BARRACUDA

Twenty-seven Key West sunsets had come and gone since the body of Dr. Gerald Porterfield drifted into South Marina. Although his death was eventually rubber-stamped as an accident, the investigation itself had been a certifiable crime. Long-standing relationships were needlessly destroyed. Reputations suffered wounds that may never heal. Much of the town remained blistered from the blast of revelations.

Some local residents, like seventeen-year-old Mullet Lawson, never gave a shit one way or the other. He hadn’t known Porterfield personally and the guy was pretty old anyway. All old people died eventually. He did know Slacker Mills, of course, the famous fisherman convicted of murder in the court of public opinion. That was no big deal either. Like so many other fishermen pointed out: nobody stayed lucky forever. Slacker had always been too damn lucky.

In the pre-dawn of a fresh fishing day, Mullet was first to arrive at South Marina. Although he worked on his dad’s charter boat, his nickname was a consequence of his hairstyle, not a reflection of his vocation. With a large cast net slung across his right shoulder and a pair of empty five-gallon buckets hanging from his left hand, he walked between lines of sleeping boats. Only the squeak of rubber soles on the boardwalk broke the silence.

A recent high school dropout, Mullet had proven to be a reliable deckhand on the Kingfisher. His first chore each morning was to capture enough live bait to fill the boat’s holding tank. Normally that was no problem. Prior to sunrise, the marina was thick with schools of blue runners, mullet and ballyhoo. He often caught a few dozen extra, a ready source of beer and cigarette money from other captains. While getting to school on time had always been a problem, he never failed to make it to the harbor well before his father. Rolling out of bed was easy when he had somewhere interesting to go. His dad didn’t pay him much, but on the ocean he was allowed to smoke and swear like a real adult.

At the end of the walkway, Mullet checked for splashing on the surface or diving gulls, any indication that fish were near. About thirty feet out, a strange object caught his eye. Dark tentacles dangled at the surface, slowly waving, noticeable only because they were dotted with white. Was it some kind of octopus or squid? An unusual kind of jellyfish? He continued to squint at the oddity, searching for clarity in the dimness. Maybe it was only debris. All kinds of shit washed in with the tide.

The thing was drifting further away, or maybe moving on its own. Because it was out of range for his net, he hurried back to the Kingfisher, where a variety of fishing poles stood in holders on the bulkhead. After snapping a treble-hooked plug onto a stout spinning outfit, he rushed back to the end of the finger.

His first cast was true. He snagged the mysterious object, which surprised him with its weight. He lifted the tip of the rod and a shockwave passed through him. He was looking at a woman’s face! The tentacles were braided locks of hair. The white dots were decorative beads.

The fishing pole fell from his hands and dropped into the dark water. Mullet spun around and sprinted like hell, looking for someone, anyone, to tell.

Unfortunately, that someone, that anyone, turned out to be me.

My father used to recite a quote about the best laid plans of mice and men. I don’t know exactly how it went, or even whether I’m more a mouse or a man. I only know that my plans for a quick escape from Key West after Gerald Porterfield’s death went south in a hurry.

I’m Slacker Mills. You may have heard of me. Someone said my name reached as high as second on Google Search several weeks ago, behind only a woman who had a third breast implanted between the two originals. That was shortly after the last Free Fish Friday at Key West’s Rusty Hook tavern, immediately after the passing of the man I knew as Jerry Porter.

Up until then, I rated my life as perfect, an A+. Maybe only an easy grader would assign himself such a mark, but as I recall, the easy graders were also the perfect teachers.

While some spend a lifetime trying to figure out what to do with it, that was never a problem for me. I knew my calling since the age of eight. That’s when I first dropped a hook into a Minnesota lake and felt the tug of a smallmouth bass on my heartstring. I’ve done nothing but fish ever since, exclusively off Florida’s east coast for the last twenty years. My message to kids would be this: You’ll never earn an A+ by being well-rounded, no matter what parents say. Do only what you enjoy most, and do it all the time. That’s the only way to become the best.

My father’s favorite expression was: When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Like most things he said, I probably interpreted it differently than intended. At the slightest whiff of trouble, of any adversity, I’ve always gotten the hell out of Dodge in a hurry. That’s the reason I never spent more than six months in one place until landing in Key West five years ago. I had always listened to my nose. When the investigation of Jerry’s death concluded, my nose had been screaming: “Get your ass out of town!”

In bequeathing me the Ayudame, his forty-foot sport fishing yacht, Jerry hoped I’d begin a responsible life as a Key West charter operator. I saw the boat only as a getaway vehicle, a golden ticket to wherever the fish were biting best. After spending years on the pilot seat and fighting chairs of Ayudame, she was a part of me - the part I still liked.

I was good as gone three weeks ago, two days after the investigation ended. A minor roadblock popped up at the last second. I should have ignored it, crashed right through it, because it only led to more. And led me to linger in Key West, the last place on Earth I should have been.