Crack's List

Like I don't put up with enough crap at work, my wife has struck once again!
I love the fact that she is our CFO and does a fine job at making sure our money goes the distance. But sometimes it's just not worth saving a buck. I think sometimes she gets a little too frugal. And sometimes I'm the sucker in the whole deal.
So she's doing her thing trying to make sure we don't spend the inheritance that the kids won't get by shopping on Craig's List. You may have heard of this thing. You know where people list items for sale like cars, furniture, jewelry; and sometimes they list services for sale like handyman or yard work or sexual favors or serial killer victim. I'm pretty sure those last two might be one and the same.
On this particular occasion my wife has decided that she is going to save us a bundle by finding a leather couch for dirt cheap. She calls me at work to notify me that we need to go look at a sleeper sofa. Are you freak'n kidding me?!
"Babe, it's been a long day (a 12 hour day)."
"Yeah, but this is a really good deal. $350 for this Lazy Boy."
"Babe, really."
"No, seriously, it's leather and lists for $900 new. The lady said that she's desperate, that they're going to come get her car if she misses another payment."
Sirens are now sounding in my head. "And where is it at?"
"Nokomis."
Sounding like Jim Mora I say "What's that? Nokomis? You talking about Nokomis, are you kidding me? Nokomis?"
"Listen, I've dropped the girls off at my folks and grabbed my dad's truck. Meet me over at Five Guys for dinner and then we'll go check it out."
Damn it! She knew she'd get me with the Five Guys offer.
I meet her there, down a burger, fries, and a hand full of roasted peanuts. Then we hit the road. I ask her what the directions and she reads me something like this:
"Go to Blackburn, but not the Blackburn you're thinking of. Cross over it and take your first right. Follow that road and it will be the first condo on the left."
And I'm like what?
"You don't know where that is?"
"It's frig'n dark out and that doesn't make sense!"
"You don't have to yell. Do you want me to call her?"
I jerk the truck off the road. "Call her."
We get somewhat better directions and as luck would have it we're right around from her. Pulling in, I see the first condo on the left and a piece of crap 1990 Cavalier in the driveway. Are you catching these signs?
I back the truck in and say into the steering wheel, "This is not going to be good."
"Come on, how bad can it be?" Pitched right down the middle. "But if it is, you figure out how to get us out of here."
How it became my job to develop an escape plan from a place I didn't want to be in to begin with is still lost on me.
As soon as we step out there's some little piss ant dog yipping at us.
"Come on baby, it's okay. Stop barking."
I follow the voice to, yep you guessed it, a crack head! All skin and bones and jittery. She waves us in. My wife catches my look and starts to giggle. As we step in the "smoke-free" home (yeah, smoke-free since the time my wife called you)it gets even worse in the light. This chick's hair has been died and fried so bad it's more of an orange color with a green sheen in the light. She looks like tarantulas are crawling out her eyes from the caked-up mascara.
So Eight Ball Annie begins her spastic impression of Vanna White telling us what a great deal it is and how bad she needs to get rid of it. She convinces my wife, and therefore me, to have a seat. My wife to the left and Eight Ball Annie on the right. At that point her Rat Terrier/Chihuahua/Pomeranian/ whatever ankle-bitter mix jumps on my lap.
"Oh, that's my little Pipsy. I had to rescue him. He's incontinent so they were going to put him down."
My wife once again manages to keep her giggles to an undetectable level from the rock monster whose skin is obviously irritating her to the point of scratching it off.
"So you said it's a sleeper?" my wife asks just to keep this freak show going.
Apparently my gaping jaw was enough to cause a Cheshire's grin to stretch across her face.
Eight Ball Annie leaps from the couch and begins to rip the cushions of the couch. I step back out of the way and just when I didn't think it could get any worse I suddenly feel the need to gouge my eyes out.
See, the lovely Eight Ball Annie is wearing this soft nicotine stained linen sundress. Of course the benefits of such a garment are its light and airy feeling and in some cases its sheerness, but this was not one of those cases. Because as Eight Ball Annie bent over in front of me she gave me a not-so-lovely shot of where that pink t-back disappeared. This, once again, amused the crap out of my wife. I thought my burger would join the pillows tossed across the room.
Fruitlessly, Eight Ball Annie tries to pull out the "never-slept-on" folding bed. It keeps binding on her and I figure this is the out we needed, but my wife is enjoying this entirely too much tells me to give her hand.
The thing opens to reveal a sheet stretched over the "never-slept-on" mattress. All I can think is Luminol and a black light would set this thing aglow.
Just as I'm about to say something bounding in from the front door that was left open comes a screaming three year old who begins jumping on all the furniture.
An exhausted elderly man steps in and tells Eight Ball Annie that her child, once again, came running into his place to hang out. He waited fifteen, twenty minutes but mommy never came to get her (and he couldn't take it any longer).
Now instead of irritating the old man the little brat is irritating me. Eight Ball Annie does a fine parenting job of ignoring her and keeps looking from me to my wife for one of us to whip some cash so she can run out and get her fix and turn the scream'n demon's shrieks into a lullaby. And just as I'm about to break her dreams I'm interrupted once more.
"Hey, hey, hey! Quiet down! Pot Head Pete says as he comes out of the bedroom apparently just waking up from a nap... At 8:30 pm? "Wus up," he mumbles as he shuffles into the kitchen type area looking in the variety of chip bags open on the counters. Must suck waking up with the munchies and a screaming kid. Oddly the strangers in the house didn't seem to phase him. Hmm...
"Well, I don't think it's gonna work. It's uh, too small. Too small for the space we're looking at," I finally get out and grab my lovely wife's hand.
"You sure? I'll take $300!"
"Yeah, sorry, even at $300 it's not going to change the size."
"Well, okay guess it's not going work," the wife says, finally showing me some support.
We show ourselves out and load back into the truck.
"Babe, what the hell?"
"Okay, okay you were right."
"There's a reason they say 'No shoes, no shirt, Nokomis*.'
"Look at it this way, at least you got some new characters," she says with a smile.
What could I possibly write and use that chick. I guess my blog.

*Just so it is noted, not all the losers in Nokomis are crack heads.

Tides of Time (A Short Story)

Isn’t it something when you grow older and develop that life of your own? The job, the wife, the kids; makes me think of the song Cats in the Cradle. It had been too long since I went fishing with my dad. How the time had flown and something that meant so much to me as a kid became nothing more than distant memories.

The inability to sleep was pure torture. Not from a tired sense, but more so because of being awake and waiting. What would we catch? What would we see? Every trip into the Florida Keys gave my growing mind something to feed upon.
“Well, we’ll see how the weather holds out,” he would say as we turned in for the night.
The weather. I found it odd that all I wanted to do was marvel at Mother Nature and yet it was she which created the greatest obstacle. Worrying about the green blobs drifting across the radar screen would get me out of bed every time. I sat for an hour, or so, studying the storm reports before he would get up.
“Clear skies, slight breeze coming out of the east,” I would be at him as he turned the coffee pot on.
“How long have you been up?”
My eyes would find a spot in the linoleum. “Just a little before you.” I didn’t tell him I watched the American flag while they played the national anthem before the screen went to snow.
“Uh-huh,” he would reply with a smirk.
“So are we going?”
“I don’t see why not,” he said as he laughed and rubbed my crew cut.
And that would be it. I’d dash out the door to get our gear together and load the little refurbished johnboat. It wasn’t much to look at, but it was just right for tooling about the mangroves surrounding Key Largo. This particular day he was going to take me to a new spot.
Not much was spoken, not much needed to be said. He had taught me well and we were focused on the task at hand. Fishing was not our hobby, it was our obsession. He didn’t ask corny questions about my youth and I didn’t give him answers that would appease him. I knew he loved me, and I hoped he knew I loved him too.
We turned onto U.S. 1 and headed south past Bojangles’. A little further down to Jack’s Bait and Tackle for eight dozen shrimp for eight bucks. Past The Last Chance bar and into Key Largo.
Dad liked to take Card Sound Road around and south instead of staying on the highway for reasons I couldn’t tell you. It was for the most part a desolate ride. I would just stare off into the darkened mangroves catching glimpses of the moon on the water.
I would think to tell my dad how much I loved him and how much I admired him, but still we would ride listening to the tinny sound of Buffet on the AM radio. We shared this bond, this love for the water. Nothing needed to be said. Or maybe it was because I was getting older and it wasn’t cool to say I love you. Maybe it was because I was getting older and I could see that my hero was not made of steel.
His hand on my shoulder, “Wake up, we’re here.”
I snapped up and looked around; didn’t even remember going over the Card Sound Bridge. He had already backed the boat into the makeshift ramp. I jumped out, causing hundreds of fiddler crabs to scurry back into their holes, and grabbed the bowline while he lowered the boat in. Standing there as he parked, I inhaled deeply taking in the smell of the saltwater. A slight breeze came off the little bay and my shoulders shook from the chill in the air.
Dad climbed over the bow and to the transom lowering the motor. Primed the bulb, pulled the choke, and tugged on the cord. The little fifteen Evinrude started up with a whine and a two-stroke cloud drifted off the water.
The short ride across the flats left me shivering up front, but soon he idled down and was hunting for his spot.
“There, see the beer can in the mangroves?”
I could barely make it out, but sure enough right at the mouth of a cut in the mangrove forest was a sun-bleached can stuck on a branch. It looked nothing more than a piece of jetsam that got snagged in the stilted tree, but in fact it was the marker he used for his honey hole.
He motored up and told me to tie off to one of the branches. “We’re a little early; the tide hasn’t started moving yet.”
“Well, we could try!”
“Sure, why not,” he said as he opened the cooler converted to bait-well. He pulled out a good four inch shrimp and handed it to me which I quickly skewered and tossed overboard.
In a matter of seconds I felt the tugging at my line and reeled it up to reveal the fierce shaking of a channel cat. I cringed and the grimace on Dad’s face said it all as I dangled the slimy critter in front of him.
He grabbed it with a rag and popped the hook out. “Watch out,” he said and tossed the fish up in the bow.
“What did you do that for?”
“Just watch.”
“Can I have another shrimp?”
“Let’s wait for the tide; I don’t want to be wasting shrimp on catfish.”
I looked down and watched the catfish wriggle its body side to side when I heard something in the mangroves. It got closer and closer until I saw its eyes aglow from the white light on the transom.
The raccoon stood on a rocking branch watching me for a moment then climbed down on the boat, snatched the catfish up and climbed back into the mangroves.
I smiled at my dad and he gave me a nod.
A few minutes went by and the back of the boat began to swing out of the cut. Dad grabbed a couple of shrimp, handing one to me and hooking the other to his rod. We dropped them over and within seconds we had snappers on. Over the next few hours it was hook, toss, catch, repeat.
The cooler was teeming with fish, the tide was done, and so were we. I’ll never forget that day.

Today I was up early checking the weather; cloudy with a slight chance of rain. The house was quiet as my wife and kids lay in their slumber. I finished my cup of coffee and put the mug in the sink then hit the road.
As I pulled my boat into the driveway my dad’s house was still. I picked him up and not a word was spoken. The ride down Card Sound Road was quiet, not even the radio. I whipped around and backed the boat in the ramp; no help, no problem, he taught me well.
I stood there breathing the salt air, watching the rippling bay. We loaded into the boat and took off. My windbreaker flapped in the wind as I spied the cut in the mangroves.
The boat tied off, we waited in silence for the tide to move. Once the transom shifted around I went and sat by him.
“We made this trip many times when I was younger; it was always one of my favorites,” I said. “I’m sorry I didn’t take the time to do this sooner, but, you know, life gets in the way. I hope you know that I love you and always have. Thank you for making me who I am today.”
I couldn’t fight back the pain in my throat any longer as I spread his ashes. Tears rolled down my face as I watched his remains become absorbed by the brine.
He lives through me in my love for what he loved.