“What the hell?” The sight of a stranger in my cabin startled me nearly enough to jump over the side, but all I could manage to do was blurt out something stupid like; “What the hell?" It was a gut reaction, and she had expected such, I guess, and I continued to greet this girl with incomplete sentences.
“What are you doing in my… How did you… What the hell?” I didn’t accomplish much there in the shallow end of my vocabulary, so I left the cabin door open and backed away.
“I hope you can swim,” I said, “Shore’s right over there, about 100 yards.”
“Please don’t,” she said. “Let me stay, please!”
“Stay? Where? Here? This boat isn’t even big enough for me, how the hell…”
“I don’t take much room,” she said. "Please!”
“Please what?” My mind raced with what lay in front of me. Some runaway was a stowaway on my boat, and what could I possibly do with her? There was no place nearby to take her and then go find a decent anchorage before dark and I didn’t want to navigate this area after dark. This girl was going to stay the night, it appeared.
No, bad idea - I interrupted my own thoughts. There could be serious trouble and I was on the wrong end of it. I really should just start up the Stolen Gun, double back and dump her on the nearest pier - about 13 miles, from what I remember - I might even give her a blanket. If this woman was a tattoo, it would spell trouble, and... whoa, trouble was now stepping right out my cabin door.
“Hey, hold it there young lady.” I tried to step back, but was already at the transom. As she emerged into the light I remembered how attractive she was, not in a Hollywood way, right, but just the right way, and this was all wrong. “Do your parents even know where you are?” I now seemed to have, at least, the presence of grammar with me, and beyond being duly flabbergasted, I was duly curious.
“Who cares?” she said. "I don’t even know where they are."
“What are you trying to do? Are you running from something? Someone?”
“Aren’t we all?” She said, and she was right in a way, but also clearly dodging the question.
“You’re on my boat and I need you to give me some answers,” I said, authority dripping from the corners of my mouth. “Where do you live?”
“Where do you live?” she asked. And this went on for about 20 minutes. I’ll spare you the dialogue, mostly because it didn’t show me in a favorable light, but things calmed down – I calmed down, that is – she never seemed to be anything but in complete control. Even when she was “begging” me to let her stay, it all seemed like just another act, and I was just another sucker on just another boat.
“I’ve never been on a boat this big before,” she said, obviously knowing that the way to impress men is to tell them how big their things are. Laughable, because the Stolen Gun is only 21 feet long - large enough to get me up the Intracoastal, but small enough to be easy on fuel.
“Well, now you have, and in the morning you won’t be,” I said, trying to talk as if I was actually in control. Now that I was looking at her as something other than a young barmaid, and in the dim glow of my anchor light, she did look like she could have had 18 years behind her – at least that, I reasoned, but I can’t really say for sure what part of me was doing the reasoning.
We talked for a few hours, with her bright chatter holding up more than her end of the conversation, and me falling into her web. It was interesting, trying to separate the lies from the truth and get some idea of what this girl was all about. After a while I decided that it was all lies and I just let it go at that. The boat churned in the whimsical toss between prevailing breezes and the river current, and we swayed slowly back and forth under a sky filled with brilliant stars.
I maintained that I didn’t want her aboard and that she would leave at the earliest opportunity, and I wondered if she could see through my lies as easily as I saw through hers.
“So, Mister… uh, Mister Putcamp - is that how I say your name? Putcamp?”
“Say it any way you like, as long as you have the keys to these handcuffs,” I told Deputy Stern-face.
“So, Mister Putcamp, you decided to let this girl stay on your boat, even though…”
“Decided?” I said. “I had no choice!”
“Oh, but you did,” he said, and I knew what was coming next, so I barged right in.
“What would you have done? She said she was 18, and I believed her. Look, nothing happened.” That’s when his cell phone rang.
“Tell them I’m busy,” I said with a sneer. He turned his head to answer his phone, and he just listened without saying anything. Then he hung up.
“Okay, Mister Putcamp,” he said. "Continue please.” And so I did.
I made the sleeping arrangements pretty simple; she would get the bunks inside the cabin and I would take the cushions on the stern deck. I had never slept there before, and I had never even wanted to sleep there, but there was no way we were going to sleep together, and as callous, cold and uncaring a man as I can be (at times,) I could not make her sleep outside. I gave her two blankets, took one for myself and, wearing everything but my shoes, I spread out on the stern of the Stolen Gun.
Laying there on the narrow set of cushions as the boat swirled in the breeze, I watched the stars go by and wondered where my life had gone in the past 55 years. I was never the kind to plant roots and let things stick. I’d had a few good relationships here and there, and a few bad ones, but most seemed to come and go. I guess I was thinking about this because seeing Marley got me thinking about daughters and family and how I’d never had either. For most people, we might just be having a little family vacation, with Dad and Daughter out on their boat, but that’s not how I roll, is it? No, in my screwed up life where sometimes your best friend is either your bail bondsman or your lawyer, in my life where I never feel like I really own anything, but just rent things - and friends - temporarily. Yeah, in my life. where I find myself stranded on a boat with a stranger who makes me realize that, even if it’s just old failed dreams that haunt us, we are all running away from something.
Ever wonder how kids stay in bunk beds, and why they don’t just roll off of them? This thought came to me while perched on the cushions. If I rolled over to my left, I would fall off the engine cover onto the deck, which was a lot better than if I rolled over to my right, which is what I did at about 3 a.m. I know this, because I woke up long before I hit the water, at least I think I woke up. It was surreal and I remember every hundredth of a second, starting from the moment when I realized there was nothing under me. I thrust my hand down to save myself, but I clutched nothing but empty, salty air. Then, I rolled some more and landed on the ski platform, grabbed a stern cleat and stopped myself from falling completely in the water by propping myself up on the outdrive.
Suddenly and completely awoken from whatever dream I had been enjoying, I was soaking wet from the waist down as I scrambled back onto the boat. “What the hell,” I muttered. “What the hell!"