BEACHED AND BURNED — Jamie McNabb

Back in the day, worn-out wooden ships were often beached and burned for their metal fittings. It was an easy way to squeeze the last remaining value out of their otherwise useless bones. These days, more often than not, just about the same thing happens with people.Ferdinand Roberts feels like a rotting hulk, like a ship that has passed her burn-by date. It is not a happy feeling, and yet, within it there lurks a secret, well-hidden hope.Like a lot of geezers, Ferdinand pees off his back porch. He knows it's disgusting, but in his case, that's the whole point. He's getting even with his next-door neighbor and former business partner, Harold Pittock.Then one fine day Ferdinand's heart gives out and he dies.The orderly hasn't even gotten his corpse down to the hospital morgue before the familial knives come out and the scabs get ripped off, and the secrets are dragged kicking and screaming into the light of day. What fun!However, in the midst of the grief and the chaos, one question flares up like a rocket and shines hot and bright: where did Ferdinand's money go? There must have been some of it left, mustn't there?And just like the owners of one of those old wooden sailing ships, his children begin to hunt for it. In effect, they burn the hulk of their father's life, hoping to walk away with as much salvage as they can.Love and remembrance can be like that, especially when it comes to a complicated man like of Ferdinand Roberts, to a sailor who spent most of his life of the beach.Ferdinand, however, has one last trick up his sleeve. He is one old ship that isn't about to go up in flames without a fight.