2. He meets his first boatman.

The lad was to board between 0600 and 0630 so the boat would be ready to shove off at 0700. He woke early without the alarm clock and drank coffee with a cigarette on his porch until it was time to drive down the yard. His drive took him through neighborhoods he hadn’t paid any mind to on his first drive down to the interview. Then it had been light and while the surroundings were far less than inviting during the day, they were absolutely hostile after dark. He would never be down here in previous days. This was surely no place for the car to break down.

He pulled up to the gate and, just as the young lady had promised, it was dummy locked- only appearing to be locked. He opened the gate and after he had driven through, he stopped to return it to its former state, supposedly sealing the yard from the hostiles outside the tall chain link fence. He drove past the familiar trailer that served as the outfit’s office. A rutted gravel drive took him around a short bend to the dock. After pulling into a parking place, he turned off his engine and sat for a minute to have another cigarette and look at the surrounding yard.

This place looked not much more pleasant than the neighborhood outside the fence. The grass was grown up all around the fence line and there were occasional scrubby bushes growing in the debris of old iron parts that probably came from large machines from past days. There were a couple of shipping containers and large tanks. The boom of a barge crane stuck up from the dock. He could see a barrel with the remnants of a fire in it, evident by the dull glow from the top. Beside the fire was a figure, a little disheveled man smoking a cigarette, staring into the barrel. The lad would have to pass him as he walked down to find the boat; might as well do it now.

He climbed out of the car and gathered his cigarettes and a lighter. He made sure to get his keys and check the door locks. He looked for one more task to perform before he left his car to look for the boat. There was none. It was time to shut the door and walk on down to the dock. As he made his walk into the earliest of dawn he could now see the dock better. The wheelhouse of a tugboat was peering over the top of the barge that served as a floating dock. That would be his. He was amazed and walked toward it easily as if he were drawn toward it. Then he was aware of the creepy man by the fire barrel staring at him. He nodded uneasily to the glaring figure and just continued his walk to the gangplank that led to the dock barge. He kept walking toward the tug.

When he got to the edge of the dock, he could see that he would have to step down to the bow and then jump a little down to the pile of line on deck and then step to the deck itself. This needed to go smoothly. There was no need for any excitement on his first boarding. He stepped, balanced, hopped, gathered his footing in the line, and then walked easily down the deck. He was aboard his first tug. She was only sixty two feet long but it looked every bit of a hundred from the way he saw it. What a mess she was, but beautiful to a green eye.

The first thing he noticed was the rough texture of the hull and the houses. She had been painted a lot over the years but it wouldn’t be long before the rust would win its race to the surface. Lines were piled everywhere in heaps. There were cables running along the waist that looked out of place but had a purpose somewhere as there was a matched set- one on each side. He climbed up to the boat deck to get a look around up there and to inspect the wheel house. After he had reached the top of the ladder and stood up on the deck a door opened on the main deck. He looked down in time to see a man climb out of the galley.
"Jeez-is", he whispered to himself. He was looking down at the skinniest man he had met in years. There wasn’t a bit of the man to be missed for he was standing in his jockey shorts, the sun reflecting brightly from the underwear, and his skin which was the same color as the underpants all over. A thick mane of shaggy hair topped off the figure and gave him the look of a cartoon lion.

"You coming down or what?" the skinny man cried out in a high pitched sing-song kind of voice. "There’s no coffee up there." He had obviously entertained the daylights out of himself for he started laughing and never stopped even after he ducked back into the galley.

"What the hell is he supposed to be around here?" the lad asked himself as he climbed back down the ladder. He climbed into the galley door to find the skinny man pouring a cup of coffee from a Mr. Coffee machine. In the small galley, he was face to face with the man. What a friendly face it was too.
“I’m Bobby. Bobby Sanderhorn. But you can call me Bobby,” the skinny man announced. The lad nodded and introduced himself. That was easy. What a relief. He had met his first boatman.