Captains Outrageous (9 page)

“It’s nicer than our home,” Beatrice said.

I felt bad, but didn’t know what to say, so let it go.

As we left the hotel, I said, “Why are you letting us stay tonight? I had the feeling you needed us out.”

“You are why. I thought maybe we do tonight what we did last night. As for why I want you out, well, I have personal reasons. They are not your fault.”

“I can live with that,” I said.

We wandered around for a while, but her father didn’t show at the dock. We finally went back to the café and bought some coffee and sat at a table and talked.

“Have you ever wanted something so bad, and you had it in your hand, and you let it slip away,” Beatrice said. “Just one decision, and everything changed.”

“Beatrice, it’s the story of my life.”

“I had my chance in the States. But I came back here to be a Mexican woman in the tradition of my mother. Why? I know better. Why did I do that?”

“Perhaps you were worried about your father?”

“I like to think so. I told you that last night. But it is more. It is like I am imprinted, and I keep doing the same thing. I cannot go backward now, not easily. I have squandered so much, so much time. I would like the big score, you know?”

“I know. I’ve tried that myself. It can happen, the big score. Win the lottery. Gamble and hit the jackpot. But most likely you don’t win the lottery, you don’t hit the jackpot. Slow and steady wins the race.”

“I am nearly thirty-five, and I have not begun my race. I ran it for a while, but in the wrong direction. Correct that. I ran in the right direction, but like an idiot I turned and came back the way I had run. Now I am at the starting line again. And I am tired, Hap.”

“I’m not trying to get into your life. I don’t know your life that well, Beatrice. But why not go back to the States? You’ve got the education. There are opportunities there. You said your father doesn’t expect you to be here. He’d understand. He’d want the best for you.”

“Too hard,” she said. “I would have to get more education to actually get a good job in archaeology. That takes money. I do not have money.”

“Work and earn money. Then take the courses you need.”

“Work at what?”

“You have enough education to get a job. At a small museum maybe.”

“It takes too long. I need the money right now, so I can take the classes. So I can have freedom. I am sick of having nothing, Hap. Physically sick.”

“Maybe we want too damn much,” I said.

“That could be,” Beatrice said. “But you know what? I want it just the same.”

14

L
ATE THAT AFTERNOON
the old man’s boat came in. We were at the dock waiting. When the boat arrived and was tied at the dock, the kid, José, jumped off, Spanish tumbling out his mouth so fast you could almost see the words.

“It is Father,” Beatrice said. “He has been hurt.”

We both rushed to the boat, climbed on board.

Ferdinand was lying on the bed in the boat cabin. His leg was bound up in white cloth and there was a lot of blood.

He and Beatrice spoke to one another in Spanish. When they finished, she sat beside him on the bed. I leaned against the door frame. The old man smiled at me.

“Señor. How are you today?”

“I’m good. But you’re not. What happened?”

“Stupid accident. I do this all my life, and now I do this stupid thing. I hooked a small shark. I brought it in, and in the process of hitting it in the head, it came off the hook and wiggled on the deck and bit my lower leg. It is not bad. It was a very little shark.”

“He cannot walk,” Beatrice said. “I consider that bad.”

“No, señor. It is not bad.”

“Bad enough. I hope you doctored it as well as you doctored my friend.”

“I stitched it up myself.”

Beatrice leaned over and looked at the bloody bandage. She started removing it.

“It is fine,” said the old man.

Beatrice let out her breath. “It is not fine. My heavens, Father. It is terrible. You need to see a doctor.”

Ferdinand spoke to her in Spanish.

She looked at me. “He says he cannot afford a doctor.”

“Do you know where one is?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s get him there.”

José had come back onto the boat. He looked in at the old man, his eyes wide. The old man spoke to him. The boy immediately began to unload their catch.

“José and his brothers will help sell it in the marketplace. Father will give them nearly half of it. They do not deserve half of it. Only the boy went out.”

“He works hard,” said Ferdinand. “His family is poor.”

Beatrice barked a laugh. It wasn’t a happy laugh.

“Father, you are something. Come, let us get you up from there.”

The doctor wasn’t home. I sat on the doctor’s porch with Ferdinand while Beatrice went to find him. It was nearly dark when she finally came back, an old man plodding along beside her.

He looked like something out of a Humphrey Bogart movie. He wore a white linen suit that looked as if he had slept in it. Scuffed black shoes run-down on the sides and a shirt that had been last washed during the Mexican Revolution, and then only because he had been caught out in the rain. He had salt-and-pepper hair and the front of it hung down on his forehead as if it were too ill to consider being combed.

I heard him call Ferdinand by name, then the rest of it was in Spanish, which left me out. They apparently knew each other well.

I helped the old man up. He was stiffer than before. As the doctor came to help me, I could smell liquor on his breath.

We got Ferdinand inside the house. There were clothes piled up and a couple of men’s magazines on the couch with naked señoritas on the cover. One was open to a centerfold and there was a German shepherd in the picture with a lady one could no longer describe as young. In fact, she looked as if she might have been more at home with a horse.

The doctor paused long enough to flip the magazine closed and toss it off the couch.

I glanced at Beatrice. She looked at me and shook her head. We sat Ferdinand on the couch. The doctor disappeared into the other room.

Ferdinand said, “They are not his magazines. He has a very crazy son. He is my friend’s shame. He lives here with his father.”

“The question is,” I said, “does the son have a German shepherd?”

“I do not think so.”

The doctor came back carrying a bag. He pulled up a chair in front of the couch, sat in it, carefully lifted the old man’s leg, placed the foot on the chair in front of him and began removing the bandages.

The injury was pretty bad. You could see where the old man had poured some kind of red stuff over the wound, and it wasn’t bleeding badly, just sort of oozing, but it was too deep and too wide for stitches, though the old man had tried.

The doctor clucked over it for a moment. He got a bottle of whiskey out of his bag and gave it to Ferdinand. Ferdinand unscrewed the cap, took a snort. The doctor took the bottle back, took a snort himself. He offered us some. Beatrice and I declined.

The doctor went away, came back with a pan of water. He went to work on the leg, cleaning it, snipping away the thread where the old man had tried to sew what couldn’t be sewed.

I went out on the front porch. The smell of the wound bothered me. I had smelled far too many wounds in my lifetime. Beatrice came with me.

She said, “He will be out of work now.”

“What about the kid, José? Or his brothers? Can’t they work for him? Help you out.”

“They would expect to be paid.”

“If you catch fish, pay them. If you don’t—”

She laughed. “It is so easy for you, is it not. Being an American. There is always money.”

“I don’t know what you think you know, honey, but one thing is for damn certain, I haven’t got any money. Leonard and I own a dime and we let each other carry it from time to time, but heaven forbid we should spend it.”

Beatrice shook her head. “My father owes money, you see. He has to make it back. He will pay the doctor from his catch. Give him fish. We need every fish to make every peso we can. Not only to live, but to pay back his debt.”

“He borrowed money?”

She looked at me with those beautiful, soulful dark eyes.

“He borrowed for me … It is not your business, Hap.”

“Very well,” I said.

She studied me for a moment, as if trying to make certain I wasn’t going to wrestle it out of her. When she decided I wasn’t, she told me anyway.

“He borrowed from a man who adds much interest. He borrowed so that I could go to the United States, to the university. He has been paying it off all along. And I, well, I did nothing with my time there.”

“You chose to come back. You could have done something with your education if you wanted.”

“Let me put it this way. One night I am in the U.S., and I am out with friends, and they order fish. And I am looking at the fish, and thinking, this is what my father does, and he is doing it every day so I can be here. I decided to come home, help him earn the money back. This was more important. I knew he would never pay it off. The debt would be there. It was right for me to assume the debt.”

“What about what you told me before? Being like your mother. Or feeling obligated to be that way.”

“That is part of it too, Hap. If I were smart, I would have got a job and helped pay off the debt. My degree would have helped do that. Instead, I come back and live like a peasant to pay off this big loan by helping him fish. What kind of thinking is that, if it is not the thinking of someone who believes they are trying too hard, and wrongly, to rise above their station.”

“If you’ll forgive me, Beatrice. It’s stupid thinking.”

“I know. But I do it just the same. Let me tell you why I want you to leave tomorrow. My father has a charter. A big important charter. Men who want to fish. They have agreed to go out three days. They will pay a lot for this. Far more than the cost to fish. They are rich Americans and my father has guaranteed them each a trophy fish. There is a place where there are plenty of great fish. My father knows it. If the fish are not there, we do not make as much. And I must be very kind to one of these men.”

“I don’t think I like the sound of that.”

“I am not yours, Hap.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. I don’t like the idea of any woman having to be nicer to a man than she wants to be.”

“I have met this man. He is not my favorite. But this money, it could pay off our debt to this other man I told you about.”

I was liking the sound of it less and less. But Beatrice was right. It was not my problem. And she was not my woman.

“What happens if you don’t find the fish?”

“This man my father owes. He is a man with much pride. More pride than the need for money. He can be unpleasant.”

“Jesus, Beatrice. Your father is in to a loan shark?”

“He is more than a shark. He is a school of sharks. One time a man owed him and did not pay, and this shark, Juan Miguel, he had the man killed, the body skinned, boiled, and sold his skeleton to a medical school.”

“That sounds like a story to me, Beatrice.”

“This is Mexico, Hap. Stories like that are real here. The final word is this. We owe him money. We are behind in our payments. He has threatened my father. He and his thugs.”

“Your father doesn’t seem worried.”

“He is worried. But he keeps it to himself. He will seem even more congenial now than before. It is his way of dealing with disaster. Tomorrow he will lose the big charter because of this, and then there will be no way to pay the money.”

“My God, how much could he owe?”

“In American money, it would be eighty thousand dollars.”

“Christ. A fishing trip, even if these guys catch ten trophy fish apiece, won’t pay for that.”

“But it will keep him at bay. We have managed to pay some of the debt already.”

“He loaned a fishing peasant eighty thousand dollars? He’s an old man. How would he think he’d ever pay that off?”

“The debt is his, then it passes to me. He pays what he can, and I continue to pay throughout my life. With interest, of course.”

“You should have stayed in the U.S.”

“Then they take it out on my father.”

“Then he should have come to stay with you.”

“It is his debt, and he feels obligated to pay it. It is not like for you, Hap. He could not just go to a bank and get a loan.”

“Hon, I couldn’t get a bank to loan me the time of day.”

She studied me carefully, to make sure I was serious. She sighed abruptly and looked off toward the ocean. I had the uncomfortable feeling she might be waiting for me to offer her money.

I said, “Seems to me it would still be worth sharing with José and his brothers. That would be the best way, wouldn’t it? Have them help you fish, pay as you go.”

“My father does not want to give away his place to fish. José and his brothers, they are good boys, but they would tell others. They work for whoever they have to work for. I do not blame them. But this place, my father needs to keep it secret.”

“If it’s so full of fish, why does he often go without fish? Today he didn’t come back with fish. Except the shark that bit him.”

Beatrice didn’t answer.

“Listen, Beatrice. I’m just an ol’ East Texas boy, but I’m not dumb. And I mean no disrespect, but what you’re telling me, it doesn’t add up. I hate to be one to talk about welshing on a debt, but in this case, where your life is in danger, why don’t you just run for it. Go to the States and forget it. Pay it back later if you feel you owe it. When you can.”

“You cannot run from Juan Miguel. Don’t worry, Hap. I have told you more than I should. Really, this is not your business.”

It never is, I thought.

We walked back into the main part of town and ordered some food for Leonard. They wrapped it in brown paper and put it in a sack. I went back to the doctor’s house. The doctor loaned the old man a pair of crutches, and he used them to go with us back to his boat.

Beatrice and I helped him secure it, then we made our way to their car, and Beatrice drove us to their place.

On the way, the old man talked very pleasantly to me. You would have thought nothing had happened to him. That this injury didn’t matter. He acted like someone eccentric and wealthy who didn’t worry about money.

Beatrice, on the other hand, was quiet. A cloud seemed to have descended over her. Or perhaps I should say a darker cloud. From the moment I met her there hung about her a grimy aura of disappointment, as if all her ambitions were living things that she had seen slaughtered.

At their place I checked on Leonard first thing. He said, “It’s about time you came back. Hell, I’m bored. I read the Vachss book. Great. I got up enough energy to look for more books I wanted to read, but there wasn’t much in English that interested me. Where’s Beatrice? The old man? What’s his name?”

“Ferdinand. By the way. He had an accident.”

“Accident? What kind of accident?”

I told Leonard all about it. Gave him the details of the day.

“I’ll be damned. Where is he?”

“With Beatrice in the kitchen. Fixing some food. I brought you some. I thought we’d be back a lot earlier. Sorry. Hope you weren’t too hungry. I was going to get you some vanilla cremes or wafers, but couldn’t find any. Actually, I didn’t look that hard.”

“Gee, thanks.”

I sat down on the edge of the bed and handed Leonard the grease-stained sack. Inside were burritos and tacos.

“Think you got enough?” Leonard said, peeking into the sack.

“I figured you’d be hungry.”

“You’re right. I ate the bread and cheese right away. Got bored. This smells great … What about us going home? You made a call, right?”

“Right. Go ahead, eat.”

“Something’s wrong? It always is, so why wouldn’t it be now.”

“I didn’t say that.”

While he ate, I said, “You know, I heard a joke the other day at the chicken plant.”

“Oh no. I don’t want to hear it. Your jokes suck, Hap. And that means things aren’t going well. You always try and soothe me with a joke. It only makes it worse. So just cut to the chase.”

“I didn’t say I had bad news.”

“But you do. I know you well enough to know something’s come up.”

“All right. I have some bad news.”

“I knew it.”

“Well, considering I have some bad news, you might want to hear my joke.”

“Just skip the joke and go straight to the news.”

“Then you’ll never hear this great cowboy and Indian joke.”

“I can see now you’re going to tell the joke. No matter what I say or do, short of killing you, you’re going to tell me this goddamn joke. Am I right?”

“I heard it from a fella out at the chicken plant.”