If I Survive You

Cukie and his mother, Daphne, are on their way from their home in Kendall to Smuggler’s Key to meet Ox, Cukie’s absentee father. After 12 years of silence, Ox has expressed an interest in getting to know his son, and although Cukie is ambivalent about the prospect, Daphne agrees. On the way down to the Keys, Cukie realizes how close his father has been all these years; Daphne admits that Ox is not “a good” man. When they arrive at Ox’s work, a hut on the marina, Cukie is somewhat surprised to see that his father is a “redneck.” The young man finds little in his father’s face (other than his nose) that would indicate familial relation. Inside Ox’s tiki hut, there is a large poster of a Jamaican woman that Cukie has seen in Kingston shops. As his father brags about knowing the model, and about how much she resembles Daphne, Cukie’s disdain grows. Although he expects his father to offer him a beer, Ox instead hands him lobster-hunting equipment. The two embark on their first dive, and afterward, Ox tells Cukie that lobstering will be something he can “fall back on” (109) when he’s older if need be. He tells him that “Splashdown,” or lobster-trapping season, is about to begin, and he will show him how to build traps and harvest Florida’s spiny “sea bugs.”

Cukie remains taciturn as his father teaches him to trap lobster. Initially, he refuses to discuss his or his mother’s life with Ox, but after a few days of work that is alternatively meditative and “torturous,” he asks Ox where he’s been for the last 12 years. Ox replies that for a decade or so, he captained boats along the South American coast and in the Caribbean, and for the last two years, he’s been in the Keys. When Ox begins to take tourists out on short, chartered day trips, he leaves Cukie to man the tiki hut. Cukie is filled with curiosity about his father and looks around for clues about the man’s life. He meets Happy, the marina manager, and the two trade barbs. Happy chuckles and tells Cukie that based on his reserved, wry sarcasm, he is his father’s son. Cukie and Ox work together all summer, and Cukie comes to understand that trapping had “centered” his father, grounding him and providing stability. When Ox drops Cukie off at his mother’s car at the end of the season, he hands Cukie an envelope full of cash. He gives his son a sincere thank you and tells him that he’s done a good job.

Cukie brings “his summer work ethic home” (114). Now that he no longer has lingering questions about his father, he too feels more grounded. His grades improve, and he helps out around the house without being asked. Although he’d always been jealous that Trelawny had access to his father, Cukie now wonders what must have gone wrong in their relationship for Trelawny to waste so much time alone in his room playing video games. He notices that Trelawny is not as eager to help his own mother as Cukie is. He makes plans to spend the next summer working with his father again.

Another summer of work leaves Cukie physically stronger and more mentally alert. He is scouted for his high school’s football team, and girls start to take more notice of him. His father wonders if he would like to work with him full time after high school, and Cukie thinks that he might enjoy that. During his fourth summer working with his father, he begins to hang out with the other fisherman in the marina after their workdays are over. He starts flirting with Genie, Happy’s daughter. The two are supposed to meet on the beach one night, and Genie is so late that Cukie is sure that he’s been stood up. When she finally arrives, she is worried because her father didn’t come home the night before. Cukie, too, is worried: He saw Happy leaving on his boat with Ox. He wonders what the two are up to. When he locates his father, he asks about Happy. Ox’s response, that he has not seen him, is curt to the point of hostility. When Cukie contradicts Ox, explaining that he saw the two leaving together on Happy’s boat, Ox grabs Cukie by the shoulder, hard, and tells him that he won’t have “some bastard child” (120) talk back to him. Angry, Cukie grabs his clothes and hitches a ride back to Miami.

Cukie and Lianne have a baby, a boy, and Lianne points out that Cukie and the child share the same nose. They name their son Julius. Although four years have passed since Cukie has seen Ox, he heads down to Smuggler’s Key to inquire about a job. He is determined to support his family, and he hopes to resume work with his father. He’s recently lost his mother to cancer, and he and Lianne are struggling to keep up with the mortgage payments on the house that he inherited from her. Lianne had been a bartender on South Beach, but was let go when her pregnancy began to show. When he reaches Smuggler’s Key, Cukie is chagrined to see that his father’s tiki hut is no longer there; in his boat slip instead is a sleek, new cigarette boat. Cukie heads into the marina’s restaurant to ask after his father and is surprised to see a heavily pregnant Genie behind the bar. She initially tells him that she hasn’t seen his father in years, adding that her father had never returned from the fishing trip where he’d originally gone missing. However, Cukie glances into the kitchen and notices his father’s Jamaica poster. He bursts back into the restaurant’s back office and finds Ox.

Ox takes him out on the water. The sleek cigarette boat is in fact his. Cukie demands $10,000 from his father, payment for not only back child support but also his silence: He accuses Ox of killing Happy and threatens to tell Genie (or the police) that he saw both men sail out together on the day that Happy disappeared. Although Ox initially responds that he doesn’t owe Cukie anything, Ox agrees to the amount and tells Cukie that he hadn’t killed his friend. The two had gotten involved in a cocaine smuggling operation; the men in charge had deemed Happy not “up to” the job, but had let Ox live. Ox has Cukie dive into the water to see the cocaine-stuffed, dead lobsters he uses for smuggling. Anxious to get back to Lianne, whom he’d left in the hospital to search for his father, Cukie asks to return to the marina. Ox, however, leaves his son in the water and drives his boat away.