Hooked On Adrenaline

A gentle change in the rocking of his boat woke Brad from a sound sleep. Carefully opening one eye, he looked at the clock on the bulkhead. Six o’clock? A slight turn of his head brought a porthole into his line of vision, and from the sunlight streaming in from the east Brad knew it was morning. The wake from a boat in the channel over a half-mile away reaching his boat caused the change in the motion.

Realizing there is nothing to be alarmed about, he lay there savoring the moment. A warm gentle breeze wafting through the boat brings with it the aroma of Night Blooming Jasmine blending with the salt sea air to make a perfume more exotic than man ever could.  It is just cool enough that his nude body is comfortable under a single cotton sheet. Through the open porthole, he can see a coral reef twenty feet below through the clear, pale blue ocean, and in the distance hear a hearty rendition of dueling songbirds. The Garden of Eden must have been around here somewhere close by, he thinks as he rolls over to go back to sleep. Whatever I did to deserve this, for sure, I’d do it again.

It seems as if it was only yesterday he was waking up in an M.A.S.H. unit in Korea with a leg full of mortar fragments. The ship hit the sand when The Corps, not knowing what to do with him when they discovered he was only sixteen, tried to discharge him dishonorably because he’d been somewhat deceitful about his age. Then his stepfather, a retired Navy officer, intervened threatening the government because they did not check birth certificates when accepting recruits in their reserve program, as well as for mobilizing a whole reserve company to active duty with no formal training, and then attempting to dishonorably discharge a wounded teenager who should be given a citation for simply surviving. After the dust settled, Brad was honorably discharged, and his records sealed but at least he was out.

Back home in a sleepy little coastal Georgia town, Brad flitted from job to job never finding his niche, mostly because of well meaning relatives and friends attempting to decide his life for him. Finally, taking his paycheck, he bought a 1941 Chevrolet pickup for $25.00 and headed to Florida. When he got to Marathon in the Keys, he joined a group of treasure divers gearing up to look for a wreck containing bars of silver, reportedly sunk on a nearby Key.

Brad signed on as a mechanic, partly because everybody applying for jobs wanted to dive, but mostly because he was an excellent mechanic willing to work for room, board and shares. Over the next few months, Brad endeared himself with the rest of the crew by miraculously resurrecting equipment no one on board thought would ever function again. He kept the equipment working so efficiently he actually had a little spare time during which one of the older divers of the crew, who had been a Navy diving instructor, gave him scuba diving lessons.

Brad took to diving like an otter, and before long was taking a regular shift underwater, never finding any gold (on record) and very little silver, but loving every minute of it. When the operation closed down Brad took as his share, $150.00 cash, a faceplate, a set of flippers, two scuba bottles, one breathing valve, a harness, a weight belt, and the two gold coins that somehow got “stuck” in his wet suit and headed South, actually at this point, West.

Arriving in Key West he quickly found a secluded spot under some trees on a small deserted and very secluded cove, where he could park his truck and set up camp. Then he found the local marina. Next afternoon when the tourist boats began coming in for the night, Brad had set up and was open for business.

Lounging on the dock watching a sixty-five foot Trumphy dock, Brad waited until she was secure but the captain was still on the bridge.

“Hey Captain!”

“Yeah, whatcha want?”

“That vibration you just picked up, I’ll get fix it for fifteen bucks.”

“How you know I got a vibration?”