Nelson
On the first night in my new boat slip, the temperature dropped 20 degrees in three hours. The wind started moaning through Moulin’s lines and the sixty-foot catamaran started bouncing. Someday was attached to it so we bounced around like a mouse dancing the Flamenco with a drunk elephant. Funny to watch, unless you happen to be the mouse.
Watching the storm moving in I knew that this was going to be a long night. And so, fortified with coffee retrieved from the Circle K on the Overseas Highway, I prepared to stand watch. I was up all-night checking lines, wind speed, and generally ensuring that my home would survive the night. How I wished for the quiet of being up on land in the boatyard. Freedom can be terrifying.
I had only moved down the canal a mile closer to the ocean and I could still make out Shelly and John’s dock in the distance, at the end of the canal. But, moving back into the mangroves away from the highway, was like moving to a different America. I had never experienced anything like this. I’ll bet that most Americans had never experienced this lifestyle either.
The warmth that I was greeted with was at first a little disconcerting. The new crowd down the canal admitted me into their lives immediately, with no reservations. It was a shock for this Canadian, brought up in the reserved British tradition that we should wait a proper amount of time before relaxing enough to shake hands, and then calling each other by our first names. “Hey Rick! I’m Teddy!”
I was immediately surrounded in a cocoon of genuine friendship and gossip. I thought Shelly and John’s boatyard was an anomaly but this warmth and openness turned out to be normal.
Welcome to America.
The chain-link gate guarding the boatyard, which doubled as a scrapyard, was never closed. It was never closed because someone had to actually get up off their chairs that surrounded the fire, walk over, lift the gate, and then drag it closed. Nobody bothered, ever.
Off to the side of the yard up against the fence was a pile of derelict white fiberglass boats in various stages of crumbling. A boat would have been dropped off in the yard for some reason or another. Years later, when and if the boat’s owner returned to the yard for his boat, he’d find it had been stripped, crushed by the tractor, then bulldozed into that pile at the edge of the yard. But, once the boat’s owners dropped their boats off at the yard, they never came back.
The square cinderblock garage that dominated the yard had acquired several additions that flowed haphazardly away from the main building. The structure with all its sheds surrounding it, looked like a squat flat-topped Arizona mesa. The garage’s once white cinder block walls gave the building a dirty moss-green color that can be found in the outdoor toilets of rural gas stations all over the American south.
Hidden from view behind the garage like some bony wing of a flying dinosaur, our docks stuck out into the canal. The main dock had three arms jutting from it into the water. The arm furthest down the dock held tall Malone’s small trimaran. We always wondered how a man of well over 6 feet ever managed to live in such a tiny boat. Normally placid and gentle, once riled, Malone was reputed to have an unbelievable temper. Blonde-haired blue-eyed Viking Malone was famous for once standing on the end of his dock brandishing a Samurai sword daring anyone to come and take it away, while all his neighbors cowered in their boats waiting for the Viking to sober up.
Beside his boat, his outboard motor was stored hanging unlocked from the dock’s pylon. I think it was pretty well understood by everyone on our docks that if someone attempted to steal his outboard motor, the Marathon police would be the least of the thief’s worries.
The next arm of the dock held blonde-haired, blue-eyed, actress Annie’s cruiser and Isabel’s sailboat. Isabel was tiny, like a detonator is tiny. Brown-haired and trim, Isabel seemed to know where she stood in the world. I saw her trim figure at church. I saw her not taking any nonsense from her grandchildren. Tiny Isabel was the only person Malone would listen to, and was frightened of for that matter.
But, Annie was our claim to fame. She was a theater stage manager, house sitter, dog walker, paper delivery lady, and well known Keys stage actress. The word was that everybody in our little enclave originally had lots of ambition, lots of ambition! It was just that Annie stole it all. We were able to tell people that sure maybe our lives were in the toilet but ‘Do you know who I live beside?’
Annie and Isabel where the serious live-aboards. They had lived on their boats for so long they could remember when these docks were relatively well maintained.
The last dock, the dock that was closest to the canal’s mud banks, the overhanging mangroves, and the all-pervasive no-see’ums, was my slip. That was the dock was where Someday, and Moulin Au Vent were tied up. Our dock cantered to one side as it slowly sank into the water because the wooden pylons on Moulin Au Vent’s side were rotten completely through and the wooden pier was slowly settling into the canal.
In the very back of the boatyard, far into the dark mangroves, squatted a small 10 X 10 trailer up on blocks. Its four bald and deflated tires thrown haphazardly into the weeds. The tiny trailer was surrounded by man-made scaffolding, ripped blue plastic tarps, empty paint cans, railway ties, and a collection of rusted and bent bed frames and pieces of miscellaneous iron that were on their way to the scrap dealer, sooner or later. Back there, deep in the mangroves Nelson and Lassalo lived with their Rottweiler Sarge.
Finally, as far back in the mangroves as possible, there was Teddy and his two pit bulls Rebel and Lady living in an RV hidden behind Nelson’s trailer.
We looked out for each other, we took care of each other’s boats, and we gossiped about each other. We were neighbors and for a while, we were family.
Nelson had been an officer in the Cuban military. Right up to the day that he put on his best uniform with creases that would cut skin, and together with a small platoon of other like-minded Cuban military officers he marched up to the front gates at the American base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and defected. Nelson is the type of guy parents warn their children about. He knows everything about everything.
“Hey Nelson, what are the girls like in Cuba?”
“Cuba, Guatemala, Porto Rico, alla same. Deys all got hot blood. Jew Canajeans can’t hannell them. Deys high mountinance.”
“Mountinance?”
“Si, very high mountinance.”
“I gotta go to Cuba.”
Nelson lived on the edges of society. He regularly made money without regularly showing up for a regular job. Living by his wits had made him a very good judge of character. Nelson was street smart, something I never was. He was a rascal, determined in his pursuit of his version of the American dream.
Nelson was convinced that he could be a millionaire many times over if only he was crafty enough. He’d just have to get slack-jawed Lassalo to do all that necessary drudgery. Nelson only wanted to come up with the ideas and then collect the cash.
One day, as I walked down the path towards my truck, I almost stumbled over the backsides of Nelson, Lassalo, Teddy and their dogs as they bent over a ruined pile of rubber. The mound of rubber turned out to be a boat. It became apparent that the gang was frantically patching the patches of a US military surplus Zodiac that the US navy had long ago discarded. Nelson had bought it in a very used condition at some junk yard. The boat that Nelson planned to stake Lassalo’s life on was just shards of rubber that had once upon a time floated. Nelson spent entire weeks in an attempt to glue those slivers of rubber back into some semblance of what the boat once was only to find that next morning, one or both of his boat’s pontoons were once again deflated.
I didn’t ask what he was going to do about a motor. Nelson’s plan was to patch the Zodiac and take it across the 90 miles of open ocean, to the closely guarded shores of Cuba. Once in Cuba, he bragged with his considerable albeit 20-year-old-contacts, he would pick up some ‘beaches’.
Once back he’d work those beaches in the night clubs of Miami. He also promised magnanimously that when the plan came together because he liked me so much, he winked and said that he’d put one ‘beach’ aside for me.
“That’s a 200-mile round trip.” I said. “You got enough gas?”
Nelson looked at the boat, then back at me. Annie, who had been standing close went on.
“Have you ever been out there? There’s the harbour cops, the coast guard, the navy, the air force. Not to mention the satellites who are all set up just to watch for exactly… this.” She pointed to the deflated shards of rubber.
Nelson was quiet. Annie pointed south.
“We went out fishing, and we were stopped by the Coast Guard and searched four times.” She held up her four fingers.
I added. “And that’s just the Americans. Get caught by the Cubans and you’ll be lucky if they bother to take you back to shore.”
Nelson came to the realization that with a full load of ‘beaches’ his boat wouldn’t hold enough air or carry enough gas for a full round trip from Marathon to Cuba, then back to Miami.
For a full day, Nelson was quiet. We waited.
Late that night we heard a shout.
“Lassalo! Get back to work! I have an even better idea!”
Nelson announced he would set up a business. He would get Lassalo on this Zodiac scraping barnacles from the hulls of rich people’s yachts up and down the canals of the Keys.
“Besides. Alla beaches I know are too old anyway.”
“One way or another,” Annie smiled. “Nelson plans on scraping somebody’s bottom.”.
“Play dad foggy musee wide buoy!” Lassalo sang. Sort of.
“The guys got the I.Q. of a shoe.” Teddy smirked.
One day, I gave Teddy and Lassalo $50 to sand and varnish the outside wood trim on Someday. I could have done it myself but they do it for a living, it was the end of the month, and they are already three months behind on their rent payments to Blake. And if Blake ever did evict them I would miss their show. They bought beer. The money wasn’t all wasted, in lieu of paying me back they saved one warm beer for me.
“Play dad foggy musee wide buoy!” Lassalo sang over and over. I don’t think he knew any other words. Either to that song or the English language for that matter.
“Jew wanna go havers on a satellite dish Rick?”
“No Nelson. I’m leaving just as soon as my boat is ready,” I lied. I was getting to think the only way to negotiate with Nelson was just to lie. Nelson knew I was lying. I knew I was lying. Even Sarge knew I was lying. Of course, Sarge the police dog thought everybody was a liar.
“Si. An I really wan a satellite dish. I be sorry to see you go. Jew da bess Can jean ah ever matte.”
“Nelson, Since I’ve been here you’ve sold me a stained spinnaker, a mainsail with a hole in it, an AC unit with no Freon, a whole buncha shit that I’ll never use. Borrowed money for cigarettes, beer….”
I looked at Nelson sitting quietly beside me. He was nodding and smiling a gapped-toothed smile, waiting for me to wind down. I could have been accusing him of being an axe murderer for all he cared. He would just nod and wait for an opening in the conversation. So, I shrugged and said,
“Besides, I’m the only Canadian you ever met.”
“An I really wan a satellite dish.”
Nelson had his priorities right. It was about him and him alone. Why should I get all worked up and morose about a failed marriage when there was a rusty, second-hand satellite dish at stake.
“Play dad foggy musee wide buoy!”
Teddy turned to me.
“The guy doesn’t have enough brains to take a shit and wind his watch at the same time.”
A couple of weeks later I walked down the path between the palm trees and the group home’s fence. In the middle of the path was a huge pile of empty plastic water bottles. In the middle of all this plastic Nelson and Lassalo were on their hands and knees busily working, sorting, mumbling. There were at least a hundred bottles, all shapes, all sizes, all clear plastic. The sun glinted through the knee-high pile of plastic bottles.
Nelson held a bottle up accusingly. He said something to Lassalo, in Spanish, which I understood to be along the lines of,
“Careful, don’t let dirt get inside.”
Lassalo nodded.
Off to the side of the path, on a small table neatly arranged in groups of six, were plastic bottles full of water. The group homes’ garden hose hung over the fence. A pencil-thin stream of stolen water dribbled from its spout.
“Hi guys. What cha’ doing?”
Nelson gave me a sidelong look.
“Flea market tomorrow.”
I realized what they were doing.
“Jesus, Nelson. How can you do that?”
Nelson took a full bottle from the small table, laid it on its side, and with the dexterity of a surgeon deposited one round drop of strong-smelling glue between the bottle and the cap.
“Use glue.”
“Glue?”
“Si. They have to hear the snap. No snap, they get suspicious.”
“I mean, how can you do that?”
Nelson’s eyebrows knitted. He spoke to me as he would to a child.
“Glue.”
“No, you’re talking mechanics. I’m talking ethics. How can you do that? Don’t even talk about diseases, out and out theft.”
“Business.”
Nelson’s morality was simple. He figured you were temporarily holding his money. You might have worked for it, might need it to support your wife and kids, but Nelson considered what you had in your pocket, his.
He turned away like it was no use trying to talk sense to a child.
“Nelson, doesn’t that flea market have a Dealer’s fee?” I lied, trying not to look like I was lying.
Nelson’s face went through a kaleidoscope of emotions. Then his beady eyes looked at me.
“Don’t look at me. I got alimony payments.” I lied again. I moved down the path. Before I got into my truck, I turned and looked back.
Nelson was standing at the edge of that pile of plastic bottles, his eyes flickering back and forth between the water bottles and Lassalo.
“Play dad musee’ wide buoy! Play dad muse lao!”
Teddy walked by my truck with Rebel and Lady at his heels.
“My dogs are smarter.”
I hadn’t seen Nelson and Lassalo for almost a week, so, I knew something was up when they stood on the dock by my boat.
“Rick, could you give us a ride?”
Nelson, Lassalo, and a couple of their friends looked down at my boat and smiled expectantly.
“The church.”
“The church?”
“Si.”
“OH, the church. THE church!”
Nelson passed Lassalo a look as if to say ‘Why do we have to remind this Canadian every, single, week about the free food that a church gives away to us homeless every bloody Thursday.’
So, Nelson, Lassalo, and three of their friends loaded into my truck. Hoping the Marathon Police wouldn’t pull me over for transporting illegal aliens or not having anyone in my truck properly strapped down, we motored down the Overseas Highway through downtown Marathon.
“Hey, Nelson. You realize that nobody in this truck is American?”
“Don’t park too close,” was Nelson’s only answer as he pointed across the street to the library’s shaded parking lot.
It was understood that when walking into a church’s basement to beg for food, it was best not to climb down from a bright white, brand new truck with Canadian licence plates.
Nelson and the others waited for a break in the traffic to run across the highway to the church. Nelson’s normally thin and misshapen clothes had been discarded for even thinner and more misshapen clothes. His pants had a rip in one of the knees.
Nelson was as good as any bloodhound sniffing out anything free. Free food, free handouts, second-hand boating tools, third-hand clothes. Nelson milked the town of Marathon like a farmer worked the teats of his cows. I was always amazed at how hard Nelson worked at not having a regular job.
After what seemed like an hour waiting for the Cubans to shop, I went outside the library and sat underneath the trees on the bench. The Marathon Hospital, Marathon Library, and Marathon Police Department stand in a row. The library is the only one of the three with shaded park benches, so there is always hospital staff having their lunches in the limited shade. I sat with a group of men in hospital greens lounging on the grass. A picture-perfect family walked out of the library. A father, a mother and two freckle faced children. Each one of them carried a book. The little girl smiled at me proudly.
I had a family just like that once. Strange, my first reaction was to smile at the memory of my children when they were small, and carried their own small books home from our library.
The mother hissed at the child.
There’s a lot to be said about just sitting back in the shade, coasting on the wings of a beautiful day, feeling the humid salty wind coming from a retreating tide fill the air.
I leaned back and breathed in the smell of tar from the hot tropical highway, the pungent aroma of the eucalyptus trees above. The ocean wind rattled the palms and force-fed me smells of salt and coral and spray and the humidity of thousands of miles of open ocean. My sandaled feet warmed themselves in the sun as I sat on the library’s bench and felt the Keys right down to my toes. Life at that moment was so very sweet.
“Even the air is friendly.” I mumbled. “Except for that kid’s mother. What’s with her? All I did was smile at the child.”
I looked around at the other men all lounging around me on the grass.
‘Scruffy looking orderlies.’ I thought, looking up at the hospital’s entrance sign. ‘A lot of tats on these orderlies’. One of the men in hospital green stood and put on his bright orange shirt emblazoned with ‘FLORIDA STATE….’
I didn’t need to read the rest.
Nelson and his ragged crew of friends carrying white bags full of tins and dried food waited on the far side to cross the Overseas Highway.
“Stay there! I’ll come and get you!” I shouted jumping up holding my hands in the air. “Stay there!”
I didn’t stick around to see if the Florida State Prison work gang was laughing or not.
Rick Ranson 