WALKABOUT - Taking a Mulligan (Part 15)

91

I drove on, through Chattanooga, and due to poor timing, hit Atlanta during the morning rush hour, with its bumper to bumper traffic, barely moving. There was an accident up ahead, judging by all the flashing emergency vehicle lights, so no telling how long it was going to take to get south of the city and back up to Interstate speed. I tried not to think about the fact that I had to piss like a racehorse. I should have stopped somewhere between Chattanooga and Atlanta.

Eventually, somewhere around Macon, it occurred to me that I would have to do something about the truck. I couldn’t just abandon it when I got to Tampa. That would also draw attention. I could drive down to Florida, then dump it in a canal or a lake. Eventually, though, someone would find it. Again, unwanted attention.

Then, an idea came to me. Years ago, Dianna and I had donated a car to a church, which in turn gave it to a parishioner who needed wheels in order to get to and from her new job. The truck was registered in Michael Welch’s name. I’d kept both his and Mulligan’s ID’s, just in case. I would donate his pickup truck to a church in Tampa. Hopefully near the port.

Driving through rural Georgia reminded me of when I was a corporate pilot. Once or twice a year I would fly some of our company’s top executives to Albany, Georgia where they would meet up with some of their top customers to do some quail hunting at an upscale lodge for a few days. Most times they would invite me to come stay at the lodge and hunt with them. That was one of the perks of the job. If the execs and the customers liked you, you were sometimes included in the fun.

In Valdosta, I found a Cracker Barrel and filled up on a small stack of pancakes, washed down with a large glass of milk. I took a nap in the parking lot, just to take the edge off before hitting the road again. I was worn out, but otherwise doing well.

92

I drove to Ybor City, just outside Tampa, and found a small non-denominational church on 7th Avenue, not far from the TECOline Centro Ybor station. It was a weekday, and I didn’t know if there would be anyone around. There were a couple of cars in the parking lot, so I figured it was worth checking out. I tried the front door. Locked. I knocked and waited about a minute before giving up and getting back in the truck.

After maybe five minutes or so, I spotted another church with a fellow mowing the grass out in front. I parked along the curb and approached him on foot, stopping several feet away to wait for him to shut down the mower. He looked at me apprehensively. “Excuse me,” I said. “I was hoping to donate my truck and—”

“No habla engles, senor.” He pointed to the front door of the church, and said “Ella esta’ en el interior.” I don’t know much Spanish, but the meaning was understood.

I nodded and smiled, said, “Gracias,” and made a mental note to follow through on my goal of learning Spanish. This is the United States of America, after all. If I want to live here, I should at least learn the language.

I went to the main entry door of the church. This one was unlocked. There was a short hallway leading to the sanctuary. Halfway down there was an open door on the right. Although the door was open, I knocked anyway.

“Hello?”

“Si,” a female voice replied, “Adelente.”

I poked my head inside. Behind a wooden desk sat a woman I guessed to be in her mid-fifties, slightly overweight. A streak of gray accented her shoulder-length raven hair.  “Sorry,” I said. “My Spanish is not so good. Do you speak English?”

“Of course,” she smiled. “I am Melissa Sanchez. How may I help you today?”

Nice lady. Turned out she was the pastor. I explained that I had a truck in good running order which I no longer needed, and would like to donate it if they could use it.

“Certainly,” she said. “Believe it or not, that was on our prayer list. We have a family in need of reliable transportation. It is reliable, isn’t it?”

“Absolutely,” I assured her.

Pastor Sanchez asked no questions about my motivation for donating the car. It was a simple matter of signing over the title. I loaded the computer processor, the monitor, and all the cables into the roller suitcase, packing loose articles of clothing to protect them from damage.

Minutes later, I was walking through Ybor City, with its wrought iron rail balconies and slate-shingled roofs, wearing my backpack and pulling my roller suitcase with the desktop computer and monitor packed inside, relieved that the pastor had not seen it necessary to ask too many questions. With minutes to spare, I arrived at Centro Ybor station and caught a streetcar to the Port of Tampa.

93

The Midnight Sun Festival Cruise Lines ship was the biggest ship—the biggest anything—I had ever seen. It dwarfed everything, including the other cruise ships, in port. It was, as my daughter Rocky used to say when she was little, “Ginormous!”

I hadn’t thought of Rocky—Raquel, as her mother insisted upon calling her – in more than passing for several days. Then, with the sudden flashback to her childhood, I couldn’t put her out of my mind.

She was a Daddy’s girl, always hopping up on my lap, asking for something. I would say, “What did your mother say?”

“She said no, but, you’re the boss, Daddy!” she’d reply, smiling and batting her big brown eyes at me and maybe, for good measure throwing in a hug or a kiss, occasionally both. She was good. Really good. Of course, no amount of buttering me up would be sufficient to overrule my wife, so it rarely worked. Until Dianna wasn’t paying attention, and then the kid could get anything she wanted from me.

And then, next thing I knew, I was off in another direction, thinking of Dianna, wondering how she was holding up. Was she worried, maybe already grieving? Did she even care? Funny how the mind works.

None of that mattered now, anyway. I had a ship to board. There were literally dozens of security officers, with a sprinkling of police officers at the entrance to Cruise Terminal 3, and I confess that I was nervous about getting past the security checks once the screening process began.

Jared Mulligan’s passport and driver’s license looked to be authentic, at least to my untrained eyes. Question was, did I closely enough resemble the man in the photographs to get through security checkpoints? Surely a close examination would reveal me as a fraud, and well, I didn’t even want to think about what would come after that.

94

I was one of the first to arrive at the cruise terminal. Should I just go ahead and check in? Or wait until later? Would the security personnel be more thorough now, before the lines became longer and people were growing impatient? Common sense said yes. Wait. But where?

To get inside the terminal, I first had to pass through security. Outside, the sidewalk was swarming with security personnel. They might not notice me loitering. Then again, might. Across the street there was a parking lot. Walking around aimlessly over there was bound to draw attention. I could check out the aquarium. It was only a short walk. But what would I do with my bag? In our post 9/11 world, I doubted they would allow me to leave the bag at the front while I moseyed around inside, killing time.

So, I did the next best thing. I walked up to one of the security officers. He was probably five-ten or five-eleven, built like a fireplug. He had a tough, no-nonsense look about him as he stood leaning back against the wall, one foot propped up behind him. Not the sort you would choose to mess with.  “Excuse me, sir,” I said. “Is there a public restroom nearby?”

For a moment, I thought that he was going to ignore me. Then, his head turned slightly, just enough to make eye contact with me. I expected him to tell me to move along. “Yes sir,” he said in a distinct New York accent, “just around the corner there,” he moved so that he could point it out for me. “By the stairway, you’ll see a little alcove. The restrooms are in there.”

I saw where he was pointing, and nodded. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure, Sir.”

The door to the restroom was locked, and I had to wait a few minutes before the occupant came out. I went in, and nearly gagged. It smelled like a Sasquatch had taken a shit on a burning tire. I steeled myself. I had to endure it until the time came to take my chances with security.  During the next half-hour, there were at least half a dozen times when someone tried to come into the restroom. “Occupied,” I would call out.

A couple times they came back a minute or two later, and say something like, “How much longer?” or “C’mon, buddy! Hurry it up in there!” I ignored them.

95

Finally, it was time. I had to take my chances now or give up on the idea altogether. I came out of the restroom to an entirely different scene from what I’d left earlier.  Literally hundreds of people were milling about. Some were unloading their luggage from taxis curbside. Some were walking in from the parking lot. Still others were already in line, passports in hand, working their way toward the security screeners much like you would expect to see at any airport.

I proceeded to the third line, only because it was not quite as long. And then it hit me. The gun! I still had the throwaway gun that I’d used to get away from the sheriff tucked in the small of my back, inside the waistband of my pants.

I wheeled around, started to bolt, and then reminded myself, Stay calm. Don’t draw attention. I deliberately slowed myself to what felt like slow motion back toward the restroom I had used earlier.

The security checkpoint lines had grown a lot during the short time I had been gone. I positioned myself behind two elderly couples traveling together and a newlywed couple who couldn’t keep their hands off one another.

The gun was now in the waste bin in the restroom. If someone found the gun, they couldn’t fire it. I’d put the bullets in another bin, inside the terminal. I couldn’t think of anything else that might get me into trouble. Well, maybe the fact that I was travelling on a dead man’s passport. Other than that . . .

96

As we approached the checkpoint, the security officer spoke to the elderly folks. “Good afternoon. Passports please.”

“We’re going to Los Angeles,” one of the men said. “That’s in the U.S.”

“Yes, sir,” the officer replied. “I still need to see your passport.”

“That’s a bunch of shit,” the old man huffed.

His wife placed a hand on his arm. “Remember, Henry, it said in the letter that we had to have our passports.”

“What’s the problem here?” the other old man stepped in.

“This guy says I gotta show him my passport,” the first one said. “I tell him, we’re just goin’ to L.A., for Christ’s sakes! We ain’t even leavin’ the country!”

The second man’s wife leaned in. “What’s he saying?”

“He’s sayin’ I gotta show him my passport!”

“Oh my!” she exclaimed.

Right about then a supervisor appeared. “Hello,” she said. “Can I be of any help?”

“This kid here says I gotta show him a passport. What do I look like, some kinda terrorist or somethin’?” He was raising his voice now, and people in other lines were turning to see what all the commotion was about. “I fought in Korea and Viet Nam before you were even born,” he said to the officer. “And you have the nerve to treat me like this? Where you from, anyway? You don’t even look like an American,” he said. “Let me see your passport!”

“He’s right, Henry,” the second man said. “You gotta have a passport.”

Henry seemed to accept the opinion of his friend as the official word, but he didn’t like it. “I still say it’s a bunch of shit.” He turned back to his wife, “Give him the passports. I don’t want to stand here all day.”

People behind us were switching over to other lines in order to bypass the bottleneck these folks were creating. I myself stayed put.

The supervisor told the officer to take a five minute break, and took over for him. In less than a minute the passports were produced—by the wives, who had dutifully kept everything needed for boarding the ship in their purses—and the two couples were on their way.The newlyweds were next. They barely acknowledged the supervisor, other than breaking their contact with one another just long enough to hand him their passports. The supervisor looked at me, rolled her eyes. I smiled, shook my head.

She handed them their passports, “Have a nice honeymoon.”

I stepped up to the supervisor, handed him the passport which identified me as Jared Mulligan.“This line sort of bottlenecked,” the supervisor said. “Sorry about that.”

“No problem,” I shrugged.

The supervisor gave my passport only a passing glance, and I was on my way. As I passed through the metal detector I noticed the old man who had been complaining about the passport was now receiving additional screening by security officers with wands. As you would expect, he was complaining. “I look like Osama bin Laden to you?” he shouted. “He’s dead now, you know.”

As relieved as I was to get through without incident, I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed. After all my preparation, I hadn’t even been challenged. I know what you’re thinking: I should be grateful when things go easy.