After the Ark

By Dick Shead

It was a two-week vacation sailing in the gulf of Mexico. Steve and his friend Tom hadn't planned on stopping a raid on the US.

A sailing trip starts out great for Steve McInerney and his buddy Tom Palmy when they meet another sailor, Audrey Sutter, who joins them at an anchorage where the two boats ride out a storm. Unfortunately, a couple of Mexican bandits shelter in the same place and take a liking to Audrey's boat. Their plans didn't include three gringos surviving the encounter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wings ePress, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9781613094907

Book preview

Wings ePress, Inc.

3000 N. Rock Road

Newton, KS 67114

Dedication

To my wife, Charlene, and our friend Lenann, both of whom kept me on track during the writing.

One

"Madre de Dios , the old man mumbled to himself. The sun gets hotter every day. My death will no doubt occur in weather like this during the walk to town." He lifted his ball cap and wiped the sweat from his forehead as he imagined his body lying on the shoulder of the highway. His mind’s eye pictured a car full of turistas rounding the curve in the road and finding his corpse. Perhaps some buzzards overhead or picking at the body. His watery old eyes squinted through the shimmering heat waves ahead. "Someone perhaps like these turistas parked by the side of the road." They had to be turistas , with a new-looking pickup and with such a boat as they were towing, a sailboat about six and a half meters long. Perhaps, he thought, they will take pity on an old man and give me a ride.

As he approached the pickup from the rear, he saw that the cab was empty, and two men were leaning against the front of the truck. They were holding beer bottles and looking down the road and over a marsh at an unbelievably white beach. Beyond, a blue bay faded into the horizon. That’s Tiburón Island out beyond Kino. Dog Bay is near the south end. The one on the driver’s side was speaking English. We’ll be there by this time tomorrow. He straightened up, then stretched to get the kinks out of his spine from the long drive.

The passenger was rubbing his rump. He replied, Sounds good to me. Glad we’re here. I’m getting TB from the drive.

The driver laughed, Hell, tired buns never killed anyone. You’re gonna love the sailing.

The old man saw, with satisfaction, that he was right. Two gringos, one dark hair, one blond. They looked to be about thirty. The passenger, the blond, was wearing glasses with clip-on sunglasses. The driver was the taller of the two but both were over six feet. The old man had to look up at both of them. "Buenos días, señores. ¿A donde vas?"

The two men jumped...they hadn’t heard him walking up behind them. The driver answered, "Holla viejo. ¿Como esta?"

"Bien, ¿e tu?"

"Bien, ¿hablo usted Ingles?"

The old man shook his head and looked at the beer. The driver told his friend, He’s fine. I’m fine. I’d say he wants a beer and a ride. He turned back to the Mexican patiently standing before them. "¿Un cerveza?"

"Si. Gracias." The old man watched while the passenger walked back to the tailgate of the shiny pickup, now dusty from a long drive across the desert. Not one of the skyscraper, four-wheel drive types, but a long bed with extended cab. Of less interest to the old man was the color-coordinated scheme between the truck and boat. The red of the truck matched by the red hull of the boat. The white deck and cabin of the boat were the same as the white, cab-high shell covering the bed of the truck; the ice chest was just inside the tailgate. Pulling out a round of beers, the passenger distributed them and the three stood drinking and watching a scorpion scurrying around the bushes and cactus that lined the road.

The old man chug-a-lugged the bottle, threw it by the roadside and emitted a loud, long belch. He pointed at the rig and the two travelers. ¿Kino? he asked.

The driver answered, "Si." And asked in Spanish if the old man would like a ride.

Soon the three were in the truck and continuing toward Kino. The old man was drinking another cerveza and smiling at his nice norteamericano amigos. The desert sun, well into the cloudless, afternoon sky, brought the beer right back to the skin. The truck’s air conditioner dried him off and kept him cool.

They were some two hundred miles south of the U.S. border on the mainland side of the Gulf of California, or as the old man and the rest of Mexico called it, the Mar de Cortés, in English the Sea of Cortez.

They had entered Mexico at Nogales for the trip to Hermosillo where they turned west to Kino and the Gulf. The road ran along the edge of a marsh for several miles, a man-made border separating the marsh and the blue Bahia Kino off to the left from the mesquite-and-cactus-covered desert on the right.

On the trailer behind the truck was a sailboat, the mast strapped down along the deck. It was an eye-catching picture, the red truck pulling the red-hulled boat with a white deck. The name Tom’s Toy – Phoenix was painted on the stern.

The driver of the truck, Tom, was still talking; after being around him for only a short time people realized he was the master of the one-sided conversation. They either accepted his personality or kept their dealings with him on a strictly business basis. His passenger, Steve, was more of a listener and got along well with Tom.

The sailing down here is great. You’re gonna be glad you came along. It’s not that far from Phoenix, just a long day’s drive. Two weeks down here and you’ll forget all about Cyndal and Wendy until the next alimony check.

Steve grimaced. I might if you ever stopped talking about them. Sometimes I think my marriage meant more to you than it did to us.

Tom thought it over. In a way I suppose it did. I knew it wouldn’t last, but after my three marriages, it was nice to see a couple that was trying to make it work. At least you were. Even if you did seem a little pussy-whipped. Anyway, Tom continued before Steve could protest, this trip is just the thing to take our minds off our troubles.

They continued down the road, Tom talking, the old man nodding and smiling and Steve, having heard the same conversation all the way from Phoenix, wrapped in his own thoughts. He nodded or grunted his replies more to the sound of Tom’s voice than to what had been said. Tom didn’t believe his silence was golden. Fortunately for their friendship, Steve was usually a good listener. Right then, he was trying to picture Tom’s image of him. One thing about Tom Palmy: if he liked you, he felt free to say anything that popped into his head. It hadn’t helped his marriages. Probably because the things that popped into his head were not always that flattering to the listener. He took his divorces philosophically, however, and kept looking for the woman who would understand him. He found plenty of women willing to check him out. Although he couldn’t stay married, he didn’t lack for female companionship. It didn’t hurt him in his job as a salesman, Steve decided. When he meets someone, he knows how to make them feel like an old friend from the first meeting. But his speech is so guarded and well-thought-out when he’s with a customer, he just lets his mouth run wild when he’s with friends. No wonder he doesn’t have very many.

Tom’s relationship with women was one of the reasons Steve got invited on this trip. Tom had planned the trip with his girlfriend but at the last minute, something Tom said (he wasn’t sure what) pissed her off and she let him know she never wanted to be in the same city with him again. Tom wasn’t surprised...he had lost a lot of girlfriends due to his mouth. Tom had wanted to take Steve sailing anyway, so the last minute fill-in worked well for him.

Tom was a salesman for F&S Electronics. He had that knack of being a chum to everyone with whom he dealt. Actually, he was very selective about his leisure-time acquaintances. Steve McInerney was one of Tom’s few good friends. He was an electronics engineer at F&S. They met when Tom needed a briefing on a particular line of equipment F&S was pitching to a selected customer. The sale fell through, possibly because both Steve and Tom felt it was the wrong equipment for the customer’s needs. Despite the lost sale, the two men had been friendly ever since. Between marriages, Tom spent a good deal of time with the McInerneys.

Steve and Cyndal had met while he was in the Army. He returned from a tour in Germany as a short-timer and was stationed at Ft. Devens in Massachusetts to finish his enlistment. She was attending Fitchburg State University, working on her B.A. in organizational studies.

Her family hadn’t liked the big infantry soldier, first assuming he was too dumb to be anything else, then for wasting his brain when they found out his IQ was higher than that of their genius of a son. Cyndal was probably originally attracted to him because her parents didn’t like him. Cyndal’s father had been in the Air Force, an aide to a general during the war in Viet Nam. He still believed the Air Force could have won that war. In his mind, the dog-faces and grunts were the losers who let victory slip away. He and Steve had several ‘friendly’ discussions on the subject.

Steve liked his time in the infantry, but never intended to make a career of it. He was grateful to the Army for taking him out of a roadside gas station in Nevada and giving him the G.I. Bill—his chance to go to college. When his enlistment was up and Cyndal made it clear she intended to marry him, her father pulled some strings and got him into MIT. They jumped into married life, setting up housekeeping in an apartment in Boston.

Cyndal felt terribly independent working as an intern in one of her father’s friends’ businesses. While Steve got through school on his own merit and the G.I. bill paid most of the tuition, there was no extra money for luxuries. Cyndal’s salary never seemed to amount to much more than enough to buy a few knick-knacks they had to have. Steve hated to say no to her, but they were going broke trying to hold on to the apartment and eat. Cyndal’s father kept them afloat, allowing them to move into a guest house on his property. Cyndal loved their life centering around the campus with the advantages of the home she had always known, while Steve felt he had failed his first test as a husband. He made a silent promise to himself they would have a house supported by a salary he earned. They seemed happy together, although she was always teasing Steve about being more interested in machines than people. She never thought about what would happen when Steve graduated.

The four years of school were idyllic. The problems started shortly after graduation. By the time Steve graduated, they had a baby. Wendy was born while Steve was away at a job interview. When he first met his daughter, he fell in love with her, but Cyndal was strangely possessive. She hated it when Steve would pick up Wendy or try to play with her. Cyndal and Wendy spent most of their time with Cyndal’s family.

Then Steve moved the three of them to Phoenix, accepting a job offer from F&S Industries. Other places offered more money, including an offer from Cyndal’s father (who had no need for an electronics engineer) but the work at F&S sounded the most interesting. Steve had grown up in the Southwest and had always planned to move back; he was sure Cyndal would love it as much as he did. He had enjoyed his years on the East Coast, but the place and people seemed almost foreign to him. The desert country was his home.

From the beginning, Cyndal had hated it. She didn’t like the heat, the mixed cultures, or being so far from her family. She immediately started a campaign to force a move back to Boston.

In many ways Tom was right when he said Steve was pussy-whipped. He was one of those people who either have very deep feelings about something or no feelings at all. He didn’t understand the folks that had an opinion about everything, whether or not they knew anything about the subject. He channeled his opinions differently. Anyway, he let Cyndal pick out the house, the furniture, their clothes and, except for Tom, their friends.

The only thing he refused to do for her was move back to Boston. Being in the East was enjoyable for a time, Steve thought, where he could visit friends and places in Massachusetts. But my home is in Phoenix, he reasoned, where the skies are clear and blue, and winters are warm. Even my sense of humor is more attuned to the West.

He waited for Cyndal to grow a similar attachment to the West, but it had never happened. He often heard the same complaint: everything is too dry and brown; I can’t make any friends. Ridiculous, he thought, the same shops or reasonable substitutes could be found in Phoenix as back East. Cyndal’s complaints of being lonely made no sense to him. After all, she could talk to her sister or anyone else in the family whenever she wished. Still, Steve realized bitterly, she had driven off all his friends except Tom. Well, he persisted in thinking, she’ll come around.

When Cyndal’s efforts didn’t make Steve move back East, she filed for divorce, not a friendly one at all. Everything they owned in Phoenix had to be sold, with most of the proceeds going to Cyndal for the care of two-year-old Wendy so she could take the child back to civilization, as she put it. A clever lawyer hired by Cyndal’s dad convinced the court to give her complete custody of Wendy, asserting that a person without a house and with no savings or source of reliable income should not have control of a child.

Bitter and angry, Steve was left with a furnished apartment and an old car. His friends watched him struggle with the terms of the divorce, knowing he’d worked hard to make a good marriage. They also knew he didn’t like to fail and the divorce would mean he’d failed as a husband and a father.

Tom Palmy had recognized the symptoms the first time he met Cyndal. She was much too demanding and helpless for someone like Steve. Tom knew the marriage never had a chance, although Steve made it last longer than Tom had thought possible. Cyndal needed someone to cater to her whims; Steve was too much his own person. The breakup would have happened anyway; the move to the Southwest had just accelerated it.

Tom also knew Steve was wrong about failing as a father...his daughter loved him. When he saw the family together, he had noticed the way Wendy would run to him and take his hand instead of Cyndal's. She was too young to understand what was going on and Cyndal didn’t explain it fairly to her. In the year since the divorce, Steve had made two trips to Boston to see Wendy, but he realized Cyndal was poisoning Wendy’s mind against him.

Steve hadn’t made many new friends in Phoenix since the divorce. Tom watched him struggle to get his mind off Wendy. Tom told Steve, After a year you need to move on.

But Steve had started to move on in a way Tom didn’t like. He told Tom he was thinking of leaving the company. He had several offers from headhunters and perhaps it would be better for him to make a clean start. Perhaps move east while he worked out a better deal with Cyndal. That’s when the sailing trip came up.

Tom had developed the social skills for his sales job but, in reality, he didn’t like many people, so he didn't have a large number of friends. Once he did accept someone as a friend, though, he didn't want to lose them.

If he could get Steve hooked on sailing or other new interests, perhaps he’d stay at F&S.

Tom was a Californian originally. He had learned to sail at an early age and grew up enjoying the sport. When he moved to Arizona, he sold all his equipment, thinking his sailing days were behind him. After settling into the job, he found there were several lakes close by and many people traveled to Mexico for water sports. Tom picked up a twenty-two-foot trailer boat. It was small enough to travel with and large enough to live on (in cramped comfort) for several weeks. After Tom met the McInerneys, he invited them out several times, but Cyndal didn’t care for it and resented any time Steve spent with Tom. So, except for a single sail on Lake Roosevelt, Steve had never been on a sailboat.

On his single sail, Steve had seen the possibilities of having fun on the water although he didn't get too involved with the hands-on details. Tom had demonstrated the results when it was done correctly. He was looking forward to the two weeks in Mexico with no thoughts of his ex or their daughter. Both men were glad to get away from the run up to the election which was going on across the country. The blue and red ‘Hillary’ posters and the ‘Make America Great Again’ signs were getting old fast. Two weeks with no ballyhoo would be a blessing. The two men had made a pact not to discuss the election while they were out of the country.

Tom brought the truck to a stop and let the old man out with many adioses and a gracias near the edge of town. The two watched him hobble off toward a gas station/grocery store combo. Tom continued on down the highway to the beach and then northwest along the shore. We used to have the Kino Yacht Club on the south side of town. It was just a place where an ol’ boy worked on boats and a place to launch. Now it’s all apartments and condos. The new launch ramp is north of town. Most fishermen just launch off the beach. Anyway, we’ll drop off the boat and run into town for dinner.

Steve looked around at the desolate landscape, A yacht club out here? It seems kind of out of the way.

Tom just smiled but didn’t answer, unusual for him. The road took them out on a sandy peninsula to a shack and a narrow concrete launch ramp leading into the Gulf. The sandy lot was littered with old boat motors, propellers and other worn-out marine parts. A few trucks with empty trailers were parked nearby. Steve could see a weathered hull with a few broken ribs poking out of the water a short distance offshore.

As they drove up, a man opened the door of the shack and leaned against the frame as he watched them. He was a Mexican, wearing khaki work clothes. He and the clothes looked as worn as the litter around the shack. His mouth opened in a gap-toothed grin as he recognized the truck’s driver. "Hola, Tomas. How you doing?"

"Bien, Tomas. ¿E tu? Steve, this is Tomas Vigil. He keeps things together around here. Tomas smiled, showing his gums again, and shook hands with Steve. He mainly works on the fishing boats that use Kino as their home port. He’s a first-rate mechanic. We can leave the truck and trailer here and he’ll keep an eye on them."

They spent a few minutes talking to Tomas, then got busy rigging the boat. The mast was stepped, the sails bent on and secured along with all the paraphernalia that allowed them to take advantage of wind power. As Steve examined all the winches, pulleys, cleats, lines, and sails, Tom explained, The wind is free. Catching it is damned expensive. To make life easier, an outboard motor was mounted on the transom.

The sun was touching the western horizon when they finished storing the supplies in the boat. Steve was standing next to the trailer looking for anything left to load aboard when Tom climbed over the side and onto the ground. That’s enough for now. It’s too late to catch the port captain tonight. Let’s drive into Kino for dinner. We’ll sleep on the boat where it is. Tomorrow we’ll finish the paperwork and buy the last minute food items. They unhooked the trailer and headed for town.

Tom took Steve to a café near the waterfront where the fishermen pulled their boats up on the beach. They had corn chips and salsa which they washed down with the local beer while they waited for their food; they had both ordered grouper steaks. On his own, Steve would have been uncomfortable in the strange (to him) setting, but Tom seemed to know several of the fishermen and they made him feel at home, even if he didn’t understand the language. By the time they finished their meals, Steve was half soused (something he hadn’t done since the Army) and enjoying himself more than he had in a long time. He had been in some of the Mexican border towns, but Kino was a different country, much more pleasant and relaxing. After Irish coffee and flan, Tom showed Steve a few night spots before heading back to the boat.

MOTHER OF GOD, WHY do I have to be out here in this heat, Ramon was thinking. He smiled to himself. After two years in Mexico, he still ‘thought’ in English. He glanced back at the wake streaming behind the ragged old boat; it wavered back and forth as the waves and his inept steering combined to push them along a zigzag path. He complained to his companion, Carlos, This pig of a boat is incapable of traveling in a straight line. El Capitan didn’t know he was sending us out on a such a deadly boat. If he had known, I’m sure he would have found something safer rather than risk the guns not making it to the rendezvous. It’s a shame we could only carry half the guns. The half going by truck are more likely to be caught and confiscated. Ramon wiped the sweat from his eyes, threw a finger at the blazing sun and made a half-hearted attempt to correct the course as they crossed another wave and veered off in another direction.

The boat, a Chris-Craft cabin cruiser, had started out as a toy for the wife of a rancher. They had extensive land holdings along the coast with a house overlooking the sea. The couple had spent many pleasurable hours in the Estero de Urias and along the coast near Mazatlán. Ramon knew nothing about this, of course. The boat had been through many hands since then. When the wife tired of this boat, they sold it to a sport fisherman who used it for charters. As time passed, the boat accumulated too much wear for a first-class operation. It was sold to another charterer and so passed down from one owner to the next until it was in too poor a condition to attract any turistas willing to risk their lives on it.

The final owner couldn’t afford to maintain the boat for the sport fishing trade, so he turned to commercial fishing. Unfortunately, the boat wasn’t designed to carry the quantities of fish needed for a successful commercial operation, and he continued to sink down, earning less and less each year. The boat had had