When the Pirate Prays. James B. Johnson
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face. That’s why he whacked off her head.
The Gulf coast of the island was perhaps fifty yards to the west and I saw no ghosts, headless or not. The wind was now blowing with serious intent and pushing big rollers ahead of it over the dunes, through the brush, and onto the roadway. A dog-sized wad of Gulf froth slapped the windshield and slewed off like spit in the wind.
“Many years ago,” the governor said, “maybe in the early eighties, in Sarasota just north of here—”
“I know geography, we drove through there,” I said and immediately regretted my short-tempered interruption. I’m vain about geography.
“You have to forgive him,” Tapes said, “he just broke up with—”
“You leave Rebecca out of this—”
“Becky,” Tapes corrected, nodding earnestly, “and he ain’t his real self nowadays. Jeez. You got to be especially sensitive around him—”
“The governor doesn’t need to know about my nonexistent love life,” I said testily.
Gonzáles was glancing between us, looking like he just swallowed a handful of chili powder.
I stared at him expectantly, one eye on the road disappearing in and out of the wipers. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“The Sarasota no-name storm,” I prompted.
“Oh, yes. It caused more damage than any named storm or hurricane in a long time.” He scratched his incipient beard. “It dissipated rapidly.”
I grinned at Tapes. “‘Dissipated rapidly’?”
“Now you done it,” Tapes accused Gonzáles with a frown.
“Done what? I mean, did what?”
“Shortcut will use it to death. Everything now will dissipate rapidly. Dinner, clouds—”
“Beer,” I added.
“You’re Shortcut?” asked the governor.
“You’ve heard of me?” I asked.
“Not at all,” said Gonzáles with a twinkle in his voice. Right then, I liked him; he was giving it back to me in kind and, hell, I deserved it. Damn Rebecca—Becky, rather—for putting me in such sour circumstance.
How was I to know Governor Henry Beauchamps Gonzáles would be dead in less than ten minutes? And right after I decided I liked him, him being a politician and all.
“You drive very well,” Gonzáles told me.
“Thanks.” I avoided an ocean by driving on the shoulder of the road I couldn’t see and through a flower bed. The salt water coming up from the Gulf would kill all the flowers anyway. “Like Alcibiades in a chariot race.” It hadn’t been my intention to bring that up, but it just slipped out, my mind being occupied with concentrating on driving and all.
“Who?” asked Gonzáles.
I’d never talked to anybody who knew how to pronounce Alcibiades’ name, so I was guessing. Of course, I ain’t in the classics social circles.
“Alcibiades,” I said, and Tapes groaned. I pronounced it like “Al-kye-bye-aye-dees.” I shrugged mentally. What the hell. I’d never been out to impress people anyway. On the other hand, I hated to make a jerk out of myself. “One of the guys Plutarch wrote about.”
“Ah, the traitor,” said Gonzáles. “He betrayed Athens in favor of the Spartans and ruined democracy.”
“He got a bum rap,” I said. “You ever read what Plutarch says about that?”
“Gimme a break,” said Tapes.
Wrenching the steering wheel to the side to compensate for a strong gust, not to mention not being able to see, I thought about paybacks to Tapes. “Once, Alcibiades entered seven teams in the Olympics. One account has it that he won first, second, and fourth; Euripides disagreed, reporting Alcibiades came in third and that was it. Have I ever told you that, Tapes?” I was not needling him, just reminding him of my idiosyncrasies.
“A hundred times, Shortcut. And you never pronounce his name the same.”
“Well, here’s one I haven’t told you. A. J. Foyt said, ‘Every year I get older and go faster. It’s a helluva deal.’ A. J. must’ve been talking about me.” I looked around Tapes to the governor. “A. J.’s from Texas, too.”
“Who are you people?” asked the governor. “You talk like cowboys, yet you quote Plutarch. You dress like cowboys and drive a forty-eleven-year-old truck.”
“I’m Shortcut. He’s Tapes.”
“Nicknames,” said the governor. “Do you have a real name you answer to?”
“I don’t give that out freely.”
“He doesn’t tell strangers,” Tapes said simultaneously, always protective of my fragile ego.
Gonzáles stiffened.
We’d abused our newly found friendship. I waved my hand in a disarming manner and suddenly the truck slewed and banged into something I couldn’t see. I grabbed the wheel like an astronaut cut loose from the space shuttle. “I’m Billy Birthday and this is Wallace Francis Fidgle.” Tapes was born with the bark on. He was wearing a pullover shirt upon which burgeoned a mushroom cloud over which appeared the words “MADE IN AMERICA,” and under the A-bomb explosion were the words “JUST TRY US.” Very tacky.
Gonzáles nodded approvingly. “What are Plutarch-quoting cowboys doing on Gasparilla Island, Florida?”
“Vacationing and checking out lighthouses,” I said. Generally, Tapes lets me do the talking for both of us. He’s usually very quiet: unlike me, if he doesn’t have anything to say, he doesn’t say it.
“It figgers,” said Gonzáles like he knew he wasn’t going to get a straight answer. “You have a way with words.”
“He says he’s as eloquent as Cicero,” said Tapes, surprising me. We hadn’t seen each other for a few months and he wasn’t used to not talking yet.
“I got a GED,” I said.
Have you ever seen a lighthouse lonely against dark seas and skies? Standing on a spit of sand or stone, lancing oceans and seas, gutting clouds, slicing fog? A majestic version of human engineering, a bastion against the absolute worst nature throws? Were lighthouses music, grown men would cry more frequently.
“Turn right,” Gonzáles directed, indicating with his right pointy finger.
Perceptively, the wind decreased. We drove down a lane lined with giant banyan trees along both sides. The resultant canopy made it even darker. The wind funneled through from behind us, west to east, and scooted my truck along faster.
“Where we going?” I asked.
“The Inn. Surely the bridge will be closed. Might even wash out.”
“We haven’t checked out yet.” The way it looked, we’d be here a few more days.
The governor’s face scrunched up as he stared at banyan limbs whipping about us. “I grew up on the island, and I’ve never seen a storm come on so quickly.” He rubbed a misted spot off the side window. “If that high pressure system is stalled just to the north of us, this storm will sit here for a while.”
“Meteorology comes naturally to some people,” I said, making my smile disarming. “Too bad talking about the weather’s become a cliché.”
“Not at all,” he said. “I listen to NOAA weather radio every morning.”
A flying object shot into my line of sight, just for a second at the end of a wiper arc, and I braced against the seat.
The truck shook and we