of me. He gave me the words.
Years passed. Sometime later he learned I had a bit of a green thumb and that I had an inherent hatred of weeds, so he offered me a permanent position at his parish. “I see what you’re doing,” I joked. “Two birds with one stone: somebody to mow the grass—and pole you through the grass flats.”
He’d smiled. He loved to fly-fish a flood tide, where he could sight the fish.
I didn’t see it then, but he was grooming me. Every interaction was purposeful. Calculated. Intentional. He was not only teaching me to see—he was teaching me what to look for. It was in those moments at early dawn, watching the sun rise as he cast off my bow, that he taught me about the one, and how the needs of the one outweigh those of the ninety-nine. It would be years before I understood what he meant.
I started to stow Fingers’ lunch box in the head, where it would be safe and protected from the elements, but I thought better of it. He wouldn’t like that. He’d want to be where he could see. Where he could feel the wind in his face. So I strapped him to a flat section on the bow and secured him with several ropes. A hurricane couldn’t rip him off there. Once he was secure, I checked the time. Fingers’ Submariner was worn, scratched, and lost a few seconds every day, but that didn’t bother me. He’d bought it thirty years prior while serving on an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean. Told me it was the best $600 he’d ever spent.
I asked him one time, “What’re you doing with a Rolex?”
He had smiled and scratched his chin. “Telling the time.”
I raised my jack plate, thereby lifting my engine as far up as it could go while still spinning the propeller in the water, cranked the engine, nudged the throttle into drive, and idled out of the backwater.
My boat is a twenty-four-foot Boston Whaler. Called a 240 Dauntless. It’s a bay and backwater boat, though better suited to the bay. It’ll float in fifteen inches of water, but in truth I need twenty-four to thirty inches to get up on plane. She handles well in a one- to three-foot chop where I can lower the trim tabs, push the nose down, and skid across the tops of the whitecaps. But where she earns her reputation as a Cadillac ride is when the wind dies down. I push the throttle to 6000 rpm, trim out the engine to bring the rpm’s up to 6200 or 6250, and she glides across the water like she’s riding a single skid. In rare moments, she’ll reach fifty-five mph. True to the Whaler name, she’s unsinkable, which is a comfort when the storms come. And her range is decent enough. If pressed and conditions allow, I can run an entire day on her ninety-gallon tank, making more than two hundred fifty miles. The T-top is powder-coated stainless steel and built like a tank. It makes a good handhold for purchase in rough waters, you can stand on it if you need a better view, and it’ll keep even the hardest rain or intense sunshine off you—both of which are welcome after long days on the water.
I like my boat. It’s not sexy, but it is a comfort when other things are not.
When I was a kid, I read Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island a dozen times. Maybe more. I loved everything about it. And although it filled many a long night, I never learned to talk about boats or ships or anything having to do with seafaring vessels the way Robert did. He owned the language of ships and boats like he lived it. I, on the other hand, did not grow up a deckhand. I simply grew up with my hand on the tiller. Boats were boats. The left side was the left side, not the port side. Right side was right side; starboard always confused me. Fore, aft, forecastle—this was all Greek to me. Later in life, I’d find comfort in some of these terms but never like Stevenson. To me, he was the captain and I was just a pretender sailing in his wake.
Chapter 4
I idled out the creek toward the Intracoastal—or IC. Most just call it “the ditch.” Above me, gnarled and arthritic live oak limbs formed a canopy shading my exit from land and my entrance to water. Spanish