"Never Say Never" Chapter 2

           

Chapter 2

Kai Miller

I've often walked the shore and wondered if all things drift according to a larger plan. For each message in a bottle, each straw hat blown from the hand of a strolling lover, each sailor far from home, all the lost coins from all ancient ships, is there a designated landing place? I've marveled at the seeming randomness of the treasures pushed up on the tides, corroded by salt, encrusted with barnacles, at home in the ocean, now tossed back to the land.

A street preacher on the pier told me once that God stirs the currents with His fingertip, the winds with His breath, and that even in the vastness of the sea He knows each ship at sail, each tiny creature beneath the water, each shifting patch of sand. Nothing lost, said the preacher, is ever lost to God. A homeless man, begging for change from tourists, took a free sack lunch from the preacher and held it in his blackened hands and agreed that nothing adrift is meant to stay adrift forever.

The homeless man had eyes as dark as coal, as deep as the waves on moonless nights. I gave him a dollar that had been washed and dried in my pocket. He smiled as he unfolded it and straightened the crisp paper. His hands reminded me of Grandmother Miller's hands, but I knew Grandmother Miller would have said I was a fool for giving the man anything. She would have talked about shiftlessness, the results of it, and the fact that those who find themselves destitute have caused their own misery. Teach a man to fish, she'd say, and then, if my father were in the room, she'd give him a narrow-eyed look. My father would put up with what he called the sermon for whatever amount of time was necessary. He'd play Grandmother Miller's game--pretend he wanted to get a real job and keep it, promise to start going to church again, agree that a family needed stability. He'd vow that if Grandmother Miller would just help us out one more time, he'd give up his dream of making it in the music business. He'd promise to become normal, conventional, faithful, devoted. To comply with her wishes. Then, once we had what we needed--usually money--we'd leave. We wouldn't come back to Grandmother Miller's big house in McGregor, Texas for another year, or two, or five, depending on how soon we were destitute again.

Maybe I gave the dollar to the homeless man because I knew that Grandmother Miller--wherever she was by now--wouldn't like it, and even at twenty-seven years old, I was still trying to prove she wasn't right about everything. She wasn't right about me. I was nothing like my mother or my father, and I never would be. Or maybe handing over the dollar seemed like a good thing to do, because, when a storm the size of Texas is just over the horizon, it's probably smart to get some good karma going. Even though weather forecasters had predicted she'd stay south and make landfall somewhere below Brownsville, I could feel Glorietta swirling across the Gulf of Mexico, closing in. The sky was as blue as a baby's eye today, but Glorietta was coming. Three nights in a row, I'd dreamed she hooked north and headed our way.

My landlord, Don, was sure there was nothing to worry about, but then that was Don. A few quick looks at the weather reports, and he was chillin' like a tall glass of iced tea with a little paper umbrella on top. In his mind, Glorietta was already a non-event, an uninvited tourist wobbling across the Gulf. In the meantime, the surf shop was doing a brisk business in boogie boards, water bikes, and jet skis, with the waves up and tourists rushing to have a little fun, in case they had to cut their vacations short and run from the storm. Even though half of Perdida had already boarded up, Don didn't want to mess with putting the storm shutters on the shop, or on our apartments upstairs, so I'd started doing the job myself.

Don finally gave in, after watching me single-handedly drag hunks of plywood from the storeroom. He grumbled about the unnecessary preparations as we covered apartment windows upstairs. The big apartment with the ocean view was his, and the little one around back was mine.

Don jokingly called my apartment the mother-in-law suite because he said I acted like someone's mother. That was funny, coming from Don, a surfer dude deluxe, who was forty-eight going on eighteen, with a long salt-and-pepper pony tail, skin like leather, and the weird idea that women found him sexy. He grew on you over time, and as a landlord, he was easygoing, which was why I'd kept the apartment for two years now. Living at the end of The Strand, I'd become part of an odd little family of people like Don, who were happy enough to have someone to hang out with, but didn't require any strings. It was nice, having a place to come home to when I wasn't working entertainment and social staff contracts onboard one of Festivale's cruise ships, teaching everything from ballroom dancing to crafts and jewelry making.

Don gave me a dirty look as he carted the last of the shutters upstairs. "What-n-the-world you worried about, anyway? In the morning, you'll be headed out." He motioned vaguely in the direction of the port, where the Liberation would be dropping off one group of passengers and getting ready for departure with a new group at four P.M. tomorrow.

"I want my apartment to still be here when I get back." For some reason, I could never resist arguing with Don. His laid-back, no worries attitude reminded me of my father in some psychologically-twisted way I didn't really want to contemplate. The last time I saw my dad, we were living in a camp trailer and working the roller coaster at a carnival. I finished my final high-school correspondence lesson--an essay on the Cold War--dropped it on the table with the mail, then grabbed my stuff, walked out the door, and just kept going. Not the smartest decision for a seventeen year old, but at that point, I had to do something.

Right now, Don was looking at me like my father had those last few years--like he wished I'd buzz off and leave him alone, so he could do what he wanted. "Glorietta'll go south. Everyone says she'll go south."

"Everyone, who?" Even with the day bright and clear, I could feel the air growing heavy and the sea changing. Couldn't Don sense it? "Maggie and Meredith boarded up this morning." Across the street, Maggie and Meredith were operating their coffee shop with the shutters up, the stereo playing seventies music, and incense burning to attract benign weather spirits. "They're heading for the airport this evening to fly to Maggie's son's place in Kansas. Maggie said the traffic's already getting bad and she almost couldn't find a flight."

"People are stupid." Spitting a stray hair out of his mouth, Don slipped a shutter into the brackets.

"No one wants to get stuck here if it comes." Before sunrise, something instinctive had prompted me to pack all the things I'd normally take on ship. But while gathering the usual items, I'd slipped a hand under the mattress, the place I didn't tell anyone about, and grabbed the mementos of my childhood-a family photo of my mother, my father, my brother Gil, and me, a ticket from a racetrack in Ruidoso, New Mexico, a birth certificate with a sticky note still attached, a heart-shaped drink coaster made from flowers pressed between two sheets of sticky plastic, and a smashed penny from the Tulsa State Fair. They were tucked inside a bible Gil took from a motel nightstand in some town that was nameless in my memory. Gil had a thing for bibles, though none of us could figure out why. Maybe he knew he'd be heading for heaven pretty early on.

Don's mutt-slash-Black-Labradors came to the inside of my screen door and whimpered as Don revved up the drill to secure the shutters.

"What're they doin' in there?" Don pointed the drill like a pistol and gave the dogs an irritated look.

"Getting hair in my bed, probably," I muttered, holding out a box of self-tapping screws, so Don could reach them. The dogs had chewed their way through my screen door and ended up in my bed sometime in the middle of the night.

"Well, kick 'em out," Don ordered, like it was that easy. A hundred and forty pounds of combined Labrador went pretty much where it wanted to.

"If you'd fix the gate, I wouldn't have to." Technically, according to city codes and probably my lease agreement, Radar and Hawkeye were supposed to be locked in the little yard behind the shop. "Anyway, they can tell something's wrong. That's why they're acting weird."

"Pffff!" Don's lip curled. "Don't let 'em in, and they'll quit."

"They ate a hole in my screen door."

Holding the plywood with one hand, Don leaned back and checked out the mangled nylon netting that had been the only barrier between me and the host of Texas-sized mosquitoes that frequented Perdida at night. "Shut the door and turn on the air condition, there, blondie."

"I like to hear the water, and besides, the air conditioner's broken, remember?"

Don didn't want to talk about the broken air conditioner. "Just tell 'em to get out." He shook the drill at Radar and Hawkeye again. "Get outta there!"

The dogs whined and retreated into my apartment.

"They're all right." I said. "They won't stay outside. I'm telling you, they know something." Radar and Hawkeye had been pacing the floor between the bed and the door for hours. "Maggie told me that when she was growing up, the animals always knew days ahead if a hurricane was coming. The cattle went to the hills, the horses were skittish in their stalls, and the barn cats moved their kittens to the loft. Animals can sense things."

Don let the drill rip, then cussed a blue streak when the screw sheered off, and the drill bit went skittering sideways. His arms strained as he struggled to hold the plywood in place, sweat dripping from beneath his Willie-Nelson-Style bandana headband. "This is ignorant."

Leaning over the veranda railing, I gazed around the corner toward the beach. Today, it was full of sunbathers and swimmers ignoring the riptide warnings. "No, it's not. I have a feeling about this one."

A chill ran over me, chasing away the sticky heat on my skin. Over the past two years, Perdida had become the closest thing to a home I'd ever known. After a lifetime of drifting, I was finding out what it felt like to spend time in one place, to put down roots. With Maggie and Meredith's help, my jewelry-making business, Gifts From the Sea, was growing, and in a few months, I'd be able to quit the cruise ship contracts and spend my days combing the beaches in the early mornings after the tide, and creating art jewelry from beach glass and other treasures the water had surrendered overnight. With more shops around Perdida showing and selling my pieces, I was slowly becoming an artisan working in a medium of found items. A soul at peace with the sea.

If Glorietta came this way, all of that could change.

Don raised the drill and drove another screw with one quick swipe. "Hand me the box," he barked. "You worry too much."

"You don't worry enough."

"Ffff," Don scoffed, but his mouth was twitching upward at the corners. "I don't know what you're complainin' about. You'll be down in Mexico someplace, soaking up the sun."

"Yeah, right." Nobody here had any idea that working on a cruise ship wasn't like an episode of The Love Boat. The hours were long, and the work was usually far from glamorous. Even the jewelry-making classes, where I helped passengers create lasting keepsakes from treasures discovered in distant ports, were usually less than inspiring.

Don tucked several screws into his pocket, and I moved around the porch turning over the plastic tables, bracing the tops against the wall of the building. Standing at the railing, I watched a flock of seagulls fly inland, while Don finished the last of the shutters, then walked down the deck. "Guess I'll do the door tomorrow morning after you leave... if it's even headed this way. Which it won't be." He set the drill against the wall. It would stay there until tomorrow morning, or the next time he needed it.

"If it turns north, promise me you'll evacuate, OK?" I pleaded, even though I knew what his answer would be. "Just go, all right?"

He pulled off the headband, wiped his neck with it, then put it on his head again. Gross. Don had the couth of a baboon.

"Go where? Where am I gonna go? Every motel from here to Oklahoma's full of idiots runnin' from a storm that's not even coming here. Half of Houston's gone on the run, already. I'm not sleeping in some high school gym with a bunch of screaming brats."

Tears prickled in my throat-the desperate kind that wouldn't be denied. "Just do this for me, OK? If they order an evac here, leave, OK? Take a... a little vacation."

"A vacation?" His head fell to one side and his mouth hung open. "Darlin', I live on vacation. Besides, how in the world am I gonna evacuate? No room for the boys on my bike." He gazed lovingly at his Harley, lounging in the shade of a palm tree below.

"You can have my van. I'm taking the shuttle to port. I'll leave the keys tomorrow morning, and the van'll be here in case you need it. If they call an evacuation, you can take Radar and Hawkeye, and go."

"In that junker? We probably wouldn't get ten miles." From day one, Don had been vehemently opposed to the antique VW Microbus I'd been lovingly restoring as my official business vehicle, since I'd started Gifts From the Sea, moved to Don's building, and finally had a place to keep a car.

"Come on, Don. Just promise me you'll leave if you need to."

He threw his hands up, sighing. "Sheesh. All right. If I see it's coming in, I'll go."

"When?"

"When I see it's coming."

Which meant never, of course. "You won't be able to get out by then. Every road north will be stacked bumper-to-bumper. By tomorrow morning, if the storm turns, it'll be stop and go. If I wasn't headed out on the ship, I'd be hitting the road today, like Maggie and Meredith."

Don shot a dirty look toward the coffee shop. No doubt, Maggie and Meredith had already harassed him about his lack of evacuation plans. "I gotta get back to work. I'm a big boy, Kiwi." At some point after I'd rented the apartment, Don had taken to calling me Kiwi, because he couldn't remember my name, Kai.

"You don't act like one."

"Go make some jewelry. Your counter downstairs is getting low," he grumbled, then headed for the steps, his gaze scanning the sky. "Glorietta'll hit south. You can bet your big blue eyes on it. And that'll just mean more people'll come here for the end of the season. Big bucks, baby."

"I'll leave van keys on my table. If you need it, take it." I called after him.

He stopped momentarily at the top of the steps, his posture softening. "Take care 'a you."

"I will. You too."

Giving the thumbs-up, he started his descent. "Bonfire at Blowfish Billy's tonight," he called, motioning down the beach toward one of his favorite haunts. "Gonna boil some crawfish, pop open a keg, rock out to a little Cajun music."

"I think I'll pass."

He waved me off. "Suit yourself. Peace out."

"Yeah," I muttered, rubbing my hands over my arms as the lonely, hollow feeling I'd known all my life came creeping in like an unwelcome relative. You gotta look out for yourself, Kai-bird, my father used to say. When it comes right down to it, you're all you got.

I felt the loneliness closing in hard and fast. Before it could grab me, I opened the apartment door, took Radar down to the yard, then let Hawkeye follow me toward the street. Radar wasn't allowed anywhere near Maggie and Meredith's coffee shop, but Hawkeye heeled with the discipline of a professionally-trained guide dog, which he may have been, for all anyone knew. Hawkeye's past was a mystery. He'd been discovered hiding among the piers under the coffee shop, with a chain so tight around his neck the skin had grown over it. Don took him home, because, as he told the story, Maggie and Meredith would have made a sissy dog out of him.

Hawkeye stayed closer than usual as we headed across the street and climbed the stairs to the coffee shop.

Maggie and Meredith were in rare form when we walked in. "I see you convinced the bubblehead to board up," Maggie observed, tucking her hair, glazed an unnatural red this week, behind her ear.

"He's sure it won't hit here."

"Meridee's got a bad feeling about this one, and so do I." Maggie leaned over to greet Hawkeye and scratch his ears. "This old fellow looks worried, too."

"I tried to tell Don that."

"Don-schmon." Cupping Hawkeye's head in her hands, Maggie gazed into his eyes. "I wish I could take you on the plane with me, big boy. Yes, I do."

"Do the two of you need a ride to the airport tonight?" Anything would be better than sitting alone in my apartment, or going to the crawfish boil at Blowfish Billy's, watching old hippies beat their chests and shake fists at the storm.

"Nope." Standing up, Maggie flipped a towel over her shoulder. "We're just leaving the car at the shuttle stop. If Glorietta sweeps it off to Timbuktu, then so be it."

"Maggie!" Meredith protested from the back room.

"Well, you never know. This could be the big one." Maggie grew serious. Bracing her hands on the waistline of her long cotton skirt, she peered out the door. I couldn't help looking myself, thinking that far out on the horizon, the water was darker and choppier now.

Maggie chewed her lip. "If Don weren't such an idiot, he'd pack up and go."

"I tried to tell him that, but he won't listen. He's headed down to Blowfish Billy's tonight. If the storm does turn before morning, he'll probably be passed out somewhere."

Tossing the towel onto the counter, Maggie snorted and rolled her eyes. "If he ends up being right, we'll never hear the last of it."

"I hope he is right." But no matter how much I tried to tell myself that everything would be fine, the words were like a magician's illusion-foggy, muted, ready to vanish any moment. The image in my dream, the one in which the storm was coming and I couldn't run fast enough, seemed real

Chapter 1