This is day two of Captain B’s adventure into the Gulf as a stowaway on a BP boat with a camera and there has been no contact. His phones ring once and die. The phones could be dead from lack of charging options, no phone service wherever he is or they could be at the bottom of the ocean so there will be no contact. The tension is keeping me on the edge of my chair, imagining all kinds of scenarios. The Captain is no stranger to danger, having had a boat sunk back in the 80s by folks who didn’t approve of his survival trips to Cuba. He and his band of merry pirates out of Key West would take a boat to Cuba to give medicine and vitamins to the poor that were hurt the most from America’s Cuban embargo. There were many black ops against him. Once they tried to murder him and twice they tried to sink his boat, which they finally did. He would be dead today if it wasn’t for one of his trusty dogs that he had rescued starving from the streets of Havana on one of his many trips. Funny that a little yapping dog named Pepe (who just died of old age) was the thing that woke him up as his ship was being boarded by lowlife scum that would rather see children die than have a caring human being take medicine to them.

Since history is in order here, I’ll backtrack a bit. Our bad date on my 16th birthday wasn’t because of character defects in either one of us, to the contrary, I think we were perfectly suited even though he was the football player and I was the nerdy seamstress. The problem was I had three older brothers. My bad-to-the-bone brother (who died in prison) wanted me to be happy with this wild young man, understanding all to well something he had already seen in me. My other two brothers wanted them to be happy, not me. Hell, Captain B knew everything they did in that bar on 9th Street on a nightly basis and who would want that information fed to their little sister.

I’ll be by my phone on 24/7 waiting for his call from shore. He will be surprised when he finds out that there are people around the world now reading about his exploits and hoping the best for him. After all, we are all going to suffer from the lack of credible information and he could be our best source of the damage done to wildlife habitats. This isn’t the first time we’ve had adventures together and as the days go by, I’ll catch you up. He brought in the first boat to the bayous after Katrina intent on helping fisherman and their animals.

There will be daily updates.

Dotty Oliver Publisher of Little Rock Free Press on facebook.

Mistress of the Misunderstood Book Salon.