by Neil Hetzner
* * *
Joe had been watching shards and pinpricks of lights lasering around the storage hold for almost two hours before Bob Tom began to stir. After he had awakened, Joe had started by reconsidering his questions from the night before, however those thoughts were so formless that the boy soon abandoned them. Instead, his thoughts veered from escaping the hold, to fledging and flying, to Prissi, to Prissi’s lips when he kissed her, to fighting the Hudson for his life, to the extraordinary way he had been rescued and what a debt he owed to Bob Tom, and back to Prissi and the danger she must be in, to some vague time in the future when he and Bob Tom, and… maybe, Prissi would be flying above the Adirondacks spying in the nests of eagles before landing and eating a meal with Blesonus. Joe was so engrossed in his diversionary thoughts that it wasn’t until Bob Tom groaned a third time that the boy recognized that his friend was awake.
Shaking his bound hands at those above-deck, Bob Tom exclaimed, “Et tu, Brute or whatever yore damn name might be.” The old man brought his bound hands to his head and struck himself in the forehead.
“Noby One, my little friend, you done yourself a huge favor by passin on what I thought to be Kentucky’s finest.”
Bob Tom hit himself a second time.
“I’m afeered that they done me some permanent damage, Noby. My brain feels like it fell in a swift current and got battered around in the rocks.”
Although he was sympathetic, Joe wasn’t feeling patient. He figured that Bob Tom must have had between four and five more hours of sleep than he’d had and since the riverman had been drunk, he hadn’t fought as hard and consequently hadn’t been as bruised and banged up as Joe himself. When Bob Tom groaned and started to hit himself in the head a third time, Joe asked, “Any chance of you taking a time-out from your exercises to help me think how we’re going to get out of here?”
Damall’s bushy eyebrows bolted upward like a couple of mangy rabbits flushed from their warren.
“After all I done for you and you talk to me this way. I’m hurt, Noby, bad hurt from what them pirates done to me, but I’m worse hurt from yore unkind, ungrateful and surely uncalled for words.”
Joe held out his hands, “What are we going to do? If we don’t do something soon, they might kill us.”
Bob Tom grunted as he raised his shoulders from the deck of the hold and looked around before asking “Where’d you get that idea? Kilo for kilo, yore surely the most valuable piece of real estate in all of New York.”
“We’ve seen their faces.”
“As ugly a collection as I’ve had occasion to witness since…”, Bob Tom paused as if he couldn’t think of what next to say.
Despite their situation, Joe smiled as he asked, “Since you was underground with a bunch of bristle-lipped wimmin?”
“My very thought, Noby, despite it bein a while comin. My very thought.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“Well, I’d say the furst thing we’re goin do is ask our hosts for some java, an I’ll drink yore’s so to help my pore head, an a half dozen eggs over easy an, mebbe, some bacon. You like bacon, Noby?”
Bob Tom did some yelling and he and Joe did some exploring, but the day passed and no one answered their calls. Neither bacon nor eggs, not even coffee arrived. Not did any solution to their problems appear. They used a broken pipe wrench they found to try to wedge under their plaston fetters and snap them, but the loops were drawn too tightly around their wrists to succeed. Bob Tom talked about using the wrench and a couple of pieces of pipe they scavenvged to attack the kidnappers when they came below, but Joe didn’t see that plan as being very successful until their hands and feet were free.
The hours slowly passed, the light faded, and their hunger pains and thirst grew. The engine, on the other side of the handle-less bulkhead door, chugged along, but the only other sound the captives heard than the engine was the sloshing of the Hudson against the steel hull. Joe was curled into as small a ball as possible trying both to keep warm and to keep his hunger from spreading beyond his belly, when he was startled from his sleep by Bob Tom’s anguished swearing.
“May you burn in the stench of brimstone and feel yore spirit weighed down with a millstone.”
“What? What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong? I’ll tell you what’s wrong. We’ve been assaulted on. Captured. Mis-used fearsomely. But, l I’m not one to make a fuss about bein mis-used. Since Eden, it’s all men’s fate. But, Noby, there must be limits. What happened to me lessen four days ago, Noby? What sorry fate came to pass?”
Bob Tom, with his hands held up in the air in anticipation, waited, and waited some more for Joe’s answer.
When Joe didn’t respond, Bob Tom finally let his hands drop to his chest.
“Tarndamnation, Noby. What ignominy have I suffered? What near mortal loss?”
Joe finally had an inspiration, “Your kayak? Your favorite boat?”
“Yes, my most favorite boat is gone. Taken from me by fate...with a punkin-sized helping of help from you, as I recall. And when that was taken, did I complain? No. No, sir, I took ole Fate’s medicine, a right bitter medicine, and swallered it down.”
Joe’s hands started to protest Bob Tom’s re-telling of the story, but the riverman shook his head.
“I won’t put up with it. I, Damall, damwell won’t.”
Bob Tom paused and Joe gave in and played his part, “What?”
“My pole. My fly-fishing pole. Not only my favorite fishin pole, but the best fishin pole on the whole Hudson. Where is it? Who’s got it? I lost my favorite boat, but I will not, won’t lose my favorite fishin pole. No, sir. I won’t.”
Looking around at the shadows that lurked in the corners of the tug’s hold as if some answers were to be found there, Joe says, “Then, let’s get it back.”
Bob Tom concurs, “Good plan,” before yawning. Seconds later, he is snoring, but it is hours before Joe gets back to sleep.
The following day their captors opened the hatch and sent down an unimaginably bright column of sunlight as well as a five liter can of water and a tub of something that was more than soup but fells short of stew. Bob Tom and Joe waited until the tub cooled before alternating their hands into the pot.
When the pot is about half-empty, Bob Tom wondered, “You ain’t holdin back, are ya, Noby. Lettin me have a little more just cause I’m bigger’n you and apt to be more haingry?”
Joe laughs, “I thought about it, but figured I shouldn’t because I’m a growing boy.”
Feeling restored by the food, and with Bob Tom more than a day away from his hangover, the two captives spend their time crawling around the hold seeing if what they find can be turned into a means of escape. Joe follows the hunter’s advice to look at things sideways, not to try too hard to figure anything out, just let it come. Joe, who has been looking for things either sharp or hard enough to cut through their restraints, tries to take Bob Tom’s advice.
Joe tells himself that he must have done a good job when he looks at a small battered-sided lantern, flicks a switch, and gets an idea. He wriggles around until he is facing Bob Tom, who is rummaging around in the dark, narrow, wedge of the bow.
“Look! I’ve got an idea.”
He wiggles the lantern.
Bob Tom turns around, “An I can see it’s a bright idea, Noby, but a bright idea is a far ways from a solution.”
Afraid that he won’t have enough time, Joe turns off the lantern and begins wriggling along to where he remembers seeing cans of motor lubricants and fluid. Once there, he picks up a can, reads the label, puts it back, picks up a second, reads that label, puts it back, reads a third and holding it tightly drags himself over to the pile of orange foul weather gear. Pulling a slicker free, he studies how to tear a pocket flap free. With his hands bound one over the other, he can’t use them to tear it off. After a minute, he puts a corner of the flap in his mouth and bites down as he uses a hand to try to tear it free. His effort fails. He starts to ask
Bob Tom for help, but decides to take a second to try to figure out another way to free the flap. When nothing comes to him, he follows Bob Tom’s instructions to the letter and literally turns his head half-way from the slicker. After a minute he laughs and gives his full attention to the slicker. Using his forearms, Joe spreads the slicker out on the locker’s floor. Once that is done, he twists and turns until he can kneel on the shabby jacket. He scoots around until he has one knee of on either side of a pocket before bending over, wedging a fist into the pocket and straightening up. It takes more strength that he would have guessed, but the pocket’s side seams finally let go. Joe backs up, leans down and now using his forearms to secure the slicker, he bites the flap and pulls and twists, like a dog trying to win tear a rawhide bone from its owner’s grip.
By the time Joe has the pocket torn free, Bob Tom has crawled over to see what he is doing.
“Iffen I’d knowed you were that haingry, Noby, I wouldn’t et so much myself.”
Joe laughs, “I’m haingry for freedom, Bob Tom. Here, hold this.”
Joe brings his mouth close to the old man’s hand and they transfer the pocket.
Bob Tom looks at the patch of waterproof fabric and asks, “What now?”
When Joe explains what he aims to do, Bob Tom just shakes his head, but within an hour, both captives have their hands and feet free. As soon as the plastic on the binds on his feet burns through, Joe extinguishes the torch which he has made by rolling up the patch of slicker, soaking it in engine oil and lighting it with a spark from the filament of the lantern bulb after its glass case has been broken.
When Joe looks to Bob Tom for approval, the riverman gives it to him, but Joe’s glow doesn’t last long because Bob Tom says as he shakes his hands to get the blood circulating, “Having our hands free ain’t the same as bein free.”
The old man looks around the room’s murk again before looking down at the pipe wrench which Joe has used to hold the torch in place.
“Let’s just think bout this a minute or two.”
“Well, we better not think too long because if they find us with our hands free, we’re going to be in trouble.”
Bob Tom shook his head dismissively, “I ain’t afeered of a little trouble.”
Joe’s headshake at the riverman’s words mirror Bob Tom’s own gesture.
After a minute Bob Tom makes his way to the locker’s door, studies it, grabs the metal handle, tugs on it and grunts. He walks over to the handle-less door that goes to the engine room, studies it for a long moment and then puts his shoulder against it. He shrugs, turns back, picks up the pipe wrench and walks over to the old generator pushed against the locker wall. It only takes him a few minutes to pry the casing off. It takes much longer to get the generator’s magnet free. Once he does, he slowly moves the magnet toward the pipe wrench. The magnet’s pull is so strong than when it is still five centimeters away, the wrench begins to move. When Bob Tom moves the magnet in a small arc, the wrench obediently follows a similar arc.
“Well, I guess we got us a ticket out of here, but a ticket don’t mean much if we don’t have a plan.”
For the next hour, the captives think about what their course of action will be once they are freed from the locker.
Once they figure out what they will do if things go as they hope and what they’ll do if all hell breaks loose, Bob Tom and Joe wait until the middle of the night. When the time comes when they think it is most likely that all the crew will be asleep except for someone at the helm, they carry the magnet to the steel door that opens to the engine room. Being careful to make as little noise as possible , Joe takes a sleeve he has torn from a slicker and holds it against the door where the handle would be if it had one. The sleeve muffles the noise when the magnet pulls Bob Tom forward and attaches itself to the steel door. Before he begins to move the magnet, Bob Tom studies the door almost as if he can see the L-shaped handle on the other side and the metal hook it fits into to secure it. Simultaneously pulling the magnet toward him to create as much slack in the handle on the other side of the door as possible, Bob Tom slowly moves the magnet in an arch. Joe has his ear to the door to listen for any sounds that the handle is turning. He hears nothing and despite the sweep of the arc, the door remains locked. Bob Tom shifts the magnet and tries again. He moves the magnet four times but each try ends with the same results.
As the old man prepares for another attempt, Joe whispers, “Wait.”
When Bob Tom is not inclined to wait, Joe grabs his arm.
“Wait.”
He eases the old man to the side and then, using all of his strength, he begins to work the slicker sleeve from behind the magnet. When it is finally free, Joe steps aside and says, “Try it now.”
“That ain’t gonna make no Damall difference.”
“Try it.”
Bob Tom does and Joe’s ear picks up the hollow sound of metal turning against metal. Twenty seconds later the door is free and Bob Tom, holding the pipe wrench at his side as a weapon, eases himself through the door.
As they had hoped, the engine room is empty. As they move through the small hot, machine-filled room, Joe picks up a ball peen hammer to arm himself. Above deck the two escapees stay in the shadows as they reconnoiter the deck of the tug. Joe finds a cache of flotation devices and carries them to the back of the tug where Bob is working on releasing the hitch. As Joe ties the PFDs together with a long coil of line, he watches until he understands how the coupler works. As soon as he understands what Bob Tom is doing, Joe grabs the PFDs, jumps aboard the first barge and runs to the far end and begins to release that coupler. He can feel the train of barges begin to change direction within seconds of Bob Tom setting them free. Joe waits until he sees Bob Tom fly over his head and land on the third barge. Joe frees the connection between the first and second barge and leaps onto the second. The excited boy has barely scrambled five meters along the wall of lettuce crates when he hears Bob Tom’s anguished cry.
“T’ain’t here. T’ain’t here.”
A second later, whoever is captaining the tug sounds the alarms. Joe hurries to the stern of the second barge and begins to free it from the third as lights blink on the tug and shadows begin to move across her deck.
As soon as Joe and the PFD’s make the jump onto the last barge, the teener becomes cautious. Having heard his cry, the boy thinks that Bob Tom might have fallen into a trap by the kidnappers. Seconds later, Joe is pleased to find the old man is alone.
Alone, but agitated.
“I cain’t find it.”
Their plan has been that in the confusion of having the cargo break free, Bob Tom and Joe would hide on the back of the third barge as long as possible with the hope it might escape the current and make a run toward shore. If that didn’t look like it was going to happen, their back-up plan was for Bob Tom to pull Joe to shore while he rode atop the PFDs.
As a spotlight beam locks onto them and shouts are heard from the tug, Joe says, “Your fishing pole? Forget it. It’s probably on the tug.”
“I’m not leavin without my most favorite pole.”
“C’mon, we have to go. “
“I ain’t goin til I get that pole. Them buzzards are goin be too busy with them barges to be fussin with us.”
Joe starts to push Bob Tom toward the stern of the barge and out of the spotlight.
“C’mon! We have to go. What do you think they think is more important? A bunch of lettuce or me?”
“Noby, I cain’t. I gotta have that pole. My only daughter gave me that pole.”
When Joe pushes the old man a second time, the old man pushes back. Feeling helpless to fix what he is beginning to understand is something that has become unhinged in the old man’s mind and absolutely determined that he is not going to allow himself to be recaptured, Joe pushes past the riverman. The boy races to the stern of the barge, clambers up on the rail, and holding the coiled line in one hand and the half dozen PFDs to his chest with the other, Joe jumps into the Huds
on and back into the scariest moments of his life.