Chapter 26: Closure

I decided to pay a trip to see the girls and see how the Italian Dream was doing. I went by myself. I rented a fully-equipped 30-foot sailing ketch, tossed my duffel bag aboard and laboriously loaded a crated-up Browning machine gun as well as four cans of ball ammo. I always carried a Garand M1 with a battle pack of ammo (300 rounds) and an M79 grenade launcher, both in a big rifle case, with twenty rounds of HE grenades that I could shrug on at a moment's notice. It fit under my field jacket which was a bonus. Of course, I always carried my .357 revolver in a shulder holster. I bought a disposable phone and dissappeared for a couple of weeks.

I caught up with Angie and Chrissy on a no-name spit of land just south of Sugarloaf Key at a place called, God help me, Jack's Shack. It was a generic bar up on pilings, where the toilets dumped directly into the water. What a fucking dive. They were slowly getting trashed on Miller Light. The Italian Dream was moored up outside, somwehat worse for wear. It hadn't been cleaned in some time. The windows were crusted with white salt deposits. My pretty girl had been turned into a whore's dog. I was damned tempted to spray paint that on the stern plate. I shook my head. I sat at the rear of the bar, my cap slung low over my forehead, and nursed a bourbon and coke while listening to the girls talk. The desultory snippets that I caught reflected a pair of wasted lives. Everything I'd fought for, everything I'd built, everything that I'd tried to make the best of with that boat was just a broken down pickup truck to them. It left a wretched taste in my mouth. I felt I still owed them some, but not so much now. I wrote a note for my first mate:

Angie--

I looked you up to see how you were doing. I find that I am filled with disappointment. It seems that you stoppped being a ship's captain long ago. Now you are but the pet of a dominant lesbian. I am including a large check in the hopes that you will get your head back in the game, and give this vessel the captain that she deserves. If you two snort and drink it up, God help you--you'll get what you deserve.

Tony.

I wrote out a check for $130,000 U.S.D. I sealed it in a baggie with the note and taped it to the machine gun's shipping case. That check was going to be for a million, before I discovered what they'd become and done to my pride and joy. I left the ammo cans and th emachine gun at the foot of the dock where they were tied up. I motored away having not spoken to either of them. I suppose that I had a measure of closure after that. I didn't owe them a fucking thing, after what they did to me, much less how they abused my poor boat. I turned my face away from them. Nothing that they did was my responsibility. I absolved myself of all the painful things that they would do from there on. They had never learned personal pride or value, and never wold. Later I took the picture of Angie dressed in her trademark black bikini off my office wall and put it in the bottom desk drawer.

I spent a week cruising and fishing, talking to myself. Finally I forced myself to take up my life again. Why do my dissapointments seem to so heavily outweigh the good times? Is there a rule out there somewhere? The Buddhists have a saying: "Attachment is the root of all suffering." I am not willing or prepared to let go of my relationships with my ship, my crew, my girl or my way of life. I was not prepared to age in my attitudes so thoroughly and so quickly. My fire is still there. I yearn. I wish. I seek. I enjoy. I cherish. I judge. I love. I sorrow. I mourn. By these things I delcare myself alive. I returned to the ship and lit an incense stick for Buddha. I said a prayer apologizing for my lack of acceptance. I vowed to make peace with what I had. I found each day to have its own challenge, and each challenge had something to cherish.