Word Count about 91,164
Drake Koefoed
Captain Dave
Chapter 1: Captain Dave visits New Orleans
Musical theme: Foxy Lady by Jimi Hendrix
Dave slowed as he saw the car off the shoulder. He pulled over and got off the road and to the edge of the pavement. He knew the State Police did not come this way often, and he was on a deserted stretch of I 49, north of Opelousas. He could see that there was someone in the driver’s seat of the car. He walked down to the car, which was parked at an angle in the weeds.
“Are you all right?” he asked as he came to the car.
“Stay away!”
“Should I call the State Police, ma’am?”
“No. Just go away.”
“Is your car disabled, ma’am? I’m going to be in Opelousas in 20 minutes or so. I could call a tow truck for you.”
“I’m just out of gas.”
“Would you like a ride into Opelousas?”
“No. I just want you to leave.”
“Then I should call the State Police?”
“No. I don’t like cops.”
“You’re not going to stay here in your car all night, are you? I don’t think you should do that.”
“No. Take me to Opelousas.” She got out of the car and opened the trunk to take out a small suitcase. She took it up to Dave’s car, and put it in the back seat, and got in the passenger seat herself. Her hand shook as she put on her seat belt.
Dave looked over. He was surprised to see her in the light. She was a beautiful woman with long curly strawberry blonde hair.
“So, I am Dave. I’m a captain on a 245 foot offshore supply vessel.”
“I’m Jainie. I’m the captain of a car that’s out of gas.”
Dave laughed, and Jainie smiled. “I suppose if you need to head on tonight, I could take you back and put some gas in your car. Or you could just check in where I am at the Motel 6 in Opelousas, and have your car towed there.”
“That might be pretty expensive. I was planning on going right to New Orleans.”
“We would have to get a gas can, and go back for your car. I could do that, but I’m tired. Do we need to do it that way?”
“Uh, well, Dave, I hate to ask you, but could I sleep in your room and we could get my car in the morning?”
“They probably will put me in a room with two beds anyway, and I’m going to be hanging around down in Golden Meadow to see if we are going to go to sea. It’s supposed to be a single room, but they won’t have a heart attack, I don’t suppose.”
Jainie ran her hand down Dave’s arm. “You’re very nice.”
Dave wondered for a moment, and decided he had nothing worth stealing. If this Jainie wasn’t on the up and up, there was nothing much she could take.
He came to the motel. He went in and registered without saying anything about Jainie. He couldn’t imagine what wrongdoing she could be up to, starting with parking in the weeds alongside the Interstate. He got a key card, and they went to the room.
“Isn’t this exciting, Dave? Like we’re on a rendezvous, you know, in one of those movies? You can be Humphrey Bogart, and I will be Lauren Bacall.”
Dave thought she was a lot prettier than Lauren Bacall.
Dave giggled. “Don’t be getting any ideas, young lady. We’re just going to sleep.”
“Do you need to use the bathroom?”
“For a minute.” He went in, and came out. She took her little suitcase and went in, and while she was there, he undressed and got into bed.
She turned out the lights, and breezed into the room. She was visible in the moonlight from the window, where it was not closed all the way. She wore a baby doll outfit, with no panties, and knee high stockings with little ribbon ties at the top, and high heeled sandals. “Something’s going to happen, Dave.” She said.
“Nothing is going to happen, Jainie.”
“Oh, yes it is!” she said, flipping back the covers, putting one knee on each side of him, and taking him in her hand. He could not, in those circumstances, claim not to be attracted to her. There is a moment when a man first enters a woman, when it feels so good he can’t stop. Then Jainie was pumping away, her hair making a kind of cave in which Dave couldn’t see anything but her lovely face.
* * *
Afterward, Dave was limp. “Dave, was it good for you?”
“Yes, Honey, it was great.”
“You called me Honey. Did you know I just staked my claim?” She touched the bedposts in sequence. “As of right now, Dave, you’re mine.”
“I don’t remember agreeing to that.”
“You don’t need to. I’ve staked my claim. You don’t have some other girl someplace?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s good, because I won’t need to call Carlos Marcello and have the bitch whacked.”
“Do you know Carlos Marcello?”
“I’ve met him. He wanted to bang me, but he didn’t ask nice, so I wouldn’t let him.”
“He is the head of the New Orleans Mafia.”
“I know that. He told me that when I told him I wouldn’t fuck him.”
“He let it go at that?”
“Well, I suppose! I told him no.”
Dave started working over her back muscles as she lay on him.
“Oh, Dave, that feels so good.”
“Not too hard?”
“No. Take it all the way.”
Dave started working her over with hard pressure. She reached down and put him back inside herself. “Both at the same time, if you can.” He could.
Afterward, she started talking about her cousin in New Orleans. Marcie this, and Marcie that.
“Seems like you think a lot about Marcie.”
“When you see her, you’ll know. Marcie is a fashion model. She does the French runway things. She is hurt your eyes pretty, but she’s junkyard dog mean.”
“Just to let me know who has the bed staked out.”
“You’re mine, Dave, and you better remember that, because if you let that little Marcie get her hands on my territory, you’re going to regret it!”
“Don’t worry too much, Jainie.”
“I’m not worrying too much, just the right amount. You haven’t seen Marcie yet, and I’m telling you, admire but don’t touch.”
When they got to the house in New Orleans, Dave found out what she had been thinking about. Marcie came out to greet them. She wore a sheer silk bustier that only partly covered her nipples. Her pert breasts competed for attention with her intense blue eyes, and her blonde mane. She had about the most perfect figure Dave had ever seen, a wasp waist and sleek, narrow hips, on which she wore a pair of linen shorts. Her legs were covered with iridescent nylons. Her shoes were silver patent leather. Her toenails were done up with polish, like all of her.
When she greeted Dave, she stepped up very close to him, wriggling a little as she kissed him on the cheek. “Want me?” She whispered in his ear. Dave nodded, and turned to greet the other cousin, Danielle. She was a petite girl with black hair in a short pixie kind of haircut. She wore a light blue halter top pantsuit in a very fine knit, with black boots with gold buckles. She had a sort of ‘girl next door’ cuteness that could hardly compete with her cousins’ movie star and femme fatale looks. She took Dave’s hand, and kissed his cheek. “Dangerous bitches in range” she whispered.
“Not you, though. You are sweet and innocent.”
“Maybe not all that innocent.”
“I’m told I belong to Jainie.”
“Marcie will see that as a challenge. I might even have poaching tendancies, myself.”
“You mean butter would melt in your mouth?”
She smiled.
Jainie came and took Dave’s hand. Let’s go in the back garden and have a beer.”
They went through the kitchen where Jainie grabbed two bottles of Shiner Bock, and out into a wonderfully wild and overgrown garden. They sat on a pair of lawn chairs. Jainie moved hers much closer to Dave. “Do you like my cousins?”
“Yes.”
“But not too much.”
“Not too much. I already have a girl, who ambushed me in my motel room.”
“I will thank you not to refer to that. The point is, you’re mine. It’s not polite to ask a Princess how she acquired things. Surely you understand that, Prince David.”
“Uh, yes, OK, I do understand that.”
“Now as to these cousins, I expect you to look, but not touch. We have an understanding on that?”
“I guess so. Yes, sure we do. Your cousins like to put their hands on me a little, but that isn’t what you mean, is it.”
“No, it isn’t. You are mine. Just like I am yours. Unless you forsake me.”
“You would not take that well.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” She took her shoes off. “My feet are tired. Can I put them in your lap?” She didn’t wait for an answer, and put them there. Dave fiddled around, sort of massaging them.
“Nothing excites Marcie as much as something she isn’t supposed to have.”
When Dave didn’t answer, she continued. “She flirts with photographers, and she flirts the most if they are married or have a steady girl. Models do that a lot, I think. Maybe they get an edge on the competition. Models are very competitive, did you know that? They get thirty beautiful women in a room, all wanting the same job. All of them wondering if their neck is too long, or their breasts are too big or too small, or something. Can you imagine a girl as pretty as Marcie trying out for 30 jobs in a month, and not getting any of them?”
“Uh, when you explain it like that, yeah, I can.”
She looked at the clouds. “So she gets all snippy, and frustrated, and if she does get a job, then she thinks of it as an affirmation, sort of. And if the photographer gives in to her, then she is irresistible, and all is right in the world. What do you think of that?”
“Well I guess I can understand it.”
“Now Danielle is another sort, all together. She works in an art gallery, so she is always wanting to show that she is educated and all that. She is supposed to be glamorous more than sexy, and so she puts on this pretty girl show every day for guys who are much older and married anyway. Now you look at all the weaponry. Like those shoes there. What would you call them?”
“Well, high heeled strappy sandals, I suppose.”
“You’ve heard them called ‘fuck me shoes’, haven’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Why would someone call them that?”
“They’re sexy. They make women’s legs and feet look nice.”
“OK, so you get dressed in your Carhartt overalls, Red Wing boots, and all that blue collar stuff, which I like, by the way, but it’s not like tight jeans or something. Anyway, Danielle is wearing her fuck me shoes, and all this sexy stuff, and then she doesn’t get any, and she is frustrated.”
“She’s a pretty girl. She could have a boyfriend.”
“But she doesn’t.”
“Well, she could. If I didn’t have you, I’d ask her out.”
“You probably would, Mr. Carhartt, but how often do you go to galleries? Maybe once in a while, to fix a dripping sink or something. And if you’re a fairly good looking man, the girls in places like that fall all over you. But you don’t know it; you think they are just being nice. You have like, well you, anyway, you have these great arms.”
“Me? I don’t lift weights or anything.”
“No, but you’re strong. Women have these little arms, and most of us are not very strong at all. I look at your arms, and they are all cordy, like. You’re much stronger than me. It’s a little bit scary, but it’s sexy because of that.”
Dave looked at his arms, wondering what the whole thing was about.
“It’s when you lift something, or whatever, Dave.”
“I don’t think I’m a strong guy, honey.”
“What you think doesn’t mean much of much. I have to go to Red Stick.”
“Red Stick?”
“Baton Rouge.” She put her shoes back on. “You could probably massage my feet real nice if you put your mind to it.”
“What are you doing in Baton Rouge?”
“Business. Do you trust me? I’m leaving you to the tender mercies of my cousins. I don’t trust them. Marcie will make a play for you again, and you had better tell her ‘no.’”
“I will. Why didn’t you ask me if I wanted to go to Baton Rouge with you? My personnel guy says we are not going to sea for a while. Maybe I should just go on home to Texas.”
“I’m the Princess. I want you in New Orleans, not Texas.”
“What if I want to go to Texas?”
“You don’t need to go to sea for at least a month, and you don’t need to be in Texas.”
“Who says I don’t need to go to sea?”
“Vince. I took the message, but maybe you didn’t read it.”
Dave thought of the message slips on the table in his room. “OK. I guess I didn’t read my messages.”
She handed him a slip of paper and a credit card. “This is what we need to get done before tomorrow night when I come back from Red Stick.”
“What is this, tires on the truck?”
“That card will cover it. The PIN is 4153. Buy the best; it’s cheaper in the long run. Put new mud and snow tires on all five. That black Ford back there. The key is on your table.”
“Why do you want me to put mud and snow tires on that pickup? Why on all five? What about your car?”
“I always have a good tire on spare. We’re going to Wyoming when I get back. I’m going to show you the prettiest ranch in America.”
“What if I had plans?”
“You don’t. But if you did, you would have to change them. The Princess commands.” She gave him a quick kiss on the neck, and jumped into her car, and drove off.
Dave went back inside, and started to read the book he had begun a few weeks back. He was nodding off in his chair when Marcie came in. She was wearing a sheer black nylon body stocking and high heeled sandals. Victoria’s Secret had nothing on her.
“The cat’s away.”
“Marcie, would you do me a favor and change into something less comfortable?”
Marcie smiled wickedly. “I will, Dave, but no matter what I wear, I will be naked under it.” She spoke the last into his ear, her hand on his shoulder.
Dave went into the kitchen, where Danielle was making gumbo and shelling shrimp. “You’re just in time to help if you will. You know how to shell shrimp?”
“Sure.”
“Well, take over on this, then, and we’ll be right on time.” She was wearing a tan double knit leotard with a pair of coffee colored boots.
Dave took the shrimp to the far side of the kitchen table, and began peeling them. Marcie breezed in, wearing a jogging suit and athletic shoes. “Getting dinner ready, I see. She must be working pretty hard at domesticating you. Did you get some sex this morning before she left?”
“Please give it a rest, Marcie.”
“Oh! Not until I get what I want. Danielle, did you offer Dave a drink?”
She poured a double Jack Daniel’s, dropped in an ice cube, put it in front of Dave, and breezed away, as if she had accomplished something.
Dave took a sip at the drink. He went back to shelling the shrimp.
“She doesn’t even want you for you. Just to do it. Although she does fuck like a mink. She wants you because you belong to Jainie. I want you because you’re cute and nice, and you treat women with respect.”
“Danielle, I could troll you past my crews, and you would get lots of bites.”
“Most men treat women like dirt.”
“I’m not going to argue that. But there are a lot of nice guys out there. They are often the very ones that women don’t want. Women pass the nice guys over, and choose the creeps. I never understood it.” He shelled some more shrimp.
“Why does Jainie find you, and I don’t find anyone?”
“I would have gone for you if I had met you first.”
“She found you by the side of the road and ambushed you in your motel room. You think women don’t talk, but we do.”
“I never thought otherwise. But it doesn’t answer your needs.”
“You don’t know a thing about my needs, Mr. Dave!”
* * *
When Dave got to the tire shop, they were hoping for the easy kill, but they gave in pretty easily to his insistence on keeping the perfectly good tires that were coming off the truck. He traded a brand new spare tire that was coming off the truck for an extra rim, on which they would mount the best of the old tires. The second best was mounted on the former spare rim. He left with four new tires on the truck, and two excellent spares.
He got the oil changed, and filled the gas tank, and some other stuff like that. He bought the things on Jainie’s shopping list. He got her a Carhartt winter coat, because even glamour girls get cold.
He went to the Volvo truck dealership, and looked into the prices on Semi Tractors and livestock trailers. He paid $152 for a four day offer on a Volvo Semi Tractor and a livestock trailer, with the new tractor at $152 thousand.
Jainie came back as planned, and she went right to the dealership with Dave and bought the semi. She got four thousand off the price of the trailer. She got the dealership to pay for having her ranch name painted on the doors. The dealership would also send a lot boy and a salesman to leave her car at Marcie’s. She whispered to Dave. “I guess you know by now I’m not a poor girl.”
“I do, but I’d like you just as much if you were.”
“You will have to drive, Mr. Class A CDL Carhartt overalls guy.”
“How do you know I have a Class A CDL”
“Because I’m a sneaky bitch. Let’s go back and park on the other side of the block from Marcie’s. I’ll show you where.”
They went there, and she pointed out a car storage lot. “You can park in there. They know this truck is coming, and there will be a space for it any time.”
He parked the truck, and they walked around the block and into the house. She took him in the bedroom for a while.
* * *
They went to the back yard and drafted a document entitled ‘Rights of a Princess,’ enumerating those, with some attention to specific circumstances. They had sandwiches on whole wheat bread with mustard, gourmet on both, please. There was no mayo because Marcie took in the approximate calories necessary to sustain a crow, but starve a raven. There was low fat turkey and non fat cheese, gourmet of course. The lettuce and tomatoes were organic. The tea was unsweetened, the choice simplified by the fact that Marcie probably didn’t even know where you went in the store to buy sugar.
Danielle was at the gallery. Marcie was on the phone, but it was fairly obvious that she was calling long distance, because she was speaking French. It didn’t sound like Cajun French. She gave them a finger wiggle wave.
They took their suitcases, and walked on around the block to the truck.
“That didn’t sound like Cajun French to me.”
“Dave, she doesn’t speak a word of that. She was on the phone to a designer and a photographer, and someone else, I don’t know who she is. But that was Paris for sure. She’s going over there in a week or two, First Class, duh. She’s going to walk down the runway a couple of dozen times and fly home. Danielle will get probably a thousand dollars to drive her to and from the airport.”
They came to the truck and got in.
Dave put the rig in third. “North?”
“Well, I should think so. Wyoming is north of Louisiana, so far as I know.’
“That’s where it was last time I looked at the Atlas.”
“Through Dallas? We could go through Kansas City.”
“Dallas drivers are very rude. Let’s go the Kansas City route. I always go that way because they cut you off and want to run you off the road in Dallas.”
“They do far less of that with an 80,000 pound truck, Princess.”
Just as he hit ninth gear on the Interstate, she took a little box out of the pocket of her Carhartt coat. “Yes,” she said and put the ring on her finger.
“Did I miss something?”
“Uh, yes. You were supposed to be the one with the ring, and ask me if I would marry you. But the Princess is used to being in charge.”
He shifted into tenth without using the clutch. “So, at this point, I say…?”
“’Will you marry me?’” That’s your line at this time.”
“Will you marry me, Jainie?”
“This is the part where I get to use the un-ladylike words. You’re fucking A right I will!”
“OK, so now I just worry about getting to that little place in Wyoming.”
“Now that you are my intended, it’s not little. It’s been needing attention and perhaps some accounting work from a kind of a Carhartt overalls, Red Wing boots guy with a college education. You know someone like that?”
“Possibly. Your intended might have some of those qualities, though he has not graduated as an accountant.”
“Oh, well. He has an MS in mathematics.”
“How did you know that?”
“Girls know. Same way I know you didn’t fuck Marcie.”
“She would have told you.”
“She would have, but I would have known anyway. You could no more have hidden that than you could smoke a cheap cigar in the house.”
“So you’re going to trust a mathematician with your books?”
“I am. I’m even going to marry him the 22nd of next month, mark the date.”
“Well, uh, so you know. I have some money in checking and all, and the house in Texas. But we don’t have much money, you see.’
“You never asked me what I had.”
“A pickup, and you could get a loan on this truck.”
“I didn’t get a loan on this truck. I bought it for cash. And I didn’t tell you anything about the ranch in Wyoming. Well, get ready to apply your mathematics, Mr. Carhartt overalls, Red Wing boots, and mathematician. We have eleven thousand acres.
“In West Texas, that would be worth at least several million.”
“Our place isn’t in God damned West Texas. It’s worth about sixty million dollars. I imagine that comes as a surprise to you, Mr. Carhartt overalls, Red Wing boots, and mathematician.”
“It does.”
“Is it a good thing?”
“Maybe.” He slowed to let several cars pass. “I’d like to live in a quiet place by the sea somewhere. Maybe the Philippines, or Indonesia. You have to have some money to retire to a place like that. Sixty million sounds more like being in the cutthroat capitalist game.”
“We could do something like moving to the Philippines if you want. We can figure it out. You’re not going to let this change our plans?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that. I’m your guy. I’m yours.”
She visibly relaxed. “The ranch is pretty nice. It’s peaceful. Too peaceful. I don’t really get into the capitalism much. I just sell when I have a lot of stock. I sell when prices are high.”
“They say that’s the secret. Sell high.”
“My foreman is stealing.”
“I’ll have an audit. Well, it’s your place, but.”
“You said you wanted to incorporate the ranch.”
“Yeah. That’s what you do.”
“Well, you are going to be Chairman of the Board, CEO, President, and of course, Chief of Mathematics.”
“Well, then, I will have the books audited.”
“Do you know anyone honest we could have for a ranch foreman?”
“You figure Marcus is for sure wrong?”
“Alan Wildethorne says he is. He’s my investigator. The same guy, by the way, who investigated you.”
“I didn’t know I was investigated.”
“My uncle Daniel, who left me the ranch, made me promise I would not marry anyone without having them backgrounded. Alan said he never did a more positive background than yours. Not everyone likes you, but they respect you.”
“You had me investigated.”
“I did. Remember we said we would have no secrets from each other? Well, I had you investigated, and it isn’t a secret. Alan had people out all over the country, and put in about 1,000 hours. I know your fourth grade teacher was Mrs. Jenson, and she says you were a nice kid.”
“Your uncle Daniel said to do this?”
“Yes. There were four brothers. Three of them had a daughter each. You have met all of us. Daniel had none. He went to Wyoming, started a ranch, made lots of money, and bought a bunch of contiguous land. He invited us girls to his ranch for the summers. Marcie was afraid she would break a fingernail. Danielle wanted to marry Rembrandt, but he was too dead for her. She would have gone for Schumann, but there was the same problem there. I loved the ranch, and Daniel, too. I liked the cow pies, barbed wire, and the wonderful views. I helped cows give birth, and shot varmints. So Daniel left the ranch to me. He died young, got trampled by a bull. I spent all my money on inheritance tax, but I got it paid. I had a mortgage, but I paid it off. So it’s all ours.”
Dave downshifted as the traffic slowed in front of him. “I’ve got someone we could ask to be a ranch foreman. He grew up with cattle in Southern Louisiana. I don’t know if we could hire him, but I can call. His name is Kevin Lake. He’s black. A giant, NFL fullback sized dude. Uglier than a gorilla, but the nicest guy you would ever want to know. Kevin is a tugboat man. His education is in physical chemistry, but that didn’t work out for him. Speed dial 54.” He handed her his cell phone.
She said, “80k” and dialed. “Kevin? I’m Jainie. Dave’s fiancée. We’re wondering if you are available to be a ranch foreman in Wyoming. Yes, he is right here.”
She plugged in the headset, and handed the phone to Dave. “Dave, you getting married?”
“Yeah, Kevin.”
“Well, I had enough of these jerks I be working for. How sure this offer be?”
“Absolutely certain. You would be working for me and Jainie as the foreman of an 11,000 acre ranch in Wyoming. How would $80,000 a year do?”
“I never been in charge of somewhere that big, Dave. I doan wan be a disappointment to y’all.”
“I’m sure you won’t be, Kevin.”
“Well, den I take de job, sure.”
“Jainie will arrange for you to get here. She wants you right away.”
“Den I be dere. Some time I tell ya bout dese bums I be quitting.”
“OK, Kevin. I’m giving you to Jainie.” He handed over the phone and downshifted again. Jainie talked with him for a few minutes, then conferenced in her travel agent, and arranged for Kevin to fly into Wyoming. Next, she switched phones and called Bobby at the ranch, and arranged for him to pick up Kevin at the airport.
“Got it done,