Caroline was diagnosed with a brain tumor the week after her fortieth birthday and was dead by forty-one. Soon after, her husband, Beau, gave Huck a flat tackle box. When Huck opened it, he saw Caroline’s flies, one in each sectioned compartment like so many jewels. He has them still.
Before she met Huck, Kimberly Cassel was a bartender at Sloppy Joe’s in Key West. In those days, Huck was not yet Huck—he was just Sam Powers—and he was not yet a captain; he was first mate for a guy everyone called Captain Coke. Every Sunday, Coke would invite Sam to go out on the water “just for fun,” and nearly every Sunday, Sam said no because Sunday was his only day off and he had to do things like laundry and grocery shopping, and sometimes he hitchhiked up to Islamorada, where his mother would cook him dinner. But one Sunday in March of 1978, Sam said sure and Coke said, “Finally! I’ve been wanting to introduce you to my sister.”
Huck remembers that he’d bristled—he did just fine in the women department on his own and he’d been looking forward to a day of real fishing (instead of baiting clients’ hooks and turning back early if someone got seasick), and he wasn’t sure he’d enjoy the presence of anyone’s sister, aside from his own, on a fishing trip.
But then Kimberly came striding down the dock wearing cutoff army-surplus fatigues, a red bandanna around her neck, and a white visor; her sandy-blond hair was up in a ponytail. Huck recognized her as the bartender from Sloppy Joe’s, the famous Key West watering hole where Hemingway used to hang out and where Huck liked to fish for women from time to time. Somehow he’d never realized that the most popular bartender in Key West was his crusty, hard-living boss’s sister.
Well, okay, Huck thought. She was nice to look at, but could she fish?
Oh, yes. Like Huck, Kimberly was born and raised in the Keys, on and around boats. During that first trip together, Huck watched her land a one-hundred-fifty-pound sailfish, sitting in the fighting chair, screaming like she was having a baby.
He vowed then that he would marry her.
But first he had to beat out scores of other men—the salty locals and rich, sunburned tourists alike, all calling her name, throwing down money, telling her she was as beautiful as one of Charlie’s Angels. It took endurance to get the first date. Huck had to stay at the bar drinking but not getting drunk until Sloppy Joe’s closed at four a.m. This was no small feat when his wake-up for the morning charter was only two hours later.
Looking back, Huck realizes that he’d been so dazzled by Kimberly’s obvious charms and—he’ll just say it—so invigorated by the chase that he ignored the warning signs of a deeply troubled person. Kimberly routinely did shots with customers, sometimes as many as five or six. She never appeared visibly drunk at work, but after her shift ended, there was always a margarita or three or five. Back at the beginning, Kimberly had been happy and pliably good-natured when she was drunk.
Shortly after they were married, things changed. In year three, Captain Coke’s own substance abuse got the best of him. He was spending all his money on cocaine and, apparently, none on his business. He’d taken out a line of credit on the equity he had left in his boat and then failed to pay. Just as the bank was ready to claim the boat, Huck stepped in and bought not only the boat but the whole charter business. Kimberly called Huck a savior, though she wanted Huck to keep Coke on as captain. No, sorry—that wasn’t going to happen. Huck didn’t want Coke anywhere near the boat or the business, though he was happy to pay for rehab. This went over poorly with both brother and sister, but Huck stood his ground. He took over the charter business, hired a new young mate, and made so much money the first year that he was able to buy a second boat.
Huck wanted to start a family and Kimberly claimed she did too, but she refused to quit her job at Sloppy Joe’s. It brought in too much money, plus it was her identity. Huck didn’t say that if she had a baby, she would have a new identity.
He wouldn’t dare.
Kimberly did go off her birth control but she continued with the shots and the after-shift drinking.
“For God’s sake, Kimmy,” Huck finally said, “any baby we have will be born pickled.”
Kimberly didn’t like this one bit, though it did make her slow down a little—and sure enough, she got pregnant. Huck remembers the mixture of giddiness and terror at the news; it was as though someone had told him he could travel to the moon with the astronauts or star in a movie with Clint Eastwood. Did he want to? Hell yes! Did he really want to? He wasn’t sure. What did Huck know about having a child, about being a father? He was also afraid that Kimberly wouldn’t be able to stay on the wagon for nine full months—it seemed impossible—plus both of them smoked like fiends, and that would have to stop.
Kimberly bought prenatal vitamins and went to see an ob-gyn in Miami and she changed her post-shift drink to one white-wine spritzer. She cut down to four cigarettes a day—breakfast, lunch, dinner, and late at night—and Huck thought, Okay, maybe this will work. He couldn’t expect her to quit everything cold turkey;
