Skinny Billy McLemore stood at the tugboat Quetzal’s wheel, silent, shirtless, clothed only in a dingy bath towel cinched around his waist with a clothes pin. His common-law wife, Bernardine stood beside him yelling and hollering, her long Caribbean dress bare at the arms, a deep red dress with tropical orange flowers printed here and there. Billy took the Quetzal toward the shore, slow, easing through the waves. Speed boats came alongside for a look at the old tug, it’s rusting sides covered sparsely with a new coat of grey paint thanks to Simeon, Luke, and Baruch a few weeks before.

         Simeon, Luke, and Baruch painted the tug in between their odd jobs in St. Thomas. Instead of sleeping in the heat of the afternoon wrapped in mosquito netting, or bird dogging chicks out at Duffy‘s Love Shack, or drinking big brightly colored daquiris on the cool tiled patios of hotel bars, or even splashing about in the beauty of Brewer’s Bay, they would with great glee come down to the Quetzal from their little apartment above the Foo Fo Days bar, to grab a paint bucket and an old brush. The three of them would paint, paint, paint under the beaming heat lamp of the Caribbean sun. Sweat pouring down, Bernardine singing some song badly, Billy frowning and huffing and puffing “come on you missed a spot, pay attention to detail now up there!” No exchange of money, maybe a poorly cooked plate of rice and a neon-pink cup of kool-aid when the paint gallon ran dry. Top to bottom, the whole damned ship, painted for free,everything except the smokestack with the Pink Panther in a Tux, his diamond studded cane, his top hat, his laughing smile beaming over the Charlotte Amalie harbor.

         The Quetzal moved in slow across the waves, the old warship heading for home, pointed steadily toward the mouth of the Intercoastal Waterway. The Coast Guard intermittently barking instructions. Bernardine hanging out the pilot house door shouting and waving to the speedboats, the sailboats, any damn boat that she saw. Simeon, Luke, and Baruch sat on the top deck, hooting and hollering, and making a scene. “We’re a motley crew, but that’s what saves us,” Luke joked. It was a running joke, and like all running jokes, it made them snort and guffaw and slap their knees.

         The Intercoastal Waterway accepted the old boat into its waters, a river of sea water running nowhere and back again. They made their way through the channel, looking out at the river deck bars with bamboo torches packed with vacationers and businessmen ducking a meeting. Lots of men in various styles of shorts. Jean shorts, golf shorts, basketball shorts, sitting in the sun, talking about fishing, drinking Coronas and the like. All marveled at the old Quetzal and its crew, and many of them yelled things at the boat and at the crew. “It’s a ship not a boat, you assholes!” Simeon bellowed with gusto.

         “HAAAAAA-AAAAAYYYYYY!!!!!” Bernardine yelled to each of the men on shore. “PARRRRTTTTYYYY ON BOARDDDDDDD!!!!” The men would grin and yell things back, and she waved at them all in the long tradition of triumphant returns.

         A sailboat pulled alongside, and two Italian men sat in the little brightly painted red sloop, Arrivederci emblazoned in blue block letters on the side. They lounged in their swimming suits and yelled things in Italian at Bernardine. She danced out on to the top deck and came around next to Baruch and yelled and yelled and yelled. The Italians kept their sailboat as close as they could, and Luke pointed out that they were running an outboard motor for power rather than relying on the wind. Simeon and Baruch both smirked. Bernardine continued to dance, and with great gusto, she pulled down her dress, her bare braless breasts flopping out and up and also down. She shook them left, she shook them right, she shook and shook and shook again. The Italians clapped and whooped and laughed. This went on for about five minutes, Billy said nothing, as though he saw nothing. Finally he leaned out the pilothouse door and said, “If yer gonna do that, ya better lose some weight before they lock you up for puttin on a bad show and disturbin the peace.”

         Bernardine ignored him and looked at Baruch instead. “Do you think they liked it?” she asked in a deranged voice.

         “Welcome to America,” said Baruch sadly.

         “That’s right honey, Welcome to America, Bernie Style!!!!!!!!!” Simeon and Luke cackled and coughed and downright laughed their asses off, but Baruch just stared off into the distance. Simeon looked at him, shook his head, and laughed some more.

         The three of them lurched forward almost falling off.

         “What the fuck?!” Luke yelled.

         “Sandbar!” Billy yelled from the pilot house.

         “Goddddd Dammmnnn Ittttt!!!!!!!!” Bernardine screamed.

         Simeon, Luke, and Baruch scampered down the ladder to look over the side. Down in the waters, they could indeed see the sand. Now the men on shore were really laughing and yelling. Most of their yells were centered on the idea that you’d have to be a damn fool to take a big ship into shallow waters. Billy was working hard up in the pilot house, giving it full power, which was really one quarter power thanks to the engine’s weakening with age, in reverse.

         Simeon, Luke, and Baruch stood there looking down into the water, unsure of what to do. They looked out over the water, and saw a man in a little metal fishing boat with an outboard motor rigging a boogie board to the back of the boat with a rope. He had blonde scraggly hair, which was blowing in the breeze, and a little boy with him, maybe seven, maybe eight years old. The boy lay still on the boogie board while his father tied the rope. Once it was tied, the father began yanking on the pull cord of the outboard over and over. It would not start. They watched as the boat began to drift toward the boy, since it was pointed upstream, and they screamed at the father not to start the engine. The rope was slack now, and the boy was still and patient on the board, waiting for the fun to begin.

         Bernardine heard the crew screaming and looked out and began screaming too, but the father did not look up. About six inches from the boy, the outboard caught and growled to life. As the propeller began to churn, the boy was sucked underneath the boat disappearing from view. Simeon, Luke, Baruch, and Bernardine screamed and screamed and screamed. The father looked back to check on his son, and began scrambling from side to side trying to find him. After about a minute, they saw him pull the boy, shaken but uncut and unhurt from the other side of the boat.

         “Holy fucking shit. I thought he was fucking dead for sure.” said Luke.

         “Yeah. What the fuck?” said Simeon.

         Bernardine was still screaming from the top deck. Screaming at the crying man. “You goddamn fucking fool!” she screamed. “You stupid fucking son of a fucking bitch! Somebody should drown you, dumbfuck!” She screamed and screamed and screamed. The father and son looked up at her, a banshee in the breeze. They looked up and she looked down, and it carried on for five or six minutes.

         Meanwhile, the big engine was churning loudly, pulling hard against the sand, struggling, struggling, struggling. Finally they felt the ship start to shift a little. Little by little by little until finally they were moving backward off the sandbar’s head, back into deeper water.

         If any of them figured this would be the only sandbar of the day, they were dead wrong, because they hit them all. Fifteen sandbars in six hours. Each time, the same routine of cursing and reversing and hooting and hollering from other boats and from the men on shore. Each time, Billy grumbling and moaning and whining a bit, and Bernardine next to him cursing and yelling and flipping off the hecklers, her chest now covered with a t-shirt that read “Momma of the Year.”

         The first time she wore the shirt on board, they were drifting off the coast of Cuba. Simeon, Luke, and Baruch were jumping off the pilot house, playing Frisbee in the open ocean, doing dead man’s float competitions fifty miles from land. She sat on the deck: watching them play in the water; watching them waiting for the ship to pitch down to grab the ladder and scramble up before it could pitch back up; watching them shout and splash and curse and laugh. Baruch came up on deck preparing to jump again, and Bernardine said “Barry, you see this shirt?”

         “Momma of the year, huh? How did you win that? Was there a vote?”

         “No baby, just one vote, from my daughter.”

         “You have a daughter?”

         “Sure do, she’s 19, that’s probably about you boys’ age.”

         “What’s her name?”

         “Tammy. You’d like her. She’s real cool, cuz I brought her up to be real cool.”

         “Cool.”

         “Yeah. We’re like sisters. Some moms are always telling their kid ‘I ain’t you friend, I’m your momma, and I’ll have ya ass’ but I don’t care about all that hollerin and carryin on. I tell her, ‘bitch, you treat me good, and I’ll treat you good and I’ll listen to you anytime.’ You know what I mean Barry?”

         “Yes, the key to effective communication is openness and honesty according to seven out of ten scholars.” Baruch smirked.

         “You smart ass. That’s why I like you Barry, you funny as shit, but you a nice kid too. If I ever met your momma I’d tell her she raised a nice as hell kid, and then I’d drive her all around Daytona Beach and party with her all night. Me and your momma would have a good time.”

         “I think she’d like that,” said Baruch.

         “Who?”

         “My mom.”

         “Oh, right, anyways, that’s what me and Tammy do, we put on our leather hooker boots and party all night. She always says she’s got the coolest fuckin mom in Florida, cuz I don’t give a shit, I’ll party with her until 5 a.m. We’ll pick up dudes and drop dudes, any damn thing. Her Daddy died six years ago from the AIDS, but I never told’er that. Never told’er nothing about him. He was just a whore married to a whore. We were just a couple of crack lovin whores Barry, but damn it if I didn’t have a good time with that fat old sack of shit. Damn it all to hell if we didn’t have ten years of a good time together. He was a chef you know?”

         “No, I didn’t know.”

         “Best damn cook in Vegas. That’s where I met him. I was dancing in the chorus line and he was cookin prime ribs up down in the kitchen, and listen close now baby, I was the greatest thing Vegas ever saw. You’ve seen those showgirl boots I wear sometimes with the tassles and all? Well, listen Barry, twenty years ago, before my ass spread, before I had my daughter and got this scar, before I met that old complainer up there, I was the best piece of ass West of the Mississippi. I’ve always been proud of that. Best piece of ass in Vegas five years running.”

         “Another fine award,” said Baruch.

         “Damn sure was, but I still love my Momma of the Year shirt, Barry.”

         “Maybe I’ll get one for my mom too.”

         “You should, you really should Barry, because that’s the kind of thing that moms remember a long long time.”

         Night was falling, and the Quetzal was approaching an island in the waterway. There were channels around each side, and Billy swerved left first, and then at the last moment, changed his mind and tried to come back to the right. The big ship turned to slow, and the boat rammed into the muddy bottom. Not just beached on a sandbar this time. Nope, this time they had officially run aground. Billy tried the usual routine. Full speed backwards in spurts, trying to back the ship out of the mud, but the mud was thick, and the mud was strong, and the ship was heavy and stuck. After an hour of gunning the engine in reverse, Billy came down from the pilot house. It was dark now, and the air was thick with mosquitoes and the noise of a million birds and frogs.

         He gathered the crew together at the little dinner table, and Bernardine banged around on the stove making hot tea.

         “Don’t over boil it now.”

         “Baby, I been makin your tea for seven years haven’t I?”

         “And you always over boil the water.”

         “Boiled water’s boiled water Bill.”

         “Give me that god damn pot Bernie,” he whined pushing her out of the way, just like every night. He finished boiling the water and poured it into the cup, dangling the tea bag over the surface of the water. In and out, in and out. Simeon, Luke, and Baruch sat their silently waiting for him to say something stupid. When they first met him, they agreed that he was some sort of pirate captain, because he looked the part. Over the two week journey, they learned that he was a dopey used car salesman, who while taking his granddaughter for a drive in his Cadillac, decided to buy the ship on a whim. He didn’t sell cars anymore, now he was a pool builder by trade, but to them in those days, he was just a dopey car salesman who kept crashing the god damn ship. So he sat there, and his beard hung down pulling his chin down, emphasizing his moping, and they stared at him, refusing to give him solace in his misery.

         “We could call the Coast Guard, couldn’t we Bill?” said Bernie cheerily.

         “No, no damn Coast Guard!” he barked.

         Bernie passed out the last of the MRE’s and Simeon smiled, because he got Barbecue beef, his favorite one. They opened the outer bag, releasing the heat, and waited for the meals to cook inside the bags. Thirty year old Vietnam-era MRE’s. They were hard to swallow; harder to digest; hardest of all to smell. They slopped them down, and sat some more until Billy spoke.

         “What do you guys think we should do?”

         “Why don’t we just wait for the tide to come in, and then we’ll probably be able to get her off?” said Luke.

         “Yeah, I guess that’s our only shot.”

         The crew went out on the deck. They had heard enough. They sat in the chairs of the deck. Baruch was chewing the last of his tobacco, the spit spattering on the sides of his Nalgene bottle, and then running down to the bottom. Simeon watched him spit and grinned.

         “I ever tell you guys about the time I drank my brother’s chew spit?” he asked.

         “No man, tell us that story,” Baruch replied.

         “Well, one thing any guy should know about aluminum cans in Arizona is that if the tab is ripped off the top, that can is a spit can. But this one day, I had been up at Lake Powell. You ever heard of that?”

         “No man,” said Baruch. “What’s Lake Powell?”

         “It’s this big ass lake up in the north of the state created by this big ass dam. Lots of people go up there for fishing and boating and camping and cliff diving and shit. So I was up there with some friends, and we were playing volleyball in the sand. And I played that volleyball shit all day long. I was thinking I was real smart, because I kept putting on that sun tan lotion, but I never remembered to put it on the top of my feet. So I’m not burning at all, but about four hours later, it’s about a hundred degrees right? And my feet are turning purple and burning like hell, but then it’s too goddamn late. So we’re driving back to Flagstaff that night, and I’ve got my feet out the window the whole damn way, cuz they hurt so bad, except at forty miles an hour, they’re finally cooling off a little bit in the breeze.”

         “Why were you only doing 40?” asked Luke. “We used to do 90 back from Powell every time.”

         “I was in this shitty car that even when we floored it down hill couldn’t get over 50. So we’d floor it downhill at 50 and then coast over the flats at around 40 and then do about 30 up the hills. It took forever, and I was thirsty as hell and my feet were burning like fire. So we get home, and my brother picks me up in his truck and buys some whiskey, a can of Iced Tea, and some chips or something, and I wasn’t paying attention but he sure drank that can of Iced Tea real fast. So I take a piss and I see the can sitting there on the counter and just as a matter of reaction I reach over and take a big slug.”

         “That’s fuckin sick,” said Luke.

         “Yeah, the bad thing was that when it hit my mouth, I instantly knew that this was no iced tea, but because I already had started the motion of drinking, I just couldn’t stop the swallow, so it went down, and let me tell you guys something.”

         “What’s that?” said Baruch.

         “Chew spit doesn’t feel good in your stomach.”

         “Want a drink?” said Baruch holding his spit bottle out. They laughed hard.

         “Well, I’m going to sleep man, I’m tired of this shitty tub,” said Luke.

         “Yeah, me too,” it’ll be good to get off this damn thing and away from these idiots,” said Simeon.

         “Don’t be so sure,” said Baruch.

         “Why’s that?” Luke asked.

         “Just remember the principle of leaving,” Baruch said solemnly. “When you leave a place or a person, they will give themselves to you.”

         “Whatever man,” said Simeon and stomped into the cabin and threw himself on the bunk. Ever since the long night of sea sickness off Miami, Simeon stopped sleeping in the hole and slept in a bunk. “What’s the point?” he said the first night of the switch. “I already gave up on my hole, so why try to pretend I was down there the whole time?” The bed was soft, and the boat was still in the mud, no more rocking, the engine shut down for the night, nothing but the sound of bugs and birds and frogs. Simeon woke around 2 a.m. and walked out on the deck where Baruch and Luke were still sitting. A fishing boat was alongside them, and two men in hunting camo were laughing and drinking cans of Bud.

         “How the fuck you idiots run this tub of shit aground?” asked the guy in the rear of the boat as he switched off the outboard.

         “The guy who owns it couldn’t make up his mind,” said Luke.

         “That’s that shithead from Ormond right?”

         “You know him?”

         “Everybody knows that damn guy, he’s always on the news for something or other.”

         “Like what?”

         “He’s always getting robbed or violatin' an ordinance for keeping too many buses in that shitty yard of his.”

         “Buses?”

         “Yeah, he’s got like fifty buses in his backyard, and he’s always back there foolin' with 'em but none of the damn things run. He’s kind of like our local idiot.”

         “That sounds about right,” said Simeon.

         “So how ya gonna get 'er out?” said the other man between drinks.

         “Plan is to wait for the tide to come in and then try to back it out.”

         “Yeah, that might work.”

         “What time is high tide?”

         “Beats the fuck out of me,” said the one in the back.

         “And beats the fuck out of you,” said the one in the front with a smirk. The guy in back brought the outboard to life, and they watched the boat disappear into the murky night, buzzing away into the distance. It was hot the next morning, but the tide did come in, and after about twenty minutes, Billy got the boat back off the mud.

         Simeon sat alone on the front deck and watched as they started passing big mansions on the water. Mansion after mansion after mansion, all with three or four boats tethered on docks. He watched them slide by as the big ship coasted along at two knots. Here and there, a gardener mowed the grass, trimmed a hedge, pruned a rose bush. They were back in America now. All the way back in. Baruch was right. He saw the big house with McLemore emblazoned on the dock in gold. He saw the neighbors sitting on their dock watching and pointing and laughing, already with glasses of wine in the morning.

         When he stepped off the ship, Simeon stumbled on the flat deck of the dock. The world was no longer rocking with the motion of the water, and his legs were having trouble adjusting.