Port Starbird (Storm Ketchum Adventures) (3 page)

Ketch noted the boy's obvious exuberance at being permitted to
pilot the boat from the flying bridge, and at the same time the boy's continued self-discipline. This must seem like a wild ride to him, Ketch thought, yet he's still paying attention and keeping himself under control. He also didn't appear to be getting sick from the pitching, rolling, and yawing of the boat, which were all exaggerated at this height. Ketch, too, had always been lucky in that regard; he'd never been seasick a day in his life, no matter the conditions.

When they were about to exit the inlet, Ketch realized the Captain hadn't specified which direction to proceed in from there. Before he could call down to ask, he spotted a pelican gliding by. He wondered if it was one of the regulars that had started showing up at the docks to claim some of the culls from the fishermen's daily catches. There were still not that many of them in this area, but they'd recovered from the DDT debacle of a few decades back and were no longer considered endangered
, though it wasn't until the mid-Eighties that they'd begun nesting along this coast in earnest. They'd originally mostly lived farther south, notably in Texas and Louisiana, where the use of pesticides laden with DDT had decimated their populations in the Fifties and Sixties. As with other carnivorous birds, like the ospreys and the peregrines, the chemical had caused them to lay thin-shelled eggs. But now they were making a comeback, so much so that they were expanding up the east coast.

Ketch
saw the pelican go into a steep dive straight into the water some distance up ahead. It appeared to be feeding on something, so he had the boy turn the boat in that direction. He focused and saw there were gulls and terns congregating there as well, and he thought he could see fish jumping at the surface. They throttled back some and when they got close he idled the engines, sent the boy back down to fish, and allowed the boat to drift along the fringe of the feeding area.

He checked the fish finder as they drifted.
It looked like there might be two schools in the area, maybe Spanish mackerel and menhaden. Maybe they were being driven together by predators. This could be a hot spot. Whatever they were, this conglomeration of fish would soon be undergoing a three-pronged attack - the schooling ones on the outskirts of the swimming masses would be picked off by bigger fish, those that ventured too near the surface or above it were fair game for the birds, and the fishing hooks would hopefully soon prey in turn on the school's predators. The fishermen below wouldn't be targeting the menhaden if that's what they were, as they were filter feeders, but the mackerel and whatever else was after all of them below the surface might keep the party busy for a while.

It would probably be a little while before they caught much, so h
e allowed his mind to wander and considered Ingram again as those below started casting their lines. He remembered reading that Ingram's first wife had died under somewhat questionable circumstances, sometime before Ketch had moved here. A boat drowning, he now recalled, but there had been drinking and recreational drugs and a well-documented argument during a nighttime party on a yacht - which had been docked, not under sail; and there had been an inquiry. But it had been ruled an accidental drowning. At least they'd had a body to examine that time, unlike in the case of the disappearance of Ingram's second wife.

After a while Ketch heard
a commotion from below. "Hey, you got somethin' there for sure, son!" the Captain exclaimed. "Lemme give y'all a hand with that!"

Ketch decided to go below in case he was needed, and also to tend to the safety of the dog. He'd leash the dog to something in the cabin
until he knew whether they had a fighter on the line. If the dog got too close to the wrong fish while it thrashed its last life out on the deck, he could be injured by errant teeth or spines or bills.

By the time Ketch got the dog leashed there was a jack flopping on the deck. It looked to be at least a ten-pounder, which was
noteworthy for a jack as it was a fighter, but he knew this fish shouldn't be eaten due to the possibility of ciguatera poisoning. If it were a pompano, okay, but not amberjack. But this wouldn't matter to the boy, who looked about as happy as a boy could look. He appeared to be having an excellent day, Ketch thought; good for him.

It looked like a couple of the others were reeling in mackerel - Spanish, smaller cousins of the king mackerel, but decent eating - and someone had hooked what looked to be a puppy drum, and another was struggling to bring in a thrashing bluefish. He'd been right to follow that pelican.

Before anyone could do anything with the jack, one of the men announced he had something really big, and the Captain hurried over to assist. Ketch considered releasing the jack, but it looked like it might be too late for that now, and they might want to mount it or something for the boy anyway. He found some gloves and showed the boy how to remove the hook and stow the fish.

An epic struggle appeared to be taking shape near the stern. "I don't know if this line is strong enough to hold 'im!
" the Captain declared. "Don't yank on it Doc, we don't want 'im to throw the hook! Don't try to reel 'im in yet, if he runs let 'im take some line, hope there's enough! Everybody else reel in your fish and get your lines out a the water, we don't want to get tangled.
Now
! And you there, watch out for that blue, he's got razor teeth!"

Without being told, Ketch herded the boy back up to the flying bridge, where the view would be better. They prepared to throttle up. He'd use the boat to make up for any deficiency in the line. If the fish took out a lot of line, he'd make the boat follow it so they could reel in the excess and reuse it for the next run.

After several strong runs the fish finally began to tire, and they were eventually able to reel it in closer to the boat. When it got close enough, Ketch left the boy at the helm and went down and helped the Captain gaff it and haul it aboard.

It was a cobia. The Captain made everyone stand back while he put the creature out of its misery before it could hurt anyone. The cobia's horizontal pectoral fins can enable it to remain upright and thrash vigorously on a boat deck, making its sharp spines a hazard to bystanders.

Ketch called the boy down, then went into the cabin and released the dog so it could investigate. He heard his cell phone beep and retrieved it from his backpack. It looked like there were a couple more missed calls like the other day, but again the caller ID wasn't showing the number. Probably some charity or other; it had better not be telemarketers, since he was on the do-not-call list and he could and would report them. When he noticed the time on the phone's display, he was surprised to see it had been almost three hours since they'd left Oden's.

"Well, will y'all look at that - a cobia! I bet
he's fifty pounds!" the Captain announced. "That's damn respectable for cobia. You did good, Doc - that there is a good eatin' fish! We better pack it in some ice, and then you can have 'em cut it up for you back at the dock. Here, you guys can stick it right in here, you're younger'n me and my arms are tired..."

When the fish was secure, the Captain went into the cabin to get a drink
, and Ketch followed him in. "Ain't that the damnedest thing!" the Captain exclaimed, plopping down on a bench to rest. "Cobia's hard to find in the first place, never mind hard to catch, and we weren't even tryin', didn't even have the best bait. Just shit-all dumb luck, that's all. Good thing we had the heavier line on." He briefly grinned. "Well, they're happy now. Bet I'll be gettin' a good review on my website for this trip!"

"I wouldn't be surprised," Ketch replied. "It's a good fish, and it's been a good morning." The dog joined them and Ketch also sat, and scratched its ears. "Thank you again for having us, as always."

"No no, thank
you
-all for helpin' out! Especially with that boy like you done, I appreciate that. I didn't want to have to leave somebody behind, and I figured they'd let us slide with the second mate thing if anybody asked about it. Sorry 'bout springin' it on you like that."

"No problem
. It's been fun, he's a good kid."

The Captain took a final pull on his water bottle and stood up. "Okay. Well, I think we might could start headin' back now, let 'em troll
along the way if they want. I sure hope we don't have no more dumb luck though, or we could be out here all dang day. Don't stop unless you have to!"

"I hear you. If I see another pelican
, I'll go the other way this time."

The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful. Someone hooked a striper,
and someone else added a trout to their cache. A pretty good haul overall for a half-day trip. He supposed he shouldn't be surprised. Pamlico Sound and the nearshore Atlantic here were said to offer a world-class variety of fishing opportunities; one didn't necessarily have to go all the way out to the Gulf Stream for a good time. But the Captain's charters hadn't been this lucky in a while.

Ketch called the boy in and let him steer again toward the end. After they docked back at Oden's, he thanked the boy and shook his hand, then removed the dog's life jacket and got the dog off the boat.

The dog lifted his leg on the first piling he encountered. Ketch figured he'd walk the dog for a bit, let him relax and do whatever else he needed to do while the others dealt with the fish, and then they'd clean up and ride back to the boatyard with the Captain. He leashed the dog and checked to make sure his doggy-waste disposal bag dispenser was clipped to his belt.

He was a
bit fatigued, but he felt good; it had indeed been an enjoyable trip, with the boy's interest and enthusiasm an invigorating bonus. He stepped lightly as he regained his land legs. He felt like he could do anything. Nothing of course could reverse time, but days like this made him feel younger, like maybe he could keep up with just about anyone. And he could, he thought, if he stayed in shape; he could still occasionally defeat those two divers he played tennis with now and then, despite being almost twenty-five years their senior.

They meandered for a while
along the patches of grass over by the inn. The dog squatted, Ketch cleaned up after him, and they started to head back across the parking lot. As they approached the restaurant, Ketch heard someone behind him call his name.

"Mister Ketchum? Storm? Hey, Storm Ketchum!"

When he turned and saw who it was, he remained rooted to the spot, his buoyancy dissipating like dry ice sublimating in the summer sun.

~  ~  ~

A jambalaya sweat broke out on Ketch's forehead, and he became momentarily light-headed and his mouth went dry. But he remained rational. His scientific training (and not the lame attempts at therapy he'd fleetingly tolerated until replacing them with the dog), allowed him to recognize these changes for what they were, simply symptoms of the 'fight-or-flight' or acute stress response, or what most people referred to as an adrenalin rush. Catecholamine hormones, including adrenalin, were flooding his system in preparation for violent muscle action in a primeval attempt to ensure his survival. Just survival of the fittest, that was all; a caveman thing.

"Mister Ketchum,
I'm glad I ran into y'all," the man said as he drew up with Ketch and the dog. "My secretary's been tryin' to reach you by phone, but she hadn't had any luck so far."

Ketch didn't reply. He remembered being
virtually incapacitated by this physiological response at various times in the past, and especially of course during his 'difficult' time, but he was over that now - wasn't he? You're fifty-eight years old, he told himself; don't panic, man-up and control it.

The interloper soldiered on with
what seemed to Ketch an obviously insincere smile. "Sorry for the bother. I was gonna send someone out to pay y'all a visit, but my secretary showed me a picture of you on the computer just the other day, and then I saw you walkin' here, and I figured it'd be a good chance for us to talk. Anyway, I don't believe we've ever met." He stuck a hand out. "Bob Ingram."

Ketch didn't immediately respond to the proffered handshake.
Surrender was of course out of the question, and technically wasn't a component of the fight-or-flight response anyway; and fleeing wasn't an option, it would be childish and embarrassing, and lashing out physically would be even more so. Thus though the 'fight' part of the response appeared to be biologically obligatory in this case, it would have to be muted.

He
kept his hands to himself and coldly replied, "I know who you are." The dog, attuned to Ketch's tone and body language and extraordinarily sensitive to pheromonal signals as most dogs were, positioned himself between Ketch and the perceived threat and emitted a guttural growl.

"Jack,
be quiet. Down!" Ketch commanded. The dog obeyed, but continued to keep a wary eye on the situation. Ketch tautened the dog's retractable leash and pressed the lock button just in case.

"Thank you," Ingram said
, withdrawing his hand but still retaining the smile. "That's a fine-lookin' animal you got there. What's his name again? Loyal too, I can see - "

"What can I do for you?" Ketch curtly in
terrupted.

"Well,
" Ingram said, momentarily nonplussed. Then he slapped another smile onto his face, the way politicians can when it might be expedient to do so. "Say Storm, mind if I call you Storm? I was just about to meet some folks for lunch, but how about we get us a cold drink and have a little chat first? They have an outdoor deck right over there at the Breakwater, and I know they wouldn't mind if your little friend joined us. My pleasure, of course."

Ketch focused and took the measure of the developer.
Around forty maybe; average height, casually but impeccably and expensively dressed, hair well-styled, tanned but smooth skin, a gentleman's hands, well-fed. A good old boy, confident and condescending. "That's Doctor Ketchum to you, and I'm pressed for time. Please make your point now if you have one."

Ingram measured Ketch back for a moment. "Okay, I guess y'all won't be makin' this easy for me. I heard about you
, I should've known." Ketch mimed absently checking the watch he wasn't wearing.

"All right then
,
Doctor
Ketchum, here's how it is, short and sweet if that's how you want it." Ingram's smile faded. "We've reached out to you several times and got no answer. Assumin' you've been readin' our communications, you know what the situation is. You're one of the last holdouts, and we need to move on with our project." He held both hands up. "Now I know we said we'd proceed with the eminent domain thing if we hadn't heard from you by last Friday. Well, the paperwork's ready, but I hadn't turned it in just yet, and I'm still willin' to give you one more chance to sell before I do that, and I'm willin' to work with you on a timetable. And I'm still willin' to give you a little more money if you sell, since I'll save on legal expenses. So I'll give you one more week - but I'll be needin' a firm commitment from you no later than this comin' Friday." He paused to allow a response; when none came, he continued, "I believe that's more'n reasonable on my part, since this has been goin' on for quite some time now. Sellin' is the best deal for you, sir, no question, and I hope you'll come to see that by Friday. Otherwise I'll submit the paperwork next Monday for sure, and we'll move forward with acquirin' your property the hard way."

K
etch's shoulders drooped and his spirit flagged like a rapidly deflating balloon, but he tried not to let it show. So it was really going to happen, then, and rather soon from the sound of it. In his conscious mind, he'd known he was going to have to face it eventually, of course, though he'd hoped it would actually take a little longer; that was why he'd gone ahead and ordered the foam block floats (which he'd better hustle to install) that now sat behind his house. But subconsciously he'd hoped otherwise, a consequence he supposed of his former lifelong habit of avoiding thinking about unpleasant things and hoping they'd go away. But he was older and he knew better now, so it was good he'd acted with at least a little foresight this time.

Why did
eminent domain even exist here in The Land Of The Free, and why was it allowed to not only continue but expand beyond its original intent, which it seemed to constantly be doing? He knew some of the answers to those questions, of course, because he'd Googled the subject after he'd received Ingram's last letter. Good old Google - where would we all be without it these days? He'd entered 'EMINENT DOMAIN NORTH CAROLINA' and braced for the onslaught. 'About 852,000 results (0.18 seconds)' - very impressive, and daunting. He'd shopped around on the first page and chosen a link, as most people end up doing, and started reading.

He remembered being initially bombarded with discourses on r
iparian rights, due process, adverse possession, inter vivos trust, primogeniture, easement, covenants and restrictions, preferential assessment, zoning, condemnation, and so on and so forth seemingly ad nauseum. And all of them intertwined throughout with innumerable ifs, ands, buts, and howevers. No wonder he'd never been inclined to study law - what a pointless morass it all seemed, not at all like his former profession nor the ecology of this barrier island, both of those being more or less contained ecosystems and thus more appealing to his brand of intellect. How did the law get so complicated? Whatever happened to good old-fashioned common sense?

One link
had led to another, and he'd eventually found some friendlier text, the first being the one about land trusts. Now
there
was a clever idea, one he'd been able to wrap his mind around. You solicit small monetary contributions from a large number of people and apply them toward a land purchase. Each contributor becomes a joint owner of the land, and if someone wants to condemn the land and seize it, legal proceedings have to be initiated individually against each and every owner, so the cost and court time become prohibitive. However, to attempt that kind of undertaking on his own behalf would require lawyers and other support personnel, not to mention time and money, both of which he had too little of. So he'd gone on to another link, and another...

And
finally found a small treatise on eminent domain that normal human beings could read and understand. He'd read that eminent domain in general is the power a state has to seize private property without the consent of the owner. This power has traditionally (since the eighteenth century) been used for large public construction projects, like roads, bridges, railroads, fortifications, and various other public facilities. He'd already known that much.

But
then he'd been educated on
Kelo v. City of New London
, a U.S. Supreme Court decision from a few years back that had opened the floodgates to allowing eminent domain to expand from 'public use' to 'public benefit' by setting a precedent for a state to transfer property to a private individual or company for economic development. This had originally been intended to expedite redevelopment of blighted urban areas, but not surprisingly it had also enabled other kinds of development, especially in states that didn't further restrict it or set clear limits on it, which many did not.

So that was
probably why Ingram thought he could get away with taking his house - development of the Kinnakeet Boatyard locale could be interpreted as being for the benefit of the public; and perhaps the boatyard area could also be legally viewed as blighted, everything being relative and the boatyard being the closest thing to a slum in Avon.

He'd also read that
the North Carolina General Assembly, to which the North Carolina Supreme Court tends to defer eminent domain authorizations, doesn't generally authorize it for Kelo-type economic development - but although some states had passed constitutional amendments to protect property owners against Kelo-related abuses, North Carolina was not one of them; and in fact, North Carolina was the only state whose constitution didn't expressly address eminent domain at all. He learned that such abuses had in fact occurred since that court ruling, and not just here in North Carolina but nationally as well, often based on intentional misuse of the legal term 'blight', to the extent that the terms 'blight' and 'public use' were now being so broadly interpreted that they'd lost their originally intended meanings.

Ketch was no longer as naive as he'd been at times in his younger days.
Regardless of the legal logic (an oxymoron if he'd ever seen one) behind it, he was certain Ingram must have friends in the Assembly, or he wouldn't be so sure of himself. Or was he? Sure of himself, that is. Why would he still be practically begging Ketch to sell, when he'd said he could and would seize the property? Why not just do it? Could he be afraid of his application being rejected? Or were there other complications that Ketch wouldn't be aware of, such as a need for bribes or other deals that would make seizure more costly for Ingram? Maybe there were simply added legal expenses, as Ingram had said. He wondered whether Ingram had actually gone through this process with any of the other properties he needed to acquire, or if they'd all just agreed to sell under duress.

"Mister Ketchum? Storm?"

Ketch took a deep breath and tried to stand up straighter. "What you're doing should be against the law," he said. "You shouldn't be allowed to threaten people with eminent domain. The government is supposed to use it for the public good, for building highways and such. You're perverting it for personal gain. You're not the government, and what you want to do is for your own good, not the public good."

"Well, as it turns out, the law does allow what I'm doin'," Ingram quickly replied, "and like it or not, I'm doin' it. You're just gonna have to face up to that, sir."

Ketch supposed he could maybe make himself feel better by circulating petitions and trying to organize public protests, activities that some people he'd known had occupied their spare time with back in the Sixties and Seventies - but he knew others had already taken those routes here with about the same degree of success those people had experienced in stopping the war back then...

"And what I'm doin'
is
for the good of this town, and there's enough folks agree with me on that," Ingram added.

...
But heritage be damned, and the environment as well - after all, progress is growth, right? Resources are infinite. It's man's destiny to subdue nature, and the loss of species is simply an inevitable byproduct of progress, just the way of the world...

"Mister Ketchum?"

...Too many people still believed these things. That was the heart of the problem, there were too many people now, and more than ever before with too much discretionary income...

"
Storm?"

...
Like those fruit flies in their little vials back in the lab, they'd shortsightedly gorge themselves on as much as they could get and wantonly multiply until all the food was gone, until the planet was drained, and then they'd all die. But all that would happen later, not in our lifetime, so screw it, let's just make as much money as we can right now...

"
Doctor Ketchum? Storm? Hey Storm! You okay?" Ingram glanced toward a nearby bench. "Maybe you should set for a minute? Here, let me help you."

When Ingram reached for Ketch's arm, the dog leapt up
to intercept, snarling and snapping menacingly. Ketch woke from his reverie and yanked back on the fortunately locked leash. "Jack! No! Down!" The dog desisted and sat, but continued to complain in a lower tone and continued to stare directly at the developer with trembling lips. Ketch tightened his grip on the leash. He noted that the dog's teeth didn't appear to have made any contact so far - which was good, as this dog was a power chewer and he surely didn't need that kind of trouble on top of everything else.