Spiders and Shipwrecks

Lou's girl found this crawling on her while they were doing it. He says it was the worst case of crabs he had ever seen.


Gunshots... maybe three. I lift the girl off of me and sit up in the cushioned alcove of the Morgan. Then there is the shouting... cursing is more like it.
"That's Lou... " I jump up and pull my clothes on and then look down at my beautiful bank teller. I smile at our transaction... a deposit as I recall. "I'm sorry, I have to go."

After the cursing there is a woman screaming. It continues just long enough for me to get a bearing on where they are. I run barefoot while zipping up and buttoning my pants. No gun, nothing in the way of a weapon to help Lou with what ever shit he is into. The girl screams again and there is another gun shot.
"SHIT... " I run faster now, the remains of the coca powering me up a small rise behind the Domincan restaurant and down into a little glade before the jungle starts. I see a light colored blanket in the dark spread out.

"I gotcha you little SHIT." I hear him off to my left. Then the girl screams a little and runs toward me, naked as the day she was born, and holds me, putting me between herself and Lou.
"LOU? It's me, man... is everything okay out here?"
"Hell ya, it is now." He comes toward with the nine millimeter in one hand and something else in the other. "Now that I have our little friend here."
Lou holds up the item in his other hand and I feel like grabbing the little honey that has her arms around me. It is a tarantula, writhing around in his grip."

"Get that fucking thing out of here, man."
"It's just a spider, you pussy. This one won't even kill you."
"Wanna bet?"
"Come on, she held it." He says, gesturing to her with the hairy little bastard legging around between his thumb and forefinger. She shoots back with something in Spanish... not I love you I am reasonably sure.
"What did she say?" I hold her close... naked and very nice.
"She says she didn't hold it. It crawled across her face while we were fucking on that blanket over there."
I loosen my grip and start looking in the dark at the ground around us. "Do these things travel in packs?"
Lou holds the struggling arachnid up to eye level and looks at his prize in the darkness. "She is beautiful, don't you think?"
"I don't like spiders when they are bigger than a dinner plate."
"To bad you don't have your camera." Lou says, sounding disappointed at the opportunity to document the moment. His girl says something and gestures to her purse laying to one side of the blanket. Apparently she has a camera in her bag. Lou rejoices and we snap the picture. Then he walks away with the spider and throws it into the edge of the jungle like an empty beer can.
"What are you doing out here anyway? Why didn't you come back to the boat?"
"She's shy, I guess."
"Well you're not. Put some fucking clothes on."
"Hold my gun."

The rising sun warms us as we lay on the top of the Morgan, each of us with our perspective bank tellers, wrapped in blankets. We have been sitting here since the spider incident, talking at first, then dozing off and on. Smoked a nice Walker about an hour ago. Lou just concluded a story about him in Haiti and something about the statute of limitations when you garote a cab driver.
"Fucker was taking me way off road. No where near the place I wanted to go, man. I should have killed the bastard. As it is he will never swallow normally again, or breath, or talk for that matter."
"Nice. Any other hits we want to tell our ladies about, Lou?" I swallow the remains of a Red Stripe and look around for a place to throw the empty. From behind me, a deep voice says something in mother tongue. I turn and see Blanco behind me, staring at me in the dawning light. "Jesus, Blanco, you scared the shit out of me."
"He says to not throw the bottle away, he gets his deposit back on the case." My girl translates in her sweet broken English.
I hold the bottle out to Blanco and he reaches out and grabs it.
"Hey, Whitey, toss me another beer." Lou looks at me with a raised brow, like "am I going to let him drink alone", or as Lou would say "you gonna be a pussy you panty waste motherfucker?"
"Me too, Blanco."

New beers, and plans for the day courtesy of our host. Blanco tells us there is a shipwreck we can go see about three miles off shore. It is shallow enough to snorkel. Lou tells him he is a certified salvage diver. Just another thing he knows how to do and another thing that I don't.
"Nothing to it," he tells me, "Just don't come up too fast or you're fucked."
"Well hell, if it were that easy my Aunt Fannie would be a salvage diver."
"You have an Aunt Fannie?"

The girls headed off to get ready for work at about seven in the morning. Loco had left us while we were still dancing at Dominican's, but he would be back after noon when he had someone else that could take his security guard shift. He told us he would call in sick and take us, but we would be alright. Loco is a cool cat, and we already consider him a friend.
Lou and I hadn't slept a wink last night with the exception of my dozing off during his attempted taxi cab driver execution story. But we are not tired. That coca leaf could become a permanent part of my diet as far as I am concerned. Everyone around here seems to treat it as though it were nothing. But process it and have a little white powder on your person you could end up in the Caribbean version of Midnight Express.

It is a little after nine when we cast off and motor out of the marina. Blanco and Lou are chatting it up while Blanco pilot's us toward the shipwreck. I am on the bow of the boat having a Titanic moment, King of the World and all that. We raise the sails and shut the engine down. The Morgan rides the waves like a Cadillac rolling down the interstate. It is a heavy boat, heavy and sure. The breeze caresses you like a woman's touch, light and comfortable. The boat lists over with the wind in it's sails, Blanco holding her to the course he has set. Just to look at him, you know he is at home on the ocean.

I take my post up on the bow and see dolphins running the waves with us. They barely break the surface as they stream along just under the water. I turn to see Lou and Blanco discussing something between hits on a Walker. I look back to the water as we pass out of the harbor and in to the Spanish Main, El Carib... the bright blue waters of the Caribbean.

When I climb back over the cabin and down by the pilot house of the Morgan, Lou sucks in a deep hit and then passes the Walker to me. Blanco looks my way and smiles. He nods as I take the joint and hit it.
"Blanco says a couple of guys were executed on this yacht. They stole what they wanted, then scuttled and sank her."
I let my hit out in a cloud that our ten knots carries off behind the boat. "Who executed them."
"Pirates."
"Pirates... of the Caribbean. Pirates of the Caribbean killed these guys and sunk their boat?" I look at the two of them and they nodded in return. "You are both stoned out of your minds."
"No, Jake, it's true. It happens all of the time out here. A yacht will anchor in some secluded cove and spend the night, only to be boarded, robbed, and then executed. That is why the more experience captains will put in to an anchorage that is well populated."
"What the fuck are you all of a sudden? Captain Bligh or something? Don't tell me you're a sailor too."
"As a matter of fact I have spent a summer island hopping on a pretty nice trimaran about six years back."
I look at him and smile, "I can't wait until someone needs brain surgery."
"Fuck you."

We sailed for a good forty-five minutes when Blanco called out something in Spanish. Lou got my attention on the bow, "We need to take tension off the sheets and get the sails down. We're here."
Between the three of us we manage to get her stopped and the sails down within a minute or two. Blanco fired up the diesel and motored back to a specific spot on the GPS, then shut her down.
"This is it, I guess." Lou looks to Blanco, who confirms by going into the cabin and retrieving masks, fins, and snorkels.
"How deep is it?" I ask Blanco, who understands what I am saying. The holds up three fingers.
"Thirty feet?" He nods.

Lou straps a knife to his calf and I take the spear gun. I have shot one a time or two and at least know how. I am more concerned with not shooting Lou on the way out of the boat. We splash in backwards like they do in any diving movie and are off to the shipwreck. It is hardly that, a shipwreck I mean. This was deliberately sunk by pirates, not by accident. I get half way down and have to come back up for air. I didn't plan it right. So I exhale several times and take a deep breath, then dive down to where Lou is already.

It is a large powerboat, a Sea Ray, maybe thirty five feet long. I would think it would be a prize in it's own right. But apparently too hard to conceal from authorities. I watch Lou disappear into the cabin. He can hold his breath for a long time. I don't feel the urge to resurface, not yet anyway. I gain entrance to the main salon and see Lou up near the roof treading water. When I surface next to him I am in an air pocket.
"Hey, this is great, huh?" Lou says into the echoing darkness of the air pocket.
"Okay."
"Just relax. I don't think there is too much breathable air in here, so we better take our breaths and then head back up. I think Whitey has a scuba tank. We can share the air if he does."

We make our way up to the Morgan and Blanco sets us up with the one scuba tank he has. Lou dons the tank and regulator, shows me how to take a hit of air, and schools me on not surfacing too fast not that we are deep enough for that. We have several hours ahead of us, about forty five minutes of air, a yacht that may yield a few unfound treasures, and then the meet this afternoon. Looks like a full day.