Stone, The Man Three

STONE THE MAN

Sequel # 3

By Rodney Hart

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2012 by Rodney Hart

Original Copyright: 1999

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CHAPTER 1

It was almost A year after we had returned from the treasure recovery trip in the Turks and Cacaos Islands and after the loss of my wife Andrea.

Bobby and I had managed to make a success of our photography business, in spite of my failure to begin living again without Andrea. I had tried to make a relationship with Sara after our last treasure hunt, but I couldn’t rid myself of the love I had for Andrea and Sara left, telling me that she would always be there for me, if I found that I could free myself from the enslavement to Andrea’s memory.

I left the studio a little early on Friday.

I didn’t want to look at another cheesy smile, or pad the ego of another would be star.

After I got to my apartment, I slumped on the bed. and before I could fluff up my pillow, Bobby came rushing in with his usual ear-to-ear grin and shouted: Buckley, get up, man!! You’re outta here.

He Grabbed my suitcase and threw it on the bed.

He boldly said:

Get packed. You’re on vacation. I brought your camera and here’s your plane ticket, he said, as he stuffed them into the pocket of the suitcase.

I didn’t move.

Come on, Bobby, I don’t feel like a vacation. I’ve got clients to do next week,

Hey, man!! I’ve been setting this up for weeks. Don’t disappoint me now. All that’s bull, my man, I took care of all that. Jamey Pride is handling your shoots. All you gotta do is get on the plane.

This was just like Bobby. He could manage to make anything happen, and now I’m bound for Cape Cod.

Bobby grinned with his usual ‘Cat got the mouse’ grin.

Wine, women, and song, man. love is in bloom get up and out of this room.

A cloud hurried by my window at about ten thousand feet, and I heard the engines power back to a quiet hum. No, I couldn’t say no. Bobby wouldn’t have it. That’s why he had the nickname Bobby Pin.

It’s what everyone called him because he’ll stick you with what he wants you to do until you’re bleeding.

God bless the man. He’s got a good heart!

Just then, my stomach was in my throat as the plane hit a pocket and took us down like the first hill of a roller coaster ride. Then, we leveled off, and I thought of Andrea clinging to me on our way to the Keys in 1994.

Buckley, hold me! she said with a cry in her voice.

Of course, I did, like Lancelot and then she said in a quiet whisper,

Buckley, if we crash, will you hold me until the end?

I stared at her.

Andrea, will you stop it. We’re not going to crash.

How do you know?

Because, good lady, God wants you on earth to nurture the sick and feed the hungry.

Andrea was the world’s best hospital nurse and loved it.

Besides, I said, The pilot doesn’t want to die. He won’t let it happen. I heard he was the best in Trans-American airlines.

She lowered her chin.

I know you’re right. I was just scared.

"Shoot! I said silently. There I go again.

I’ve been doing this ever since Andrea died. She’s always with me. We’re always doing something. I remember every detail, every word, every look, every smile, every frown.

I’ve got to get out of this slump and get something out of this vacation. I thought.

The wheels screeched hello on the runway and we taxied to the gate. The pilot announced:

Welcome to Hyannis. We hope you will enjoy your stay.

The crowd hustled along the corridor to the baggage claim. I awaited for the cattle stampede to end and then casually walked to the baggage claim.

This is a switch, I thought.

Dozens of other bags usually convey around the loop a couple of times before I finally see mine. Much to my surprise, my bag was waiting for me.

Things must be going my way, I thought.

The usual transfer to another plane is tainted with anxiety for lack of time to make a new gate. However, Bobby saw to it that I needed no running shoes. The ten-seat Beechcraft was scheduled to fly fifteen minutes from then, and a shuttle scooted me a stone’s throw to an already warming up two-engine Silver Bird. My destination was Provincetown Airport located about 80 miles down the Cape, a 20-minute hop by air.

Yeah, I thought, Bobby made it easy for me.

I can’t count how many times Bobby had saved my butt when a client could not do more than say cheese to my camera and he had to make them look like stars. I would groan to Bobby and hand him a roll; he would say, Relax Buckley, don’t faint, I got paint, Then he would grin and somehow produce a glamour shot from a turkey shoot.

I walked to the plane.

I had to laugh at the pilot standing by the stairs to the plane, announcing this:

Now boarding Flight Number 83 for Provincetown. Last call.

He was proper and professional, but I was the only passenger.

I sat in the copilot’s seat, with his permission, and looked at my watch. Then, I thought about it and said to myself:

Who gives a hoot what time it is? I’ve got all night and the rest of my empty meaningless life. Why look at the time?

That was the real me at that time.

It was 9:27 when I felt the wheels fold into the wings.

By the time we get up to altitude, we’ll have to begin our landing approach, the pilot said, with a smile on his lips.

That reminded me of the near splashdown we had on our photo class trip to Turk Island in the Bahamas.

Andrea and I, plus eight students, set out to capture Bahamian life on film,

I was scheduled to lecture at the Grand Turk Hotel. The whole island was small enough to throw a stone from one shore to the other.

I was following the islands out the window and saw that we were right on course until rain and clouds smothered my view and a tempest tossed us around. We were tossed up and down and around for over a half hour. Finally, we stopped clutching our seats with white knuckles and the sun returned to light up my view. The pilot announced that we had just flown over Cat Island and, in an hour, we would be in Grand Turk.

I looked down to confirm our location.

No way! I said aloud.

Andrea stared at me and asked:

What’s wrong, Buckley?

Nothing, I told her, I just dropped my marker.

But in reality, we were lost. That was not Cat Island, it was Silver Shoals.

Two hours later, the pilot announced that we were landing on Provodencia Island for fuel.

I grimaced knowing he had lost his way and we were low on fuel.

Why stop for fuel only five minutes to our destination? I thought.

Provo is only a five-minute hop to Turk. Are we that low on fuel?

That’s when I saw the right engine prop chug and spit to a standstill. I looked out the window just in time to see a C-47 in 20 feet of water a hundred feet back of the landing strip.

Just when I said to myself:

"At least one engine is still fueled, an eerie silence fell as the final turn of the left engine prop came to a standstill.

The blade pointed at high noon, and we heard the whisper of wind passing over the wings.

Andrea looked as if old man death were taking her hand. The camera buff students hugged their knees. I put my arm around Andrea and pulled her close.

Don’t worry, my love, we’ll coast right in.

But what did I know?

The wheels missed the unpaved beginning of the runway by only a few feet as the powerless plane glided in to a very–close to crashing, into swallow water. We yelled a happy hooo-ray.

Later, we flew over to Turk and forgot our close encounter with the ever after.

No white knuckles this flight, I thought, as the plane touched down like an eagle to its nest.

Provincetown Airport, the pilot said and smiled at me.

A taxi drove up to the plane as we reached the gate.

The pilot was out and opening the baggage door by the time I brushed the hair from my face in the wind at the plane door, the cabby loaded my luggage and I climbed into the cab.

What be your port of call, laddie? he bellowed in a leathery voice.

Windamar Hotel, I answered.

Ah, that be a fine establishment, to say the least, he said, with a grin around the neck of his lighted pipe stem.

He looked like he spoke. A black cotton coat hung loose to his thighs.

Boots from the shipyard saddled his feet. His face was full-bearded and leathery.

A low slung cherrywood pipe hung from his teeth. I pictured him just off a ship from Cape Hattaras.

He drove with the precision of a ship’s captain and asked:

Where be ye frrom, lad?He said, rolling his r’s.

Miami, I answered.

Ah, that be a place I fancy to sail one day, he beamed.

After that, I heard only a murmur in the background as I remembered the time that Andrea and I hopped a cab in New York on a bitter cold day.

After we sat in the back seat, she had unbuttoned my coat, slipped her hands around my back, and held me close and warm.

But that’s past history, I thought to myself.

Now you’re here, Buckley, and you’re going to make whoopee! Right?

The cabby hopped to my door and I stepped out.

The doorman was already by the cab.

I slipped the leatherneck cabby a ten for a five-dollar fare, and with a deep drag on his pipe and a bright eyed smile, the cabby said,

May the winds fill your sails, lad, and he was gone.

The doorman noticed my generosity and jumped to reap a rich yield.

What’s your name, sir? I’ll get your room key and you can check in later.

Buckley Stone, I answered, and he rushed through the French glass doors and was back in a minute.

I’ll put your bag in your room, sir.

Thank you, I said.

As he was about to leave, I called to him:

Just a minute, son! What’s your name?

Jamie Washington, he said with a smile of polished white teeth. He was tall and thin, 20, maybe. It was hard to tell.

He looked like a baby-faced, teenage George Washington, I thought.

Listen, Jamie, I need you to do me a favor.

Yes, sir, he promptly answered.

Have a Miami Herald put in my room every day that I’m here, will you? It’s important to me.

Mister Stone, he retorted. "We don’t get the Miami paper here.

Then he smiled. Perhaps he remembered how he could make it happen.

I’ll have to have it brought down from Hyannis. It might cost a few dollars, sir!

Make it so, I replied.

I wanted to keep up with the happenings in Miami, and the Herald was a good way to make it happen. I wanted to keep up, but reasoned more honestly that it had a lot to do with my past memories that changed my life with a big surprise, I was hoping that Andrea’s killer would show up in the news and with that I could bag him and terminate my heart aches by taking my revenge.

I’ll see to it, sir, he said smiling wide.

I walked over beautiful plank-wood floors on the porch that only changed color to a satin light brown in the lobby.

Walls 16 feet high, fit the cabby’s jargon with an array of large paintings of proud ships with sails stretched full of wind and seas of a tempest thrashing at her sides.

Brass and bubbled glass lanterns embraced seabird papered walls, and oak trimmed out the rest. Three large, wide stairways sided by twisted oak banisters with brass braces climbed to the second-story and 30 rooms. Ship wheels hung in a dozen places as mementos of prizes of proud ships that challenged the seas.

I flopped on the bed, as I had been doing lately at home, and remoted the TV to a movie channel. Then I caught myself.

Look at you, you lame dope. You look like a man who’s run out of hope. Yeah, look at me, I’m even thinking in rhymes. Kill this. I’m outta here. I said with a determined mind set.

I pulled on a sweater and jeans and found myself walking down a cobblestone street. Decorative lamps hung down from copper poles. Not bright like Miami, but pleasing and cool, and sea breezes tickled my nose and smelled of kelp.

The houses showed a history of captains and politicians, by their colorful early English decor with a cottage or two, in-between in the grandeur of 1890 gingerbread shone with a flavor of an aged sea villa.

I recalled that Andrea wanted a cottage just like that shack sided with teal and brown, the one on the corner.

I told her that someday I’d buy her the house she always dreamed of having, if she could beat me running to the corner.

Will, I laughed and started running. She did beat me, but only after I faked a cramp in my leg, then told her that it didn’t count.

She grimaced and told me off in so many words:

Buckley, Stone, that’s really a dirty deal,

Then she kicked my feet out from under me. We both fell to the grass, laughing.

A sign on the pole said, Eat at Giorgio’s on the Wharf 2 Blocks North.

It was 10:15 p.m. I wondered if it was still open and headed that way past an all-night dinner that lit up the bay. Two blocks seemed like a mile, and I finally stepped onto rough wood planks and walked along a long pier to the left.

I can’t remember how many hundreds of times I had taken Andrea to the Miami Wharf for fish and chips and afterwards to the best ice cream place in town. Then we would always walk home, singing to the top of our voices. And I can’t forget her as she would dance and whirl on shadowy streets. Sometimes I thought she was crazier than me.

I walked on, seeing a few couples coming my way laughing and talking loud as if their bellies were full and the whiskey was lighting up their lives a little.

Fishing boats lined the pilings of the pier from about fifty steps in where the water starts deep, to the end where the large diesel shrimpers bobbed proudly up and down in the rolls of small waves in the smooth water.

Quaint shops with china and gifts from faraway places, began blocking the wide path of planks about halfway down the pier.

I wondered if I was too late to eat, because several other couples were walking in the opposite direction to the beginning of the wharf.

Then, just as I reached an extrusion of a wall of one of the shops, a figure huddled in the darkness caught the corner of my eye.

My first thought was that it was a drunken wino staying the night, but then I heard sounds of sobbing.

I said to myself:

What is this? and edged closer for a look see.

I saw a full head of long, pretty, auburn hair draped over arms around bent knees in a sitting position, leaning against a gift shop wall in the darkness of the night.

I stood about five feet away dumbfounded, and listened to her sobs of despair, recalling that they were much like that of my own a few months ago. The night that Andrea died,

The pain in my stomach was so intense that I could do nothing more than curl up into a sobbing ball of pain. Then I asked myself how I could approach her?

I wondered if this was someone with a similar kind of suffering.

How do I begin to ease her pain and what should I say to this stranger?

I know Ashley made an effort when she and Bobby came over to call on me after Andrea’s death.

All she really said was:

‘I know there’s nothing I can do to ease your pain, Buckley, but we’re just going to be right here so that you’re not alone. And if you want to talk, we’re going to be waiting to hear you.’

Somehow that helped, not being alone, eased my pain.

Ashley was as smart as a whip, whatever that means. She was the secretary and gofer for our business and Bobby’s wife. She knew everything that seemed important to people, and she made everyone happy and satisfied. She is the perfect person to have as a liaison to the public.

She didn’t play any games and didn’t flaunt her good looks to tease the men.

I always wondered how she could be attracted to Bobby.

He had a completely different view of sexuality and morals. He was always the one to jump in bed at the first hint of flirtation.

But maybe Ashley changed all that. I don’t think so. Can an animal change its instinct?"

Alas! What can I say to this huddle of pain sobbing in the middle of the night? I thought.

Then, for the lack of other words, I spoke what I felt was appropriate, but after I said it, I thought it was a little cheesy.

"Can I help you,