Wind whipped skull and cross bones across the flag. Blue-green water slapped the bank. Oaks blocked August moonlight. 

Denny gritted teeth. Squinted with his good eye, the other covered by a patch.

Foam spattered his face, flying that Jolly Roger high.

“Prepare to be boarded!”

The Jet Ski slammed into old lady Simond’s pontoon boat.

********

It’d been a good summer already by mid-July, picking up jobs and bets. Small timer stuff. Kept Denny and Gus in beer money their last summer vacation.  They’d just spent some sucker’s over/under cash on a sixer of Old Style when Denny shoved a finger in the air, “I got it!”

Denny’s old man’d cut him off for skimming bets at the end of their junior year, so the boy’d do just about anything for money. Except work. Which was why Gus was shocked when a plan with legs fell out of Denny’s lips.

********

Plastic sheared metal, tattooing a Kawasaki logo down the side of one pontoon. Denny bulleted off his seat. Hit his creeping hairline square on the boat’s canopy.  Tailbone cracked on the beer cooler.  Old lady Simonds stood over him, a fat thigh aside each shoulder.

Gus killed the throttle on his own Jap job, leaped onto the boat, dragging that despicable English teacher to the ground by her neck.

********

Denny beamed. “Half dozen lakes in driving distance on the Missouri/Arkansas lines. Put the camper on the truck, drag the Jet Skis behind it. Put in at a dock in the morning. Slide up next to a boat or two, separate a rich fool from his vacation money. Pull into the next campground by evening.  Live like kings all summer, have a few bucks leftover when George Jones comes to Kansas City in August.”

Gus heard Old Lady Simond’s labored breathing before the click-clack of her heels. Like that bastard in Star Wars they saw at the drive-in, and just as barrel-chested, too.  She slammed a ruler between them.  “Summer school reading done? Or you planning on falling in your daddies’ derelict footsteps?”

Gus wasn’t sure what kind of English teacher didn’t know the difference between, “falling,” and, “following,” but his brain was too busy churning Denny’s idea to question her credentials. He’d never run across a teacher that’d fail him if he at least tried handling the work. He barely processed her words, as chubby fingers snatched papers that’d keep him off the baseball team and leave him an extra year off from a diploma.

********

Gus was a big man, if you called him a man yet. Six foot one and two-fifteen could be called a man at any age. As a varsity catcher, he’d seen his share of man-children put a shoulder down to cross a plate.

Old Lady Simonds was twenty-three years deep in public school educating, and had seen her own share of kids big and small bouncing off knees and hips. From the size of those hips, this wasn’t her first barbecue.

She felt Gus’s biceps on her neck, turned her feet and bounced him off a live well onto her husband’s newly urine-stained lap.

She snatched a fishing rod beneath the Zebco reel, swung a fiberglass whip of a homer underneath Denny’s budding mustache.

********

They’d sweated July out in the old Ford from water to water, tanned on lake sun. Wallets fattened by tourist cash.  Wearing out the AM to Willie, Waylon and George Jones. One step ahead of park rangers.

Then they’d sidled up to a KOA off Fout’s Boat Dock and saw her.  Lightning Lauren. Five foot two, one hundred four pounds of red-headed spitfire, fighting all comers bare-knuckled.

Two friends. One girl.  Denny’d won their coin flip.  Lauren’d be his for the flirting.

Until Gus fell into the ring. He’d never hit a woman, and wasn’t planning on starting. He smiled big, stared deep into blue eyes and stuck out a smiling chin.  Damned if Lightning Lauren’s left didn’t knock his grin into Denny’s right eye.

********

Gus got a rib shot of fishing rod. The old lady was having flashbacks to her third period special needs shitheads.

Mister Simonds, having been on the receiving end of a few such smackings, had his own flashback.  Planted size seven and a half Weejun loafers on the Astroturf deck, swung a stringer chain.

Across the bitch’s throat.

She choked. Coughed. Fell. Corpulent neck snapping against a depth finder reading eighty feet.

********

Denny looked at Lauren with his one good peeper. “Hold still!” She adjusted his new eye patch. He grabbed at her hand. She cackled.  “One eye, little buddy. No depth perception.”

She focused eyes on Gus.  “In your neck of the woods next week. Rematch?”

Gus smiled. “No fists. Just wrasslin’?”

She smiled goodbye with big white teeth. Except the hole where one used to sit right of the front buck ones.  A little imperfection making perfection.

Two hours later they’d seen Old Lady Simond’s boat night trolling.  Denny wanted to buzz past, leave a load in her pants. It was dark enough she’d never recognize shit.  Dark enough that a man with one eye and no depth perception, carrying a Jolly Roger’d misjudge the distance from a Jet Ski to a pontoon boat.

********

Old man Simonds wore glasses for astigmatism. One muscle shorter in one eye than another. Surgeons cut the muscle when he was two.  Eyes didn’t work together enough for him to judge distances, like swinging a stringer at a woman that beat him like he was a dog stealing chicken off the good china.

They watched her float face down ten minutes before a word was spoke.

Anybody backing up a man with a story about a drunk wife falling off a boat gets ten grand insurance cash.”  The old man’s size seven and a half loafers swelled with promise.

********

Denny went alone to George Jones.

While Gus wrassled.  Underneath a camper shell, bare backs and thighs covered by a Jolly Roger.

—-

Erik Lundy’s stories have been published in Plots with Guns (where he’s also an associate editor), and will be published in the upcoming Crime Factory Magazine,

and the novella The Big Page in the iBook store.  His comics My World, the Knuckle Sammich, and Small Timers are all available for free online.

Visit http://workplaceofthedamned.com

I had a good enough set-up to just tow the fucker right off if I wanted to, but that ain’t what I was set for. I went and knocked on the screen door in back. Shaky cinderblock steps next to a half-finished deck. Budweiser cans, stomped and squashed, spread around the yard like some drunk midgets had been playing a hopscotch game last night before the storm.

Hurley’s girlfriend answered. Agreeable gal. V-neck tshirt. Can of Bud. Nice, smooth tan. Not much else. She made a point of showing me she was cold. Coupla points, I figure.

“You here for the boat?”

I explained as how I was.

She wanted me to come in and she’d get the keys to the trailer lock. No sense making a big mess of shit, she said.

I came in and sat down at their kitchen table. A card table. Duct tape not quite covering up a cut at the edge. Three chairs. Unmatched.

She hollered from across the hall. “Can I talk you out of taking the boat just yet?”

I said Bill had been pretty clear about how I was supposed to conduct things with her no-count boyfriend. He’d suggested that I bring back the fucking boat and stop fucking around or he’d fucking shove a fucking ramrod up my fucking ass. I kinda gave her the short version.

After we finished, she brought me a can of beer and laid back down on the bed, resting on her elbows.

“So maybe you come back for the boat next week?”

I said I wasn’t so sure about that.

She rolled over on her back and looked up at me. “See, Hurley’s got this job and he’s good for it. I mean, I’m kinda looking out for him, you know? Making sure shit gets took care of. That’s how come I’m offering this little payment to you, you know. Kinda on account.”

I didn’t say anything. I thought about her asshole boyfriend. His worthless self.

“You know, on account of Hurley not being good for much. I gotta take care of things.”

When we were done that time, I got up and said I’d see about giving them a little more time. I said “an extension” and she giggled.

I drove back up the hill and stopped at the church parking lot. Pulled up next to Hurley’s truck.

“Took you long enough,” he said.

I said it sure did and that he had another few days to get the money to Bill. If not, I’d have to come back.

“I can’t lose that boat,” he said. “She’s the love of my life.”

I drove off. On account of not wanting to have to shoot him before I saw his girlfriend again.

Gearing up the big launch. Stay tuned.