February Heat. Wilson Roberts

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      Chance’s dinghy was tied behind his boat, nearly two hundred feet off the Great Harbour dock. I stood yelling for a few minutes. I knew he couldn’t hear me over the halyards flapping loudly on the surrounding sailboats, with the sounds of wind, water, boat engines, but I yelled anyway, hoping I might raise him, not wanting to swim out there through the filthy water. The St. Ursula Legislature has never even debated the possibility of requiring boats to have holding tanks. Sanitation minded Ursulines refer to the area as Grundge Harbor. Nobody else seems to care.

      Finally admitting to myself Chance wouldn’t hear me, I reluctantly took off my flip-flops and tee shirt and waded into the water. Turning, I gave Liz the resigned wave of a doomed hero.

      “If I don’t come back just erect a monument in St. Luke’s churchyard in Chaucer with the epitaph, ‘drownded by turds.’”

      When I climbed up the ladder on the back of The Maybelline, I checked myself to make sure there were no pieces of toilet paper clinging to me. I washed with the deck shower and went below. Chance was lying on his back snoring loudly, still wearing the “Marx and Lennon” tee shirt, huge bare feet sticking straight up, toe rings reflecting the sunlight coming through the portholes, his right arm hanging off the side of the bunk, knuckles brushing the floor.

      I put a pot of coffee on the galley stove to perk and rowed the dinghy ashore to pick up Liz.

      Chance hadn’t moved when we got back.

      I nudged him.

      Nothing.

      I nudged him again.

      Groan. Snort.

      A third nudge.

      “Fuck off!”

      A fourth nudge.

      “Fuck off, asshole. Shit on you. Leave me the hell alone.” He sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Oh, hi Frank. Drop dead, will you?”

      “Coffee first.” I handed him a cup and poured one each for Liz and me, motioning her to join me on the outside deck. Chance needed a few minutes to pull himself together.

      Drinking our coffees, we sat on two aluminum lawn chairs he kept on the deck. The Maybelline rocked with a slight constant motion, bobbing uncomfortably whenever a sailboat under power, a motor launch, or one of the many inter-island ferries passed on way to and from Tortola, Virgin Gorda St. John and St. Thomas.

      Waiting on the deck for Chance, we exchanged bits and fragments of our lives. She had gone to graduate school at Penn after her first husband died, supporting herself and her daughters by substitute teaching in the Philadelphia schools. She did a doctorate in folk literature, her dissertation examining the influence of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century Provençal troubadours on the later oral folk traditions of the British Isles. With her degree completed, she took a part time job teaching remedial reading and writing and an occasional freshman composition class at the community college in Bucks County. That had been seven years ago.

      “And what have you been up to since then?” I asked her.

      “Teaching, raising my girls, and trying to enjoy life.” Neither her voice nor her face showed evidence of much enjoyment.

      “What brought you to St. Ursula?”

      “Nice try, Frank.”

      “You said your first husband died. First implies second. What happened to him?”

      Her lips tightened. Looking away, toward shore, she shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

      “He involved in whatever you’re doing here?”

      “I won’t talk about the bastard.”

      “That was his ring you threw off The Yellow Bird yesterday, right?”

      “The son-of-a-bitch.” She nodded through clenched teeth. “It was as close as I could get to throwing him off the boat.”

      “At least it was legal,” I said.

      We both laughed tentatively, and I changed the topic by telling the story of my divorce. I have taken a number of vows never to tell a woman the events leading up to and surrounding the breakup of my marriage. Sometimes it’s the first thing I talk about with them.

      I rambled on, pointing out boats belonging to the People magazine set, small schooners and large motor yachts anchored in the middle of the harbor where, even this early in the morning, steady motor launch traffic bore the wealthy and their hangers on back and forth to Chaucer.

      Half an hour later Chance finally came out, his hair combed, his beard neatly trimmed.

      “Liz, Frank, good morning. Lovely day.” In the four years we’ve been friends, I’ve never seen him give into the appearance of a hangover, nor even admit he’d had one. “How are you feeling this morning, Frank?” He was smiling.

      I sneered at him.

      He sat on the rail facing Liz and me, sipping coffee with his pinky extended. I briefly filled him in what had happened the night before. When I finished he grinned, picking his teeth with a thumbnail.

      “You thought I’d have a gun,” he said.

      “I thought you might. Is that all you have to say? Don’t you want to insist Liz tells us everything before I get you involved in any of this?”

      “Frank, you’ve already plunged in, or you wouldn’t be here. If you’re in, I’m in.”

      I started to speak, to head him off. He waved a hand in my face and made a shushhhing sound.

      “If you’re in, I’m in, no arguing about it, understand? Whatever’s going down here, if you’re going to be a hero, then I’m going to be your sidekick.”

      “Understood,” I said, relieved by his willingness to help.

      “Of course, it might not work,” he added. “The pattern’s all wrong.”

      “How’s that,” I asked.

      “Sidekicks to heroes tend to be from different races. There’s a whole theory of literary anthropology about it. You know, Huck and Jim, the Lone Ranger and Tonto, Natty Bumppo and Chingatchgook, Randall McMurphy and Chief Broom. I could throw everything off balance. Ishmael and Queequeeg, Spencer and Hawk, you know?” He grinned at me, shrugging.

      “Like the Green Hornet and Cato,” I said.

      “Exactly. See how it works? It’s an important concept to think about before letting me plunge in. As if you could stop me.”

      “I’m a writer,” I said. “I don’t need literary theory.”

      He nodded. “Good. Now, as for knowing the details, I don’t want to. I’ve helped too many people out, and been helped by too many people when nobody but the principal knew the details. It’s safer that way, more comfortable for me. I don’t mind working on a need to know basis.” He looked at Liz. “I assume if we need to know something, you’ll СКАЧАТЬ