3. He gets his first start.

Bobby stood at the coffee maker, trying to sip coffee that was too hot to drink. He winced every time he put the mug to his lips but he was persistent. Try after try he gave it and continued burning his mouth until he finally got a big sip of coffee to go down. He smiled with satisfaction and offered the lad some coffee, pointing to the mugs hanging on hooks over the sink. Then he exited through a door leading forward. The lad sipped the hot coffee more carefully than his new crewmate and looked around the galley.

The room was no more than ten feet or so wide and maybe that long. Another watertight door was opposite the one he had entered with. In the center of the room, mounted on the forward bulkhead was the galley table. It had bench seats along each side and a television set was mounted above the table as high as the low overhead would allow. Against the after bulkhead was a kitchen stove with only three burners, a sink with a few cups and some plates in it, and a refrigerator. He carefully opened the door of it and peeked in. There were a variety of condiments in bottles and jars, a Tupperware pitcher, and some lunchmeats packaged in plastic wrap. The freezer held a few packages of meat and a large plastic tub of ice cubes. There were about ten ice cube trays stacked to one side. In a wooden cabinet on the port side, there were many canned goods and a couple of loaves of bread. While he was looking in this cabinet he noticed a narrow wooden door in the corner. He didn’t bother to open it but he did wonder where it led.

The forward door opened and the lad turned to see the skinny come back into the galley. Now he was wearing work clothes- jeans, a holed t-shirt and high top basketball sneakers. He retrieved his now cool cup of coffee and sat down to the galley table where he reached for an ashtray and his cigarettes. The lad was relieved to see this so now he could sit and have a smoke himself. Bobby lit a Marlboro and the lad could see that the fingers on his right hand were disfigured. They were all there, but the tips of the index and middle finger were deformed and bulbous. They looked like the fingers of the alien movie character E.T. He noticed that Bobby could use them well enough but when it came to delicate work like holding his cigarette, he had to move it back to the second knuckle to get a secure grip. When he took a drag, it looked like he was covering his mouth up to cough. There was now telling what had happened there but the lad made a mental note to make sure he avoided an injury like that.

They talked for a few minutes. It turns out that Bobby was living aboard the little tug. He was down on his luck and the old man was charging him far less than he would pay for even a local dive to stay there. It was starting to sound like Bobby did a lot of drinking and the lad figured this didn’t help his current shortage of luck. They traded stories and the lad learned that Bobby had been in the Coast Guard in some foreign country. Interesting work and good service for men who liked to drink much. Drinking was a theme with Bobby.

"Well? I better get her started up before James gets here. He hates to wait," Bobby said as he was putting his cigarette out. He got up from the table and disappeared through the door in the corner before the lad had a chance to try and follow him. He listened to the clanking a banging sounds coming up through the deck. Soon an engine turned over and started. It was a bit loud and he could tell it was a medium sized diesel engine. Then the lights went out. In only a second or two, they came back on. The boat was now on generator power. After a minute, the lad was brought to his feet, startled by a loud noise that sounded to him like an elephant trumpeting a warning inside the boat. The lad had no idea what it was, just that it had made engine work. The sound happened one more time and although he jumped a bit, he wasn’t as shocked as the first time. Bobby reappeared and waved him to follow. They went back outside and Bobby clambered up to the dock, disappeared for a minute and returned with a shore power cable coiled up on arm. As they stowed in the forepeak companionway door, the lad asked him, "What the fuck was that?"

“It’s the cable that gives us power at the dock," Bobby answered.

"No. I mean the loud-ass noise from the engine room when you started those engines."

“Oohhh!" laughed Bobby. "You never heard air starters before?"

“Nope."

“You better get used to them. There’s a lot more noises than that around here.” Then he talked to himself a bit. "The old man can find ‘em green, he can."

They continued coiling up the cable, Bobby chuckling the whole time about the air starters. The lad didn’t want to be called green out loud, and he certainly didn’t want to be laughed at, but he could see there would be more questions as the day went on.