The intracoastal waterway shimmered like tempered glass as Skully's boat skimmed powerfully on tilted plane towards Destin. His burgeoning wake brought tidal waves to the grassy banks, breaching seawall and swamping the ancient claws of tenuous clinging tree roots.Skully could have impressed them with tales about his speedy jaunts to the Bahamas, or his expeditious pleasure cruises from Key West to the Dry Tortugas, racing back to that hidden little bayou in the Everglades, and out in the Gulf again before dawn broke. But that was a long time ago, another story? and another business.
"What the Hell!"
Hazard warning lights on the river bank to his left rushed toward him.
DANGER
CABLE OPERATED FERRY
CANAL BLOCKED WHEN LIGHTS FLASH
As the crude stenciled sign flashed by, Skully pulled back hard on the teak-handled throttle, throwing his teenage son backwards off the bow rail as thirty two feet of sculptured fiberglass rose up into the April sunshine. Backwash swamped the back of the boat.
"Get the hatches, Joe!" he shouted.
Joe scrambled down the boat to close the covers tight before the flood swamped the engine. He jumped up on the stern and braced himself firmly against the back rail as the boat leveled and the swirling waters surged down the decking. Joe looked around and saw the rigid stance of his father and then turned away in dread. It seemed inevitable that there would be a hold up, and then his father would get mad and embarrass them both. The young man stared deliberately away, back into the wake of the boat. Experience had taught him that when his father had set himself a tight schedule, he would not have his plans interfered with by anything or anyone.
Skully had also assessed the situation. One hundred feet ahead, an antiquated steel barge was carrying two pickup trucks across the intracoastal. The strange vessel was held on course by a large pulley attached to the side of the ferry and gliding along an overhead wire cable, which ran from bank to bank. Skully was a greedy man, a clever man who'd grown rich by not taking chances. Yet sometimes he would take little chances if he had to, and missing the opportunity of catching those rival savings and loan presidents on the hop by waiting for this dilapidated piece of junk to out of the way before the cable would drop was unthinkable. He blasted the horn, shattering the morning stillness and causing skittering herons to flee high from the banks. Grasping the microphone, he bellowed,
"We're coming through!"
He ignored the flailing arms of the ferryman and the oaths of the truck drivers, and steered his glistening vessel to the rear of the ferry barge, now over halfway across the intracoastal. Every eye was locked on the heavy steel cable as Skully's bow slipped under at around four knots. Skully exhaled relief and grinning smugly, swung the throttle forward and ducked down as a mocking courtesy to the gawking spectators watching him accelerate through the wake of the old barge. What could they do? Report him? What was some dumb marine ticket anyway? He might even pay it as a show of good faith in his dealings with Marine Patrol!
As the steel cable passed overhead, clearing the top of the windshield by a comfortable two feet, he waved at the people on the ferry, yet at the same time thought it strange that their anger had now turned to white-faced horror. The ferry man waved frantically; one of the truck drivers screamed.
Skully heard the light thwack and saw the cable vibrate as the back of his boat was swamped again, this time gushing red with the blood of his young son. As he turned, he saw the splash as Joe's corpse was catapulted over the rail into the wake; and he heard the dull thud as the boy's severed head dropped onto the deck and rolled into the live well.