“A Lake Leon Showdown With Class, Sass, and Fiberglass.”
They said the Italians knew how to make three things better than anyone else: shoes, espresso, and wooden boats. And this one—sweet mother of varnish—was proof. A 1960 Riva 20′ Super Florida, all gleaming mahogany, turquoise vinyl, and chrome brightwork polished to a Texas mirror shine. She was poetry in motion, even when still on the trailer, idling outside the Silver Slipper Supper Club, waiting for her public debut.
Nobody knew where the boat came from. One day, the old drydock shed out at the far end of Lake Leon—half-buried in cattails and wasp nests—had nothing but beer cans and promises inside. Next morning, the boat was there. Sitting like some long-lost Riviera debutante in exile. The kind of thing you saw in a magazine while waiting for your tire rotation at the Tread Lightly Tire Shop.
Rusty from the Rusty Hammer Hardware Store swore it was an omen. “She appeared the same day Trixie finally fixed the neon ‘K’ in her Klip-N-Dye sign,” he said, nodding like it all made sense. “Balance in the universe. Natural as cow tipping.”
Lucinda, however, had other ideas.
Lucinda was the one who named the boat. Or rather, she named herself the boat. “It’s my color scheme,” she told anyone who asked, one hand on her hip, the other holding an iced sweet tea sweating in the July heat. “Besides, if anyone’s gonna glide across Lake Leon leaving a wake of broken hearts, it’s me or a boat that looks like me.”
Hairless B29 had been the first to spot it, tucked in that drydock, while scouting locations for his upcoming production of Much Ado About Nothing, which he insisted would be staged entirely in paddleboats. That plan lasted about three minutes, until Thelma from Our Lady of Immeasurable Concern fell in trying to audition as Beatrice and had to be pulled out by Delgado with a pool skimmer.
But the boat stayed in the conversation.
“I checked the hull,” said Hairless, adjusting the collar of his 32 Bar Blues cotton seersucker camp shirt to show just enough of his flaming B-29 tattoo. “Not a scratch. Original tag from Cantiere Riva. Even got the little fire extinguisher tucked up under the dash like a pearl-handled pistol. She’s been kept right. Almost too right.”
That Friday, Fort Stockton buzzed with an energy not seen since the time somebody started a rumor that Matthew McConaughey was opening a gas station in Balmorhea.
Word had spread: the Riva was going into the water. And she was doing it at sunset, in front of the Silver Slipper Supper Club, with a catered buffet of crab-stuffed jalapeños, prime rib sliders, and complimentary highballs poured until the moon said stop.
Lucinda, naturally, had secured the role of pilot.
“It’s a captain,” she corrected, as she climbed aboard in a turquoise wrap and rhinestone sunglasses the size of frying pans. “Pilots fly planes. Captains handle beauty.”
Pastor Peterson stood on the dock shaking his head, still trying to figure out if this counted as a religious experience or a sin dressed up in teak.
“Lord, give her humility,” he whispered.
“She ain’t gonna need it tonight,” muttered Angus Hopper, sipping a Lone Star and leaning against his weather-worn Ford F-100. “She’s about to part Lake Leon like Moses with chrome trim.”
The lake lit up like a pocket mirror as the boat’s engine hummed to life. Folks lined the dock, the deck of the Silver Slipper, the nearby boathouses, even the patch of scorched lawn where the mayor once tried to install a statue of himself and got zapped by a sprinkler timer.
Lucinda throttled up gently, the nose rising ever so slightly as the polished cutwater sliced into the lake like a rumor through a prayer circle. The crowd applauded. Delgado fainted. Someone from the Piggly Wiggly took a Polaroid. Even the crickets got quiet.
It was perfect—until the spotlight beam hit something in the reeds.
A second boat.
—
Not a Riva. No gleam, no badge, no polished brass. This thing looked like it’d been fished out of a swamp and given CPR by a possum. A fiberglass hull, faded green, the name CLARA BELL stenciled in flaking black across the transom.
Lucinda idled back toward the dock, engine ticking as she slowed. The mood on the water shifted from enchantment to curiosity with a little bit of “who invited that?”
“Who’s in it?” asked Rusty, squinting.
The figure at the helm wore a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses, obscured by distance and the mist rising off the water. Then it spoke—through a megaphone of all things.
“You think you’re the only one who remembers how to make an entrance?”
Lucinda stood tall on the deck of the Riva, one hand shielding her eyes. “Sugar Britches?” she called.
The dock gasped like a synchronized swimming team.
Sugar Britches—née Denise Ballinger of Sweetwater—had vanished years earlier after an incident involving a pageant crown, a wrecked El Camino, and a weathered lounge singer named Slim with no known last name. No one expected to see her again, much less gliding across Lake Leon in a boat that looked like it had tetanus.
But there she was.
She pulled up alongside the Riva, engines humming like two cats in heat.
“Thought you had the lake all to yourself, huh?” Sugar Britches said. Her voice still had the bite of a switchblade wrapped in cotton candy.
Lucinda, unbothered, leaned down with the coolness of someone who’s hosted five Thanksgivings and buried three boyfriends. “Only one of us still knows how to keep a boat afloat and wear lipstick in August. Bless your heart.”
Trixie, having wandered down from the Silver Slipper with a Diet Shasta and half a cigarette, clapped her hands. “This is better than the time we tried to deep fry an armadillo at the Rotary Club picnic.”
Hairless B29 sniffed the air. “Tension,” he whispered. “God, I missed it.”
The two boats circled one another like old vaudeville stars sizing up the lighting. The Riva shimmered. The Clara Bell… sputtered.
Then Sugar Britches made her move.
With a roar that sounded like three blenders and a cough, her boat surged forward. Straight at the Riva.
“Britches lost her damn mind!” someone yelled.
Lucinda didn’t flinch. Instead, she throttled forward, spun the wheel like it was a high-stakes bingo cage, and did a full-speed donut around the charging Clara Bell. Water sprayed. Men screamed. Pastor Peterson prayed with one hand and reached for a highball with the other.
The Clara Bell wheezed and stopped dead. Smoke puffed from the stern like a flatulent dragon. The Riva, meanwhile, glided away like a pageant queen exiting a scandal.
Lucinda cut the engine, stood high on the deck, and addressed the crowd.
“Some boats were built for speed. Others for drama. I suggest we leave both to the professionals.”
And with that, the applause returned. Louder this time. Someone threw their hat. Delgado cried again.
Later that night, after the dock was empty and the Silver Slipper band was packing up their saxophones, Lucinda stood by the Riva, hand on the varnished wood, whispering something low.
Hairless approached, nursing his third bourbon.
“She yours now?” he asked.
Lucinda smiled. “Always was. Just had to let her remember.”
The boat glistened under the moonlight. A boat with secrets, maybe. Certainly with history. There were rumors of it having once belonged to a Medici descendant. Or maybe a Cuban smuggler. Or a former Miss Texas who married a Florida senator and disappeared.
But none of that mattered anymore. She had a name now: Lucinda. And she had a home—on Lake Leon, tied to the dock near the Silver Slipper Supper Club, where the drinks were strong, the women stronger, and the boats knew how to take a bow.
EPILOGUE
The Clara Bell was never seen again. Sugar Britches, however, was. She turned up a week later working the bingo cage at the American Legion Hall, claiming she’d always preferred dry land anyway.
And the Riva? Every Saturday around sunset, she’d head out for a spin—sometimes with Lucinda at the helm, sometimes Hairless, sometimes even Sister Thelma. One memorable evening, New Guy tried to commandeer her, but failed to find reverse and ended up crashing gently into a floating swan inflatable rented for a wedding rehearsal dinner. He was banned for a month.
Folks say the boat has magic. Maybe she does. Or maybe—just maybe—it’s Fort Stockton itself, which has a way of turning even a mid-century Italian runabout into a living legend.
Just don’t ask where she came from.
Some things are better left floating.
