Troubles in Paradise (Paradise #3)(10)
“You gonna be okay here?” Dunk asks. “Someone is coming to get you?”
“Yep, all set, all set,” Baker says. It won’t be a G-wagon with a driver but someone will come, he hopes, or if everyone is busy, he’ll schlep every gosh-darn thing they own to the dock in the scorching heat and flag down one of the open-air taxis, the driver of which will probably balk when Baker tells him he lives on a hilltop in Little Cinnamon.
He should have returned Cash’s call from the Houston airport. Not setting up a ride was very shortsighted.
Floyd starts to cry. “It’s hot,” he says. “I want a snack and a juice. Where’s Grammy?”
Baker pulls Floyd along like a toy on a string. “You were asleep when they served the meal on the plane, honey, but I’ll get you something the second we get home. And you can swim in the pool for as long as you want. There are still three whole days until you start school, so we can do some exploring in the Jeep. We’ll take the top off and make it a convertible.”
Instead of placating Floyd, this agitates him further and a mini-tantrum follows. I want the pool now, I want a snack now…Baker swivels his head to check that Dunk Huntley has left and isn’t watching Baker. Dunk Huntley has no idea how difficult dealing with a four-year-old can be.
Sex app, artisanal weed edibles, real estate development. Wasps of Good Fortune. Baker wonders if it’s supposed to be WASPs, as in “white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.” That’s an obnoxious name for a band, and they probably stink despite the early–Men at Work sound, yet Baker can’t deny he finds Young Croc Dunk Samba WASPy Wunderkind Huntley fascinating.
Baker checks his phone. Nothing from his mother or Cash.
He calls Cash. Straight to voicemail.
He calls Irene. She answers on the fifth ring. Her “Hello” is little more than a whisper.
“Mom?” he says.
“Oh, Baker,” she says. Her voice is broken; something is wrong. Baker will ask once he’s off this dock and in one of the air-conditioned Jeeps.
“Is there any way you can pick us up?” Baker says. “We got a ride over from St. Thomas with this guy on his boat and so we’re on the National Park Service dock instead of the regular ferry dock.”
“What?” Irene says. “Where are you?”
“The National Park Service dock.”
“Here?” she says. “On St. John?”
“Yes, here on St. John,” he says. “It’s Thursday, Mom.” He tries not to sound so exasperated because if he’s learned one thing about the Virgin Islands, it’s that every day feels like Saturday.
“Didn’t Cash call you?”
“Yes, he called me—”
“Didn’t he tell you?”
“Tell me what?” Baker says.
Huck
He doesn’t understand women—and how is that possible after so many years of loving them?
Huck grew up with a sister, Caroline, who was a scant two years younger than him and who learned to fish from their father right alongside Huck. But whereas Huck was all about sport-fishing—the hunt, the fight, the elation that came from landing a big one—Caroline liked the quiet elegance of fly-fishing. She showed an uncanny talent for it early on, which was unusual for a child that young. She preferred dancing her line over the flats of Islamorada to a trip out to blue water, and to his credit, their father, the original Captain Powers, nurtured her gift. By the time Caroline was thirteen, she had won every youth fly-fishing competition in the state of Florida, competitions in which she was always the only girl.
All through high school, instead of dating or hanging out at the Green Turtle with her friends, Caroline would sit at her desk and tie flies. Caroline Powers became famous for her flies; grown men paid good money for them—good money, the price jacked up to an almost absurd level because Caroline didn’t want to sell them. Her flies were works of art; she had the patience, the attention to detail, the slender, nimble fingers. She had the love and devotion.
While Huck was in Vietnam at the tail end of the war, 1974 to 1975, Caroline went to college in Gainesville, met a boy from the Florida Panhandle, followed that boy when he went to law school in Tallahassee, married him, and gave up fishing altogether. That, Huck didn’t understand. Whenever Caroline and her new husband, Beau, came back to Islamorada to visit, they would go sport-fishing with their father on the big boat, and although Caroline was impressive the way she cast and reeled in the big fish, Huck yearned to see her with her fly rod again. He even suggested it once, the two of them out together on the flats at dawn in the pontoon. She shut him down immediately in a hushed voice: “No, Huck, I can’t.” As though fly-fishing were something embarrassing she used to do as a kid, like going roller-skating in just a bikini and a pair of red knee socks.
Caroline was diagnosed with a brain tumor the week after her fortieth birthday and was dead by forty-one. Soon after, her husband, Beau, gave Huck a flat tackle box. When Huck opened it, he saw Caroline’s flies, one in each sectioned compartment like so many jewels. He has them still.
Before she met Huck, Kimberly Cassel was a bartender at Sloppy Joe’s in Key West. In those days, Huck was not yet Huck—he was just Sam Powers—and he was not yet a captain; he was first mate for a guy everyone called Captain Coke. Every Sunday, Coke would invite Sam to go out on the water “just for fun,” and nearly every Sunday, Sam said no because Sunday was his only day off and he had to do things like laundry and grocery shopping, and sometimes he hitchhiked up to Islamorada, where his mother would cook him dinner. But one Sunday in March of 1978, Sam said sure and Coke said, “Finally! I’ve been wanting to introduce you to my sister.”