Deadman's Cay Read online

  Deadman’s Cay

  Dangerous Gulf Sea Adventures

  Boyd Craven III

  Copyright © 2020 Boyd Craven III

  Deadman’s Cay, Dangerous Gulf Sea Adventures

  By Boyd Craven

  Many thanks to friends and family for keeping me writing!

  All rights reserved.

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  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  My belongings were dumped out of a bag onto the counter. I signed the form and put the Bic lighter and the folding knife in my front pocket, my wallet in my back pocket.

  “I had a belt and a multi-tool,” I told the corrections officer.

  “That’s all I got,” he told me.

  I wanted to give him grief, but I didn’t have it in me. It had been a long five months.

  “Can you double check? My pants don’t fit me anymore, and I don’t want to be mooning everyone.”

  “I told you,” he said in a snide voice. “That’s all I got.”

  “Whatever. You know it’s on that inventory list you just had me sign, right?”

  The turnkey spun the clipboard back around and held it up to his face, then held it away, squinting his eyes. “You know what, you’re right. My bad, hold on,” he said and walked back behind the glass partition.

  I waited, I was good at that. Waiting.

  “Sorry. Here you go,” he said, walking out with a clear bag.

  “I appreciate it,” I told him, tearing the bag open. I threaded my belt through the loops on my jeans, then when I was to my right hip, I put the sheath for the Leatherman on the belt and cinched it tight.

  “No problem. Sorry about the mix up and the wait,” he told me.

  “I’m good at waiting,” I told him and gave him a rare smile.

  An old girlfriend told me once that when I smiled, birds fell dead out of the sky and little children ran screaming. Cat ladies had conniptions, and I soured milk. This guy just gulped and nodded at the door. I tipped an imaginary hat and walked out, free at last.

  “You need me to call you a cab? Somebody to pick you up?” The words came out the door before it had swung closed, separating the jail from the oppressive humid Florida air.

  “No thanks,” I said, sticking my head back in. “I appreciate it, though.”

  With that, I started walking. I had nobody down here. Nobody to call, nobody to pick me up, no family anywhere. I’d started this journey almost half a year ago, drifting south after my father’s death. I’d had a good job with the railroad, but when my dad had got sick, I’d moved back to Chicago to take care of him and gone on FMLA leave. When he’d died, I’d buried him as he wanted, only to find out that he was underwater with his house payments and taxes and had little money in the bank. I’d done odd jobs in Illinois to square people off as much as I could allow in my conscience, right up until I’d got a termination notice from the railroad. With that, I’d begun drifting south, feeling alone in the world.

  I wasn’t broke at the time, but within my first month of moving to Florida I’d hooked up with this girl. She’d let me stay with her while I was looking for work, and I’d thought we had a fairly good thing going on. I was rewriting my resume and trying to get work as a heavy diesel mechanic when an acquaintance of my girlfriend’s and mine asked me to grab a drink. I did, knowing Mina had to work for another hour. We sat there and talked about baseball, and I was thinking for the first time in a while that it was great to finally make friends again. That was when Mina and another man had walked into the bar. I was about to get up and say ‘Hey’ to her when she kissed the other guy.

  “Don’t do it, bro,” was what my new friend Brian had said to me, but I was already moving.

  Things went south fast, and in the space of two minutes I lost my girlfriend and my place to live, and when the weasel dick pulled a knife on me, I broke a stool over his arm and shattered his jaw with my fist when he’d tried to get up.

  Fast forward five months with a felony on my record, and practically broke from a cheap shyster lawyer; I was free. Free to do what, though?

  “Hey, need a lift?” a man in his mid-sixties, with gray and white hair, his skin tanned from constant sunlight, called out the window of his truck. I had been walking down the road for an hour, heading in the direction of the coast. He’d pulled up next to me, and I looked back, seeing the road blessedly empty for a long stretch.

  “I’d appreciate it,” I told him.

  “Headed anywhere in particular?”

  “West, toward the water.”

  “Hop in. It’s hot out, and I got a couple cold beers in the cooler on the floor.”

  I smiled for the second time in months. “Thank you, friend. I don’t have much cash—”

  “Eh, I don’t need cash. Hop in and keep me awake. I’ve been driving since yesterday.”

  “I can do that,” I told him. “Name’s Anthony, but people call me Tony.”

  “Well, Big Tony, get your bad self in here and let’s head to Crystal River.”

  I opened the door and got in, putting a foot on either side of a small beverage cooler on the floorboard.

  “Crystal River? Sounds good to me.”

  “Grab us each a beer. I’m Joseph. My friends call me Joe.”

  “Much obliged, Joe.”

  We drove for most of an hour, taking it slow. He had one beer and pushed a second one on me. I didn’t object too much. He talked about his kids, his grandkids, told lots of fishing stories and told me how a smart man could just about live off the ocean out there. That appealed to me, especially since I had $247 in my wallet, the rest of my worldly possessions already gone, or repossessed, or given away by the ex-girlfriend.

  “You know, a fishing license out here is cheap, just have to show them proof of residence and your license.”

  “I used to live out of state, I guess I need to fix that and get a Florida license sometime,” I told him.

  “It’s easy. No problem,” he told me more than once.

  With no place in mind, he finally got around to asking me where I wanted to be dropped off.

  “You homeless?” he asked me.

  “For now,” I told him. “Just got out of a bad situation. Thought I’d find a store, pick up a tent, and then start looking for work.”

  “I can drop you off at the Walmart, but it’s a little way outside of what people call town,” he said.

  “That sounds good,” I told him, truthfully.

  He must have had his exit plan for me, because we pulled into the parking lot not thirty seconds later. I thanked him again for the ride and the beers. He tipped an imaginary hat and left, his old truck easing back onto the road with a small cloud of blue smoke coming out of his tailpipe. Knowing I didn’t have a lot of money to spend, I headed inside.

  I
’d already made up my mind what to buy. There wasn’t a lot else to do in lockup. I wasn’t in a big mean supermax prison, and being close to six-foot-three had helped ease tensions that other people might have otherwise had around me. They’d left me alone on the inside. That suited me fine. I was still grieving over my father’s death and Mina’s betrayal. Depending on how the prices were on things, I might have enough for a couple changes of clothes, a tent, some basic camping supplies, a tarp, and some food.

  My stomach rumbled, and more than once I had to keep moving as the ladies walked by. My dating opportunities in lockup were a guy named Bubba… and Bubba, and neither of them rang my bell, so I tried not to be a creep as I picked out some cheap basketball shorts, jean shorts, a pair of flip flops, and a couple bags of 3XL plain white t-shirts before heading back toward the camping section. I found a large tarp easily, picked out a belt knife that cost more than anything else so far, and a tent. I was heading to checkout when an idea hit me, and I went back to look at backpacks.

  This I knew as a kid: you don’t buy cheap plastic backpacks to tote your stuff around if you have any sort of weight in it. I was going to I found a stiff black canvas one marked with a clearance tag. Into the cart it went, and that was when I decided, ‘what the hell’, and approached the sporting goods counter.

  “Can I help you?” Stan the clerk asked when it was my turn.

  “What’s it take to get a fishing license in Florida?”

  “Proof of residence, and pay the crown,” he said with a grin. “Unless you want to pay the inflated rate for non-residents.”

  I liked this guy. “I’ve been here a few months, but I don’t have a permanent place to stay.”

  “Well, you could always go to the county clerk’s office and fill out a form. Declare your residence and bring the form back here. That way if the Florida Wildlife Conservation officers stop you, they don’t throw you under the jail for fishing without a license.”

  “Yeah, I want to avoid that,” I told him with a grin. “Any chance you know where that is?”

  He smiled and pulled his phone out. After tapping a couple times, he showed me a map and how to get there. I thanked him and decided to head through the fishing aisle anyway. I grabbed a small spool of twenty-pound test, spent some time trying to find hooks with barbs, then decided it was probably illegal down here and instead grabbed a variety pack of hooks and looked at the rest of the stuff. I wanted more, it might take that in order for me to eat regularly, but I had to find a job, and there was no way I was going to panhandle. I had fallen far, but that was one avenue I wasn’t ready for. Yet.

  Lastly, I headed into the grocery aisle and looked longingly at all the food there. I mentally calculated what I had space wise in my backpack if I tied the tent on the outside, and I didn’t like what I came up with. Like every healthy college-aged kid would do, I bought myself a twelve pack of ramen and two bags of rice and mixed beans each. When I got through the checkout, I almost cringed at the total, but I paid out a good chunk of what money I had left.

  One thing I noticed right off as I got outside, something I had taken for granted, was how much waste we as humans made. For instance, everything I bought went into a plastic bag. I hadn’t told her not to do it, but I was going to sit on a bench outside and unpack everything so I could start carrying it. The packaging and extra cardboard sleeve that came around the tent… That was when I started thinking maybe I should keep some of this stuff, for fire-starting if nothing else.

  “You need a hand?” A voice startled me, and I looked up to see a uniform, a shiny badge of the Crystal River PD and a smiling man with mirrored sunglasses.

  “Just putting my stuff together before I get on the road,” I told him.

  “New to town?” he asked, taking a seat on the bench next to me.

  “Yes,” I told him. “Just got dropped off.”

  He looked at my open backpack, tent, and the clothing I had already stuffed in the bottom with my meager amount of food.

  “You have any place to stay?” he asked me.

  I hesitated, and he put his hand on my arm, making me flinch.

  “Easy, big guy, just trying to be friendly. You look a little lost, that’s all.”

  “I’ll level with you,” I told him, suddenly trusting him. “I just got out of the prison upstate a little bit ago. Bar fight and everyone was stupid, especially me. I did five and a half months. I don’t have anybody any more, and no place to go.”

  “You got a plan?” he asked, a concerned look in his eyes.

  That was when I realized what put me at ease around him: he reminded me of my father in a way. They didn’t look anything alike. My dad was born in Puerto Rico and had been even more tanned than I was, with my mother being Irish. But the soft way the cop talked and the concern he showed… Maybe I was just an emotional wreck. Who the hell knew?

  “Declare residence, get a fishing license, find someplace to camp out and then start looking for work.”

  He nodded, looking off into the distance for a moment. “You planning on sticking around Crystal River?”

  “I don’t know,” I told him honestly. “Working on engines is all I know how to do, and with a felony on my record now…”

  “That’s rough. Still, down by the marina in town, I suspect they might need a hand now and then. You know where that is?”

  “I don’t, but I can find it,” I told him.

  “You want a lift to the clerk’s office? I have to be there for court in an hour. I just stopped in here to grab a soda and sandwich from the deli for lunch.”

  “I … thank you,” I told him and put my hand out. “Anthony Delgado.”

  “I’m Luis Warner,” he said, shaking my hand. “If you’re still here and ready when I come out, I’ll give you a lift.”

  “Thank you,” I told him gratefully, then sat back down to wait.

  Chapter Two

  It took me an hour to get my declaration, and I used an address that Luis gave me. That might have tripped me up, but he seemed to have decided to help me out more than I realized. It could have been his home address for all I knew. He also gave me a card to his church and told me they had good people there, and they would welcome a new guy into the church family. I wasn’t an overly religious sort, but I put the card in my wallet, along with his.

  I would have loved to have snagged a ride back to the Walmart, but I walked, and I realized a big flaw in my plan. I was thirsty and I had no water handy; plus, I was going to have to go back into the store with my backpack and stuff that hadn’t been used or worn yet, so I couldn’t stash it. I was risking losing it by doing that, but then I got an idea. The tire center was right near sporting goods.

  “Hey, guys,” I said, sweating, walking in the separate entrance for the auto tire center.

  “Hi, can I help you?” a woman behind the counter asked.

  “I have to do a little shopping. Can I leave my backpack and stuff back here for say, five or ten minutes, so I can use the bathroom and get a drink?”

  “No problem, hun. You don’t have nothing crazy in there, do you?” she asked me.

  I knew she was kidding, but I pulled the hot black backpack off, now understanding why it was on clearance. I unzipped it and showed her the folded clothing and food on top. She grinned and pointed to a spot next to her, and I thanked her profusely and headed back to sporting goods. I was able to get in and out with my license as soon as Stan saw me, and I took a brochure on the fishing laws. The last thing I wanted to do was get into any sort of trouble. None at all. Then I used the restroom, drank the water fountain near dry, got my backpack and tent and then left.

  One thing I’d noticed during my earlier walk was that there were pop bottles and liquor bottles along the edges of the road. I didn’t have much money left, and I didn’t want to start blowing it all on plastic containers when they were free for the taking everywhere. Likewise, that was what I was planning on for my cooking and dining ware. I would source local or eat with m
y hands rather than carry around pots, pans, plates, forks and so on. Besides, I had my pocket knife, a belt knife, and my multi-tool. I wasn’t a proficient carver, but if I found a job right away, I didn’t have to worry too much.

  It was getting late in the day when I smelled the ocean. I didn’t see any signs, but I knew if I kept following my nose, I would come to it. I wasn’t wrong. I found it and came across one of many of the marinas that Luis had told me about almost immediately. I went to open the door, but it was locked. I didn’t have a phone or a watch, so I could only guess it was after closing time. The gate to the ramp wasn’t locked, and I saw that there were more than a few boats floating along the docks that lined the edges of it. My stomach was rumbling, so I decided maybe I would try some sushi.

  Not really, but I wouldn’t mind getting the lay of the land, and walking out on one of the docks would give me an opportunity to look for the fish and see what, if anything, was biting. I had grabbed an old two-liter bottle and a large one-liter Coke bottle, and decided to see if there was anywhere to fill the jugs. If a marina had boats moored to it, and they were anything like campgrounds, there would be a public use hose. I walked around to the side and found a fueling station, a pumping station, and what looked to be fresh water. I grinned and rinsed out my bottles and refilled them.

  “Where you going, you big dumb asshole?” came out of nowhere, in a slight Jamaican accent.