J. R. Rain
Hail Mary
A man appeared from the lower cabin.
The man, who hadn’t looked very happy to start with, blinked once. His mouth dropped open. He looked utterly perplexed to see a massive Caucasian standing in his boat. His perplexity might have been comical if he hadn’t been holding a very long carving knife.
I couldn’t tell if he was the same guy who’d sported the neat part down the center of his head-since this guy’s hair was in current disarray-but if I was a betting man, I would bet that he was.
Just as his shock turned to rage, he launched himself out of the lower cabin, bringing the knife up in a gutting motion. Unlike the helpless sharks he was used to carving up, I could fight back.
And I wasn’t so helpless.
Before the knife got very far, my fist flashed through the small space between us and hit him under his left eye. His head snapped back. His feet flew out from under him. Where the knife went, I didn’t know. One moment he was attacking me and the next, he was tumbling back down the stairs from whence he came.
I followed him down, jumping down just behind him. The interior cabin was surprisingly big and roomy enough even for me. But that didn’t mean the place wasn’t trashed. It was. Disgustingly so. Cots lined one wall. The opposite had a small but filthy futon. A TV was in one corner. Trash was everywhere. Wadded-up, greasy tinfoils. Wadded up, greasy burger wrappers. Wadded up paper bags. Ironically, a trash can-apparently bolted to the floor-stood empty nearby. Somebody around here was a shitty shot.
Still lying in the center of the floor, bleeding profusely from a humdinger of a cut under his eye, was a Grade-A asshole. Beyond, a woman peeked out at me from behind a cabin door. I motioned for her to get back into the room and she did, slamming the door shut.
It was about then that Sanchez appeared behind me, breathing hard. He ducked his head into the cabin, saw the scene, and leaped down smoothly.
“ Is he the only one?” he asked, pointing to the dirt bag on the floor.
“ A woman’s in there,” I said, pointing.
“ That’s it?”
“ Far as I know. Boat isn’t that big.”
Sanchez nodded once. “I’ll look around.”
As Sanchez ducked away, the man lying on the floor began waking up. The boat rocked as Sanchez moved around above deck. The man on the floor groaned and sat up on an elbow.
“ Hola, motherfucker,” I said. “You speak English?”
The man said nothing. His eyes still looked a little crossed. His hands, I saw, were crisscrossed with scars. Fishing lines? Shark bites? Zipper malfunctions?
Sanchez appeared again.
“ Clean,” he said. “Except…”
My friend looked away and pressed his teeth together. His jawline rippled.
“ Except what?”
“ I think you should see this.” He didn’t look at me.
I reached down and grabbed the guy by the shoulders and pulled him up to his feet. He was bigger than I realized, easily over six feet. Paunchy around the middle. Muscular shoulders. He came willingly enough but there was still some fight in him. I shoved him in front of me, up the stairs, where Sanchez briefly took over, grabbing him from me.
On the deck, Sanchez pointed to what had once been covered under a tarp. Now one corner of the tarp was pulled up.
Something with bright, sad eyes was watching me from inside.