by Neil Hetzner
* * *
Even as he fought the hands that were holding him down, Joe had the clarity to twist his head to see what Bob Tom was doing. From what he could glimpse between his assailants’ arms, those three crew members were having a much easier time overpowering the riverman than the two who were trying to tie Joe up as the teener kicked and thrashed, and used all of his hockey experience to get out of their clutches. Joe, since he was neither drunk nor drugged, might have succeeded, although what advantage that might have produced given that he was on a barge in the middle of the Hudson River wasn’t clear, if the other three crew members, after securing Bob Tom, hadn’t joined their mates.
After the crew members bound their hands and feet with the same heavy plastic zip-ties used to secure the crates to the barge and locked Joe and Bob Tom in a well-worn storage locker area in the bow end of the tug’s hold, the old man immediately fell back into a deep sleep. By flopping around on the floor of the hold and not worrying about the bruises his efforts were making, Joe managed to work his way onto his knees. From his kneeling position, despite the tight restraints around his crossed wrists, Joe could reach Bob Tom’s hands. Leaning back on his heels, he tried to roust his friend by pulling on an arm, but when that appendage stretched like a water balloon in Joe’s hand, he gave up on that tactic. Instead, he leaned forward, wedged his head under the riverman’s fusty armpit and using all of his strength, managed to push Bob Tom upright, but as soon as Joe removed his head, Damall fell over like some hideously re-imagined Raggedy Andy doll. Listening to Bob Tom’s stertorous snores, Joe wondered if there was something else in the bottle besides the bourbon the old man had treated as if it were sacrament. After one more effort to bring back Bob Tom to the living, an exhausted Joe gave up on getting any help from his rescuer.
As the old man slept, the exhausted but sleepless Joe laboriously crawled and wriggled around the hold looking for possible means of escape. The steel lever handle on the locker’s door moved a couple of centimeters, but no more. A second unmovable door, one that seemed to lead to the tug’s engine room, didn’t have a handle on it. After more than an hour of probing the locker and considering the collection of frayed lines, lubricants, a dilapidated generator, and foul weather gear without coming up with anything that felt like a practical plan, Joe decided to followed Bob Tom’s example and go to sleep. As he waited for his exhaustion to win out over his outrage at the cowardice of his captors attacking while he and Bob Tom slept, Joe desultorily twisted his restraints until his wrists began to bleed. What did the tug’s crew plan to do with him? Would they themselves try to ransom him or would they turn those dealings over to someone with a little more experience? Would they try to keep Joe and Bob Tom in the hold of the ship or would they decide that it would be safer to stash them someplace on land? If it was to be land, would they opt for someplace rural or would they carry their quarry all the way to Manhattan or beyond? And the most interesting question of all, given that the victims had seen their faces, did the kidnappers have any intention at all of returning their captives even after a ransom had been paid?
After asking his questions and getting no answers, Joe finally fell into a short uneasy sleep.