I was going on a fishing trip into Old Mexico - a trip I'd dreamt of and planned for years, because at first I couldn't afford it and then because I could never find the time. The last thing I needed was a handful of trouble in the form of my neighbor, Cassie's, daughter.
When Jessie was a lot younger, I was sort of her adopted Dad, because her real one just left in the middle of the night - a school teacher that ran away with one of his students.
In typical small town fashion, I'd known Cassie for more years than I'd known my own wife, so it wasn't any big deal being a sort of Dad for her kid (besides, we had a history that pre-dated my marriage) and her kid had seemed to like me for several years.
Jessie was now eighteen, rarely ever disciplined in her life, and a real handful for her mom, likely due to Cassie's inability to crack the whip (which is interesting in itself, but another story).
Attractive, very bright, a bit on the slender side, a mane of golden red hair that always touched my soul when I saw it, but clearly developing into a stunner if she didn't kill herself first. Booze, drugs, sex - no matter - she'd taken her walk on the wild side and seemed to like it well enough to want more of everything.
In the last few years, she seemed to take a strong disliking to me, but I figured that this was because she knew I was strict and probably bad medicine for snotty little girls unable to show respect for Mom, tradition, or social norms.
Not that I don't appreciate a nifty little civil disobedience from time to time. I just think that it's important to become familiar enough with traditions, norms, and mores to know which ones merit continued observance and which ones need amending or discarding.
Frankly, because of her snarly side, I'd no longer found this kid to be very sociable or otherwise pleasant to be around and, in general, someone to be avoided due to her unpleasant outlook and demeanor. While Cassie was pleasant enough to me and still the same warm wonderful woman I'd dated way back then, I avoided her invitations to come over when I knew that Jessie was going to be home.
I just didn't feel that tanning her hide in front of Cassie was the thing to do, even when she was being unreasonable with her - especially in light of the ancient history Cassie and I shared.
At two o'clock, the morning I was to leave, the phone rang Jill and me awake. It was Cassie, near hysteria, saying she had to come over right now and was bringing Jessie and that there was some kind of trouble, but that Jessie hadn't really done anything (yeah right!).
Jill went down and made coffee, while I pulled on a pair of wash pants and an old Medinah golf shirt. Cassie scooted in the back door with Jessie and, for once, even Jessie was treating the occasion and her Mother with respect.
There had been trouble. Gangs had moved even into our small town and Jessie had seen something that she should not have seen and Cassie wanted to get her out of town before one of these hoodlums caught up to her.
When I suggested the police, even Jill joined in the laughter. So I would leave a few hours early, like "right this moment" so that they would think that it was someone who looked like Jessie, 'cause we had "left the day before for Mexico".
So it was that I, with Jessie in tow, pulled out of my drive at three in the morning with both Jill and Cassie safely in their beds. She spent about an hour telling me what she would and would not do while on this trip and made it clear that she planned on calling her shots.
Finally I said, "Jessie, shut up! You will do as I damn well say or I will bust your ass! Your Mother made it abundantly clear that my firm hand will guide you for so long as you are in my care. She knows me and how I discipline children and expects me to treat you as if you were my own. So, we'll have no more about what you will or will not do while with me on my vacation."
She lapsed into a sullen silence and finally nodded off to sleep. It was no truce, though, just a gathering of strength. Generally surly, she seemed to be going out of her way to irritate as we made our way toward the Baja Peninsula.
At one point, in a diner in South-central Missouri after being a loud bratty kid during our meal, she literally jumped on my back over a trivial matter and started pounding on me. I flipped her to the floor and delivered three open-handed shots to her bottom that sounded like a .22 pistol to the applause of every patron and the waitress.
She collapsed to the floor in utter shock, staring at me as if I'd lost my mind. Her look soon became the sort of distant, musing, calculating one that I was used to seeing on her face as she was obviously filing away her error in pushing too far.
Imagine my surprise when two days later she came at me with a nail file after I told her that she could not go swimming after our late dinner, because we had to get an early start. I was really angry with her at that point because dinner had been delayed just so she could swim before we dined.
So, after securing the nail file, I turned her over my knees and started whaling away with my bare hand. I must have hit her a dozen times when my conscience grabbed my arm and stopped me, fearing that I might injure her.
Again, the musing look after -this time- tears. But with just a bare hint of a smile - or so it seemed. Obviously, I am a naïve and stupid man, or I would have seen the danger lurking so near, but since such things, in adolescents, were foreign to me I blundered onward. Anyway, the spankings seemed to remind her that I was not her mom and would not tolerate inappropriate behavior.
We reached our destination without further incident and, as luck would have it, she hooked into a really nice Sail the first day out. Give her credit, nobody but her was going to land that fish - nobody!
It was this stubborn refusal by her to accept help, and my body's refusal to respond to my new water-proof sun block that landed both of us in dry-dock at the 'villa' the next day -her with stiff and cramping back and shoulder muscles, and me with severe enough sunburn to want to avoid sunlight for a day or so.
In spite of our best efforts of the night before to tend our respective aches with aloe, hot compresses, and soaking in the appropriate temperature waters, we remained on land and indoors, too sore to venture out.
I slowly prepared a pretty large hungry-fisherman's breakfast, taking care to avoid aggravating my reddened skin. After eating, I gingerly rose to clear the table commenting that another ten minutes in the sun would have ruined the trip for me.
Jessie said about the same concerning the duration of her fight with the fish and graciously volunteered to apply gel to the spots I could not reach and did so with a tenderness hard to imagine from one whom I suspected harbored a secret kinship with bin Laden.
She then asked if I had anything other than hot compresses for her sore muscles, as the lodge shop was out and would not restock for two more days.
Since I always carry a small first aid kit when traveling and am especially careful to have it well stocked when out of the country, of course I had a tube of analgesic ointment which should ease most of her pain. Indicating that it was in my bathroom, I told her to take off her shirt and lie down.
