Tue Oct 20, 2015 12:23 am
Is the below story a forum space hog?
Or a good read?
Read my Crypto Fi short story and decide for yourself.
Unfortunately, this text box forces its own layout on my writing by eliminating paragraph indentation which changes the read and the meaning, so I was forced to add spaces between paragraphs which ruins the literary effect less than run-together paragraphs.
The author’s rights to the below short story, “A Hoarder and a Detractor,” are protected by ProtectRite®
A HOARDER AND A DETRACTOR
by Rich Vedder
Revised October 18, 2015
I lie on my stomach digging sand from under my sailing yacht using a piece of driftwood as she lies high and dry on her side on the edge of a sandbar. And it’s my fault - if I had been keeping track of the weather, my bitcoin-purchased twelve meter sloop, Crypto Lady, would not have floundered in a storm and my yacht-mate, Lori, and I would not be shipwrecked here surrounded by vast waters in a remote area of the southernmost Bahamas. The nearest civilization is small Clarence Town one hundred kilometers to the north and we are eighty kilometers off the closest island freighter route.
If Crypto Lady were just twenty meters to the east, she’d be floating free, but getting her there is no small task as you don’t easily move thirteen thousand kilograms of fiberglass and lead, and, short of a lucky break, help to move her is not coming this way anytime soon.
I pull myself out from under the boat for a break, and, as I go to her bow, I pass the sandbar’s only other inhabitant - a solitary mangrove.
At the bow, wading into clear waters, I find that the thick lines of kedging ropes that I’ve rigged to pull her out of her sand trap are tight. They resonate a thrumming sound as the surf rakes them where they angle down before vanishing into the depths. Waves rudely thump and splash against my beloved boat’s seaward side shifting the sands and reclaiming what I had dug out yesterday.
I look across the blinding-white sands to where Lori lounges in a beach chair under her makeshift tarp fastened to the stern and see that she has set her novel down and is giving me a bad look. Time for some damage control - I head her way. A young, slender looker, I have to give her credit for holding out so far because stranded on a remote sandbar for a month is a recipe for insanity. She’s good crew and I have to admit that I’ve grown fond of her, but then again, she hasn’t been of much help lately and sometimes she can be a royal pain in the backside.
As I near her I notice the toll that the harsh elements are taking on her features and skin. She’s looking for trouble - maybe my best defense is an offense. “Help me dig. Tomorrow’s spring tide could be our chance,” I say.
“My back hurts. That digging’s a man’s job.”
“We don’t have the luxury of lounging if we want to get out of here,” I counter.
Lori leaps up and gets into my face, “Luxury?! What a hoot! You get rich on bitcoin and look what it’s gotten us! If you’d stop hoarding your precious coins and sell a few we could get a tow and get off this God-forsaken sand trap … but noooo! … you’ll miss your coming rally!”
I don't respond - avoiding the trap of talking myself into selling coin. Lori’s anger appears to be subsiding and I gaze out onto the sapphire waters wondering what shape we’ll be in when we finally do get off this sand-spit - but Lori’s not finished.
She slaps her grubby, salt-soaked paperback. “I’ve read this damn book five times! Can’t we get e-book on your sat phone?”
“We’ve been through that. Fuel’s low and so is charging power. We need to conserve in case we have to call rescue.”
Lori sighs, flings her book to the sand, and stomps off to the water’s edge.
Troubling. I go to under my boat, take up the driftwood, and begin digging again. I haven’t dug out much sand before Lori cries, “A sail!!”
I pull myself out and race to her side to see a sailboat in the distance. “Gotta’ send distress!” I yell and scamper up our rope ladder onto Crypto Lady’s deck and Lori follows.
Below deck, walking on what was once vertical bulkheads of my boat’s impossibly tilted interior, I snatch the flare kit, scramble up to the cockpit, and fire off two. We watch for a while and I can see that the boat has turned. “They’re going to help us! I know it!” We dash below and Lori begins washing up as I get on the radio trying to make contact, but get nothing but static.
The tide has risen covering the sandbar and we stand in ankle-deep seawater watching a well-founded fourteen meter sloop approach under full sail. The headsail furls and a man darts to the bow and tosses his anchor with his yacht still under momentum. A moment later his anchor sets and swings the boat around deftly leaving her stern not more than thirty meters from us - a ballsy maneuver.
Soon thereafter, Jackson Greenspack - a husky, sun-darkened, middle-aged man in a fresh flowered shirt - perches on his stern which bobs in the waves. Below him the name ‘Clamslammer’ is painted boldly across his sleek transom. It strikes me of how grubby and desperate we must look as he takes an uncomfortably long moment to critically inspect what he sees, then says, “Water’s spread pretty thin there, huh?”
“Can you help us with a pull?” I plead.
“Maybe. When you ready to try?”
“Sunrise tomorrow. Spring tide. Hope for an extra ten inches of water.”
“Tell ya’ what. Join me for cocktails in a couple of hours and we’ll talk about it.”
“Good deal!”
Not long later, as the blazing sun is beginning to work its way towards the western horizon, I stop my digging to see Lori climb from our boat clutching her waterproof pack bag. “Going somewhere?” I ask.
She couldn’t look more guilty if she’d been caught raiding a church collection plate. “Just to check out the guy’s yacht.”
I stand and face her, angry that she’s going off to leave me to dig alone. She gives a guilty shrug, slinks off to the water, dives in, and swims pulling her floating bag behind her with a lanyard clinched in her teeth. I go back to digging with a sinking feeling.
Later, as I prepare to launch my dingy to visit Clamslammer, I look across the water and watch Lori helping Jackson rig a big sunshade above his decks. It’s troubling to see that his attention is on her Bikini more than the chore at hand.
Facing Jackson in his cockpit, I sip on a beer as he knocks back double Havana Club rums.
“Clamslammer!” Jackson beams. “Hawking penny stocks in my office over the marina, then hopping on my yacht and keel-grinding clams to get through the shallow channel.” He humps his hips and laughs.
Lori pokes her head out of the companionway. She’s drinking fine Cognac and is getting tipsy herself. “Awesome galley Jackson! Refrigeration runs twenty-four seven?”
Jackson grins, nods, and thrusts his empty glass to her.
I gaze at Lori miffed by the way she has established her presence below. “Good on your beer?” she asks me. I shake my head apprehensively as I have the painful thought that she could be preparing to jump ship. She disappears below. As unhappy as I am about this developing situation, I must move ahead with the deal to get my boat off the sandbar. “Two thousand’s too much,” I say to Jackson.
He shakes his head, “Not too much. Hell, it’d cost a fortune to call a tow from Georgetown.”
Lori pops up, hands him a fresh drink, then darts back down.
Jackson stomps on his cockpit sole with confidence, “Two-hundred horse Perkins. Gobs of torque. I’ll get you off. You got cash?”
“Bitcoin. If we agree on a price, I can call and have cash in your account a few minutes after my boat’s off.”
Jackson sours, “Friggin’ Bitcoin. Bunch of anti-establishment decentrals trying to disrupt the world‘s what they are.”
Lori pokes her head out. “Bitchin’ ice maker, Jackson!” He grins in response.
I need to find out what Lori is going to do. I say, “Let’s get going. Any cleaning you need to do down there before we leave?”
She gets an apprehensive look, then to Jackson, “You sure you going to get Crypto Lady off?”
He gets a devilish grin, looks away with a soft gurgling sound, looks back to her, then says, “You tell me. Which boat you going with if I don’t?”
Lori’s face flips to me and her eyes flash panic, then to Jackson, “Don’t ask me that!” Then she darts below.
Jackson rubs circles in his cockpit sole with a foot. “Uhh …” he murmurs. He works his thumb on the top of a winch as if he’s polishing it, then turns my way with his eyes cast low. “I don’t take bitcoin.”
I sit in silence for a moment as the audacity of what he’s doing sinks in. “It doesn’t matter, you get dollars into your account.”
He rises and heads for his companionway. “I don’t want to have anything to do with that Ponzi scheme,” then he goes below.
As bad as things have gotten, I must trudge ahead with trying to get my boat off. I poke my head into the companionway and look for Lori but can’t see her. “Lori! You coming with me or not?” I yell.
“Go on. I’m staying here. I’ll get my things later,” comes her voice from behind a door.
I slam my fist on the cabin top. “Damn you!” I take a moment to think, knowing that I’m too angry for my own good. Can’t get distracted from what I need to do. I then climb into my dingy and row back towards my stranded home.
The sun is setting as I pull my dinghy up onto the sand. The constant easterly trade winds have subsided and the air and water sit unusually thick and still as dirty-gray clouds creep in from the east making for a pallid sky. I go to the solitary mangrove - my last option for companionship on this lonely realm which I’ve created for myself. I sit and face it, tear off a leaf, and pop it into my mouth. As I chew on the leaf, I feel the need to talk.
“Are you lonely, little bush? I’ve watched you claw for survival day after day for a month.” Day after day - all the same. The trade winds always blowing from east to west, the sea constantly marching from east to west, the fiery heavens arcing over from east to west.
“How did you get here? Are you tattered because you’re unhappy? Is it your own damn fault that you’re stuck here alone? When you were a little mangrove pod did you cling to your mother’s branch sucking in the benefits too long while your sibling pods dropped off into the sea calling for you to join them as they floated off together to make their communal hammock?”
Enough of this. I must dig.
Wind from the east has broken the still and distant thunder warns of a storm brewing on this dark night as I dig sand by the dim light of a kerosene lantern. I can hear the two thrashing about on Clamslammer as they take down the sunshade. Jackson must have continued putting down double rums because he sounds drunk as he bellows at Lori, “Leeward end first!”
It’s three a.m. I had not paid much attention earlier when Lori had come and collected her possessions. The storm is approaching and should be a Godsend for my task as the rising winds whistle through Crypto Lady’s rigging promising to bring a surge of extra water. The thick rope lead of my kedging tackle throngs and sings like a jumbo piano wire with tons of pressure as I crank on a winch in my tilted cockpit tightening it in inch by inch. My boat gives a shudder and I think that she might have moved a bit.
Sunrise is soon to come but you wouldn’t know it as lightning cracks the black sky and wind and rain whoosh and howl stinging my exposed skin. Slaving on the winch, I’ve moved my boat a total of three feet and each small surge gains a little more as the water rises. I hear faint sounds of the two knocking about on Clamslammer and catch Jackson yelling, “Throw it now!”
The raging storm is now directly overhead and I’m practically swimming in the flood of rain. I take in another inch of rope and it cries in protest and the fiberglass combing supporting the winch creaks and bulges as it is already far beyond its designed load. I crank with more force and my boat moves, but then bumps to a stop against something hard. Am I to be defeated when I’m almost there? I have to do this - it’s all or nothing - win or lose. I straddle over the winch, brace firmly, and give it everything that I have with all the leverage that I can muster. I’m seeing stars when Crypto Lady gives a painful moan, shivers, slips forward, and then stops again and teeters on a hard spot. It’s then that rope breaks with a mighty BANG! and missiles by me slapping my calf. Just as it looks as if everything is lost, a rogue gust of wind shoves her sideways. She teeters to the right, hesitates, and then slides into the water and floats free. I scramble, grab my ready-made anchor rode, spin it onto the winch, and furiously grind my way towards deeper water.
I haven’t gotten far when the bow of Clamslammer comes drifting by. She’s broadside to the storm and heading for the sandbar with Jackson on the bow with a line coiled to throw. “Catch my line!!” He tosses and it lands beside me. “Help me!! Three thousand!! Got it below!!”
I let the line slide into the water and say, “I don’t take dollars.” Then Clamslammer disappears into the storm.
The storm has left the morning air clean and crisp. Crypto Lady rides on her anchor in twenty feet of water with my kedge ropes lying on the bottom beneath her. I’ll come back for them after some R&R in Georgetown - milk, bread, fresh produce, fresh water.
Clamslammer lies on her side at the edge of the sandbar. Jackson exits from his companionway and gives me a look that pleads for help.
I crank my engine and check the cooling water spitting from the exhaust. Everything’s surprisingly shipshape considering what my ole girl’s been through. I go to the bow and begin hauling the anchor.
Jackson shakes his fist. “Better help me off or I’ll have you live to regret it!”
I’m in my cockpit now. I put the engine into gear and look to him. “I’ll check the value of the dollar when I get to Georgetown. Be back in about a month,” then I motor eastward, set my wheel, hop up to the foredeck, and raise my mainsail.
The End
Last edited by
richroll6 on Sat Oct 31, 2015 9:49 am, edited 1 time in total.