Bobby
I stood on the deck and looked down at Bobby. Other than a brief meeting several weeks ago Bobby hadn’t bothered with me. At first, he seemed eager to help, then he asked what I was paying Roger. After that he left me alone.
Bobby walked like some grandfather’s long underwear drying on a clothesline in a fall wind. Legs churning one way, arms swinging another. Elbows with holes in them and back flap dangerously open. His Adam’s Apple seemed to stick out as far as his chin. His belt-buckle was north of his navel and south of his skinny ribs. It was a wonder he didn’t rattle.
The creased gatherings of his shirt and pants to his belt left the bottom of his pant-legs dangling far north of his lonely socks.
“The guy should have a party for his shoes, and invite his pants down.” Ernie deadpanned.
Bobby’s clothes were for protection, or to give heat, or as a covering from the sun, or mosquitoes. Nothing more. Style pleased other people. In Bobby’s universe, function was the only consideration. It was not as if his clothes didn’t make a statement of sorts. The statement was that Bobby didn’t give a rat’s ass.
Where Bobby shone like a beacon was in his use of the English language. Others were known for their laser wit and quick retorts, but Bobby’s style of speech splashed everyday objects with buckets of fluorescent paint.
A woman did not merely have tight pants, she had pants so tight “it was like skin on a sausage”.
Nobody had just a fat rear end, they had “an ass like a $40 cook stove”.
A woman was so skinny her sweater looked ‘like it was hung on a nail, twice’.
On this day, the scarecrow shambled towards me and me boat, pant legs flapping. His unusually direct manner of walking spoke volumes.
When Ernie and Tom talked about Bobby there was always a pause, a slight lifting of eyebrows, a slow shake of their heads.
Today Bobby stopped and looked up at me with one hand on the angle iron stand, his other hand on the ladder. His pose was casual, but posed just the same.
The fact that he remembered my name in this hundred boat yard with all these customers coming and going, meant he must have checked at the office. The fact that he had taken the time to ask my name meant that he wanted something.
“I’m so pissed off, I’m like a sore-assed duck in a salt pond.”
“What’s up?”
“That bone-bobbin’, finger puppet told me I gotta pay my share or she’s throwing me out. And renting out my half of the houseboat.”
Nobody had ever accused Bobby of making sense. What he meant to those of us who spoke Bobby-ese was that his girlfriend wanted Bobby to pay his half of their expenses.
That bitch.
“She hasn’t been screwed for so long she’s forgot who pays!”
“Maybe you could pay her a couple of hundred each month. As long as you keep on paying once a month, she’ll leave you alone. She won’t be dancing in the streets about it, but at least she won’t be throwing you out either.”
“Hell, I even thought about jumping her bones, but it’d be like making love to a pile of whale-bones. I’d do it though.”
“What’d she say?” I tried to put visions of those two cadavers pounding down like two stacks of rattling whale bones out of my mind.
“I got to the end of the month.”
“That bitch.” I suppressed a smile.
“That bitch.”
Tom told me that was first hired as the night watchman because there had been several petty thefts in and around the boat yard.
“Except”, Tom said; “You noticed? He’s supposed to be the night watchman, but he never seems to be sleeping during the day?”
Between the three of us, Ernie, me and Tom, Tom was by far the most worldly wise. While Ernie and I talked about our dreams of sailing off to one exotic Caribbean port or another, Tom had already done it. Ernie would be great exploring the ports and beaches and bars of the islands, but if I were a hundred miles offshore, it would be Tom I’d want with me.
It wasn’t like Ernie to take an instant dislike to anyone. Tom however, was quieter and studied people a lot more than we did. Tom rarely spoke to Bobby.
“He sleeps in the office at night when he should be walking around, and just leaves the yard lights on.” Tom said to Ernie and I.
“He only comes out of the office when he’s got something to steal.”
Bobby showed up one day at the boatyard and told the young owners Shelly and John, that he was an independent contractor hired to repair a friend’s boat. Shelly and John felt sorry for Bobby and they did need a night watchman, so in trade for watching the place at night, they charged Bobby really cheap rent to sleep in an abandoned houseboat that had been dragged up into the mangroves. Then he inferred to everyone else that he was an employee.
Formally hired or not, Bobby introduced himself to the marina’s boat owners as the new night employee. A couple of months later, because he was the only one around, he gave himself a promotion and started calling himself the Night Foreman. A couple of months into the job, Bobby gave himself another promotion by dropping the word night from his new title.
Bobby repaid Shelly and John’s kindness by wandering around the boats at night stealing. He took whatever was loose from the derelict boats out back, and then hawking the loot at the bars across the other side of town.
Bobby let it be known that he’d been around the world several times, had worked in Kuwait, Alaska, North Dakota. According to Bobby, Bobby’s done everything, and has been everywhere. Tom once said to Ernie and I;
“If Bob told me it was daylight, I’d go out and check.”
Today I looked down at Bob.
“She cleaned up nice.” He nodded to Someday.
“Well, between me, Roger, and Jose the Guatemalan, at least we got the first layer of grunge off.”
“Jesus is coming, look busy.” Bobby smiled. I matched his smile. We stared at each other awkwardly.
“Hey Rick… ah. How you fixed for anchor chain? I got a hundred and fifty feet of it. Cheap.”
I stopped and looked down at Bobby.
“How cheap is cheap?”
“Don’t know.” Bobby spread his bony hands. “It’s kind of rusty. Fifty bucks?”
“Fifty bucks? Where’d you steal it?”
Bobby’s smile quivered.
“It’s salvage.” His eyes flickered towards the back of the yard where the collection of derelict boats jammed one on top of another lay.
Once you’d been here for a while and if you asked permission, John would let you scrounge parts off the derelict boats. As long as the parts were small and there was no real market for them.
A couple of months earlier I laid out 4 mismatched stanchions on the tailgate of my truck, that I had removed from a destroyed boat from out back. John briefly looked them over and charged me $40. Ernie told me later that John had turned around and given Bobby my $40 to pay off his overdue cell phone bill.
“If it’s okay with the yard.” I said to Bobby.
“I AM the yard.” Bobby’s chin stuck out.
“You want to give me a hand? Let’s go get it.” I grabbed the ladder.
Bobby backed off a step.
“Can’t right now. The forklift’s busy and besides, the chain’s pretty dirty. I’ll leave it in the cockpit of your boat tonight.”
I was still standing there long after Bobby had left when Tom walked by.
“Bobby wants to sell me 150 feet of chain for $50.”
Tom didn’t say a word. He turned and looked at the storage garage door where Bobby had disappeared. Then he slowly turned back to me.
“And you know where he got it from?”
I nodded. Tom and I both looked towards the back of the yard.
Next day Bobby showed up again.
“You still want the chain?”
“Thanks, but I’ll pass for now. I got no place to put it.”
My hand indicated the endless small jobs in Someday’s cockpit. His eyes glared as he looked down. Then he abruptly changed the topic.
“You know, Rick, I don’t know why you’re spending your time fixing up that boat. There’s so many cheap boats around the Keys. With just a little tweaking you could be off sailing, right now. You gotta decide whether you’re a just a boat-builder or a sailor. Me? I’d rather be off sailing.”
“I got my reasons. But, cheap boats?”
“Sure, they’re all over the place. Have you tried down at Key West? Or leave your name at Boot Key Harbor?”
“Bobby, I’ve been pretty much married to this….” I spread my hands to indicate Someday.
“Every marina in Florida has at least a half dozen boats somebody has skipped out on. You walk into any Florida marina with money in your hands and chances are you’ll get the deal of a lifetime. Without….” He nodded toward my boat. “All this work.”
“I’m leaving for work up north because right now, I don’t have the money. Oh, I’ll make money quick when I go back to work. But right now? No. Right now I’m broke. And second of all; I know me. I need something to do. I don’t want to sit and stew.”
I looked around the yard. “I need a project.”
“What?” Bobby said. His forehead crinkling.
“I could sit and worry about losing everything. Or….” I spread my hand towards Someday.
“It’s your Yellow Brick Road?” Bobby said, smiling.
“Exactly.” I looked at the thin man standing at the base of my ladder with renewed respect.
Ernie was a romantic at heart. He quickly got caught up in the saga of saving my boat, even though he was clumsy about articulating why I wanted to do it. Tom thought I was crazy to buy such a clunker. Tom had said as much several times ‘Why waste time on this second hand dog kennel’?
But Bobby knew. With just a few sentences, Bobby had read me like a book. Something Tom never had.
That’s where it stood for several days. Bobby was pleasant and I’m a push-over when it comes to flattery. Bobby would walk by my boat, nod toward the new paint job.
“Looking good there, Rick.”
The next day, after I attached the yellow tape dividing the coats of blue and red hull paint Bobby stopped by and gave me two thumbs-up. I smiled for an hour over that silent compliment.
Over the weeks, while I worked on Someday, every time Bobby walked by he complimented my boat. I started looking forward to his visits. It got to the point where I was smiling as soon as I saw Bobby. I looked forward to him. Bobby appreciated all my work. More than that, he was the only one who recognized why I was doing it.
One day Bobby walked past. Then stopped like he was deep in thought.
“Hey, Rick!” Bobby paused. “Say, you looking for a motor?”
“The new one in that 35-footer out back by the fence? I already asked Peter. Not for sale.”
“Not that one. My old lady’s got a 5 HP diesel. She wants $700. Its over at her place.”
“Let’s take a look.”
An installed diesel motor in fairly good condition was at the very least $1,000, and even that would be a great deal. I had enough skill and time that I could do most of the installation alone.
“Does the boatyard know about this?”
Bobby gave me a sharp look.
“No. It’s my motor. It’s none of their business.” He said loudly. “Like I said. It’s over at my girlfriend’s house.”
That’s where it stood for several days. I knew that eventually I would have to get a motor but I was in no rush. And there was that lingering feeling that if nobody else trusted Bobby why should I?
Later that week I walked through the high-ceiling storage shed. Off to the side sat a half-dozen old chairs set up in a semi-circle around a never cleaned barbecue. A wall of beer cases surrounded everything. There were a couple of old cushions that looked like discarded civil-war bandages. The dogs lay on them. Everything looked lonely.
Right in the middle of this huge sofa Stonehenge, hunched over like a garden Gnome, sat Bobby. He was staring off into the late afternoon sun.
“Hi Bobby, what’cha doing?”
“Just working out a case of black-ass.”
I shrugged and left him alone.
When I returned Bobby stared at me.
“What?”
“She wants that $700, now.”
“In advance? Bobby, I haven’t even seen the thing.”
“I told her that. She says that she could put the motor on eBay and sell it right away for a grand, easy.”
“Go right ahead then.” I turned to leave.
“What can you give me? To hold it, say, until you get back?”
I reached into my pocket, just to be sure.
“I got $200 now. Another $200 when we pick it up. The rest when the motor is in my boat. How’s that?”
Bobby smiled an angelic smile for the first time. Except he wasn’t looking at my face, he was staring at the bills in my hand.
“Rick, you’re actually going to do a deal with that guy?”
Tom and I stood under my boat.
“He’s got a motor.”
“Boat motors are like girls in bikinis. You think you’ll never see anything better and five minutes later, another one walks by.”
“Well, I need something.”
“Yeah. Well, I’d look around. Dealing with that guy would put callouses on an angel’s ass. And another thing, you noticed that Bobby’s blue jeans are all bunched up and hang off his belt like a drape. I think your friend Bobby’s lost a lot of weight real quick.”
Tom let that soak in.
“He doesn’t have enough skin on him to make up the face of a chicken. Why has he lost all that weight, Rick? Why?”
Tom threw his hands in the air and started walking away. He stopped and shouted.
“Cause he’s on something you dumb fuck! He’s on something!”
Rick Ranson 