The rock is hard but the river is patient, sculpting smooth the ivoried moss-veined walls above and below Demopolis Lock. The dam boils fiercely, mist rising from the roiling rapids of the man-made waterfalls.
“I feel like we’re in a giant bathtub,” says Trish.
Several miles past the lock the limestone basin softens to golden sand, carved into high mesas, banked into broad, flat beaches, lapped by the Tombigbee.
I dread the next stop: Bobby’s Fish Camp. There isn’t anywhere else to buy fuel before Mobile Bay, so I’m resigned to stacking up on the floating aluminum dock with a flock of fellow snowbirds and Great Circle Loopers, the latter to me now seen as naïve and knock-kneed as a gaggle of preteens attending their first boy-girl dance. Their self-important, excited chatter has been a plague on the radio all day, clogging Channels 16 and 68. “Turn that shit off,” Robin said, but she knows we can’t, there are too many blind corners. We need to hear the tows. I need to know if anyone is waiting for me at Bobby’s. Derek would never announce his presence. But any little nuance, from who’s on the docks already to who’s headed in is a clue.
I anticipate Derek around every bend. The one-upon-another hairpin curves finally break into a straight stretch of leaf-dappled river.
“There’s Bobby’s. Whoop Dee Doo,” I remark, deadpan.
“When did we get so jaded?” Rob crinkles her nose, squinting as she spots the filled dock in the distance.
“What’s wrong with you two?” Trish runs around the deck whipping pre-tied bumpers over the side. It doesn’t sound like any boaters I know from previous visits are around, but I rigged everything so I can duck below if need be. “We have to raft up, big deal. There are people — and a restaurant. Civilization!”
“Sort of,” I caution. “Did you ever see the movie Deliverance?”
“No. Why?”
Robin chuckles. “Daduh dun dun dun dun dun dun dunnn …”
Silver Airstream trailers, Confederate flags flying, line the dirt banks facing the dock. A few full-size vintage Frigidaires are sitting outside the campers, power cords running to the common outlet on a telephone pole. It’s late in the afternoon and very obviously Happy Hour has been going on for hours, with nearly all the aluminum green-and-white webbed lawn chairs occupied.
A motley assortment of lop-eared hunting hounds, beagles and pit bull-hybrids bark and bay at the busy docks, skulking amidst the aluminum trailers, ramshackle wood cabins, aging modular homes and the occasional Quonset hut. Several larger cottages are perched on the hill where the riverbank grades steeply up, mountain-like, following the curve of a hardpan gravel road. Every flat-topped roof is liberally salted with rusty beer and soda pop cans. Spanish moss drapes the oaks, hairy gray lace swinging in the strong breeze. Here and there small potted palmettos and the last of the season’s marigolds cheerily nod from well-tended, pine-needle mulched flowerbeds.
“Charming, isn’t it?” I say. “If you think this is a party, you should be here for Jefferson Davis Day.”
Trish ignores me, clearly enthralled. KC wags her tail.
“Don’t forget to leash Kace right away,” I tell Trish. “Those hounds will eat her for supper.”
I roll my shoulders, take a deep breath and whistle “Dixie.” No sign of Derek or anyone else I recognize. Bobby and Betty June are sure to be around. But they won’t remember little old me. On that I can rely. They’ve seen hundreds of boaters every year for decades.
About halfway up the hill in the low, white cement block restaurant with green shutters Bobby and his daughter Betty June serve the quintessential all-you-can-eat deep-fried catfish dinner complete with hush puppies and fresh coleslaw.
“I can’t eat here,” Robin says, claiming the 20-foot alligator gar mounted in the dining room ruins her appetite. Bobby himself caught the 137-pound beastie below the Coffeeville Lock. I agree it’s the ugliest fish I’ve ever seen with its snakelike snout, plate-armor head, full mouth of narrow, pointed teeth and bulging tar-black torso. It’s even uglier than the fat-tongued big-lipped invasive gobies of the Great Lakes or the tumorous 200-pound trout some fishermen pulled off the bottom of Lake Superior near Isle Royale when it should have been left to its moveless peace 200 feet down. A few years earlier, Derek and I had watched the hapless anglers on the docks at Chippewa Harbor as they tried to catch-and-release. The ancient fish was too old to survive handling.
Trish wonders if the gar is still in the dining room.
She doesn’t know. The only thing that changes on the Tombigbee River is the shoreline contour.
“Of course it’s still there,” says Robin. “Too frickin’ gross for words. Get me a burger to go. Well done. Please.”
“As if we need to be reminded you like your meat burned,” I say, heading amidships.
“Elvis preferred his meat well done,” Robin points out.
“Yeah and look what happened to him,” says Trish, already at the stern, lines ready. Under our tutelage she’s gained an easy competence handling basic boat skills. Teaching her what I know is deeply satisfying, this vast store of unacknowledged knowledge finding a willing outlet — with immediate, effective results. As Robin says, we know our shit, and anyone who underestimates our skills is quickly outmaneuvered.
She pilots past the 160-foot floating dock eyeing up the six yachts already tied to it, then pivots Blackdog, steering into the current, slowing as we pull into the middle. She aligns the boat with the notch alongside a 47-foot Chris Craft Cabin Cruiser, Water Witch. It’s a roughly 50-foot inset, which doesn’t leave room for error. The Chris-Craft is flying an America’s Great Circle Loop flag with a white background, meaning the cruisers aboard haven’t completed the circuit yet. Flags with a gold background are awarded to those who have finished the Loop. The wife, girlfriend or whatever she is hoists her glass of red wine so enthusiastically it splashes. She’s wearing a golf visor atop short, curly gray hair. Hubby, boyfriend or whoever he is, stocky, full head of thick white hair, eyes hidden behind mirrored aviator sunglasses, stations himself at the outside rail, his easy smile indicating he’s ready and willing to take a line.
Rafting is a House Rule at Bobby’s. When there’s no dock space left, incoming boaters tie to other boats, rafting out as far as need be. It’s a relief to encounter amiable cruisers. Some boaters just don’t get that they can’t have the place to themselves; pointless grousing begins as soon as they see another boat heading for “their” dock. Bobby is famous for his mandate that no boat is ever turned away. He’ll stack in as many as need be to get boaters off the river for the night.
There are only a few spots where anchoring is possible in this sector of Tenn-Tom waterway. Fern’s river lessons still apply: only a fool would travel after dark. There are too many dangers, from submerged logs to tow-barge configurations as wide as the channel. Commercial traffic keeps moving 24/7 down here unless there’s fog. But I’ve never heard of pleasure vessels being allowed to lock through at night.
“We’re gonna raft to you if that’s OK,” Trish shouts to the Loopers. Our intention is clear but a courtesy notification is custom.
“Sure. As long as I can get out. We’re locking through early tomorrow morning,” the man says.
“Same here,” I say. The more I see the better I feel. No one I know in the vicinity and we’re on the outside, where it would be easy to escape. “We’re all headed to the same place.”
“We’re gonna fuel in the morning if we fuel at all,” Robin says. “We should have enough to make it to Mobile. Looks like the pump is gonna be tied up for a while.”
“So the only reason we’re stopping is to let KC pee. Great.”
“We can fill the jerry cans if that’ll make you feel better,” says Robin. “And I would top off if this wasn’t such a shit show.” She gestures in front of us, at the single diesel/gas pump. That’s why she picked the middle slot. Boats ranging from 40 to 60 feet in length are performing a perpetual switcheroo, pulling up to fuel and then rotating back into their assigned slots. The current runs hard here. Some of the boaters aren’t used to steering to accommodate the push and pull, depending on whether you’re with the flow or against it. There’s more than one near-miss as they struggle to control their boats, a fair amount of cursing, and a lot of flailing rope tosses as those safely secured catch lines and pull vessels to safety. At least there’s no need to fret over plugging and unplugging power cords. There’s no shore power. There are also no showers. There won’t even be a flush toilet available once the restaurant closes.
The last time Derek and I stopped at Bobby’s — Chinook continuously undulating in the wake of local fishing skiffs, tow-barges and power yachts with the speed and fuel reserves to bypass the camp — I’d asked if there was anywhere to throw out the garbage. It was a fair enough question considering the $1.50 per foot we were charged to stay the night. For 50 bucks there ought to be a dumpster, right?
“Put it over there, honey,” gestured one of Mr. Bobby’s waitresses (the great man himself was not on the premises during this occasion). She pointed at a ditch behind the restaurant, where a passel of hounds was eagerly ripping plastic bags to get at the good stuff. Later that night we heard a piercing yip — apparently the gators were as attracted to the improvised dump as the camp dogs.
“The big one got Cody. Lucky them other dogs were smart enough to run,” one of the teen-aged boys fishing on the dock next morning informed me.
Kerflumoxed, I reverted to a neutral non-sequitur. “What are you fishing for? Catfish?”
“Naw. Eels. They’re real good eatin’.”
“Say what?” Derek never had the ear or the patience for southern dialect.
“Eels,” I interpreted. “He says they’re delicious.”
We couldn’t get out of there fast enough. We laughed later, when I suggested reeling in some eels for breakfast. Yum. Eel omelets? Eel hash browns? My sister has eaten saltwater eel in sushi restaurants, but then Layla will eat almost anything. As a child she tried toadstools multiple times. She didn’t mind having her stomach pumped after her experiments.
I miss Layla, even though we haven’t been close the past 10 years. She pities me. I resent her for not rescuing me, even though I’ve never asked outright. I think she looks down on me, subconsciously or otherwise, for staying in a bad marriage and never doing much of anything with my life. I tell myself envy is a petty emotion. It’s more like shame, anyway. Shame and blame for simply going wherever outside forces carried me, as thoughtless and meaningless as the rafts of leaves and water weeds transported by the current.
Still, I miss my family. The awful-awesome of being with the people you know best and who know you best, no matter how they treat you, can be a comfort. We don’t check in with each other more than once every couple of months, so I know that right now they’re not at all worried about me. More than normal.
Events that would bring other families to a celebratory or grief-stricken standstill are blips on Layla’s screen. On one typical call her news, delivered in low-key, businesslike fashion, was that she had earned her doctoral degree. “That was fast,” I thought but did not say aloud. She’d probably mentioned she was going for it in passing, years earlier. The content of our phone calls is always minimized to bullet points that efficiently cover the relevant territory where our family geography overlaps. Her big concern is guaranteeing that her teen-aged children, my niece and nephew, turn out the way she thinks they ought to. Not like mine. Or me. Boy, is she in for a surprise!
Derek hates my family. He isn’t likely to call them to report that I’m missing. He’d have to explain why. He’s a non-voting Republican. They’re Union Democrats. He pees with the door closed; they pee with the door open. They hug. He hits. If my family has to choose between him and me, they would choose me. He’s always known that.
I remember the way that we laughed at this crazy redneck river camp. “Oh Derek. We’ll always have the eels,” I say aloud, then snort at my own maudlin, perverse humor.
It’s routine for nine or more yachts to nuzzle up to Bobby’s during November migration. That’s three-to-four boats deep and not for snobby anal retentive types who don’t care for complete strangers clomping across their decks to get to shore. It’s been muddy out and several boats are carrying red wine drinkers who add crimson splotches to the bits of dirt, clay, gravel and fallen autumn leaves tracked across the decks as hosts and hosted refill drinks and snack platters.
Robin laughs openly at the Clark Griswold lookalike on a magnificent 57-foot Nordhavn named Avalon as he vigorously swabs his deck with a mop after each of his neighbors step on and off his boat. There are drawbacks-besides the inability to escape-to berthing directly on the dock. Privacy cravers and neat freaks are better off in the outside position. The more sociable types enjoy the proximity to other ebullient boaters, trading cocktails and tall boating tales that grow in drama in direct proportion to the piles of empty cans and bottles before everyone walks up the gradually inclining, curving, tree-lined gravel-clay path to the restaurant for catfish.
Lack of privacy has advantages. I can see the wide-screen TV in the 53-foot Hatteras Kendra ahead of us well enough to read the news crawl on the bottom of the screen. I haven’t looked at a newspaper or television broadcast since Hammond. Most boaters, if they watch anything on TV, are into boating movies or documentaries.
The crawl says nothing about a middle-aged female boat thief breaking probation. CNN hasn’t latched on to my downriver run to perdition. What a relief.
On our first visit here Derek dealt with a blown fuse in a 60-foot Trumpy, the stand-offish neo-Cons aboard more than paying for our night’s stay. Funny how snotty yachties turn right friendly when they realize that the middle-class jack-of-all-trades sharing the dock in a less-fancy vessel is their only hope to get the boat moving.
Strange things between strangers always happen at Bobby’s.
“Don’t let that dog close to the ponds. The ’gators got a dog last night.”
“Gee, that’s what I heard last time I was here,” I tell the skinny, long-haired young man watching us with his duck gun in hand as Trish carefully leads KC over the two boat decks between us and the dock. Water Witch is rafted to a 48-foot Kadey-Krogen with the amusing name Can’t Anchor Us. KC is a very calm negotiator of various obstacles, and since we know that she really, really has to go, her restraint is inspiring.
“You all have alligators around these parts?” Trish looks like she’s ready to bolt back to the boat, hauling KC with her.
KC clearly doesn’t care about hazards ashore. She’s got number one and number two in her immediate future, predators be damned.
“Yes ma’am,” he affirms. “Just keep her on a leash and away from the pond and you’ll be OK.”
Traveling incognito fed my paranoia; now the lack of recognition deflates my ego. So far John at Green Turtle Bay is the only face encountered to whom mine is familiar. “I can’t believe nobody recognizes me,” I remark to Rob as she comes up from below with another beer, a box of Cheezits and a bowl of Clementine oranges. Scanning the transoms of the boats at dock I don’t recognize any names. In addition to Water Witch, Can’t Anchor Us, Avalon and Kendra, five other boats have stacked in for the night.
The 35-foot Island Packet sailing catamaran Menou is snugged into the T at the end of the dock nearest the boat launch, the Cajun couple Dick and Dixie ensconced in folding chairs to meet and greet newcomers.
“Oh come on, Gil, give it up,” the Avalon wife cackles, turning from her lively, laughter-punctuated conversation with Dick and Dixie. “We’ll scrub everything after we’re through with these dirty rivers.”
“When you get done with your decks, c’mon over here bebe,” Dixie called in a melodious patois. “There’s plenty of dirt to swab darlin’, but don’t you touch my attack dust bunnies down below!”
The sturdy, dignified 40-foot Nordic Tug, The Newfie Bullet, is parked in front of Can’t Anchor Us. Dee, the take-charge Admiral aboard, lets us know that we’re all going up to dinner at the restaurant in an hour or so. On the dock, behind Water Witch, an elderly white-haired couple in a 37-foot Pacific Seacraft named Wind Dancer speaks quietly to each other as they make adjustments to more firmly secure their mast, which protrudes well off the end of the canoe-shaped stern. A younger couple on Rough Draft, the 39-foot Corbin cutter-rigged sailboat tied to them, offered advice and commiseration.
“I can’t wait to step our mast,” the vivacious, voluptuous brunette announces while her well-toned, athletic male mate nods vigorously. “It feels like our boat isn’t whole with the mast down, you know? You know. When we can put the sails up again I’ll be so happy.”
Meanwhile the English couple on the 31-foot Camano Troll Spirit of Whitby, tied behind us to Rough Draft, is politely inquiring of all and sundry where to plug into electrical power. Temperatures are routinely dropping into the 40s at night and they are crestfallen when informed there is no shore power to be had. They have the effrontery to ask if they can plug into the sailboat’s DC power. Of course not.
As I observe the interplay, I long to jump in, handing out boat cards and sharing my stories. I feel left out.
“Poor Hailey, does it hurt your pride that nobody knows you without your man? I guess you aren’t that memorable,” Robin teases. “Or maybe it’s the clothes.” I glance down at my nondescript plain white t-shirt and boot-cut button-fly jeans. There’s a muddy orange leaf stuck to the side of my scuffed white high-top Reeboks and a tomato sauce stain on the left side of my shirt just below one breast. The sun is leaving us; I unknot the sleeves of Joey’s faded Nike hoodie from around my waist and pull it over my head.
The evenings are getting cooler; we left the bikini weather up on the Tennessee, although the autumn color has followed us downriver. Amidst the tall red pines and towering oaks emerge patches of crimson, orange and walnut-brown foliage. The ground around the boat launch is littered with yellow leaves, gold the first to go as the season progresses. With a mountainous hill looming over us, it’s easy to imagine that we are somewhere farther northeast in hillbilly country, the Smokies, say, or the Appalachians.
“Really, I wish that we could just keep going. I’ve never liked it here. You two go on ahead to the restaurant. I’ll just hang out on the boat,” Robin says.
“Come on, I need my husband’s moral support to sit there and eat catfish with that butt-ugly alligator gar staring at me. Put down that beer and come on up to the restaurant. There’s beer up there, too.” I say. Trish has gone ahead with the group, promising to save us seats.
It’s pointless to argue. “OK, I’ll bring you that burger plain, well done,” I say, sighing theatrically.
“Do you need money?”
“No. Thanks. You’re doing enough. I can foot this bill.”
“You take this.” She hands me two twenties. And her credit card for the dockage. “You’ll need everything you have once we get to where we’re getting to, wherever that is. How much is it again?”
“One thousand five hundred and seventy-two, give or take the $72,” I say.
“Well I’m just glad you didn’t decide to take that Wal-Mart greeter job in Demopolis.”
“Too cold. Rob?”
“What?”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Now scoot. I’m gonna take a nap.”
As I step over our deck and onto the adjoining boat, I notice a new arrival parked behind us off the end of the dock. Or maybe this weird sailboat was already here and I’d missed it in the crowd. Once I’ve climbed over various obstacles on Water Witch and Can’t Anchor Us, I walk down to the upriver end of the dock for a better look. The roughly 27-footer’s decks and hull are carelessly sponge-painted lavender. The boat isn’t tied to the dock, it’s anchored off in the reeds and cattails bordering the drainage ditch that feeds the boggy ’gator pond. It’s tethered to a floating laundry-soap bottle trip line, a trick river travelers use to retrieve their underground tackle if it becomes tangled in bottom debris. The gender-neutral assortment of medium-sized shirts and pants hanging from the rigging and lifelines doesn’t offer further clues about the sailor aboard. A poetically curved old wooden rowing dory painted a deeper shade of purple is marked T/T (tender to) Schizo, home port New Orleans.
A creature of indeterminate age and sex in a voluminous brown turtleneck sweater and plaid polyester trousers wearing ripped black low-top canvas sneakers emerges from belowdecks, gesturing insistently. Its face — framed by short, black, wooly, frizzed hair with bits of line on the ends, like dreadlocks in training, framed by the fading sun — was slightly off in some way. Off in a way impossible to immediately define but instantly felt.
“Hi!”
“Hello,” I said, noting the pilling sweater and stained pants. “When did you get in?”
“I just got here. I come here every night. Can I raft to your boat? Bobby lets me raft when every other boat is in for the night.” The voice is a scratchy, whiny croak. I’m struggling with gender identification. The Pat character from Saturday Night Live comes to mind.
“No. I can’t give permission; it’s not my boat. I’d have to ask the captain, he’s up at the restaurant. Everyone is. You could come up there and ask,” I offer, hoping Robin, six boats away, will hear us and come outside.
The androgynous creature has already started the sailboat engine, a sputtering, puttering Atomic 4 from the sound of it. Black oily smoke belches out of Schizo’s stern. In short order, the homemade anchor is hauled, a 30-pound spiked chunk of metal swinging wildly from the bow like a medieval battleax. In a matter of seconds, Schizo has wheeled out around the dock into the river, its bow pointed straight at Blackdog’s starboard side. All of the boats are tied to face the current with their right quadrants exposed to the river, the bows (the pointy end is the strongest spot on any vessel) taking the brunt of Tombigbee current making its own run downstream to the Coffeeville Lock, less than two miles distant.
Blackdog is about to take the brunt of Schizo. The lunatic captain’s current path and speed will slam the sailboat squarely into the couch where Rob sleeps.
“Robin! Prepare to ram!” I’m shrieking as loud as I ever have and I keep yelling as I climb back over the boat closest to the dock, banging my hip against the edge of the cabin bulkhead and knocking over a glass of red wine onto the holly-wood sole of the cockpit floor. Stubbing my left big toe on the rope-wrapped eight-inch metal cleats binding Blackdog to Water Witch, I swear and stumble down the side deck onto our back porch.
“Robin! Prepare for impact! Robin!” The bright pain of a self-inflicted injury screams in my toe and my brain.
“Sheeut! Hailey? What is it?” She emerges from the salon just in time to see the little sailboat heading directly toward us. “Heyyy — slow down,” she yells. “Do you wanna kill somebody?”
“It wants to raft to us,” I say. “Fend off.”
“It?”
“I can’t tell the gender,” I say. “But I know crazy when I see it.”
“Stop,” orders Robin in her deepest, lowest voice, projecting louder than I’ve ever heard her. We’re both so loud it’s a wonder no one has emerged from the Airstreams or nearby cottages. I can see lights on in some of them. “Do not come any closer.” Schizo is about four feet away, its unsecured anchor swaying like a lunatic metronome.
“Mister Bobby says I can raft up,” the creature whined.
“Mister Bobby didn’t tell me that,” says Robin, calm but stern, like an elementary school principal quieting a child on the verge of a tantrum. “You’ll have to go and get Mister Bobby if you want to tie up somewhere. You are not tying up to this boat.”
As if to itself, the creature begins to mumble in its own jargon, laced with a few recognizable profanities. “Kill the assholes, kill the fuckin’ assholes,” it mutters, cackling mad whispers. Schizo backs away six feet, proceeding to run up and down the exterior line of boats at the dock, back and forth, circling. Rob grabs a boathook.
“Oh, man,” says Robin. “Hailey, run up to the restaurant and find Bobby or Betty June or somebody while I fend off this nutbar.”
A bandy-legged white pit bull mix splotched with brown and black patches gets up from his resting spot as I clomp down the ramp off the dock.
“It’s OK boy, I gotta get some help,” I say, startled but starting out friendly, which isn’t going to do any good because despite the rakish RCA-dog pirate patch over one eye this is not a friendly dog. He’s wagging his stump of a tail and growling at the same time, rumbling low in his throat as he moves leisurely directly into my path.
His upper lip curls into a snarl. Why would they keep a dog like that around? “You sure are a mean dog, aren’t you?” I say, trying not to show fear.
I side-step into the grass, scanning the ground for a rock, a branch, anything to bop him with if he attacks.
“No!” I hear Robin order again, as if commanding a dog.
“No!” I mimic to the mean dog with the big head, massive jaws and the merciless eyes of a killer. He turns away to sniff at an interesting turd pile and I sprint up the crude road, slipping in the loose gravel, nearly taking off the swinging screen door of the restaurant. Behind me, the mean dog is meandering up the hill.
“Where’s Bobby? We need him at the dock. We need some help, some nut in a purple boat is trying to raft up to us.”
Twenty or so preoccupied, happy faces glance up from their deep-fried pickles, sweet tea and platters of catfish fillets.
“Mister Bobby went home,” says Betty June from behind the counter, her head partially hidden by the ornate antique cash register. She punches a button and the metal drawer pops out with a chime and a solid chunk. “Somebody needs some help tying up; tell ’em I’ll get to ’em after I ring in these tickets. They need the gas pump turned on?”
“No, it’s some kook in a purple boat acting crazy. She, he, it — I can’t tell-is trying to ram our boats.” This gets the attention of two skippers sitting with their wives at a nearby table. I am speaking at the volume which throughout my life has prompted parents, teachers and employers to tell me to quiet down and use my “indoor voice.”
“Oh, that one,” says Betty June. “Bobby told it to stay away.” She asks in a confidential tone. "Do y’all think that’s a man or woman? We can’t decide.”
“Whatever it is, it’s not sane. Please, can somebody help?”
The two skippers rise from their dinners. Both are tall, beefy men wearing West Marine foulie jackets. “Let’s see what’s going on,” says the one I recognize from the boat in front of us.
Trish comes out of the ladies room. “Where’s Robin?”
“She’s trying to keep a wacko off our boat. Come on!”
I’m last out the door. I don’t see the mean dog or even sense him until I feel a sharp pinch on my upper thigh just below my left butt cheek. The two-pronged puncture is like a hole-puncher or a stapler, neatly placing two round indents on the tight skin of a back thigh in motion.
“Son of a bitch!” The pain is a rusty nail, penetrating deep like the time I jumped out of my tree house when I was 9, one bare foot impaled on the tiny, dirty metal stake sticking up out of a discarded board.
Infuriated, I wheel around and kick the mean dog in the head. “Fuck off, Fido.” I’ve got a thighs roundhouse going, adrenalin pumping. No flight. So fight. I kick him hard again, in the ribs. He yips, startled. I drive in another good one with a Reebok to the ass before he slinks away, howling monotonously. It sets off the other dogs, barking and hair-raisingly howling.
“Holy shit,” says Trish. She must have turned around when she heard me holler. “You’re bleeding. He got you good.”
“Screw it,” I mutter, stumble-running to the dock, catching up with the men.
In the fading light the full moon is up, clouds streaming by behind it. I can just make out the dim outline of the invading sailboat.
“What in God’s name is this? That’s no way to park,” says one of the skippers.
Schizo is wedged bow-first into the five-foot space between Blackdog and the yacht in front of us, its anchor dropped on the yacht’s stern deck. The skipper murmurs dismay as he gets a look at the trailing, gelatinous weeds, his Sunbrella seat cushions sullied with mud and other slop from the river bottom. A thin twist of yellow ski-tow rope is tied to Blackdog’s stern rail, sloppily but effectively holding the purple sailboat in place, stern swinging out in the current.
“That’s one heck of a way to raft up,” says the other skipper.
“Where’s Robin? Robin?” Trish is calling as I somehow make it again over two decks to the salon door. I hear Annie Lennox, smooth, low, powerful, controlled, on the stereo speakers singing “Mamma, where do I go,” the “Diva” CD we were listening to earlier in the day. In the low lamplight I see a brown throw blanketing the couch. KC is cowering in the corner next to the armchair.
The brown throw is moving. I see the lint and fabric pills covering it, and hear a pig-like grunting. It’s a brown sweater. Its hips — his hips — are moving in that age-old rhythm, obscenely bumping in time with the music.
He is covering Robin.
He is raping Robin.
I can’t see her face, just one helpless inert bare foot hanging off the side of the couch, the sole plastered with a pain patch.
Without much thought I move around the coffee table, approaching the prone bodies feet first. I reach in under where the lower abdomens meet, my hand in a belly sandwich directed past the pubic bones. I know what it is the minute my fingers skim the pliable, rubbery skin. I close my hand around the penis that is about two inches inside my friend. How satisfying to pull it out hard and bend it down sharply, jamming it head first into the cushions.
That gets his attention. He stiffens as if stung by a million wasps, rising up on his forearms. He sucks in air but does not speak.
“Get off!” I hiss. He struggles to one knee, bracing the opposite foot on the floor as if paused to spring.
The Roomba zips from under the couch, clipping his inner ankle on the tender spot between sock and shoe. He groans, trapped between the coffee table and couch as the robot vacuum mechanically bumps and backs up, bumps and backs up.
Robin’s eyes are closed. I can’t tell if she’s breathing. From the side table I grab the long-handled butane lighter we use to ignite the gas stove, brandishing the wand at his ugly, feral, inhuman face. I hit the flame button, searing one gaping, gasping nostril, and smell burnt hair.
“Uhhh,” he moans.
“Get out of here,” I hiss again, fierce and fearless.
“Everything OK in there?” Trish calls. She’s still on the dock with one of the skippers. The other skipper’s back on his boat, untangling the errant anchor. All three are trying to raise someone on the odd, purple, dangerously parked sailboat.
Fuck. How do I answer that without telling the world? “Some trash wandered onto our boat,” I call back. “No worries. It’s leaving. Now.”
He has crawled out from between the couch and coffee table, panting, on hands and knees. I kick him in the ass. My foot’s going to be as sore as my toe tomorrow. “Pull up your pants,” I direct, keeping my voice low. The ornamental iron poker next to the Franklin stove comes easily to hand. Head down, muttering to himself, he yanks up the absurd plaid trousers as he lurches for the door, crouched low over his aching groin.
“Out!” I shout. He’s through the door and into the cockpit, me close behind with the poker in bashing position.
I’m untying the ski rope. The skipper on Kendra is still exclaiming over his muddy back porch as he examines the bizarre anchor.
“Hey Kendra,” I yell, “Could you toss that anchor off your stern?”
A spotlight clicks on, illuminating the scene and temporarily blinding me. “We got trouble here?” Betty June calls out.
Nice of her to show up. “This freak came on our boat,” I inform her. “But he’s leaving now. Keep that light out of my face, OK?”
Muttering at the mucky mess, Kendra’s boat skipper manages to heave the anchor back onto Schizo’s foredeck. “You’re gonna pay for any damages,” he warns the gibbering rapist as in obvious pain Robin’s attacker attempts to raise a leg over Blackdog’s rail to step onto his beat-up excuse for a boat. I help with a shove that sends him over the side into the water. He hangs on, grasping one of the many dangling lines hanging off his boat.
Robin, Trish and I have a good start on a Top 10 List of Creeps We’ve Offloaded Overboard.
“I saw your ladder, sicko. Swim for it,” I shove the Schizo away as hard as I can. The current catches the bow, pushing boat and sailor out into the river. A tow-barge as brilliantly lit as a cruise ship turns the corner, searchlight sweeping the banks. Too bad it’s so far away, I think, vicious in my need to obliterate the horror, picturing the smaller vessel crushed under the weight of a full barge load.
“That wasn’t very nice,” remarks Betty Jean.
I’ve had it with her.
“Yeah, well he wasn’t very nice. And that mean dog you’ve got running around here isn’t nice either. He comes near me again and I’ll kill him.” I’m huffing, short of breath. The bite isn’t throbbing, it’s banging. “Somebody needs to run me to the hospital.”
“Which dog?” says Betty June. “Buddy? That’s Mister Bobby’s dog. He’s a barker, that’s all, he don’t mean no harm.”
“More like bloody Buddy,” I say, showing her the bite and blood. “He snuck up behind me and latched on. Are his shots up to date?”
“Just got him a new set of tags,” says Betty June, no doubt threats of a lawsuit dancing in her mercenary brain. “Let me get the pick-up. I’ll run you to the Urgent Care.”
“I’ll meet you up at the restaurant,” I tell her. “I’m going to pour some peroxide on this right away.”
Robin can come with me. Surely they’ll have a rape kit or know how to get one. She’s still lying on the couch. “Rob, are you OK? Answer me.”
She’s rigid, eyes still closed. I bend closer, touch her cheek. “We both need to get to the hospital. Let’s get you dressed.” I pull up her Snoopy boxers, straighten her rucked-up t-shirt that reads “Carrabelle: A Quaint Drinking Village With a Fishing Problem.”
She opens her eyes, colorless, no pupils visible, awash in trauma. “No hospital,” she rasps.
“You have to. God knows what that monster is infected with. We’ve got to collect the evidence. Where else did he hurt you?” He didn’t get in far, but she must be torn, ripped. There are fingermarks on her skinny neck.
“I am not going. Don’t tell — anyone.”
Trish enters the salon. “Oh my God, Robin, are you OK? What did he do to you?”
“Raped her,” I say. “She won’t go to the hospital.”
“Don’t tell.” Robin repeats. She closes her eyes again. Trish grabs the tangled navy-blue blanket from the floor and covers her. KC pads over to the couch, carefully placing her snout on Robin’s leg. “Good girl,” Robin says.
“OK sugar. It’s OK.” Trish strokes Rob’s forehead, nods at me. “I’ll stay with her. Maybe in the morning …”
“Grab the peroxide from the medicine cabinet, would you?” There are involuntary tears in my eyes. The bite hurts more by the minute. I lay prone on the floor, not bothering to take off my jeans. Trish pours the contents of a full bottle over the back of my leg. It foams; I squirm with the pain and bite my lip.
“Protect her, Trish. Watch in case that fucko returns. Don’t let anybody near this boat. I’ll be back,”
“We’re covered,” she says, brandishing pepper spray, poker nearby.
I limp across the decks again, tears still streaming, adrenaline crashed into organ-deep exhaustion. I realize I’ve left my purse aboard. Screw it. This repair is on Betty June’s dime.
Funny how on the river you forget the land life nearby in towns beyond view. The white pick-up climbs the winding camp road up the mountain and in seconds we are on a flat University of Alabama Highway bordered by dormant fields, traffic zooming by and bright lights in the distance.
“You’re going to need to quarantine that mean dog,” I tell Betty June. “Unless you want to get it over with and put him down before he hurts somebody else.”
“Bobby’s dog wouldn’t hurt a flea,” she says.
“How many other people has he bitten?”
“Must have been some other dog. Buddy just barks. Y’all can show me in the morning. Might be Bob’s hound. He don’t let his grandkids around it.”
With a population of 360 covering 4.5 square miles, Coffeeville doesn’t have a full-fledged hospital. The emergency urgent care office on Highway 177 is quiet. Since I have no other pants they give me a pair of blue scrubs to wear home after the wound — two puncture marks already vividly bruising-are washed and dressed. Since I don’t remember the date of my last tetanus shot (possibly after the tree house incident of long ago) one is administered in short order. I give my name as “Nora Jones” on the medical forms. I’m a big fan of her music. The admitting nurse practitioner is anxious to get the proper forms filled out regarding the dog and his distemper shots. Without proof, I am advised that I will need to return for a round of rabies shots. They also give me a packet of amoxicillin to fight infection.
Betty June promises to return the next day with the dog’s proof of vaccination. She writes a check for services rendered.
Robin is still on the couch when I return. I stand over her, looking down with a tenderness not felt since Lisa and Joey were babies. I wished I’d stayed with the boat and sent her up the hill. That maniac would never have gotten a foot aboard. “Oh Robin,” I whisper, like a prayer. I let her sleep.
We’ll get her help in the morning.
I latch the cabin doors and check the windows. Across the river, a new mast light shines near the opposite bank. Schizo? I slump in the armchair, still-thumping leg propped on the ottoman, to keep watch. Fog rolls in, obliterating the mast light and the moon.