Authors: John Rocco
Swim That Rock
Table of Contents
25 - The Italian-American Club
Presumed dead does not mean dead. They didn’t find his body.
That’s why I am walking down the street in the middle of a category 3 hurricane with a six-inch knife in my pocket. I’m trying to find the guy I saw this morning who used it to stab a fifty-dollar bill into our fence post.
He knows something. It can’t be a coincidence that the knife had my dad’s initials. There’s no way.
The signs on Main Street twist and wobble, sounding like steel drums as the storefront awnings slap and shake in the wind. The sidewalk seems to move beneath my feet while my black poncho sets sail. It’s pushing me back, saying,
Go home, Jake.
I’m not exactly sure where to look for him, but my guess is that he’s sitting in Muldoon’s Bar. That’s where all the fishermen go when they’re not fishing. The street in front of the bar is lined with pickup trucks, and as I get closer, a couple guys stumble out, pull on their rain slicks, and stagger away. I can’t see a thing as I peer through the porthole window on the front door. I push open the door, and the smell of smoke and vomit blows past my face into the surging winds behind me. It’s dark inside, and the only light comes from red bulbs and a flickering neon beer sign hanging on the far wall. I can see dark bodies hunched over the bar like a row of black crows on a telephone wire.
The last dark shape lifts his head from his drink. Looking over his shoulder, he nods as if he’s been waiting for me.
“Water’s up?” he questions.
“Yup, almost in the cellar of the diner,” I say nervously. I don’t know exactly what I’m expecting him to do, or what he wants me to do, but I find myself just standing there. I guess I figure I owe the guy; he did give me a fifty and the knife with my dad’s initials on it. He told me to come find him when the water came up, so that’s what I’m doing.
He tosses the glass of beer back. It drizzles from the side of his mouth. Wiping his face on his shirtsleeve, he gets up from the barstool, which falls backward to the floor with a loud crack.
“Get in the truck,” he says, pointing to the door.
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“Know what?” he snaps, throwing crumpled bills onto the bar.
I know I shouldn’t get in some stranger’s truck, but I figure it must be an emergency with the hurricane and all. None of these other guys are acting as if this is weird, and they must know this guy.
I’m thinking all this as I find myself in the front seat. The stranger climbs into the driver’s seat. He’s wearing black rubber boots, worn jeans, and a red flannel shirt that hangs on him like a wet blanket. It’s weird that his shirt is buttoned all the way up, like he’s hiding something. Black hair is matted across his forehead, making his pale, sharp features look like they were cut from gray marble.
“Where we going?”
“We got some business to do.” His voice sounds like a shaken bag of rusty nails.
“My name is Jake, by the way. Jake Cole.” I’m holding his knife with the initials out for him to see. The
J
and
C
pearl inlay shine from the flickering streetlamp.
“I know your name, kid.” He glances down at the knife. “Keep it.”
“What do I call you?” I’m wondering if his initials are J. C. too.
“Just call me Captain.”
I want to ask him more about the knife and if he knows my dad and how he got the knife and why he gave it to me, but my jaw feels locked up. Stuffing the knife into my jeans, I look for the seat belt.
The stranger stomps his foot on the accelerator, and the diesel truck rattles down the street toward Charon’s Dock. The dock, or what remains of it, is attached to the old oyster-shucking house, and even on a good day you take your life in your hands just walking on it. The pilings are all crooked and worn down at the waterline, fangs biting into the water. The whole mess has been trying to fall into the river for years, but some of the local fishermen keep knocking nails into it and adding new boards so they don’t lose their access to the river.
The tires crunch to a halt on the shells at the edge of the dock, and I look over at Captain, wondering what we’re doing here, especially in the middle of a hurricane. In the beam of the headlights, with every snap of the wiper blades, I can see white foam surging over the boards, forcing them to lift and sway. Suddenly, it clicks.
“Wait, you’re not going out there. Are you?”
“Follow me!” Captain commands, and with a flick of his wrist, he shuts off the truck and leaps out. I am plunged into darkness.
I can’t move. I’m frozen in the front seat. He’s completely nuts if he thinks I’m going out there. I watch him as his dark silhouette bobs, limping quickly through the rain toward the dock.
Thwaak!
A branch comes crashing down on the hood of the truck. Not a big branch; I don’t think it even dents the hood, but the noise makes me jump right out of the seat. I pull the door handle and chase after him.
The rain lets up but the wind is still howling, and the salt spray is stinging my eyes as we walk the planks toward the end of the dock. Each step Captain takes causes the dock to lurch, so I have to time my steps with his to keep from getting tossed into the river. The five boats still tied to the dock pull and yank on their lines. To my right I can make out the forest of masts from all the dry-docked sailboats. The wind is tearing through them, moaning and wailing as it tries to rip them from their cradles.
“Ahghhh, nothing like a nice night out on the water,” Captain yells at the wind and foam screaming down the Warren River. I can feel my heart pounding in my chest as I realize that he is going to get into one of these boats. He straddles two boards in front of a dark gray twenty-four-foot boat, which looks like a shark riding high on the waves. He’s lifting the stern lines and swearing as the boat swings and heaves on its two anchors. He’s driving a team of wild horses, pulling and stretching the anchor lines with arms that look like steel cables under a layer of ghost-white skin.
“Get on board, kid. Jump now!” Captain screams above the sound of wind and waves.
“What?” I say, questioning his sanity as a plank rips away and disappears into the rushing river. The dock groans menacingly and there is a spine-shaking, splintering
crack
as the boards beneath me begin to fall away.
“Do it now — just do it!”
I jump.
