Wreckers' Key (3 page)

Okay, so you’ve been thinking about getting out of the boat business, but listen to yourself. What else do you think you could do?

I started to stroll back toward the dinghy dock on the waterfront, thinking I might stop off at the Schooner Wharf Bar for a cold one before heading back out to the boat.

Paint. That’s what I really wanted to do. Like my mother. She had been a fairly successful watercolor artist before she died. We spent many happy hours standing in front of the easel together, her warm body pressed to my back, her hand guiding mine.
Yes, that’s it. Well done. You've really got a talent for this, darling.
Her work still graced the walls of some of the most prominent homes in Fort Lauderdale from the days when the galleries sought her work. And now I’d been invited to enter several paintings in the prestigious Las Olas Art Show, and at least one gallery was hinting at wanting to show my work. I knew the statistics, the very small number of people who actually made a living as artists, but maybe if I sold
Gorda
, I could use the money to take a year off just to paint. Just to see if I really had it.

“Seychelle?”

I turned my head in the direction of the distant shout. At first I didn’t see anyone. Then, far down one of the Schooner Wharf piers, I saw a man stepping off the schooner I’d been admiring just a few minutes before. He came trotting up the dock toward me with an incredulous look on his face.

“Seychelle Sullivan? Is that really you?”

Ill

I was pretty sure I would have remembered this guy if I’d ever met him before. The fabric of his white T-shirt was stretched tight across his broad chest, and where the sleeves of the shirt had been cut off, his tanned biceps bulged as he half ran toward me, waving. His slim hips were encased in cargo shorts, and his thick brown hair was streaked with strands of sun-bleached gold. All in all, I was figuring it was my lucky day that he was running toward me, whoever the hell he was.

My face must have shown my confusion. He stopped about five feet away from me and smiled. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

“Um, no. Are you sure we’ve met?” There was something about his eyes that was ringing bells somewhere deep in the recesses of my brain, but I couldn’t nail down the connections.

He opened his mouth wide and laughed. His teeth were whiter than a puppy’s and the look he was giving me, enthusiastically waiting to see if I would come up with his name, made me think that if he’d had a tail, it would have been wagging.

He dropped his head to his chest for a few seconds, as though giving up. Then he looked up, showing off those gorgeous teeth again, and said, “Ben. Remember? From high school? Ben Baker?”

“Benjamin Baker?” I said, my voice rising nearly an octave on his last name. “Oh my God, Glub? Have you ever changed!” When I’d called him his old childhood nickname, he’d dropped his eyes for a moment and his dazzling smile dimmed by just a few watts. I reached out for his shoulders and held him at arm’s length. I knew I was babbling, but I couldn’t believe it. “Look at you. Oh my God. You’re gorgeous!”

As I walked around him, surveying the transformation from head to bare feet, he cocked his head sideways and watched me.

“Changed a little, huh?” he said.

“A little? Geez, I never would have recognized you.”

Benjamin Baker had been one year ahead of me—in my brother Pit’s class at Stranahan High. He was one of those nerdy boys, shaped like a pear with a wide ass and narrow shoulders. His mother always buzzed his hair short, making his head look even more pinlike in relation to his enormous butt. I used to think he would have made a good singing Country Bear in a Disney attraction.

Ben had been totally into marine science, though, and that was our connection. That and the fact that we lived in the same neighborhood, and Pit and I often had to save him from the cruel teasing of our older brother Maddy. I’d spent hours with Ben going over all the creatures he had in his slide collection and peering into the powerful microscope his mother had bought for him.

In high school, Ben had suffered from the triple curse—he’d had braces, acne, and glasses all at once. His face had been a red, bumpy field of scabs and pus, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that he had the coolest hermit crabs as pets, I don’t think I would have gone over to his house anymore.

“What happened to you?”

He laughed again in that openmouthed way that was so unlike anything he had ever done as a kid. He’d always been trying to disappear into the woodwork back then, hoping not to stand out so the other kids wouldn’t tease him or beat him up as they did regularly. If he did laugh, he’d hold his hand in front of his mouth so you wouldn’t see his braces.

“Hey, people change, you know? After high school, my dad wanted me to go to work for him at the car dealership, but you can guess how I felt about that.” He stretched his closed mouth until his lips were so thin they nearly vanished.

Yes, I knew more than I wanted to know about the relationship between Ben and his father. The older Baker never passed up an opportunity to remind his son of just how much of a disappointment he was.

“Soon as I turned eighteen, I joined the Coast Guard. Got the braces off, got contact lenses, went to boot camp, and started eating right. Got away from my mother’s cooking and discovered I liked working out. Within a couple of years, nobody from back in Lauderdale even recognized me. I passed people right on the street and they had no idea it was me.”

“You know, I can believe it. You really look great. I am so happy for you, Ben,” I said, and I meant it. But, there was something about seeing him again that made me remember moments in my childhood when I hadn’t been the person I wanted to be. I’d never teased Ben like so many of the girls had. Any teasing was always just between us, as a friend. But there had been times, many of them, when I’d seen other kids being really mean to him, and he had looked at me with those sad eyes, beseeching me to do something. I was a scared kid, too, and I hadn’t stepped forward to defend my friend. I wasn’t proud of those moments. “What are you doing here in Key West?”

“I live here,” he said. “See that black-hulled schooner back there,
Hawkeye
? She’s my boat. I live aboard and do sunset charters and snorkeling cruises, that sort of thing.”

“I always thought you’d become a marine scientist.”
 

“Yeah, well, that
was
what I wanted to be when I was a kid. But after I joined the Coast Guard and started spending all that time on boats, I just couldn’t face going back to school. Whenever the guard would make me go in for training, it just brought back all those memories of high school—and they weren’t particularly good memories.”

I nodded. “I can understand that.”

“I spent a year stationed on a cutter here in Key West, and I really liked it. Decided this was the place I’d return to when I got out of the service.”

“How are your folks?”

“My dad’s still the same.” He lifted his shoulders and spread his hands wide. “We don’t talk. My mom died about a year ago.”

“Oh, Ben. I’m so sorry to hear that.” Ben’s father owned Baker Ford, a large dealership on Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale. I was always afraid of Mr. Baker when I went to Ben’s house as a little girl, and Ben literally shook when his dad called his name. His mother was a soft-spoken woman, but she was a society type, Junior League and Garden Club and all, keeping herself busy and out of the house. When we were kids, Ben used to come over when his parents were fighting, and though I never saw his mother wearing dark glasses or anything like that, I’d known it was pretty bad. There was always an air of barely suppressed violence in that house.

“I heard about your dad,” he said. “I read the local boating magazines, and I saw a couple of articles about him when he died.” He shook his head. “I really liked Red. I wish I’d had the opportunity to sit and listen to some more of his stories. Too late now, I guess. So, you’ve taken over the business?”

“Geez, Ben, you sure know a hell of a lot more about me than I do about you.”

His lips stretched wide again, this time showing those teeth, but I noticed that the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Wasn’t it always that way?” he said.

I’d always suspected Ben had liked me more than I’d liked him. Not like a boyfriend-girlfriend kind of thing, but he had always wanted to have a friend who shared his love of the sea and all things marine. I came closest to that of the people he knew, but I already had a best friend in Molly. She lived next door to me, and we were fast friends right up through high school. Ben yearned for a friendship like I had with Molly, but few kids wanted anything to do with him. “That’s quite a boat you have there,” I said, trying to change the subject. “I was admiring it earlier. You sure do keep her in great condition.”
 

“Thanks. I work at it. She’s a special boat, a real Alden, designed and built in 1922.”

“How big is she?”

“Seventy-five feet overall, but only fifty-nine on deck. The problem for around here is that she draws seven feet. That’s no good here in the Keys. The water’s a little thin. The guy who owned her before me did all the restoration work, but it’s still a full-time job keeping her in shape. I renamed her after my great-great-grandfather.”
 

“Oh yeah?”

“According to my granddad, the original Benjamin Baker was a captain here in Key West in the late nineteenth century. He had a wrecking schooner named the
Rapid
. I’ve named my fishing boat after his schooner, and my schooner is named after the man himself—his nickname was Hawkeye. He salvaged over forty wrecks in twenty years.”

“I love learning about the history of this place. Makes me feel like I’m a part of this long line of Florida salvers. Last time I was here in Key West, I went to that Wreckers’ Museum in Old Town.”

“Yeah, they’ve got pictures of old Hawkeye in there. And I agree with you about the history. That’s a big part of what I like about living here. This town cherishes its history. In fact, today’s the first race of the Wreckers’ Cup series. I’m getting the boat ready now for a charter. We’re going to race. If you’re not doing anything, you’re welcome to come along.”

“The Wreckers’ Cup?”

“Actually, what they win is a bottle of Captain Morgan rum and a night’s bar tab at the Schooner Wharf Bar. We race out to Sand Key Light. It’s only seven and a half miles. It’s really a lark of a race—like a reenactment of the heyday of the wrecking business here in Key West. You know, back when the wrecking schooners would race out to the reef, hoping to arrive at a new wreck first so the skipper would become Wreck Master. Most of the charter boats go if the weather’s right. People wear costumes, and there are all sorts of shenanigans that go on. It’s lots of fun.”

I shook my head. “That sounds tempting, but I’m here on business and I’ve got to get back to my boat.”

 
“You’re here on
Gorda
?”

“Yeah, a friend of mine asked me to help tow his boat back to Lauderdale.”

“What happened?”

“He put her aground not too far outside the Key West Harbor entrance. He was driving this ninety-some-footer at speed in a squall,” I said, shaking my head.

“I heard about that,” Ben said. “I was listening to the VHF when he called for a towboat. It’s pretty well marked out there. What happened?”

“To hear him tell it, it wasn’t his fault. He thinks there was some kind of problem with his navigation equipment. He’s got this friend who’s a super hotshot in electronics coming down to check it out. He’s determined to go to court if he has to. He’s that kind of guy—stubborn and determined to clear his name. I think the world of this guy—I’ve known him for years, and it’s breaking my heart to see him in trouble like this. But if you ask me, his friend is making the trip for nothing. Nestor just needs to own up to it and try to get beyond it. These young captains rely too much on electronics.”

Ben nodded. “I know exactly what you mean. I saw it all the time during my years in the service.”

At that point we both grew quiet. I figured we’d just about exhausted the Nestor topic and damned if I knew what else to say to him. This man, in whose company I’d spent thousands of hours as a kid, now made me feel extremely self-conscious. I kept sneaking looks at him, seeing the eyes of that fat boy in the handsome face of this man.

“Look,” I started to say just at the same time he started to speak. We both stopped, then laughed, then started to speak at the same time again. “Hold it,” I said, raising my hand like a traffic cop. “I’ll go first. I’ve really got to be going.”

“Right,” he said, “That’s what I was starting to say, too. My charter guests are due here any minute, and I’ve still got a few chores to take care of on the boat.”
 

“Well, this was really a weird coincidence running into you on the dock in Key West.”

“Yup. Small world, eh?”

“It was great seeing you again, Ben.”

“Same here,” he said.

I waited, hoping he was going to offer an invitation for a drink or dinner later, but none came.

“You take care of yourself, Seychelle. See you around.” He strode off down the pier back to his shiny black schooner.

I watched him for a few seconds. Man, I thought, and he had a nice ass, too. Given that the male in my life was off with one of my best friends studying childbirth, a big tall handsome boatman with a nice ass looked pretty damn good to me about now.

I turned and made my way down the dock. I didn’t want him to see me watching him with the sort of weird fascination I felt. Once I’d realized it was Ben, I could see the resemblance, but I wouldn’t have recognized him on the street in a million years. Old Glub, the biggest nerd in high school, had turned into some great-looking guy who owned a spectacular classic boat. Now, that’s one I never would have bet on.

Back at the dinghy dock in front of the Turtle Kraals Restaurant, I pushed aside the crowd of small boats to pull in my little inflatable. Now that I was here in Key West, I wished I had my Boston Whaler with me, but I’d decided against towing it all those miles. The inflatable fit inside the aft deck box along with the little six-horse Nissan outboard, but it made for a wet ride going back and forth to the anchorage out off Christmas Tree Island in these strong winter winds. The outboard was running really ragged, and though she eventually warmed up and smoothed out, the popping and sputtering continued. If I wasn’t hauling any cargo and the water was fairly flat, I could get it up onto a plane, but today wasn’t going to be one of those days.