"Things are going good here, but ah -" she knows what she has to say, except the words are stumbling around in her head. She is thinking it through again as if thinking about it will somehow change the situation. She knows there's no more time to think anymore. She has to say it. She considers not telling him, taking care of it herself. Maybe her mom was right.
"But, how are you doing?" he asks suddenly genuine. "What are you up to, Wendy?"
The sound of him saying her name propels her over the line. She's going to tell him. She knows she's going to tell him. She thinks for the first time, just by the way he said her name, just from that little spark of genuine interest in his voice, she thinks things might just work out ok for them - for Jack and Wendy Turner. She pushes the blankets off and slides her legs out of bed. She's wearing tight black bootie pants and a pink pajama top. She slides over to the edge of the bed. "I'm glad you asked, Jack. I'm doing well, real well as a matter of fact. And the reason I'm calling you is that -"
She pauses again. Rubs her hand across her stomach, feels something move inside. Her eyes open wide and she smiles.
"You there?" he asks.
"Yes, we're here." The room is filling with the LA suburb sunshine. It's streaming in, dissolving the shadows.
"So, what is it you want to tell me," he asks. He's such a dopey 18 year old guy. He has no clue. He's totally oblivious of what she is about to tell him. If he was forced to guess, like a hand had just put a pistol to his temple and a voice said, "Guess what she's about to tell you, Jack. Guess or I'll shoot you, Amigo." He would not have guessed correctly. He'd say she wanted to tell him that she'd signed up for classes at the community college or that her parents had bought her a new car, or that she was going to a concert or she'd ask why he never called. Why hadn't he returned her messages on Facebook?
But there in her bedroom she rubbed her swollen belly and feels the baby's little tiny foot pressing against her hand. It moves slightly and she can feel a bone in the pinky toe rub against her palm. "Well, Jack, I'm calling to tell you that you are going to be a dad."
CHAPTER 3
Long cool blue waves are rolling in toward the sugar-white sandy beach on Boca Chica Key. Jack and Max and a dozen other sailboarders are catching the wind, launching off the crests, gliding through the sun shot sky. The water is as clear as gin. Patches of coral and kelp strands are visible here and there. The wind freshens, an earnest gust begins to blow, to really stretch their sails and Jack forgets everything except the power of the wind and the board strapped to his feet beating against the water. The muscles in his arms are tense so he stretches out, leans back and holds on. He's sliding across the tops of breaking waves. The swells rise and sink and he rides them up and down wanting to just keep right on going to Cuba or Jamaica. He wants to just keep going and never come back.
* * *
"How do I know it's even mine?"
"You don't," Max says. "But the timing points to you."
They are lying on the sand sipping cans of beer.
"She's eight months pregnant."
"And that's about the time you left LA," Max smiles. "You know, every time I saw her after you split, she asked about you and she was lit up, like stars in her eyes."
"Stop, man."
"Hey, the only way to know for sure is a paternity test, right?
"Yeah."
"But, I'm just saying, I didn't get the vibe like she was spreading it around, did you?"
"No," Jack admits. "She's a real sweetheart. But, dude, I'm making like seven hundred and change a month."
"Love is all you need."
"No, man, you need cash for diapers and baby bottles. You need a house and appliances and a four door sedan."
"I can totally see you in a four door."
"Can we just stop talking about this, besides, we got plans. We're gonna buy a sailboat and head out across the Caribbean."
"Maybe that has to wait," Max says.
"I'm too young to be a dad." Jack is irritated.
"You're not too young to make a baby." Max smirks. "Besides a boat is like twenty thousand dollars. Even if we had that kind of money, Dad, buying a boat would be irresponsible."
"Don't even talk about responsibility, man, like I gotta choose between a baby and a sailboat."
Right then, a forty footer cruiser crosses right in front of them a little ways out from the beach. A few guys and girls are crewing. It's leaning way over and everyone is sitting up on the high side. A full spinnaker, black with the skull and cross bones, pulls her along. Jack looks at the boat with heartbreak in his eyes. He sees himself on the bow of the Almayer, riding up and down on the ocean swells. He feels the sailor's carefree attitude calling him back out to sea. But he's on land right now. All the stress of daily life is clawing at him. He just wants to be out at sea where life is simpler.
"Responsibility," Max says. "Life is thrusting responsibility on you." Max snickers. "Thrusting," he whispers and moans, pretending like he's making passionate love.
Jack snaps back to reality. "Listen to you; you grass-smoking, windsurfing, table-waiting beach bum. You have no responsibility."
"Responsibility, Daddy." Max is in full ballbreaker mode now. "That sounds so harsh, like open a bank account or pay the water bill or shop for appliances." Max makes a face like he's in pain. "Change a dirty diaper," he says. "Can you say dirty diaper, daddy?"
The sailboat flying the Jolly Roger swings around so close to the beach, they can hear the crew shouting and laughing as the boom swings around and the crew works the winches.
"Give me another beer, will you?"
Max says, "Here, this is exactly what you need, another beer. Drink your troubles away."
"Don't talk to me about responsibility, please."
"Responsibility," Max says. "Another word for condom -"
"Lay off, will you, Max."
"You and Wendy should have thought about wrapping some responsibility around your junk, Jack."
The sailboat has turned away from the beach and is heading out onto the open ocean. Max and Jack sit on the sand, sipping their beers, watching it shrink as the wind sweeps it away across the surface of the blue sea.
* * *
Later they are driving down the road. Palm trees swaying in the breeze, nice little beachfront bungalows behind hedges and flowering shrubs.
Jack is thinking back to LA, to the weeks he and Wendy were together before he left to join the Coast Guard.
He remembers it all clearly. He has long hair and a soul patch and they are sitting on a blanket at Redondo Beach but the situation is very tense between them.
Wendy is in a bikini, a skimpy pink number with strings. Her knees are drawn up to her chest. Her arms are wrapped around her knees and her chin is stuck down. She is in a stressed-out fetal position.
"The judge said either join the military or go to jail," Jack explains.
"How can a judge force you to join the Army?"
"I didn't join the Army, I joined the Coast Guard," Jack says.
"A judge can't force you to do that!"
"The judge didn't force me. Like I said, him and my lawyer gave me a choice."
"Either they forced you or you volunteered, Jack," Wendy insists. "You can't have it both ways."
"It's a little more complicated than that."
"I'm not stupid. Don't talk to me like I'm stupid." Wendy looks incredulous.
Jack's sure she's not stupid. He'd readily admit that she's smarter than he is and she has the grades to prove it. "Baby," he says, "there was that Honda Civic, remember. I told you about it. I just took it for a ride. I wasn't stealing it."
"You stole a Honda Civic?"
"My lawyer and the judge agreed it was joy riding."
"That's what I'm saying, Jack. They can't force you to join the Army for joy riding."
"It ain't the Army, and they're not forcing me to join, I tol
d you they gave me a choice. I could either join the Coast Guard and they drop the joyriding charge, or if I didn't join, they woulda charged me with grand theft auto. I coulda got five years in jail."
"Jack, you can't just walk out of my life right now, I mean -"
"I have no choice, besides, it won't be so bad. The recruiter guaranteed me a special training program."
"What, digging foxholes?"
"That would be the Army, I told you I'm going in the Coast Guard. I'm gonna learn how to handle small boats and handguns." Jack reaches over and rubs her back.
Wendy immediately cuddles up to him. "But, you can't go away now, Jack, we're really starting to hit it off."
"I'm sorry."
They kiss.
"When are you leaving?"
"Not for another two weeks.
"Good." She presses against him. They kiss and grope passionately.
Nearby, a middle-aged Mexican lady with several small children are building a sand castle. The lady notices Jack and Wendy making out. She rolls her eyes and distracts the kids from looking at the teen lovebirds.
For the next three weeks Jack and Wendy are inseparable. It's a three-week make out session - at Wendy's house on the family room couch, with their shirts off on Wendy's twin bed atop her pink comforter, making out on the couch in Jack's basement apartment, and stripped down to their jimmies in the plush backseat of a new Acura MDX, and finally, the grand finally, on a picnic blanket beside a babbling brook, naked, with a shiny Jeep Grand Cherokee parked nearby.
At LAX International Airport, Jack wraps an arm around her waist, an overstuffed gym bag dangles off his shoulder. They kiss as travelers move busily past them with their wheeled suitcases rolling on the dirty marble floor.
Wendy pulls away and wipes her eyes with a tissue.
Right then Jack is snapped back to reality as his little pickup truck starts making a loud banging noise. It's coming from the driver's side, rear.
Jack knows what it is. He's blown a tire. He steers to the side of the road and climbs out.
Sailboards are sticking out the truck's bed.
Max climbs under the back to figure out how to loosen the spare.
"Tread is showing on this spare, dude."
"Will it get us home?"
Max shoves the tire out from under the bed and crawls out after it. Jack lifts it and rolls it around to the driver's side rear, where the flat is.
"Yeah, this thing is in bad shape." Jack looks closely at the steel belt sticking out where the tread is worn away. "How much is a new tire, fifty bucks or so?"
"Heck, I don't know, probably."
Jacks got flip flops on, and his feet are squishing around as he pries the lugnuts loose on the flat. Cars and trucks are whizzing by a few feet behind him.
Max is ratcheting up the jack, positioning it to lift the truck when Jack has the lugs loosened.
"It can't be my kid," Jack says, frustrated. "Me and Wendy only did it once or twice. Definitely not enough to get pregnant." He works one of the lugs loose and places the nut on the ground. Max starts working the jack handle and the truck rises, the flat leaves the pavement.
Jack quickly loosens the remaining lugs and hands them to Max one at a time.
Max holds up one of the nuts, he closes one eye and squints with the other, pretending he's a jeweler with a loupe. He studies the lugnut as though it is a precious stone.
"What are you doing, goofball?" Jack asks.
"You know it only takes one nut to make a baby, right?"
Jack bangs the lug wrench on the pavement. "It ain't easy going from being a GED, stealing cars for a living and now I gotta deal with being a sailor, wearing uniforms, calling college guys sir."
Max backs off, gives Jack some space.
"I'm earning like no money, and now this with Wendy."
"Sorry, dude. I'm only jazzing ya."
"I got all the jazz I can handle, Max. I can't support Wendy, not her and a kid, even if it is mine." Jack begins tightens lug nuts. Silence smolders between them broken only by the sound of car tires zipping past on the hot blacktop.
"I don't mean to pile on, bro', but this tire is wasted." Max indicates the just-mounted spare. "We gotta get some new rubber on this rig."
"That's what I'm trying to tell you," Jack says emphatically. "I can't even afford a tire, never mind supporting a wife and kid. Besides, if there's money laying around, we're buying a sailboat."
Max tosses the flat in back of the truck.
"Let's roll," Jack says, hopping back behind the wheel. "I gotta go on watch in an hour."
CHAPTER 4
In a small office on the Coast Guard Base on Key West, Petty Officer Doogle, a 45-year-old, slightly overweight guy in an unkempt light blue shirt and dark pants, leans back in a cushioned office chair watching an old style WWF wrestling match on a tablet computer. In one hand he holds a can of Mountain Dew and in the other a bag of Flamin' Hot Funyuns.
"Pile driver! Pile driver!" Doogle shouts excitedly as the men on the tablet's screen engage in hand to hand combat. One wears dungaree coveralls with the legs cut short revealing black high-top boots laced up over bright orange hunting socks. This is Haybaler, Doogle's hero. The other giant in the ring is Indian Chief, who wears only high-top moccasins and a short deer-skin skirt held up by a colorful bead-belt with feather's dangling on leather strings. Indian Chief has long black hair that flies wildly as he kick's free from Haybaler's grasp, lands on both feet. Indian Chief dashes across the ring, bounces off the ropes and lunges at Haybaler, grabbing him around the neck and twisting savagely.
"Oh, no!" Doogle screams, "Not a lock jaw! Haybaler, get away from that injun!"
Jack Turner enters the office through a door with a window that is covered by old style metal blinds. The blinds rattle as Jack closes the door behind him. Jack is wearing his Coast Guard blue utility uniform. He props his elbows on the counter surrounding Doogle's desk and stands there looking bored. A radio and a nightstick hang from his web belt. He watches the WWF match over Doogle's shoulder.
"Can you believe this?" Doogle asks the tablet's screen. "What a joke. There is no way Indian Chief puts a lockjaw on Haybaler. This is a total crock of nonsense!"
Jack picks up a pen. He writes a brief entry in the logbook that is sitting open on the counter. "I'm checking in, Doogle," Jack says. "It's eleven-thirty. That's twenty-three thirty for you die hard military guys."
Through a mouthful of Fiery Funyuns, Doogle says, "Just write it in the book, Turner. Yes! Haybaler, takes the redskin to the mat!"
"The warehouse is all secure, but I haven't checked the doorknobs in over ten minutes, anything could have happened -"
Doogle is not listening.
"Mexican drug lords are probably breaking in right now, trying to retake all their controlled substances -"
"Just write it in the book, Turner." Doogle's eyes are glued to his tablet.
"Did you hear those gunshots?" Jack whispers, looking around with mock concern, making a silly face. "I think we're under attack . . . you better sound the alarm -"
Doogle has gripped his Funyuns so tight he's crushing them. He throws a punch and Mountain Dew sloshes from the can. "Kick his ass, Haybaler! Yeah! Kick his aaaaaaaassss!"
Jack walks out, the blinds on the back of the door rattle as he goes.
Far down the long dark hallway on the opposite end of the warehouse from where Doogle sits watching his old school wrestling matches, Jack leans on the wall. Perspiration is beading on his brow. Rattling around in his head the worried voice of a teenage boy fretting about his uncertain future. What am I supposed to do, get a four door with good tires and a car seat? Behind the beads of perspiration on his brow, Jack begins to form a dismal vision of his future -
He sees himself standing in the living room of the mobile home where he and Max now live. The mismatched furniture crammed into the tiny space. He sees himself standing
there in uniform. The nightstick and radio are still hanging from his belt. In his hands he holds a screaming infant with a bloated diaper. Wendy is there, but now she looks much older. Poorly applied make-up decorates her face. Her hair is a mess, as if she's had a few too many discount die jobs. The smell of whatever is bloating the baby's diaper fills the inside of the cramped mobile home and makes Jack gag. It's hot, unbearably hot. Jack looks at Wendy's unwashed housecoat and it's clear that she is pregnant again. And she's smoking. Jack hears a little girl singing a song, a lullaby of some kind. He can't make out the words, but it's surely a little girl's voice burbling away. He turns slightly, careful not to drop the infant, and sees right behind him, a toddler in droopy underpants standing there with a black Magic Marker held high over her head, like a psycho with a dagger about to stab. But she's not stabbing, she is scribbling on the faux-wood paneled wall.
Wendy screams at the toddler in a smoker's rasp, "You stop that you little brat!" Then she glares at Jack and demands, "Make her stop, Jack! Beat her if you have to. I don't give a shit."
A pit of anxiety opens in Jack's belly and his entire existence slips into the cesspool of swill and darkness that he knows is waiting for him down there.
There in the warehouse, late at night on watch, with his hands hanging at his sides, Jack brain is working so hard it's crying tears of salty sweat that trickle down his reddening face. In his imagination, he watches his future self, as if he's standing in the corner of the impossibly-cramped little living room like an invisible observer. He's certain that Wendy and the kids can't see him. And the weird thing is he sees himself turn and look directly at himself and he sees his lips pinch into a tight circle. And as he shakes his head, he hears the word, "NOOOOOOOOO!" first a low growl, then louder until it starts to shake the tin and Styrofoam and cheap paneled walls. The infant wails, and the little girl drops the Magic Marker on the dirty carpet in fear and springs to her mother who clutches her close to her ratty housecoat. Wendy and the little girl cower as Jack, who clutches the infant in his shaking hands, screams so loud the wall behind him trembles and explodes outward as if torn loose by a sudden hurricane gale.