Motor
The one thing that kept me warm for the months in the Canadian Arctic was the thought of my boat. Warm welcoming Someday. Almost-finished Someday, soon to be exploring the islands of the Caribbean, Someday.
I stepped from the Florida heat into the cool dark office of the boatyard, and put my travel bag on the already crowded desk. Behind the counter, Shelly and John reached their hands out to greet me.
“How was the frozen north?” Shelly’s hand already in mine.
“Frozen, and it was very far north.” I grasped them.
“How long was it this time?”
“A hundred days. But this one felt like a lifetime.” I smiled.
There was a pause as we all thought the same thing at the same time.
“Too bad about Ernie.” I said.
John and Shelly’s smile wavered.
“Did anybody find his family?”
“I guess we were his family.” Shelly said.
John abruptly turned and walked into the back office. Shelly watched him go, then turned back to me.
“John was the one who found him. We put Ernie’s boat on the hard, out back.”
Shelly shook off that memory and smiled stiffly. After a small exhale, she said brightly;
“We had a monsoon a couple of weeks ago.”
“I saw it on the weather channel.”
“You get our weather?”
“Yep.”
It was the strangest thing. I would be sitting in some construction camp under six feet of snow, and watching a TV weather lady getting all worked up about Miami’s UV Levels.
“Welcome to the world.” Shelly said, as John returned. “One thing about Marathon. It doesn’t hurt to go outside.”
I told them a couple of stories about the characters whom I encountered in the construction camps. Shelly and John matched me story for story with the various oddballs who were an everyday occurrence in the Keys. It was as if Ernie were still in the room, causing the three of us to laugh too loudly, and smile a little too quickly. Finally, I said what I had been thinking of since I got Shelly’s email about Ernie’s lonely death.
“I think Ernie knew. The night before I left, he told me as much. The thing is, it was only after your email that I connected the dots.”
They nodded. After a pause, I brightened.
“Well if you had a monsoon, I gotta check on my boat.”
Twenty minutes later I was back in the office.
“My motor’s gone.”
Shelly and John gave me a bewildered look.
“Motor?”
“Yeah. I paid Bobby $400 for his girlfriend’s motor. Two days before I left Bobby, his buddy and I drove up to Islamorada, loaded up the motor. We drove it back here and put it on a pallet under my boat. I was going to pay him another $300 when he put it inside my boat.”
Shelly turned to John. “Where’s Bobby.”
“He’ll be back at 4:00.” John’s eyes looked at the wall clock.
I was cleaning a season’s worth of leaves from the deck of my boat when John, and Bobby, hanging back, stood in Someday’s shadow. Bobby’s head was bowed, but he looked up at me through his eyebrows.
“Where’s my motor, Bobby?”
He shrugged. His eyes looking anywhere but at me.
“How should I know?”
Bobby’s looked first under the boat, then up at me. John’s face was a study in repressed fury. His eyes flashed between us.
“Maybe somebody stole it.’ Bobby shrugged.
“It was on a pallet. If somebody did steal it, they had to have stolen the forklift too.”
All three of us knew that, after hours, the key to the forklift was in a lock box, behind the front desk in the inner office.
“I can get you a gas motor.” Bobby’s eyes flickered towards John.
“I want the motor I paid for. Either my motor or my $400 dollars back.”
Bobby gave me a defiant look. Then his eyes flickered between John, me and the front gate.
“Let me look.” Bobby spun on his heels and stomped off.
John looked at me for a long time.
“Knowing something, and then proving it, are two separate things.” I said.
“I don’t need this.” John said shaking his head. “What are you going to do?”
“I’ll give him till tomorrow. Then I’m making a report to the police.”
John shook his head and walked towards the office.
“We warned you, bucko!” Ron stood in Someday’s shadow. He was smiling up at me. After he had seen my truck arrive, my favorite semi-resident of Shelly and John’s boatyard had wandered down to the back of the yard where Someday nested.
“I know. I know.”
“Ah don’t worry about it, Rick. Just think. You made several local dealers very happy.”
“You can go now.” I said. “Go back to ripping wings off hummingbirds.”
“If I didn’t like you, I would have just walked away.”
“I know. But I just….”
“What did you expect, when you didn’t bolt the motor down.” Ron smiled.
I climbed down the ladder and shook his hand.
“If some guy deliberately sets out to screw you,” he went “There’s not that much you can do.”
“You and Ernie warned me.”
“No. I was going to say that you weren’t the first. But you’re the first to squawk.”
I looked at Ron.
“The thing is, Bobby is not an employee. He’s living off Shelly and John’s mercy and paying them back by stealing from them. As fast as the boats where shipped out back.” Ron raised his right hand towards the pile of derelict boats. “He’s going at them at night with a skill-saw.”
I looked out back towards Ernie’s sailboat.
“Soon as everybody’s gone for the night. He’s stealing parts off those boats and selling them out the back door. I can hear that saw going steady, every night.” Ron looked at the pile of derelict boats, then back at me. “Might as well go to the cops now.” he said, “You ain’t ever getting that motor back.”
“How come you haven’t warned Shelly and John?”
“Cause he’s real good at covering his tracks. He goes in and asks to take off a small part of one of the derelicts. John’s a good guy and most times says ‘Sure.’ Then when Bobby gets that permission, he spends half the night stripping the boat. In the morning, he brings that one small part that John said he could take into the office. The rest of the stuff is squirreled away all over the yard. He knows where the cameras are.”
I nodded. “I don’t want to do this. This will bring attention to the yard from the cops they don’t deserve.”
“They don’t deserve him either.” Ron said. Finally, he said. “It’s up to you.” And turned and walked away.
The day dragged. I finished cleaning Someday and started on preparations for the never-ending task of repainting the boat’s trim. I wandered down to the local hardware store and bought supplies. Once I got back to my boat, I looked in the direction of the office, searching in vain for Bobby. Usually, once an hour, he would carry some small object across the yard in front of the cameras. Then he’d hide for a half hour in the shade of a boat, then make a big deal of carrying the same piece of wood back across the yard in front of the cameras again, into the shade of the garage. A first-year apprentice trick that didn’t fool anyone.
Scamming Shelly and John never used to bother me because I thought Bobby shirking work was someone else’s problem. It bothered me now. Stealing time and stealing a motor is the same thing.
It was too late in the day to start another painting project so I took a side trip down the canal and had a coffee and a long talk about my situation with my friend Anne. She was an actress in all the local plays and pretty much knew everybody. Anne’s boat was moored in a small dock at the far, quiet end of the canal. After a long discussion and with me sitting beside her, Anne phoned Blake her landlord to talk about my situation.
The second day back was like the first. Standing in the beautiful Florida sunshine, I did odd jobs. Following the shade that revolved around Someday, I cleaned up debris, scraped the paint, and fumed about the motor. The money could always be replaced. Humiliation was going to leave a scar. At the end of the day, I walked towards the area where I knew Bobby hid out. I turned the corner and surprised the skinny man, who sat snoozing in the shade of a boat. I stood very close to him.
“What are you going to do?” he said, sitting up in the chair, as he looked around for an escape.
“What I said I was going to do.” Was the answer I had practiced. I turned away.
That night, I didn’t stay on Someday as I had planned. That recent monsoon had left water inside and all the bedding smelled of mildew, so with a lot of misgiving I rented a motel room close to the boatyard. As I lay in the motel’s bed, I hoped that Someday would still be in one piece when I got to the yard in the morning. Besides paint, the decks had a lot of my sweat and more than a few drops of my blood on them.
‘I’d put money on the weasel planning something.’ I thought, as I lay on the bed.
I rehearsed what I was going to say to the desk sergeant at the police department. I decided to talk to John and Shelly one last time before I went to the police, so that they would at least have some warning.
Next morning, I put on my cleanest clothes. Packing all of Someday’s papers, the bill of sale from Jack, my passport, and a written report of my complaint into a large manila envelope, I drove to the marina.
I counted six police cars in the parking lot. There had to be almost a dozen cops conferring around the marina’s front gate. In the middle of all the large dark uniforms was Bobby, tiny, thin, agitated. When I parked my truck on the edge of all that activity he gave me a deer-in-the-headlights stare.
Ron was driving out. I waved him down.
“There’s been a break in.” Ron deadpanned.
“Do you believe that?” I asked.
“Well, if there really was a break in, the crooks knew where every camera was because there are no pictures of them. Not even shadows.” Ron grinned. “He told the cops that he surprised them when he walked into the office and the crooks hit him on the arm as they ran past.”
I handed Ron the written statement I was going to give to the police when I got there. Ron read it and then silently gave the paper back. He sniffed.
“Like I said before. It’s up to you.”
I looked at Ron. “What you are saying is that I’m a foreign national, accusing an American citizen of theft, without any written invoices as proof. And do I know what I’m getting my ass into?” I looked towards the windowless slate grey Federal Building across the canal.
“Pretty much.” Ron gave a small wave and drove away.
It took a while, but, by noon, the police finally had cleared out, and the marina went back to normal. I wandered down to my boat and made a coffee. I sipped my mug and watched the white fluffy clouds. I always joked with Shelly that the clouds and sunsets were too damned good for the Floridians. I could have used some of that heat in the last three months.
I walked to the back of the yard and for the first time, I ran my hands over Ernie’s boat. Walking around the back where no one ever went, I stopped. Two stanchions had been hacked off. Bobby walked by. It was the first time he had come close to the back of the yard in days. When he saw me he turned and abruptly retraced his steps towards the yard’s shop. But before he turned, he smiled.
I watched him go. After he turned the corner I reached into my pocket for that folded and now moist paper that was my police statement. I ripped it up.
I walked into the office and stood by the desk. John looked up expectantly.
“Tomorrow, put my boat back in the water. I’m going to finish her off down the canal. I’m moving her down the canal to new boatyard.”
Rick Ranson 