by Bill Brewer
Diegert stood still for a moment, relieved that he hadn’t drawn attention to himself. Returning to the pickup truck, he tied the steering wheel with a rope and placed a rock on the gas pedal. The truck accelerated off the end of an ancient concrete break wall and plunged into the channel passage. Diegert quickly returned to the yacht. He pulled up the mooring lines and the sand anchors, started the engine, and quietly backed the vessel away from the beach. He knew there was a risk he would encounter pirates as soon as he left the port, but the alternative on land was no better. This mission’s original extraction plan had gone to shit. He reasoned, however, that if any pirates attempted to take the yacht back, they were going to find out what it meant to defend a vessel by all means possible.
The power of the engine delivered him away from the port. His first priority being escape, he now realized he should check his fuel supply. Throttling the engine back, he went below for the first time. In the dining area next to the galley kitchen sat a gray-haired, weather-beaten old man. Diegert flinched when he saw someone else on board. The man’s hands were bound and leashed to the table. A rag, tied around his head, gagged his mouth.
The old man’s eyes went wide with surprise, and his startled look actually calmed Diegert, who could see the old guy was sizing him up. At six foot two and 190 pounds, Diegert was lean, strong, and very fit. His black tactical outfit, with vest and boots, was dirty and sweat-stained. The old man’s gaze lingered at the splotches of dried blood on his pants. Diegert needed a shave, but his dark stubble only made him appear all the more imposing.
He untied the rag. The grizzled guy made a series of awkward faces as he tried to bring comfort back to his lips. Diegert looked at him squarely. “Is this your vessel?”
“Aye,” the old man said, looking at his replacement captor. “What now?”
“Now I go check the fuel.”
The old man shouted after him, “The gauge is on the far right, near the anchor chains.”
Returning from the engine room, Diegert told him, “There’s less than half a tank.”
“It’ll be enough if we start using the wind.” The old man lifted his tethered hands, yanking on the leash that held him to the table.
Diegert looked at him wearily. “What’s your name?”
“Barnard Pinsdale, this vessel is the Sue Ellen. She’s named after a beautiful girl I knew when I was young. I’ve been captive for five days. The fools think I’m rich, and they’re hoping for money. What are you doing in Somalia?”
“Never mind.”
Diegert knew he could not sail the boat himself, and this man didn’t seem like a threat, yet he was hesitant to free him and allow him to take charge of the vessel. He went up on the top deck and looked out. The shore was receding, and all around was vast distance. The great expanse made him uncomfortable, and he realized he would need the old man’s help.
Diegert freed the man from the tether and untied his hands. The old man rubbed his wrists as he slid out of the galley booth. He rose on wobbly legs, and Diegert could see the wiry man had a paunchy belly, but his forearms were taut bands of muscle under deeply tanned skin. The old man extended his weathered hand.
“You can call me Barney.”
The two shook hands, but Diegert didn’t offer his name. Barney held on longer than Diegert expected, but it had probably been awhile since the old man had been touched without violence. Barney shut the engine off and directed Diegert to drop the anchor.
“What? We’ve got to get out of here. We’re not just going to sit here and let them come after us.”
“Listen, darkness is falling; we’ll keep our lights off. The winds are a doldrum; we can’t sail. In the morning, we’ll catch the warming winds and soon be far away from here. Besides, I haven’t been in my bed for five nights. Now come over here and let me show you how to release the anchor winch.”
The two men remained separate through the night with Diegert on deck and Barney stretched out on his bunk below.
As the sun rose, Barney directed Diegert on how to control the sails and handle the sheets, and soon the yacht was on a true course. With good wind and calm waters, the two passengers rode in silence as the boat delivered them away from a place they were happy to leave behind.
16
As the day passed, they traveled nearly a hundred nautical miles.
Barney commented to Diegert, “We’re making good progress. The winds are being kind to us, and you sure are a quiet fella.”
Diegert looked at him, smirked, and said nothing.
“So why won’t you tell me what you were doing in Somalia?”
“I was doing hunger relief work.”
“With which agency?”
“Ahh…the International Association for Hunger Relief,” replied the younger man while continuing to look out at sea.
“Never heard of ’em.”
Turning to face Barney, Diegert addressed his inquisitor. “We’re a new agency, and I was doing the lead work of establishing relationships and securing facilities for our operations.”
“How’d that go?”
“Not well. The Somalis are very short on trust and have long memories for disappointment.”
“You sound like a do-gooder, you just aren’t dressed like one. Speaking of hunger relief, let’s eat.”
Diegert’s face lit up with the mention of a meal.
“When the Skinnys were here, they fed me uncooked pasta and raw canned meat.”
“Well, what do we have now?”
“Now I’m going to cook it.”
Barney stepped down into the galley. Diegert sat on the stairs. Barney got out the pot and pulled out a bag of egg noodles and a can of ALPO “Country Stew” dog food. The can had a picture of a handsome yellow lab, and Barney set it next to the noodles. He handed Diegert a large cooking pot. “Go fill this half full with water.”
“From the ocean?”
“No, why don’t you go pump some from the well?”
Diegert rose and returned with the pot half full of seawater.
Once the water was boiling, Barney put in the noodles.
“The Skinnys didn’t like pasta. Of course, they never figured out you had to cook it. They tried it raw, and that’s how they fed it to me.”
“You never told them about cooking it?”
“I wasn’t going to be their Julia Child. It’s the small victories that help you survive being a captive.”
“Who’s Julia Child?”
Turning away in disgust, Barney checked the boiling noodles and used a can opener on the dog food.
“What’s with that?” asked Diegert.
“This is our meat.”
“That’s dog food.”
“Yeah, the Skinnys couldn’t read; they took one look at the picture and thought it was dog meat.”
The old man was laughing as he recalled the Somalis’ reaction to the canned food.
“In fact, that’s what they called me. They’d say, “Hey, Dog Meat.”
Chuckling again, Barney drained the boiling water, mixed the contents of the can with the noodles, and returned the pot to low heat to simmer.
Diegert was incredulous as he watched the meal being prepared.
“Who’s Julia Child? Come on! You don’t even know the greatest chef to ever have a TV show. Why don’t you Google her?”
Diegert pulled out his smartphone.
“I don’t have a connection.”
“Of course you don’t. Your generation doesn’t know shit. You think intelligence is being able to manipulate technology. You know how to look stuff up, but you can’t remember a thing. You’ve traded knowledge in your head for gigabytes in your hand, and when your technology fails, you’re left with a brain that ain’t worth shit.”
Diegert wasn’t listening; he was torn between the rumbling in his stomach and the realization that the only relief of hunger was Barney’s canine cuisine.
“I cook, you clean.” Barney handed Diegert a plate of warm, tender n
oodles in a rich, beefy gravy with generous portions of cubed meat and finely chopped vegetables. With a shake of Parmesan, it actually tasted good, and Diegert eagerly emptied his plate and looked up for seconds.
“One serving is all you get. There is no more.”
Barney finished his meal and pulled out an old disc player. He put in a CD, pressed a button, and a symphony of music came forth from the speakers. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and waved his hand with his index finger pointed as if he were conducting the musicians. Diegert listened to the classical music and felt like he was at the movies with no movie. Even though Barney was enraptured, Diegert asked, “What kind of music is this?”
Barney, pulled from his reverie, said, “You don’t recognize this?”
“No, I never listen to this kind of music.”
With a critical scowl, Barney informed Diegert, “This music is the most beautiful and complex in the world. All modern music owes a debt of gratitude to this work.”
“Oh, come on, all music?”
“Yes, the work of Mozart revolutionized the way music was written, played, and appreciated, such that any musician who does not recognize his contributions to the art form has no sense of historical significance.”
The symphony hit a high note just as Barney concluded his statement. The musical accompaniment to the diatribe spewed forth by Barney forced Diegert to feel the impact of his words with a silencing effect. He struggled to say only, “OK.”
As Diegert literally licked his plate, he watched Barney close his eyes and return to conducting Mozart’s Symphony no. 1 in E-flat Major. Diegert wondered if he would one day like this music when he was old. His mind wandered to another question, though, and he interrupted Barney again: “Hey, what happened to your dog?”
Opening only one eye, Barney replied, “I’ve never had a dog on board the Sue Ellen.”
“You mean, you meant to eat the dog food?”
“It’s way cheaper.”
Diegert couldn’t hide his disgust as he gathered the dirty dishes and went below.
“Use seawater for washing. Don’t waste any fresh.”
Barney sat on the deck as the sun, augmented by Mozart’s symphony, slowly set.
After cleaning the kitchen, Diegert came back on deck.
“Night watch,” said the old man. “We’ve got wind tonight, so we’ll each take a six-hour shift, during which it is your responsibility to maintain course and report any equipment problems or severe weather changes. I’ll go first, so you go below and get some sleep.”
Diegert went belowdecks and found two berths. One had obviously been used by Barney, the other had become a repository for junk.
Diegert moved the boxes of canned dog food as well as various towels and tarps covering the old mattress upon which he was going to sleep. Once he was lying on the mattress, he found it very uneven and uncomfortable. Getting out of the bed, he pulled up the mattress, uncovering a case. It wasn’t his business to know what was in the case, but the latches gave way with a soft snap. Lifting the lid, he could see black foam formed into the outline of a rifle stock. Other areas of the foam were specifically cut out for the barrel, ammunition magazine, and a high-powered scope. Encased in foam on the top of the lid were two pistols with sound suppressors as well as more mags of ammo. Diegert looked at the arsenal and thought again about Barney Pinsdale and the Somali pirates. Could this set of weapons have belonged to the Somalis, or was Barney something more than just a wandering sailor? He closed the lid facing the same storage difficulty that led to it being stored under his mattress. There was nowhere else to put it. He set the case on the floor and piled the tarps, towels, and boxes of food on top of it. He stretched out on the old mattress and put his head on the dirty pillow, and even though he had made this perplexing discovery, he was so fatigued that he instantly fell asleep.
The Sue Ellen had made its way into the commercial shipping lanes, which were the best routes through the ocean. The ships sought efficiency in their transit, and corridors through the ocean could become busy and dangerous places for smaller vessels, especially at night. Barney had the Sue Ellen outfitted with solar-charged lights on the bow, stern, and atop the main mast so that she could be illuminated all night long. This was an appropriate precaution, but it also presented a risk. Pirates traveled without lights and finding a lit vessel at night was easier than searching through the day. All day while they sailed, Barney had known they were still in dangerous waters but had hoped for the best. In addition to the wind and the weather, Barney was keeping his ears alert for the sound of any approaching outboard engines.
After six hours, Barney’s watch had passed without incident. Below in the cabin, he woke Diegert and waited up top to review the change of the watch. Diegert found it hard to wake up; he could’ve easily slept longer. At the top of the stairs, he was impressed with how dark the night was. He could see by the light from the boat’s illumination, but otherwise the ocean was a very black place on this moonless night.
“The winds are light without much variation, but we’re still making progress under sail. Keep the tiller within the range I showed you, and we’ll stay on course. Not many stars out tonight, so just hold the line.”
“Right.”
“One last thing, lad, keep an ear out for sounds of motor engines. If you hear the running of an outboard engine, I want you to wake me.”
“Why, what is it?”
“We’re still in pirate waters. They cruise around in skiffs. You can hear them before you can see them. These devils are smart, though; they’ve learned to muffle the engines very well. If you hear something, wake me up.”
Sitting alone on the deck in the dark, Diegert looked suspiciously into the blackness, imagining approaching pirates. Over time, this gave way to thoughts about his family. His father and brother didn’t garner much reflection. He knew they were in the middle of deer season, hunting every day and spending every night at the Moose Jaw, drinking too much beer and talking too much bullshit. His father never took him deer hunting. Excluding him was the highest form of rejection in northern Minnesota.
His mother would be working long, hard hours at the Triple Crown Diner. Taking orders, serving meals, and cleaning tables, she had to do it all, and she only knew one speed, full bore and wide open. She worked herself so hard so that she didn’t have time to think about a different life. She’s the one who would be missing him. She would be thinking of him, and it hurt that he hadn’t talked with her in such a long time.
Diegert had never met his grandmother, but he knew she’d been raped by a white guy, and that’s how his mother was half Ojibwa. Denise was born but not accepted by the Ojibwa as a true native. As she grew up and went to school, the white kids called her half-breed and treated her like shit. After high school, short, fat, bald Tom Diegert asked the tall statuesque but socially crippled beauty to marry him, and she did. Her own mother, David’s grandmother, had committed suicide years before, so she was alone at the Justice of the Peace ceremony. She moved into Tom’s dump of a house, and within a few weeks, she had it cleaned up, painted, and looking pretty good, even though the small two-story house lacked an efficient furnace and any real furniture.
Physically, she was out of his league. From time to time, he would have to take the joking insults that flew around the Moose Jaw. The guys called him “chief” and asked if his “squaw” was good in bed. He would drink away the embarrassment and go home to fuck her with anger. Eventually, she got pregnant and Jake was born to grow up looking just like his dad.
She would like being out on this boat. She had never seen the ocean, but every vacation he had spent with her was a camping trip. Just the two of them, hiking or canoeing to a remote, beautiful place in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters. They would set up camp, and only after she had done the work of making their site homey would she sit down and relax. She would say, “It’s a real vacation when it’s cheaper to be away than it is to stay at home.” Spending time with her in the wilder
ness, he’d developed an appreciation for independence. He learned a lot from his mother, and although not all the lessons were good, he found in her a person he knew loved him and took pride in his accomplishments.
What would she think of what he was doing now? Killing people and running away. Grief rose up in him and made him feel as dark and lonely as the ocean was without light and seemingly without end. He thought about those he had killed, both the targeted and circumstantial. He wanted to shed the tears he felt were forming behind his eyes, but they wouldn’t flow. He couldn’t find a way to release the guilt for his violent acts, and therefore he retained the pain in his soul. It was a long, dark, lonely night, and Diegert began to fear that the night and his life were becoming indistinguishable. An assassin lived a sad and singular life.
Six hours later, Diegert’s watch ended without incident and with a beautiful sunrise.
Barney’s disheveled hair and sleepy face appeared in the stairwell.
“Well, we survived another night,” Diegert said, greeting his shipmate.
“Survival—your generation doesn’t know shit about it,” Barney replied as he continued up the stairs onto the deck.
In a mocking voice, the old man began, “Oh my God, I survived college, or I don’t think I will survive the holidays. What bullshit. You people mistake effort and a moment without complete comfort as something to endure. You think it’s a great virtue to have succeeded where there was very little chance of failure and absolutely no threat to your life.”