Bill the Fisherman
Sun Grifters Chronicles
Outside the bar, Keith stopped for a moment. There was a time, back in the day, after a day’s or, in this case, a night’s work, that Keith would have stopped and lit up a cigarette. It would have been his reward. But he quit that habit, along with a few others, a few years ago, when he got shot.
Instead, Keith breathed in a lungful of that delicious Key West air and let it out slowly. Better than any cigarette or glass of whiskey had ever been. Then, Keith picked up the guitar case and headed down the dock toward home.
Keith’s personal list of great things about Key West could have stretched the length of the Overseas Highway all the way back to Miami. However, at the top of the list was the fact that he could walk everywhere. No car required, although he had one for the rare occasion he might want to (or need to) leave. He kept his automobile, a 1997 Ford F-150 that ran as well as it had when he drove it brand-spanking new off the lot, behind Sun Grifters. He’d offered Elie rent for the parking space. But she threw it in with his work contract. As long as he continued to sing there, he could park there.
Tonight felt especially good. He felt like he’d done a professional job tonight, a “Hard Day’s Night.” No, he wasn’t Willie Nelson, and he sure as heck wasn’t Jimmy Buffett, but he was, indeed, Keith McGuire, and he got paid sufficiently for singing songs about living in paradise. You just can’t put a price on that, especially when you actually are living in paradise.
Keith’s place was a mile or so from the bar. Most of his walk was along the harbor and the docks. Once you got away from the tourist part of town, there weren’t a lot of lights. No matter. Nighttime in Key West didn’t always need light. There was something about it. Maybe the air was so pure that even on moonless nights the star glow was enough to light your way.
But tonight, there was moonlight, and it shimmered on the harbor water.
Lights from anchored sailboats floated in long trembling ribbons across the water’s surface. Somewhere out in the marina, halyards tapped against aluminum masts. Their randomness not really random at all, but it was another type of music, wind-inspired.
The old sailors called it the marina’s wind chimes.
A warm trade wind wandered in carrying salt, diesel fuel, and somebody’s cigar.
Keith breathed it all in.
Home.
“About damn time you got here!”
Keith jumped a mile, and Bill the Fisherman emerged from the shadows of a palm tree.
“Jesus Christ, Bill! What are you trying to do, get yourself killed?”
Bill grinned. “You ain’t going to shoot me, besides, you ain’t got your piece.”
Keith wondered how Bill knew that…besides the obvious fact that Keith was never armed with much more than his two fists. But they always did in a pinch. In a pinch, he could probably even remember how to use them once more.
Bill fell in beside Keith and matched the slow pace.
“Dude, I thought maybe you got discovered,” Bill said. He laughed at his joke.
“I got discovered thirty years ago. Nobody cared.”
Bill laughed more, as if that made perfect sense.
Bill was excited about something tonight, but Keith didn’t know if it was good or bad. But he knew that Bill would tell him sooner rather than later. Between talking and not talking, Bill the Fisherman always chose the former. In a way, Bill reminded Keith of that old wino in the old movie To Have and Have Not, the one played by Walter Brennan, who kept asking everyone if they’d ever been stung by a dead bee. Bill wasn’t as irritating or endearing as Eddie, the dead bee character, but that was Hollywood, and Bill was real. Keith inwardly shrugged. Bill would have to do.
But, Keith sensed, there was something going on with Bill. He knew better than to ask Bill what it was. Best to let him warm up and tell him what was going on.
He did. “That son of a bitch!” Bill’s voice came out high and whiny, like he had stepped on a…well, a dead bee.
“There it is,” Keith said.
“What? There what is? What you trying to say, Keith McGuire?”
“The reason you waited for me,” Keith answered. He’d sensed something had been wrong with Bill for the past few days. As one of the few year-round residents of Key West who could even stand to talk to the man, Keith knew Bill better than probably anyone on the island. Bill had been looking shifty-eyed lately.
Finally, Bill opened up: “You know Jimmy over at Harbor Fish?”
“The restaurant?”
“Yeah.”
“What about him?”
“Got some yahoo trying to sell him snapper.”
Keith nodded, “And?”
“And that’s my restaurant.”
“That’s not your restaurant, Bill. You don’t even own a tricycle!”
“It is too my restaurant.”
“You know what I’m saying.”
Bill waved away this tedious legal distinction. “Well, they buy fish from me.”
“You mean, ‘they buy fish from me sometimes.’”
“Regularly.”
“You sold them fish twice, that you told me.”
“Three times.”
“Fine. Three. That’s not exactly like getting married, is it?”
Bill looked vindicated. At least he looked vindicated in the leftover glow from the last street light they’d passed a few houses back.
“Well, this guy’s hornin’ in, I tell you. And I got to do something about it! It’s not good for my rep, you know.”
Keith chuckled. The idea of Bill having a rep worth doing anything about was amusing. He thought about just letting it drop. But that’s not the way things worked with Bill. He was like a wind-up box with no off switch. “Bill, there are other fishermen in Key West besides you.”
“There shouldn’t be.”
“That’s not how capitalism works.”
“Capitalism’s overrated.”
Jeez! They walked a little farther.
Someone, a kid, rode past on a bike. Keith noted it was pretty late at night to be riding around, and he wondered if the kid was older than Keith thought or maybe up to something he wouldn’t like.
Somebody laughed from a distant porch. Then some other folks laughed. Must have been funny, Keith thought.
They were still walking along the harbor. You could hear the water slap against the pilings of a small dock that jutted out from right behind a couple of houses.
Keith thought for a second, then: “So what’d you give Eduardo?”
Of course, Bill started talking about what he’d learned about pelicans at the library on Fleming Street. “Did you know pelicans don’t really carry around fish in their beaks?”
“Deflection,” Keith said matter-of-factly.
“De-what?”
“You’re avoiding my question.”
“Look here, Mr. I’m so good at negotiating. I ain’t reflecting anything.”
“Interrogating, not negotiating, and yeah, I’m quite good at it. And it’s deflection, not reflection! So, let me ask again in case you didn’t hear it the first time. What did you give Eduardo?”
Bill sighed. “A present.”
“What kind of present?”
“A Bill present!”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“It answered my question.”
Keith stopped walking.
Bill kept going three steps before realizing he was alone. Then he turned around. “What?”
“What did you give him?”
Bill scratched his beard. “A little something. You know. A little tiny something. That’s all.”
Keith waited.
Finally, Bill sighed. “Ah, man, I ain’t sellin’ anything, if that’s what you’re getting at. Is that what you think?”
Keith said nothing.
“And I ain’t using, in case you got that stuck in your head somewhere, too!”
Bill shifted his weight.
“I mean it!”
Keith resumed walking. After a moment, he said, “Because next time I won’t call in favors.”
Bill looked down at the sidewalk. “Fair.”
They both kept walking in silence. They cut through a couple of dark residential streets. Once a working-class neighborhood, all these houses, even the ones that looked like a strong wind would blow them over, would go for at least one and a half million. A few had sold recently upwards of three.
Which is exactly why Keith didn’t live in a house. He lived on a houseboat. Well, really, it was more of a house than a boat, but it was a house that floated. And it belonged to Elie, his boss. And it came with the job. That and the parking space.
To get to the house, you climbed down a few concrete steps, then out onto a fixed dock. Keith did that and walked up to his front door. The light above the door had burned out a few days ago. Well, probably a few weeks ago. He’d been meaning to fix it. He’d been meaning to fix a lot of things. Some had gotten fixed. Most hadn’t.
Keith fished in his pocket for the key. He found a guitar pick, then another, then another. Which wasn’t as daft as you might think. No guitar pick, no musico. No musico, no floating house. And Keith would be living back in Godforsaken Atlanta, not right on the rim of paradise itself.
But not only could he not see the lock well enough to insert the key, but when he did, it stuck. As always.
Keith jiggled it. Turned it this way and that. Jiggled it again.
“Dammit.” He tried again.
Bill stood motionless in the yellow glow of a streetlamp a few houses away.
The lock finally clicked.
As Keith opened the door, Bill yelled out, “Who’s there?”
Keith turned around to see who Bill was talking to. If he had been talking to anyone, that is. It wasn’t inconceivable that Bill was just seeing things. It had happened before.
“Who’s there?” Bill asked again. He sounded spooked.
Someone walked down the concrete steps to the fixed dock. “Hi, Daddy!”
It took Keith a second, but then he said, “Hey, Baby!”
“Someone want to explain to old Bill here what’s going on?”
“Stace,” Keith said. “This is Bill. Bill, Stace.”
It took Bill a moment, but then, “So, you’re Stacy? You’re Keith’s daughter! Well, I’ll be!”
“Stace, Bill. We call her Stace.”
Bill turned to Keith. “What are you standing there for? Aren’t you going to invite your daughter inside? And me, too. I need to use the facilities. That is, if you don’t mind.”
REAM
These stories, in order, are being also published on a reading platform called REAM. If you would like to read these there, then here’s the link to that: https://reamstories.com/lcrichards/public . That’s my author page. Scroll down slightly, and you’ll see where this particular series of stories is: The Key West Crooner.
Subscribe to my Substack!
I have new articles, essays, and short stories coming out every now and then in a completely unpredictable, possibly random schedule. (Just being honest.) If you want to get notified of my new stories and other items, consider subscribing.
Would you like one of my mystery books for free? Click here!
All I need is your email, so I know where to send the book. No tricks, just a great book to read!