Sunsets and Silencers

"Wreckers" Fiction by L.B. Sedlacek

Wreckers

It is unlucky to start a cruise on Friday.Most of Key West is three to four feet above sea level.  Bobby raised his glass, clinked it against mine.  He slurped down half his beer before wiping his chin and lips with a gnarled hand and pointed to the sunset.  An orange hue gleamed against the windows and dripped down the glass in a humid haze.     

“Those are great, aren’t they?”  

I held my hand in the air and waved at the bartender.  “Two more over here, Owen.”

Bobby drained the rest of his beer and dropped the bottle on the table. He grinned and rolled up the sleeves of his flannel shirt.  His arms were deep brown and muscular.  He had a wide neck and skeletal legs that he claimed helped him move quicker when he was on deck.  I was half his size and everything about me screamed scrawny.  Bobby would always say I was the brains and he was the brawn, that’s what he would tell the newbies anyway.

Disaster will follow if you step onto a boat with your left foot first. The sunset was evaporating quick; a faint red glow fanned out across the ocean.  I looked at the giant palm fronds swaying in the breeze.

“Wind’s picking up, Bobby.  We may have more of it come morning.  What do you think?”

Bobby fingered his beer bottle wrapping wide fat fingers in a fist. “Ah, you’ll get used to it.  That ain’t hurricane wind by any means. It’s just an ocean breeze.  It gets colder this time of year especially on Halloween.  Less humidity hanging in the air.  Besides, we’ll be underneath it.”

A silver coin placed under the masthead ensures a successful voyage. I nodded and grabbed the check.  I pulled my wallet from my sport coat and threw a couple of tens and four quarters on the table.  Bobby picked up a round squat glass and set it down on the bills.  The glass was ridged like a pumpkin and was crammed full of Parmesan cheese.

“You ready to go, Clyde?”

I pushed back my chair and nodded to the bartender.

Bobby said, “See you tomorrow, Owen.”

Don’t look back once your ship has left port as this can bring bad luck. We stepped out on Duvall street and surveyed the crowd.  Most were tourists.  There were still a few locals plowing down the streets in flip flops or barefoot back to their homes, shops, or hang outs after watching the sunset.  A couple of people hollered, “Hey Bobby.”  Bobby yelled back and waved.  His fingers were bent and he could not make his hands go flat.  He claimed it was from an old bar fight injury.  Owen told me it was from years of fishing in the keys, and holding his hands too long in the same position.

I pointed to the last glimmer of the sunset.  “Water’s getting black, Bobby.”

“Yeah, I know.  It’s not that far to the pier.  I have the candles.”

I sighed.  “Sure.  Okay.  Maybe we can get something to eat afterward?”

Bobby chuckled.  “Beer didn’t fill you up?  I don’t blame you.  I wouldn’t eat any of Owen’s cooking either.  Some folks say his food’s been around almost as long as he has.”

Starting a cruise on December thirty-first is bad. I buttoned my jacket and shoved my hands in my jeans, pulling my lips up into a pseudo smile.  It was the end of the month.  October thirty-first.  It was four hours until midnight.I followed Bobby towards the pier where the Moravian Vista was moored. It was my boat, a massive steel barge with cranes and computers and all the latest in treasure hunting equipment.

A naked woman on board will calm the sea. In the heyday of America’s merchant-marine traffic in the middle nineteenth century, ships would crash into one of the key’s coral reefs.  The corals were almost invisible even on sunny days.  The Moravian Vista was a wrecker, a bottom feeder of shipwrecks.  My warehouse sat near the eastern end of the island and was crammed full of furniture, guns, and sometimes gold, silver, pearls or diamonds.  We would always try to locate the rightful owner’s relatives and give them first shot at reclaiming the goods before we would hold our monthly auction and offer up our spoils of the sea to the highest bidders.

Bobby’s pace picked up as we headed into Mallory Square past the main cruise dock.  With finds like the Isaac Allerton, the Santa Margarita, and the Nuestra Senora de Atocha, shipwreck salvage had become big business in Key West.  The Nuestra Senora de Atocha had proven to be the biggest find so far with silver, gold and jewelry worth approximately four hundred million dollars.

Pouring wine on the deck will bring good luck on a long voyage. Bobby tossed a quarter in the air.  “Your turn to call it, Clyde.”

I sighed.  “Tails.”

Bobby caught the quarter and slapped it on his arm.  “Heads, it is.”

I grimaced and rolled my eyes, careful to make sure Bobby didn’t see me.  He was the best navigational guide for the waters and the reefs I could find and he wasn’t afraid to put on a scuba suit and crawl around on the ocean floor.  The crew of the Moravian Vista believed Bobby to be the toughest man they’d ever met.  Bobby soaked up their bravado.  He was their good luck charm.

We stopped at the end of the pier.  The reflections from a couple of streetlights bounced off the water.

I flipped my collar up around my neck and pulled out two candles. “Where do you want these?”

Bobby pointed to the fisherman’s table at the end of the pier.  “Right there will do.”

The candles were white and tall and the kind that most people used on their dining room tables when having company over for dinner.  I lit both candles and let the wax drip in two spots about a foot apart.  When enough wax had dripped, I set each candle in the melted goo until the bottoms took hold and they stood up by themselves.  Bobby reached into his pocket.  He handed me a picture.  The photo was black and white and placed in a cheap gold frame.  I set the photo between the candles. Bobby knelt in front of the picture, his head at eye level.  He closed his eyes and hummed.  I pulled out a bottle of red wine and popped the cork.  I poured it on the pier and tossed some over on the deck of my boat.

I looked at the picture, into the eyes of Bobby’s wife.  Every month with a thirty-first day, Bobby dragged me to Owen’s Bar, and then to the pier, where we would take a moment to remember her.  She’d never shown an interest in boats, but the one time she took a tour with Bobby, she’d slipped and fallen overboard and her body was never recovered.  Bobby’s third or fourth fishing vessel had been called Princess, his nickname for her.  He’d worked on another one later called Dana, her name. 

I was interviewing him at my warehouse the morning the news hit about her death.  Bobby spent the rest of the morning explaining to me, a landlubber from Iowa, the things I needed to know about ships, sailors, and the sea.  My favorite advice was to avoid red heads when going to the ship because red heads brought bad luck. 

Every time we set sail, the night before, I would be up all night.  My crew would visit me at my townhouse along with my full head of red hair.  They also made sure I knew to never start a voyage on the first Monday in April because it was the day Cain slew Able, that a stolen piece of wood mortised in the keel would make the ship go faster, and that a dog seen near fishing tackle was bad luck.

I picked up a hook from the fisherman’s table and picked at the candle wax.  I tapped Bobby on the shoulder.  “You bout ready to go?  It’s getting late.”

Bobby looked up at me and shrugged his shoulders.  “Yep.  Guess so.  The guys will be coming by to see you soon, won’t they?”

I grinned and said, “Yep.  But I’ve got one for them.”

Bobby stood and blew out the candles.  He put Dana’s picture inside his shirt.  “Yeah?  What?”

“Never say the word ‘drowned’ at sea.”

Bobby bit his lips and scrunched his mouth.  Finally, he said, “Yep, Clyde.  You’re getting the hang of it.  You might end up at the sailor’s Fiddler’s Green after all.”

I slipped the candles in my pocket and shook my head. 

L.B. Sedlacek's short stories have appeared in publications such as "Literary House Review," "StoriesThatLift.com," "Bovine Free Wyoming," "Monarch Mysteries," "The Outer Rim," "Silver Moon," and "Duct Tape Press."  Her poetry has been published in "Assisi Journal," "Down in the Cellar," "Audience Magazine," "Song of the Siren," "Aoife's Kiss," "Poesia," and others.  L.B. also hosts "Coffee House to Go," a podcast for the small press.