Amador Green
Book One
Chapters 4-6
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Chapter Four
--Blue Boots

In order to kill some time till the rendez-vous at seven-thirty, the boys had taken a drive back over the Richmond bridge to Sausalito where they'd been staying. Ever since the late 60's, Burt and Josephine Stephenson had lived aboard their houseboat at Gate Five just some hundred yards from the ill-famed heliport where Bill Graham upon coming down from his last trip, crashed forever. Unlike some of the houseboat moorages at Larkspur, Gate Five was more atmospheric, perhaps than picturesque with its large unpaved dirt lot between Business 101 and the boats at their moorings on the quay. At the south end was a grimy old Mohawk gas station and to the north, just past Gate Six was the fateful site of that historic helicopter crash. Between the lot and the boardwalk leading to the boats at their docks was a sparsely treed windbreak of dust coated eucalyptus.

Burt, a man of six-two, spoke in tones so resonant that his voice was commonly audible from the wharf beside their boat, a World War II surplus LSM, the troop carrying plywood landing craft deployed in the storming of every beach from Iwo Jima to the Normandy coast. They had made an artwork of the conversion, finishing the inside with rare oiled woods from every part of the world. Seated in his captain's chair before the teak paneled French doors that ran floor to ceiling between the cabin and the afterdeck patio, Burt's long shock of hair hung free and unconstrained over his shoulders, a bright, sun and salt-air bleached silver mane.

Laughing, just as Alex had always remembered him, Burt shook his head in an unsuccessful attempt to turn off his mirth over what the boys had been telling of their plans; his eyes swept to his left, to lock with those of Josephine where she sat on a brocade davenport above the boys who lay stretched out on the floor at her feet, and she smiled, leaning forward, elbows to knees draped by an earth-toned print fabric right down to the scallop-stitched uppers of her sky-blue western boots. Burt laughed still. "If I hadn't been right there when Alex Junior here was born, I'd swear he was the spitting reincarnation of his daddy."

Wistfully, Josie smiled as she recrossed her legs. "You took the smoke right out of my toke, Papa."

"Same attitude, same . . . I don't know what to call it . . . "

Her blue boot bounced. "Not 'optimism' . . . "

"No, that would be far too low a description for what Toker MacPherd, senior had stoking his fires in this world."

"Don't know as you'd be apt to call it something like 'faith'." His wife's hand went to a smallish breast to toss a handful of long hair over a delicate, fine-boned shoulder and it was lustrous black hair with streaks of silver-white adorning it here and there. She turned to Burt.

"I'd be more minded to call it 'confidence'."

She shook her head. "Not visionary enough. Any damn asshole can be confident."

"Well, call it 'faith', if ya like, Babe, just so long as it doesn't get all blind and stuck-up with a lot of squareness about a monopoly on the truth. Toker sure wasn't like that."

Josephine raised a brow. "Right. But that doesn't mean his confidence didn't stand on a vision that went a damn sight beyond some crumby confidence in just himself." She shrugged. "That's why I think confidence is too small a word for Toker MacPherd, the First?"

Burt considered it. "Granted." He nodded. "Point made." He turned his glance back to Alex. "Whatever it was, you can see how it's passed from father to son." He smiled affectionately. "Still, I hate to tell ya, Alex but just like I often had to say to your Old Man, well, uh . . . put it this way . . . "

"Yeah?" Marty sat up a bit.

Alex propped his head on a fist.

Burt shared a smile with Josie. "Look: I don't want to rain on your rain forest picnic like this mates, but . . . C'mon. Harnessing a whale?" Burt looked directly from one to the other of the boys.

Alex produced a joint from his pocket; he held it up as he slapped the other hand against Marty's shirt pocket where his buddy usually kept his matches. "Maybe this will help you to see where we're coming from?"

Josephine narrowly eyed the joint. "Is this some of that infamous Amador Green sinsemilla of yours?"

Alex dubiously considered the question. "Yes?"

Burt sent a wink to Josephine. "Couple joints of that, and we'd be lobotomized plenty good enough to see right where they're coming from, wouldn't you say, Josie?"

Josephine's hand went beneath the coffee table and did something that caused a drawer to spring open.

"Wow!" Alex stared.

She reached in and produced a small, delicately carved wooden box. "Save it, Alex and try some of ours."

"Ooo!" Marty rolled a little closer. "That is so cool."

Alex pocketed the joint. "What you got?"

"Oh, just a little something from Panama."

"Dude!" Marty hit Alex on the arm. "Panama Red!"

Two joints the size of Camel cigarettes making the circuit, proved sufficient over the next fifteen minutes to produce from Burt a frame of mind that had him asking, "You really feel that you will be able to communicate mind to mind with a whale? Is that the idea?"

Josephine, now reclining on the sofa turned toward him. "So far as a human being getting some idea across to an animal? Oh, I don't see it should be any different with a whale than a horse, or maybe a cow."

"Or a goldfish," croaked Marty, holding back a toke.

Josie stared askance at him as she passed to Alex who was giggling nearly out of control, trying to repeat the word, "goldfish."

Marty scratched his head. "Well, how 'bout a camel or an elephant? I mean, how about one of them dog gone elephants now? What's a whale compared to a big ol' elephant?"

"Or a goldfish!" Josephine shot an eye from Marty to Alex who was already falling over as Marty looked on in awe.

"Well, c'mon now," said Burt, "Marty has a point about the elephant."

When Josie was almost done laughing she said. "I know . . . yes, he does."

"What about a porpoise?" Marty looked straight at her.

"Well sure!" Josephine leaned an elbow on a knee, and her chin in her hand. "Heck! Just look at all the animals that man is able to commuicate with, I mean, like, don't forget the chimps and the gorillas, lions and tigers. Sometimes they even get hip to a lion tamers words, man."

"Well, that's hip," said Burt. "So maybe those marine biologist friends of yours can . . . " He suddenly looked at his watch. "Did you say you had to meet those babes at 7:30?"

"Oh cripes!" Alex looked at his Super Diver. "It's a quarter to seven already."

"Best get a move on." Burt stretched. "We'll leave the bow light on for you."

Josephine came to her feet and followed the boys toward the ladder leading to the upper forward deck.
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