Tracy Kruse, 41, noticed that her sturdy husband had started to lose weight and was having trouble sleeping. He usually spent at least $30,000 outfitting his two boats for what he had thought would be a bountiful summer guiding his loyal clientele to the best fishing the rich gulf waters had to offer, said brother Marc Kruse, 52, who works for a corporate manufacturer in Mobile.
Two weeks ago, Kruse went to work for BP, turning his 52- and 43-foot boats, the Rookie and the Rookie II, into what the oil giant calls Vessels of Opportunity. He was never given a day off.
"He told me he hated it," said his 12-year-old stepson, Ryan Mistrot. "He hated going out for BP."
His mother recalled the day last week that Kruse told her his chickens were hungry.
"They always are," Ryan said, as he played with Kruse's Jack Russell terrier, Isabel.
"Yes, but what he was saying was, 'I don't have food for them.'"
Frank Kruse, who lives in nearby Fairhope, Ala., said he watched his brother's spirit shaved down by the relentless bureaucracy of BP, heaping concerns on a man who for years had never worried about much except the weather.
"Every time they got over one hurdle, there was another," Kruse said of his brother. "I guess he looked long term and saw what's going to happen when this is all over and the gulf is dead."
"My question," says Ryan, sitting tan, shirtless and barefoot on the tile porch floor, "is why did the Rookie never get a day off?"
What scares those who have gravitated to Kruse's house in the wake of his death -- family and the captains and their wives and girlfriends -- is that Kruse was, by most of their measures, doing pretty well. He was a middle-class fisherman with dedicated customers. If someone who seemed as financially and emotionally stable as Rookie could develop the black tunnel-vision of suicide, how many more are in peril?
"His wife knew he was depressed, his family knew he was depressed, but he wouldn't reach out for help," said Frank Kruse, general administrator in nearby Mobile County. "He kept saying he was fine. He was hiding things."
Last Friday, Rookie Kruse told his elderly mother he had no money coming in, but he expected to get paid in a few weeks.
"He said, 'Don't worry about me mother, I'll be fine,'" Marolyn Kruse said, stifling tears. "That was the last thing ... "
Kruse filed a 52-page invoice Monday to get the money BP owed him for two weeks' work -- about $4,700. He half expected BP would reject it. By then, he was down from 219 lbs to 185 lbs, his brothers said. He had to pay for the house, his Ford F-250 pickup, the boats and an 80-acre hunting camp near Pensacola, Fla., where he and other captains hunted white-tail deer.
"In a few weeks, the repo man's at your house," said Kruse's brother Marc. "That's a very scary situation."
Kruse knew about running a business. A graduate of the University of Southern Alabama, he had majored in business and worked for more than a decade for UPS, rising to a supervisor before buying his first boat 24 years ago.
Several fellow captains stopped by Kruse's modest single-story ranch house Wednesday. The captain's widow welcomed them. They were his second family, a society in which he was considered a big name. She withdrew from the crowd, preferring the deck that overlooks a river that translates as "good comfort."
"It's not like he was broke or destitute," Frank Kruse said. His thoughts turned to others who may be in the same position his brother was in. "I can't imagine what some of these people are doing -- they're mortgaged up to the hilt."
Linda Abston, a friend of the family, also came to the house Wednesday night. She has seen business plummet at her hair salon, Cut 'N Up, next door to the Winn Dixie on Highway 59. After the spill, her five employees fled to sell T-shirts or cut hair in Pensacola and Tuscaloosa. Now Abston, a perky blond, is stuck with $6,000 monthly overhead.
On Monday, she said, she tried to file a claim with BP for $5,000, but started getting referred to a succession of claims agents.
"I'm thinking they're going to do the right thing. By Friday, I'm at my wits end. That's when I get the call about Rookie," Abston said. She stood on the Kruses' enclosed porch and cried. Kruse relatives soon surrounded her.
"I can absolutely understand how he felt," Abston said. "Because it is so much pressure, trying to manage with this cesspool and the uncertainty of it all."
On June 12, Abston attended a protest at Perdido Pass in nearby Orange Beach toting a sign, "God help us."
much more of others in the same situation
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