Milo quoted his fee, which staggered the man. (O, shining hope…) “Listen,” said Milo, “you get three or four other fellas, it’s easier on your wallet, and we could go out and hit it tomorrow morning—”
But the tourist seemed to be in the grip of some urgency.
“No,” he said. “Let’s go ahead and go.”
“Hop aboard,” said Milo, offering a strong, tanned, tattooed hand.
The tourist introduced himself as Floyd Gamertsfelder.
“I sell carpet,” he said.
“That’s awesome,” said Milo, casting off.
Burt jumped ship and trotted away down the dock, heading home. He didn’t belong out on the water, and he knew it.
—
Floyd Gamertsfelder didn’t give a shit about catching fish. This was something Milo knew the instant he saw him, the moment he heard that strange urgency in the carpet salesman’s voice. About half of Milo’s customers were like that; they paid heavy money for his time, fuel, and tackle, but they were there for something deeper and more difficult than amberjack or marlin.
This was Thing Two, the second part of Milo’s job: professional wise man and counselor.
People came to him because they had problems they couldn’t sort out on their own and they had heard of him. Just as people in cartoons climbed mountains to find wise men, real people traveled serious distances to consult Milo aboard his boat, upon the sea, for the price of a half-day charter.
They were smart to do so. When you live almost ten thousand lives, after all, you can learn a great deal. Milo had squeezed so much learning and experience into his one, single soul that the knowledge had grown pressurized and hot and transformed into wisdom the way coal changes into diamonds. His wisdom was like a superpower.
It showed in his eyes—like green fire in outer space—and in his tattooed skin, which was creased and furrowed as if his suntan had put down roots.
“I really just want to talk to you about some stuff,” Floyd admitted as they motored out of the marina.
“I know,” said Milo.
Past the breakwater, a decent-sized swell lifted the Loudermilk. The kind that promised good surfing later. He hoped Floyd was a fast talker.
Patience, his boa reminded him. Compassion.
Milo nodded, formed the mudra with his thumbs and forefingers, goosed the throttle, and steered out to sea.
—
Floyd Gamertsfelder was not a fast talker.
Milo was kind of hoping he’d open up and spit out whatever his mystery problem was before they got too far out, but no. Floyd made his remark about wanting to talk, and then he just clammed up, watching the horizon, looking glum.
Milo wasn’t surprised. It took time, usually. The puzzles people brought were hardcore and personal. They had to ride the waves awhile before they opened up. They had to glimpse his outer-space eyes and hear the ocean roll in his seaworthy, biker-dude voice.
Milo nearly always took his customers to the same place, the same coordinates. Out of sight of land, an hour over open water, to a place only he knew about. In ninety feet of water, he dropped anchor directly over a forgotten submarine wreck, an artificial reef that hosted almost every species in the Gulf.
“A dead man could catch his limit here,” Milo told his customers.
He and Floyd drifted around for two hours over the sub, catching bonito and sunfish.
Floyd opened up a little cooler he’d brought, and they each had a beer.
“Have you ever been married, Milo?” Floyd asked.
Ah, a marriage problem. Marriage counted for 80 percent of the wise-man business.
Milo said, “Yep.” (Nine thousand six hundred forty-nine times.) “Well,” said Floyd, “basically I don’t think my wife is very nice to me.”
Milo made a sympathetic noise.
“Not like cheating on me. I don’t mean that. Maybe this’ll sound dumb, but she doesn’t ever do nice shit like bring me a glass of lemonade when I’m mowing the lawn. Am I being old-fashioned? They say it’s the little things, right? Well, she doesn’t do any of the little things.”
Milo reached behind him to damp the throttle, cutting the engine noise.
“Do I do little things for her?” Floyd continued. “Hell yes. Last week I made spaghetti, and—whoa, something’s happening!”
A nice amberjack had hit Floyd’s line, and they spent fifteen minutes reeling it in.
The wind picked up a little. Down below, in the ribs of the old submarine, thousands of fish watched the shadow of the Jenny Ann Loudermilk as it lurked across the sea bottom. A mile away still, the shark that would eat Milo chased a school of mackerel and glided north along the drop-off.
“Is your wife nice to other people?” asked Milo.
“Not particularly,” said Floyd.
“What do you think the problem is?”
Floyd took a deep breath and said, “I pretty much think my wife is an unpleasant person. I think she doesn’t like me very much, or anyone else, either.”
“Why don’t you leave her?” asked Milo.
Floyd digested this question for five full minutes.
“I’m trying to be mature about things,” he said at last. “I thought maybe we just needed time. Marriage is work. So what”—here, he finally turned to look straight at Milo—“so what I think I need to do is, I need to grow up and want things to get better. My parents didn’t raise quitters.”
Milo didn’t meet Floyd’s eyes. He watched the sea, looking for something in particular.
“?’Scuse me a minute,” he said, and cast a tube lure waaaaaaay out, watched it splash down. Silently counted: Four, three, two, one—and then yanked back hard, cranked like mad, and dropped a giant angry barracuda onto the deck, right in front of Floyd.
“Christ!” screamed Floyd. “What’s wrong with you?”
The barracuda thrashed, all huge jaws and razor teeth, instantly making hash of the deck hose.
Floyd exploded in panic, dancing and spinning.
“Be mature about it,” suggested Milo.
The barracuda flipped into the air, snapping at Floyd’s hands.
“Give it time,” added Milo. “Fishing is work.”
The barracuda mowed through an empty beer can and went for Floyd’s ankles.
The carpet dealer, like most people, was brave when he needed to be. He swallowed his panic, bent down and grasped the fish around the middle, and flung it out of the boat with something between a sob and a grunt.
Then he stood there shaking, pumped full of adrenaline, trying to decide if he had enough courage left over to shout at Milo again.
“The problem with a barracuda,” said Milo, “isn’t that you aren’t being mature. The problem is that it’s a barracuda. If you don’t like being in the boat with it, one of you has to go.”
Floyd sat down in the fighting chair. After a minute, he said, “Yes.”
He said it in the saddest way, but he looked happy.
Milo mashed the throttle and sped for home, hoping to save the tail end of the afternoon.
If he had died just then, it would have been a poetic and satisfactory end. But he didn’t.
—
He chose to get drunk at Bobo’s Pub.