Chapter 25. The Bonnie, Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond

We passed under the Golden Gate Bridge before sunrise against the flowing out of the tide, working boats, crabbers, and sports fishers. The bay became calm after we passed Alcatraz. It wasn’t long before I would be cruising by my old haunts. Casey also knew where we were going. For all his jabber, he’d kept our destination a secret from me. Anna might’ve drawn more out of him while they tangled up the sheets. I had to go below to wake him. It was his turn to take the helm and to tell me where, in-the-hell to come, we were going.

 Casey was sparkling happy to come above. The most discrete men can be locker-room gabby if they hadn’t gotten laid in a while. I don’t think he’d been with a woman in all the time I knew him but he was respectfully mum about whatever had happened with Anna in the berths. His body smelled of fresh soap, his face shaved, beard trimmed, his once shabby hair was braided and brushed. Though he wasn't quite GQ, he was a handsome man. Anna must have seen it in him. I sure as hell didn't.

Casey’s constant banter would have had most folks believing he was too shallow to be anything else but happy. Casey had more depth to him than that. The happiness his face shone with that day was witness to the reality that there was more to the village idiot than others suspected. If I was a shrink, I would have diagnosed his glib prattle to be symptomatic of a borderline bipolar mania that easily plunged into the abyss of depression at times. Regardless, I was pleased to see him in this state.

Waiting a report of some kind. I teased, “Where we goin’, lover-boy?”

“On the Bonnie, Bonnie, banks, of Loch Lomond,” he sang, then laughed, “but not Scotland.”

“You don’t have to tell me about Bonnie banks. I know this bay better than…” I stopped short of revealing what I knew and didn't know because Doc was on deck following me like a lost puppy. I ordered him, “Larry, go below and stay with Anna ‘til I get the lay of the land.”

He would've been wagging his tail had he one, and he eagerly complied as though I'd commanded, "Go fetch."

After he’d gone below I asked Casey, “Don’t worry about him with Anna. She’d rather kill him than fuck him. What’s Ryan got cooked up for us at Loch Lomond?”

“I don’t know that one. Truthfully, I believe this is where his plans end. He just had to tuck us away… somewhere…  anywhere… away from them fuckers. You know what I mean?”

“Nothin’ else? C’mon man, there has to be more to it than that.”

“There’s that boat and your friend, Gabe. I heard he cleaned your clock a few years ago… Gabe? I told you we was goin’ there. Didn’t I?”

“Gabe, yeh. I handed over my boat to him when I joined the Army… Cleaned my clock? Shit, it’s been twenty years.”

“Naw, you must’ve forgot… you was there with him on a drunk and he called Ryan to fetch you. What, you blacked out on all that?”

“Oh, yeh, that’s right. I remember now.” I didn’t remember one bit of it. All I could recall was leaving Santa Barbara heartbroken and smashed on Jack Daniel’s. I can’t even remember her name.

“Shit, Crash, you took one of the company’s taxis up to San Jose… Scored some speed from a dude you met in a biker bar… That’s what Ryan says… yes, San Jose.”

I remember it like a clouded dream… a game of pool. I hadn’t been in that much danger since Saigon. The biker was a Vet so he held back the other bikers and, well, we all got along after a few shots. 

Casey rattled on, “You fuckin’ hooked up with a whore at the Ofice… Nadya,.. Funnier than any Fubar in Nam. You fuckin’ left the taxi in San Jose… traded it for a Harley and rode it North to Vacaville for some damned reason and ended up at this Gabe’s place, I guess. All I know is we’re meeting him there. That’s all I got.”

Fubar for sure. Did I buy it or steal it? If I stole it, it wasn’t from a Hell’s Angel or I wouldn’t be here to think of it. I’m not sure of the rest after that. Bits and pieces of seeing my friend, Max, in Vacaville. Got in a bar fight there too, I think. Next thing I recall was coming-around on Ryan’s couch in Santa Barbara with raw knuckles and my right eye swollen shut. That part I remember. Since the last I could recall was the biker and the whore, I figured we must have thrown down somewhere during the blackout.

Casey filled me in some more, “Yeh, funnier than shit. You fuckin’ traded a spankin’ new company cab and that chick, Nadya, for an old pan-head Harley and some coke. Doc wanted to bust you for G.T.A. Ryan had to go up there and pay out a couple thou to get the cab back to the company!”

“Yeh, yeh, I know… I paid-up. So, what’s with Loch Lomond?”

Loch Lomond is a small marina beyond the estuary of San Rafael near San Pedro Point. It has a boatyard and, if Gabe was there, it was for maintenance on whatever boat he had. I didn’t think he’d still have the Sea Wolf. I started to remember. He had it moored in Benicia…. where I used to have her sometimes before I joined-up. Images of arguing about taking the boat back flashed a second here and there but nothing stuck in my memory.

Anna came up and joined us with a hand on Casey’s hip.

I cautioned her, “While we’re in the marina you and Doc best stay out of sight. The fewer of us seen on deck the better.”

 Casey tended to the lines at the guest dock. We weren’t there five minutes before I saw Ole Gabe sauntering our way on sea legs, his gnarled thumbs hooked onto his belt like he was Popeye.

I was out of the boat and on the dock passing Casey, stopping long enough to tell him, “You stay here and watch these two. Keep ‘em inside. Got that. Don’t let them out further than the cabin. I’ll see what’s going on.”

“Sure, I know he’s gotta be watched but she’s okay,” he protested weakly, “ain’t she?”

Loud enough for all to hear, I shouted back as I reached out a hand to Gabe, “There are things only the heavens are meant to know, Casey.”

Gabe took my hand and yanked me hard to him and wrapped heavy arms around me in the vise grip strong enough at seventy years old to wrestle any bear twice his size. Letting me go at arms-length he snorted, “Ha, you’re right there. You look lots better than the last time I saw ya.”

Still puzzled at the dark area of memory clouding the picture, I said, “Shit, been at sea for several days and you think I’m cute? I must have looked like day-old dog-shit the last time.”

“I smell coffee brewing, ya got a spare cup?” he said as he jumped on board. I was impressed at how agile he was for his age. He sized up the two inside without saying a word about them but looked up at me on the dock with an approving nod. He waited ‘til I came aboard and said quietly, “I see ya got everyone back here alive. Ryan was in the dark on that account.”

“How much do you know about what’s goin’ on?”

He took but one sip of coffee and set it down, “Not much but we gotta talk some. Let’s go back to the yard. I have something sweet to show ya.”

He walked me off the dock to the boat yard. She was up on blocks, the Sea Wolf II, looking new, as though she’d just come out the crate. We stood under the bowsprit. Dark eyes on a leathered face bore into mine, “I meant to say, you look like you been sober a few days, eh?”

I hadn’t given it much thought but tried to act nonchalant nonetheless, “Why, you got anything in the cupboard for an old pal?”

“We gotta stay sober for this one, my friend. We’re fuckin’ worse off than Custer at his last pow-wow.” I must have still looked puzzled, he added, “Say, I’m sorry I had to bust you up the last time you were here but you went white-boy Injun on me.”

Gabe, a Miwok, rarely “went Injun” on me or anyone else no matter how drunk. He must’ve been the author of my fucked-up face from back then.

“Sorry, Gabe, but if you want to know the truth, I don’t remember anything about it.”

“Well, now that we’re bein’ truthful, I was stone cold sober for two months when you showed up with that nice lady, Nadya, on a Harley. You said you rescued her from some bikers in Vacaville. I had to send her off but I kept the Harley for ya. Ain’t been registered in two years but you gave me the title.”

 “Shit, Gabe, all of this came down so fast, I don’t know exactly what’s going on. Something about Russians fuckin’ around with real nasty flicks, and Doc here…”

“The cutie your buddy's with back there must be Anna?”

“Yeh, what do you know about her?”

“Ryan told me he figured she was tied up with a Blonka… a Donkva or something… the Russian Mafia… only worse.”

“It’s the Bratva…” I looked back at the Dinky Dao where Anna and Casey were in a groping lip-lock right out in the open on the deck. I felt a tinge of jealousy and pissed that they disobeyed my orders.

“Looks like she’s taken.” Gabe craned his neck beyond me towards the Dinky Dao, "Yeh, too old for that. But, I figure we can tuck you away up in the sloughs until Ryan has a better idea. Shit man, I’m getting too old for this crap too.”

“Me too. But you don’t know the half of it, old man.”

“Her mission is trying to fix old drunks like us.”

Gabe’s grin opened to a row of glistening ivories, “Soft touch, eh? Can’t fix a broken faucet with a hammer. Ryan says you quit drinking. I didn’t believe him.”

“Just for now… at least until we get through this. I should give that gal some credit for it. What made you quit?”

“Made me quit? About the same thing that made me start. Life looked like it was so full of shit that looked better with a shot and a beer.”

“Yeh, I gotcha. Kind of. I mean. Bad shit happens.”

“Bad things happened because I drank but not because something bad happened that made me drink. One day I figured it out. I was just bored and tired of it.”

“I hear ya. Hollywood always has some babe that comes along to cure you.”

“Everyone has to feel like there’s a purpose in all this. I joined a forgiveness dance at an intertribal Pow Wow.”

“What did you ever do so bad that needed forgiveness?”

“I danced to forgive, not to be forgiven. It’s my purpose. What’s yours?”

I looked at his face. It showed no emotion but it was there under the mask. His was a calm that could be counted on. Passed on from one generation to another for over some hundred-fifty years since the Gold Rush of 1849… He found a purpose, what was mine?

 “Yeh, what you thinking? I can smell the gears burning” Gabe had the look of a ground-pounder that finally gets an order.

“You take the kids up the sloughs in Casey’s boat. Snodgrass is best, ya know… lots of brush to ditch under with some camo-net… should be pretty good.”

“Good idea.”

“How about I can launch the Wolf tonight… maybe, I don’t know. I’ll take Anna on the her to Tamale Bay. She’s ready to sail now, right?”

“No Crash, not yet. I know you want to take her out again but listen to me, dammit.”

“Okay, you still got that cat-fishin’ camper trailer on Prospect Slough?”

“Yeh, got everything you need in her… Cat-fishin’ gear. Three 8 volt batteries I keep charged.”

I didn’t register the Harley but I kept her up good. Got her under wraps in Benicia. We can all go together that far and yer pretty boyfriend can ride with ya from there…” Gabe couldn’t resist teasing, “it’s got a sissy-bar.”

My God, I know he was joking but I objected to his insinuation, “He ain’t my fucking boyfriend? Look at us,” I let out a strained chuckle. It didn’t make much sense the way this was all falling together but that too had a logic to it, “Why should we be slung into the slough while you guys take a cruise up the river?”

I didn’t like the idea of splitting up our forces… if a force is what you’d call us, but Gabe’s idea seemed to be right out of Sun Tsu.  A smaller force is better off splitting up to take on a larger one.

“You know the answer to that. It’s been raining and there’s more comin’ in tonight. A bike can take those roads. Got stuck on the way there in a jeep once. They couldn’t follow you far and we would be snug at Snodgrass.”

“You have a point.”

 “They have eyes on us… well, how do you spooks say, your mission has been compromised. It’s best they think we’re all on that fuckin’ garbage scow at first.”

“Compromised, how do you know that?”

A beige sedan was parked across the road from the marina. Gabe nodded towards it, “Look for yourself. There’s good reason to get out of here, Crash. That fucker’s been parked there since last night.”

“Shit.”

“Shit’s right, I wanted to check him out… discretely, ya know. Well, I went inside the Wolf for the glasses from the cabin. Sure enough, that son of a bitch had a pair of his own glasses on me and he was grinning. The asshole was letting me know he was there.”