Captain Brian Trilogy

Books in the Trilogy are sequential, spanning nearly a decade. The award-winning Greater Trouble in the Lesser Antilles is a good place to start, but each book stands on its own.

LJHS, Chapter 1

Click to Order
Argo, my Cheoy Lee Clipper, rode easily to her anchor, securing one flank of the flotilla of yachts that formed a loose cordon across the broad mouth of Cane Garden Bay. Shins pressed against the stern rail and T-shirt billowing like a spinnaker, I scanned an empty sea. As the eternity of my vigil numbed me, I conjured up an extravagant barge clearing the headland—an orchestra in full regalia, dancers and pageantry, pennants flying, attendants peeling and feeding grapes to the nubile deity, ensconced on a jeweled throne and attired in peacock feathers. Ha!

It stretched even my unbounded imagination to presume to witness such a sight. I would’ve been more than satisfied, absolutely gratified, if Billie, the adored one, simply arrived. Floating pleasure palace or dinghy, water wings or crimson shell, her manner of conveyance mattered little. Yet the more I envisioned a peacock-feathered costume, the more I zeroed in on the notion of plucking, an activity in which I’d never engaged.

Some say that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Others embrace the out-of-sight, out-of-mind model. I can attest that after three weeks of self-imposed exile from my home on St. Judas and from Billie, neither cliché nailed my true feelings: my wife and my home were never absent from my thoughts, and my ticker, with each lub-dub, lub-dub, grew harder. A coroner would be obliged to consult a geologist to assist at my postmortem.

Nothing in my compact with Billie required that I put my back into an oar for a man who forever feathered his own, but she demanded it. Every time I brought up the subject of our new dependent, Billie insisted the Moocher was the brother she never had. When I broached the topic of incest, her lividity rivaled that of a nun accused of heresy, and I was frozen out for days.

While it was up to Billie to end the beguine she began with the Moocher, it was up to me to demonstrate my displeasure. I played a risky game walking away from her as I did. A chance existed that Billie would get lonely, and the Moocher, who camped out in our gazebo, would talk his way into our cottage. Maybe he already had. While I feared the loss of the love of my life, my pride took as big a hit as my heart; it twisted every fiber of my being to flee St. Judas.

Outsiders view the island as a vacation destination, one of hundreds of emerald dots in the sapphire and teal Caribbean. The initiated fancy it a kaleidoscopic Eden, the hub of the universe, where earth, air, fire, and water converge in perfect proportion—maybe not the best of all possible worlds, but pretty okay.

Swayed by love and by the felicity of the fathomless and elemental convergence, which intimated that St. Judas might be the one geographical spot on the planet where Billie and I could be forever together, I wagered everything to marry her, thrilled that for the first time in over twenty-five years I belonged to a family. Still, I couldn’t ignore the evidence that I’ve always been a man on the run.

Each time I’ve run away from home, I’ve found diminishing success at putting a serious number of miles behind me. Running away from Kansas at fifteen and landing in the Philippines on a World War II–era Victory ship set an impossible standard. My latest escape—pathetic in the scope of its ambition—took me from the US Virgin Islands to the British Virgin Islands, like fleeing Manhattan for Brooklyn.

I’d put in at the land of the turtledove, Tortola, named in 1493 by the Admiral of the Ocean Sea. I’d done it in the manner in which a child lands on one foot in a game of hopscotch, poised to spring again and touch down with both feet on the ground. And that’s how I wanted to land back on St. Judas: both feet flat on the ground, no tiptoes, no stumbles.

I didn’t select Tortola’s premier destination as my interim headquarters on a whim. If I hadn’t required an anchorage where I could be found, I’d have chosen a secluded cove to ponder the state of my life. I did consider that my selection of Cane Garden Bay might have revealed a preconscious agenda—learn if I possessed an affinity for the life of a vagabond sailor, cruising from port to port, seeking water, a hot meal, and human contact.

If Billie sought me out, this should be the first place she’d look. If Billie had doubts, she had only to check with Pirate Dan; I’d left word with him where I could be found. Dan, the proprietor of the Congo Club, Flamingo Bay’s principal social institution, purveyed news and gossip along with food and drink.

Though I held out hope that Billie would come looking for me, I hadn’t heard word one from her, and my BVI cruising permit was set to expire. I’d kept my hands off my VHF radio in recent days. The two weeks I did monitor it made me feel like a besotted teenager with an unrequited crush on the girl who was too busy being Miss Everything to even notice me.

In the constant tug-of-war between gravity and levity, I couldn’t deny gravity’s present advantage. Still, I got along pretty okay on Rhymer’s cheeseburgers, Callwood’s rum, and, since yesterday, a Baggie of shrooms. I did brood under a shade tarp rigged to the mizzen boom, mindful that I pulled a blanket over my head, mindful that the child informs the man.

When I wasn’t engaged in perfecting the art of navel-gazing, I trained on the beach in martial arts and forged ahead on my required reading for the Flamingo Bay Literary Society, reacquainting myself with the pre-Socratic philosophers, the late inhabitants of Spoon River, and the dashed dreams of Jay Gatsby, despite growing doubt that I’d ever attend another society discussion, ever return to Flamingo Bay, ever resume my role as husband.

Just as I prepared to abandon my vigil, a white sloop, modern and plastic, approached on a starboard tack, materializing exactly where I anticipated spying my pleasure barge. I looked her over in the manner in which I’d scrutinize a pretty girl, but found she lacked the authenticity to excite me.

Anachronism that I am, I appreciated Argo’s nod to tradition. Fitted with a teak deck and trim and Sitka spruce spars, the forty-two-foot ketch looked like a true sailing vessel, a boat I could envision Jack London skippering if he were alive today. Argo did lack up-to-date electronics, a deficit that proved a plus, enhancing her authenticity.

The no-show of the fantastical barge disappointed for only a few eternal seconds, as I could surely summon it if I just put more of my mind into it. Hadn’t I already willed the plastic sloop into existence? I watched the sloop’s mast swing upright when she turned into the wind, less than a mile out. After she came about on a port tack, the breeze filled her sails and she heeled sharply.

Watching the sloop maneuver triggered an itch to hoist Argo’s sails. In a short while, I reckoned to do just that, maybe for the final time ever in the Virgin Islands. When I could no longer mark time—a mind-set in which the Marines tried and failed to indoctrinate me—I set about whipping my boat into shape: I inspected the systems and equipment, topped off the fuel and freshwater tanks, polished the brightwork, donned diving gear to clean the hull.

I stood ready to take on five of the seven seas; only a younger man with ethylene glycol in his veins could endure the challenge of the polar oceans. No matter. I couldn’t decide on a compass point much less a destination. Sure, I had friends in Puerto Rico, and I’d often thought about spending serious time on the dream isle, Dominica. Now, for the first time in my life, I feared the next port of call. The rub: some mornings around three o’clock, I feared there’d never be another port of call; I’d forever chase the horizon.

The sloop, fifty yards out, sailed on a collision course with Argo. For some crazy reason and for just an instant, the boat struck me as a big white wind-propelled torpedo. That image evaporated when a beer bottle flew over the starboard rail. Since the litterer hadn’t been tossed overboard with the bottle, it got me wondering if the sailors, to the last man, weren’t bozos.

As the sloop bore down on me, the three-man crew—doughy-skinned tourists—fired up the engine and struck the sails. Anchorages existed, but none adjacent to Argo; a fifty-one-foot Hinckley kept me company to port, and the rocky shore rose out of the sea to starboard.

Sails secured, the yacht motored by Argo, closer to the rocks than I’d have ventured. None of her crew acknowledged me. The boat was Charlotte, a charter out of Road Town. When Charlotte closed on the buoys that marked the swimming beach, her anchor splashed. The string of yachts had formed an imperfect necklace across the bay. Now Charlotte became an anomaly, a misplaced and threatening pendant.

The skipper reversed the engine to set the anchor. After the anchor line played out and the engine stopped, Charlotte’s stern was fewer than fifty feet from my bow. If her anchor broke loose from the seabed, the fresh breeze should carry her smack into Argo.

I’d never before met sailors with a pack mentality; skippers like elbow room. We don’t anchor on top of each other unless we’re forced by weather into a crowded harbor where too much neighborliness provokes the nautical equivalent of fender benders. Throw serious weather into the mix, and a safe harbor can reek of havoc in minutes: one boat’s anchor lets go, and it catches the anchor lines of its neighbors, often carrying them ashore, piling one boat atop another, constructing a postapocalyptic tenement on the beach.

I gave up my watch for the pleasure barge and headed forward. All three of Charlotte’s crew busied themselves on deck.

“Yo!” I bellowed.

I waved my arms. I whistled. I didn’t draw a glance.

“Yo!” I hollered again.

My words floated out to sea on the trade wind that tumbled down the lush mountainside.

Frustration could soon prove me a bigger fool than the fools themselves—a yo-yo. I headed aft to brood over why refusing to make eye contact gave Charlotte’s crew the go-ahead to play me; I didn’t get the logic. While just being in the world leaves everyone open to random abuse, the crew’s behavior felt deliberate.

To cool down, I needed a swim. I pulled off my T-shirt and dug into a pocket—jackknife, lighter, cigarettes. I unconsciously lit a cigarette, blaming my absentmindedness on the increased volume of the annoying hip-hop that blasted from Charlotte, I figured to express my displeasure more forcibly on this go-round.

Before I could act, the gray-haired skipper of the Hinckley—a solo act with seersucker skin, the archetype of the itinerant mariner—produced a bullhorn. At the requisite decibels to get the attention of God, he barked, “Shut the hell up!” The music died straightaway. I saluted the man. Then I considered whether a bullhorn might assist me in getting Billie’s attention.

Cigarette dangling from my lips, I dug into my other pocket and found my wallet, secured in a Ziploc sandwich bag with my house key. Through the thin poly, I ran my finger over the key’s nubs, my fingernail along its groove. As much as I admired the conceit, I understood that it wasn’t the cigarette smoke and the breeze that conspired to burn my eyes.

I longed to feel the illimitable energy of Billie’s lithe body, delight in her youthful exuberance, glimpse the trade wind ruffle her yellow hair. I longed to witness her emerald eyes grow large, astonished at her own utterances, utterances she prefaced by cupping her hand around her mouth, as if she intended to whisper a secret. Most often, however, her fingers, without moving, morphed into a megaphone, broadcasting to everyone within hailing distance a preposterous tale, a scandalous secret, or, craziest of all, a question so brazen that even pirates blushed.

Any recollection of Billie’s antics usually caused me to chuckle, but not lately. I didn’t expect to experience true mirth again until I strangled the Moocher. As my fingers reached for his throat, in a scene that played out in my head for the hundredth time, a solid clunk jolted Argo and knocked me to the deck, jarring the fillings in my teeth. Because I’d already anticipated the ramming event, I experienced more of a déjà vu than a shock, not that my prescience tempered my anger.

I jumped to my feet and rushed forward, cursing, to survey the damage, a three-foot-long shallow gouge in the white hull. As Charlotte slipped by Argo—hulls separated by four feet of water—her skipper’s cackle sent me over the edge.

Landing on Charlotte’s deck, I struck for the smart-ass’s jaw to demolish his smirk—his smirk, the Moocher’s smirk, every damn smirk in the Virgin Islands.

He ducked, and I missed his jaw. I did catch him in the left temple. He sat down hard on his wallet and refused to get up.

I considered dragging him to his feet by his ponytail and having another go at him, but I’d vanquished his smirk. I looked around for someone else to punch. A big redhead worked at raising the anchor. A little guy, with a half smile and a loping gait, hurried aft to replace his fallen comrade at the helm and fire up the engine.

“Who’s next? How about you?” I challenged the little guy at the helm.

“Do I look stupid enough to mix it up with you?” He gently revved the engine to relax the tension on the anchor line. “It was just an accident.”

“Accident, my ass.”

I headed forward to beat the snot out of someone my own size. Behind me, the man I’d punched hollered, “Hey, aren’t you Captain Brian, skipper of Fargo, terror of Flamingo Bay, cuckold extraordinaire?”

I turned to confront him, only to greet a roundhouse born around Trinidad. His fist gathered momentum as its trajectory mirrored the wide arc of the Lesser Antilles. It seemed silly to waste his energy, so after his fist sailed past my jaw, I stepped in close to pat him on the back. A jab to his shoulder with the heel of my hand and he followed his fist overboard.

“Help!” he shouted, before he even splashed. When he bobbed to the surface, he cried, “I can’t swim!”

Ignorant of the rules of water safety (Reach! Throw! Row! Go!), the redhead dove in after him.

“How do you know my name?” I made my way back to the helm with clenched fists. “Who sent you?” I straight off relished the idea of all three crew treading water while their boat left port without them. “Are you going to talk, or are you going swimming with your buddies?”

When we stood face-to-face, he said, “Swear to God, I know nothing.” He pointed to the man I’d helped overboard, his arms still flailing. “He’s the one to talk to. He released the anchor line. I have no idea why. I don’t know how Tom knows who you are. Our destination was supposed to be Norman Island. I don’t know why he insisted we anchor here.”

“So which one are you, Dick or Harry?”

“Huh? I’m Mikey. The redhead is Doug.”

“My advice. Get your buddies under control. Another thing. Anchor over on the other side of the bay or plan to stand watch tonight.”

“Man, I’m sorry about your boat. I would never intentionally damage it. Bill Luders was a brilliant yacht designer. I know he designed your Clipper. I’m restoring a Luders 33. Honest!” He pulled out his wallet, never taking his eyes off me, as if he feared a sucker punch. After a bit of fumbling, he freed a photo of his sloop. “We’re in the same club. We’re brothers, man.”

I doubted the sibling thing. Still, I appreciate anyone who commits to keeping an old high-maintenance boat afloat, so I uncurled my fingers, dropped my arms, and asked about Tom.

“That jerk! I don’t know what’s up with him. I didn’t bargain for any of this crap.”

Tom, imitating a defeated slapstick buffoon, popped his dripping head above the stern. The temptation to have another go at him was too great, so I jumped overboard just as he stepped off the ladder and onto the deck. I got in the swim to which I’d been looking forward. It lasted only until I reached Argo. I toweled off and watched Charlotte motor to the other side of the bay. I didn’t believe I’d seen the last of her crew. I felt I’d traded the houseguest from hell on St. Judas for the yacht from hell on Tortola.