Free Troubled Sea by Jinx Schwartz Page A

How long did it take you to get here today?”
    “We left early. About five this morning. You figger it out.”
    Jenks suppressed a smile. For a University of Texas grad who made, lost, and made again, millions in the oil business, Bud treated small-time mathematics and correct grammar with the cavalier insouciance of many a Texan good ole boy.
    Quickly calculating the time and distance in his head, Jenks teased, “Thirteen, fourteen knots is a little slow for you, isn’t it, Bud?”
    “Damned new fuel tank slowed me down.”
    “New tank?” Hetta asked.
    “The one I added to All Bidness since I saw you last time. A thousand gallons.”
    “A thousand gallons? Why?” Jenks asked, looking perplexed. Bud had a habit of buying anything for his boat that someone even hinted he might need. Hetta once said she could most likely sell Bud an altimeter for All Bidness if she tried.
    “Pam wants me to take her down to Ecuador next year, so we need more fuel.”
    “Ecuador?” Hetta gasped. “Please, oh, please, tell me John is going to take you down.” Bud sometimes used their friend from La Paz, John Colt, to captain All Bidness . Bud was spectacularly unqualified to navigate his luxury yacht.
    Not that All Bidness didn't have every possible navigational tool money could buy. In theory, Bud could get up one morning in San Diego, program his integrated systems, and cruise to Cabo San Lucas. Alone. By preprogramming waypoints into the GPS receiver, the boat could navigate on cruise control for hundreds of miles. In experienced hands, these systems were a joy, making long voyages much easier on a boat’s crew. In Bud’s hands, though, an automated boat would be a floating disaster in the making. Luckily for the boating world of the entire West Coast of Mexico and the United States, Bud knew it. He never learned to read a chart, nor had a clue how to load waypoints into his GPS receiver. His grasp of the new electronic blitz of the universe ended when he learned PLAY and REWIND on his VCR. RECORD was beyond him. Bud was not stupid, he just had no interest in participating in the cyber-electronic world.
    In addition to enough contrivances to get her to the moon, All Bidness boasted three staterooms, crew’s quarters, a pilothouse and, of all things, a two-person hot tub on the aft deck. Two, unless Bud was in it.
    Hetta envied All Bidness ’s “verandah” as she called the spacious covered aft deck, and Jenks practically salivated over the walk-through engine room. But neither would trade places with the man sitting in front of them.
    “Naw, we won’t need John to drive All Bidness no more. Pammy’s got us a whole new crew of young fellas that take real good care of that. Don’t know what I ever did without that little filly.”
    “You did fine. And you had more money,” Hetta drawled sarcastically, thinking, I wonder what else those hot and cold running boat boys are taking care of?
    Bud laughed and rattled his melting naked ice cubes, letting Hetta’s barb roll off him like water off All Bidness ’s sleek hull. “Ain’t that the truth? But I didn’t have near as much fun.”
    Jenks took Bud’s glass and went into the cabin for more ice. When he returned Hetta and Bud were rehashing THE WAR—not World War One, World War Two, or even the Civil War, but the Texas Revolution.
    Bud was a seventh-generation Texan compared to Hetta’s ninth-generation status, and both had ancestors who fought for Texas,  most of the time on opposite sides. The two had diametrically opposing opinions as to the “hows and whys” of the Texian revolt against Mexico in 1836. The Brooklyn-born Jenks had learned more than he ever wanted to know about that piece of history.
    Bud had the soapbox. “Dammit, Hetta, Bowie was already in Texas. He was even married to a Mexican gal whose pappy was a government honcho...didn’t just come in like those land grabbin’ Yankees.” He stopped and looked apologetically at Jenks. “No offense