Where Is Joe Merchant? A Novel Tale
by Jimmy Buffett
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jimmy BuffettEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-09-01
ISBN: 0156026996
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: Mariner Books
Book Reviews of Where Is Joe Merchant? A Novel Tale
Book Review: If the Phone Doesn't Ring, It's Me...
Summary: 5 Stars
Most Jimmy Buffet tales are sea stories, and I figure this one deserves one in return.
I first read this book on a dive job a couple hundred miles out in the Gulf of Mexico. What were we doing out there? Don't worry about it, it's above your pay grade and not your concern. But we were working 12 hour shifts bringing something up from the bottom of the gulf using two dive boats and a derrick barge. It was fast constant work with little to no time during the day to use the can let alone ponder the meaning of life.
As I said, we were working 12 hour shifts, and even after the exhaustion of the constant work you eventually had to do something with your mind or you were gonna go nuts. A lot of the guys were watching Porn before we left the dock, those guys scared me. I was and still am a reader. I had picked up a copy of this book on the way out to the dock, and stuck it in my seabag for that point where I just had to have something to read.
About 3 days into the job I had worked, eaten, and slept as much as I could and so in the middle of the day, I was working the night shift from midnight to noon, I sat down in the galley and started to read my new book. A little background, I am a parakeet by proxy. Technically I am a fist generation Parrothead, but I was more or less raised by brothers that were much older than I was, so my parental figures were parrotheads and so I became one, too.
Well, the boat captain sits down across the table from me. He had the unlikely name of Captain Whimsley, this was the most normal thing about him. He honestly looked like he was the picture on a package of fish sticks. Anyway, he starts talking about the book I was reading. It seems he knew the author.
Not only did he know the author, but he could name all the people the characters were based on. He then goes into tales about the adventures he and the various people in the book had when they were younger. And how some people died in Vietnam and various other unnamed and unacknowledged wars.
At this point I was kinda kicking back and letting an old man rattle on, if you've never worked on the sea, there comes a point every once in a while where you need to talk. What comes out might be complete BS, but you need to hear the sound of your voice and know that others heard it, too.
But then things started to get weird.
Capt. Whimsley got a funny look in his eyes and the tone of his voice changed. And he started talking about the mysteries of the universe and the planet around us. We were way beyond 42. He was talking about Nazi experiments taken over by the U.S. Navy. He was talking about entire towns mesmerized by the ocean. He was talking about things that just the sound of them scared the hell out of me, and he meant every word. He spoke of things that I don't dare repeat because if they are true, which I'm not saying they are, the world is a very strange place.
Finally, just before he kind of deflated, he started talking about things in the water. How they would show themselves when you were putting something big in or taking something out. About how they had power over the wind and the waves and the moon.
I know, if you've read this far, you probably think I'm nuts, and I'm not the one who told the original stories. I'm just a guy passing on the tale, but bare with me for another paragraph or three, and I'll tell you why this moment stands out in a life time of moments.
Capt. Whimsley bid me good day and left, I made my way to my rack still kinda laughing about the crazy old man and his sea stories, and slept peacefully until it was time to go to work. After gearing up, I walked out on deck, and dive operations had stopped.
Dive operations don't just stop, there is always a reason.
The first thing I noticed was the sea was flat as a pancake as far as the horizon, a rare occurrence I assure you, and it had turned white for about a hundred yards out. Upon closer inspection, we were surrounded by hundreds of thousands of seagulls staring at the boat.
This was spooky enough, but when I looked to the sky, that was when my life changed. I didn't see a UFO, no that would have been too normal, too expected. What I saw was the moon. A full moon the size of a beach ball, and as orange as a life vest.
I was not the only one who saw all this. But even the members of my crew that night prefer to think what they saw there was nothing but a false memory. Nothing bad happened really, no one was hurt, we just all had our preconceptions shifted a bit.
As for Captain Whimsley? I never talked to him again, and I only saw him from a distance one more time in my life. He had given me a message to pass on to someone that he was sure I would meet some day in a specific location that I have been avoiding since that night, maybe that was the reason for the events of that night.
As I get older, I look back on that night. Maybe it was a fantasy played out in a delusional mind. But as my health fails, and I'm getting weaker, I'm starting to wonder if maybe it isn't time to do what I was told and go meet that person in that location and pass on the message.
Summary of Where Is Joe Merchant? A Novel Tale
Where is Joe Merchant? That's what his sister, Trevor Kane, the hemorrhoid-ointment heiress, wants to know. For Desdemona, Merchant is the missing link in her ongoing communications with space aliens. Tabloid journalist Rudy Breno only cares that Merchant gets bigger headlines than Elvis. And for renegade seaplane pilot Frank Bama, the mystery of the presumed-dead-but-often-sighted rock star is turning his life upside down.
In his debut novel, Jimmy Buffett cooks up an irresistible gumbo of dreamers, wackos, pirates, and sharks, as he leads Trevor and Frank on a wild chase through the Caribbean Islands to a place where anything can happen . . . and everything does.
In his debut novel, Jimmy Buffett cooks up an irresistible gumbo of dreamers, wackos, pirates, and sharks, as he leads Trevor and Frank on a wild chase through the Caribbean Islands to a place where anything can happen . . . and everything does.
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