Chickenhawk: Back in the World

While I finished the bonding strip, John was out buying brand-new radios: a single-side-band long-distance transceiver, a short-range ship-to-ship transceiver, and a loran navigational receiver. When the bonding strip was in place, I ran wires from the aluminum mast and every major cable and metal part of the boat to the bonding strip. If lightning hit anything, the charge would be channeled into the sea.

I unpacked the radios John had stacked in boxes in the main compartment. John had experience installing marine radios, but the details on these high-tech receivers exceeded his knowledge. I knew nothing about installing this stuff, but I studied the instructions in the boxes and visited marine electronics stores and asked them what to do.

When I worked on the boat, it was just work, but interesting work. Something about boats makes mundane chores more fascinating than the same work on land. I didn’t think about what I was doing.

When I was out shopping for wire or paint or caulking or just getting advice, I was constantly aware that I was helping get a sailboat ready for a smuggling trip. I had the childish feeling that everyone I talked to could read my mind—they could see this red neon sign blinking next to me: Smuggler. Blink. Smuggler. It was an eerie feeling, but it was not just paranoia. When people at marinas in Florida see two or three men, who pay for everything in cash, working full-time getting a yacht ready for deep-water sailing, they become suspicious, and it’s usually well founded.

During the second week of preparation, we picked up the third member of the sailing team, Bob Ireland, at the Gainesville airport. Bob, who came from Indiana, was my size, with dark hair, and (I found out later) was an accomplished artist. He joked around with John and affected a Spanish accent because John could speak fluent Spanish and loved to hear Ireland massacre the language. Immediately, John decided we had to have nicknames because “two Bobs will make us crazy.”

Ireland said, “Me? I’m definitely a Ramon—” He turned to me in the backseat and said, “You? You look like an Ali to me, Bob. Okay?”

“Call me Ali,” I said.

“Ali! Ali!” Ireland chanted. Muhammad Ali the huge prizefighter; Bob Mason the 135-pound pencil-neck. We all laughed.

We drove to our woods near High Springs.

John got out a rolled-up nautical chart that night while we sat around his dining-room table.

“The plan, man?” Ireland asked. John moved some plates aside and unrolled the chart.

John smiled, swigged some beer. He spread out the chart and put glasses and ashtrays on the corners because it wanted to roll up. “Wanting; having, Ramon.” This was John’s favorite expression: the smuggler’s slogan. “Wanting lots of money; having plan.” John picked up a pencil and tapped on the map at Jacksonville. “The plan. We leave Jacksonville when we get the word,” John said as he began tracing a route with the pencil. “We sail due east for a while, due east, till we get to deep water, here. Deep water, out past the Bahamas. Then we head southeast to the Virgins. All told, the first leg is about thirteen hundred miles. Thirteen hundred miles. Take maybe ten days, two weeks. About ten days, if we get good winds. Then we’ll lay over in Saint Thomas for a few days before we head south. A few days there, then we head south.” I stared at John. Why was he repeating himself so much?

“What’s going on in Saint Thomas?” asked Ireland.

“Take on final supplies. Stock up. Top off the fuel tanks, the water tanks, and stock the food lockers—”

“And la cerveza locker, si, Juan?” Ireland laughed.

“Is a bear Catholic, Ramon? The cerveza locker? The cerveza locker? This ain’t gonna be an easy trip, not easy, no, but we’re going to be living good.” John raised a beer and we touched cans. “Living good! Wanting; having! Okay. We re-provision here; we also install the transducer for the depth finder. Have to have a depth finder. I know a beach we can use to keel-haul the boat. We’ll keel-haul the thing—”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Basically. Well. It’s simple. We get the boat in shallow water at high tide. Then we haul it over on its side; pull it over on its side when the tide goes down so we can get to the bottom of the hull and drill a hole for the transducer—the thing the depth finder uses to send and receive sonar signals.”

“Why not do it in Jacksonville?” I asked.

“We’re running out of time, Ali. No time. Plus we’d have to haul the boat and I think the people at the marina are getting suspicious. They act suspicious. Besides we have to wait in Saint Thomas for the scam master to bring us some money anyway. We’ll have time to kill there.”

I nodded, distracted. John was nervous. And seeing the plan on the table suddenly made what had been just talk reality. Before, I’d been a sweaty laborer working on a boat, forgetting, or denying, why I was.