Merle

“I see that you have dried off and made it.”

His face kind of turned a cute color of red and I was unable to stop the way it made me feel. He looked so innocent that it was hard to not see the rough exterior. I don’t know why, but Charlie was the kind of guy that I was drawn to. After the day I had had, it only seemed natural to calm down and have a conversation with someone else but my half-drunk boss. I was livid with Kevin and Charlie seemed to know the man well, so I wasn’t as hesitant to talk about what my day had been like.

“I did, thanks to you. How was your first dive with Kevin?”

I looked back to where Kevin was getting all of the boat’s pieces back in place for the night and I kind of sighed to myself. It wasn’t that I wasn’t grateful for the job or anything like that, but at the end of the day, it had been a rough one.

“Why don’t you buy me a drink and I will tell you all about it? Unless you are busy.” I looked around for his crew and wondered which boat was his, but I didn’t want to look too hard. I wanted to get off of the shore and put a little distance between me and the boss. I knew that it was going to be hard, but I had never considered that it would be dangerous. If it was going to be just me and Kevin out on the water together, he was going to have to go a little more sober the next time. He had to keep track of things and twice while I was under the oxygen shut off and once the hot water that was fed into the wet suit was gone and I liked to have frozen before I got to the surface and back on the boat.

“Well it is the least that I can do after you saved my life earlier.”

I waved him off. He wasn’t going to keel over earlier, but he would have gotten sick if he hadn’t done something. I didn’t want to see someone not taken care of. I used to be a lifeguard and that need to help was still there.

He offered me a ride and I took it because I was exhausted and the last thing that I wanted to do was to walk to the bar. It had been a long day and I knew that tomorrow was going to be longer, but at least there had been some success in the sluice box. The little glitters of gold were what kept me from telling the older man that I was done before I got started. It was hard to do, but I was still trying to make my fortune this summer and the only way to do it was on a gold mining rig. All I had to do was convince Kevin that we would do better with him actually sober for most of the day while we were out there.

“So was it that bad with Kevin?”

I was looking out the window and I nodded my head that it was. “Yeah he was hung over or still drunk from this morning or last night. I am really not sure, but he certainly wasn’t on his A game.”

Charlie grinned and told me that he was on his A game. “If he got out of bed and off of the stool at the bar, that’s about as good as it gets for Kevin. I hate to say it because I like Kevin a lot, but I think that you have gotten in with the wrong rig. He will barely scrap up enough to pay for his habit over the winter. I have known many of his divers through the year and no one comes out any better.”

I made a sound of displeasure and I tried to straighten up, but I had known that it was going to be something like that. Hearing Charlie say it just let me know that what was in my gut. This was a bad idea and after choking on no oxygen and almost freezing earlier, I knew that it was going to be dangerous. But the deal that there would-be some gold at the end of it would help me endure more abuse. The idea that it was all for naught was not something I was prepared for and if I was honest, he had deflated my sail more than I thought possible.

“Well I don’t know what I am going to do if that is true. I have been trying to get up here for almost two years and finding someone that would let me dive for them was hard enough. I am here now and I can’t leave yet. I need to get some gold.”

I wasn’t really thinking too hard about what I needed. I knew that I needed another rig to work on, but I was still under the impression that I was going to have to prove myself first. When Charlie offered an alternative, I didn’t know what to say.

“I thought you said that you don’t go out anymore?”

“I do not usually but I do have two that go out every day. I just bought up some more mining area and I need to get my money back out of it. We can talk about percentages later, but my rig is safer and you will always have someone on board that will watch your back while you are down there.”

“I have to think about it Charlie.”

“Don’t think too long. I need an answer by the morning. If you are in, just meet me at the same place and I will get you started.”

I agreed to do that, but I was also trying to figure out how I could explain myself to Kevin.