by Karen Dionne
“The door!” the captain yelled as the ship foundered. “For God’s sake, somebody shut the door!”
“I can’t reach it!” Jack called back. “It’s too high!”
“I can do it! Boost me up!” Tyler scrambled on all fours across the canted floor. Jack linked his hands and lifted the boy to his shoulders, gripping Tyler’s ankles with both hands as he fought to keep his own footing.
Tyler strained for the latch. “Move to the left! The left! Hurry, hurry!”
“I’m gonna fall!” Jack let go with one hand to brace himself against what used to be the floor.
“More, more! Okay, I got it!” Tyler pressed his shoulder against the door as water poured in around the edges.
Ben tightened his grip. No way could ninety pounds win against the sea. Still, the door slammed shut. Jack lowered the boy to the floor. Tyler put his head in his hands. Jack patted his shoulder. “There, there, lad. Give her a minute, and she’ll quick put herself ta rights, you’ll see.”
But the ship rolled even farther. The cabin lights flickered and went out. Ben squinted through the watery half-light, trying to discern if they had passed the point of no return, but with no true vertical reference it was impossible to tell. If his feet were acting as a plumb bob, they were at 45, maybe 50 degrees. The trawler could probably do 60 and still recover—they had plenty of ballast; the insurance company had seen to that—but any more, and—
Suddenly his feet found their purchase. He thanked God and started to stand, but his feet slipped out from under him and he smashed to the floor. He put out a hand to raise himself, then snatched it back as though he’d been burned.
Mother of God. It couldn’t be. He extended both hands again, feeling about cautiously as if slow, deliberate movements could somehow change the truth—but no. Instead of the raised-patterned, sheet-metal floor he’d been expecting, the surface beneath his palms was smooth as baby’s skin.
He was sitting on the ceiling.
JesusMaryandJoseph they were turtled; the ship’s underbelly exposed to the sky; her antennas pointing uselessly toward the pitiless depths below. It was all over now. The Arctic Dawn would float upended for a few minutes, maybe five, maybe ten. Then her holds would fill, and the sea would claim five more. He closed his eyes. He supposed he should do something—break out a window to swim for the surface or try to open the door—but if ever a ship and her crew needed help from above, it was now. He tried to call up an appropriate prayer from his childhood, then remembered the supplication to Saint Elmo his grandpa had framed and mounted in his fishing boat.
Almighty God, he prayed, mouthing the words that had been uttered in every church nave and every household and every candlelit vigil since the first sailor had been lost at sea, you bestowed the singular help of Blessed Peter on those in peril from the sea. By the help of his prayers may the light of your grace—may the light of your grace . . . damn—how did the rest of it go? “Shine forth”—yes, that was it—shine forth in all the storms of this life and enable us to find the harbor of everlasting salvation. He drew a deep breath and began again. Almighty God, you bestowed the singular help of Blessed Peter on those in peril from the sea. By the help of his prayers—
“Derek,” Jack whispered.
Tyler sobbed.
Ben squeezed his eyes shut tighter. “Almighty God,” he prayed aloud, as if the force of his entreaty could effect an answer, “you bestowed the singular help of Blessed Peter on those in peril from the sea. By the help of his prayers—”
“May the light of your grace shine forth in all the storms of this life,” the captain joined in.
“—and enable us to find the harbor of everlasting salvation,” they finished in unison.
“We ask this through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Tyler added, his youthful voice cracked with terror. “Amen.”
“Amen.”
The men fell silent, listening to the Arctic Dawn creak and moan as if she were already mourning her crew. Ben opened his eyes, but this time, instead of praying, he willed the iceberg to shift, to roll, to split again—anything that would generate another wave like the first one—a monstrous, rogue wave that would slap them with all the force the Atlantic could muster and knock them upright again. It could happen. Miracles could happen. Miracles did happen . . .
Almighty God, you bestowed the singular help of Blessed Peter—
The ship shuddered. He blinked, then blinked again as a coffee thermos rolled slowly across the floor. It picked up speed, finally clattering into a corner, and Ben clenched his fists. Yes, by God. They were moving. He grabbed hold of the ship’s wheel.
“Hang on!” the captain cried. “We’re going up!”
“Hold on where?” Tyler asked as he slid across the ceiling and cracked his head against the window. He scrambled to his knees, then fell again. “Is it really true? We’re saved?”
The captain didn’t answer.
More, more, Ben urged, a little more . . . come on . . . keep going . . . keep going . . . It wasn’t his imagination; the water outside the windows was getting lighter . . .
The ship continued to roll, straining for the surface like an Olympic swimmer after a high dive, until at last they burst up from the depths into the middle of a shaft of sunlight so ethereal Ben would have thought he’d died and gone to heaven if his arms weren’t so sore.
He extricated himself from the ship’s wheel and looked around the cabin in speechless amazement. Tyler was on his knees retching into the corner, but Ben couldn’t fault him for that. He didn’t feel so well himself.
Most unbelievably of all, when he stood up on trembling legs and crossed the wheelhouse to look out the door, he saw Derek still strapped to the stern, his hair and beard dripping, his clothes freezing stiff as he grinned back like a madman and gave a big, victorious, double thumbs-up.
Chapter 2
The protesters were waiting when they returned.
As the captain eased the trawler past the breakwater and into the harbor, Ben squinted through the sleet to study Derek’s daily welcoming committee: a dozen men and women huddled against the wind, singing and chanting with their arms linked, their SAVE THE EARTH banners flapping so hard they could barely hang on to them.
“Idiots.” He’d done his share of picketing back in the day, but he was in no mood for a confrontation—particularly one that would put him on the wrong side of the stick.
“You got that right.” Derek took another slug of Jack’s whiskey and shuddered. It was going to take more than a bottle of Lord Calvert to make him feel warm again. “I suppose I should be glad it’s only the POP people picketing me, and not some extremist group like the Environmental Liberation Front. Those guys are seriously whacked.”
Ben agreed. Torching Hummer dealerships and ski resorts and shopping malls under construction and whatever else the ELF thought the earth would be better off without was beyond crazy. Destruction in the name of saving the environment—what kind of logic was that? The Preserve Our Planet people were babes by comparison. The worst they’d admitted to was an incident in Arizona where a member poured soda pop down the gas tanks of construction equipment. The ELF was listed at the top in the United States as a domestic terrorism threat, but the POP people didn’t even register. That, along with the cardboard pop-gun cutouts they carried as a symbol of their acronym, made the group seem almost silly.
“Still don’t figure why they’re targeting me,” Derek said. “Compared to outfits like Evian and Perrier, I’m a drop in the bucket. Even my six-year-old understands that turning icebergs into drinking water does no more harm to the environment than plucking a fish out of the sea.”
He polished off the last of the whiskey in one long pull and stuffed the empty in his rucksack. As the others made the trawler fast, Derek hung back. Ben couldn’t blame him. The rest were riding their adrenaline rush, but Derek had used up all of his surviving. Ben still couldn’t believe he’d made it. Riding out a three-sixty wasn’t without prece
dent—coastguardsmen routinely rolled their cutters intentionally during rescue practice—but most men did it inside the wheelhouse, and not outside tied to the rail.
Ben flexed his shoulders. Everything hurt. His arms felt like they’d been ripped from their sockets and stuck back on again backward, and cold—what he wouldn’t give for one of the protester’s down anoraks. Give him a striped cashmere scarf to go with it, and a pair of color-coordinated Thinsulate gloves, and don’t forget the mukluks, like the sheepskin pair that tall, blond woman was wearing. He snorted. Mukluks. Where did she think she was, Antarctica?
“Arctic Dawn is the tip of the iceberg!” the woman shouted. She jogged her sign in the air. “Pre-serve—our—plan-et! Pre-serve—our—plan-et!” The others joined in, clapping and stomping out the rhythm.
“They’ve got a new sign.” Tyler pointed to a poster featuring the cartoon cub from Derek’s bottled water label, only in this version, the little fellow wasn’t smiling; he was on his back with his feet trussed and his tongue lolling with a fishing spear protruding from his side.
Derek blew out his cheeks. “Don’t react. Don’t respond, no matter what they do.” He picked up his rucksack, wincing at the weight of it, and led his entourage toward the gauntlet.
Halfway down the dock, a bottle flew past their heads. Derek stopped short and ducked, even though by then the bottle had gone wide and plopped into the sea. He dropped his rucksack and lifted his fists, but instead of shrinking back, the protesters began to laugh. Ben looked to where they were pointing and saw that Derek’s rucksack had fallen open, and the empty whiskey bottle had rolled out onto the ground.
Derek’s cheeks flamed. As Ben stooped to retrieve the bottle, he noticed a hand holding another pop bottle inches from his nose. Slender fingers curled around the neck; foam oozed from beneath a polished thumbnail. The fingers flexed, and the hand gave the bottle a shake.
He looked up. It was Mukluk Woman. He straightened, and for the first time in his life, he wanted to hit a woman. The feeling shamed him, but his anger was greater and he let it boil. Who did she think she was, coming here to harass Derek? This was his town, his dock, his life. He’d just survived the worst experience imaginable, and this woman thought she could intimidate him into quitting by threatening to spray him with soda pop? Ben glared at her, daring her to do it, but something of what he was feeling must have shown in his face because she looked away and let her hand fall, spilling the soda on the ground.
The others took her cue, and Derek and his men walked unmolested the rest of the way to the parking lot. Ben trailed Derek to his pickup.
“Where’s your car?” Derek asked as he tossed his bag in back.
“At your house.”
Derek gave him a long look. “Get in,” he said at last.
Ben climbed into the passenger seat. Derek started the engine and dialed the defroster to high. As soon as a fist-sized area on the windshield cleared, he put the truck into gear and headed inland toward the bluff.
When the heat kicked in, Ben leaned forward to direct the vents toward his face. The movement triggered a twinge in his side. It wasn’t a pain exactly; more like a stitch, but it was still enough to make him suck in his breath. He wondered if he shouldn’t have asked Derek to swing by a clinic first. His arms and legs seemed to be working just fine, but after the beating he’d taken, you never knew what might be going on inside.
For that matter, they were all pretty well banged up. The knot on Tyler’s forehead promised one if not two black eyes, Jack’s hands and face looked like they’d been worked over by a pair of Mafia goons, and the captain sported a limp worthy of a Caribbean pirate. Ben closed his eyes, listening to the sleet hit the windshield and the slap of the wipers, marking their progress by the engine sounds as Derek negotiated the switchbacks that led to the top of the bluff. The Arctic Dawn’s survival was going to become the stuff of legend, but at the moment, all this particular legend wanted was to go to sleep.
He opened his eyes when they turned off the highway onto a rutted two-track.
“You’re wasting your time,” Derek said.
Ben sat up. “Maybe, maybe not. You don’t know what we’re offering.”
“Doesn’t matter. The Antarctica plans aren’t for sale. You know that.”
“Everything’s got a price.”
“I didn’t spend ten grand to patent the process just so’s I could give it away. The bottled water business is just a lead-in, a trial run. The Antarctica plans are the real deal.”
Ben let the statement stand. He wasn’t worried. Derek’s house was mortgaged to the hilt, and tomorrow, his notes were due.
Derek turned in alongside a picket fence enclosing a turquoise clapboard house and parked next to Ben’s dark blue rented Lincoln. As he reached for the door handle, Ben stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“Five minutes. Just listen to what we have to say.” He nodded toward the house. “What’ve you got to lose?”
Derek’s wife Aimee met them at the door. She looked tired, and the crusted baby spit-up on her flannel shirt and the smears of what Ben hoped was chocolate on her jeans told him she probably hadn’t had the best of days, either. Derek Junior stood behind her, sucking noisily on his thumb as he clutched a wad of his mother’s shirttail and stared at the two strangers sitting on the sofa.
Derek gave her a cold kiss.
“You’re wet.” She reached up to touch his hair and relieved him of his rucksack. “Your bag’s wet, too.”
“Rough day.” He took off his coat and hung it on a peg.
“Papa!” Derek’s six-year-old came running. She wrapped her arms around his waist. “I missed you!”
“Ooof—not so hard.” He ruffled her hair. “I missed you, too.”
“That didn’t hurt!” she laughed and squeezed him again.
Derek’s wife pried their daughter loose and steered her toward the kitchen. “Go finish your supper,” she told the girl. “Papa and I will be along in a minute. Derek—” she nodded toward the lawyers who had stood up when Ben and Derek came into the room “—these men want to talk to you.”
“Is that so.” He sat down on the chair beside the door and pulled off his boots, frowning as he methodically examined his toes.
Ben knew enough about frostbite to realize that three white toes on Derek’s right foot and two on his left wasn’t good. Still, considering what Derek had almost lost today, Ben supposed forfeiting a toe was relatively insignificant.
Derek eased on his slippers and got to his feet. “What’s for supper?”
“What’s—We’re having steamed cod.”
“Potatoes?”
“Mashed. Derek, these men are from—”
He held up his hand. “I know where they’re from, Aimee, and I know why they’re here. But right now I’m just a wee bit tired and a whole lot hungry. They can wait.” He plucked the baby from his pen and carried him into the kitchen.
So much for the bond of shared experience. Ben found a seat in the living room. Judging by the empty coffee cups bracketing the sofa and the deep depressions in the cushions, waiting was what the lawyers had been doing for most of the afternoon. He selected an orange plaid recliner with a view of the kitchen.
“You can’t just ignore them,” Aimee was saying in a low voice as Derek settled the baby in his high chair. She passed him the plate of fish. “They came all the way from California. They flew here on a private jet.”
“And did I ask them to come?”
No answer.