Fishing for Miracles

McDougal saved my life in Panama City in the late 70s. I was about 8. McDougal couldn't have been more than six. We were working a shrimp boat that ran up and down the Gulf Coast 20 hours a day. We worked cheap back then -- oblivious to child labor laws and to the doubts of our elderly caregivers.

About a year into our shrimping venture, I caught syphilis from a Tallahassee whore and slipped into a maniacal state. I'd knifed the first mate during a heated game of Go-Fish (the only game the captain permitted us to play aboard his vessel). I called for an eight, and the first mate denied ownership of such a card. We were playing with a marked deck, so I knew he was lying. At first, I let it slide. But when on the very next turn, that bastard requested an eight from me, I lost it. Ran his belly with an 8" filet knife. He bled out over the period of about six hours, then I tossed him overboard.

When we pulled into port, the captain notified his widow, and she went into a rage. Attacked me with an aluminum bat she kept in her Dodge Omni. Beat me within an inch of my life. I was so blitzed on seafarer's moonshine and fevered delirium that I didn't even know who she was at the time. I thought she was a giant shrimp and the Omni was a vessel designed and built by aliens in the mythical city of Atlantis.

I put up no defense, and was resigned to accept my fate.

Thank God for McDougal, who upon seeing what was happening, charged the scorned widow and choked her to death with a 4-foot strand of 150-pound test fishing line.

I was severely wounded and had slipped into a state of shock. McDougal loaded me into the Omni and rushed me to an emergecny room ... in Atlantis. There, I was healed. Plus, I was given a third eye at the base of my spine.

God bless McDougal and the magical mermen surgeons of Atlantis.