The Last Karankawas(34)
The crew of the Cig go out on another run a few days later, then every day for the next four days. They have a string of luck, haul in enough to reach the daily limit a few times, and Vinh wants to take advantage of it. Schafer picks up the names for various Gulf fish that find their way into the catch—shad, drum, croaker. Once there is a small sea turtle, even though Rey says every net has the required TED, turtle excluder device. Schafer lifts it carefully, peering at its beak, its wedged spotted flippers. He thinks of Laurie, the veterinary tech: how she would beam at this turtle, point out the scars along its olive-colored shell, before tossing it back into the Gulf.
She still calls every few days, right at 5:15, when he knows she is climbing back into her car after her work at the clinic. He pictures her at a stop light on North Street, drumming her polished nails on the steering wheel, saying aloud, Please please just pick up. He watches her name blink on his phone until it finally disappears. She won’t leave a voicemail.
He feels like shit, right on time. He should just answer. He should just call her back, talk to her. But he opens the fridge instead, thinking, Coward. Knowing two Bud Lights won’t be enough. When Schafer does pick up the phone this time, he calls Jess.
They meet at a bar on the Gulf side, one Jess swears is touristy enough to get the hot girls from Houston but local enough they won’t frown on sunburned, sweat-stained watermen who wear caps indoors. It has a patio where they can sit and watch the foot traffic on the Seawall—joggers, families out for a stroll, people on obnoxious tandem bicycles—but all those tables are taken so they post up inside. Schafer buys the first round, Jess the second, and they alternate from there until Jess’s grin stretches wider than usual and Schafer no longer hears Laurie whispering his name.
It becomes another routine, one he settles into, one he relishes. Every couple of days, he and Jess—and sometimes Rey, and once even Vinh—meet at a dive bar along the Seawall. Pound beers, take shots. Sometimes Schafer catches a woman’s eye and smiles. Twice he leaves with someone. But usually he is content to sit with the men, listening to them talk about family, baseball, the water, letting their voices and laughter push through the murk of his memories.
He hasn’t dreamed about Iraq or Kerrville once since arriving on the island. At night, if he wakes up drenched in sweat, it is because the AC has cut out. He can handle that. He can fall back asleep after that.
In late August, Laurie stops calling.
* * *
“So how do you like being a shrimper?” Jess asks. They have made their way down a set of steps carved into the Seawall, leading to the beach. The sun is going down, the boulevard still bustling with evening strollers. The air has cooled, slightly, and now sits lukewarm on their exposed skin. Schafer pulls out his Camels and lights a cigarette; he offers the pack to Jess, who shakes his head.
He takes a drag and blows it out. “It’s good labor—you do this, then you do this, and if you do it all in the right order, and you’re lucky, you get shrimp. I like the routine.”
“It clears your head, right?” Jess gestures vaguely to his forehead in a waving motion. “My girl doesn’t get that. How it is out on the water.” He pauses. “You’re pretty white for a migrant worker.”
Schafer has to laugh.
“We get plenty of drifters—it’s a bay town. You’re not from here, you seem like a good dude, and you’re white as fuck.” He smiles when he said it. “What’s your deal?”
Jess slips off his flip-flops, digging his toes in the sand. Schafer follows suit.
“I like making my way around places,” Schafer says. He draws on the cigarette. “Finding something new to do, learning how. I’ve been doing it years now.”
“What were you doing before?”
He doesn’t plan to say it. He has made it this far, weeks and many trips out on the water, hours spent with the men, without saying it. He doesn’t like telling anyone because, as Cab likes to say, that is when their faces change. Watch, güey, just watch the patriotic pity shit take over. A person hears Army or Iraq or tour of duty, and their eyes glint. They shift their smile into what they always think is a look of admiration, but instead is relief. A thank God it was you and not me, pal look.
But Jess waits with the patience of a waterman. And he has been a friend, Schafer knows. Steady, these weeks. So he tells him. “I was in Iraq.”
He watches for Jess’s face to change, but it doesn’t. He purses his lips, nods seriously. “Shit” is all he says. “Did you kill anyone?”
“I was an MP, did mostly convoy security. I was a gunner.”
“So … yeah?”
Some memory wants to rise up, maybe the swirling desert sand in his mouth, maybe the crack of bullets or the thud as they burrow into a body. Whatever it is, Schafer pushes it away. He’s gotten good at that. It isn’t important, he tells himself. It isn’t the stuff that matters in his story.
“A few,” he says, just to move the conversation along.
“Shit, man,” Jess says again. “That’s heavy.”
They stay quiet a while, and he is grateful—Jess knows how to let him sit in silence. So many people fear it, worry what he might be thinking, and fill the void with chatter. But he and Jess sit, let the passersby, the seagulls, and the murmuring waves do the talking.