Chapter 3

The north shore was a pretty dark place when you got right down to it. This side of the island was no where near as heavily populated as other parts and the area around the station was even less so. It had it’s advantages though. Chuck was able to see the car lights that were heading out the drive towards the main road. There were lots of trees between him and the driveway but, light gets around in the darkness and stick out like a sore thumb.

Chuck felt pretty paranoid these days. He watched the head lights until they were gone. Once he was satisfied that whoever was in that car was not going to be bothering him, Chuck went back to pulling beers out of his old, junk yard salvaged, fridge. He had found it, fixed it, painted it in a woodland green camouflage scheme, and then left it sitting out by the shed at the heliport where most of his tools were. Chuck would have preferred keeping it down in his bunker but, that place only had power when he fired up his generators. It took too much gasoline to keep them running all the time and, besides, the fridge had a nasty habit of blowing the circuit breakers. The heliport had hard wired lines.

Once the ice cooler was full of beer, Chuck strapped it back down to the four wheeler’s basket and drove on back to his place. He did not have much trouble finding it even with the ATV’s headlights off. They had a nice fire going in the sand, in front of the bunker. It led him right to the spot where he began handing out fresh cold beverages. Tony took an entire six pack to start with. Calvin was content with half that but, he still had three un-opened cans sitting right beside him anyway.

Tony raised one of his newly arrived beers and said, “you know. We need to do this more often guys.”

Calvin only shook his head before taking a sip of one of his cold ones, “like you really make yourself available.”

“Not a problem anymore,” Tony said with resolution.

Chuck was ignoring their banter. Even if the dunes would obstruct any possible view of the driveway, he still kept looking in that direction. Finally, he gave up and sat down by the fire. He popped a beer and said, “I saw somebody leaving while I was up at the hangar.”

Tony had just finished with another long pull of his beer when he said, “probably just Danni. She said something about going out tonight.”

Cal shook his head again, “no, she left a long while ago. What does it matter anyway? As long as they’re leaving who cares.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Tony said before turning his can completely up.

Cal noted, “tonight you’re drinking to everything, from the looks of it.”

Chuck was still squirming, “do you figure Barton’s coming back?”

“Can’t hold his beer,” Tony said with absolute certainty. He went on to add, “I heard all them Earth folks are like that.” Then Tony thought about it and asked, “do they even have beer on Earth?”

“Um,” Cal replied, “I’m sure somebody imports it.”

Chuck actually put his beer down. Tony watched him and wondered. Was he squirming? Then Chuck asked, “so what do you think of the new guy?”

Cal leaned over on one arm, got comfortable, and replied, “I don’t know. I guess he’s all right. He’s a little weird but, then again, you ever met somebody from Earth that wasn’t?”

“Damn it Cal,” Tony complained, “would you please stop talking about Earth all of the damn time. It’s always Earth this and Earth that. Why does everybody act like that place is so damn special anyway?”

“Um,” Cal shrugged and replied, “maybe because it’s the cradle of humanity? Other than that, well?”

“You know what Cal,” Tony shot back with, “you sound just like my tenth grade history teacher. You know that?”

Chuck winced at Tony and asked, “what crawled up your ass and died, dude?”

Calvin answered for him, “don’t take it personally Chuck. He’s just a rotten drunk and Amy isn’t talking to him right now.”

“How would you know Cal,” Tony huffed. “Like how many times have we actually drank beer together?”

“Oh,” Cal actually spit before he replied, “maybe hundreds? Who keeps count?”

“I was talking about the Amy stuff,” Tony grunted.

Chuck asked a stupid question very seriously, “so what was she like dude?”

Tony had to shake his head before he could reply to that, “what was who like?”

“You know,” Chuck replied with a shrug, “the tenth grade history teacher?”

“Oh,” Tony thought about it for a minute and replied, “I hooked up with her after I got out of the army. We had some drinks, had a little fun.” He got angry all over again and this time he pointed at Cal and Chuck furiously, “and we didn’t talk about Earth!”

Chuck was still confused which, wasn’t all that uncommon, “what’s your hang up with Earth dude?”

Once again Cal answered, “that’s where Amy’s from.”

“No way,” Chuck replied, “I thought she graduated from, like, Bayside.”

“She did,” Tony said as his nostrils flared, “her family moved here when she was about thirteen or fourteen.”

Calvin decided that the conversation was not going to be getting better tonight. He pushed himself up to a standing position, dusted off as much sand as he could, and then announced, “I think I’ve had enough for tonight.”

Tony still sounded mad at the world when he told the guy, “you’re getting old Cal.”

Cal replied in a light hearted way, “so are you pal. You think you’re going to be able to get out of here tonight?” Cal nodded to the beer in Tony’s hand.

Tony thought about it and said, “I did tell my Aunt Cassie that I’d help her around the yard tomorrow.”

Chuck just winced from even more confusion, “I thought you lived with that Uncle Blake guy, you know, the fireman dude.”

“He does,” Cal said as he collected his things, “sometimes. Tony here has so many relatives he could stay with one a night, for a year, and still not wear his welcome out at a single one. I bet that saves on rent.”

Tony could just not give up the confrontational urge tonight, “well you’re one to talk Cal. How long have you been camped out at the barracks now?”

“Oh,” Cal took no offense. It was the best way to handle an angry drunk, “since my ex gave me the boot. Tell you this, it would be really nice to have a family like yours Tony. I think it would be kind of nice to have somebody watching your back all the time.”

Chuck just mumbled, “or a curse.”

Cal looked down at the kid and wondered if he heard that right. Then, the copious amounts of beer, swimming around in his head, spoke to Cal as if it were a savior on high. The great voice called down and said, “you don’t care.” Cal just stumbled off in the dark with a, “night kids.”

“Dude,” Chuck said once Cal was gone, “he’s right. You should like just hit a rack over at the station and…”

“I don’t want to sleep there,” Tony shot back with a very biting edge in his voice. Despite the level of intoxication Tony did realize, deep down, that they were both right. He had a better plan than the barracks though. It also did not involve a sleeping bag in Chuck’s bunker which, predictably, was offered next. Tony did not bother to even reply. He staggered to his feet, grabbed his surfboard, and wandered down to the beach.

That was why he woke up in the sand with the sun just starting to peak over the eastern horizon. He had his arm around his board like it should have been around something else. Tony tried pulling his head up but it hurt. He just let it fall back down even if he did get a mouth full in the bargain. Then he heard the giggling. It was coming from the other side where he had never bothered to look. Tony flipped his head over and saw a blurry looking thing that he was reasonably certain was female.

As Tony’s eyes cleared he first zeroed in on the white, one piece, bathing suit. Then his eyes started looking pretty hard at all the places that the suit was not. Finally he managed to push himself up far enough to his expose his chest.

The girl, with the short blond hair, just laughed, “morning sand man.”

Tony shook his head violently and growled before trying to spit the rest of the sand out of his mouth. Then he rolled over on his side so he would face whoever this was. As his vision began to clear, and his head too, he finally realized, “you’re that… Leslie right? The merchie from the Roby Celeste.”

“Formerly,” the girl said in a light hearted kind of way. “Remember, it went to the bottom a couple of weeks ago. Oh, but wait, I guess you don’t remember much of anything this morning. Looks like you had a wild night.”

Tony rolled over and got himself up to a sitting position. He did waste a little time brushing himself off. Then he told her, “not remembering was the point of the exercise.”

“Ah,” the girl told him as she faked having a revelation, “that kind of trouble.” She snapped her fingers, “don’t tell me, the red head, right?”

That actually got a laugh out of Tony despite the pain. Then he shook his head in disbelief but, he still had a smile on his face when he asked her, “are you always this direct?”

She just shrugged but, remained light hearted, “only when I know what I want.”

“Oh,” Tony replied. He repaid bluntness in kind, “and do you know what it is you want this morning?”

“Sure do,” she said as she leaned over. She wiggled a finger for him to come a little closer. When Tony was almost touching her nose she patted the surf board on the other side of her and said, “I want to surf.”