from
Four Guys in a Boat
by Tom Watkins
Chapter 3: St. Martin and St. Barts
Though George didn’t sign on again, he didn’t seem to resent
our planning another trip either. “You’ll find somebody. Go and
have fun. Smoke one for me.” Six months later he quit the university
and just disappeared. He’s out there somewhere (literally), but we
never heard from him again. Perhaps he alone truly had Tania’s
wanderlust.
Without him we needed another guy’s guy who could immediately
fit in, like a rookie who’s a flat-out starter. “Fit” was critical:
year three had to be even better than one and two. The bar was
really up there.
Luckily we found Oz. Not the wizard of course, but a sports
obsessed professor who can make theoretical mathematics fun for
even the numerically challenged. True, “fun” and “math” are not
often found in the same sentence, but Oz belongs to a very exclusive fraternity. Plus we all liked him.
He shares with George a large, soft-looking frame that is sometimes
rumpled, but that’s where the resemblance ends. Oz scores
high on the warm-and-fuzzy scale, good family man, considerate.
More like a social worker than a mathematician. Smiles a lot, even at
strangers. What hair he has is prematurely gray. Made him look like
the crew’s token senior citizen. Well, made us look younger. Surprisingly
good tennis player, considering his full figure.
Oz sees humor in everything (clearly one couldn’t survive these
trips without that), though never at someone else’s expense. He
brought a softness to the group we’d not had; and he came fully
clothed. Sure, he could open a pop top and he loved poker. But he
liked it best when nobody lost much.
We were certain he could hold his own in guy talks (which as
everyone knows are, on weekends, 75% about sports and 25% about
women; 25% sports, 75% women the other days). He smoked the
occasional cigar and, like the rest of us, could lie about his past. At
least when it came to the two principal subjects of conversation.
Lying about achievements related to sports and women was an
essential ingredient. So was the unspoken rule not to say anything
about the trip to a non-member when we returned. Especially a
female.
We regaled Oz with stories about the first two trips, embellishing
only when absolutely necessary; and we convinced him of his
need to experience a new sport.
Equally important was a guy willing to bring his share of the
limes. By this time we’d discovered we needed to bring our own
limes if we wanted really juicy ones.
When told of this, Oz asked, “Why would you carry limes to the
islands? It’s the tropics, for Pete’s sake. They grow ’em there and
ship ’em here. We’re gonna carry them back?”
“Right,” I said. “They’ve only got key limes there. They make
great pie of course, but those golf ball-sized nuggets are way short
on juice. Besides, we don’t want any scurvy aboard.” (None of us
ever contracted it.)
“Still seems crazy,” he responded.
“Well, we’re crazy,” I said. “Ya gotta trust us.”
“I don’t drink rum and tonics,” he added as his final effort at
protest.
“You will.”
One more little known fact: limes will last all week if you wrap
them in tin foil. No late week scurvy.
