"I don't know. What do you want to drink?"

LowWater bar glows into the night with people coming and going and coming.and staying. Fishermen are arriving from a week at sea and getting ready to leave for a week at sea. About 1:00 AM Mad Jack has forgotten he has no boat.

He is ready to hire everybody in the place for crew and is telling them that. He is even starting to feel amicable toward Delaney. He goes over and thumps him on the back, which makes Delaney spit into his drink.

"Hey, Delaney!" booms Mad Jack good and drunk. "Let me buy your bad attitude a drink!" Delaney whirls in his seat throwing his elbow back to smash the booming wind from his friendly enemy, but it only glances across Mad Jack's wide belly setting them both to spinning, and Delaney falls on his butt, which sends Mad Jack into enormous rollicking laughter.

Delaney is sputtering mad and tries to rise up off the floor, but is so furious he can't find his balance, and which sends Mad Jack into a further haul of the anchor-chain.

 

Finally, he regains his unsteady feet and starts to launch into combat when a deafening explosion bursts with a flash of white fire in front of him.

"Heads up!" belows Third-Eye from behind the bar lighting another cherry bomb and throwing it into the room again. Delaney jumps back to keep from being deafened and scorched. Mad Jack just throws back his head and roars with laughter as the cherry bomb explodes between his feet. He is beyond small things like pain.

"I said no fighting on my shift and I mean no fighting on my shift!" yells Third-Eye. "Either you two sit down and find your own separate oblivions or you are out of here! And I mean it! A-fucking-men!"

The two near-fighters take barstools at opposite ends, one fuming at the ears and one braying to the ceiling. Third-Eye comes over to Mad Jack, who is guffawing like a Bronx cheer through a Gatling gun.

"Mad Jack, don't make me throw you out of here, or Delaney neither, we need all the business we can get. Times is hard. Plus, you gotta call a cab when you leave. If you get busted for drunk driving it'll bust this place too, and I'll hear about it because it was my shift. So mellow out, wouldja?"

Wharf Company Writing and Photography © 2010
Mad Jack and the Great White
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by Michael Harris © 2009

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