BIG AL

(From MAGIC HARBOR by Don Berry)

 

 

 

On occasion, there is a price to be paid for the privilege of living in the cuckoo's nest, and the price arises when one of the cuckoos starts to bite. So it was when Big Al came into Eagle Harbor.

Big Al arrived in a broad, sixteen foot skiff, and moored to the public dock. The vessel itself was ominous; the hull was gray (though I remember it as black), covered over with black plastic tarps, roughly lashed with ropes over some kind of interio r frame that raised its profile a couple of feet higher than the gunwales. It was dark and dismal, looking like a menacing cave you might encounter in a nightmare, and choose to avoid. A little outboard hung at the back, and there was just enough room a midst the junk for Al to stand and steer.

This little skiff was Big Al's home. Sometimes the muttering of a small generator and an eerie blue glow emerged from beneath the tarps as Al watched his tiny black and white TV in the silence of the harbor night. He cooked on a two burner Colema n stove beneath the tarps, and had, for company, two dogs. One of them was a yellow Great Dane named Blondie, about 75 lbs, the other a small, grizzled gray terrier named Missy.

Big Al was about 6'3 and 240 lbs. He had light hair and blond eyebrows on a thick, light complexioned face, making the pupils of his eyes stand out like tiny black marbles. He always wore a red watch cap and reddish-brown sweater that pulled up over his belt in back. Even in the middle of the December freeze, Al was always barefoot, though a couple of times I saw him carrying a pair of shoes for some unknown purpose.

Al made me uneasy from the beginning, but my first encounters with him were not threatening. He was, in fact, overly obsequious, and admired my little Honda generator excessively. On the public dock he engaged me in a long conversation about the rel ative merits of various generators, how much wisdom I showed, how much good fortune I had, how he envied my obviously high status. How comfortable and luxurious my boat was, "to a fellow like me". He always gave the impression of looking at you out of t he corners of his eyes, though I do not believe that was literally true. Metaphorically, he was always wringing his hands in admiration and humility.

While he was moored to the public dock, his dogs were a menace. They clearly regarded the dock as their own property, and challenged everyone who came down, noisily and aggressively, and they bit. Even from the middle of the harbor where I am anchor ed, you could hear them barking at any late night activity.

The first report of any conflict came in the encounter with Mark of the little ketch CALYPSO. Mark is a big man himself, a piratical type with a somewhat checkered past. (The first thing he ever said to me was, "What made you leave the world?" He h as been, by his own account, out of the world for a long time.)

A couple of boats ago Mark had been busted in Port Townsend on drug-and-alien smuggling charges. The charges had to do with cocaine, which I gather was never proven, and 25 Salvadoran nationals, who were somewhat easier to find.

He spent some time in jail, during which his boat, a 58' Sparkman and Stevens yacht called MARANOA, had put to sea under somebody else's command and been run aground. Phil of the tug FAVORITE salvaged the MARANOA, so the story is probably pretty stra ight. (Others say the alien smuggling never happened at all.)

Anyway, Mark had bought the grey ketch CALYPSO (for $100 down) in Port Townsend, then disappeared with the boat, ending up in Eagle Harbor. In Eagle Harbor he bought another, larger ketch for the same $100 down, expressing his intention to bring it up to a seamanlike standard.

In Eagle Harbor Mark worked occasional day jobs at Russell Trask's shipyard, and even some for my son David's contracting firm. CALYPSO was clearly going downhill, rusting at the rigging, the sails drooping sloppily off the booms, uncared for and no t much loved. Mark had arrived with a boat that was hours from sinking at best.

He, too, spent a lot of time moored at the public dock while he worked away at CALYPSO, and the harbor's first belligerent contact with Big Al happened there.

Big Al accused Mark of talking about him behind his back and spreading bad tales. This, we later learned, was the basis of all Big Al's psychotic rage. He heard voices. He believed, periodically, that everyone was talking about him behind his back, often about his sexual practices. From within his dismal, black shrouded cave, he could hear them as they came walking down the dock. Water rats, tourists, visiting yachtsmen -- it made no difference. They were talking about him behind his back, he hea rd what they said, and for that, they were dead meat.

In the early days, before the violence, some water rat would always say, "Well, he's right, isn't he? We're talking about him right now." Which was, of course, true.

Anyway, Big Al accused Mark of CALYPSO of this back-talking, and Mark, basically, told him to shove it up his ass. Big Al went for him, lunging across the dock and leaping aboard CALYPSO. Mark had his work knife sheathed at his hip. He drew it, and described to Big Al what he intended to do with it.

How the rest of the story actually evolved, I don't know, but the upshot was that Big Al himself went barefoot up to the police station to complain that Mark had attacked him with a knife. By the time the cops arrived, the only knives on Mark's perso n were a little 3" jacknife, and in his sheath an innocuous putty knife.

The cops were of the opinion it would be better if these two guys had nothing to do with each other. Mark allowed as how that suited him fine, he didn't know this guy, he didn't want to know him, etc, etc.

Other than that, nothing much happened, and Big Al went back to his sometimes fawning, ingratiating behavior. Shortly after, Mark took CALYPSO over to Russell's shipyard and put her aground on the tide grid while he worked on his new ketch. CALYPSO tilted farther over at every tide, the disheartening sight of a potentially good boat dying before your eyes.

Scuttlebutt had it that Big Al was supposed to be on some kind of lithium treatment, but forgot, or refused, to take it. This made sense, because Big Al's psychotic episodes of accusation came out of left field with stunning unexpectedness. The wate r rat population gradually became divided into those who had actively been threatened by Big Al and those who had not.

Those who had been threatened were seriously worried about Al's presence in Eagle Harbor; those who had not could see no particular harm in his craziness.

The first real violence, however, came because of the dogs. Crazy Ken, whose nameless white cutter is anchored next to me, was bitten three separate times as he came down the dock to get his dinghy.

Ken is a very shy, and quite harmless, crazy person. He is not so much crazy as perpetually disoriented, though he seems to be better when he takes an anti-depressant drug like Prozac. He says of himself, "Some people get different color socks on by accident. Sometimes I look down and I don't even have the same shoes on both feet."

Ken asked Big Al to keep his dogs in control, and not let them bite him any more. Big Al got out of the black cave, picked Ken up and threw him off the dock into the harbor. As Ken struggled to get back on the dock, Al dragged him out of the water b y his shirt front, threw him prostrate on the dock and stomped him. Then he threw him back in the water again, and repeated the whole episode, inflicting visible damage on Ken's face and apparently cracking a couple of ribs.

After Ken had gotten some medical treatment, he went to the cop shop and filed assault charges against Big Al. A day later he reconsidered.

Those of us who live at anchor are vulnerable. It is true we have a kind of moat, but if someone does get aboard your boat, there's no place to go; you pretty much have to take care of the situation then and there. Ken was afraid that if he let the charges stand, Big Al would come and kill him, so he went back to the cops and dropped the charges.

The water rats watched all this closely, but with divided opinions. It is an unstated, and profound, principle of the water life that we solve our own problems. It goes strongly against the grain to allow any outside authority into our affairs, part icularly the law. And however psychotic and threatening Al was, there was still a general acknowledgement that he was One of Us. A real bad One of Us, but still...

About this time, Big Al bought the decrepit little powerboat DENIZ KOPEK from Brian for a thousand dollars, which he apparently paid. DENIZ KOPEK's engine didn't run, so Al lashed the black cave alongside and moved both vessels off the public dock and far back in the harbor. He had been tied to the public dock so long that the cops were paying regular attention, and putting pressure on him.

At first this was a relief. At least you didn't have to encounter Al every time you went ashore. But then he began to develop the disconcerting habit of prowling the harbor just after dark, circling boats slowly and inspecting them carefully with no decipherable purpose.

On one moonless night he circled me a couple of times, and I could hear the buzz of his outboard going around only a couple of feet from my hull. I was writing, and had my generator on to run my computer. I went up on the aft deck.

It was completely dark, with the lights on shore and the iridescent sparkle of the Seattle skyline eight miles away the only source of light. In this eerie, shadowed setting Big Al floated a few feet away from my hull with his engine idling.

I was cool, but reasonably cordial. I hadn't personally had any conflict with Al, but I didn't particularly like being interrupted when I was writing, and most of all I didn't like somebody circling my boat in the dark.

Al started the generator conversation all over again; how much he admired my Honda, how much he admired my boat. It was a creepy conversation, but nothing in it was overtly threatening.

Nevertheless, it made me nervous enough that I bought a padlock at the hardware store the next day and actually chained my precious, precious generator to the rail.

I hated this, passionately. Like all water rats, I cannot tolerate having my actions dictated by somebody else. And in particular, dictated by anxiety about what that other person might or might not do at some fictional time in the improbable future . I disliked myself for the suspicion, and by now I disliked Big Al for giving me the cause. I hated the thought that I had actually taken some action because of the ridiculous possibility that Al intended to come steal my generator when I wasn't aboard . But the bastard made me edgy, no two ways about it.

The hell of it was, I actually felt better when I had the padlock on. I took it off the next day.

By now Big Al had threatened about half of the water rats at one time or another. It was always the same. From his hand-wringing humility he would suddenly lurch out with the accusation that they had been talking about him behind his back. They wer e just shit, and they were dead meat, and he was going to see to it they could never do that again.

His menace emerged from such a deep well of inner torment, so utterly beyond his own control, you could not help but be moved by his pain. I remember two images that were particularly poignant. One sunny day Big Al was sitting at the bench near the dock, his great buffalo head bent and weaving slightly from side to side, muttering to himself in a low, pain-filled voice. As I passed, I could just make out a few words. He was saying over and over, "Crazy. Crazy. Crazy. I am crazy. I know. Yes. Crazy. Crazy."

And then one night, after another altercation at the dock, he drove the black cave out into the middle of the harbor about thirty yards from my boat. He cut his engine and began to scream at the moon, cursing us all for hateful, backbiting bastards. "Every one of you! Every one! I know you can hear me! Every goddam single one! You sons of bitches! I know you can hear me!" Lonely in the night, beneath a moon as solitary as himself, he poured out the anguish that poisoned his life. Of all those he cursed, I was the only one who heard.

One day in early February, I passed Big Al at the grocery store, and nodded to him. Shortly afterwards, I had finished my grocery shopping, and headed back for the harbor. Big Al followed me down from the store, past the slide and jungle gym of the little public park. He came up behind me as I crossed the last road before going down the trail to the public dock.

"Hey," he said. "You live in that glass boat out there."

"Yeah," I said.

"You remember about two months ago, you came down the dock when I was talking to that Indian woman?"

I thought back, and did remember passing him and some woman, whether Indian or not I didn't recall.

"Sure," I said, "I remember."

"I heard what you said," Big Al said. "You're talking about me behind my back. You killed my chances with that Indian woman. You're nothing but shit. You're dead meat. I'm going to get your ass."

I was dumbfounded. Even with the scuttlebutt and knowing the history, it was absolutely astonishing. It was so completely random, so wholly fictional, so utterly without reference to the actual world it was breathtaking.

"That is absolutely not true," I said. Not exactly a dynamite rejoinder, but it was the only thing that came to mind. After that we both walked down to the dock by separate routes. I got in my dinghy and rowed out to my boat, Big Al fired up the bl ack cave and slowly motored down toward the back bay.

That evening I thought the situation over as best I could. Point one: Big Al is twenty years younger, seven inches taller and weighs nearly twice as much as I. Point two: Big Al's rage has nothing to do with the actual world, but only with a dark and pain filled imagination that is perfectly reflected in the floating black cave that is his boat. The conclusion I reached ran totally contrary to my convictions, my ethics, my beliefs and my temperament.

Nevertheless, the next morning I went to David's office in the Professional Building.

"David," I said, "I need a weapon."

David looked up from his desk in astonishment. "Jeez, Dad," he said, "What's this all about?"

In our lives together, David and I have had considerable experience with weapons, living as hunters both on the Oregon Coast when he was a boy, and later when I lived in my cabin in the Coast Range. I've bought guns from him and sold him guns, and tr aded horses for guns. We are both comfortable with weapons, respect them, and understand through experience what they do. I have had no weapons for a number of years, but David is still an active hunter and has a small collection.

I explained about Big Al and his threat.

"What do you want?" David said. "Rifle, shotgun, handgun?

"Handgun," I said.

"Revolver or automatic?"

"Automatic."

"Forty-five or thirty-two?"

"Thirty-two," I said. "God, David, you sound like a gun dealer."

David laughed. "Well, it's a pretty weird coincidence, Dad."

It seems that just the day before, David had received two handguns from his brother-in-law, my son-in-law, who wanted to sell part of his own collection. E.J, my daughter's husband, is a former Navy officer and member of the Navy's pistol team. He h ad sent for David's possible purchase two Colt automatic pistols, one an accurized .45 for competition, the other a small, unfired .32 calibre officer's sidearm.

David was going to buy the .45, but not the .32, which he was preparing to return. E.J. put considerable importance on the fact that the .32 had never been fired, and had said there were only 20 or 30 like it in the world, making it a classic collect or's piece.

I asked to borrow it, anyway. Whether I was borrowing it from David or from E.J. I wasn't quite sure, but it was not a point of significance at the time.

David went out the same afternoon and bought a box of ammunition. He rowed out to my boat that evening, bringing the little .32 Colt with him. We had a nostalgic evening, reminiscing about bear hunting in the Oregon Coast Range when David was a teen -ager and our family's primary source of food was our hunting.

As he was leaving, he turned to me and said seriously, "Dad, there's something I hope you'll keep in mind about this."

"Sure," I said. "What?"

"Well, you know this gun has never been fired."

"So?"

"So, if you shoot Big Al, you've bought the gun." He grinned, got back in his dinghy and rowed ashore.

Thus it was that I ended up with something I had sworn I never would have -- a handgun for self defense.

I am a little sorry to report that, as with the padlock on my generator, my philosophical discomfort was not as strong as putting to rest the apprehensions Big Al's incomprehensible mind had raised in my own. I did feel better with a weapon. I am re solutely opposed to being a character in somebody else's nightmare.

For self-defense, so called, I much prefer an automatic pistol to a revolver. The reason for this is that I am willing, but do not desire, to fire it. An automatic pistol gives you, if you so choose, a variety of things to do before you pull the trigger. It is my belief that often the major function of a self-defen se weapon is not the firing of it, but the showing of it.

The first stage is to show the weapon, with the clip not engaged. Second, engage the clip, which is a definitive gesture with an unmistakable percussive sound. Third, draw back the slide, lock it, and show the weapon with clip engaged and chamber em pty. Fourth, release the slide, and chamber a round, which is the most intimidating sound in the world to one who knows it. Fifth, a round fired into the air.

In the kind of circumstance I might reasonably expect with Big Al, everybody would have at least five opportunities to change their minds before anything irrevocable happened. And if quickness were required, the whole thing can virtually happen with a single motion.

So, that is where things stand at the moment. Big Al is still in the harbor, crazy and full of his dark, private torment. I am armed, slightly against my will, and have had a very detailed conversation with the cops on the fine legal points of self- defense. The cops regretted that Ken had dropped his charges against Big Al, but understood why. Until something further happens, there's nothing they can do.

"After all," the Chief told me, "There's no law against being half-crazy out there in the harbor."

I told him yes, I knew that.

 

end

 

 

Big Al
©1995 Don Berry