Flotilla Read online

  At first glance, the Colony looked less like a business than it did floating wreckage. This is where my Dad lived? It looked like a naval disaster. I could see the lights of the different ships but it was clear they were there to provide the minimum amount of illumination and only if one stood directly below or around them. The wind started to moan and whip the ocean into whitecaps. The old fisherman wildly spun the wheel and nosed the boat away from something. I craned my neck to see what had happened and saw a set of nets he’d nearly run into. Where were we supposed to tie up at?

  The network of docks in the colony had been designed to allow the ferry boat to nose in and dock directly at the colony. I knew this from Dad’s emailed descriptions but I couldn’t see where that point was. As we neared a single boat, the pilot spun the wheel and goosed the engines slightly. I was certain we were about to crash but soon saw what the old fisherman had seen. The small opening presented itself and allowed the ship to come inside to dock in the center.

  Riding up to the main dock let me get a closer look at my new home. The picture coalesced and I could see the boats and the people on them preparing their evening meals. The rain caused individual scenes to fade in and out of view. Open cook fires and people huddled around them. Men, women and children moved in and out of the shadows wearing cheap plastic rain gear if they wore any at all. Orange plastic work lights twisted in the wind over decks made out of cheap plywood covered with cheaper non-skid yellow plastic. Was it like this on purpose? An old Asian woman sat on a milk crate peeling potatoes. With her hair soaked and plastered to her head, she let the peels fall right into the water. She disappeared in the rain and then I was watching a group of Mexican men standing around a gas grill. Their cooking location was the back deck of a barge-like ship and they paused to look at me watching them. Then they were gone again as the boat motored through another turn.

  I was either an alien visitor to a new world or the world’s most pathetic tourist. The Colony being the jumbled mess that it was, you felt disoriented just looking at it. Brand new yachts rubbed fenders with broken-down houseboats. Trim plastic-and-metal docks touched puke-colored sheets of splintered pressboard sitting on top of sawed-off telephone poles. Cheery groups of Mexican or Asian families went about their business next to each other, ignoring the sullen-looking white guy across the water with the thousand-yard stare.

  It took a while but finally the boat pulled up to dock next to the Phoenix, the ship at the center of this disaster zone. Dad had told me that he would meet me there. In our conversations, he told me a few things about the ship and it was strange to see it finally in person. It was like seeing the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco for the first time after looking at it for years in pictures, movies and television. I was here … after two years I had finally arrived. I stepped outside to look at the grey cliff of steel, getting my face immediately soaked by the rain.

  “Hey, j’wanna gimme a hand?” the old Filipino said. “Your Da’ said you would help – that’s why I didn’t charge him.” I turned around to see my two duffel bags airborne and flying at my face. I managed to catch them but staggered under the impact. I recovered before I could go flying off of the dock and into the water. Looking down, I saw that but there was no dry place to drop them. I could only set my bag onto the deck which was already puddled with rainwater.

  “That’s good,” the pilot remarked, watching me vainly try to find a way to keep my stuff dry. I gave up and set it in the smallest puddle on the dock, hoping Dad had a dryer or something. “I always send out the laundry first – if you can’t handle that, no way am I letting you touch the food.” He began tossing other bags to me in the same way. Some of them were easy, like the pillows in sealed plastic bags and others were not. I struggled to find a place for a forty pound bag of dry dog food that he suddenly tossed in my direction. My first ten minutes onboard the Colony and I’m moving cargo for this quietly violent old man … hardly the welcome that I was hoping for.

  I worked in silence and considered my situation. The sinking feeling in my stomach was getting worse. During the treatment center period, I developed this gut feeling that I had crossed the line from a comfortable level of trouble into something much deeper. It never got any better even though I was waiting for that time when things would be on their way back to normal. I wasn’t there yet. That gut feeling got worse when mom told me I was leaving to go see Dad during the breakfast and riding out here had not improved things. Now, standing on the teetering dock, soaked to the bone, this bad feeling was larger than my whole stomach. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so lost or so alone. I didn’t want this … I wanted to go home. I wanted my Mom.

  Whoa. Did I just say that? This wasn’t the time or the place to go to pieces. Stop it, I yelled to myself. I looked around quickly and saw the dock and the gangplank leading up to the destroyer. The pilot was busy doing something on the boat. Either he was ignoring me or maybe he forgot I was there. I toyed with the idea of pulling a runner while he had his back to me. I was carefully picking up my duffel and preparing to sneak away … find a boat or a phone and beg Mom to arrange transport. My feet were shifting into out of here mode when I heard a voice over my shoulder.

  “How was the trip?” I turned around suddenly hoping to see Dad. A kid was talking me from the gangplank of the Phoenix. He stepped carefully off of the aluminum gangplank and started toward me. The boy was younger and smaller than I was but wore a leather jacket I could have camped out under. He sauntered up to the cargo stacked on the dock and started rummaging through a double-bagged sack of oranges like he owned them. Maybe he did, how was I supposed to know? The pilot caught him after he placed the second one in his pocket and reacted swiftly.

  “Hey, gimme ‘dat!” the old man screamed and made a show of waving a large rusty boat hook at us. Faster than I would have thought possible, the kid pirouetted on his toes and darted off down the docks without another word. In a second or two he was gone in the silvery sheets of rain.

  The fisherman was cursing in Tagalog, searching for the equivalent in English and too angry to find it. I heard the word “Craphead!” in among another long string of angry foreign cursing while he looked at the damage. Gesturing at me, he continued his tirade while slapping the wet sides of his boat and stabbing his finger in the direction of the departed thief. Bystanders looked at me like I was to blame. I kept my mouth shut and stood there; too tired and too scared to care. I was wet, tired and hungry – now maybe my free trip was gone because of this shoplifting kid.

  “Problems?” Dad had appeared at my elbow and I had been too distracted and frightened to notice. He didn’t seem surprised by the screaming or how I looked, dripping wet and ready to start swimming for home. He didn’t seem to notice the weather or the heaving deck. In fact, Dad looked comfortable wearing a ratty pair of thongs and a bright Traffic Yellow slicker. It had been a year since we had seen each other. He had a goatee now and his traditional high-and-tight was starting to include some streaks of gray.

  The pilot was still steamed but he finally calmed enough to communicate in English. “Your kid’s a thief!” the pilot yelled. I jumped at the accusation but Dad put a restraining arm on my elbow. “You can pay me off later, Rick but the kid owes me a new bag of oranges. I want my boat fee for hauling him out here, too!”

  “That’s crap, Ignacio” Dad said shortly. He was a short guy but he had the shoulders of a linebacker. His balanced stance on the dock was somewhat predatory to me, I don’t know why. “Jim didn’t steal your oranges and that kid sure didn’t make off with a whole bag. Jim didn’t know he was boosting until he was gone.”

  The boat pilot wasn’t about to back down and I suddenly noticed his hunched and leathery neck…kind of like a turtle. “In the old days,” he commented darkly. “We’d just take his hand.”

  “And you’re welcome to,” Dad replied wearily. “As soon as you find the hand.” He picked up the duffel in a single hand and began to move away. “Thanks for the lift, boss,”
he called back over his shoulder. “Com’on, Jim.” Dad moved off almost as quickly as the shoplifter.

  I had to run on wet and treacherous docks to catch up. The Colony was laid out in concentric circles of docks – A through E - We walked on our way to the E-ring where the Horner was and it took 20 minutes to make our way out there. Dad took a dizzying set of rights and lefts I knew I wouldn’t be able to remember.

  As we walked along, I tried to take everything in. The place had a vibe to it like the flea market we used to go to every Saturday over at the Rose Bowl. People were moving all over the place and you had to squeak through them balanced against the motion of the sea. People were busy eating dinner – the cuisine looked like it had come from every corner of the world. The smell of curry mixed with smoky barbeque and hot cornmeal. Onions, garlic and hot soup – my stomach started to growl. Kids were all around us chattering in different languages. At first I couldn’t understand why these people would be out in the rain like this but then I realized that some of the places we passed on the docks were actually restaurants. Lots of little counters and stalls with two or three stools but then we passed one with tables and a waiter. Stranger by the minute, I thought.

  The docks were wide and inviting in some places and other places they crowded you almost to the water’s edge. Dad seemed to be an expert, he moved through the crowds without breaking stride while I bounced around like a drunken acrobat. My initial fears of dying before I could find Dad were replaced by my fear that Dad would somehow get me killed before we could get to the boat. I was certain I would never be found again if he wandered off and stared so hard at his back so hard that my eyes began to hurt.

  It was dark and wet in some spots but in others, they had rigged lights and rain cover. The clear plastic sheets were stretched across the open space, sagging dangerously with water. They worked as rain shelters but wouldn’t last for long … The weight would eventually cause them to burst. With my luck, it would happen while I was standing right below. Then I saw that I wasn’t the only person who saw it … he just had a different perspective than me. A squirrelly-looking white guy came along with a huge equipment dolly that held a compressor hooked to a large plastic tank. He reached up with a J-shaped rubber hose and started to suck the water out each rain shelter.

  I watched him move from shelter to shelter and I had to be impressed by the simple genius of a shelter/water trap. It was an ‘oh, wow’ moment for me, cut short when I realized suddenly that fresh water was probably something we didn’t get a lot of out here.

  I felt an elbow in my ribs and turned: Dad had realized I was not behind him and came back to get me. We weren’t going directly to the boat. He took me to dinner at one of the full sit-down floating restaurants. Pho and egg rolls – simple stuff but it was hot and tasted great. Dad kept introducing me to everyone in his line of sight. We couldn’t go more than a bite or two before Dad was waving someone over else and going “This is Jim, my son … the one I told you about!” Then an ancient Chinese woman would be patting my cheek or I would be shaking some old white guy’s callused, weathered hand.

  Dad’s introductions continued through the dinner and the rest of the walk to the boat. Some people were all smiles and handshakes, others were a little distant and still others were just kind of glazed over, like Dad was introducing them to a hamster. It wouldn’t have mattered if they gave me wads of cash or beat on me – I was so overloaded with names and faces that I wouldn’t be able to recall any of them a day later. I was more tired than I’d ever felt in my life. I was ready to collapse on the soaking deck when Dad announced: “Here we are!”

  Based on Dad’s pictures, I was expecting to find it easier. The Horner C was parked with the aft swimming deck up against the E Ring dock and looked almost invisible against the dozens of boats I’d already passed. I could barely make out the upper deck in the dripping gloom. Somewhere inside, a light burned making it look friendly and welcoming. Dad led me up a small set of stairs where he then unlocked the rear salon door and waved me inside.

  “Drop your stuff here for the moment,” Dad said, and disappeared downstairs somewhere. I stood there, dripping wet and exhausted, looking at the boat Dad had been describing to me for the last two years. We were in the salon, the large rear lounge area that was as wide as the ship. Cheap furniture faced a small flat panel screen that hung over a fake fireplace that didn’t look like it worked. I moved forward up some stairs into the galley area. I could tell that the boat had been expensive at one point but had suffered years of abuse. The faux-granite countertops were scratched and scarred – I guess nobody ever heard of a cutting board. In front of the kitchen was the bridge. A large chrome-steel ships wheel sat in front of two chair mounts but there was only one chair left with faded and torn leather. The console was filled with different buttons and readouts but I had no idea what any of them did – they looked broken anyway.

  Stairs disappeared below somewhere and I saw another set of stairs heading to an upper deck back in the salon. Boats are really three-dimensional and even though it was half the size of my mom’s house back in West Covina, I felt lost and enormously out of place. Finally Dad reappeared in the galley and beckoned me downstairs. Out of all the rooms on the boat, the only semi-available room was the crew quarters. Dad had the Master Stateroom at the head of the passage and the other room on board, ‘stateroom’, was completely full of junk.

  “Guess things happened too quickly,” Dad said, with one arm sweeping stacks of old newspapers and books roughly to the floor. Under the other arm he held a group of old, nasty blankets that he dumped onto the bare mattress. The room was cold and wet, a porthole had been left open and whatever heat there was inside had disappeared hours before. “You’ll be staying here,” he continued. “One of your first jobs will be to get this room in shape.” He turned and disappeared back up the passageway.

  I sat down on the bunk and took in my new room. It was large by boat standards but since it was crowded with junk I had only enough room to stand up and turn around in. When they ship a dog on a plane the dog crate has more space than what I had to work with. What am I doing here? I kept asking myself that question over and over again while I tried to shift the junk enough so I could put my bags down.

  The buzzing in my head had gotten worse and on top of that, the rolling downstairs was making me nauseous. I was supposed to take some meds that were back in my bags somewhere – Dad may not have been told about my prescription. Hungry, tired, had to pee and miserable…that was me at that moment. The rain was actually the opening act on a full-blown storm and this was how I was introduced to life on the sea.

  I’m going to pause this thing for a second and drive or pilot or sail – whatever you want to call it. I’ll pick it up again in a few.

  Our current position is: 33°50'21.60"N 120°16'17.53"W

  Chapter Two – Gardens and Guns

  I planned on going straight to bed but Dad had other plans. We were up until midnight catching up. He drank a beer and smoked half a pack of cigarettes while I told him all about the trouble I had been into.

  “Your mother hasn't been keeping me in the loop,” he said, his hands working to repair a green nylon net.

  “She told you about the rehab, right?” I asked hopefully.

  “Sort of. Why don't you tell me?” I had a lot of details to fill in. I tried to be as up-front as I could but the whole story made me feel so embarrassed. I’m a real doofus when you stop and think about it. I could tell that some parts of the story were upsetting, especially when I got to how I almost died.

  “You had alcohol poisoning?” he asked. “How much did you drink?”

  I had to admit the truth. “A lot.”

  “What does that mean?”

  I didn't know how to answer that and shrugged helplessly. He gave me an ugly look but didn't comment. In my embarrassment, I kept peppering my conversations with a bunch of ‘you knows’ and ‘uhs’. Dad said absolutely nothing throughout my story until I final
ly ran out of things to say. He stared at the ceiling for a while.

  Finally, he brought his eyes back to me. “Pen patrol starts at dawn,” he said while crushing out his cigarette. “Get some sleep.” He slapped some light switches and the upper deck of the boat plunged into darkness. I had to find my way to the stairs by touch and the dim light from other boats. Dad’s voice followed me down the hole: “Tomorrow you are going to work harder than you’ve ever worked in your life.”

  I stumbled below to my stateroom. Dad disappeared into his room and shut the door. I wasn’t sure where the bathroom was. Dad would start with the nautical terms in the morning and I was expected to call it a ‘head’ like everyone else. I would learn its dirty little secret soon enough. Ever been desperate to piss and too tired to make it to the john or is that just me? Just before falling asleep I discovered that with a little ingenuity you could actually crack the porthole open and take a leak by bracing yourself against the bulkhead. Thankfully, nobody saw me bent against the window trying to take a piss … I’m sure I looked like an idiot. By the time I was done I was panting from the effort of holding myself up like a drunken gymnast.