“You again?” Joe the bartender asked when Edward was near his shack. Joe grimaced wide enough to expose the hole between his teeth. He swayed behind the bar from one side to the other like one of the sailboat masts around the pier.
“I’m just wasting time till the ferry gets here.” Edward didn’t stop, continuing his trek, curious to see where the beach ended.
“Hey, dude, where you goin? You got a bug up your ass or something? Don’t you want rum punch?” Joe pulled at his beard in what looked like a mad professor’s contemplation of some theory, but then scratched feverishly at the rough and wrinkled flesh underneath.
“I don’t have money to waste. I gotta go into town and buy some tools—”
“Got any weed?”
“What? No.”
“Oh. OK. Porget it. Well, come on, any-who. I give you a drink.”
“Really? That’s very generous.” Edward stopped, turning to walk over.
“You can pay me later.”
Edward wiped the sweat off his brow and shook his head.
“You live at those houses on Deadman Bay, huh?”
Edward sat down on one of the stools while Joe poured rum into one of the red cups. When it was full, he whistled and pretended the cup was a rocket, taking off from the shelf and landing on the counter in front of Edward.
“Before you, there was a twenty-year-old girl. But she quit after a few days. Couldn’t handle it. And before her they had some crazy hippie lady watching the property for two years.”
“A crazy hippie? Here?”
“Yeah, who’da thunk it.” Joe’s hair looked like it hadn’t been washed or combed in about five years and he pressed it back. “Anyways, she used to get off on savin shit. You know, turtles, geese, bawd eagles. And if she saw some tourist catching anything in a net, the bitch would blow a gasket. Start saying how it’s endangered. When she dished that out to me, I’d give it right back, tell her, ‘how do you know it’s endangered? You count ‘em!’ Haaaa hah ha—” A fit of coughing overtook Joe for a minute. He took a drink from his hidden flask and then became very quiet, looking off behind Edward before continuing. “You livin out there,” he said in a scratchy whisper, “where they found that dead body, huh?”
“How do you know about that?”
“Dude. It’s an island.” He stretched his arms out and shrugged before letting them fall. His hands slapped down on the counter as if playing a bongo. “I was in a band once—”
“What did you hear about that body?” Edward asked.
“Everything. Why – what do you know?”
“I found the body—”
“Woahhh. Dude, that was you? That’s gnarly.”
“I thought you knew everything?”
“Oooh, well, some.” Joe leaned over the counter and looked down the beach from left to right. “What’dya think happened?”
“Police say he was murdered on a boat. Probably a jealous lover or drug runners—”
“And you believe that shit?” Joe half laughed and half coughed. “You believe that then you as stupid as my brother-in-law and he plays with chickens.” Joe closed his eyes tight producing fans of wrinkles under his temples.
“Why? Did you hear something different?”
“Hear? Hear nothing. It’s what I saw and I saw some weird shit that night.” Joe eye’s widened, eggs set into the craggy nest of his face. His wild hair crept forward, down over his face. He wiped it back again. “Never listen to no police. They tried to get me in Calipornia. Call me up. Say I won the lottery. Tell me to show up at some address to pick up my money. But I had three warrants out on me at the time. Unpaid tickets. One possession. Behind a little on the rent and something else I forgot. So, I went to that address, but you know I’m always lookin out, so, I stay behind a tree up the street, and just wait there, watchin. Then some dumbass drives up in his red Camaro. He’s wearing his black jacket and got his hair all slicked back, and you know – you know – he’s got, like, ten outstanding on him. Well, he walks into that building and you know what happens? He doesn’t come out. Some cop comes out and drives that Camaro away. It’s just a big snaaatch. Big bear trap. Right then and there.”
Joe took three tries before snapping his fingers.
“That’s when I pigured out I needs to see the world. Travel. Get out of the country. Man cannot live on bread and weed alone.” Joe sucked in air through the gap in his teeth. His tone dropped to a calm, low chord when he said, “I got a great-great grandfather who was Navajo. That Indian blood drives me to explore.”
“Yeah, that and your three warrants.” Edward rolled his eyes before gulping down half the drink.
Joe coughed up a laugh. Edward turned and glanced at the pier before resting his elbows on the counter.
“Joe, you say you saw something that night? Like what?”
“Lights, mannn.”
Joe reached for his flask, shook it around a few times, watching Edward’s reaction before taking a swig. He put it back down.
“Lights? What do you mean lights? Like out over the water?”
“Yeah, man, like out over the water. In the sky out there.”
The liquor vapors coming off Joe’s breath made Edward’s eyes water. Edward realized he was leaning over the counter and slowly moved back. Pretending he was stretching, he turned his head and sniffed in a lungful of clean air.
“What do you mean, in the sky?”
“In the sky, dude, hovering—”
“You saw a helicopter?”
“No, not a helicopter. Aliens, man, aliens.”
Edward started laughing, but stopped when Joe didn’t. Joe glared with wide, wild, bloodshot eyes.
“Spacemen. Seriously?”
“Serious, dude.” Joe the bartender pointed his index finger at Edward’s nose. “I been out there. Rowboat. Midnight.” He turned his finger upward. “A light zooms over me like a meteor. But then it turns. Right over my head, man. Just like that! And then it heads for the mountain top like it’s gonna land right there on the peak or something and I’m thinking I should go there, you know—”
“Like Richard Dreyfuss?”
“Who?”
“Richard Dreyfuss. Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
“No! Not like that. It’s real, dude.” Joe’s eyes widened, the white contrasting more against his bark-like skin.
“Are you saying aliens murdered that man?”
“Unh-unh. Nope.”
A particle of spittle volleyed out of Joe’s mouth and landed on the back of Edward’s hand. Edward forced himself to ignore it, casually moving his hand off the counter and wiping it on his shorts.
“Well, that’s a relief.” Edward smiled.
“You can’t call it murder, man. You can’t call it murder if a tiger kills a man. Murder is a culturally centric judgmental platitude put up by oppressive governments. When they murder people, they call it execution.”
“OK-OK-OK.” Edward held up a hand to try to stop Joe from continuing.
“You don’t think so – you don’t think so? I got another truth for your little head. You think you see it all. There’s more shit going down than you see with your two eyes.”
“Uh-huh. Like what?” Edward pretended to scratch his nose to cover his smirk.
“Like under that pretty blue water, dude.” Joe passed a wrinkled hand across the air between them. “Under that water there’s a war going on right this very minute.”
“A war? Who’s at war?”
“Man, the pucking government and the Columbians! Who do you think? The USA has the submarines and mines, but the Columbians got the whales and dolphins—”