Part 1
At the beginning of the rainy season, my old boss called to tell me about the Captain. He was a sweet old drunk that lived in his van in the bookstore’s parking lot. The day before, his van was towed away, and that rainy night the Captain slept in the dumpster behind the store. I offered him my basement. He cleaned it up and made himself comfortable. He drank a lot, passed out early, and spent his days on the back deck staring at the canopy.
Part 2
As the rainy season ended, I explained it was time to move on. A week later, I returned from a trip to learn that my housemate found the Captain dead. The coroner called me every day for a week trying to identify him, but for 40 years, since going AWOL during the draft, he was the Captain. Last night, my old boss stopped by with a picture of the Captain standing on the bow of a ship, 30 years younger than I’d ever known him. David Stanhope was scribbled on the back, but I never called the coroner. We sprinkled his ashes on the bay and quietly wondered how many of his stories were true.
