Thin Slice of Life

Chapter 05

The next morning Charlie rubbed his eyes and wondered if the disjointed images rolling around in his head were just a lingering bad dream. The specter of Neddy’s soggy body being heaved onto a stretcher, the soaked shirt clinging to the folds in his doughy torso, stained by the blood, was still too vivid for comfort. Charlie vaguely remembered the honorable Senator standing in a pool of bright light talking to news reporters after the shooting. Hell of a party. He raised himself off of Johnny’s couch and searched the cabinet for some coffee. The weathered house on Rattlesnake Point was located about five miles from the harbor, perched out over the edge of Copano Bay on twelve-foot pilings. Johnny had bought it as a get-away house about a year before he moved back to the coast for good. The architecture of La Casa de Sweetwater was sort of a randomaccess affair. The spavined sofa protruded almost into the kitchen. What passed for a living room could easily have been mistaken for a garage—a short-block V-6 engine served as an end table by the couch. Fishing gear in various states of repair hung on the walls next to a grouping of outdated calendars from a Rockport Mexican food restaurant . One of the calendars featured Pancho Villa on a white stallion (and not a motorcycle, Charlie observed). Marine charts, a tattered CHAPTER 05 36 05| collection of John D. MacDonald paperbacks, and a well-thumbed copy of Heidegger’s Being and Time comprised the Sweetwater library. With coffee perking on the stovetop, Charlie wandered to the bathroom and stared at his unshaven face in the mirror. He stepped cautiously into the shower, and tried to remember if he’d attended other fancy garden parties where one of the guests was shot dead by a sniper. Nope, he thought. Last night was the first one. He dressed in a hurry and drove to Fulton Harbor, where he was relieved to find the Ramrod resting placidly in its boat slip. Bright red stripes outlined the cabin and the gunwales; the windows were framed in a jaunty blue. The hull and deck had recently been whitewashed with a fresh coat of paint and were blinding in the morning sun. Moored in the harbor among the drab Vietnamese bay boats, the Ramrod stood out like a parrotfish in an aquarium of mudcats. Raul was already on the boat coiling a stern line. “Buenos días, Raul. Is my brother up, yet?” “Hola, Charlie,” he replied with a toothy smile. His head still hadn’t grown to fit his two front teeth. “No, he was not here when I come. Maybe he is eating at the marina.” Charlie started to step onto the boat and then he paused. “Con permiso?” he asked. If the kid had been working as Johnny’s first mate, then he’d earned the courtesy. “Pase,” Raul answered shyly. Most of the boats that lined the docks were bay shrimpers with high bows, low decks and flat-bottom hulls, good for maneuvering in the shallow depths of the coastal waters. But the Ramrod was longer than most of the bay boats, fifty-eight feet in length with a shallow draft cypress V-hull designed to operate in both the bays and the open gulf water. When Charlie stepped onto the stern deck he looked around and whistled. “I’m impressed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Ramrod looking so spiffy. You want to give me a tour?” “Hokay, Charlie,” he said brightly. “The bank give Johnny the money to make the boat like this, but he say we make the money back in the golfo, no problem. I think we do it too,” he said over his shoulder. In the galley Charlie noticed a half-eaten loaf of Buttercrust bread and some dirty dishes in the sink. Rumpled sheets covered two of the bunks and a slicker and a pair of paint-splattered pants lay on the third. His father’s favorite gimme cap hung on a peg by the door, 37 |05 and next to it hung Johnny’s battered straw cowboy hat, bringing to Charlie’s mind the many trips out to blue water he had made with the two of them when he was younger. In the retouched landscape of his remembrance, the Sweetwater family at sea...