Handyside

With a perforated round spoon, Garth crushes the catus fruits in a pitcher. The skins slide off, the needles break loose. I hold a clean sock open. Garth pours the pitcher’s contents inside. He squeezes the sock like an udder. Thick, blood-red juice drains out. The skins and needles stay inside. After mixing sugar and water into the juice, we pour two glasses.

“Truck, you want some?” Garth asks.

“No thanks,” Truck says firmly.

“You sure? It’s really good,” I say.

“No.”

After much cajoling, he tries a small sip, but refuses to drink a glass.

“Where’d that Natty Ice come from?” Truck inquires, indicating the lone can of beer on the table.

“I found it when I was cleaning the trash out of the yard,” Garth says. “It’s still sealed, but it’s dated 2006.”

Truck cracks the can open, drinks half.

“You won’t drink fresh cactus juice,” Garth says, “but you’ll drink a 4-year old warm beer?”

Truck always says that if beer and cigarettes are unavailable, he can easily live without them. He doesn’t need them. He sounds like  recovering alcoholic trying to convince himself.

I think he likes them more than he thinks he does.

After Truck heads into town, Garth and I bushwack thru an overgrown trail that leads to an abandoned camp only 15 yards or so from ours. It’s strewn with fully intact coolers and plastic chairs. These are a rare find. Typically, if something usable is abandoned, Cliff has already found and claimed it.

Garth and I also find a massive tent. It’s brittle from sun exposure, but also fully intact. We prop it up on the skeleton of a patio umbrella, and tie it’s corners off to the surrounding trees. Then we pull weeds and trash off the floor inside and rake the dirt. Laslty, we bring Truck’s sleeping pad and my sleeping bag and lay them out inside, adding a cooler and two chairs as furniture. Truck now has his own camp. He won’t have to wade out to Gonzo.

He didn’t ask is to build him a spot.

“I’m happy on the ground by the fire,” he always says.

But he’s reluctant to infringe on the personal space Garth and I have created for ourselves.

Clearing the ground and raising the tent was tiring and hot in the blaring sun, but I don’t mind because I like Truck. I enjoy working if it’s for myself or a friend. The only thing I don’t like working for is money.

Garth and I take a nap to recharge.

Afterward, he rakes weeds out of the yard he cleared.

Just before sunset, Truck returns. He’s brings chili, bread, and 4 rolls of toilet paper. He also carries a bottle of cheap vodka in lieu of the usual 18-pack of Busch. He bought the food with his Florida Food Stamp card, and grabbed the toilet paper from Waste management while working clean-up for the boat races. The vodka he found in a vendor tent. He had a case of Pepsi too, but ended up hitching to Christmas Tree with Bruce, who demanded it as payment for the ride.

Since Bruce believes Truck is his best friend, he expects Truck to stock his camp when he buys food. Truck told him Garth and I paid for the food so Bruce wouldn’t claim it.

Bruce can’t provide for himself. He never has but a few dollars and can’t get a food stamp card because he has no ID. He hangs around the Key West docks looking for traveling kids who are new in town, don’t know the area and have nowhere to stay. He offers them a ride to Christmas Tree in exchange for gas money or weed. Once they’re stuck here, He says they can stay in his camp and help consume whatever food, beer and cigarettes he brings back. In exchange, they must haul stuff off the houseboat, hide it in his camp and guard it every day.

Bruce got offended when Truck said he’d bought the groceries for Garth and I.

“What are you, their slave?” he’d said.

“No,” Truck said. “They’re like a brother and sister. I was goin’ to town anyway, so why not?”

Garth and I thank Truck for the supplies and then lead him down the path toward his new camping area.

“Ahoy!” Bruce’s abrasive yell echoes thru the woods just before we get there.

“Go back to camp and hide the vodka and food, fast!” Truck says to me, knowing I’ll be faster than him since I don’t have to duck as much.

Since he bought it, he can decide who partakes. I run back, stash the bottle under the bed behind a bag of socks, and shelve the food to make it less conspicuous. Bruce appears seconds after I move away from the shelf.

“I brought this for you guys,” he says, handing me a Pepsi.

I invite him to sit down, hoping Truck and Garth will get back soon. When they do, Bruce launches into a round of his usual transparent bullshit.

“I was gonna buy this island,” he says. “If I did, I woulda kept it just like this. It’s enchanting. You can always hear the music comin’ off Schooner Warf.”

Yeah. The same ten songs in the same order every single nite. It doesn’t enchant me so much as it puts me in a coma.

Bruce says he’s gonna wait for the 1:00 a.m. high tide. He’s gonna dive in and patch the beached and sunken houseboat.

Truck is always very talkative with Garth and I. But throughout Bruce’s gravelly ramblings, he doesn’t say a word. Garth distracts himself from the monologue by erecting an umbrella over our table in the yard. He makes only occasional polite commentary. I disappear into the hut.

Bruce waits a while. It’s dinnertime and he saw Truck’s groceries. He’s hoping to get a meal. Since I’m the woman, he expects I’ll cook it. When I pick up a pen instead of a pot, he leaves.

At dark, I cook a pot of chilimac on the campfire. Garth and I mix the vodka with our cactus juice. It’s better than vodka-cranberry. Truck drinks the vodka straight.

The fireside conversation turns to the trip Garth and I made down the Intra-Coastal Waterway. Truck learns that we sailed all the way from Annapolis, Maryland, to Key West on a 26-foot boat with no prior experience.

“I am impressed!” he exclaims. “I don’t know anyone who would do that! You made it here and Gonzo still floats! Congratulations! Garth, you can add Captain in front of your name! I can’t believe you did that!”

What about me?

I was the first one to attempt to sail the boat when we first bought it. I piloted Gonzo halfway down here. And I did a hell of a lot less bitching and moaning than Garth did about how terrible it was to cross a sound in mean waves or be stuck in the cabin for the duration of a 3-day long storm.

He’s said himself- more than once- that he wouldn’t have done it without me.

Why do people always assume that it was Garth who sailed us down here? Why do they all think I’m just here to make dinner, look pretty and keep him company?

If we never told anyone any different, people would always assume that because Garth is the man, he’s the one who does all the great things. They would always assume that because I’m the woman, my only function is to keep house.

Why don’t they ever assume that I actually took part in the adventure? I am here too, after all.

“I get to be Captain Sarah then,” I say. ” I sailed that boat half the time.”

“Alright,” Truck says. “You both get to be captains.”

Garth and Truck launch into a conversation about “live video blog-casting,” a new idea of Garth’s. They start talking about finding sponsors who’d be willing to give us boats to sail all around the world. Truck has so many useful contacts from his time in the sailing industry, that it actually begins to sound realistic.

It makes me nervous.

What if I decided I didn’t want to sail around the world? I’d have to anyway. I’d be stuck. Obligated. In debt.

If that’s what I’m getting myself into, I’d rather go without recognition and money.

“I found something really cool,” Garth says.

He shaves the spikes off a red, bulbous fruit and cuts it in half. He eats a chunk and hands one to me.

“This is really good,” I say.

It’s somewhere between a grape, a raspberry and a pomegranate.

“You wanna go get some more?” Garth asks.”We can make juice out of them.”

We trek toward shore, stop at a stout cactus with, flat, round, spiky green branches. Each branch holds a cluster of the red fruit.

“It’s a prickly pear cactus,” Garth says.

We fill a plastic piture with half the plant’s fruits and carry it back to camp.

I write again while Garth spends the day clearing rubble and dead trees out of our yard.

We’ve decided it’s better for us to work on separate projects than it is to work together.

For dinner, Garth and I eat pasta with canned chicken and garlic salt. It’s the only food we have left.

Truck shows up shortly after we’re done. He’s been working the boat races again and carries a bag of groceries.

He had to sleep in Key West while he was working because he knew he couldn’t rely on anyone to give him a ride to Wisteria and back every day. One nite, he slept under some cardboard.

“I have only used cardboard one other time,” he says. “I’d forgotten how warm it keeps you. I was really impressed by it. But the sprinkler system came on at 2:30 am and I had to move. I’m really glad to see you guys. It’s nice to be back to normal.”

Truck doesn’t like being trampled by tourists and accosted by bums. He dislikes civilization.

He tells us that news of the Gonzo transaction traveled fast. People he barely knew came up to him in Key West and asked him about it.

“Everyone thinks you guys gave me the boat,” Truck says.

We did give it to him. But to keep Gonzo off limits to the rest of Key West harbor, Truck tells people he doesn’t own the boat. He only re-titled it in his name to get it insured. He’s going to move it to a safe place and fix it up so it can be sold.

Everyone wants a piece of Gonzo. He’s one of the nicest boats in the harbor. Very few of the hundreds of boats anchored here are all in one piece. Few can sail.

Captain Bruce especially wants Gonzo. He keeps giving Truck advice on what to do with the boat. He keeps saying we should to this or that with it, as tho he and Truck are partners. Truck keeps telling him no.

“I have yet to see a boat Bruce owns that isn’t upside-down or on a beach!” he says.

We lend Truck a lounge chair pad and sleeping bag and he sleeps by the fire in the courtyard.

We awake after dawn for the first time in months.

The hut is finished. It’s mosquito-proof, water-proof and functional. All that’s left are aesthetic touch-ups.

“I’m so hungry,” Garth says.

With all the physical work we’ve been doing lately, we’re always hungry.

Yesterday’s torrential rain soaked all the dead wood. It’s near impossible to make a fire. We need to use the Stove of Wrath as seldom as possible so we won’t run out of gas.

It’s difficult to do anything without breakfast. We pace around aimlessly.

Finally, Garth relents and lites the Stove of Wrath, first making oatmeal, then heating water for shaving.

When he’s done with that, he puts duct tape over all the holes and gaps in our screen walls.

“I don’t care anymore,” he says. “See? I’m using duct tape.”

“We should name our camp The Garbage Can,” I say. “It’s made out of garbage.”

I spread a table cloth of tent vynil over the desk Garth made me, and sit down to write. I spend most of the day in a chair with a bic pen in my hand.

Garth clears weeds from the hut floor.

“Are you sure you don’t mind me not helping?” I ask.

He pets my head.

“I like that you write. You tell a story. And it’s my story too. I wouldn’t care if all you did was write and I worked all the time.”

He even cooks me lunch.

In the afternoon, he takes a cooler to the tall pines around Art Camp and fills it with pine needles, which he spreads thick as carpet over the hut floor.

During one of his three trips to the pines, Captain Bruce finds him. I hear them talking. Bruce’s voice is loud and clear.

He wants Gonzo’s engine. He wants to sell Gonzo for parts.

“The boat’s not mine anymore,” Garth says.

Truck’s name is on the title now. He’s already told Bruce the engine isn’t coming off the boat, and the boat’s not being parted out. It’s being fixed up and sold.

“I hear people were talkin’ shit about me on the island,” Bruce says next.”Truck backed me up. He’s a good guy.”

Truck doesn’t like Bruce. He’s nice to Bruce because Bruce has a dinghy that can get him to Key West for supplies. He’s nice to Bruce because  having a pirate for an enemy is bad.

In a way, I pity Bruce. But he brings everything on himself. Such is life.

Garth cooks again at dinnertime, mashes the rest of our potatoes.

After dark, he heats water and pours it into two refrigerator crispers he found and cleaned. He adds soap. We sit by the fire with our feet in hot baths and look up a brite stars.

I like our life.

Torrents of rain splash in with the dawn.

Drops drum on the plastic roof. They join to form rivers in the wrinkles. The rivers curl inward as they pour from the roof’s edges. Puddles form on the tarp that covers our bed frame. They creep toward the mattress.

Showers splatter in on the kitchen counter, tool bench and desk.

Heavy pools form where the plastic roof sags between its clothesline support beams. Garth and I get out of bed. We poke the bulges in the plastic, catch the overflowing water in jugs, pitchers, coolers and cooking pots.

We wash our hair with rainwater. We haven’t showered for a week. It’s incredibly refreshing.

We roll the matress away from the waterfalls. We move books and bags of sugar away from invasive showers.

Yesterday, our home was in order. Dissaray has returned with the rain.

Garth and I don’t function well in disorder.

It’s difficult to motivate ourselves to make oatmeal and coffee. But the idea of dealing with our hut’s shortcomings on empty stomachs is more repulsive than cooking in a soaking wet, cluttered kitchen.

“I’m not staying here if we can’t get this hut dry and keep it dry,” Garth says.

He hates rain more than anyone I’ve ever known.

Truck ambles in for coffee. He’s absolutely soaked.

So that Gonzo wouldn’t hit bottom, he’d pulled the boat another 15 feet out to sea before going to bed last nite. This put Gonzo in about ten feet of water. Truck, forgetting to consider this, jumped off the stern this morning, intending to wade to shore. Instead, he submerged himself completely in the cold ocean.

I scrape the last few grains of instant coffee from the bottom of the jar, divide it into 3 cups. The water is only lukewarm when the Stove of Wrath runs out of gas.

“I’ll drink mine cold,” Truck says.

The chore of putting more gas in the stove is highly unappealing. I drink mine cold too.

After breakfast, Truck seeks his routine ride into Key West.

Garth cuts the tarp floors out of some abandoned tents. He and I pull them across the plastic roof. The rain gets us wet, the tree branches we must grapple with get us dirty.

Captain Bruce drops in. He goes on and on about how he’s gonna give us cooking pots and let us use the generator he’s planning on bringing to the tee-pee. The nite we met him, Bruce also vowed to get Garth and I a good anchor for Gonzo and a couple of jobs so we could make money. I don’t expect any of this to happen.

Bruce says his mom is about to send him a care package full of clothes and money.

Bruce is 44 years old. I’m even less impressed with him than I was before.

He borrows our pot, takes some of our water and heads toward the tee-pee to make himself some Ramen.

He pauses, turns to us and says, “I’ll make some for all of us.”

Everyone shares on Christmas Tree Island, especially drinks and food. But Bruce offers twice, making sure we heard him, looking at us as tho waiting for a reaction. He thinks he’s just made a saintly and unusual offer.

We thank him. He leaves.

“I’m not a big fan of communal living,” I say.”I just want peace.”

When I have something, I enjoy sharing it with the people around me. I don’t even expect them to do the same in return. Sharing isn’t the part of communal living that irritates me.

It does bother me that I have no personal space. I’m expected to accept even those who really grate on me into my home. I like sharing my space with decent people. I don’t like sharing it with loud, obnoxious con-men.

During a break in the rain, Garth and I duck into the trail that leads toward the tee-pee. Low-hanging branches brush against me, dripping water down my spine.

The Ramen in mush. Bruce has been boiling it for about 30 minutes.

“Damn, Bruce,” I say. “If you can’t even cook Ramen, how do you survive?”

“I usually cook it in the microwave,” he says.

I look around.

“What microwave?”

“The one on my huge yacht.”

I picture all the drowned, dilapidated heaps Bruce is always dragging up onto Wisteria’s shores.

“What yacht?”

He doesn’t answer.

After lunch, Garth and I return to our hut, wash dishes in the collected rainwater, rinse them in drips falling from the roof.

Our tarps are sun-worn and slightly leaky.

“If we’re gonna have a home and stay in one spot,” Garth says. “It’s got to at least be dry. Otherwise, I wanna keep moving.”

He looks around at the various puddles that displace our lives. His gaze comes to rest on our pot of fake flowers. His friend, Greg, bought them from a thrift store in Reedville to decorate Gonzo’s keel table. We couldn’t leave them behind.

“At least the flowers are getting water,” Garth says.

The tarps are wide enough that 2 feet of excess hangs off either side of the hut roof. We tie lines between the edges of these flaps and the nearby trees, creating sloped eaves that deflect the rain.

We slide 3-inch thick slabs of weightless foam between the plastic roof and support lines. They raise and straighten the plastic, allowing rain to roll off the roof rather than pooling at its edges.

I dry the tarp beneath our mattress. I dry the kitchen counter, tool bench and desk. I return the books and bags of suger to their proper places.

The hut is waterproof. But with its ragged, mismatched tarps and chunks of foam, it looks like a pair of well-worn patchwork shorts. The haphazardly unprofessional look of our construction job frustrates Garth.

“I can’t be a part of this,” he says. “It’s all too temporary.”

“Let’s leave then,” I say decisively, knowing he won’t just give up.

Garth wants to make this work. He just doesn’t like to take a duct-tape and bungy cord approach to a task when he knows how to do it properly.

He’s a perfectionist.

“I just want something decent,” he says. “This isn’t what I had in mind.”

“Nothing ever is,” I say. “This is as good as it gets when you’re building your house out of someone else’s discarded, destroyed, rotting junk. You can’t expect perfection in this case.”

Garth and I get back to work. We spend the rest of the day putting up bug-proof screen walls. The process is long and tedious.

I sit down for a break. Garth continues working, but begins to moan about how difficult it is to do things himself.

“You’re not much help sometimes,” he says.

“I need a break! I don’t have endless amounts of energy like you do! Can you just give me a mintue without making me feel guilty about it?!”

He sits down beside me, hugs me.

“I didn’t really mean anything by it,” he says. “It’s okay.”

The poject continues with a lot of yelling and cursing. Both of us are tired and hungry. We’ve lost interest, but we want to finish what we’re doing so we won’t have to come back to it later.

Just before sunset, we finish the walls with our last drops of functional energy.

Cliff wanders in and invites us to watch a movie at his camp later. We eat and then head over.

Tom is there too, with his friend Ted. There’s also a guy named Sean. He gets what people here refer to as a “Crazy Check” every month. He plays harmonica on the street and studies music by listening to the radio. When Garth and Tom begin talking about China, Sean reveals a deep interest in mail-order brides, prostitutes and the Chinese sex industry in general. He wants to marry a Chinese girl.

Tom and Garth, both having spent a fair amount of time in China, agree that Chinese girls aren’t attractive.

“No stereotyping in this camp!” Cliff admonishes.

Sean asks them why they don’t like Chinese girls.

Garth beings by saying they’re plain.

“That’s such a subjective answer!” Cliff says, cutting him off.

“Sean’s asking Garth a question about aesthetics,” I say. “Aesthetics have to do with nothing but personal taste. How can Garth not answer that subjectively?”

Cliff relaxes a bit.

Tom, Ted and Sean leave after a while and Cliff puts a film on a portable DVD player that’s hooked to a marine battery. The film is called Swept Away. It’s Italian, made in the 1970s. A rich woman and a poor man get shipwrecked on a deserted island together and, as Cliff says, “It goes from comedy to dark, uncomfortable wife-beating in a matter of seconds.”

“The 10 million dollar question this morning,” Truck says, “is where’s Bruce?”

Captain Bruce is a problem. He’s a magnet for authorities. Because he hides out on Wisteria, he brings them down on all its trespassing residents; not just himself. Most of the people who live out here do so quietly. The cops don’t pay attention unless someone’s causing trouble. If they come after him and find us, we could get 29 days.

Truck comes over for breakfast every day now. Garth hands him a pot of hot water for coffee and noodles. He hands Garth a cigarette.

“You need a lighter?” Truck asks Garth.

“No, I’ve got this stick,” Garth answers, pulling a glowing twig from the fire.

He holds the stick to the cigarette between his lips, realizes he’s about to lite the filter, flips  the cigarette around and tries again.

“I am so glad I have my hat back,” Truck says.

It’s a red baseball cap that says Mt. Gay Rum on it. It’s from a sailing race he was in. It’s his prized possession. He was catching a dinghy to Christmas Tree one day and it blew into the sea. He thought he’d lost it, but it washed up on shore.

“That’s good karma,” he says. “You can’t buy one of these hats.”

“What’s the longest single-handed sailing race you’ve ever done?” I ask him.

“Puget Sound to Hawaii. It took 48 days.”

You can’t sail in a straight line unless you’re running with the wind.

“You only sleep an hour at a time,” Truck says. “You set an alarm clock so you can wake up and see if you’re still on coarse.”

“I think we should wait until afternoon, when it’s warm, to dive for those anchors again,” Garth says.

Gonzo can’t stay tied to that wreck forever.

After breakfast, Garth builds me a desk and I organize and put away more of our stuff. By the time the desk is standing on four legs, the sun is warm.

I change into a bathing suit and shorts, put the snorkling goggles on. The three of us walk to shore and wade out to Gonzo.

I kneel on the bow and look into the water. The wreck that sheared off Gonzo’s anchor lurks five feet below the surface, a dark, menacing threat. It scares the hell out of me. Since the anchors were set only a few feet from it, I’ll be diving right next to it.

“Tie a life jacket to a line and throw it out to me so I can float on it between dives,” I say as I walk back to the stern and descend the swim ladder.

I drop all at once into the turquoise water. It’s so cold I can barely speak.

“Throw me…that…line!” I choke, spitting out the waves that splash into my face.

I grab the life jacket and dip my face in the water. I see nothing but a blurry turquoise haze.

“Am I near the wreck?” I shout to Garth and Truck. “I can’t see it from here.”

They assure me I’m but feet away.

I take a breath and dive straight down, stretching my arms out in front of me so they’ll be the first to touch the ground, the wreck or an anchor line. When I feel the water close around my toes, I kick down four or five more feet. I’m  about ten feet down, and this water should only be about 15 feet deep.

I look around. Still, I see nothing but murky haze. Mysterious shipwrecks lurk all around me. I can feel them the way you can feel something chasing you in a dream.

I swim back to the surface, grab the life jacket, ask again if I’m in the right spot. Garth tells me I am.

I dive down again, further this time. Still, I can’t see the wreck. There’s no sense swimming around with no reference point. If I can’t find a 30-foot long boat, I won’t be able to find a white rope lying in white sand.

“Okay, it’s no good,” Garth says when I resurface again. “Come back to the boat.”

I gladly do so, and we all wade back to Christmas Tree Island. Garth and I go back to camp. Truck searches for a ride into town, intent on buying an anchor.

Garth builds a stand for his tool bench. I build a shelf for clothes out of green and yellow milk crates.

Garth gets fuming mad at the disorganized mess of stuff in our camp. Clothes lie all across the bed. Suitcases and backpacks stand in the walkways.

“We just don’t have enough shelves to put things on yet,” I say. “You shouldn’t be so serious about this. It’s a game. We’re building a hut out of garbage. I like to think of it as an art project, or playing house.”

I decorate my yellow and green shelf with a purple silk scarf and show it to Garth.

“That’s pretty,” he says. The silliness of it brightens his mood.

By afternoon, we’re sweaty, dirty and hot. All our stuff is in order. It’s quite a relief.

Truck reappears with food, beer and an anchor.

He’d run into Tom, another fellow who lives on a boat in Key West harbor and visits Wisteria now and then. Tom’s 34 years old. He’s from Manhattan. People say he inherited loads of money when his parents died. Before that, he hitchhiked all around the states for three years. He also hiked the Appalachian Trail at the same time Truck did. He’s got wild long blond hair that’s always in his face, a blond beard and a rosy Irish complexion that makes him look like a young version of Santa Clause. He doesn’t drink or do drugs of any kind. Not even caffeine.

Truck really likes Tom because he’s intelligent and he doesn’t like to put up with any bullshit.

Toward the end of our first nite on Wisteria Island, after Garth and I had stood around and listened to a few hours of Captain Bruce’s non-stop, wildly exaggerated drama, Tom joined our group. Bruce paused to introduce him to us, then launched right into another loud yarn.

“Don’t tell us another story about yourself,” Tom said bluntly.

Bruce shut right up.

Truck also likes Tom because he rents a suite at the Galleon in Key West when he gets sick of staying on his boat. He let Truck stay there while he was working the boat races.

Tom had an extra anchor which was on one of Bruce’s boats. He said Truck could have it. When Truck went to get it, Bruce asked him to help move stolen merchandise off the beached and sunken houseboat and put it in the tee-pee Garth and I just moved out of. Truck told him no. Bruce asked for a beer. Truck told him no.

“I don’t wanna get involved with what Bruce is doin’” Truck says. “Some of us are here to stay out of bullshit.”

He hands out some beers.

“Ahoy!” a voice shouts from just outside camp. That’s how people announce their presence here. It’s like ringing a doorbell.

Cliff wanders in, wearing a cowboy hat he wove out of palm fronds, and tells us some kids might get together and play music at Kid Camp tonite. He departs shortly after making his announcement.

“I think we’re the only sane people living this lifestyle,” Truck says. He thinks Cliff is quirky.

Truck and Garth trek to shore with the new anchor and hook Gonzo on it.

While they’re gone, I make chili-mac. I start a fire and run back and forth collecting wood to keep it going while the water boils. Smoke billows into my face whenever the wind shifts, and burns my eyeballs. I’ve cooked dinner every nite since Garth and I moved onto Christmas Tree. I don’t mind being a housewife when it involves, building my own roof and my own bed, and cooking on open fires.

The Thrill is Gone blares out of some bar on Key West. The live music begins at dinner time every nite and lasts until the bars close.

“We saved Gonzo,” Truck and Garth announce when they duck back into the hut.

“And you’ve got a new neighbor,” Truck says. “There’s a drum set in the tee-pee.”

Bruce claims to be an excellent drummer. He says he’s played with Bob Seeger, among others. I’m really not looking forward to having a loud, attention-seeking, bullshitting, cop-magnet living yards away from me.

Dinner is really excellent because we’re really hungry.

As we sit around the fire and eat, Garth starts talking about getting work again. I hope he’s not too serious. I want to stick to the Mission Statement. I don’t want to ever work again unless the job is interesting, temporary or on a boat.

Truck comes over for coffee, informs us that Gonzo rests on his keel in a foot of water, tilting out to sea.

After breakfast, Garth follows Truck to shore.

I remain at camp, wash the dirt from every crevice of a large white plastic bin. I fold Garth’s extensive wardrobe, pack it into the box, shove it under the bed. I fold my clothes and pack them in my backpack in case we have to leave in a hurry.

It’s hot. I’m hungry, light-headed, dizzy.

Garth returns with wet hair falling in his face from beneath a crooked red bandanna. He’s been anchor diving. Our last hook was sheared off  when its line rubbed against a sunken ship’s jagged edge. So Garth tied our long docking line to the wreck’s bowsprit. The sunken ship will serve as a mooring once Gonzo is floating again, but we have no more real anchors.

Branches crack in the woods. I put my finger to my lips to silence Garth, and I point over my shoulder. Bruce creeps thru the brush with a machete not five yards from our camp, hunched like a cartoon bandit. He doesn’t know he’s visible.

Garth takes the back door path out of camp.

“Bruce!” he shouts. “Bruce!”

On the third call, Bruce finally answers. Garth speaks with him a minute, then comes back to camp.

“He didn’t look right,” Garth says.

He leaves again to finish dealing with Gonzo. I stack oatmeal, noodles, potatoes and cans on a shelve we found in the bushes.

Hours go by.

I trek to shore. Gonzo still rests on the bottom. Five people surround him. I remove my boots and socks, wade into the surf.

Truck stands out in the sea, holding onto the end of Gonzo’s mainsail halyard. He pulls on the line and the boat tips toward deep water. Garth and the others stand on Gonzo’s shore side. They push when Truck pulls. I join them.

Gonzo doesn’t budge.

A fellow named Cliff ties a line from Gonzo’s bow to his motor dinghy. He drives out to sea while Truck pulls and the rest of us push.

Gonzo pivots on his keel but doesn’t float out to sea.

We try these tactics over and over. Gonzo remains stuck. We’ll have to wait for high tide.

Truck, Garth and I go back to camp. Cliff wanders in a few minutes later on our invitation.

He wears camouflage pants and a green beret with a green felt flower pinned to it. Gray-blond curls stick out of the hat and fall around the circular lenses of his glasses and his gray-blond beard.

Cliff’s about 40 years old. He grew up in Texas. When he was 25, he moved onto a commune in the Ozarks of Missouri and stayed there 10 years. Now he lives partially on a boat in Key West harbor and partially on Christmas Tree Island. He works at Project Lighthouse, a homeless shelter for kids under 21.He used to live in this camp years ago, before it was destroyed by a hurricane.

Cliff makes a quick run to town and comes back with beer, paid for by Truck. Then he paces around camp, picking thru the heaps of abandoned stuff, filling a 5-gallon bucket with bolts and screws for art projects.

He invites us to see his camp. It’s only a short walk away. It’s got a makeshift shower, a bed, a sink, lots of tables, a food shelf, a spice rack and other things. There’s a giant couch made of Styrofoam with multi-colored crab pot buoys sticking up off the back of it on stakes.

Cliff puts bluegrass on the radio. He starts talking about hermit crabs. He says they’ll clean your dishes.

Garth mentions eating them. He’s only being obnoxious, but Cliff takes him seriously.

“Don’t eat the hermit crabs!” Cliff he implores. “PLEASE!”

On the way back to our camp, Truck explains that Cliff is very matter of fact, has no sense of humor.

After a couple more beers, the three of us walk back to shore to check the tide. The sun is sinking when we arrive. The water’s risen slightly, but Gonzo still won’t scoot off the shoals. We return to camp and drink more.

I tell Truck I saw Bruce creeping around in the woods.

“He was hiding,” Truck says. “The FWC came lookin’ for him this morning.”

FWC stands for Fish and Wildlife Comission. They’re the water cops of Key West harbor.

“Bruce knew they were comin’,” Truck continues. “He says to me, ‘If they show up, you better split.’ Why to I have to hide? I didn’t do anything wrong. I’ve got a good excuse to be on this island. I’m tryin’ to get a boat back on its anchor. So Bruce was standing there, telling me this, and the FWC comes around the corner in a boat and suddenly, he’s gone. It’s that house boat and all the shit he ripped off of it.”

After dark, when we’re sure the tide is high, we trek back to shore once again. Truck and Garth wade out to Gonzo, telling me to wait on the beach so I won’t have to take my boots off. I sit in the roots of a fallen tree.

Gonzo’s outboard roars. He pivots back and forth. After 20 minutes of shoving and struggling, Gonzo finally floats. Truck stands in the water, shouting and cheering, waving his fists. Garth crouches on the bow, pulling on the extra-long docking line, dragging Gonzo out toward the submerged wreck, out to deep water. Cabin lites come on in the anchored boats around him. Heads peek out of hatches to see what the yelling is about.

Once Gonzo is in over four feet of water, Garth jumps off the bow and wades to shore. Truck wades out to Gonzo, where he stays while Garth and I walk back to camp and go to sleep.

“We should elect a king on this island,” Garth says. “Then we’d build a jail for Bruce.”

“This is like Neverland,” I say. “Bruce is Captain Hook. He’s evil and he’s always trying to do sinister things to others. The rest of us are Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, making forts and having adventures.”

We scavenge wood of all shapes and sizes and construct a 3-foot high bed frame. It takes all day to make the rectangle, the legs that hold it up and the cross beams that keep it from wobbling side-to-side. We add random chunks of wood wherever the connections fall short or are loose.

In the afternoon, we make a first attempt at piecing our plywood together over the frame to make a flat surface for a mattress. We soon find that no matter how we arrange our misshapen chunks, they’ll fail to cover the whole frame. They’ll sag in. We need more legs and support beams for them to rest on.

We need more wood.

I dismantle a sawhorse to make use of the boards it’s made out of.

“What are you doing?” Garth moans in disappointment and dismay. “You don’t take apart a sawhorse! It’s more useful intact!”

“No. It’s not. We need more legs for the bed, otherwise we won’t be able to finish it. We have no more wood. Except for this. It’s more useful taken apart.”

We argue about it.We get nowhere. We accomplish nothing.

Neither of us is right. Neither of us is wrong. Both of our ideas are rational. We just have different opinions about which one is better.

I walk away.

I am so tired of arguing. I am tired of being told I am wrong.

In the evening, Truck appears. He brings us an 18 pack of Busch he bought with boat race money, then he goes to stay on Gonzo.

I lite a fire in the tee-pee and coook mashed potatoes while Garth finishes building the bed on his own.

When we’re done eating dinner, both of us move our things into the new hut.

After dark, Garth and I hear voices calling our names. It’s Leo and Nick, two college students who just arrived in Key West from Boston. We’d found them helping Captain Bruce dump the water out of another beached boat earlier in the day. Garth wanders into the woods to greet them and lead them into camp.

We start a fire and drink the beer Truck left us.

Leo brought a guitar. I get mine out and we jam. He plays lead over my finger picking rhythms. Nick blows on one of my harmonicas. Garth sings some improv.

Halfway thru the 18 pack, Nick suggests we smoke. He’d gotten paranoid on the way into camp and hid his stash. Garth leads him around in the woods so he can find it.

After Nick and Leo are gone, Garth and I go to sleep on our memory foam with the bed frame we built underneath us and the roof we built up above us.

“Life is about being civilized in uncivilized ways,” Garth says.

He gazes around the tee-pee at our ramshackle make-shift furniture.

I look at our centerpiece, a pot of fake flowers and a toothbrush holder Garth dug up and cleaned.

Garth cooks oatmeal over the 50-year old camping stove Ron gave him for Christmas last year. It’s Swiss. Once you lite it, nothing can put it out. The flames roar wrathfully. Last time we used it, we lived in an abandoned church in New Orleans next door to a junkyard owned by a cross-dressing professional scavenger.

“We’re crazy you know,” Garth says. “We’ve moved everything we own onto an island intending to build a shack in some woods that will be bulldozed any second.”

According to Captain Bruce and Truck, Wisteria Island was owned by an old woman who wanted it to remain undeveloped so local live-board boaters and traveling Rainbow Kids could camp here. She died recently and left it to her children. They sold it. Now there are 4-foot deep cylindrical holes in the ground where core samples have been taken. Soon Christmas Tree Island will be stacked with resort hotels. Rich tourists will be ferried over from Key West to listen to Jimmy Buffet songs and drink margaritas.

Until then, people like Truck, Captain Bruce Garth and myself- people who can’t or won’t function in civilized society- will ignore the ‘No Trespassing’ signs, sneak into Wisteria’s woods and build shelters out of the sails, masts and rigging of boats we came in on.

“We may be crazy,” I say. “I like it.”

Garth removes a pot of boiling water from atop the buzzing blue flame of the Stove of Wrath, carries it toward our coffee mugs.

“Would you do an experiment for me?” I ask, before he spoons instant coffee into the mugs and squirts in hazelnut creamer. “Will you put the creamer in my coffee AFTER you pour in the water?”

“Ground-breaking idea,” he says. “Has it been sticking to the bottom of the mug?”

“No.”

He spoons in the coffee, pours in the water, dispenses the creamer. He stirs it and hands me the mug.

“I was right,” I say, peering into the spinning hot drink.

“What ?” Garth says.

“There are these chunks in my coffee whenever you make it. They’re never there when I make it. The only difference in our methods is that I put the creamer in AFTER the water.”

“You’ve been really bothered by this, haven’t you?”

“I’ve been concerned.”

After breakfast, I fish my bloated journals from our stack of books, open them, lay them on a grate in the sun to dry.

Before we left the scene of Gonzo’s near-death crash, Garth encouraged me to rescue my Record Book from the sea.

“It looks sad,” he’d said, staring at it thru the water.

Now that we have a functional base of operations on Christmas Tree Island, Garth and I intend to construct and entirely new hut to live in indefinitely. We don’t want to remain in the tee-pee because a former owner may come and claim it.

We duck thru the overgrown path that leads to the hidden clearing with the metal carnival tent frame. Garth begins by ripping all the disintegrating tarps off the frame. He then uses a hand saw to cut branches off the roof. I start by using a machete to mow a thick tangle of 2-foot high weeds off the floor. Blankets and tents rot beneath the plants, embedded in the ground like dinosaur bones. I pull them up and carry them to a remote pile.

The work is physically exhausting. After two months in Gonzo’s tiny cabin, with no room to exercise, I thoroughly enjoy it.

By midday, I’m famished. I go to the tee-pee to cook Ramen while Garth goes to shore to check on Gonzo.

Truck will be in Key West for 3 days. He’s working the boat races to earn money to move Gonzo into his friend’s slip and spruce him up for sale. The slip should be available by Monday. Until the boat is gone, Garth and I will still feel responsible for its well-being.

I lite the Stove of Wrath, put a pot of noodles on it. The stove is tall and narrow. The pot is wide and shallow. Water sloshes in the pot as I let go of it, and the pot tips off the stove, spilling Ramen into the dirt.

Our food and fresh water supplies are running low. We only have $40 and re-stocking means a 30-minute row across a busy harbor. This is a tragic waste.

I storm and rage and prepare another pot of noodles, turning the Stove of Wrath off in order to save gas while I do so.

When I flick a lighter against the stove to restart it, a big orange ball of flame shoots out. I hear sizzling. A bitter scent stings my nose. Putting a hand to the side of my head, I feel crinkled singed-off hair sticking out like wire. The damage runs from my temple to the nape of my neck.

I get downright pissed off.

Garth returns with two halves of a dirty, dented Martin Guitar case.

“Look what I found for you,” he says.

I’ve been needing a case to keep my guitar in so it won’t rust in the tropical climate. I can probably fix this one up.

He sees me glowering down at the Stove of Wrath and hugs me.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “You just have hair like a black girl now. ”

Garth cooks the Ramen. After lunch, we go back to work.

Using a ball of twine and some sailor knots, we construct support beams for our ceiling. Ten lines stretch from one side of the roof to the other, over its pointed apex.

We unroll our spool of plastic, one of the few  supplies we actually bought for this venture. It’s an inch too short.

We cut in in half, rotate each piece 90 degrees. It covers the whole roof. excess hangs over the sides.

But we must join the two halves together so rain won’t leak thru. Garth refuses to use duct tape.

“I have experience with construction,” he says. “I want to do this right. Besides, duct tape in the sun is really bad.”

Garth and I scavenge 4 planks from a heap of rubble. Each one is 24 inches long, 1 inch wide. We lie one sheet of plastic on top of the other, line the planks up end to end along the edges we intend to fuse. I pick 20 small screws out of a pile of rusted screws and nails that lie scattered across the forest floor. Rolling in unison, we wrap the edges of our two plastic sheets around the wooden planks. I hold 4 more planks down on top of the wrapped ones. Garth screws them together.

We unfold the plastic, now one large sheet fused together in the center, and draw it across the roof. The clothesline support beams keep it from sagging down. The planks we screwed on lie in line with the center metal support beam in the tent frame. We secure the planks to the pole with plastic zip ties from Dollar General. We roll the excess plastic that hangs over the sides onto the poles of a dome tent and tie them up.

We have a rainproof roof. But it’s a foot too short for Garth.

We raise it by propping the 3 metal legs on old dead batteries from the junk pile, replacing the 2 by 4 leg with a long tree branch, and nailing extra pieces of 2 by 4 onto the ends of 2 other wooden legs.

It’s late afternoon. Garth and I have accomplished enough for the day.

Tomorrow we want to build a bed frame. So we traipse thru the woods toward shore, crawl on hands and knees thru mangroves, arrive at a junk pile with a lot of plywood in it. All the pieces vary in size and shape. We carry as much as we can back to the tee-pee. It’s heavy, awkward, difficult to drag over fallen trees and past protruding branches.

On the way back, we see Gonzo drifting toward the beach. We call Truck to let him know. He’s at work and doesn’t have a dinghy, so he can’t do anything about it. Garth and I agree to keep an eye on the boat. It’s not in danger at the moment.

My stomach rumbles.

“I get so tired,” I say, realizing that cooking dinner will involve starting a fire and keeping it going while peeling and chopping potatoes.

“I get tired to,” Garth says. “But not of you.”

Captain Bruce and a young friend stumble upon the tee-pee. They come in and take a seat. I prepare potatoes at the low table at the rear of the tee-pee, my back to the rest of the room. They give Garth a beer and he sits and talks with them.

I listen quietly while Bruce growls with conviction about how there are shady people around who will steal from you, how we’ll be safe as long as he’s around. He takes credit for our work on the tee-pee by saying he reserved the camp for us. That’s impossible. He didn’t know we were even considering staying on Wisteria Island until he found us here five minutes ago.

You can always tell when you’re dealing with a sketchy individual. There are signs. They will know everything about everything. They will be everyone’s friend. They will be the mastermind behind every plan and every good accident. They will warn you about how sketchy everyone else is. They will protect you. They will be a superhero.

They will be transparent as glass.

People like Captain Bruce get on my nerves.

He and his friend want to be invited to dinner, but don’t have the patience to wait. They take off for Key West.

Garth and I lie calmly together on a lounge chair pad by the fire, watch the peeled and cubed potatoes fry.

“I just want peace,” I say. “It’s peaceful just laying by the fire with you.”

Garth agrees.

After 40 minutes, the potatoes are only half cooked. We’re hungry. I throw green beans and Vienna sausages in the pan long enough to get warm, and then we eat.

“These are really good for being only half done,” Garth says.

It’s 8pm. Garth and I are so tired we fall asleep the second we lie down. I like it. I like being tired because I worked from dawn until dusk making my own house in the woods on an island in the “Caribbeans.”

Star-Spangled Banner bellows thru the trees. Embers crackle in the ring of rocks in the center of the tee-pee floor. Torn red and yellow sails glow as they sag thru the poles that lean together above our heads.

It’s  dawn. I’ve slept well.

Garth and I traipse back and forth between the tee-pee and the pile of belongings we left near shore last nite. We retrieve our suitcases, bags, water jugs.

Garth climbs trees and tee-pee poles, raises scavenged tarps and sails over the gaps where wind ripped the walls open. I use scavenged boards and 3-inch thick slabs of Styrofoam to fashion a long, low table. I unpack our things and organize them on top of it and beneath it.

Garth brings in a plastic patio table and two plastic chairs. He drives four metal camping chair legs into the ground inside the fire ring, throws a grate across them so we can cook on the flames. I wander thru old camps, look for something to make a tool bench out of.

“I can’t work like this!” Garth is screaming. “I can’t just spread my tools out on the ground! I need a place to organize them!”

“You make no sense,” I say. “When we were stuck in the boat, you kept saying you wanted to anchor next to a beach so you could spread everything out on the ground.”

In a clump of trees, I discover a pile of rotting blankets and sleeping bags. They obviously haven’t been used in years. Underneath them, I find two milk crates. I bring them back to camp.

“Where did you get those?” Garth asks. “Did you get them from that big artsy camp over there?”

There’s one especially elaborate camp located under the tallest pines on the island. It’s got a refrigerator, a restaurant-style garbage can, a pile of a hundred washed-up shoes, a curtain made of Mardi Gras beads, a collection of flash lites, a collection of stuffed animals, electronics plugged into tree trunks and various weird art projects. Someone lived there a long time and spent many hours creating all the strange horror movie displays that decorate it. We can’t tell for sure if anyone lives there now.

Garth and I only want to use our own things and things that are clearly abandoned. You never know what kind of altercations you may get into if someone returns to their camp to find their things have been commandeered. We don’t need enemies or complications.

“No. Not exactly,” I answer.

The pile of blankets and sleeping bags was close to the art camp, but clearly not a part of it.

“Not exactly. So they might belong to somebody. Put them back.”

“I know they weren’t being used.”

“You’re not sure. Put them back.”

I have a serious problem with being told what to do.

My judgment is as sound as Garth’s when it comes to identifying abandoned objects. Yet he tells me what to do as if I were a child.

I was hoping that eliminating the boat from our lives might eliminate sources of contention. It gave us a lot to fight about. Maybe it will take time for Garth to start acting laid-back again like he was before we got it.

I put the milk crates back where I got them and avoid Garth for a while.

When our camp is in order, we walk over to Christmas Tree’s north shore and meet Truck. He’s watching Bruce’s beached houseboat sink. There’s a hole in it now.

We give Truck the keys to Gonzo’s hatches, tell him we’ve moved out and he can move in. Truck’s already insured the boat and arranged to move it into his friend, Eric’s, slip. It’ll be much safer there than it will be thrashing around in the open waters of Key West harbor.

After that, Garth and I explore a bit.

We come upon the heap of blankets and sleeping bags where I found the milk crates.

“Oh, is this where you found those?” he says.

“Yeah.”

“It looks like fair game to me.”

“That’s what I thought.”

I don’t know why you refuse to trust my judgment on anything.

Back at the tee-pee, I make a tool bench out of the crates and organize all of our tools into it. Garth hacks out a direct path from our camp to the bathroom.

The bathroom is a hole in the ground with a wooden chair built over it. The chair has a motorcycle seat on it. Where the seat’s cushion once was, there is a toilet seat. A huge umbrella stands over it. Blankets form walls around it.

Later on, Garth and I explore some more and find a barely visible overgrown path. It leads to what used to be a network of clearings. In one opening, the metal frame of a carnival-style tent still stands. It’s 15 feet long, 10 feet wide. One leg is a 2 by4. Another leg is a bed post. Trees arch across the roof, blown by hurricanes. Weeds grow knee-deep beneath it. All around it, in other overgrown clearings, piles of nails, screws and bolts rust on the ground amid brittle, shattered tool boxes. Tents disintegrate in heaps of plywood, shelves and cassette tapes. This was once a very functional camp.

It’s well-hidden, long-abandoned and filled with useful things. We decide to make our permanent camp here.

At the end of the nite, Garth and I cook dinner on the campfire and go to sleep on our memory foam.

“I wouldn’t do something like this without you,” Garth says. “I like it that you do these kinds of things. It wouldn’t be the same without you.”

January 8. 2010.

With Gonzo revived and the dinghy patched, we’d planned to row into Key West.

“If we could get into a protected anchorage,” Garth says at dawn, “we could go ashore regularly and use the internet and get something done during this storm instead of just rocking around.”

Today, it will be 70 degrees.

For 3 days after today, it will be around 45 degrees. Rain will fall. 20-40 knot winds will blow ceaselessly. There will be no rowing.

We can use today to explore Key West and use the town library, then be stuck inside Gonzo’s cabin for 3 days, rocking around; or we can use today to sail east along the Keys, get closer to the 10,000 Islands, find a protected anchorage and row into the closest town during the storm.

Garth gets out the charts and Skipper Bob Guide.

“The next protected anchorage is Newfoundland Harbor off Hawk Channel,” he says.

He analyzes the chart. I lie in bed and wait, unable to get past him as he is sitting in the entrance to the v-berth, concentrating too hard to bother moving.

“This is impossible to figure out!” he says. “I can’t find Hawk Channel! These charts make no sense!”

I remember seeing Hawk Channel on the charts. Maybe I can find it.

I sit up, look over Garth’s shoulder, reach for the chart.

“Please!” he snaps. “Let me figure this out and then you can look at it!”

I may actually be able to help you, but I have absolutely no interest now.

I lay back down, turn my back to him, wait for his typical rash decision.

A massive wake rolls by. Gonzo becomes a tilt-a-whirl.

“I don’t care where we go!” Garth shouts. “As long as it’s somewhere else!”

“I want to figure out where we’re going and how to get there before we leave. I’m not interested in fucking around on this boat at random for an indefinite period of time,” I say.

I just want to get off it for good.

I get up and begin dressing.Garth throws the charts down and gets under the covers.

“We’re not doing anything,” he says. “I can’t understand these charts and I don’t want to row to Key West in that traffic.”

It’s daylite and the water’s perfectly calm. The boat traffic in the channel really isn’t that bad. I’m certainly not just sitting here during our one day of good weather.

I pick up the chart. The Keys are difficult to read, but with patience I locate Hawk Channel, Newfoundland Harbor and a route that will take us there.

“I found where you wanna go,” I say.

“If I’d known you were looking, I would’ve told you not to. I’m not going.”

What about me? What about what I wanna do? I don’t wanna sit in this boat all day and watch you mope and complain. But you think you’re going to decide for both of us, as usual. Why do I let you do this?

I wash the dishes. I plug in the solar panel to charge the batteries. I fold all of my clothes and all of Garth’s, consolidating mine into my newly cleaned hold and his into 2 garbage sacks.

“Orderliness,” I mutter. “I want my clothes to be orderly. This is all I have. I don’t care if it’s the only order in my life. I’m losing track of my existence. what year was it when we were in New Orleans?”

I make coffee, hand Garth’s mug into the v-berth.

If I can’t talk you into getting out of bed, I’ll make you get out by feeding you stimulants.

After a few sips, Garth is sitting on the settee, staring mournfully into his clothes hole.

“So what are we gonna do today?” he asks.

“We can still go to town.”

He packs the laptop. I pocket the hatch keys.

We need the rolling suitcase to carry groceries. It’s in the cockpit hold. the hold is shut with a padlock.

For unknown reasons, I have severe problems with padlocks. I cannot open or close them. It’s a problem I developed in Annapolis. Before that, I remember being perfectly capable of locking and unlocking padlocks.

I stick the key in. It fits, but won’t turn. I struggle with it. I remove that key, insert another one. I rattle it. It won’t budge. Garth sighs impatiently.

“I was getting in the kayak. But I’ll get back out and unlock that since you can’t.”

Dick. I don’t talk to you like that when you can’t figure out how to tie a fucking bowline.

“I really don’t like it when you speak to me that way,” I say.

We row slowly across placid water in warm sun and arrive at the Key West Bight Marina’s dock in 20 minutes. We pay the $6 day-docking fee.

The plan: I go to the library and write while Garth shops for food. He stays at the library and writes while I explore Key West.

The library is crowded with screaming children and the internet is so slow it crashes while navigating between pages. We leave.

“There’s an internet cafe downtown,” Garth says.

On our way there, we spot a Wendy’s. Being famished, we drop in and order 6 chicken sandwiches, the only $1 item on the menu.

While we’re in line, a road kid drifts up to the counter. He wears a faded striped cardigan, tattered patchwork shorts and blond almost-dreads that hang to his chin. He resembles Kurt Cobain.

“I want to be that kid,” I say to Garth.

He has nothing. No money. No boat. Nothing. He is free.

I remember what that was like.

Garth and I eat and then head for the cafe. They charge 10 cents a minute to use wireless with your own laptop. Rip-off.

As we pack up to leave, a local guy tells us the only free wi-fi in town can be found at a dockside marketplace. He gives us squirrelly directions.

We wander all over town, get hot and tired, get run over by tourists on scooters, get yelled at by bouncers selling two-for-one drink deals in bar and pub doorways.

We never find internet.

We fill our suitcase with a few groceries from Fausto’s, an expensive downtown grocery store.

With $3 left, we shuffle tiredly back to the marina and sit on the dock. Garth smokes a cigarette.

“It would be dumb of me to leave without seeing that lady I know about work,” he says. “She’s rich and knows everyone and may even be able to put us up in a slip. What do you think?”

“Work always starts out sounding like a brilliant idea. Then we end up hating it. But we have to stay because we’re in debt to someone for slip rent or something else. I know I won’t be happy. I’ll be trying to convince myself I’m happy. On the other hand, I know I’ll be happy if I have nothing and owe no one.”

Garth and I row back to Gonzo, drop off our groceries and laptop and continue on toward Wisteria Island. Tying up the dinghy to a tree, we walk into the woods.

Except for a few tall pines in the center, most of the trees are dead. There’s thick 5-foot high brush all around. There are many pathways that lead to strange encampments made of old furniture and parts from sailboats. They are elaborate, but long-abandoned.

Crossing all the way to the other side of the island, we come out on the beach to see fellow in the surf wrestling a skiff. He’s around 40 with a dark tan and the cheekbone-length blond dreads of an electrocution victim. Half his teeth are rotten, the others missing.

“I’m Captain Bruce,” he says.

He’s trying to drag the skiff off a little sailboat he claims to own. Garth and I give him a hand.

He talks in a loud, raspy, Pop-eye voice. He laughs obnoxiously and refers to himself as a pirate.

We spend the evening with him. He drives us to Key West on a dinghy with an engine that barely starts and buys us beers at a little bar near the marina. He swings by our boat on the way back to Wisteria Island. Garth grabs our rum. He shows us his houseboat. It’s anchored way too close to the northern shore of the island. A hundred foot ship is sunken right behind it. Inside it’s a junk yard. It must once have been worth a lot of money. If he doesn’t move it, the northerly that’s about to blow in will destroy it.

Next, Bruce leads Garth and I to his camp in Wisteria’s woods. He has a friend there. A six-foot eight-inch tall fellow named Truck. He’s very quiet.

We all sit around a fire. Bruce tells us that the locals call Wisteria “Christmas Tree Island” because the local boat kids have a Christmas Party here every year.

He shares a joint, drinks our rum and proceeds to talk non-stop about himself for the rest of the nite. He says what he believes to be very profound things about the beautiful women in his life, his 6 kids, sailing between Belize and Key West for ten years, being a welcome gringo in Latin America, living on expensive yachts…

At the end of every massively exaggerated story, he leans in close, punches me in the shoulder, eyes popping wide, and growls, “GET IT?” as tho his senseless ramblings were supposed to induce major epiphanies about the true meaning of life.

Bruce claims to have saved many lives as a body guard, but won’t name any names, “Not even for 2 million bucks in a bag.”

He finds derelict boats anchored around Key West, fixes them and sells them.

He goes on and on about being raised in Ohio and Vegas, about how he knows Hugh Hefner and has dated Playboy Bunnies, about being a Harley racer and builder. He yells dramatically about crashing bikes at 132 miles per hour.

He gives us a lot of advice about how to live on a boat. “Yer in the Caribbeans now, dude,” he says over and over.

Very little of what he says makes sense and his Popeye Argh!  grates on my brain. Garth and I take our leave and traipse thru the woods to the shore where our dinghy is tied up.

January 9. 2010.

The storm arrives at 4am. First gust is an alarm clock. I don’t sleep after it busts thru. I lie awake, nerves clenched, waiting for something traumatic to happen.

At dawn, the small anchor’s line comes loose from its cleat on the bow with an explosive snap.

Relentless 15 mile per hour wind. Only one bent anchor down.

Gonzo WILL drag.

He’ll collide with another anchored boat, the coral shores of Christmas Tree Island, a submerged shipwreck.

Something must be done.

We need another anchor. Diving for the one we just lost is not an option. The storm-tossed water has chilled to refrigerator temperature.

We must tie Gonzo to a tree on shore.

“I could hear that line creaking,” Garth grumbles. “It wasn’t tied off very well. If I had just gone up and re-tied it, we wouldn’t have lost it.”

Garth and I are too lazy to be sailors. We often wait until it’s too late to fix a problem, making it worse and more difficult to remedy.

Garth puts on his rain suit. I pull on waterproof overalls, but can’t find my rain jacket. There’s no time to look for it.

Rain pelts down in diagonal curtains.

I drag all of our non-frayed docking lines from their hold, hitch them together end to end with bowline knots.

Garth ties one end of the extra long line to a cleat on Gonzo’s bow, leaves the rest coiled on deck.

We lower the kayak, get in, row forward, grab the coiled line, paddle toward Christmas tree Island’s shore.

The line unravels as we row, but comes taught just before the beach. It’s not long enough. Gonzo pulls against the line, drags the kayak back out to sea.

To keep from drifting, Garth and I step out the kayak into chilled knee-deep ocean.

Garth stands in the water, holds the line, plays tug-of-war with Gonzo while I walk the kayak ashore so it won’t blow away.

I wade back out to Garth, carrying the one extra line we’d brought in case we needed more. I attach it to the end of our extra long line.

With it’s new addition, the line still doesn’t reach shore.

Garth hands me the line, runs to the beach, searches the driftwood and rubble, pulls tangles of stiff black line from amid seaweed.

Meanwhile, I stand knee-deep in the ocean, waves splashing up my pant legs, rain soaking my cotton shirt, wind blowing against it so it sticks to my skin.

I grip the end of the line with both hands. Each time Gonzo swings away, I tip toward the ground, stumble further out into the sea. When the boat stops resisting, I lean backward with all my weight, step backward into shallower water.

I get cold. My fingers go stiff and ache.

Garth fiddles with a hopelessly knotted wad of line.

“Garth! Those lines are brittle! They’ll break! It’ll take less time to row back to the boat and get more docking lines than it will to untangle that!”

He continues to comb the beach, leaving me standing in the ocean, fighting Gonzo, getting rain-soaked and cold.

“Garth! I can hold this line, but I don’t want to do it all day! Row back and get another line!”

He finally gets in the kayak. It takes him all of 7 seconds to row to Gonzo.

He rows back with our last two good docking lines, beaches the dinghy, wades out to me.

He tries knotting the new lines onto the original one, but can’t tie a bowline to save his life.

Sailors use the bowline knot because it holds no matter how much weight you put on it. But it only works if you tie it right. The last thing we want is for the knots to come out of our line.

“Let me do it,” I say.

“Just tell me how!” Garth says.

“I can’t TELL you how to tie a knot! I’d have to SHOW you! But I can’t let go of this line and let the boat float away!”

“I need practice!”

“Now is not the time to practice! I’m cold and wet! Just let me do it!”

Garth tries again. The knot comes loose.

He takes the end of the line from me, freeing me to tie on the new additions.

“I did that 5,000 times during the boat show!” he says. “Now I can’t remember how! It’s like I can’t tie knots when you’re around! It’s bullshit!”

I wait for Gonzo to swing toward us so the line will slacken. Before he swings away again, I tie the extra lines on. One of the lines is so thick the knot won’t tighten. It comes loose repeatedly. I tie it a fourth time, wrap a bunch of extra knots around it.

Finally, the line is long enough.

We drag it ashore and hitch it around a tree trunk, then row back to Gonzo.

I change into dry clothes and Garth makes chili and coffee for lunch.

After we eat, he finally packs his clothes into his hold and puts the cushion back on the settee.

The boat is now entirely clear of clutter.

It’s also secure. It doesn’t thrash in the waves. No anchor lines creak.

Wind howls, rain drives down all day long. It’s 40 degrees.

“I can see my breath,” I say, watching my exhale rise into cold air like factory smoke. “This is unacceptable.”

Garth told me Key West never gets below 65 degrees. That’s why we came here. It figures the temperatures would plummet to record lows the second we arrive.

It’s always cold. everywhere.

January. 10. 2010.

The storm drones thru the nite, continues into morning.

Gonzo being clean and repaired, Garth and I have no on-board projects to occupy ourselves. Given the 25 knot winds, we can’t row into Key West.

At noon, when the rain stops, we row the few yards to Christmas Tree Island to escape the boat’s rocking and stretch our legs.

We trek across the island to Captain Bruce’s camp. He’s moved dishes, tables, a drum set, radios, shelves and chairs into the woods. Tarps stretch between trees to cut wind. Fire blazes in a ring in the camp’s center and in a metal box atop a stack of rocks.

Tall, lanky Truck greets us from a chair.

Bruce invites us to stay, then heads for his skiff. He’s going into Key West to get beer and cigarettes. He leaves Truck to guard his camp.

Truck hasn’t known Bruce long. They met a couple months ago. Truck worked for a friend and didn’t get paid. Having no money, he caught a ride to Christmas Tree Island to camp out. Bruce said he’d bring Truck food, water, beer and cigarettes if Truck would help move things from his houseboat to the woods and guard it whenever Bruce is in town.

Truck explains that Bruce rarely brings any food other than a couple packs of Ramen. He bums around Duval Street, hitting on young tourist girls, getting drunk, scamming. He always comes back to Christmas Tree to sleep tho.

Garth goes back to Gonzo to retrieve a couple cans of food. I sit across the fire from Truck.

“So, when Bruce sails to Belize, will you crew his boat?” I ask.

Bruce claims to own a 40 foot sailing yacht. Two Belizian kids bring it to Key West in the summer so he can sail it back down to Belize. He married a Belizian girl once. She’s the mother of his six kids. He says Belizians love him because he treated her so well. They would do anything for him. He’s a dual citizen.

“Hell, no!” Truck says in a mild southern accent. “I just said that to be nice. Bruce isn’t goin’ to Belize anyway.”

Truck is from North Carolina. He was a college basketball star there. That’s how he got his nickname, Truck. His strategy on the court was to run people over. The name stuck, and he kept it as a trail name during his two Appalachian Trail thru-hikes. His real name is Jimmy Foster. While he was a scuba diving instructor years ago, he got a captain’s license and began moving yachts up and down the east coast for rich people. He has sailed many times around the world in races.

Truck is poor now because even rich people can’t own too many yachts in this economy. So he lives a self-sufficient, day-to-day lifestyle on the road.

He believes in simplicity. Doesn’t like owning a lot of things. If he has a fire and a pot of macaroni and cheese, he’s genuinely happy.

“I love this!” he says, gesturing at the campfire and surrounding trees. “What else do you need?”

Truck’s also quiet and laid back.

“I’m the guy in the background,” he says.

He’s about to turn 49 and has done a lot. His stories are lucid and believable.

A stark contrast to Bruce, whose self-aggrandizing, attention-demanding melodrama is overwhelming and difficult to sort out. Truck says Garth and I are right to believe only half of what he says.

“He’s pissed off a lot of people,” Truck says of Captain Bruce.

He explains that the houseboat Bruce showed us actually belongs to a Canadian man who was deported. He’s hiding it and gutting it. Hence its precarious anchorage. Truck says authorities are searching for Bruce.

Garth brings two cans of chili, heats them on the fire stones. We share with Truck. After talking a while, we get Truck’s phone number and go back to Gonzo.

January 11. 2010.

Garth and I look at the charts again. Should we go back to the 10,000 Islands? Should we stay in Key West? Should we search for an uninhabited island in the Keys?

“We have to dive for that anchor before we go anywhere,” Garth says. “We’re down to one now, and if we lose it, we’ll be finished.”

Sailors who don’t have money to dock or moor must anchor. Without an anchor, we’d never be able to stop once we got underway.

The weather is calm. Sunny. But the water is freezing. I did the breakfast dishes in a bucket of ocean water. My hands turned to ice cubes.

“You can’t dive into that water,” I say. “It’s so cold that once you’re completely submerged, you won’t be able to function or even catch your breath.”

Besides, you can’t swim. I’d have to do it.

I’m terrified of the shipwreck that rots beneath us. The lost anchor will be right underneath it.

“You probably won’t be able to see down there either. Even with goggles. In shallow water, waves kick up clouds of sand. It’ll be too murky.”

I’m not saying all this to discourage him. I’m being realistic. I don’t want Garth to jump into the frozen ocean unless there’s a good possibility it will be worth it.

“It’s not gonna be warm again for three days,” he says. “I’m not leaving without that anchor, and I’m not waiting here another three days.”

He argues with himself again about where to go and when.

“Would you like to know my opinion?” I ask.

“You don’t HAVE and opinion!” he says, exasperated.

My core seizes up like it’s in a trash compactor.

“Excuse me? Since when?”

I have a serious problem with being stifled.

Garth gets in bed. I get out a spray bottle, clear my shelf, wipe mold from the fiberglass.

Before replacing my things on the clean shelf, I sift thru them, thin them out. I toss a big paintbrush I never use into the garbage sack.

“You’re throwing that away?” Garth says. “Don’t throw that away.”

“I don’t use it. I don’t want it.”

“Don’t throw it away. It could be useful.”

To who? I don’t see anyone painting anything on this boat. It’s mine. I’m allowed to throw away my things if I want to. Right? Guess not.

I have a serious problem with being told what to do.

Garth rails on about being stuck. He wants to leave now, but he also wants to leave with our second anchor.

He can’t decided what he wants. He’s incapable of making decisions because he’s a perfectionist. None of his options are perfect. They all have drawbacks. Therefore, he is doomed to remain in discontented limbo between them all, never accomplishing anything.

Yet he refuses to listen to my opinion or let me make the decisions.

I squirt mold with bleach. Garth tells me I’m using the spray bottle wrong.

I have a serious problem with being nagged about how to use spray bottles.

I remain silent, clench my jaw, focus on my project.

I listen as Garth debates with himself endlessly, never coming to a conclusion, getting more irritated every second.

“You’re not saying anything,” he says.

“I don’t have an opinion. Remember?”

He growls with frustration.

This whole situation is becoming a serious problem.

“I want my life to be simple,” I say. “And I don’t want to be told what to do.”

This situation needs to be drastically altered.

“Truck is a boat captain with nowhere to live,” Garth says. “He knows people who sell boats on consignment. Why don’t we give the boat to him?”

“Yes. Let’s do that,” I say without hesitation.

We can’t go any further on it. We don’t have the money to take care of it. I don’t want to work. I’m sick of all the problems that come with living on the water. I don’t want to own or be responsible for anything. I am done with sailing. I need a new gig. I would LOVE to give Gonzo away.

“Now I feel like you’re just agreeing with me,” Garth says. “I feel like you’re letting me talk you into something you don’t want to do, like when we left the 10,000 Islands and came to the Key West.”

No. Actually, I answered quickly because I know what I want.

“Don’t do things just because you think it’ll make me happy,” he continues.

“I’m over the idea of doing things that’ll make you happy,” I say. “I don’t care if you’re happy. It’s impossible to make you happy anyway. No matter what we do or where we go, you’ll always be discontented. I want to give the boat away. This is what I want to do.”

I replace my possessions on my clean shelf. Garth calls Truck.

He and I get into the yellow kayak and row to Bruce’s houseboat, where Trucks awaits our arrival.

As we’re pulling the dinghy ashore, Garth stops.

“Something is on your mind,” he says. “I don’t think this is what you want.”

“I know what I want. I’m not thinking about the boat; I’m thinking about you and me. We don’t get along well.”

We rest the kayak on the sand near the houseboat, which also rests ashore, tilted and rocking in the waves.

Garth looks closely at me.

“You’re the most important thing,” he says in earnest. “I don’t care what happens as long as you’re here.”

Inside the houseboat’s grimy cabin full of empty food containers and dirty dishes, Truck swivels on the captain’s chair. Garth and I sit facing him on the springs of a cushionless couch.

We explain our situation, offer Truck the boat.

I wait while he and Garth dinghy over to inspect Gonzo and get the title.

When they return, Truck advises us not to discuss the transaction with Captain Bruce, who beached the houseboat intentionally so that he could loot it and sell everything off. We agree.

Back at Gonzo, Garth and I pack everything we own into any bag suitcase or container we can find. After dark, we ferry it all to Christmas Tree Island on the yellow kayak. Garth makes three trips back and forth. I pile everything in the woods. We don’t want to be seen. ‘No Trespassing’ sings surround the island’s perimeter.

To start with, we take only our most valuable things and trek to a tee-pee we found in the island’s center. It’s made of dead pine boughs and shredded sails. We spread our memory foam on a tarp by the fire ring in the tee-pee’s center.

We fall sound asleep.

The ground does not rock. There’s no anchor to drag.