"Traditions of the sea, Amos. Captain's last off the ship.
After you, Alphonse."
"You crazy, man?" he shouted. "I couldn't get out that port if they cut me in half."
"You ain't that big," I said.
"We're going to give it a try."
Suddenly, he smiled.
I should have known better than to trust Amos when he smiled like that.
That peculiarly wolfish smile came over him only when he was going to do you dirty.
"All right, Gaston. You're the captain."
"That's better," I said, bracing myself and making a sling step with my hands to boost him up to the port. "I knew you'd learn someday who's boss."
But he never did. And I never even saw what he hit me with.
I sailed into Dream Street with a full load on. I was out but I wasn't all the way out. I knew what was going on but there was nothing I could do about it.
My arms and legs and head, even my body – they all belonged to someone else.
I felt Amos push me toward the port, then there was a burning sensation, like a cat raking her claws across your face.
But I was through the narrow port and falling.
Falling about a thousand miles and a thousand hours and I was still looking for the rip cord on my parachute when I crashed in a heap on the wing.
I pulled myself to my feet and tried to climb back the cabin wall to the port.
"Come on out of there, you no-good, dirty son of a bitch!" I yelled. I was crying. "Come on outa there and I’ll kill you!"
Then the plane lurched and a broken piece of something came flying up from the wing and hit me in the side, knocking me clear out into the water.
I heard the soft hiss of compressed air as the Mae West began to wrap her legs around me.
I put my head down on those big soft pillows she had and went to sleep.
5.
In Nevada, where I was born and raised, there is mostly sand and rocks and a few small mountains.
But there are no oceans.
There are streams and lakes, and swimming pools at every country club and hotel, but they're all filled with fresh, sweet water that bubbles in your mouth like wine, if you should happen to drink it instead of bathe in it.
I've been in a couple of oceans in my time. In the Atlantic, off Miami Beach and Atlantic City, in the Pacific, off Malibu, and in the blue waters of the Mediterranean, off the Riviera.
I've even been in the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, off the white, sandy beach of Bermuda, chasing a naked girl whose only ambition was to do it like a fish. I never did get to find out the secret of how the porpoises made it, because somehow, in the salt water, everything eluded me.
I never did like salt water.
It clings too heavily to your skin, burns your nose, irritates your eyes.
And if you happen to get a mouthful, it tastes like yesterday's leftover mouthwash.
So what was I doing here?
Hot damn, little man, all the stars are out and laughing at you.
This'll teach you some respect for the oceans.
You don't like salt water, eh?
Well, how do you like a million, billion, trillion gallons of it? A gazillion gallons?
"Aah, the hell with you," I said and went back to sleep.
I came trotting around the corner of the bunkhouse as fast as my eight-year-old legs could carry me, dragging the heavy cartridge belt and holstered gun in the sand behind me. I heard my father's voice.
"Hey, boy!
What have you got there?"
I turned to face him, trying to hide the belt and gun behind me.
"Nothin'," I said, not looking up at him.
"Nothing?" my father repeated after me. "Then, let me see."
He reached around behind me and tugged the belt out of my grip.
As he raised it, the gun and a folded piece of paper fell from the holster.
He bent down and picked them up.
"Where'd you get this?"
"From the wall in the bunkhouse near Nevada's bed," I said. "I had to climb up."
My father put the gun back in the holster.
It was a black gun, a smooth, black gun with the initials M. S. on its black butt.
Even I was old enough to know that somebody had made a mistake on Nevada's initials.