a lot.”
“You’re welcome a lot.”
A few minutes of silence, then “Have you thought much about how we’ll deal with the folks behind the Tree Man job?”
Sal rocked his head. “Quite a bit.”
It wasn’t a subject we openly discussed because of the sensitivity both from a political as well as government-agencies standpoint. Someone had put the word out to silence everyone who had knowledge of the Tree Man investigation. It ended badly with the death of a couple of innocents. Sal promised revenge and I concurred.
But we had refrained from a solid plan until Sal put his vast contact list inside the government to work and found where to start and, more importantly, where to end.
He continued, “We’ll have to solve some of the murders in Colorado, Illinois and here. But we’ll have to do that quietly and carefully. We do not want to show our hand too soon.”
I nodded agreement. “Just let me know when and we’ll take the tank anywhere you want to go.”
Sal smiled. Well, I think it was a smile because his beard moved.
The cool air, a thermos of hot coffee and a good friend makes for a slower heart rate which means a doze. Sal’s eyes closed, his breathing coming in slow strokes.
The sound of churning water interrupted my own thoughts. Not loud, just barely audible over the night hum of flying critters, frogs and a hushed breeze. Opening my eyes, there was nothing up or down river. Just the flat brown calm of the Coquille reflecting a star-studded sky.
With no warning, a flicker and the image of a sternwheeler. Gauzy, at least 80 feet long, rear paddle slowly turning, driving the low-slung hull quietly down river.
That’s when I asked Sal to pinch me.
We both stood and watched the paddle wheeler pass. Aside from the vagueness of its outline, it was clearly three dimensional. On the lower deck, just barely above water level, perched a cabin running from 10 feet behind the bow to the furthest most part of the stern. The paddle extended beyond the stern, large timbers gripping the wheel in place.
A straight-edged pilot house stood watch on the forward top-deck with a cabin running halfway along the hull length. Both levels were punctuated with square windows. Amidships on the lower level a pair of sliding cargo doors. A single stack belched black smoke as the ship made way toward Bandon.
“Damn,” Sal muttered under his breath.
“Can you read the name?”
Sal peered long and hard at the bow and shook his head.
“I don’t see any crew or passengers,” I said.
The decks were loaded with barrels, lumber and crates. No people.
Just as Sal reached in the pocket of his jacket for his cell phone, aimed the camera at the paddle wheeler, the ship blipped and disappeared. The paddle’s churning wake subsided. The river as barren as if the boat had never been there.
We both fell into our chairs.
“Cool.”
________________________________________________
“You saw a ghost paddle wheeler,” Chief Forte laughed. “Look, guys, I can’t help you on this one.”
Sal and I were sitting in the Bandon Police chief’s office, a couple of mugs of cop-shop coffee on our thighs. Forte had just walked in the door. We had been waiting for him after making a quick stop at the Human Bean for some early brew then raiding the Bandon Police Department’s coffee cooker for refills.
“This was not an illusion,” I told him, knowing he’d never buy the story. “Well, maybe. It was gauzy, like a mist with form. Clearly a paddle wheeler, though.”
Sal added, “You’re gonna say it was a projection or a hologram or some other stunt, but the legend of a ghost paddle wheeler has been around for decades and decades. Long before there was holographic technology.”
I added, “As high school kids, we’d go down the river with a keg, sit on the banks and wait to see the ghost ship.”
“And did you?”
“Well, no.”
Forte shook his head. “My suggestion? Stay away from the Dos Equis for a couple of days and don’t go near the river when you’ve had a couple too many and are sleep deprived. Now get the heck out of here. I’ve got rabid field mice to contend with.”
Sal and I glanced at each other, rose from our chairs and left the still half-full coffee mugs on the counter on the way out.
“And by the way,” Forte said, “if you run across the ghost of Hiram Walker, let him know I’d like a case of Black Label.”
Sal made a rude gesture over his shoulder.
________________________________________________
Sal and I spent the next three nights sitting in the same lawn chairs on the same dock. I wasn’t sure we were doing it because we wanted to see the paddle wheeler again or just because it was something different. Both of us had been bored to tears since our respective female counterparts had fled the scene.
“Don’t think we’re going to see the boat tonight,” Sal said.
“Maybe. Maybe not.” I took a long swallow of still-hot coffee from my travel mug.
“Ever miss living aboard your trawler?”
I had to think about that because it was potentially a loaded question. “Let me answer this way. If Cookie weren’t in my life, I’d still be living aboard. I don’t miss Dragonfly when she’s here. I would miss it if she wasn’t.”
“Very diplomatic. Now the truth.”
I gave my head a Bandon scratch – three fingernails at the front of my hairline, face scrunched like I just smelled a dirty diaper. “Yes. But if you tell Cookie I said that, I’ll deny it, then fire bomb your house.”
The trawler was a 36-footer, built in 1932 and powered by a one-cylinder Buddha diesel. On its best day it would hit a staggering eight knots. It had spent most of its life in Monterey, California and later San Pedro.
The first year was devoured as I turned the utilitarian cabin space into the equivalent of a studio apartment. First rate galley; mahogany counters, table and cabinets; teak floors, walls, ceiling and trim; upgraded electronics; leather lounge and a whopping good entertainment center. The forward bunk area, cuddy style, was fitted with custom mattress and the appropriate single-guy mood lighting.
The rear deck was stripped of all its fishing-related tanks, machinery and paraphernalia, replaced with cushioned lounge couches, storage locker, moveable tables and a Tiki-style bar. Hey, it was the ‘80s. The hull and top side were painted white with crimson trim and the name Dragonfly scripted in gold leaf on the stern.
The boat was the love of my life. And the perfect bachelor
