fog

Fiction

These short stories are as yet unpublished in the print media. I would appreciate any feedback.

Fog and Sympathy

by Spike Perkins

"I'll admit I'm shocked. I'm always at loss for what to say when people I didn't really like die. Torn between good taste and hypocrisy. But I'm sorry for you. Weren't you two quite close?"

"Not since the wedding. Helga could be a very mean drunk, and she had one of my other bridesmaids in tears right before the ceremony. She thought she could behave that way, then make her apologies the next day, and all would be forgotten. Well, it doesn't work that way."

We were standing on the Mississippi River wharf, Sharon and I, just above the Hilton. With instruments in hand, we were procrastinating about boarding the Creole Queen and setting up to play for a bunch of conventioneers. A light drizzle was falling, and the fog made the lights of the dry-docks across the river look like halos of drowned angels.

"Robbie Martinez used to call her 'Atilla the Drunk,'" I said. "He and Steve chartered a boat in the Virgin Islands, and I guess Helga made the trip pretty miserable. But I didn't care much for Robbie, either. Then he drowned down in Mexico, and all his friends carried on about how great he was, and I was embarrassed, just like I said before, to admit how I really felt. One gal that was crying over him at Carrollton Station--after a few drinks I more or less called her on it, and she admitted he screwed over her husband in the contracting business, and treated people miserably a good percentage of the time. I guess Helga treated Steve okay, though."

"Ha!--not on your life." Sharon tossed her head. "She was horrible to him. I thought long and hard, and I couldn't think of any reason for him to have married her, except for her money, and I hate to think of him as that kind of person."

"It must be hard on him, just the same. He's sensitive, and always seemed to have a tough time making a go of it. I used to see him down here every day, at a wine bar in the Riverwalk. I had a girlfriend who worked nearby in a jewelry shop, and I would always meet her for a drink when she got off. Steve would arrive with his trumpet on his bicycle, and have a beer before boarding the Natchez for some miserable Dixieland gig. They had them strolling the deck playing, no matter what the weather. Steve didn't like Dixieland in the first place, he liked cool jazz--his hero was Chet Baker.

Then every summer he taught sailing to snotty Uptown kids at the Southern Yacht Club. He's along way from that now, cruising the Caribbean in his own sixty foot yawl. I wonder if he misses gigging?"

"He didn't seem too interested in playing music when I saw them in St. Thomas last year. He found me an old piano in a restaurant one night, and noodled around a little with me, but that was it. Offshore cruising in a boat that size is a helluva lot more work than most people think. There isn't a lot of time to keep your playing chops up."

"So Helga got plowed and fell overboard, is that the story?"

"You know how she was, as well as I do. It wouldn't be hard to believe."

"Why do you suppose she went along with this boat thing in the first place? She was a cantankerous alcoholic, used to a comfortable life, used to having her way."

"I don't know, maybe she thought she could quit if she got away. But she was kidding herself--there are a hundred places to hide it on a boat."

"Hide it? From whom? I can't imagine Steve not having some booze around himself, he had a taste for it, too. I always suspected that was why I used to see him on a bicycle at the Riverwalk--he'd lost his license. But Steve usually kept it together and was good company--at least he wasn't an antisocial drunk."

"You're right--we all had some good times together in the old days. I hope he's going to be all right."

I looked out into the misty dark again. "You know, it makes me think of two dreams, shared by many people. Being a successful musician or entertainer, a star--that's one, and the other is sailing away forever on a sail boat, away from troubles and responsibilities. I suppose the boat one is more popular, and more plausible to most people. You don't need any talent--just money." Sharon sneered.

"Like I said, the boat thing is work, and it can be risky. Someone has to be on watch all the time at sea, and things always break, or have to be cleaned. Some people love it, but a lot who try it don’t know what they’re in for. Just look in the classified ads in any newspaper on the Gulf Coast at boats for sale, and check out the low prices."

"H’m, just like the instruments in pawn shops. Of course, plenty of the working musicians I know have theirs in there half the time, too. Did you ever half to resort to that, Sharon?"

"Are you kidding? I’ve been lucky, actually. There was always some ship of fools I could get a gig on." My eyes scanned the river again.

"Did you ever take any long sailing trips with anyone besides Steve and Helga?"

"Oh, yes, I did several times when I was knocking around Belize and Mexico. When the weather’s good, and you’re not with Steve and Helga, it just gives you this incredible sense of peace. Everything about life and death seems insignificant. I know that sounds like a cliché, but that’s the way it is."

"What if you had something on your mind to feel bad about? Don’t you think you’d brood about it endlessly, with nothing to distract you?"

"If you were that sort of person, I suppose so. Jeez, David, leave it to you to think of something like that."

"Well, I admit I’m a pretty urban guy. The idea of too much nature makes me nervous." A tow boat was passing out in the channel, and its engines made a low, throaty hum like a diesel locomotive. I asked, "Was there an investigation of any kind?"

"Steve said when it happened they were two days out from Guyana. The first port he made was some little fishing village, and whatever cops they had were much more interested in taking bribes from dope dealers than searching for Americans who fall off boats. Do you have any idea how many people disappear down there? Cruising is dangerous. If the smugglers don't get you, or the weather, there's a hundred other things that can."

"Is Steve coming back to New Orleans?"

"Yeah, they're having a memorial at the Municipal Yacht Harbor up at the lake front. Some of her so-called friends organized it. They asked me to play. They're going to float some kind of wreath on the water--I hope to God it doesn't look like that thing she wore on her head a couple Mardi Gras' ago." I sighed philosophically.

"So much for Steve’s grand passion."

"I hope you mean the boat," Sharon said. "Anyway, I think he means to stay the course, keep on sailing—alone."

"Alone with his thoughts on the high seas—it could be a life sentence." I thought of prison ships and penal colonies. The irony of it. How many miles from Devil’s Island did Helga disappear?

A crowd of tourists was starting to gather at a gate a short distance from the Creole Queen's gangplank, and a man in uniform was taking their money.

"Well, what do you say we get aboard and out of the rain," I asked.

"Yeah, might as well get to work. You know this won't be the last cruise for us." A freighter's horn blasted somewhere off in the fog, and I could feel its wake rocking the docked vessel against the long dark piles of the wharf as we came aboard.

"Hey David," said Sharon, "don’t look so glum. Do you have any idea how many school band directors in Kansas would give ten years off their life to be playing music for money, on a boat, in New Orleans?"