THE FLYING DUTCHMAN

Jeff squatted on his haunches in the yew bushes across the street from Donnas Duck’s house. He nervously twirled the drum on his father’s revolver, sighting down the long blue barrel at Sal Esposito’s head behind the big picture window. He let the hammer drop on an empty chamber and closed his eyes as he imagined his phantom bullet tunneling through the night air to exploding the plate glass window and spray a thousand shards of glass into the lap of the mob boss as he watched TV in his nephew’s living room, and the amazed look on the Capo’s face, as he felt the punch of the bullet into his skull and then the air going out of him like a deflated balloon.

Jeff opened his eyes and glanced at the copper headed bullets in his hand. His body still warm from the heroin he’d shot a while ago, the spasm of the first rush fading into little orgasms; the aftershocks of the needle going into his arm still click-clicking to the rhythm of his heart-beat. Looking at the mob boss stuffing his face in front of the flickering TV set across the street, he felt the anger come back again like an exploding bubble in the back of his head.

He and Donna had shot a bag of bad dope the night before, which sent them both to the Medical Center for emergency detox. Then Papa Esposito showed up screaming his head off and threatening to cut Jeff’s balls off for getting his daughter Donna strung out on junk while her cousin Rafe gawked at him over his uncle’s shoulder. Mobbed up or not, after what he’d been through in Nam, nobody was going to disrespect him. So, he popped the old man and wound-up wrestling Rafe around on the floor of the infirmary until some rent-a-cops showed up and beat the crap out of him, held him down while the nurses shot him full of Demerol, then cuffed him to a bed like a fucking dog.

“Beat that?!” he thought, as he drifted off in his narcotic dream to Electric Ladyland, “Mobster gets more respect that a Vietnam vet!”

The Demerol made him dream he was back in the infamous ‘D-Block’ at the San Diego Brig. That first night when they brought him in for boosting a Jeep and all the Jarhead guards were strutting around with leather saps. They walked him through their unofficial punishment hall, a special place for nasty Marines they called it, some tied up and suspended from the bars, one guy sideways, the floor slippery with blood and spit. He woke up in the hospital screaming and soaked in sweat as he tore the hospital bed apart to get free of his constraints as the night nurses screamed and called for security.

                                                                                   ***

Downstairs at the hospital emergency room entrance, two attendants strolled out of the door pushing a corpse-laden gurney for the county morgue just as a long black hearse roared into the hospital drive. The attendants too intent on arguing the dubious skills from last night’s Yankees game, while pulling a recently demised guest of the hospital out for his ride to his funeral home, were oblivious to the approaching Black Maria until it spun to a screeching halt just inches from their feet. The Hearse door opened and out stepped a short black man wearing a gray three-piece suit. On his head was a chauffeur’s cap with a spit-shined brim that shaded deep-set eyes and a wide crooked nose. His teeth were as white as a picket fence, his skin the color of light cocoa, but the most striking thing about him was his gait, he had the bowed walk of a sailor come ashore. Pushing past the attendants he threw back the doors of the meat wagon and shoved the body in like a Hershey bar to a waiting mouth.

The attendants, by now recovered from the shock of almost being run over grabbed the driver and spun him around. “Hey asshole,” the tall musclebound attendant shouted. “What’dya think yer doing?” the little one beside him added.

Looking slowly from one to the other, the driver pushed their hands away and stepped back apace and pulled a worn toothpick from behind his ear and stuck it in the corner of his mouth.

“Man’s dead,” he drawled, “and so will you, if’n you touch me again.’

The little black man’s smile broadened at this and his eyes narrowed in a way that made the attendants step back. The shorter one snapped “Go on, get yer ass outta here,” then jumped back a little further as if he’d lit a cherry bomb. The Hospital pneumatic doors opened then with a whoosh as they all turned to see Jeff walk out in his hospital gown.

Looking at the driver in his suit and brimmed hat, he asked, “Hey man, how about a ride?”

The hearse driver looked him over, a skinny white boy in pajamas and slippers with a pair of handcuffs peeking out from beneath his sleeves and said, “Sure, what the fuck!” then gestured at the hearse.

As he jumped in, two security guards came running out of the hospital and grabbed at the car’ door handles.

“I guess we better Didi mau my man” the driver said looking over at Jeff as he gunned the limo towards the gates.

“My name’s Billy Murphy,” the driver said sticking his hand out across the front seat. “And how long you been back in the world,” he added noticing the dog tags at Jeff’s throat.

“Three months. And you?”

“I am late of “Graves Registration, Danang” now stateside six glorious weeks and gainfully employed.”

“Cool, you wanna get high?” Jeff said.

                                                                                     ***

Later that day, Jeff walked into his house and was grabbed from behind to find himself nose-to-nose with his father dressed in his uniform cop blues, gun already strapped to his hip.

“Jeff, when are you going to stop lying around and get a job,” he cried.

“You’ve been out of the service for three months and I haven’t seen you do a goddamn thing.”

George McCarty was a uniformed patrolman for the Hoboken Police. He also rented his downstairs apartment to Capo Sal Esposito’s nephew Raphael, better known as Rafe or “Mad Head” on the street. George was on the Esposito Pad for services rendered, which could mean a number of things such as a phone call before a raid so Sal’s goombah friends could blow, leaving only trash cans filled with burnt bookie slips, or sometimes it was protection and strong-arm stuff. McCarty was so trusted by Esposito that he was designated a bag-man for picking up payoff money from extorted businesses on his beat in brown sandwich bags or else distributing payoffs to other cops and some judges on the payroll.

“I’m working on it, I got possibilities,” Jeff said with indignation.

“And what do you care anyway,” he added. “You’ve got plenty of dough coming in from your goombahs.

“That’s ain’t true. My family’s always been first with me. Coming back from over there,” George said, nodding at the wall like Vietnam was just outside the front door, “you’d think it’d be easier to see what’s important, what you do to get by, protect your own. I learned it the hard way at Guadalcanal. Believe me it was no fucking picnic; some guys they just dropped dead, not even a mark on them. They just weren’t mean enough to do what needed to be done.”

“Yeah, yeah! It was so simple then,” Jeff said sarcastically. “Well in ‘Nam there weren’t no heroes, just assholes like me who didn't know what the fuck we were doing there. No, wait a minute let me take that back,” Jeff added. “I know why I was there. My dad convinced some Judge to make me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

“Hey don't pin that on me,” his father said. “You were in custody for selling pills up at the High School and I had to come do something; otherwise, you were going away for real time at Rahway Prison.”

“Some solution!” Jeff said with a smirk. “Do a minimum of five years at Rahway or else leave with this nice gentleman from the Marine Corps.”

Hey!” he added, poking his father in the chest, “maybe I can be just like you now! Become a cop, get a Pad of my own, and rent the downstairs to some greaseball pays me to beat up jerks too stupid to stay away from the shylock.”

His father grabbed Jeff by the throat and pinned him against the wall while his other hand grabbed for his gun.

“What is it? Can't look in the mirror? What’dya gonna do,” he said nodding at the gun, “Shoot me for telling the truth?”

His father stepped back and said “I don't need to explain my reasons to you. This conversation is about you. I thought the Corps would wise you up. You don't remember all the times I had to smooth things out, had to eat my pride and beg guys to pull your sheet and let you go. The pranks, vandalism, drugs, that was all bullshit. But when you started talking like you were going to kill somebody, I figured hey here it is, he’s gonna spend the rest of his life in prison or worse he's gonna be dead at my feet some night. I figured you needed something I wasn't giving you; a hard lesson. And now you've had it. You've seen buddies shot to death in front of you. You've got them buddies in there somewhere,” he said tapping him on the forehead with his index finger.

“And when you survive combat, you see the thing you wanted most is what you hate, that you’re alive and they’re dead. So maybe that’s you and me now, huh? Buddies watching each other’s backs. Can we do that?”

“I don't know?” Jeff said shaking his head. “Maybe I see some of it. But the mob stuff. I don't buy it. That prick Rafe downstairs, he doesn’t deserve your respect and now you've let him live in our house like its protection, it ain’t ours no more. They own you, Dad! And there’s no easy way to cut the strings unless you blow them away or get yourself lost.”

Then Jeff pushed past his father and ran down the steps and out the back door.

                                                                                            ***

Jeff’s girlfriend, Donna Esposito was an Italian American princess, the daughter of a low-level Capo in the Colombo crime family. The Esposito brothers, Sal and Angelo, had made their bones in the black-market during World War 2, selling bunker oil they’d siphoned from the big storage tanks in Hoboken to illegitimate after-hours joints on Front Street. Oil destined for ships running troops into Guadalcanal and later tanks into Bastogne. While everyone else was huddled around their radios in the black days of 1943, listening to Roosevelt’s fireside chats and freezing their asses off in sweaters and overcoats, the Espositos were hot news in the Families who partied on their stolen heating oil. When Peace broke out, the Espositos mourned the war’s passing and effortlessly expanded into respectability by adding appliance stores to their stable of rackets, selling washing machines and radios to poor slobs coming back from the war, most of their inventory lifted by longshoremen from freighters moored at the finger-piers on the Hudson River in Hoboken.

Donna was Sal’s China doll, five feet tall in her stocking feet with the dark complexion of the Nabolidon; she had Sophia Loren eyes and the black lustrous hair that fell in soft arcs to her breasts. At thirteen Sal sent her to Barbizon School to learn how to model. ‘Walk like a lady and carry herself like a queen,’ Sal said. Unfortunately, and in spite of her beauty, Donna’s petite size only resulted in photo shoots for children’s products and then even those dried up as she grew into puberty and her expanding chest belied her innocent face. Sal was frustrated beyond reason. For the first time in his wise guy life, he couldn’t threaten or kill his way to get what he wanted. One time he heard a photographer refer to his daughter as ‘that midget wop’ and the offending person disappeared; so, did Donna’s career. No one would touch her after that.

The abandoned Staten Island ferry lay beached in the mud, its bow overgrown by towering reeds, its stern awash in green swells from the bay. Marsh gas lifted from the receding tide filling the morning air with the odor of sulfur and decay. The ferry’s bulkhead was sun-bleached with only a few patches of red flaking paint and yellow guano to mar its towering sides; a busted smokestack pointing a crooked finger at Manhattan. The Army Corps of Engineers used the muddy Black Toms Hook as a ship graveyard, a place to store derelict or half-sunken vessels they pulled from the channels. After a while the Corp would break them up, drop the debris into burn barges and set them alight by the harbor’s mouth before dump the ashes unceremoniously into the ocean.

Off the stern of the sunken ferry Franny Butler swam in a cool halo of green water, playfully splashing the gulls. The ferry was surrounded by towering dry-docks and ancient schooners pushed high upon the shoals. Franny bobbed on his back in the current, mindless in enjoyment as his shoulder-length hair splayed around him in a blond aura, his gray eyes tracking the cirrus clouds that flowed overhead, his freckled nose struggling to stay above water. Franny spent his formative years in the cozy womb of Lafayette, an Irish ghetto that his dad’s cronies believed they'd stolen from the Dutch. The Micks were too narrowback to know that the Poltroons were glad to give it up and get away from the factory stink and the blasted mosquitoes. Yet with sheer stubborn-headedness and an adamant pugnacity the Micks persevered and swallowed everything they could grab. Franny knew from experience that everything in life was pre-ordained by the trinity of Church, Police, and the Democratic Machine and that every dollar was worth eighty cents since twenty went to the ward leader, the shylock, or the cops.

When Fran and Jeff first met Donna Duck, she was attending an all-girl’s Catholic school; nun-trained was how Sal Esposito put it, like she was a prize bitch from his litter. After school she shed the good girl role and went to a pool hall where she hiked her uniform skirt over her knees and lathered on eye shadow as dark as midnight where the boys hung in the back playing pinball and chain-smoking Luckies, trying to look hard in cuffed jeans and greasy hair.

Franny talked philosophy he'd picked up at a Jesuit Prep School, Plato's cave and Aristotelian logic, truths that lay just beneath the surface. It gave Donna hot flashes listening to him as he flippered the pinball, her head spinning with his ideas that made her worldly concerns seem small and insignificant, her mafioso home-life a million miles away.

Jeff was a different story. He was all action to Franny’s talk. Once he picked up a small kerosene lamp that city workers had left by an open ditch and rolled it under a parked car, which exploded in a fireball that lifted the whole front end of the chevy then slammed it back into the ground. Donna later told Jeff that as she ran away laughing hysterically and terrified, she felt a warmth spread up her legs and over her belly from her pantyhose rubbing until it overwhelmed her in an orgasm.

Yet in spite of their differences, Franny and Jeff and Donna, and their verbal competitions, they all stayed inseparable friends and grew to rely on each other; that is until the war came between them.

                                                                                        ***

Back in the bushes across the street from his house, Jeff woke with a start as a Patrol Car screeched to a halt and two cops ran up the steps. Puzzled, Jeff watched from the shadows until he saw his father at Rafe’s apartment window bending through the frame. That’s not right, he thought as he saw the sparkle of glass on the sill, then standing up he felt a weight fall from his lap and looked down to see his father’s gun at his feet and the bullets no longer in his hand. A scream ripped from out of his house as Jeff bolted over the hedge and ran into the night.

Officer McCarty jerked back from the window to see his wife, Ellen, huddled against the doorframe to the apartment screaming, her eyes wide with horror as she clutched at her raincoat that was stained with splattered ketchup from the torn grocery bag she’d dropped at her feet. He looked at the speckled coat and then at the red gore that was formerly Sal Esposito’s head now crusted on the recliner like a smashed bug and let out an involuntary gasp. He quickly pulled his wife into the hallway. “El, calm down” he said but she continued screaming, looking past him into that scene in the apartment, only inches below her bedroom.

“El, stop!” he shouted and lightly slapped her, “Stop it!” he screamed, now fearing he was losing control himself. “Listen El! Listen, it’s OK. We’re not hurt. It’s only Sal Esposito. I've got to go to work now, do you hear me, I've got to get this under control before the backup arrives.” Then, gratefully, she collapsed into his arms and he got her to sit on the steps sobbing.

Then McCarty’s partner, Frank Pulaski, came through the front door carrying a gun he’d wrapped in a handkerchief. “George, isn't this your old piece?” he asked. “It’s got your initials on the handle?”

                                                                                   ***

Franny sat on the edge of the Ferry splashing riffles onto the water that wriggled away like golden water snakes. He turned to the sound of an approaching car and watched a funeral home’s black hearse racing along the side slope of an elevated railroad embankment that rose above the marsh grasses. It seemed the only thing keeping the car upright was its gravity-defying velocity. Both windows were filled with screaming faces and arms waving beer bottles as a black plume of dust lifted behind it and gravel rooster-tailed into the fenders sending a hollow crunching sound across the salt meadow that grew louder as the automobile got nearer to the ferry.

Then just before the railroad track ended at the river’s edge, the driver desperately pumped the brakes bringing the unwieldy Cadillac into a slow-banking skid that sent it lurching sideways and then flipped it over until it rolled down the embankment and slowly halted on its roof, the four wheels spinning in the air. The doors kicked out and a black dude rolled out of the driver’s side choking back the dust that rose like a mushroom over the turtled car while Jeff crawled out the other door. Jeff got up and wobbled over to plant his elbow on the undercarriage as if he were bellying up to a bar and shouted, “Again! Let’s fucking do it again!”

Fran saw Donna wander out of the car, her clothing dust-covered and disheveled and he couldn’t help but react in the way he always did, the warmth rising in his chest. Then glancing over at Jeff, he felt his anger rise and jumped down and walked over to Donna. “Are you alright?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m OK, Fran,” she said, laughing and brushing off her catholic school uniform. “But wasn’t that the wildest thing your ever saw? Ow!” she added rubbing her temple. “I guess I rapped my head some.”

Franny saw by her tightly pinned eyes that she was high. “What the hell are you doing with them?” he asked and why are you so high.”

He noticed that the short black dude in the suit had opened the back of the Hearse and has pulled a stiff in a torn hospital gown out onto the sand. He dragged the body over to a log bench by the firepit and propped him up with a beer in his hand.

“What's it to you?” she asked, “You’re not my keeper.”

“Well maybe you need a keeper and I don’t mean your boyfriend who dropped you off at the hospital like a sack of potatoes.

“You don’t know him like I do,” Donna said looking at Jeff over a smokey firepit that Fran had started by the river’s edge. “He doesn’t lie to me like my old man does. And he makes sense to me; even if he is a little crazy at times.”

“Jesus, Donna, he just got you rolled off a railroad embankment in a Hearse. he’s going to get you killed.”

Donna just shrugged and walked away to help Jeff and the black guy roll the hearse over by rocking it back and forth until it landed upright on its tires with a loud squeal of the shocks.

Fran followed insisting she listen, “Look, when he’s gone, we’re all right, but as soon as he’s back you’re like a fucking homing pigeon. Can’t you see he’s messed up? Dope is gonna kill him and you too, if you stay with him.”

Donna placed her palms against Franny’s chest and said “I’m sorry if I hurt you, I never meant it. We were good when he was gone and off to war. But now he’s back. I’m all messed up inside and Jeff helps me deal with it. His old man and my old man are so alike; it’s almost like we’re in the same family sometimes. We both know what each other are thinking.”

Seeing the hurt in Fran’s eyes she took him by the hand and said, “He wants me to go with him to California. That’s a commitment, isn’t it? We could kick on the road and get outta here too.”

“He going to leave you on the road somewhere, Donna. You can count on it. Don’t trust him. You know you can’t run from your old man forever.” Then seeing the hurt in Donna’s eyes, he added quietly, “Don’t leave me.”

“Come with us,” she said? “We’ll go together, the three of us, like old times.”

Offended by the idea of sharing Donna,” Fran snapped, “That’s stupid and you know it” then waved his hands dismissively and walked away.

“What do you want me to do?” she yelled after him, “Wait for my father’s crew to whack him? Sit around the house while his goons drool all over me.”

                                                                                             ***

Later that evening Billy and Jeff stood at the top of a tangled stack of pilings and lumber, weathered wood left on the shoreline on New York Harbor like a giant’s discarded game of pick-up-sticks illuminated by the red glow of a setting sun. They pushed a log loose that tumbled down in an avalanche of timbers, then ran down and helped Fran and Donna roll it onto a bonfire they’d built. Peering at a black shape on the other side of the pilings Billy said “What’dya make of that?”

“Looks like an old sailing ship, a big one,” Jeff said.

A series of broken masts rose above a shattered deck and a hull so twisted in half that both bow and stern now faced the shoreline. Its open midsections were like two monstrous mouths gasping for air on the beach. Slowly the two climbed down and walked to the ship in the gathering darkness. Its shattered sub-decks looked as if an explosion had eviscerated her; beams rent from joists, absolute confusion across the torn bulkheads, an indecipherable litter of flotsam covered the water that lapped back and forth along the hull each time a wave swept through the wreckage. Fran and Donna joined them as a warm breeze arose from the land and rippled the water and the final rays of the setting sun suffused the air with a caramel-colored light.

Pointing at some snapped cables that dragged in the water, Billy said, “I bet we could shimmy up those to the deck.”

“Let’s try,” Jeff said.

Billy and Jeff jumped across a pool of water and pulled themselves into the webbing. Fran and Donna sat down in the sand to watch. After a short while they saw them come out on the deck.

“Looks spooky in there,” Donna said, pointing at the swinging debris within the exposed hull. “It looks a little like two movie screens.”

“Yeah, said Fran the Creature from the Black Lagoon on the left and Blow Out on the right.”

“Or maybe a tidal wave’ll come through there and sweep us away,” she replied and put her head on her arms and began to cry. Franny pulled her into his chest and stroked her hair down her back.

“What am I going to do?” she murmured? “I can’t stay here. Jeff’s a basket case, and my old man scares the shit out of me. What am I going to do?”

                                                                                              ***

Bill Murphy looked down into an open hatch on the schooner deck and said, “Reminds me of them abandoned hulks in Danang Bay; you know all that GI trash left to rot. Man, am I glad I ain’t there no more.”

"I don’t know,” said Jeff. “Sometimes I think I would’ve been smarter to re-up than come back here. Nothing’s changed since I went in, maybe worse. And look at you,” he said leaning against the railing, “Graves Registration and an undertaker’s apprentice, what’s that all about?”

“Hey I got a worthy trade, my man, from my time in the crotch. Gave me time to smoke my Jays, think about my next moves. Wasn’t my fault you Jyreens and Infantreeeee got your asses all shot up when the Tet came down. I was out there in the boonies for a while but found me a trade. Yeah man that’s what I did, I traded up is the way I see it.”

“Yeah, well I traded there for here and it ain’t much different,” Jeff said looking at the Statue of Liberty glowing in the offshore floodlights. “People want to blow me away here just as much as they did over there. At least it’s all in the open in ‘Nam. I carried my piece, shut my trap and nobody fucked with me. Here everybody fucks with me.”

“Luck’s what you make of it, my bad-ass Jyrene friend,” Bill said as he pulled a joint from his pocket and lit it. I had this fucked up Lieuy half way through my tour, wanted to live out this TV show in his head with my squad as his personal wind-up toys. I grabbed his sorry ass one day and told him, “Hey nobody gives a flying fuck about this ruptured tub of a country.” And you know what he tells me? He pokes me in the chest and says, “I was sent here to do a job and I’m going to do it, so will you.”

“No way! I hated them gung-ho Lieuts.”

“True that! So, I shot him on patrol. You know in one of them screwy firefights, tracers going every mother-fuckin way. I applied for a transfer after that, Graves Registration where nobody fucks with you. I didn’t mind putting dudes’ bodies back together. In fact, taking care of them seemed the first sensible thing I’d done since I got in-country; respectful like. Otherwise, I just smoked my weed and watched the war on the nightly news like everybody else back in the states. I got no regrets.”

“Man, you’re something,” Jeff said. “Since I’ve been back, everybody I talk to who was in it, they all say the same dumb-ass crap we said over there. It’s like they’re still jungle-spooked and afraid to admit that we all got fucked for winding up in ‘Nam in the first place."

"Hey Jeff let it go. Nobody wants to hear it. It was all squat luck, who walks away and who stays. You’re out, forget about the others, and do what’s right for you, now."

Jeff took a long hard drag on the smoldering Jay and coughed out some gray smoke. “I guess you’re right. Ain't no superstars here, my Gunny said. Everybody gots the same wolf-ticket; just don’t ask Victor Charles to punch it.”

Billy laughed and said, “If we sent every navy ship to the bottom of Da Nang Bay or bombed ourselves into the fucking stone-age till no one was left except maybe mountain men like them Montagnards up in the Highlands, don't you think that someday, somebody would figure out that the others guy's sheep looked real fuckin good, or that his lady was so foxy that sure as shit he’d go out and get himself some Bloods, and Bam, they’d have themselves a serious sheep-fry and gang-bang all in the name of freedom."

Jeff snorted out some smoke, coughing and laughing.

                                                                                      ***

The Espositos cut the engine and drifted to a stop. Pulling a pistol from his belt Angelo got out of the car and raised the barrel in a shushing motion to Rafe as they walked into an alleyway formed by two boats that rose above them in the darkness.

“Are you sure he’s down here?” asked Angelo.”

“Sharkey said they come here all the time to party and get high. I believe the little shit. Why’d he lie to me when he knows what'll happen.”

Turning a corner, they came upon a raging bonfire that sent rippling shadows off the towering hulks. By the fire Donna saw the two move out of the shadows and called “Hey Uncle Ange, what’re you doing down here?”

Surprised to see his niece, Angelo stuffed the gun back in his belt and walked over to hug her. “Donna, something’s happened,” he said, then realizing that there was no easy way to put it simply added, “Your father’s dead.”

“What?” she replied looking back and forth at them, “Don’t joke, Uncle Angelo, it ain’t funny. What are you doing down here, really? Dad sent you to take me back, huh. Tell him I ain’t coming, not till he stops shoving me around.”

“For Chrissake, Donna, he’s dead,” snarled Rafe, “Whacked by Jeff McCarty that son-of-a-bitch boyfriend of yours. Now where the hell is he because I’m gonna kill him or anyone that gets in my way.” He racked a shell into his automatic and pointed it in Franny’s face.

“Wait she screamed, wait! What are you talking about?” Looking at their angry expressions, she realized that it was true; that Jeff had killed her father. He’s really dead, she thought and felt a sense of relief arise as if a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

Angelo looked quizzically at his niece and said, “Your Dad’s really dead Donna. It had to be the boy especially after what went down at the hospital. He did it at Rafe’s place through the window. Coward couldn’t even face a man when he shoots him.”

“Coward? she cried. “How is he the coward. I know cowards. I hear you talking at the dinner table. You and Dad grabbing some guy off of the street owes you money and sticking an icepick in his back while Rafe here holds him down. You call that brave? What's the matter with you? Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

Donna turned to Fran as tears welled in her eyes and collapsed in the sand pulling him down beside her.

“Get the fuck away from my cousin, you Mick bastard,” Rafe shouted as he pulled Franny up and shoved the gun into his chest.

“Shut up Rafe,” his father said and pushed them apart. “Where’s your friend kid? No sweat, we just want to talk to him.”

“He’s not my friend and there’s nobody’s here but us,” replied Fran.

“Yeah, but... hey, what's that up there, said Angelo pointing to the schooner. Looks like someone’s walking around up on that busted ship. I bet that's him.”

“Not here huh,” Rafe said as he turned and glared at Fran then reached across and fired a round that tore a huge hole in his chest. And as if tied to an invisible string, his body jerked backwards and crumpled in the sand

Donna screamed as the gunshot reverberated along the wall of beached ships then ran to silence over the darkness on the water. Rafe bent down and cracked her senseless with a tap to the head then turned to his father and said, “Let’s go.”

                                                                                     ***

Up on the ship, Jeff and Billy heard the shot and ran to the rail to see Rafe smash Donna to the ground. “No” Jeff screamed as he saw her fall next to Franny who looked trampled, twisted in a way he recognized. Fran was dead.

“Who the fuck are they?” Bill asked.

“Donna’s Uncle Angelo and her cousin, Rafe. They came sooner than I thought.”

“What? Why are they looking for you? And what made them off Franny like that?”

“I killed Donna’s father.”

“You did what?” Billy shouted. “You off ‘ed a wise guy then partied with me all day, waiting for his button men to show up. Are you that high or just plain stupid?”

“No, just tired!” he said with a shrug. “That’s my real war down there,” he said pointing at the two shadows that moved into the ship beneath them. “I lanced a tumor out of the world when I killed her old man. That’s something ain’t it.”

“Great! But you didn’t have to include me in your vendetta,” Billy said shaking his head in disbelief as he looked over the side for a way down.

“Sorry, I didn’t think.”

“Yeah, but now you’ve got me in the killing box,” he added, feeling the fear coming on, the blood rushing to his head and the pulsing behind his ears. “Aw, damn it,” he said looking at Jeff, “Let’s do what we do!” as he pulled a small pistol from his pocket.

Jeff smiled back and said “Fuckin-A.”

                                                                                  ***

Formless debris was everywhere inside the darkened ship. From deck to ceiling a maze of broken bulkheads fractured the darkness as the dim lights of the city entered and were recast into patterns of black and gray. Billy looked around and adjusted his eyes. In his early tour, because of his size, he was singled out as a tunnel rat by his LT; picked to wriggle and push his way through VC tunnels in search of weapon stashes and black pajama killers. He knew how to see in the dark, his pupils opened wide, not looking at anything in particular but finding the edges of shadows.

A call echoed down the length of the ship “Hey Jeff, where are you, we just want to talk?”

Jeff was hiding behind a pile of wooden barrels that stank of rancid olive oil. He looked through a hole in the bulkhead beside his head where stars illuminated the night sky like friendly beacons. He’d spent plenty of nights sleeping on deck as his ship made its way to Vietnam. He knew how to move here without a sound, and although the Espositos thought they were quiet, to him they were a thundering herd.

“Rafe, is that you?” Jeff cried, then scurried backwards through an open door to change position.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he answered. “Donna sent me to find you,” the words echoed off the crenellated tin ceiling of the passageway.

Jeff whispered to soften his voice in the darkness and not to give away his position “Are you alone?’

“Yeah,” Rafe replied.

Billy slowly crab-walked past Jeff to a row of crates and squeezed himself into an opening just on the other side of the doorway. A beam of light moved across the far side of the bulkhead turning its loosened slats into a series of blinding creases that strobed the darkness for a moment and then refocused on the doorway between them. Billy and Jeff briefly exchanged glances then turned back towards the opening in concentration.

Angelo came through first, peering intently into the inky depths of the cabin, the flashlight held out like a gun, his pistol pointing downwards. Bush-league, Billy thought as he reached over and pulled him through by the arm then bashed him on the side of the head with his pistol.

“Dad?” Rafe shouted from the far side of the wall as a series of shots peppered the doorframe sending thick clots of dust into the air.

Billy wrestled with Angelo on the floor, rolling back and forth, trying to twist the gun from his hand when he heard someone say, “He’s reloading!” and glanced over his shoulder as Jeff raced through the opening and into the darkness beyond.

Snapping his gun hand loose Billy pushed the pistol against Angelo’s face and said, ‘Want to die old man? I can oblige.”

Angelo went limp and dropped his gun. On the other side of the wall Jeff collided into Rafe with a thump and grabbed for the gun. Missing, he careened off and dove into the dark as a series of bullets and flashes followed him down the corridor as he ran from the stinging lead that ricocheted off the surrounding walls. Pushing through a door he tripped over a loose board and fell heavily to the deck. Looking for a weapon, he pulled at a piece of piping on the bulkhead until it broke free. Turning just as Rafe came crashing through the doorway, he swung the pipe up against the side of Rafe’s head who slumped to the deck like a broken puppet.

                                                                                   ***

The morning opened as it usually does on the lower Hudson River; the sun climbing the hills over Brooklyn to ignite the race-waters beyond Ellis Island in pinpricks of flashing colors, explosions of light that twinkled and died in the space of a breath. Gulls rose from their resting-places on the rolling swells and sought the skies while in the river depths torpedoed sturgeons ceased their nightly feeding and rested from sieving the silty bottom, their armor-plated backs scarred by the ferocious grins of tiger sharks.

Officer McCarty and his partner approached the now smoldering and smoking bonfire with drawn guns. Sharkey had told them where to find Jeff and the Espositos but it looked like it might be too late. Straddling a long log were four men, two sets of tied back-to-back, their feet hog-tied beneath them. McCarty recognized one as his son’s friend, Franny Butler, with a bullet hole in his chest tied back-to-back with Rafe Esposito. Angelo Esposito was tied up next to them with another stiff outfitted in a hospital gown.

The two Cops couldn’t help but laugh. They holstered their guns and walked around the Espositos admiring the knots and pulling on their ropes. McCarty’s partner adjusted the dead bodies so that their heads sagged onto the Espositos in a lover’s lane pose. All the while the Espositos fumed and cursed until finally Angelo screamed at McCarty, “I swear to God Mac, your son’s a dead man if you don’t untie me right now.”

McCarty sobered by this outburst sat down on the log next to Angelo and said, “Draped like a necklace around your latest victim, Angelo? I don’t think you’re in a good position to threaten anyone. Looks to me like you and Rafe are going away for a long time; murder one and two if you know what I mean,” and he started to laugh again.

“Damn its George, what the hell are you talking about? I own you. You do what’s just, untie us and I’ll forget this ever happened.”

Rafe blurted out in frustration, “Untie us godammit or else your whole family’s meat McCarty, meat you hear me.”

McCarty looked at his partner who gave him a sad nod then gazed out upon the river where a Staten Island Ferry crossed beyond the Statue of Liberty, hundreds of commuters hanging from its railings in the early morning light.

“Rafe,” he said standing up, “I think that your sorry state of affairs here is a message from my son. It says, ‘I got one, Dad! Donna’s free of her old man. And here’s your two. Do with ‘em what you want.’

“Bullshit,” cried Angelo. “Untie us!”

And normally I’d be leaning towards my meal ticket but then your dad, Angelo here, he had to go and spoil it by mentioning justice. And what’s a man to do when confronted with justice?” McCarty said as he pulled a throwaway gun from his ankle holster.

                                                                                     ***

Bottom feeders and predators, their bones litter the shoreline, just trinkets to drape around our savage necks. Ignorant we wander, paths opening and closing before us like the dilation of a hothouse flower till eventually we succumb and slowly dissolve back into the mud. The abandoned ships, hulks that dot the shoreline are serenaded by the weeping angel that hides within the reeds and sings immaculate myths of heroes and cowards. Stories of those that followed the beckoning finger into the pyre of murderous defiance where cowardice can be courage and the purest pain a protection from devouring our young.

Jeff and Donna walked through the wall of rushes until they reached the black ribbon of Burma Road. There they hid within the sea of grass, waiting and watching, as the red revolving lights from the cop cars and ambulances passed, streaking the tall reeds with blood-tinged rays that clicked on and off. Billy Murphy, his black face creased by a wide smile drove past them in his beat-up hearse and out onto the highway heading south; a Flying Dutchman, a ghost ship moving ever farther from shore and too long gone to see the land beneath his feet.

Thomas Belton memoir, “Protecting New Jersey’s Environment: From Cancer Alley to the New Garden State” (Rutgers University Press) won “Best Book in Science Writing for the General Public” by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/protecting-new-jerseys-environment/978081354887  In addition, he has published many short stories including for the journals NonBinary Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Fterota Logia, Mystery Magazine, Mystery Tribune, Constellations, South Shore Review, The Satirist, Adelaide, Meet Me at 19th Street, Cicada and Art News. His short story “Seneca Village Arises,” (Meet Me @ 19th Street Journal) was awarded “Best First Chapter” in the journal’s 2021 contest for a Young Adult novel opening dealing with racial inequality, and his short story “Murder at the Trocadero” won the “Writers Digest Writing Contest Popular Fiction Award” for Mystery/Crime (2017).