Stoney Brokium, well-known local pauper and fishing-doer, was towing a wagon around the nautical flea market when we saw him by the boating exhibits, about three 20-footers away.

“That one looks like Stoney,” Headwind said, pointing downwind.

That one’s wagon, the collapsible kind, was so full of goods that it looked ready to collapse. I doubted that was him.

“Stoney doesn’t have enough money to buy all that,” I said.

In a moment there emerged from a crowd of shoppers the figure of Justin Casey, well-known local accumulator/hoarder of more supplies, spare parts, backups and you-never-know thingies than any fishing-doer of our acquaintance or knowledge.

We recognized Justin by the Fish or Cut Bait Society shirt and cap he was wearing and the two overloaded wagons he was struggling to pull.

You don’t see a lot of flea market shoppers doing that. If you do, they’re probably Justin Casey. He usually needs help toting his load.

Stoney Brokium is his ideal companion. Everything Stoney owns, he gets at flea markets, yard sales and the bargain bins of shopworn stuff at Big Buck’s Big Box Bait & Tackle. He has an expert’s eye for utility, if not for value. Most of the stuff in Stoney’s wagon was Justin Casey’s.

I waved to get their attention, until Headwindstayed my hand.

“If they see us, Justin will ask us to tow one of his wagons. He’ll want us to help load his truck, too,” Headwind warned. “Anyway, we just got here ourselves and don’t have anything of our own to carry, so it will be hard to refuse.”

That wasn’t very comradely of Headwind, was it? I can’t blame him. Justin Casey is the type who believes that anything he has only one of will break or be blown overboard, leaving him discommoded or even lost at sea.

That never happens because he always has at least one extra copy of everything. Still, if some inanimate item comes to life and escapes, Justin will worry about losing the spare.

I fished with him once.

“Hold on to these,” he said as we cast off. He handed me a gaff, a landing net, a paddle, a flare kit and a tackle box full of sinkers.

“We already loaded these,” I reminded him.

“No, these are the spares, just in case we lose those others,” he said.

Don’t make the mistake of guessing that Justin Casey is a klutz who can’t do a day’s fishing without losing anything but a few hooks and sinkers and maybe a hat, like everyone else.

In fact, he hardly ever loses anything because his boat is festooned with grippers, clips, tethers and suchlike for securing everything and storage hatches for holding the spares.

He has a compulsion to be prepared for anything that could go wrong, because of course it will if it can.

Even though it hardly ever happens to him, he often claims to know “someone else” who had two men overboard and only one life ring — stuff like that.

“Justin’s imaginary playmates,” Cabeza calls those someone elses. Cabeza is a former psychiatry student, so his diagnosis rings true.

If Justin’s fishing on your boat, you have to negotiate with him unless you have unlimited space for all his equipment. Be careful. Cabeza often warns us not to tell Justin, for example, that you’ve never lost a denture over the side.

“That would convince him that you’ll lose it today, and he will have to find an extra set for you,” Cabeza says. “Just tell him you have spare teeth stashed in the bilge.”

Justin wears long leg pants and long sleeve shirts with extra pockets on each limb, and a big game fly fishing vest. No, he doesn’t do fly fishing. The vest consists entirely of large pockets where Justin stashes spare thisses and extra thats.

Vernon Virgil Victor (Vee for short) Hickle, well known local cop, likes telling the story of how he met

Justin Casey: “I happened to be patrolling his street when he was working in his driveway with the garage door up. I had to stop while a flock of iguanas crossed the road, and I couldn’t help taking a look at that garage.

“I could tell there were dozens of almost everything and who knows, maybe hundreds of everything else. To my unknowing eyes, and with my suspicious nature, it looked like a stash house for boating and fishing gear thieves.

“I guessed Justin was a broker for buyers and sellers of stolen sporting gear. I drove around the corner and called the burglary squad. They got a search warrant and asked me to join their raid.”

Vee said he walked to Justin’s front door with the senior detective, who rang the bell. Justin opened it and greeted them as friends.

The senior detective said they were there to raid his garage, called him a “subject” and demanded to see the loot.

You or I would have been offended and probably scared. Not Justin. He invited them in, opened the door to the garage and led them on a tour. He told them how and when and where he had acquired, legitimately, every rod, reel, hook, sinker, tool and stainless
steel propeller in the joint.

“See those drawers? They’re full of receipts for almost everything here. Take a look,” Justin said.

Until then, the cops had only his address, not his name. The senior detective looked at the first receipt and turned gray in the face.

“You’re not a crook,” she said, almost choking. “You are Justin Casey, well-known local accumulator/hoarder of more supplies, spare parts, backups and you-never-know thingies.”

Justin said yes, that’s who he is. The senior detective’s face turned from gray to red. She fell to her knees, blubbering:

“What have we done? Dear God, what have we done?”

Then she gave Vee Hickle a telling-off to last him the rest of his life. I dare not repeat the things she called him. Vee still blushes when he tells that part of the story.

The senior detective apologized for calling Justin a “subject.” She begged him not to sue the police department. She expected to be humiliated, suspended and demoted to street patrol.

Justin said if she had broken down his garage door and ransacked the place, he would sue. She hadn’t, so no harm was done. He wouldn’t even file a complaint with the PD.

The grateful senior detective began blubbering again, and slobbering on Justin’s ring fingers. It tickled. He wasn’t wearing rings.

Vee couldn’t stand it. He pulled her to her feet. “Knock it off, Lieutenant. You’re being unprofessional,” he scolded.

You guess we tease Justin about all this? We sure do.

“I bet you carry spare underwear in your pockets,” I told him that day we fished together.

“Of course I do,” he said. “In my size and yours too, just in case you hook a bigger fish than you can handle.”

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