Red

Key West, Wednesday morning, nine-ish and raining like hell.

It was a "drunk front".  A Canadian norther swept down across the
mainland and moved into town during the wee hours. On the wind,
even this far south, there was a smell of snow. The condensed, humid
Gulf Stream air turned everything to a windy, wet, thunderstruck,
depressing, chilly gray.  Normal life went on hold. There would be no dive
or fishing trips. No roasting on the beach or poolside under a layer of
coconut oil.  Nothing much left but the bars.

"Skunk" had just arrived wet and miserable to open "The Bull" and make the
best of what came her way. She started the first of many pots of coffee.

Debbie "Skunk" Peterson had acquired her name not from any lapse in
personal hygiene, but from an incident shortly after she had started
pushing drinks in the "Bull". She had accepted a challenge from a drunken
tourist to a game of eight ball. The poor bastard had no way of knowing
she was a scratch player who cleared the table thereby "skunking" the
astonished sucker out of his ten bucks. 

"The Bull" is a veteran in a city of bars that come and go with the
hurricanes or bad management. It started its present incarnation around
1950 or thereabouts in an old two-story building that has dominated the corner of Caroline and Duval for just over a hundred years.

Up stairs is another bar, "The Whistle" home to an iguana that has not
moved a muscle in years. If you want to take on Skunk at pool, watch
the big game or throw up off a high place you have to go up there.
The Bull has no pretensions about being a sports bar.

10:40

"Skunk" looked up from her "Miami Herald" as a yellow Paradise Cab pulled
up in the standing water close to the corner door of the Bull and watched
a slight, stooped figure emerge.

It was Captain Wilfred W. "Red" Williams Sr.- eighty-six last count- and a
living legend. Red was a touchstone to, in many minds, a far more
authentic, less touristy and altogether more desirable Key West. He
took little notice of the legend thing. Hell, that was somebody else's idea.

"Skunk" had set a cup of coffee and the front section of the paper towards him.

"Morning Skipper." She shot him her warmest smile.

"Morning honey.  Lousy day huh?"  He returned her smile with a beaming
grin on his pink, deeply wrinkled and toothless face.

It occurred to "Skunk" that if there is some beefcake
standard by which legends are measured, "Red" would not fit.

Imagine a thin old guy about five-six and maybe a hundred thirty-five pounds with
a shock of unruly white hair jutting at all angles from under an aged, sweat stained Dolphins cap perched back on his long head.  He beheld the world with milky blue eyes, which always looked as if they were about to overflow. Under his left eye some incident had left him with a lower lid which drooped showing a small semi circle of deep pink inner lid. He had the look of a man who had seen far too much of places he'd rather not be.

"You doing o.k. Red?" The brown hand touched his, causing him to wish
he was a much younger man.

In his time, he had four boats sink under him the last of which had left him
floating on a piece of wreckage for two days before he was found.

After the great Labor Day hurricane of '35, he had assisted in the recovery
of the bodies of over a hundred men, women and kids floating in the Gulf.
The images had never left him.

"Oh, fair to partly cloudy." He dug into the pocket of a faded blue flannel
shirt, pulled out a rumpled pack of Luckies, stuck one in the corner of his
mouth and accepted a light.

"Hell of a lot better than that." He jerked back a thumb at the day outside."Good coffee"

"Red", took little notice of the legend thing. He had simply outlived all of his
contemporaries, case closed. He had fished another legend, Hemingway, back in the days before World War Two was a cloud on the horizon. 

It was a time of bamboo rods and linen line running the Venezuelan rig
offshore behind nine-knot boats in which you could go to Cuba any time
you damn well pleased.  If you could get the old boy to talk, he might tell
you about one of the times he fished the Old Man on Hemingway's boat
the "Pilar."  "Papa" would hire him to run his boat two or three times a
week. He would sit in the fighting chair with a clipboard and a glass of
booze and write while they trolled along.

On this day the fishing was slow and Hemingway was edgy. He had just
had a fight with his first wife and told Red to head to Cuba where he was going
to stay at his "finca" outside Havana there while he, she, and things, cooled down.

When they reached Havana, Hemingway disappeared for a few days
leaving Red without so much as a change of clothes or money.
This and other incidents formed Red's opinion, an opinion in which he was
not alone, of the literary giant and major tourist draw.

"Hemingway? Ernest Hemingway was a drunken, inconsiderate,
womanizing, son of a bitch!"

Red had quit drinking years ago.  After forty some years the booze got to be too
much and he just quit.  No meetings, no support groups.

If something or some body was in your way, you either went through or around. He had always been a pragmatic man.

After he finished his coffee and as much news as he could
stand he would move down the street to his job at Rumrunners' bar were
he was a security guard. His size and age had not diminished his strength
or his feisty will. There was that situation a couple years back
when his bike was stolen.

That blue bike, one of the old fat tired kind, was his pride and joy. He was
too old to drive anymore so it was his only way around town.  He never
really peddled, but rather, sat on it and pushed it along with his feet. One
morning the bike was gone.  He groused about it for a few days and then
got on with things. He could get a taxi anytime since his son, Bud, had
arranged with the owner of "Paradise Cab" to take Red where he had to
go. He paid a stipend each month including a tip for the driver so Red had transportation. But the old man was independent and, except on days like this, he liked his bike.

Several weeks later while "Red" was standing outside "Rumrunners"
watching the world go by, he looked down Duval to see his bike coming
towards him being ridden by a young man.  He stepped to the curb, balled
up his right fist and waited. As bike and rider came abreast, he let fly
knocking the guy clean off. 

He retrieved his bike from the gutter and returned to deal with the thief,
The young man, after picking himself up, decided to go elsewhere. The cheering and
applauding tourists were deeply disappointed there was no second round. They had
every hope of seeing him get his ass kicked again by a little old man.

"Red" eased into the front page and "Skunk" put on a fresh pot. They sat
reading and drinking their coffee enjoying the comfortable silence of
good friends.  Occasionally, "Red" would grunt or utter a low profanity as
he noted the state of iniquity in the world beyond the two by four mile
island he had not left in twenty-eight years.

Bud would tell you the old boy only read the paper to support his theory
that the world was going to hell as it had been since he first took notice of
it all those years ago.

"Red " finished his three cups of coffee and slid off the stool.

"Well, I better get moving honey" He dug in his jeans for some money.

" Put that back. You don't owe me a thing Skipper. Just nice to have you
drop by." 

"Thanks honey, see you later."

"Bye Skipper, have a great day."

The rain had, for the time, reduced in volume to a steady drizzle as the
she watched the old legend, hunched under his slicker, make his way
down the sidewalk.