The Soul Depths

By Tom Latuszek

This is a story of a young man who struggles to survive by his wits at first then by hustling pool. As his experience takes him around the Gulf of Mexico from Houston to Miami, he discovers that survival can be a fine line between life and death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781365092718

Book preview

The Soul Depths

The Soul Depths

Table of Contents

ALPHA

PART I.

1. Pens and Paper

2. "My Past

3. Now Enters Marvin…

4. Spun Music

5. Downtown ‘ouston

6. The Flip Sides

7. Galveston

8. Law and Order

9. The Poet Laureate

10. Learning to Play Pool

11. The Strange Turn of Marvin

12. The Beginning of the End

13. Harley Stop

14. The Next Day

15. The Aftermath

EPSILON

PART II.

1. The Bus Station

2. Jason, or the World’s Most Annoying Bus Passenger You Could Ever Imagine Sitting Next to You

3. The End of the Ride

4. My Dangerous Life

5. ’And Now Here is…’

6. My Weird Dream

7. My Guardian Angel

8. A Place to Stay

9. Maria & Me

10. Hustling Beginnings

11. Hurricane Emily

12. The Dream Realized

13. A Parting of Ways

14. On to Central Florida

15. Many-Colored Road Signs

16. Truth, like a Blow to the Head

SIGMA

PART III.

1. Interesting New Waters

2. The Nine-Ball King of Orlando

3. Into Real Danger

4. Drifting

5. Jerry’s Blues

6. Are Things Getting Out of Hand?

7. Further South, or ‘La Rata Pantana’

8. There’s No Turning Back

9. What I Needed to Do

10. A Sense of Déjà Vu, a Look, and There She Was

11. The Seminole and the Marlins

12. Self-Check

13. Angles and Shadows

OMEGA

Dedicated to my late father who was a good pool player, the complete opposite of the father of our hero here and a strong believer in me.

—ALPHA—

I lie next to the glass and see nothing but ocean—even as the gaze shifts to the driver’s side, the pilot silhouetted beautifully against the morning sun, behind her ocean that seems to stretch to the end of the world—it is as if we drive over the waves—I see the shadows of concern in her dark eyes as she looks over from time to time—she also bids me to keep my hand pressed on the shoulder nearest her which has its own dark wet shadow—the smell of blood mixes into the other smells of the car: our sweat, the old car musty smell, other things I try to imagine—she says Don’t worry. We’ll soon be there. Then Mexico…—Mexico—The thought makes me feel like I am back in Texas once more—how did I get here?—my vision starts to fade in and out, brightening to the whitest light before fading back down like a movie fade out—before I lose control of my consciousness, I wonder again about Texas and if I was ever truly there—

I.

-1. Pens and Paper-

Where should I start?

She gave me this notebook and box of pens when we set sail…but all I’ve managed to do so far is look at them. No. That’s not exactly right. Whenever I looked honestly at this book and pens, I mulled over actually how I might say something. Do you know what I’m talking about? Like when you get a least a couple thousand somethings in your head at one time—all important parts of the whole story—but not know how to sort through them? The voyage’s only been half a day or so though since we’ve left.

We’re not on a very big boat. The ship is mostly rusted steel and wood but it seems seaworthy (I’ve never been to sea, so how the hell would I know?). I had my doubts at first and even told her so when we boarded. She just looked at me with her dark eyes and grinned, her eyes smiling all the way even though she is quite the cool customer.

The captain of our boat is a guy named Jesus. He is a small, weasel sort of man, deeply tanned with shades of gray in his dark hair and always wears the same clothes and stinks usually. He talks normally to me but only in small phrases of English. She knows Spanish quite well so she does most of the talking to him. Jesus seemed to have an initial attraction for her in a big way after we boarded in the afternoon and set sail at dusk but she cured him of that real quick. While she slept, he crept into her room and tried to have his way with her but she beat him up pretty badly and told him that if she ever caught him near her again she’d castrate him with her knife. When she told me about the event this morning, I told her I hoped our captain did not have any firepower or harpoons or some shit or we’d be in a world of hurt this far out in the Gulf. She scoffed and said he wouldn’t dare—he knew she would feed him to the sharks. Besides, she said, Jesus is a real superstitious man. I asked her what she meant by that but she didn’t answer me. She just turned away grinning, caressed briefly my face then left the cabin.

She said we are in international waters now. The boat makes it seem like we just drift right now—the motor isn’t running, that’s for sure—but she told me Jesus got us close to a shipping lane last night and we ran parallel to a big freighter to keep a low profile. I asked what the boat carried (besides us) that might arouse suspicion but she didn’t know—only that Jesus is renowned for travelling under the radars of governmental types (he must be smuggling something, human or just cargo, I don’t know which). The situation seems crazy to be sure. I keep thinking we will be stopped and jailed or just plain shelled by some friendly destroyer patrolling the Gulf. But who knows? The last few weeks or so have certainly been wild times.

There’s Jesus now. He nods at me as if acknowledging the fact that I am now awake. Sheesh, the guy looks like a bum—but he did get us out of a jam. Nonetheless, even though he may have saved us from troubles in the States for the time being, she is the real savior. I know so little about her but I owe her so much. She is really so fearless, it’s frightening. Here I am wounded and worn out and fucking scared to death but she stands so cool and calm. You know what she said when I asked her what we’re going to do if Mexican authorities got wind of all of the American money we have and start extorting? She said simply, utterly: They’ll have to find us first. Can you believe that? Every type of question I’ve thrown at her she’s answered in that manner. Every one!

I keep thinking about last night just after we sailed. I was half ways out of my mind in agony from my shoulder wound (it still fucking hurts!) but she undressed us both quickly and methodically so I would not hurt too much and drew a bath for us. The tub on this boat is small but she made room easy enough for both of us by hooking her legs around me from the behind me. She then took the most patient care in washing out my wound with a bottle of whiskey. The application hurt like hell but she kept giving me sips which helped a lot after a while. As you might imagine, her sensual proximity really got me aroused and I wanted to make love to her right then but she held a finger to my lips and told me not right now but soon.

I keep finding myself wondering if this is the same woman I met in a pool hall in Miami who could hustle a person’s soul if she so pleased. The answer that keeps returning is I don’t simply know. The recent scenes start to come back to me over and over from that part of the story but I can’t really recall seeing the fearless business aspect of her, I really can’t. Maybe this mysterious side of her is something I just didn’t pay the proper attention to notice at the time. I don’t know.

Maybe I’m just paranoid that something good happening to me will be taken away at the last second, leaving the joke on me. I mean, that sort of thing’s happened before in other times of my life. But…I guess that’s what my job here is, huh, to get down the sordid details of my life? She asked me when she first gave me this notebook What is your story? and wants me to write it all down. She said that there will be plenty of time for writing and not to rush but, knowing me, once I get started, it will be hard to stop. This obsessive compulsion is a bad habit of mine…Yeah, well, maybe I should just finish this sentence and throw the whole damn mess overboard and really be done with it.

But I keep remembering her voice and the way she said: Everyone has a story to tell. Even you. Tell me your story.

So…this is what I can remember.

-2. My Past-

I can’t remember a whole lot of my childhood. Can you believe that? All I can really remember is the fact that I was a good student at one time. There was a time, I think, where I liked actually going to school. But that time is all a blurry haze. My past is all fragments and bits of memory I’m not sure are actual recollections or figments of my imagination. A person I used to know called that living in someone else’s once upon a time. But that was before I got stuck in that shit hole of being homeless and I didn’t know if I was ever gonna get out alive. But that comes later in this story and I’m not gonna talk about that right now.

Did you know my father was in the Air Force? Yeah, he was some high chief or captain or I don’t know what the fuck he was or is. I guess I was born somewhere east, New York state, I think, I still don’t know for sure. Then my Dad got a job with NASA and we moved to Florida. My Mom got mixed up with a buddy of Dad’s and left Dad and us. My Dad freaked out completely, stalking the other guy, confronting him and almost starting fights on so many occasions. He put in a transfer to Johnson Space Center in Houston and got it.

So when I was about sixteen I moved with my Dad to Texas; from one side of the Gulf to the other. My Mom didn’t lose custody: she just gave me up. Her actions made me feel like the lowest form of animal on the planet, to not be wanted by your own mother. Dad said to me, Ah, fuck her. The two-bit bitch can’t be loyal to no one! Then he went off to get some alcohol. He tended to do that quite a bit when we lived in Seabrook which is a Houston suburb just down NASA Road 1 from the JSC.

Sometime during my last year of high school, I decided to quit. My quitting wasn’t due to failing grades or anything like that—I was actually doing pretty fair in most of my courses (some more than others; I’m sure you know how it goes: some classes can’t get you interested or involved no matter how long you stay with them). My main reason for quitting was because I got besieged by questions like What are going to do after high school? or Have you applied to college yet? and so on. My Dad didn’t seem to give a fuck what I did as long as it didn’t interfere with his business which at the time was trying to get his office secretary into bed (he succeeded; she’s now my stepmother…more on her later). The questions stopped eventually being questions and mutated into critical statements like You should do this… or You should consider going here… So one day I just said Fuck it! and left school on my own. My Dad didn’t find out until about half a year later. All he said about my quitting school was he didn’t care what I did as long as it wasn’t illegal, I got put in jail, whatever, and that I needed to get my own money working, that he wasn’t going to give me money for being a fucking bum.

So then I had to look for a job since my fatherly funding was cut off. I worked temporarily at some restaurants including Hooters until they fired me and this woman because we were caught fucking in one of the storage areas one night. I even tried to find work at some of the places over on the Kemah Boardwalk—a festivally, carnivally place on the other side of Clear Lake just as it meets Galveston Bay—but no luck. I applied at this one sub place on Texas 146 but they wouldn’t hire me because the guy said I had too much hair! Can you believe that? Granted, I do admit to looking a little scraggy in those days with long hair and a beard. But all because I had too much hair? Come on! I’ll never forget that.

After quitting school, I found my ability to keep a job for any real length of time unusually tough. I would often just stay home and watch television all day (good thing my Dad had cable) because I had a lot of free time. Still, when my Dad found out I was home watching TV for any long stretch of time, he would fucking chew me out—whether smashed or not. So, to get around his yelling, I would often leave before he did, making sure I at least said something about going out to look for a job, waited around until he left, then came back and watched TV. My Dad found out eventually though—I think it was that old, nosy guy a few apartments down from us; he always poked into other people’s business—and after almost starting a fight with me, told me in no uncertain terms and, with beautifully eloquent language (sarcasm here), that if I didn’t get my act together he would throw me out.

I admit that I did at least make some effort to look for a job but all I really wound up doing was walk around the Clear Lake area idling my time away. Sometimes I would go to the park and watch kids play (at least young ones not in school) or old guys playing chess or checkers and some of their animated conversations. Other times I would walk over to the bay where there was a little wildlife refuge and watch turtles sunning themselves or see occasionally a large steer walk around snorting at stuff. Still other times I would walk through Old Seabrook all the way to Galveston Bay and spend hours watching different types of birds go by. Often when I was by the bay, I could always see huge freighter ships passing on by in the distance going north or south: north to all manner of docks in the Houston metro area via canal or south to Galveston and the Gulf and the rest of the world after that.

When I realized I had rarely any money to buy lunch or even breakfast (I could scrounge usually leftovers from whatever Dad brought in, normally take-out of some sort or other), it could put a damper on my situation. After a few months though, my scrawniness became noticeable and commented by others. Dad’s comment was only, Jesus Christ boy, don’t you ever eat? His secretary friend/fuck would chime in with Yeah, you should eat something but with a tone like she could really give a shit whether I did or not.

As my fortune would have it, not two days after that conversation, my situation changed financially for the better—I got finally another job. The job was one I was actually interested in at a used record and CD place called Spun Music. My hire at the store all happened by accident too. That day I walked down the sidewalk along NASA Road 1 on my way to the park but, just before I got near Seabrook, I walked by a small little plaza of shops and was jolted out my thoughts by someone yelling full throat, FUCK YOU! I QUIT!! followed by the sound of breaking glass. I looked over toward the shops in time to see a leather-clad, pierced and tattooed Goth fellow storm away from the record shop, get in his piece-of-shit car, squealed his tires and launched his car out into NR1 and got his car sideswiped nearly by a well-kept BMW from the 1980s.

An older man with very little hair on his head emerged from the store. He at first looked absently toward the road then took a closer look at the bottom of his front door which was spiderwebbed with broken glass. The man shook his head, maybe thinking Kids… but also thanking probably the invention of safety glass. I wonder if my insurance will pay for this.

I started continuing my walk down the sidewalk, looking down for some reason. But before I knew it, the bald guy stood near the sidewalk.

Say, kid, he said.

I’m no kid, I answered.

Of course you’re not, he said with a small laugh. I guess you saw what just happened.

I heard mostly the after effects.

Yeah, I suppose. Fucking punks. Then he said dismissively, Ah, I should have known better to hire him in the first place.

I just nodded in agreement.

You looking for a job?

Funny you mention it. I am in fact.

The man’s expression brightened. Well, what do you know? He beckoned toward the store. Come on in and I’ll set you up.

I followed the bald man from the sidewalk across the meager plaza parking lot to the record store. And just like that I was employed again. I didn’t think too much about it at the time but that chance encounter was to have a lasting effect on my life. I can truly say that from the very moment of my deciding to work for that man, whose name turned out to be Frank, that my life changed. But the change didn’t all happen at once so don’t get any wrong ideas about that. Just over time. The transformation wasn’t just in the experience of working at the used record store—it was a whole lot more.

The Marvin Era began that day.

-3. Now Enters Marvin…-

After getting me to fill out an application, tax forms and what not, Frank asked me if I could start the next day, say eleven in the morning. I said the start time was cool and I left the store. Once I got back outside to the sidewalk by the road, I said, Fuck it, feeling in such a good mood that I resumed my walk to the Seabrook park where