sick. He felt violated as he looked at the ruins of the vessel into which his family had put so many thousands of hours of backbreaking work and so much—admit it, he thought—love. It was the last remaining tie to his family and he wasn’t prepared for the emotion that washed over him. The loss cut deep. “Jesus H. Christ,” mumbled Jake. Charlie tentatively poked around the boat, which had not yet cooled from the intense fire. Jake instinctively left him alone. After several minutes, Charlie motioned for Jake, who still gawked at the smoldering trawler, to come closer. “Check it out.” Several sets of footprints were imprinted in the mud around the boat. “Somebody was awfully interested in your boat, weren’t they?” Jake commented. His nostrils flared as he sniffed the air. “Gas...