Captain Jesus Dobby was not a cruel man. Not entirely, anyway. Long ago, in fact, his mother had gone to great lengths to make certain her son did not grow up to be a womanizing, alcohol swilling, no-good louse like his father. Dobby—born on Christmas Day, a bit more than a half-century earlier—had managed to avoid two of those traps.
Dobby owned the rust-coated Gypsy Dancer. He would troll the islands and vast open waters of the South Pacific for salvage, occasionally encountering day trippers who ran out of gas and needed a tow. He’d set the price according to how much cash they had in their wallets. Business was business. If they wanted a better deal, they were more than welcome to continue floundering; maybe they’d get lucky, maybe not.
Dobby figured his mother would be happy to see him gainfully employed. He could also more or less claim he never hit a woman—unless it was the last resort and all other options had been explored, including locking them in a closet or tying them to the bed posts. And those times were rare; the only women he associated with were prostitutes who had a financial stake in tolerating his more unsavory requests.
Dobby owned homes on three different islands, little more than fold-up cots under tin walls and thatched roofs. In exchange for some flotsam booty upon his return, neighbors would use hand-made brooms once a month to whisk the spiders and spook out the fox bats.
Although born in Amarillo, Texas, Dobby was a citizen of Tokelau, of British Pitcairn, and the famous whale-watching island of Niue. The majority of his nights were spent under the stars, though, on a bedroll tucked against the gunwale of the Gypsy Dancer’s main deck. If the air was still, he’d drape a mosquito net from the winch above. Dobby slept much better rocked by the sea, which also offered ease and proximity for the late night pissing and vomiting resulting from his love affair with locally bottled hooch. Staring up at the swaying stars, Dobby drunkenly whistled one half of the duet from the second act of a Verdi opera, a tune of revenge after poor Rigoletto received a severe ass-beating upon trying to save his daughter from the Duke. A cherished memory, a magical night his mother had snuck them downtown to a summer stock production. She’d held his hand through all three acts just like a grown up date, and he never once fell asleep.
By now keeping pace with the turtle-girl barely required cutting a wake. Dobby knew it was just a matter of time before she surrendered. The creature was clearly unable to submerge, and despite the relentless strokes of its front flippers, her head lolled back and forth. Dobby knew the thing was more valuable alive than dead, and he was worried about swimming it to death or running it over. Now, in the growing shadow of the Dancer’s wheel house, Dobby fantasized about the bidding war for this exotic critter, maybe among the big shot heavies at the Starkist Tuna plant on Pago Pago. A thousand dollars! Ten thousand dollars! Do I hear twenty-thousand for this fantastic, one of a kind aberration from the darkest depths? I have thirty-thousand from the wealthy gentleman in the first row! Do I hear forty?
The chase lasted into the third bottle of rum, when the turtle-girl surprised Dobby by dipping under the surface of the nearly calm sea. Dobby hit the engine’s kill switch and fell off his bar stool, cracking his forehead on a hard plastic Easter Island moai head he’d long ago pulled from the ocean and kept as a silent companion. Dobby stumbled out of the wheel house and down the bridge ladder, snatching the throwing net as he climbed over the H-bitt to peer down into the shadowy water.
Nothing. Just deep blue sea and the sound of trickling water from the automatic bilge pump and the ticking twin diesel engines. Dobby cupped both hands around his eyes, but the alcohol made surrendering his hand-holds dangerous as he leaned out over the bow.
A few large bubbles broke the surface directly below, and Dobby decided the grappling hook was his only chance to at least haul in a carcass. Better alive than dead, but better dead than nothing, he drunkenly reasoned. He climbed back over the H-bitt to retrieve the ominous, four-pronged hook and line from its home on top of the capstan.
The captain worked quickly and methodically, as is only possible for the most seasoned drunks. He dropped the heavy hook over the bow, then worked it from port to starboard, jigging deeper and deeper until the round bottom knob struck what had to be the turtle-girl under fifteen feet of water. He pulled in a foot of rope, then dropped under the target and jerked the hook back up, snagging his prey. He brought her up hand over hand, careful not to mangle his trophy too badly, although if he did, there was always that saltwater fish taxidermist on Tokelau he drank with—the one who could work absolute wonders.
When the creature broke the surface, Dobby’s heart sank like a thousand-pound anchor. Fortunately the prong of the grappling hook had snared a thin belt around the turtle-girl’s naked waist and hadn’t torn up her flesh. But the shell had come off, leaving what looked like a regular human kid. The thing began coughing up foaming water, as her nearly weightless body dangled a few feet over the sea, slowly rotating.
Dobby considered throwing the frigging thing back, just letting the hook drop and being done with this sorry bullshit. How much fuel had he burned? It would be fine if the hook dislodged from the girl’s woven belt, and screw it if it didn’t. Let the sea have the entire goddamn mess. Minutes ago, he’d been on the verge of the payday he’d hunted for thirty years. This thing would have a boatload of trouble attached to it.
“It’s a turtle-girl that lost its goddamn turtle parts.” Captain Dobby spit a huge wad of phlegm skyward, and then reeled her on board.