Typical River Outing

I was staring at a yard full of construction garbage one Saturday morning, my job, naturally, was to clean it up. I had just mustered the oomph to start when my phone rang. “Let’s go down the river dude!” “Screw that job, you can do it Sunday” the voice on the other line said. Compelling argument. Not that I needed much convincing, but then again Joel is a convincing dude. Or that’s what I was telling myself as I loaded up the boat a short while later. A bar-b-que pit, potato cannon, air compressor, skis, inner tube, ice chest, and our typical excessive load-out of weaponry later the boat was ready to set sail for my camp down Blind River. Joel and his then fiancée, Joye, met up with myself, Lance, and Nathan at the boat launch. Beautiful day. Gorgeous day, in fact. Breathing in the mixed aroma of summer swamp and sunscreen, I began congratulating myself on the decision to leave work.

After idling away from the launch, I throttled up the boat and observed with satisfaction the collective squint-eyed smiles that a summer boat ride always elicited from my passengers. We were almost to the camp when a parish sheriff's boat emerged from a side canal and began flashing the blue light bar that adorned its top. The whipping warm wind subsided with the engine noise as I decelerated and maneuvered the boat toward the police vessel. Aside from the enormous potato cannon protruding from the front of the boat and the gun holster on my hip, I felt no apprehension, heck I even knew the deputies. Then I noticed the other two occupants of the boat. Standing ramrod straight in pressed uniforms, they were both zeroed in on the gun holster on my belt. At this point in the story I’m going to meander for purely artistic effect. >.> THE COAST GUARD IN A RECREATIONAL BOATING ENVIRONMENT IS A STUPID IDEA! THESE MILITANT PRICKS CAN FORNICATE THEMSELVES WITH BREAKFAST FRUIT. Sorry, had to get that out. Basically, these guys are military trained and given a cop’s job with less authority. Moving on. I nodded to the deputies and we chatted a little before they asked for the guns to run the serial numbers. Standard procedure. After I handed them about five rifles I began to slowly reach for my pistol. Without warning the CG dudes went combat apeshit. After screaming at me to remain still, they jumped on my boat and took it themselves. Seeing as it was the first time they moved or said anything, I was a bit surprised; well we all were including the deputies. People are sometimes jumpy, I reasoned, and I have always complied with officers. At that point everything was still somewhat subdued, and I turned to my boat occupants to offer an encouraging smile.

After getting back onto their own boat the CG pair resumed their rigid stance and remained silently staring down at us. After a brief awkward pause my guests started breathing again and the officers resumed the inspection procedures. Next came the request for our respective drivers licenses to make sure none of us were felons and such. We all handed them over without incident. In the time spent waiting for a reply on the radio, I made the usual small talk with the deputies. Conscious of the pork chops in the ice chest, one of the questions I eventually asked was ‘How long do weapon checks usually take?’ Now I’m a conscientious conversationalist. I had prefaced the question with sufficient polite banter to mask my impatience, hell I had even thrown in some of my prize-winning nonchalance. Despite all of that, the question was apparently enough to trigger something within our nation’s elite swamp task force, which until now had been silently basking in the glory of their own awesomeness on the bow of the small police skiff. The apparent leader marched between the deputy and I and stared down upon me. “It will take” he said slowly and deliberately, “as long as it takes.”

I had been doing my best to ignore the two up until now, but now they got the full wattage of my perceptive ire. The one in front of me had to be four foot tall; both were skinny and bald, in carefully pressed uniforms. Now the Coast Guard honestly have no teethe to bite the average person with, and I have a high tolerance for dysfunctional people, but this dude was getting to me that day for some reason. Being vertically challenged AND trying to assert his authority over me was a humorous coupling that day, so I met his stare and gave him my best scornful up and down look. From then I could tell it was war. He threw the book at me, asked me for and riffled through my papers, inspected my engine compartment, checked my fire extinguisher, and finally found something for which to cite me. No throwable flotation devise. I threw a life-jacket past his head and asked why it didn’t qualify. He didn’t seem to be as amused as everyone else and informed me tersely it would have to be a life-ring with a rope. His tirade of questions and my smart-aleck remarks showed no signs of stopping until we were interrupted by the radio crackling to life.

You didn’t have to know police radio codes to ascertain the forthcoming message wasn’t good; But my people didn't seem to pick up on it. The cops and CG huddled up for a conference while staring at one of the licenses. With my back to my passengers I silently fumed while contemplating the situation. I knew the "active 29" meant one of them was going to jail, but what made me angry was the fact it also meant the CG goons had the satisfaction of having something on me, and more importantly, the legitimate authority to screw up my plans. Turning to face me, the diminutive dick informed me that he was “terminating my voyage” until I procured a life-ring.

As they escorted our boat back to the launch, I thoughtfully studied my four passengers. Nathan and Lance hadn't a snowball's chance in hell of acquiring a warrant, so my gaze shifted to Joel. But he had long since straightened up his act... My eyes shifted to his new fiancée sunbathing happily on the front of my boat. Joye had obviously willingly agreed to marry him… what was she running from? I began to suspect a darker, possibly violent history behind her white winning smile. My thoughts were broken by the sound of the police vessel roaring around us as we neared the launch. As I pulled up to the dock, I glanced up to see the officers all lined up across our landing point with crossed arms. “Joel Dicharry, would you step out the boat for us?” As I watched him being cuffed, the droning sound of Miranda rights blending with the unabashed grief and consternation emanating from his very distraught fiancée certainly added an interesting soundtrack to the scene.

We were to find out in the coming hours that a traffic ticket he had given to his buddy to fix had apparently never quite made it to the right place; hence the outstanding warrant. “How much is bail?” his fiancée had asked anxiously. “No bail" came the reply, "The judge is out of town for the weekend. Earliest he can be out is Monday.” As Joye was relaying this interesting news via cell phone to his mother, I was again contemplating the pork chops. As they drove off, I asked the cop if we could bring him some bar-b-que in jail. “Sure” was the reply. I knew the bastard was lying but I was getting hungry and Joye seemed to buy it.

Back at my grandparents, I unloaded the pit and ice chests and started cooking. I had just flipped the delicious smelling chops over when a very exuberant fiancée ran outside. Luckily for Joel, his mother had been calling all the powers-that-be and had arranged for him to be let out almost immediately. “He’s getting out!” Joye was practically jumping up and down. “Awesome,” I replied, “let’s eat.”

After picking up and feeding our prison slut, we again loaded up the boat. As we were pulling out of the driveway, my grandpa tossed a life-ring into the boat and waved. As we approached the boat launch, we couldn’t help but notice the place was swarming with cops and paramedics. It seems that in our absence a drunken boating enthusiast had taken a corner too fast and flipped his boat. Watching the paramedics trying to treat his belligerent drunken passengers was something I should have like to have seen close up, but I had to content myself with simply staring from the far end of the boat launch. We had been cautioned to keep Joel away from the police as his release did not exactly erase his warrant.

So we put into the water from the far side of the launch and slid unnoticed past the commotion with Joel lying on the bottom of the boat. Once well out of sight of the launch, I throttled up the boat and we once again headed towards my camp. It didn’t take me long to realize the boat was acting very sluggish. As I turned to frown thoughtfully at the motor, I couldn’t help but notice the nearly four feet of water sloshing around inside the boat. Apparently while bar-b-quing, my beloved grandpa decided to drain the boat out, but not replace the plug. %#&!ing lovely, I thought as I hurriedly wheeled the boat around and headed back towards the launch. To balance out the sinking vessel, I ordered everyone to the bow of the boat. After a few harrowing moments, we roared into the “no wake” zone with all of the subtlety a speeding, sinking boat could muster. Unfortunately, the situation that had allowed us our previous unnoticed entry was over, and we had the undivided attention of everyone at the launch. Having little choice I shot towards the nearest dock, which of course, was the dock of choice for the meandering law enforcement population of St. James Parish, as well as the Coast Guard, paramedics and game warden. As our sinking boat gurgled up to the dock, Joel placed the life-ring around his neck and gave a friendly wave to our old friends.

Luckily the site of a sinking boat dropped the officers firmly into the “assist” mode so we only received raised eyebrows and perplexed frowns at first. We ended up driving away unhassled. The general consensus was that we had seen enough trouble that day, and I couldn’t agree more…