Nightfall (3-5)

3

My mind raced as the line shuffled forward. There were what, ten of us in line?

I glanced forward and to the left at Jameson.

Well, nine. There were nine in line, what with him doing an impersonation of a rug.

The door opened, let in a flash of late blue sky as a man left, then closed.

Okay, so eight in line. The line shuffled forward.

I looked at the back of the man’s head in front of me. Tried to focus on that. It didn’t help a lot.

The guy had generally the same hair the rest of us had, ranging from dark brown to black. Some a little curly or wavy on the sides, some straight. The only one with any grey wasn’t in line.

We all wore the same sweat-stained khaki ball caps with Morgan Fleet embroidered across the front in two lines. That’s the ambitious name Old Man Morgan gave his dozen or so fishing boats and the pier where they docked.

The door opened and closed. The sky flashed through the opening with less blue and more dark grey clouds with a little white cotton here and there. Seven still in line.

Boot soles scraped on floor planks as the line shuffled forward. Now and then someone coughed a little into his elbow or palm or off to the side. Now and then someone released a little exhaustion with a sigh.

I looked down. The guy in front of me was wearing black boots, almost shiny black at the back from constant contact with the cuff of his dungarees. But they were scraped white around the edges of the toe. I wondered if mine looked like that.

I shifted my gaze away from his boots and back to my own.

Scraped white around the edges of the toe. But only a little. Scratches here and there. I probably polished mine a little more often than he did.

We all wore dungarees and either boots or dock shoes with thick soles. The dungarees and footwear were ours but mandated by the company and necessity. The boots or dock shoes were up to us as long as they were black or brown.

The door opened and closed. The same dark grey clouds flashed through in a vignette. We were down to six. Maybe closer though, with little or no white showing.

The guy in front of me, his shoulder blades twitched as the line shuffled forward. His khaki shirt stuck to the inside of his left shoulder blade for a second before he tugged unconsciously at the tail and pulled it loose.

We all wore the same tired khaki long-sleeve button-down work shirts with the same worn-out, sweat-stained collars. In the early morning, most of them were buttoned all the way up and tucked in. By 10 or so in the morning, most were unbuttoned halfway and tugged free of the dungarees. By 2 or so in the afternoon, most were unbuttoned all the way down.

The door slapped open hard, banged against the outside of the crew shack. Whoever left—number one in a line of six—took a moment to push it closed, but gently. And just like that, we were five.

As the line shuffled forward, Old Man Morgan looked up and gestured with his head. The first man in line stepped past him and secured the latch, then turned around to collect his pay.

There was a moment of silence. The old man was a creature of habit. I imagined him waiting for Number One of five to resume his place at the side of the table.

The second guy in line—so Number Two—stopped a respectful distance back to reserve Number One’s place in line.

Number One realized his error. He jerked and took a couple more quick, awkward steps to move back to where the old man wanted him.

Old Man Morgan mumbled something barely above his breath. Counting out the man’s pay probably. I wondered if he’d get a little bonus for securing the door. Or maybe he’d sacrificed it by not returning automatically to the line.

But I didn’t care enough to lean over and look.

As the man took his pay, “Gracias, jefe,” he said quietly. Apparently he thought he’d formed a personal if fleeting relationship with the old man when he answered the call to secure the door.

The door opened and closed, but under control this time, and we were four.

I leaned a bit right and watched as the latch slipped into place seemingly on its own. I didn’t notice whether the storm was closer, but the voice of the wind through the crack around the door was about the same.

The line, consisting now of only four of us, shuffled forward.

The old man glanced up and locked his gaze with mine for a moment, then looked away.

Sometime during that silent exchange, he conducted another exchange as the paymaster. A second later the door opened and closed again.

The line shuffled forward with only three men left, counting me. If it hadn’t been for Jameson’s foolishness he and I both would already be home or on our way.

I focused again on the man in front of me, the dark brown curls, the hair on the back of his neck, the tributaries of sweat racing through neck hair to beat each other to that spot between his shoulder blades. He was about the same height as Jameson. About six-two, maybe six-three. Maybe a hundred and sixty, hundred and seventy pounds.

We were all lean. Not weak, but wiry, with no room for carrying extra weight on the docks.

I know the guy, generally, but I kept imagining Jameson’s face on the front of his head.

The door opened and closed, as gently and as certainly as before. Number One of three was gone. We were a two-man line. There was only the Jameson look-alike, at least from the back, and me.

Too bad about Jameson. I almost looked at him again, but I didn’t. I didn’t like the guy, but I didn’t have anything against him either. Not until he popped off about Mary Jo McWherter. Why’d he have to do that?

And why did I? We all have a certain amount of attitude. Self-confidence maybe. Or maybe a lack of self-confidence. A tendency to show our ass. So why did I launch at him like that?

Because what he said wasn’t an empty boast. Or at least it wasn’t presented as an empty boast. It wasn’t an obvious joke or an obvious bit of juvenile braggadocio.

The sound of the door surprised me, pulled me back. It opened and closed, quickly, like the man in front of me went through it without even opening it. Probably in that big a hurry to leave me and Old Man Morgan alone. I wish he’d turned around, even for a second. Just to prove to me I wasn’t following a ghost.

I shuffled a couple of steps because that’s how it was done, then stopped next to the table and nodded when Old Man Morgan glanced up at me.

My lips moved and I meant to say something, though I wasn’t sure what. Anyway, nothing came out.

He had a wad of bills in his hand, the stub of a cigar in the left corner of his mouth. He looked down and started counting quietly, sliding single bills off the stack in his left hand to his right as he did so.

I glanced left out of the corner of my eye.

Jameson hadn’t moved.

I didn’t think he would but I was kind of pulling for him. Wanting the other guy to never move again when I was through with him was in my past. But I guess nobody else thought he would move either. Nobody had gone for a medic or a doctor. Or at least none had shown up.

Why do guys like Jameson always think the guy of smaller stature is some kind of little guy? I mean, on a scale of here to the sun, there isn’t a lot of difference between my five-nine and his six-two or three.

Sometimes that little difference means an advantage, but the advantage can go either way. The difference today put my fist, wrapped around the handle of a knife, at Jameson’s solar plexus with almost no effort on my part. I didn’t have to reach down. I didn’t have to reach up. He just leaned in. And just like that, now his six-two or three would make a difference only to whoever was going to build the box to bury him in.

4

When he cleared his throat, I realized the old man had stopped counting and transferring bills from one hand to the other.

I turned my head to look at him and my right arm flinched, wanting to reach for my cash.

But his elbows remained on the table, his hands still where they had been when he was counting. His eyes were focused on my face. His lips moved and the cigar rolled a little. “How long you been with me here, Nick?”

I relaxed my right arm, let it hang. “Almost a year now.” I wanted to say “sir” but my lips wouldn’t form the word. Why hadn’t he come in earlier? And when he did come in, why hadn’t he spoken? Why had he waited? “Be a year in a few weeks.”

He nodded, his gaze still locked on mine. Then he gestured toward Jameson with his chin but without looking at him. “That about a woman?”

“No.” I hesitated. “Well, yes, but not really.” Not the way he was thinking.

“Uh huh.” He looked at the cash box, then looked up again. “Thing is, I can’t have hotheads on the dock, especially over something like a woman.”

Something like a woman.

I wanted to explain it wasn’t really about a woman. It was about Jameson being crass enough to cross a line that nobody ever crossed.

I wanted to explain to him that few other men would have said something like Jameson said. And even if it slipped out during a moment of foolish enthusiasm, it would be followed immediately with “I’m joking” or something else that would let the others know he wasn’t serious.

But there was no use. He already knew all of that. Or he had never known and wouldn’t understand.

Or maybe I hoped he did know. Maybe I hoped he was letting me go because of some flaw he had instead of what I’d done.

Anyway, I only nodded.

“What will you do?”

That came from him, and it took me by surprise. “What?”

“What will you do now?”

Was he concerned? But he was Old Man Morgan. He couldn’t be concerned, could he? And if he were concerned, why didn’t he stop the fight? One word from him would’ve stopped it, at least on my part. But if I’d stopped and Jameson hadn’t, then I’d be the one on the floor.

And if he had a reason to let the fight go, why was he firing me? Maybe he was going this far to prove to me it really was all my fault. That it had no bearing on him.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Something.”

“I’m just saying, I hope you wouldn’t go to work for one of my rivals.”

Ah, there it is.

But why would he worry about that?

I was conscientious, and good at whatever I put my mind to. But he’d fired me, so what did it matter to him?

Still, for some reason what he said annoyed me.

I repeated my response a little slower and more firmly. “I. Don’t. Know.” Maybe to make him think that’s exactly what I was going to do. Work for his rivals.

Then his eyes changed. Like they drew in or something. He flicked out his tongue, ran it over his lips, retracted it. “Of course, it’s up to you.” He adjusted his left forearm on the table alongside the cash box. “You were military for a time, weren’t you?”

I nodded. “For a time.”

For a dozen or so years. I considered it an extended civilian-appreciation exercise. If I’d known what most civilians are like I might have reconsidered. Most of them are hens willing to lay their head on a block to avoid offending the butcher.

“Uh huh,” he said as if he’d uncovered a secret and we were nearing a breakthrough. “And then weren’t you a cop or something?”

I nodded again.

A cop or something. Yes, I did a brief stint there too, but it wasn’t the same. And it wasn’t enough.

In war, you get to be a bad guy.

Hey, don’t believe all the hype. Our guys are as bad as the other guys, only on the other side. It’s all a matter of perspective.

But as a cop, it’s different. As a cop you’re held accountable even if you shoot a bad guy.

In war—well, it’s just war.

I was on the verge of explaining that to him. Then I realized that wasn’t what he wanted to know at all.

He didn’t care whether I was military or a cop. He was asking me why I couldn’t play well with others.

He must have seen the understanding in my eyes. As if to fill the suddenly uneasy silence, he said, “I was just thinking, you know,” and he shrugged defensively, maybe to make sure I knew the forthcoming comment had no teeth. “Maybe you’re better suited for—well, jobs like that.” And he averted his eyes.

I’ll be damned. Jobs like that? Like what lay on the floor to my left? Or did he mean generally? Like not being held accountable. Not being expected to play well with others. Being expected to draw a bead, line up the crosshairs and squeeze a trigger. Or being expected to jab deep and true with a knife.

C’mon, Nick, you know—jobs like that.

If he’d clapped me on the shoulder and laughed and said something like that it would have been great. It would have been a sign of mutual respect, one loser to another.

But the guy was afraid of me. He was seated firmly on his civilian hen butcher-block pedestal, and he was afraid of me. It wasn’t brotherly concern at all. It wasn’t a mutual or even unilateral respect.

It was fear. It was a timid little man, despite his superior physical stature, screeching loudly, “Who does things like that? Who even thinks like that?”

Because there’s no possible way he ever could. He didn’t have the stomach for it. In his world, there was only himself and then all the lesser beings. He peered down at them from his pedestal. His butcher-block pedestal.

I waited until he finally looked at me again. Then I steadily met his gaze and nodded. “Sure. I understand.” Then I roughly took my pay from his hand and turned away. I only wish he had been standing so I could brush past him.

As I opened the door, the wind took it again, slapped it hard against the outside of the crew shack.

I reached for it at first, an automatic reflex, then decided to test my theory. I pulled my arm back and looked over my shoulder. “You’ll get the door, eh Morg?”

He flinched, then stood quickly and turned to face me. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead. He gripped the back of the metal folding chair with his left hand, his knuckles white and protruding. “Oh. Sure, Nick. Sure.”

5

The door creaked and closed quietly as I turned away and looked out over the dock. It was dark and growing darker, but the storm clouds were huge and black and close. The wind beneath them had whipped the sea into angry luminous whitecaps.

A cop or something.

Jobs like that.

I laughed quietly.

There I was, standing outside the crew shack on a dock. What in the world was I thinking? What was I doing here?

My right leg was throbbing. It never did bleed much, even while standing in line. There was only a small blotch of blood around the cut in my trousers. The khaki made even that look worse than it was. Maybe a trickle underneath, but nothing wet or warm.

But I might break something loose on my way into town.

I hobbled around the corner of the building to get out of the wind, then took off my shirt and tore the left sleeve off it. That drained what was left of my adrenaline.

I used the sleeve to make a tight bandage, then turned the knot over so it was pressing on the wound. That should hold it for awhile.

There was a little stinging, too, about halfway down my right side. But my shirt wasn’t even torn there. The point of the knife had punctured it, leaving only a small puckered tear. As I thought, he’d only grazed me there.

I tore off the other sleeve, dropped it, then put the shirt back on and started walking toward town.

The town, more of a village really, was a quarter-mile away along a quiet road of crushed shells. Well, actually Barney’s Tavern was a quarter-mile away. The village of Agua Andulado was a tenth of a mile or so beyond that.

The sun had dipped below the horizon while I was still in line over a half-hour ago. The moon wasn’t up yet. I think it was in its final quarter anyway.

But it didn’t matter. The crushed seashells that made up the roadbed had been compacted almost into a kind of concrete, at least in the tire tracks left by Morgan’s Cadillac. In between the tracks and to either side, they crunched quietly underfoot. I preferred walking there. There was something comforting about the quiet, gristling rhythm, especially with the way the shells glistened.

The road sparkled in the remaining starlight, curved up and around to the left—the west-northwest—on a gentle slope. The curve was shallow too, and the edges were marked starkly by low grasses gone to rough black saw blades in the absence of light.

When you leave the pier along the road, you start out walking slightly southwest. And by the time you get to Barney’s Tavern at the western edge of town, you’re angling only slightly north of due west.

All of that’s convenient on nights like this, when the day has siphoned your last bit of strength and town is still a quarter-mile away. Even when a major storm isn’t brewing, the wind coming off the sea is at your back, helping your tired legs get you into town.

As I walked, I thought about the old man’s question. Regardless of his intention, the question was legitimate. What was I going to do?

And he kind of had a point. All my life, at least when I was trying to choose a career, I’d chosen action jobs. Jobs where I could serve, I guess, but jobs where I’d be tested.

Well, until I took up on the dock.

The reason was a no-brainer at the time. I wanted to escape the nonsense. I wanted to drop out of the adrenaline-fueled world for awhile and be anonymous. That was a big part of it. And I wanted to get in shape physically. That was another part. I wanted to test my muscles instead of my brain and my nerves.

I wanted to be responsible for myself, for my job. Not for a bunch of other people and their problems.

A cop or something.

Well, being a cop was definitely out. It took me less than a year to see all I wanted to see of that. Even in a small town, the politics seeped in. Fat cats got fatter and skinny cats got run over.

So that left “or something.” Like a hit man with a quarter-pound trigger pull. Or back to the military.

Only the military wasn’t big on re-hiring guys like me, no matter how good they were at Morgan’s “jobs like that.” Besides, that was back in the States, and I was over here.

I continued toward town.

The wind seemed anxious for me to go too. I was grateful, though. It was cool, and my shirt and even my dungarees were dry before I’d walked the quarter-mile swatch of road leading from the pier up to Barney’s.

I’d developed a habit over the past few months of stopping off there for my evening meal and a beer. I wasn’t particularly hungry tonight, but a beer would go down pretty good while I considered my options.

And Mary Jo McWherter might be on the floor.

Not that we knew each other personally. We hadn’t even talked, really, beyond the platitudes routinely exchanged between servers and customers. There was only one of her, and dozens or even hundreds of customers. So any admiration or fantasies were strictly a one-sided affair. And that was as it should be.

Mary Jo McWherter was beautiful, and definitely one of the more pleasing roadside attractions I’d seen in my travels. But she didn’t deserve to be burdened with a guy like me. Even I didn’t deserve that, but things are what they are.

So even if we chanced to talk, which I was certain we wouldn’t, I wouldn’t give her any particulars. Still, it would be nice to see her again even from my usual distance before I left. And even if she didn’t know it would be my farewell visit.

Stay Tuned! See you next Monday!