Chapter 10: Baby Blues

Four miles off the coast of San Luis Obispo County, California

July 14^th, 2003

Four men sat in the back of the fifty-foot fishing vessel as it motored back into shore after a day of a good catch. Those four men were Jake Kingsley, Matt Tisdale, John Cooper, and Roberto Valdez. All four were smoking Cuban cigars provided by Jake and drinking from bottles of Lighthouse beer from Oregon. All smelled strongly of fish and exertional sweat. They had spent the last five hours dropping lines with one or two pound weights on them over the side, letting them go down two to three hundred feet, and often hauling up fish. Their catch bags contained a combined total of thirty-eight standard sized rock cod and two lingcod, each of which was more than eighty pounds and had taken nearly an hour to reel in apiece (Jake had caught one, Matt the other). All had limited out at ten fish.

“This is the fuckin’ life,” Matt said, taking a puff and then a swig. “Sitting on a fuckin’ fishing boat, smokin’ a stogy with the boys after a hard day of pulling those fuckers from the water. If you’re not having a fuckin’ threesome, or playing in front of twenty thousand people, it doesn’t get much better than this.” Matt had jumped at the opportunity for the trip when invited. He was not one to turn down fishing, even if he had to fly in Jake’s little plane to get there. Coop had done the same.

“I notice you use the word ‘fuck’ or one of its derivatives quite frequently,” Roberto said to Matt. “Why is that?”

Matt simply shrugged. “It’s just who I am, I guess. I feel the need to say ‘fuck’ or one of its derivatives at least once in every sentence. It’s just the way I express myself.”

“I see,” Roberto said thoughtfully.

“It is offensive to you?” Matt asked him. “I heard you throw that word out when that lingcod broke your line.”

“I am not offended,” he said, “just making an observation. I do remember, however, that you and my son had an altercation at the Grammy awards at one time.”

“Yeah ... we did,” Matt agreed. “It was nothing personal. I was immature at that point in my life. I’ve fuckin’ grown up a lot since then. How is he doing these days, anyway?”

“He is a top fashion designer and clothing shop owner in Venezuela,” Roberto said proudly.

“I see,” Matt said slowly, hearing all he needed to hear out of that proclamation. He had indeed matured enough in life not to say, “So, he’s a fuckin’ dick smoker then?”

“You ever thought about all this water?” Coop asked as they bobbed and rolled up and down and back and forth in said water while the sound of the twin diesel engines rumbled beneath them.

Everyone looked at him. “What about it?” Jake asked.

“There’s like a fuckload of it,” Coop said. “It covers most of the planet.”

“Uh ... yeah,” said Jake. “Like seventy percent of it. Almost three quarters. I spend a lot of my days looking out at it from the windows in my house. There is literally nothing but water between my house and the Philippines if you go in a straight line.”

“That’s fuckin’ gnarly, dude,” Coop said, pondering that. “That’s like ... like a couple thousand miles, right?”

“More like seven thousand miles,” Jake said. “What’s your point?”

“Where did all this water come from?” Coop asked. “How did the fish get here? Why is there salt in the water? What does it all mean?”

“You slipped off in the fuckin’ bathroom and smoked a doob, didn’t you?” Matt accused.

“Well ... yeah,” Coop admitted. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“And you didn’t invite me?” Matt said, outraged.

“It didn’t occur to me.”

“Don’t I share my medicinal shit with you?” Matt asked. “What the fuck, Coop? I thought we were brothers!”

“I have some left,” Coop said. “I can roll another one.”

“Then fuckin’ do it!” Matt demanded.

Coop got into his bag and pulled out his shit. He quickly rolled a hooter and pulled out a lighter.

“Anyone else want in on this shit?” he asked as he sparked it up.

“I’m good,” Jake said. “I have to drive us all back to the house from the dock and I’ve already had a little more beer than I really should have.”

“I’ll have some,” Roberto said.

“Really?” Jake asked.

“Maria and I have both been known to partake on occasion,” he said. “Not very often, you understand, but I am a musician. I have been hoping to try American ganja. The word in Venezuela is that it is the best in the world, which is saying a lot because the Columbian stuff we get is quite potent.”

Matt chuckled and took the joint. He took a large hit and then passed it over Jake to Roberto. Roberto sucked up a good hit and held it professionally before blowing it back out into the sea air. Jake could not resist taking a single hit as it was passed back in the other direction. Since it was Coop’s pot, it was the good stuff. Coop would not have anything less.

“Really good shit,” Roberto said with a smile as settled in to enjoy the rest of the trip back to shore.

“Fuckin’ A,” Matt agreed. “We gonna cook up some of that fish when we get back to your place, Jake?”

Jake nodded. “I’ll do up some lingcod fillets in beer batter out on the grill,” he said.

“You the man,” Matt said happily.

The deckhands processed their fish for them as they headed in, gutting them, cleaning them, slicing them into fillets, and then putting the meat on saltwater ice in ice chests everyone had brought along. They kept a third of the haul for themselves, which they would sell to the local fish market in the harbor. The remains of the fish they threw overboard, feeding the seagulls and a pod of dolphins that had taken up position behind them. The dolphins and the birds were both smart enough to follow fishing boats at about this distance from the harbor. The sharks who lived out here were not that smart and were quite late to the feast.

They pulled into the harbor and docked just after 3:00 PM. Jake was more or less sober by that point and had no problem driving everyone back to Casa Kingsley in the Navigator. They hauled all the fish inside and greeted the ladies (Kim had come along for the ride but had not gone fishing with them). After securing all but what would be served that night in the freezer (and being told how badly they all smelled by their respective women), all went to go shower. They came out to have a drink afterward.

Laura and Celia were looking a little worse for wear. Both were still in their pajamas, with circles under their eyes and pissy expressions on their faces.

“I’m glad you had a good time,” Celia said sourly.

“We did,” Jake said carefully. “How was Cap while we were gone?”

“He slept about three hours in fifteen minute increments,” Celia told him. “Just like normal.”

Their baby was now a week old and sleeping was definitely not one of his favorite activities. He enjoyed crying, pooping, peeing, suckling on Celia’s breasts, and being rocked. He did not enjoy being placed in his crib and shutting his mind down. Jake, Laura, and Celia alternated duties at night and during the day, with Mama Valdez helping out as well. Generally, when he started crying, either Jake or Laura would get him up, change him if he needed changing, and then bring him to Celia for feeding. During the day, Mama Valdez was primarily on holding and rocking duty, with occasional breaks by Papa Valdez.

“Caydee spoiled us,” Jake observed at one point. “She was such a content baby most of the time. Remember how she just used to let us hold her in the recording studio and be as quiet as a mouse?”

“I remember,” Laura said wearily.

“That’s how they suck you in,” Mama Valdez replied.

“I really hate to be a dick,” Jake said, “but I really need an hour and a half or so of sleep before I cook up the fish.”

“You go have your sleep,” Celia told him. “Why should you be deprived just because you went fishing today?”

He left that one alone and headed to the master bedroom.

He shucked his clothes and then laid down naked in bed, setting an alarm for ninety minutes. It seemed as soon as he closed his eyes, the alarm was going off. He had to blink himself awake and take a few deep breaths to get his brain into motion.

He dressed in the same clothes he had put on after his shower: a pair of running shorts and a Harley-Davidson shirt he had picked up in Milwaukee on the Intemperance tour, not bothering with socks or shoes. Dress was rather informal in the Kingsley household these days. He made his way out to the entertainment room. Laura was dozing on the couch next to Mama Valdez who was doing the same. Cap was in Celia’s arms, suckling on her left breast while she herself was only about half awake. Papa Valdez, Coop, and Matt were nowhere to be seen, likely all still sleeping off their fishing indulgences. Caydee was watching Gargoyles on the television, quite engrossed in it.

Elsa was in the kitchen. Her coleslaw and baked beans were already in progress. The fish fillets were ready for Jake’s attention. He greeted her and then began mixing his concoction of beer, eggs, flour, and a few spices. He then went and fired up the grill to warm up while he coated each piece of lingcod fillet. Twenty minutes later, dinner was served. The fish was absolutely delicious, perfectly cooked, just the right texture, and it could not have been any fresher as not even eight hours before, it had been swimming in the ocean.

“Premo shit, Jake,” Matt complimented after taking the last bite of his second fillet. “I couldn’t have done it any better.”

“Thanks, Matt,” Jake said with a grin. “You’ve never said that about my guitar playing though.”

Matt chuckled. “Dream on, motherfucker,” Matt said.

Maria asked for a translation of the conversation and Roberto told her the two musicians were merely complimenting each other’s cooking and guitar skills. She nodded in appreciation.

The nightly routine was a bit different these days. Cap was the insanely wide variable in the new equation. He could be up and needing attention at any hour of the day or night and often was. Now, if he was not asleep when it was time for Caydee’s bath, either Laura or Jake would give it to her—not that she really needed a whole lot of help bathing these days (they generally let her shower instead of take a bath). If Cap needed to feed during traditional guitar-sing time, Celia would not participate. And sometimes Laura was napping during this part of the evening, exhausted from helping Celia. Jake would always play and sing with the little redhead, however, as would Roberto.

On this evening, Laura gave Caydee her shower while Celia was in the bedroom letting their son suckle on her breasts. Jake and Roberto broke out the guitars after and played a few tunes, with Caydee accompanying on vocals, harmika, or guitar when she could. Jake closed them out with Welcome to the Machine by Pink Floyd, something he had started playing ever since Cap’s birth. Caydee understood the reference—though not the dark and foreboding nature of it—and approved. Jake then took on the duty of reading her a bedtime story. Caydee chose Where the Wild Things Are, one of her all-time favorites. He kissed her goodnight and told her to have sweet dreams.

“Is brother going to scream again tonight?” she asked him. Brother was what she called him most of the time.

“Undoubtedly,” Jake confirmed.

“Why is he so sad all the time?” she wanted to know.

“He’s not sad,” Jake told her, “he’s just a baby, and screaming is the only way babies can communicate.”

“Did I scream when I was a baby?” she asked.

“Like you would not freakin’ believe,” he assured her.

Somehow, she found this amusing.

“Okay,” Jake said when he returned to the entertainment room. “Anyone up for some cognac?”

It turned out that everyone was up for some cognac, even Celia, who had been given permission by the pediatrician to have one drink per day while she was breastfeeding. Any more than that and she would have to pump and dump.

Cap was asleep in his crib in the master suite as they sipped. The door was open so they would be able to hear him cry. Though baby monitor technology had come a long way since Caydee was a baby, they still did not use one for fear of having someone with a digital scanner listening in on private conversations. They figured that if for most of recorded human history parents had gotten by without such devices, they could pull it off.

Cap began to cry just as Jake finished his second drink. Maria immediately stood up.

“I got him, Mama,” Jake told her in Spanish. He had graduated to calling the Valdez elders Mama and Papa over the past few days. “It’s the soiled diaper cry.”

“I don’t mind,” she said.

“I’ll take care of it,” Jake said. “If he doesn’t go down after being changed, I’ll bring him to you to hold and rock.”

“Okay,” she said with a smile. She liked to do nothing better these days than hold and rock her grandson.

Jake went to the bedroom and retrieved the crying infant from the crib, smiling as he saw him. Even though his face was scrunched up in displeasure, he was still quite cute. His facial features resembled Jake’s quite strongly, with the same basic nose and chin. His eyes were dark brown, his hair black, his skin just a tad off-white in color. Pauline had released a photo of him to the media three days before and, since then, much of the speculation about his paternity had faded away. He simply looked too much like Jake for such an idea to hold any serious weight.

“Come on, buddy,” Jake told him, carrying him over to the changing table. “Let’s clean your little butt and get you feeling better.”

Cap answered him by crying louder.

The baby was wearing a baseball themed onesie. Jake smiled as he saw it. The first day they had brought him home, he had been dressed in the same outfit. Caydee had watched in fascination as Jake had done the first diaper change on the floor of the living room.

“Look,” she said in wonder as she observed. “He has little balls.”

Jake had been astounded at first until he realized that his daughter was not referring to Cap’s huevos, but to the buttons on the onesie, which were tiny half-spherical baseballs. That was also the same diaper change when he found out that little boys were different than little girls. Little girls just dribbled pee. Boys had force behind it. The moment he got the new diaper in place, but before he could close it, Cap unleashed a solid stream that hit Jake directly between the eyes, ran down his face, letting some of it dribble into his mouth, and then soaked the front of his shirt.

Jake moved very carefully now, remembering that incident. He undid the velcro of the diaper and then slowly opened it, keeping the front part where it would block any stream that was released. No such stream occurred, but the diaper was wet and soiled with inoffensive breast milk poop. He quickly cleaned the baby up and then put a fresh diaper on. He put the onesie back in place (snapping the little balls carefully) and then picked his son up and held him in his arms. Cap seemed content to be held, but not really sleepy.

“How about we have Grandma hold you and rock you for a bit, little dude?” he asked. He then carried the child into the entertainment room to make that happen.

Mama Valdez was delighted to take on the job. Celia announced that she was going to try to get a little sleep before the next feeding. Jake, Laura, and Mama all agreed to watch the newborn until that became necessary. Papa Valdez declared he needed to get some rest as well. He kissed the infant on the forehead, kissed his wife, and then headed off to bed. Coop and Matt, wiped out from a day of fishing, drinking, and smoking, had retired shortly after the post-dinner drinks and planned to sleep through until it was breakfast time. Kim, who had been awake all day playing with and helping care for the baby, had gone down as well.

That left things a bit awkward as Jake and Laura were not fluent in Spanish and Maria was not fluent in English. Still, they had enough language skills to achieve communication between the three of them. She asked them if Capriccio would be brought up in the Catholic faith.

“He will go to church just as much as Celia,” was Jake’s careful reply.

That seemed to make Maria happy.

Soon, Cap was sound asleep in her arms. Jake carefully took him from her hands, mindful not to jostle or disturb him. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to put him back in his crib now and we’ll see how much rest we can get. Thank you for getting him to sleep, Mama.”

“You’re very welcome,” she said. “I will try to get some rest as well.”

Jake knew that his mother-in-law would be much more successful in her venture than he would be in his.

She headed off to her room and Jake and Laura headed to theirs, Laura first making sure all the lights were out and the alarm was in correct configuration that allowed for open bedroom windows. Jake softly placed the infant in his crib and swaddled him. The two of them then climbed into bed, one on either side of Celia, who was sound asleep and snoring softly. They snuggled up to her warm body and were quickly asleep.

That sleep lasted two hours and five minutes before the sound of cries from the crib erupted.

“It’s the hungry cry,” Jake said as he came into consciousness.

“Si,” said Celia. “It’s making my nipples leak milk. Please make it stop.”

“I got him,” said Laura, disengaging her embrace of Celia and putting her feet on the floor. A minute later the baby was in Celia’s arms, his mouth suckling on her left nipple contentedly. Jake and Laura both fell back into a semi-slumber while the feeding was going on. Jake woke up long enough to return the baby to his crib forty minutes later. They then got another one hour and forty-two minutes of sleep before the next cries—the I need to be changed cries—erupted.

In all, the Kingsley parents got around four hours of broken sleep that night. They considered it a good night.

The next morning, Elsa prepared eggs Benedict with toast and fruit cups for everyone. The parents were red eyed and weary. The guests, particularly Matt, Kim, and Coop were all refreshed. Cap, who had gone down for a good sleep around 5:30 AM, slept through the experience.

“He was screaming again last night,” Caydee told her parents. “I heard him.”

“Indeed, he was,” Jake said sourly. “As I told you, babies will do that.”

“When will he stop doing that?” she wanted to know. After all, she had only gotten nine hours of sleep.

“When he does,” Laura said. “When he does.”

Caydee did not care much for this answer.

“All right, boys and girl,” Jake said to Matt and crew once the dishes were cleared. “Are we ready to get you all home?”

“Can I go drop a deuce first?” Matt asked. “I’m not sure I want to do that in the little shitter in your plane.”

“By all means,” Jake said, nodding in the direction of the guest bedroom. If Matt did not drop a deuce in his plane, he would not have to get the waste tank pumped out. He was all in favor of this.

“I’d better do the same,” Coop said.

Within fifteen minutes all the deuces were dropped and the guests had their luggage ready to go. They grabbed their ice chests full of frozen fish and made their way out to the Navigator for the trip to the airport. Roberto, who had yet to fly in Jake’s plane, elected to go with them just for the experience. Jake awarded him the shotgun seat even though he did not call it.

He pulled the airplane out of the hangar. He then weighed everyone and everything and then stowed the luggage and the ice chests full of fish fillets. He had everyone stay outside while he went back into the terminal to do his calculations and file his flight plan. He still had plenty of fuel for a round trip to Orange County and back so he did not call for a fuel truck. He did visually check the level during his preflight, however.

“Why do you shine a flashlight into the fuel tank?” Roberto asked him.

“In case the fuel gauge is wrong and I do not remember how much fuel I have,” Jake said. “That kind of thing can happen.”

“Probably not very often though, correct? You do not do that for your ground vehicle.”

“That is true,” Jake allowed. “But if my Navigator or my Beemer runs out of gas during a trip because the fuel gauge is wrong and I forgot how much gas I have in there, it’s just an inconvenience. We pull over, I get on my cell phone, call for help, get delayed an hour or so. In the Avanti, however, we could be ten miles out over the ocean if the fuel runs out unexpectedly due to a bad fuel gauge. That is a little more significant of a situation in terms of likelihood of survival.”

Roberto nodded wisely. “I see your point,” he said.

“That is why good pilots—and I consider myself to be one—do a complete and thorough preflight check using a checklist every single time they fly, regardless of how redundant and unnecessary it seems. That is why we have sterile cockpit rules. That is why I have the same amount of landings logged as I do takeoffs.”

“I understand,” Roberto said with a smile. It was clear that Jake had just eased his mind considerably about taking this flight.

“Coop and I are gonna go burn behind the hangar over there,” Matt announced. “It’ll just be a few minutes.”

“Do what you need to do,” Jake said with a sigh. “Just don’t get caught.”

“We’re not fuckin’ amateurs,” Matt said. “You in on this shit, Roberto?”

“I think I’ll pass today,” Roberto told him.

They nodded respectfully and then wandered off.

“They seem to smoke a lot of ganja, don’t they?” Roberto asked Jake.

“They are professional musicians,” Jake said. “It’s pretty much a requirement.”

The two of them came back about five minutes later, their eyes red and half lidded, their bodies smelling of skunk. They climbed aboard the plane and strapped themselves into the seats behind the cockpit. Jake closed everyone in and then went through the engine start checklist—getting the blessed air conditioning blowing—and then programmed his flight computer. While he was doing that, Coop had one of his stoned ponderings.

“What actually holds this fuckin’ thing up in the air, dude?” he asked. “I mean, how does fuckin’ air passing over the wings keep us up there?”

“I’ll explain later,” Jake told him. “Sterile cockpit is in effect, Coop. No unnecessary conversation until I give the word.”

“Oh ... right,” Coop said.

Jake continued with his checklist. Roberto watched him carefully, not talking, and seemed comforted by Jake’s checks and communication with ATC. It was always a good thing when one looked like one knew what one was doing.

Soon, they were at the hold line of the runway. Jake had to wait while a Citation landed and cleared the runway and then he was given clearance to take off and follow the pattern to the southeast. He turned and lined up and then pushed the throttles forward. Less than thirty seconds later, they lifted into the sky and the gear came up. They passed over Morro Rock and turned left. Roberto was impressed, having walked around the base of the rock a week before and now he was seeing it from above.

“Looks a lot smaller from this angle, doesn’t it?” Jake asked lightly.

“Indeed,” Roberto agreed, just barely able to make out tiny vehicles parked in the parking area and the tiny figures of human beings hiking around the volcanic plug.

Jake retracted the flaps, reducing their rate of climb but picking up speed. He let the autopilot take the plane, instructing it to take them to twelve thousand five hundred feet, which would keep them well above all the minimals on their route. LA Center was flight following them, making sure they would not be in conflict with any other aircraft. Jake explained all of this to Roberto, who was fascinated by the information.

“They can actually see us?” he asked.

“Oh yeah,” Jake said. “They’re reading our squawk code and can see exactly where we are, what our airspeed is, and what altitude we’re at. In a place like LA, it has to be that way or planes would blunder into each other all the time. There’s a TCAS in this airplane and pretty much every other plane flying through restricted airspace. That’s a Traffic Collision Avoidance System. It uses our squawk codes with ATC to monitor us. If any two aircraft get too close together, the TCAS will alarm and tell us to pull up or push down so we avoid each other in altitude. We’re all trained to do what the TCAS tells us immediately and without question, even if the ATC human is telling us something contradictory.”

“Have you ever had one tell you something, dude?” Coop asked, pondering that.

“Not so far,” Jake said. “The time I hit the Canadian goose, he did not have his transponder on and was not picked up.”

“What a rip,” Coop said.

“He came out the worst for wear in that little encounter,” Jake said. “He did fuck up my flap though. Cost me five grand for the insurance deductible.”

“They didn’t think that was an act of fuckin’ God?” Matt asked.

“Acts of fuckin’ God do not relieve you of the responsibility of the deductible,” Jake said.

“That’s fucked up shit,” Matt declared. “I’m gonna go make a drink. Anyone in?”

It turned out that everyone but Jake was in. Matt made a Jack and Coke. Coop poured some Cabo Wabo tequila, neat. Kim had a glass of red wine. Roberto went with Scotch on the rocks.

Jake began his descent a few minutes later. He brought them offshore a mile or so and then turned into the pattern for John Wayne Airport, where both Matt and Coop had parked their vehicles. He landed neatly into the wind and then taxied over to the GA terminal.

“It was nice meeting all three of you,” Roberto told them as he shook their hands after they retrieved their luggage and fish chests.

“You too, Roberto,” Matt told him with apparent sincerity. “You did a good job of raising Jake’s old lady.”

“We tried,” Roberto said.

Jake, Matt, Coop, and Kim all exchanged hugs. The three of them then trudged off to make their trips home. Jake then checked his fuel level and went about the process of calculating out the trip home. He went to the terminal while Roberto stayed behind to make sure no one stole the airplane.

It took the better part of thirty minutes for Jake to get the plane back to the runway, take off, and bring them up to altitude. He cruised at eleven thousand five hundred feet for this flight since he was going northwest, though still operating under VFR conditions.

“How much does a plane such as this cost?” Roberto asked once they were in straight and level flight, the autopilot firmly in control.

“Four point seven-five million dollars American,” Jake said plainly. “The bank still owns most of it.”

Roberto was quite impressed. “That is more money than I have made in my entire lifetime.”

“What can I say?” Jake said with a shrug. “Like Celia, I have a talent and I have been able to turn it into a moneymaker.”

“You have both done very well for yourselves here in America,” he said.

“We have,” Jake agreed. “We could not have done it without each other; and I mean that financially, personally, and in love.”

“I understand,” Roberto said, watching as an LA bound airliner descended just two miles from their right side, a spotty contrail behind it. He then sipped from the latest glass of Scotch he had poured himself. “This too is good whiskey.”

“I try to get only the best,” Jake said.

“I would like to move to America,” he then said.

Jake looked over at him, taking his eyes off another airliner that was descending in the same corridor as the one Roberto had been watching. “Would you?” he asked carefully.

He nodded. “Maria and I have been talking about this since we arrived here,” he said. “We are very attached to our house and our life in Barquisimeto but ... well ... our country is going bad. Every year our retirement money is worth less and less and we have more and more trouble getting by. Even Eduardo no longer has faith in our president.”

“Celia has offered to help you out on many occasions,” Jake said. “I’ve helped my own parents out, Nerdly has helped his, we’ve helped out Laura’s family that still associates with her. There is no shame in taking money when you have managed to raise multimillionaires. We would love to help improve your lives and it would not hurt us a bit.”

“We have come to understand this,” Roberto said, “though it is still difficult due to pride. In any case, we have made the decision to allow her to help us.”

“That’s great,” Jake said. “But you don’t want to stay in Venezuela?”

“As I said, the country is going bad rather quickly,” he said. “There is chaos in the streets, even in Barquisimeto. There are shortages of food and staple items like toilet paper and laundry soap on a weekly basis. I fear that soon our entire nation will be an international pariah, right up there with Libya and North Korea. And if America stops buying our oil, as seems very likely soon, we will be completely bankrupt. We would like to live here, in the land of the free, in the land of hotel room sized birthing suites, in the land of Costco warehouse stores with fresh pizza available as you exit.”