Fish Story
Sun Grifters Chronicles
Keith unlocked the door and stepped aside to let Stace walk in first.
“Come on in, sweetie!” Then Keith looked back at Bill. “You, too!…sweetie!” He said that last part with just enough sarcasm to be funny.
Stace stepped inside, then she stopped dead in her tracks.
Keith knew what was going on. He was smiling and hopefully hiding it from her.
He’d gotten the same reaction from every single person who’d ever set foot in his house, Bill included, the first time, that is.
Most people told him they expected some beach bum, trop rock musician’s house to look like a shack that had somehow escaped from a trailer park and drifted into a marina. What they saw inside Keith’s house, though, was polished wood floors, high-end, leather upholstered furniture, beautiful artwork on the walls, which was both Keith’s and other artists he’d met along the way, all lit by track lighting, which Keith himself had installed, and enough guitars to stock a guitar museum in Nashville.
Keith stood there, looking at his daughter as she took it all in. Her eyes, so much like her mother’s, moved logically from one thing to the next. She had Carole’s beauty, and thank God, she’d inherited Keith’s brain.
“Wow!” Stace said slowly.
“It’s just a house, honey,” Keith said. Then he wished he hadn’t said that. He didn’t want Stace to think he was correcting her. She wasn’t a little girl anymore, and he knew this, but in his heart and deep in his soul, she’d always be his little girl. Like that old country-western song, “I danced with her first.”
Stace turned and gave Keith a look. “Dad?”
Keith shrugged and carried Stace’s bag inside.
His place wasn’t fancy. Not by Key West standards. Half the island was owned by people who thought a million dollars was a reasonable starting point for a renovation budget. Still, he’d always liked good things, well-made things. Things that lasted—real wood, leather and not a cheap made-in-China imitation, real art, a guitar that wasn’t for a hobbyist, but one that was a tool, like a hammer is a tool.
Bill the Fisherman followed Stace and Keith inside. He wandered through the doorway not like he was a frequent visitor, which he was, but more like he was a co-owner, or more like he was allowing Keith to be the one staying there.
A large, long, leather sofa that looked old enough to have graced Teddy Roosevelt’s Elkhorn Ranch in the North Dakota Badlands sat in the middle of the room, oriented so that it looked through a wall of windows and sliding glass doors outside to the water.
“There it is,” Bill said as he walked into the large living room.
Keith sighed.
“What?”
“My chair!” Bill said proudly.
“You don’t have a chair.”
Bill pointed at one of the recliners.
“That one’s mine as much as the next person’s, except for Stace here. She can sit anywhere she wants, but not nobody else, not on my chair.”
“That’s not your chair. You don’t even own a chair.”
“Possession is nine-tenths of the law.”
“You’ve never read a law book in your life.”
Bill settled into “his” recliner. “Exactly. Keeps my mind open. Unlike all them useless lawyers they got over in Lauderdale working for them big companies. I got options. They ain’t got no options.”
Stace laughed.
Keith thought it was funny, too, but he was trying not to encourage Bill. Heck, he wasn’t even sure how Bill had slipped into the house. But no use fighting it. He picked up Stace’s bag and took it down the short hallway to the guest room. That would be her room…for however long she wanted to (or needed to) stay. A long time, Keith hoped, but he wasn’t going to let her know that, at least not yet.
When Keith returned to the living room, Bill was still in his chair, and Stace was studying the photographs on the wall, one by one.
Most of the pictures were just that. Memories frozen. But a few were interesting, like the one of Keith standing beside Jimmy Buffett many years earlier. He’d met the man for all of thirty seconds.
Another picture caught Stace’s attention.
Keith immediately knew which one.
It was of Elie, the owner of Sun Grifters. This one was Elie and Keith standing together behind the bar, both laughing at something. Keith had one arm loosely around her shoulders. Elie was looking toward the camera. Sort of. Mostly, she was looking at him. Maybe that’s why he liked the picture so much. But he wasn’t ready to admit anything about that to Stace for a few reasons. One: there was no that to admit, and two: … Well, let’s just let it drop and maybe come back to it later.
But it didn’t look like Stace was going to let it drop. “Who’s that?”
“Elie.”
“She owns the bar, right?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s pretty!”
Keith opened the refrigerator. He needed to say something; otherwise, Stace would just fill in the blanks. So, he said, “Yep.” Then he realized that was about the stupidest thing he could have said.
Bill snorted.
Keith ignored the snort.
Keith took a container of last night’s fried mahi-mahi leftovers from the refrigerator. He lifted the lid and sniffed. “Smells okay,” he said to no one in particular.
“So, Keith, how long have you known Elie? She’s a fox, if you want my opinion,” Bill said.
Bill was treading on thin ice, and Keith knew the man well enough to know that he knew it.
Keith opened the container and inspected the fish again. More for something to do.
“Long as I been here,” Keith said. “A couple of years now.”
“Long years?”
“Yeah,” Keith said, again with the slight sarcasm. “Each one was a full 365 days long. Well, one of them was a leap year. So, that’s 366.”
Stace was still standing near the photographs.
Keith could just feel Bill winding himself up. The geezer was like a Doberman sometimes. It was like he had spotted a weakness in the backyard fence and was already climbing over it.
“Long enough,” Keith said. “I guess.” Unfortunately, all of this made him wonder about the same things. He liked Elie. She liked him. She had a good head on her shoulders. And most importantly, she knew a great deal about Keith’s baggage—he’d already told her, and she apparently still liked him anyway. Maybe liked him even more. And, finally, Keith knew she had baggage of her own. And unless she was a closet serial killer, he knew he would have cared less about it.
Bill nodded solemnly. He was looking at Keith as if he were thinking, “I see right through you.”
But then Stace caught Bill’s attention. “Hey, Stace! Your daddy ever tell you about the time Elie chased a drunk tourist out of Sun Grifters with a mop?”
Stace giggled. “No.”
“Bill!” Keith protested. But that was water off a duck’s back.
“What? It’s common knowledge. It’s even in the public record because some yahoo called the police.”
“Nobody called the cops,” Keith said. He’d put the fish in the microwave. It rang, and he opened the door and tested the fish. Not quite.
Stace laughed. She was enjoying this quite a bit more than Keith was.
Which, of course, encouraged Bill.
Bill leaned forward. “God, he was a big fellow. Six-four. Built like a refrigerator. Language worse than mine, and that’s saying something. Well, I mean, when I get riled up. Started causing trouble with one of the waitresses, Mandy, I think it was. Elie warned him twice. I mean she bent over backwards.”
The microwave hummed. Bill told his tale, by far the most embellished version Keith had ever heard. And Stace was smiling. So maybe it wasn’t all that bad. It served a purpose. Keith hadn’t seen her in forever. There was a time not too long ago when he thought they might never speak again. It had been his fault. Well, not all of it, but he was glad to take the blame. He didn’t want her to shoulder any of it, even though.
Bill settled deeper into his recliner.
“So, what happened with the guy?” Stace asked.
Bill laughed slightly. “Well, your daddy didn’t help much, that’s for sure.”
“That’s not true,” Keith said. He wasn’t angry. He knew Bill knew the truth. He also knew Bill had his audience of one, and he was going to milk it all he could.
So, Keith decided to play along. “Well, it was pretty funny.”
The microwave beeped.
Keith transferred the fish to a clean plate and then shoved the fries inside.
When he turned around, Stace had finally sat on the sofa.
Bill immediately shifted his attention.
Target acquired.
“Did your daddy ever tell you about the time him and me caught the smartest fish in the Lower Keys?”
Keith closed his eyes.
“No.”
“Good.” Bill folded his hands over his stomach. He had the posture of a grandfather preparing to dispense wisdom. Unfortunately, wisdom rarely survived contact with Bill.
“This was back when your daddy had just come down here, tail between his legs, after all that nonsense in Atlanta. When he got shot.”
Keith wanted to add in a few things, like when he got shot, lost his job, lost his wife, damn near lost his daughter, and had a brush with the Grim Reaper himself. But he refrained. Bill was on a roll. Why ruin it for the man?
Stace tucked one foot beneath her.
“So we head out before sunrise. Pitch dark. Water smooth as glass. Your daddy’s got enough fishing gear to invade Cuba.”
“I had two rods.”
“An arsenal.”
“Not,” Keith said.
“Well, you had that AK in the boat.”
“A lot of guys go out armed.”
“Why’s that?” Stace asked.
“Drugs. We’re the first port of call from Cuba. They’re only 90 miles south. You could almost swim there.”
“Unless you wanted to get eaten by sharks.”
“I’m not going to resemble that remark,” Bill said. He laughed because he thought he’d made a joke.
Keith shook his head.
Bill continued.
“I mean, it was early. I’m an early riser, but this was insane. I’m operating on coffee and instinct.”
“You were operating on a sausage biscuit I bought for you before we went out,” Keith corrected.
‘Details, details!”
“So, we was fishing a channel marker and nothing happened for a while. Quiet morning. Then suddenly your daddy hooks something enormous.”
“It wasn’t enormous.”
“I beg to differ.”
“It was a tarpon.” Keith shrugged. He had to let Bill have this one. “They get pretty big. That one was, if I’m remembering it right.”
Bill slapped the arm of the chair. “That rod of yours bent over so far, I thought it was going to either break, or you was going in. One or the other. The reel starts screaming. And Stace, you should have seen it. Your daddy’s fighting this thing like he’s arresting it.”
Stace looked toward Keith. “Was it really that big?”
All Keith could do was shrug for the third or maybe sixth time that evening.
The microwave beeped.
Keith pulled the fries out. Perfect!
“You listening?” Bill asked Keith.
“Unfortunately.”
“So, after twenty minutes, your daddy finally gets this monster close enough to see ‘em.”
“Five minutes, max.”
“Twenty.”
“Ten.”
“Fifteen. Done! Now, can I get on with my story?” Bill seemed slightly grumpy.
Stace grinned.
Bill pointed at her. “Never trust a fisherman.” He laughed like he thought that was the best joke ever spoken.
“Good advice,” Keith said.
“Except me.”
“Especially you!”
Bill ignored that.
“Then that fish explodes out of the ocean!” Bill threw both hands into the air. “WHAM!”
Bill lowered his voice. He had gotten to the dramatic part.
“Lands right in the boat.”
Stace blinked. “In the boat?”
“In the boat.”
Keith had to admit that part was true. “It was pretty funny. I’ll give you that.”
“Now this fish is losing its mind. Tail slapping. Hooks flying. Water everywhere. And you know what your daddy does?”
Stace giggled. “What did Dad do?”
“Well, this thing’s thrashing all around the bottom of the boat, knocking stuff out, you know. And the boat ain’t that big anway. It’s got one of them wells in the back for a cooler under the seats back by the outboard. And your Daddy!…” Bill was laughing so hard he had to stop for a moment. “Sorry, had to catch my breath. But your Daddy he climbs into the cooler!”
Stace started laughing hysterically, turning red, nose running.
“Strategic positioning,” Keith said in a mock-defensive way.
“You screamed!”
“I alerted the crew,” Keith countered.
“You screamed like someone was doing…I don’t know what…but you screamed!”
“I might have yelled some.”
“Some?”
Stace laughed so hard she had to cover her mouth.
But the laughter died down. Bill had run out of gas or air or whatever guys like Bill run out of. At least for a moment.
Keith carried the plates outside to the deck. The deck lights cast soft yellow pools across the boards. Behind them, the harbor lay quiet. The other way was nothing but the Gulf, and then in another ninety miles, Cuba.
Rigging on a sailboat somewhere nearby clicked softly in the breeze.
The three of them sat around a small table.
Fish.
Slaw.
Fries.
Good enough.
For a while, they ate in companionable silence.
Keith liked that.
Bill was perfectly comfortable in it.
Stace seemed to be getting there.
Eventually, she pointed a fork at him.
“So, did you really sit in the bait bucket?”
Bill nearly choked.
Keith sighed.
“It was the cooler, and it was by accident and only briefly.”
“Bait bucket,” Bill said. “That’s a good ‘un, Stace. Old Bill here’s going to borrow that.”
REAM
These stories, in order, are also published on a reading platform called REAM. If you would like to read these there, 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.
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