by Arne Bue
Mr. Nakano was in 208 on the sun deck, up the flight of stairs across from the Purser's Station. Mr. Nakano followed behind Louie and Donna.
"Hey, man," Louie said mid-way up. He squirmed around and looked down at Mr. Nakano. I been a little under the weather."
"Come on, Louie. Leave the guy alone. Let's get to bed." She looked down past Louie. "Our honeymoon. "And Louie, he and I been partying, you know?" she said from behind bleak, unfocused eyes. Mousy hair strung over her face. She wore no makeup or lipstick.
Louie and Donna had the cabin next to his, 210. Donna opened the stateroom and went inside. Louie shoved a backpack in, and looked at Mr. Nakano with eyes of glass. Hair hung over eyebrows gold from sun, and his face had a copper cast.
"Hey, sorry, man," Louie said. "So damn slow up them steps. See, me and Donna..."
Mr. Nakano bowed slightly and with a step and a breath escaped into his domain, cabin 208. His heart was a hammer, and his knee and calf muscles hurt from the stairs, the cumbersome duffel, the backpack. He tasted the air. A foulness from Louie and Donna had followed inside.
He stretched in the bunk. The underside of the bedding above brought to mind a hiding place he'd used for safety from the neighborhood gangs when he was a boy. Flat gray light flowed through the porthole into the middle distance. Mr. Nakano's breathing slackened, and he settled into the mattress. He wondered how many more passengers would be heading to Kodiak, how many were going, like him, all the way to Dutch Harbor. Sleep pushed away Louie and Donna and their scent, and erased the brief returning vision of the three oily people in the ticketing office. They'd seemed quite interested in his red sports bag and his camera.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Elaine checked the radar screens, looked out over the fading light of Kachemak Bay and the spread of Homer city lights, the tie-ups to the City Pier below, glanced at the latest weather fax, and took a look at Captain Sewell, standing alone by the radios.
A worn and creased newspaper clipping held his interest. He appeared upset, and he looked off in an opaque sort of way. He did not recognize Elaine had taken the watch.
"You OK, John?" Tears in his eyes, moving his lips silently again. He'd started doing that after Joyce died in the shooting. She heard the big man clear his throat. He used a tissue to blow his nose.
"Slight cold today," he said, snorting. He stepped out on the wing and faced the bay. She followed. The Captain wished only to run his ship. There was always a purposeful intent, like now, the way he started pacing about the wing, moving with stiff, brittle dignity.
She knew about the Procardia he took for the high blood pressure. When he didn't take it, he'd sit down suddenly, as though wrecked. Then he'd grumble to his feet as though hating himself. Talking to him, small talk especially, never brightened his attitude. All she ever got then were absent nods and gazes out at the damn water. Didn't matter what she said, always the same absent look.
"So, where you want to eat?" she said.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, like Kodiak for lunch," she said.
"Oh. King's Diner. But I really don't get it."
"Just a suggestion. If you don't want to, maybe another time."
"That'd be better," he said, looking off.
The only way to converse was to talk about the Tustumena. Situations of a private nature that could impact his crew, especially their morale interested him. She'd seen Sewell shut down a potential flare-up between the cook and the steward, and between the First Engineer and the Third Mate. Between Anna Knight the Chief Purser and one of the oilers. Some of the crew would be aboard 100 days, no break. They'd get stir-crazy. He'd hold private sessions one-on-one, smoothing feathers, calming nerves. He knows their likes, dislikes, affairs, the alcoholics who preferred to stay aboard, not go into town when in port so they could stay sober, keep their jobs.
"What's with Quinsen?" Elaine asked. Sewell looked at her as though she were a troller creeping out of a fog bank.
"He'd had a few, so I had a chat with him in Seldovia. Could be a good officer, once he settles down," he said.
"I heard about Seldovia, but there's something more. He was acting like he had more than a hangover eating at him."
"He's got a girlfriend in Guam. You know about that," Sewell said.
"He's got lots of girlfriends," Elaine said.
"This one's expecting his kid in a few months, and her father wants him to marry her. He's fighting it, drinking too much."
"And smoking a little funny stuff," Elaine said.
"Not on my ship. I won't hear of it."
"Might need to talk to him some more," Elaine said. John Sewell was loosening his shoulders and looking out at the lights of Homer.
"Talk to the Nelson's?" he asked, referring to Donna and Louie.
"Paid them a visit. They're sobering up. They're not drinking in their cabins. They'll be OK by the time we get to Kodiak."
"They were in bad shape."
"They're asleep," Elaine said.
"They cause any trouble, I'm throwing them off when we arrive Kodiak."
Captain Sewell suddenly left the bridge. She may as well have been talking to him on a two-way radio. He'd just signed off for no reason whatsoever.
A creeping uneasiness made her go back, the memory of her life edging her teeth. Her son Randy had grown, had earned his degree in computers, moved out, on his own. Her shipmates and friends ashore called her The Blue Dragon because of her job, her authority over Deck Officers. Her ex-husband Brad left her for another woman, some broad in a chorus line in Vegas. After the divorce, she'd pushed herself as hard as she could in her career, mostly to forget.
The Blue Dragon wasn't afraid to step on toes. She'd wanted to prove she could succeed without Brad, and she had. With the State Ferry System, she'd worked her way through the ranks. The BA in Political Science helped her convince the State it'd be a good idea to send her to the California Marine Academy. She'd always liked ships, being around water in her home town, the Ballard section of Seattle.
The Professor from China or Japan or wherever. The Blue Dragon would keep a close eye on him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands swept more than 1500 miles from Cook Inlet toward Asia. The windswept region sat atop the Ring of Fire, a string of volcanoes along the Pacific Rim, and boasted several wildlife refuges. After the ship traveled from Homer to Kodiak, the Aleutian Chain run would begin, and the Tustumena would service the seven westward communities of Chignik, Sand Point, King Cove, Cold Bay, False Pass, Akutan, and Dutch Harbor.
Though each voyage carried its own set of problems, Captain Sewell was in his own estimation quite capable of handling any situation that may arise concerning his ship. But in the aftermath of the phone call from Trooper Henderson and the recurrence of the unwanted memories of the shooting of his wife, Sewell in his mind considered this particular voyage to have an uncomfortable feel.
He'd keep a sharp eye out, for what, he didn't know, but there was a sense to the voyage itself, the same feel he'd experienced after Joyce died, those times he'd peered out over the bow into a squall, sensing something out there, unseen, unknown, a worry that did not appear on the two radar screens, but there nonetheless.
This trip, perhaps some of the passengers bothered him. He wasn't worried about his Deck Officers, good men when one got right down to it.
There was something else, something amiss. This man with the charcoal sketches, this Kenso Nakano, couldn't possibly be running a side business of drugs on his ship. He'd have discovered that long ago. The man's a meek, polite tourist, a professor of some sort. Everyone says so. He's been aboard so often he's almost like family. Trooper Henderson was wrong in fingering this man.
But the feeling wouldn't go away. He wasn't a superstitious man, though he did have a few reservations about whistling on the bridge, bringing up a storm that way, an old seiner's belief he carried with him. He'd had suspicious feelings on voyages before. One tri
p started out like this, and he'd had to remove college students in Kodiak, have the Troopers arrest them, alcohol abusers, drunk, up on the top deck in the solarium.
So the feelings weren't bad: They were warnings. He'd be careful, keep himself particularly alert, for this trip carried unnamed and gnawing torments. The Aleutian voyage was not a place for errors in judgment.
He moved to the wing, the platform just off the bridge, and peered over the rail.
"We're all set!" a deckhand called.
"All clear ashore!" another yelled out.
Sewell sipped his coffee, looked over the side, and gave an order to Elaine. She repeated the command to the seaman inside manning the wheel.
"Left 30 degrees rudder," Sewell said.
"Left 30," Elaine and the helmsman repeated.
"Take in the lines," he said.
The speakers came alive. All clear forward and astern, Captain.
"Elaine, you check the port side?"
"All clear, Captain."
"Rudder amidships," he said.
"Amidships," Elaine and the seaman repeated.
Sewell moved the double-handled engine telegraph to half speed ahead, commanding the engine room to increase the throttle. A bell sounded and rumbling engines surged. Sewell worked the bow thruster controls, the auxiliary engines below the bow waterline and guided the Tustumena from the Homer City Pier.
Sewell stepped into the wheelhouse. "You've got it, Elaine," he said, turning the bridge over to her.
He exited the aft door and stepped immediately into the Master's Quarters. On his desk sat the manifest. Sewell studied the list and the names of the passengers.
This trip, Mr. Kenso Nakano was in 208, on the sun deck.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The thrumming of the ship's diesels stirred Mr. Nakano, and he opened his eyes. The luminous dial of his Seiko said 1 a.m., underway an hour and a half. He lifted an arm over his head as he stretched, and noticed under his armpit his own odor had sharpened. He rolled from the bunk. In the mirror, his face was bloodless and tense, and he felt a chill, and a frozen frightening thing in his heart. He unpacked his robe and towel and stepped across the passageway into the public men's shower. The blue-gray stall surrounded him like a cocoon, and the hot mellifluous water reminded of that time alone in the tunnel beneath the street in his Tokyo neighborhood where he was safe from them, where he had the advantage, where he had done what he'd always blocked from his conscious mind, though the dreams came. Never mind. His son would be an honorable man. After this last voyage, Misako made whole, his son Kano could attend the University of Alaska, Anchorage.
The soap released an ozonic smell, and he dried with a modest nibbling towel.
In 208, Nakano hung a gray hooded sweatshirt over the charcoal coat on the door hook. He stacked the underwear, woolen pants, slacks, sweaters and shirts on the top bunk, next to his brown sweater, knit cap and woolen gloves.
He must rent one of the lockers for the delivery, get the locker before the ship arrives in Kodiak.
Mr. Nakano stepped into the passageway.
A shape blocked the light. The Chief Purser, Anna Knight, stood there riveted, her wise little eyes looking at him. Mr. Nakano had once overheard her say to Chief Mate Elaine Miller, "I just love talking to passengers."
When one spoke around such a woman the experience was as though one spoke into a recording device, for she repeated much to others.
"Professor," she said. A small soft sag beneath her right eye moved slightly, a transgression on her face. Her voice sounded light and trivial, but to Mr. Nakano with an edge. He looked through the crook in her arm to the passageway beyond.
"I bet you're going to be doing those sketches again. I just know it. I always try to get a peek, but you're so shy." A gust of her smell invaded, a carbolic odor. Perhaps her soap contained a disinfectant. Maybe she'd been cleaning her office and the Purser's Counter.
Mr. Nakano wore a face of misunderstanding, and he bowed, respect to the Chief Purser. The bow carried a price, for Anna Knight beamed and somehow swelled and blocked more of the passage.
"I know you work in your stateroom. I changed the linens, emptied the trash once when you asked, when the steward was busy. You write." She wouldn't move, but stood there like a crab fisherman.
"Write?"
"You know, those journals. Oh, heavens, I didn't read them. They're like, calligraphy or something, anyway. I only noticed. How can you write, keep all those entries, and nothing to write on, I ask myself?" She wore just enough lipstick to bring out an imperfection on the side of her mouth.
"Entries. No entries."
"So I'm getting a TV table from the cook's cabin for you," she said.
"Ah, table."
"And a chair. The cook doesn't use either one, was going to throw them out. I say, Oh hold on there, Tommy Brown, one of our passengers can use that." She stopped talking, and breathed into the confines of the gangway whole neighborhoods of triumph, waiting for Mr. Kenso Nakano to speak.
Though Mr. Nakano remained as silent as sand, Knight did not relent, and motioned him to follow.
He plodded behind. Anna Knight walked with long strides inured to the roll of a ship. Her behind formed a shape rounded more than that of the young women of Japan. His knee felt a shot of pain as they took the stairs down to the foyer.
Brass bars secured the station where the Purser counted cash and balanced receipts from the bar and the restaurant. Tickets kept there were worth thousands of American dollars. Passengers dropped personal cards and letters in the mail slot. Information brochures lined the wall by the No Smoking sign. Anna glanced back at him.
"Wait here," she said. She unlocked the door and stepped into the station and re-appeared holding a TV table. "Here, take this, Mr. Nakano," she said.
Kenso Nakano smiled. "Ah."
"Wait," she said. She had a folding chair, canvas seat and back, same as Japanese movie directors sit in. He took the chair.
"You take this to your stateroom," she said, speaking slowly, directly, as though to guarantee he understood. He did indeed understand. Mr. Nakano long ago had become accomplished at English at the Language Club in Tokyo.
"Stateroom," Mr. Nakano said.
He would wait. He'd get the locker when Anna was busy with matters that in no way pertained to him, perhaps working the manifests, letting the galley know how many passengers were aboard so the cook would know how much food to prepare.
The locker, of course, must be obtained in secret.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
From its proximity, the Master's Quarters served as watchdog to the bridge. Captain Sewell's quarters included a bunk room with a connecting door to his compact office and an exit to the quarterdeck passage. With a turn and a step from quarters, the Captain would be in the wheelhouse, quick access should an emergency arise.
Deck officers lived and worked on the quarterdeck, the brain-center of the ship. In Sewell's office a personal computer perched next to an in-basket. Files, manifests and lists spread about the desk. Bolts held a file cabinet to the aft bulkhead. Forward, a computer link to Juneau Headquarters stuck out of a cubbyhole near the nook for the rain gear and coats. The satellite link was always on.
The bunk room was Spartan, the one couch, the hard bunk, a DVD player, a coat hook, the porthole. An electric school bell hung above the bunk room door, an emergency alarm. One jarring eruption from the bell would bring Captain Sewell from a dead sleep to his feet and to the bridge in less than ten strides.
Sewell had two meetings coming up. The Chief Purser, Anna Knight was the first. Sewell heard her knock. She poked her head in.
"You ready for me," Captain?
"Come in."
"Well, it worked," she said. "I got in, got a quick look in the bathroom, around the bunks, both of them."
Sewell thumbed the passenger list, those who'd reserved passage on the Aleutian Chain voyages the past two years.
"He's been on every Chain trip the last
two years," Sewell said. "I knew that, but it really comes home when I see it here."
"His sketch pads and charcoal pencils, I saw those. That big duffel he always carries. The smaller bag, the red one. His camera. Clothes are spread out on the upper bunk."
"You didn't look too obvious, I hope."
"No. I was nice. Gave him a canvas chair and a TV tray so he could work on his drawings and do that calligraphy stuff he always does."
"He could be just what he appears," Sewell said. "But watch him. I don't think there's much to worry about, but the more I think about it, I don't like the look." Sewell kept looking at the passenger list. Two years. Every single voyage.
Seeing Kenso Nakano's name listed again and again, voyage after voyage, long, hard trips, some of them in storms, darkened Sewell and brought back the parking lot in Northway Mall and the cars pulling up, the people getting out, the short burst from a semi-automatic. The one bullet. Joyce.
Anna was saying, "He just does the sketches, takes the pictures. Keeps some sort of journal or diary. Pretty well keeps to himself. I can't see any reason to take over his quarters and do a search. Least not for now." Sewell heard most of what she'd said, pulling himself back. His hands had tightened around the passenger list, crumpling the papers. Anna was looking.
"Keep notes on what you see, documentation for Henderson," he said. See what the hell Nakano does, who he talks to, if anyone. He likes to get off at all these ports of call on the Chain. Just little jaunts. Takes pictures, does the sketches."
"Right, Captain," Anna said.
"That should do it. Send in Lingenberry."
"Yes, Captain," she said. She stepped out into the passage.
The Second Mate, Harry Lingenberry, Captain Sewell thought. So Harry Lingenberry and Gary Quinsen, the Third Mate, had a drink in Seldovia. What was that all about? Lingenberry's a good Officer. But there he was, with Quinsen. They had to get some things off their chest, Lingenberry had said. Might have done some good, Lingenberry had said. Well, I'm going to talk to him. These voyages, away from family so long, sometimes not so good.