Forget You(28)
Author: Jennifer Echols

I paced under the Hemingway sign. Then I walked up the dock to the shallower water, reasoning that moving away would cause the Hemingway to sail closer. On the bottom of the shallows, hermit crabs, all legs and claws under borrowed shells, picked across the rocks and oysters. I counted five of them in the small section I could see before the sand fell away from the shore and the water grew deep and dark. Five crabs moving in different directions, each headed where another had just been. If I knew what their goal was and what destination would best help them achieve that goal, I could line them up and send them there in an orderly fashion. Doug would scoff at me for this.

I longed for him to scoff at me. It was awful. I was only attracted to him because I couldn’t have him. I was with Brandon. If I broke up with Brandon to be with Doug, even if Doug did want me, I wouldn’t want Doug anymore and I’d pine away for Brandon. This was how it worked, being a cheater. I hoped Ashley was enjoying her time in Hawaii, because her days with my dad were numbered.

I knew this, yet the sign that said Hemingway pulled me back down the crumbling pier. I examined the water hoses, the plastic buckets, and wondered whether Doug had touched them. Had he taped the Pegleg Doug sheet to the Hemingway sign? I pictured him balancing on one leg, dropping his crutches, and bracing himself against the sign with one hand, a stapler in the other. In school today I could tell he’d already grown accustomed to his crutches and had developed a routine for letting them go, throwing himself into a nether realm without balance, and gracefully taking his next handhold just before falling. I knew the movements of his dance as if I were dancing it myself.

And there was Doug, facing away from me, braced against a rail around the bow of the Hemingway . The boat glided fast through the green-blue inlet, already so close that I stepped back in surprise. Then, because Doug was arguing with his dad, I kept backing up. I sat on a clean space on a nearby bench, between blobs of dried seagull poop, to wait.

I didn’t recognize Mr. Fox. I didn’t think he’d ever been to a swim meet. But I knew who he was right away because Doug argued with him. And because even though Mr. Fox was blond with a ponytail and a beard, he was built like Officer Fox, a tad shorter and thicker than Doug. As Doug ducked below the rail, working, Mr. Fox scanned the shoreline. His eyes moved over me without stopping.

The boat bumped gently against the padded dock and backed up a little, engine churning and water boiling. Over this noise I heard Mr. Fox cursing the boat pilot. Then he watched Doug struggling for a moment and said, "Put your weight into it. What are you, a fag?" He turned on his heel, disappeared into the cabin, and came out with a beer can in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. Holding the beer perfectly level so not a drop spilled, he jumped from boat to shore and headed for a small charter office behind me without a word to any of the passengers or crew, and without a glance at me.

Every few seconds Doug’s head popped up from beneath the rail. Still struggling.

On the phone he’d said at first that he didn’t want me to pick him up here. He’d suggested he crutch up to Jamaica Joe’s on the corner and meet me there. Then he’d suggested he crutch up to his house, which he’d said was not inland, as I’d assumed, but on a bluff nearby. Neither of these suggestions had made sense to me. Why should Doug hobble when I could drive? I’d insisted on meeting him as close to the boat as possible. Now I understood the problem. Everybody was embarrassed of crazy parents.

The crew and the fishermen and the fish they’d caught spilled from the boat onto the wharf. Doug came after them, pushing a barrel in front of him and holding on to the boat rail with the other hand to keep from toppling over. He bent to retrieve his crutches and hobbled into the boat’s cabin. He came out in a different T-shirt and shorts. He crutched to the side of the boat, paused a moment to consider the bobbing bow and the two-foot gap to the wharf, and finally hopped across the gap as if he’d been on crutches all his life. When one of the crew tossed a hose to the concrete, Doug picked it up and squirted off his good foot, flip-flop and all.

Then he crutched toward me. "Hello," he called without smiling. Just as he stopped in front of me, the cool breeze whipped around him, carrying his scent to me. No chlorine today. He smelled of soap and ocean.

I stood up. "Hi," I tried to say casually, as if I were still innocent and hadn’t heard what his dad said to him. The dark look he shot me let me know I was a bad actress.

I cleared my throat. "Y didn’t get the marlin?"

"We did. We like to take a picture of it and then let it go. When men bring home a seven-foot-long dead fish, their wives don’t want them to come out with us again. What happens on the Hemingway stays on the Hemingway." His words were light, his tone somber.

I laughed. "I take it you’ve seen a lot happen on the Hemingway."

One black eyebrow went up ever so briefly, then back down. His mouth twisted into a tight bow. This sober mood of his worried me. Doug was frequently angry but rarely down. His anger was explosive, like his happiness. His depression was something only a parent could cause.

"So." He gestured with his head toward the parking lot. "More hair of the dog."

"Hair of the deer." I walked slowly beside him so he wouldn’t have to exert himself as much. I saw it was just hard for him to crutch, propelling forward six foot two inches of height and a hundred and eighty-six pounds (I knew his stats from swim team) with his upper body only. Each time he put his weight on the crutches and swung his good foot forward, his biceps bulged against the material of his FSU T-shirt–a different one from Saturday, faded gold rather than faded red.

I unlocked the Benz with the remote and stood on the passenger side to open his door, or hold his crutches, whatever he needed. But I could have predicted he wouldn’t let me help him. In a few deft moves he swung into the car and tossed his crutches into the backseat, shaking his black hair out of his eyes. I started to close the door for him, but he reached for the handle first.

I rounded the car and slipped into the driver’s seat. Cranking the engine, I pressed buttons to lower all four windows and let the heat out. I paused a moment more to make sure I was comfortable driving. This was my third time behind the wheel today and I kept expecting to feel shell-shocked, with heart palpitations and sweating hands. Nothing. No post-traumatic stress disorder, no memory of the accident. There was nothing but a drive to find out what had happened to me, an itch to be evil, and a soft spot for Doug. "Sweet ride," he said.

"Thanks. My dad’s," I said as I steered the car up the hill past Jamaica Joe’s. "I only get it until he comes back from Hawaii next Saturday."