Willie Longfellow sat in the boathouse at the Excelsior pier listening to the rain pound the tin roof of his little shack.
The wind was ferocious and Willie wouldn’t go
out until the storm had abated. There were plenty of people waiting, wanting to
take a ride to the casino on Big Island, but he knew the wind was too strong
and the chop too high for the paddlewheel he drove to make it safely across the
water.
He had to ignore them, for their own sake.
Willie might have been a drunk but he was a
competent sailor, and he wasn’t going to risk his life or the lives of his
passengers, he had too much respect for the forces of nature to play with her
that way.
The boathouse was cramped.
There was a small desk with a kerosene lamp
and a phone, a wood burning stove that was cold at the moment, but there was a
small gas-burner on top of it that he used to boil water for coffee. In the
space between those fixtures there was barely enough room for Willie to turn
around.
He leaned against the door jamb of the little shack
smoking a Navy Cut, drinking coffee and brandy (mostly brandy) from the tin cup
hooked around his fingers, blowing smoke through a the narrow crack he held in
the doorway.
Willie tolerated the weather coming into the
shack because it would be too hot inside and he knew that if he didn’t have a
little ventilation he would not be able to breath inside his chamber. He also knew
that if he went to the boat, where it would be more comfortable to sit the
people gathered at the dock would expect him to make way for the island; they
would pester him until he did something stupid like acquiesce to their demands.
He didn’t want the pressure, and for that same
reason he had taken the phone off the hook. One of the fellows at the Casino had
been calling again and again, demanding that he bring people over…and to do it
now.
Willie Longfellow had his own agenda, and he
was too salty to care what anyone else had to say about the matter. He had been
a boatswain in the Navy for twenty five years, and he had dealt with much
tougher men than the Norwegian gang that had recently taken over the operation on
the island…that’s what Willie believed, though he frequently had to remind
himself of it.
He was in the process of doing just that when
he watched a small boat pull up to the pier with its running lights on, and watched
the slender silver-haired man people called The Wolf, get out of the boat and
approach his little shack. He made eye contact with him as he toward the
boathouse and a chill went up his spine.
Willie wasn’t afraid of anyone or anything,
but he knew enough to see this man for what he was…a killer, a guy who walked
through the storm as if the rain couldn’t touch him.
He took the last swallow of his coffee,
flicked the butt end of his cigarette out the door, pulled on his raincoat and
hat, turned on his flashlight and went out into the storm, and he decided it
might be best to make a run with the ferry.
Willie tried to ignore the Wolf’s approach and
kept his eyes on the people waiting beneath the shelter, he waved to them to
let them know that it was time to board, then he rang the bell for anyone else who
might be nearby, and when he did people began to file out of the tavern on the
corner of Water Street.
The Wolf stopped him as they passed each other,
he held his arm in a grip that felt like ice, and said, “You’re an hour late.”
“Better
late than dead,” Willie mumbled.
Lightning struck the water with a long flash
and rolling thunder.
“You
know…the weather,” Willie said as he shook himself loose and moved on.
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