The Life and Times of Innis E. Coxman (23 page)

The
window to execute this maneuver is very small. Just because the bow is flush
one second doesn’t mean it’ll stay that way for two. Currents and wind both
play a hand in how long the Gully of Death remains closed. I’ve seen a couple
of guys fall and get crushed between boat and barge. Either that, or they were
swept away by the current. Both demises are tragic and ugly.

The
ropes we used for tying the barges together were an inch-and-a-half in diameter
and up to fifty feet in length. Big, thick marine ropes. And I’m not going to
sugarcoat it, good people, the things were goddamn cumbersome. Your body’s
equilibrium is off with just one coiled around a shoulder. With two, imbalance
becomes less of a concern, though you still have to walk up stairs and jump to
a fucking barge with around a hundred pounds of extra weight. I was strong, and
heaving two ropes had never been an issue for me. So much so, in fact, that at
the last minute I decided to carry three so I wouldn’t have to make another
trip to the boat deck. My cockiness directly contributed to my upcoming
dilemma, though it was mostly a drunk tugboat captain.

After
ascending the steps to their apex, I was ready to jump. My partner had already
made his leap of faith. I was braced to the pole, steadying against the boat’s
teeter-totter motions. Once everything was in place, I signaled to the skipper
that I was going aboard. He signaled a “Go” and I began to step across. Just
then, I heard the sonofabitch gun it so the port side—my side—drifted away from
the barge. For an instant, I looked like a flag of fear, my left arm and leg
extended outward, perched precariously over the Mississippi River with the tips
of my right fingers barely clinging to the pole and the toes of my right foot
on the platform. Had I let go right then, I would’ve plunged into the red,
churning water. The third rope hanging over my right shoulder provided enough
centrifugal force to swing my body eighty degrees inward to the boat. Before I
knew what’d happened, three-hundred-and-thirty pounds of screaming organ donor
were dangling over the winch and bow rail.

I
was screwed, man. Falling from the platform was imminent, for my fingertips
were slipping from the pole. I had milliseconds to make a choice: a) release
the pole and land on the rail, possibly breaking every bone on my right side,
or b) release the pole and land on a tugboat winch,
definitely
breaking
every bone on my right side, as well as my neck, brain, spirit, and rest of my
body. The former seemed a better option.

As
the bumper sticker says, I Let Go and Let God.

***

I
don’t want to expound too much on the impact. I mean, what do you think it felt
like? It sucked. But if you’re parched for a description, let’s say it was
equivalent to a gang of tweaking biker bitches clubbing me with molten sledge
hammers.

I’d
like to focus primarily on the grace with which I careened toward the deck. I
have to tell the truth—the fall itself was mystical. Magical. Fantastical,
even. I felt like a buzzard swooping down to snatch a lone bunny who’d strayed
from the family, like a rider on the world’s coolest roller coaster—only
without the benefits of a cart, handrails, or motorized tracks to foster a
sense of protection. If I’d had the presence of mind to do it, I would’ve
screamed “FUCK YEEEEEAAAAAHHHH!” on the way down. But visions of death and
paralysis filled my mind.

And
it was a gusty silence.

***

I
didn’t black out. When I tried to stand, I wished I had.

When
I gathered my wits, the first thing I saw was the huge winch just inches from my
face. I also discovered that I was alone. Neither the captain nor my
sex-offending coworker had seen a fucking thing. I later learned that the
boat’s operator was sipping his Johnnie Walker Red Label during my descent. The
other deckhand had been three barges over.

I
did a push-up from the moldy deck and collapsed from pain. The throbbing on the
right side of my body spread to my left. It was so intense I thought that every
bone, from shoulder to foot, was a powdery mass swimming in chunks of torn
muscle. But subsequent x-rays showed that I was whole inside. No fractures. Not
even
one.
How I didn’t break anything is still an unsolvable miracle to
this day, though I’m not one to kick a gift horse in the mouth.

My
second attempt to stand proved successful. Forcing a painful
walk
hobble
to the “house”—the center of the craft where the kitchen, sleeping quarters,
etc., are located—I slowly made my way up two flights of stairs to the
wheelhouse and found that sorry, no-good, negligent bastard of a boozehound leaned
back in his chair with his silver flask tipped at high altitude.

“What
in the
hell
are you doing drinking, you fucking lush?!”

He
jumped in his captain’s chair when I yelled, dropping his flask along with any
acceptable explanation for his heedlessness.

“You
gunned it and yanked the boat away when I was stepping off! You goddamned
seafaring
hag!!”
I wish I had a recording of the profanity that fell
from my normally pious tongue. I think I even made up some shit.

After
my tirade, he said, “Damn, man! What you mean you fell from the platform?!
There’s no
way
you did that, man! You’d be dead right now!”

“You
loopy fuckin’ coonass! Look!” I angrily stripped down to my cock-and-balls to
show that sixty-something barfly the hemisphere of my body that’d started to
turn every hue of black, purple, and sickly blue. Standing in the wheelhouse in
all my birthday glory, the skipper’s disbelief was nullified and he ceased his
protestations.

I
told that sonofabitch to have a pot of coffee. I was done.

“Take
me back to the office, motherfucker! I’m done!”

Fuck
‘em. I was done.  

I
half walked, half fell back down the stairs to my cabin and assessed the damage
in a mirror. The scent of freeze-dried Taster’s Choice soon wafted from the kitchen
below. Shortly thereafter, I felt the boat reversing away from the barge. When
the date-rapist came to offer me a cup of coffee—
which I flatly refused
—he
said that El Capitan was sitting at the controls looking like a little boy
who’d gotten a spanking in front of his friends.

That
souse didn’t know it, but his real ass whipping was yet to come.

***

“You
want us to do
what?!
”

“I
want you to pay for my tires, my hotel room, and every meal I eat while I
convalesce, Lonnie. Do it, or I’ll sue your fuckin’ tits off for letting this
drunk asshole operate a
tugboat!
”

It
was two days after we’d moored. We were in Lonnie’s office—me, the rapist, the
captain, and Langerhand. After a visit to the company doctor to confirm the
extent of my injuries, I was given crutches by his nurse and pertinent
information from a battle-scarred first mate in the company. Apparently, the
captain was known as an alcoholic who went out every hitch with a few bottles.
He’d been doing it for years, but this was the first time his haphazardness
ever resulted in an incident. Thank the Creator, I wasn’t dead. My biggest
boo-boo was a caboodle of busted blood vessels on the flank of my right thigh
running to my knee. It looked like a huge skin sack floating between my junk
and asscheek. The doc said my tissues would absorb the fluid over time.

I’ll
take that over “mineral analysis of the Mississippi River bed” any day of the
week.

If
you sue a boat or oil rig company, you better stick them for every dime you can
get. You’re blackballed throughout the industry and no one will ever hire you
again. I didn’t want to go that route because I didn’t know what my future had
in store; I may have needed a job on the water down the road. Since there
wouldn’t be any permanent damage to my sensitive person, I felt no need to
pursue legal action, provided Lonnie acquiesced to my reasonable demands. Much
to my dissatisfaction, they were met with a globular pair of hairy, mooning
buttcheeks.

“Coxman,
we’re not paying for a fuckin’ thing. Especially tires and a hotel room. What
are you, nuts? That’s
your
problem. As for the accident, this is a
clear-cut case of Workman’s Comp if I ever saw one. You want to sue, then be my
guest. But I’m gonna warn you, you won’t get far. We’re not in the habit of rolling
over for every cheap-jack deckhand who thinks he can steamroll-”

***

“Lonnie,
you’ll give this man his tires, a hotel room, meals, any medical care he needs,
and the cleanest whore in town if he wants one,
all
at company expense.
Do you hear me, boy?” Four heads turned in unison toward the grizzly voice.

It
was the Captain at the door of Lonnie’s office.
The
Captain. As in
owner-of-the-company Captain. I’d never met him before, and he looked just like
what one would imagine a salty seadog to resemble, from his wild, snow-white
hair to his scuffed, brown loafers. His weathered face had the bleached
whiskers of all old men. He had on a blue newsie hat that looked like it’d
delivered the first written text. A rumpled, green flannel shirt covered his
top, and oil-stained khakis were barely hanging on from a scrap of tattered
boat rope fed through the belt loops. All this, despite the man having enough
money to bitch slap a Rockefeller’s bank roll. He was elderly, but his gangly
six-six frame stooped only slightly to lean on his beechwood sword cane. He
filled up the entire doorway, an imposing figure to the youngest of men.  

Jesus
Christ, he was beautiful.

Without
waiting for a response from anyone, he pointed his cane at the other captain like
an M1 Garand. “Jarvis, you’re fired. I’ve let you get away with drinking on
your hitches for years because you only did it at night. Now you’re drinking
when you’re behind the wheel, too. You could’ve killed this man. And if you
think you’re going to leave here and go
somewhere’s else
,
think again. When they call here for a reference—and they
will
call—I’ll
tell them everything. Simply firing you is the biggest favor I’ll ever do for
you. I want you to put in for your retirement by the end of the week. Now get
the hell out of this office.” He was twisting the knife when he said the bit
about putting in for retirement by the “end of the week.”

It
was Friday morning.

Without
an argument, the lush scurried from the office. The gay rapist took the hint
and went with him. The Captain hadn’t given them much room to walk through the
doorway so they had to slink by. I was still sitting in the chair across from
Lonnie’s desk when he spoke to me.

“Innis,
I heard what happened. I’m truly sorry about everything. Are you alright, son?”

He
had the kind of presence that leaves mere mortals gobsmacked with amazement.
Once I knew I could speak without stammering, I answered him.

“Uh,
yes, sir. I’m fine. Thank you for asking.”

“You’re
very welcome. What did the doctor say when you went to see him?”

“That
there aren’t any broken bones, no internal injuries. He said I should heal
pretty quickly.”

“That’s
good. Now listen, Innis”—shuffling to the other chair in front of Lonnie’s desk
for a seat—“you’re a man. You know how things work. I’m not going to lie to
you. With the situation as it is, you could sue our pants off. You wouldn’t be
able to take everything we’ve built—I’ve got an army of lawyers who won’t let
it happen—but you could definitely make a serious dent. The publicity alone
would be enough to hurt us. Is there anything I can do for you to keep this
from happening?”

For
a split second I thought about sticking it to him. But save for allowing his
buddy to work on a boat three sheets to the wind for God knows how many years,
he wasn’t responsible for any of it.

“Well,
sir, I’m not gonna be able to work for a while and I’ll need some money to tide
me over until then. Not a boatload, just a bit.”

He
pulled a folded check from the front pocket of his flannel shirt. It had a
company letterhead. “Will this amount do?”

“Hell
yes it will!”
Clear throat and tame your erection.
“Yes, sir. That’s
considerably more than I had in mind, truth be told. Thanks, Captain.”

“No
problem.” He laid both gnarled hands atop the cane that stood between his legs,
eyeing me shrewdly from under white, bushy eyebrows. “Now, would you be willing
to sign something saying that you’ve agreed not to file a lawsuit? There’ll be
a clause in there allowing payment for medical treatment now and for any future
problems arising from this ordeal.”

“Yes,
sir. That seems fair.”

“Good.
Thank you, Innis. Thank you very much. And I’m sorry. I should’ve gotten rid of
Jarvis years ago. But you know how it is with a worthless brother-in-law.”

He
got up to leave, telling me he’d arranged for a suite at a hotel, dispensing a
thousand apologies as he meandered to the door. When he was almost out of the
office, his crickety frame did an about-face.