by Tim Curran
Which gave George some disconcerting ideas on the whole. What if they did find a way out and were vomited back into the Atlantic in the 2 ^nd century A.D. or in 1931 for that matter? What then? What then? But thinking like that was pointless. Really pointless. Time would have to take care of itself.
Bottom line, things were distorted in this place.
And it wasn’t just time either. Because the next morning… still pitch black, but seemed like it might be morning… Cushing and George got to meet Elizabeth Castle’s Aunt Else. And that was quite an experience. She was just this little thing that might have been put together out of sticks and twine, her hair frosted white, her face lined and sallow. She walked with a cane and looked very confused when she was introduced to Cushing and George like she had been woken suddenly from a dream.
“My Auntie is ill sometimes,” Elizabeth said, helping her sit on one of the sofas.
“Bosh!” said Aunt Else. “I’m perfectly fine. Never felt better.”
Her eyes were glazed by time and she had a habit of losing concentration and staring off into space for extended periods of time.
When Elizabeth was off making coffee, Aunt Else said, “Well, I had long suspected that you would return, Captain Dorrigan.” She said this to George. “I can’t say that I’m overwhelmed to see you. Time has not erased your misdeeds. You, sir, are guilty of gross misconduct.”
George waited for the punchline, but none came. “Misconduct?”
“You should consider your position, Captain, and be quite careful of what you say,” Aunt Else warned him. “Your transgressions are unforgivable and I can assure you that my husband will arrange for a Naval board of inquiry to look into your negligence. A man like you has no business piloting a ship.”
George got it now. “Um… I think you have me confused with someone else.”
“Nonsense! Don’t try that tact with me, sir. You’ll find me most unforgiving when it comes to subverting the facts. You are guilty of negligence. A negligence that has cost the lives of your crew. Perhaps you and your attorney -” she was looking at Cushing now – “have cooked up some scheme to keep yourselves out of the hands of justice, but you are guilty in the eyes of God.”
“I… ah… I was under the weather that day, Madam.”
“Drunk is more like it.”
Man, this was sweet, George was thinking. The old lady thought he was the captain of her ship and she was holding him personally responsible for whatever the disaster had been.
“I’ll throw myself on the mercy of the court when we get back,” George said.
“And so you should. So you should.”
She lapsed into another one of her silences, humming softly under her breath and George was wondering if she ever really came out of her fugue. If not, it would be tough to deal with something like this on a permanent basis.
“It was a clear day as I recall,” Aunt Else began again. “A very lovely day and Richard… where is Richard? Have you seen him, Captain?”
“I… I think he’s up on deck.”
“Of course he is. As I said, it was a very clear day and the night proceeding it was clear and the sky was filled with stars. You never see that many stars unless you’re out at sea. Just beautiful. Then that fog… it was terrible that fog. We were trapped in it for weeks, long weeks. Hmm. I wonder if it’s cleared yet. Has the fog cleared yet, Captain?”
“Any day now, Ma’am.”
George went over with Cushing to see to Gosling. His eyes were open, but he looked like he was trapped deeper in dreamland than Aunt Else. When he saw George he reached out his hand and clutched George’s own. He blinked a few times, looked like he was trying to hold something down.
“How you feeling?” George asked him.
“Like… shit,” he said.
“Please tell your sailors to refrain from profanity,” Aunt Else said.
Elizabeth came back in with more coffee. Gosling took a little, but he was terribly weak and it was tough seeing him like that. He’d always been so rugged and healthy, so very full of life. Always in charge. Seeing him laid low like that wasn’t an easy thing to take. He would say a few words and drift off, come awake again and shake his head.
“I ain’t long for this world, George,” he said.
“Sure you are. You just need to knit up.”
“Knit up? Shit. I’m done in and I know it.” His eyes flickered closed, then open again. “I just want to sleep now. That’s all I want to do. Don’t… don’t be looking like that, it’s not so bad. That woman… not the crazy old bitch… but that other one, she might know a way out.”
Cushing shook his head. “She says she doesn’t.”
“And you believe that?”
“Well…”
“Well, nothing. She knows more than she’s saying. You keep at her, you keep at her.” He swallowed a few times. “Either of you boys… you make it back. I got… I got a daughter up in Providence. You look her up. You tell her how it was for her old man. You tell her that.”
Gosling lapsed into slumber and did not wake again. He wasn’t dead, but George could tell from the look in Cushing’s eyes that he wasn’t very far from it now.
“I wish there was something I could do for your friend,” Elizabeth said. Cushing offered her a thin smile.
“A spring party is always the best,” Aunt Else was saying. “Particularly on Bermuda. A lovely garden party under the palms. Oh, it’s just wonderful. The sea air and the sunshine. Lots of fruit and cold drinks. A steel drum band…”
“I found your boat,” Elizabeth said.
“My boat? Oh, I had a lovely little skiff when I was a child on Cape Cod,” Aunt Else said. “Do you remember that? It was white with an ocean-blue stripe around the hull. We used to go fishing. I can’t remember what we used to fish for… do you remember?”
Cushing looked surprised. “You went out there?”
“Only to get the boat. It was drifting just off the stern,” Elizabeth explained. “It’s torn up a bit, but it looks to be in good shape. It’s filled with air, isn’t it? I’ve seen other boats like that here. Mostly, there’s no one in them.”
“Boats full of air! Bosh!” Aunt Else said. “Something’s full of air around here, but it’s certainly not boats!”
“Well, at least we have the raft if we need it,” George said.
Elizabeth stared at him. “Yes, I suppose.”
George could almost feel the panic coming off of her. The idea that they might shove off and leave her with her crazy aunt was scaring her. “Well,” he said, “not like we’re going anywhere right now anyway.”
“I’d like to go to France,” Aunt Else announced.
“Maybe in the summer,” Elizabeth said.
“Yeah, I hear it’s nice there in the summer,” George said.
Cushing looked at him, suppressing a smile.
“You never mind, Captain,” Aunt Else said. “France is not where you’ll be going.”
“Please, Auntie,” Elizabeth said. “Just drink your coffee before it gets cold.”
Else rapped her cane against the table. “And you would think, wouldn’t you, in this day and age, that someone would invent an olive without a pimento stuffed in it. Is that too much to ask? Is it really too much to ask? A pimento-less olive? My husband refuses a martini with a pimento-stuffed olive in it. Can you blame him? Can you honestly blame him?”
“Auntie gets confused,” Elizabeth said under her breath.
George nodded. “That’s okay, we-”
“I heard what you said, young lady. I would have thought you were brought up better than that. What would your mother think? What would she say if she saw you dressed like that?”
Cushing helped Elizabeth make their breakfast, which was just canned fruit and dry cereal. But there was oatmeal and bacon, too. And Cushing made some scrambled eggs from the MRE pouches. It was simple fare, but it tasted like a gourmet meal after being on the raft so long eating crackers and petrified survival
bread.
Chesbro and Pollard showed soon enough. They looked better than they had in some time after a real sleep in a real bed. It did wonders. Chesbro was still taciturn, but Pollard seemed to be in good spirits.
“Well, I see we finally roused you boys,” Else said. “Well, eat up and then off with you. Is there school today? No, oh well. Go out and play. Eat up! Eat up!”
“She thinks you’re her sons,” Elizabeth told them. “They died years ago.”
Pollard and Chesbro looked like a couple of actors who’d just walked out on stage and couldn’t remember their lines.
“Just play along for the time being,” Cushing told them.
As she ate, Aunt Else would pause from time to time, gesture with a fork full of scrambled eggs. “I’m trying to remember all the details, trying to keep it fresh in my mind. I think it’ll be important at the trial.”
“What trial?” Pollard said.
George just shook his head. “Never mind. She thinks I’m Captain Hook or something.”
Which got him another one of those acidic looks from Elizabeth. He supposed he could have been more understanding, more compassionate. But the truth of the matter was that he’d seen too much, experienced too much by that point, and things like sympathy were hard to come by. He was just making friends all over the place. Chesbro wouldn’t even look at him anymore since he’d punched him out. Thing was, George didn’t give a shit. He honestly just didn’t give a shit.
He thought: Give me another six months of this bullshit. Give me a year. By then there won’t be much human left in me… or in any of us.
Pollard, who seemed relaxed now, at ease for the first time since George had met him, finished his food. “It was nice to sleep in a bed. I can’t tell you how nice it was to finally sleep in a bed. I was beginning to think there weren’t such things as beds anymore. I know how stupid that sounds, but, shit, that’s exactly what I was starting to believe. Maybe… maybe once we’re settled, we can start giving some serious thought to where we are and how the hell we can get out.”
Cushing raised an eyebrow at that.
Elizabeth just said, “There’s no way out.”
“She likes it here,” George said. “She never wants to leave.”
Which got him yet another evil look from her. “Did I say that? Did I ever say I liked it here? That I wanted to stay?”
George was loving it. The old ice queen was beginning to thaw a bit. Apparently, there were some decent human feelings under the permafrost.
“Yes,” Aunt Else said, carefully counting the tines of her fork over and over, “but what you say, dear, and what you mean might be two different things.”
Elizabeth was looking really pissed-off now. They were forcing her into a corner and her claws were coming out. It had been a long, long time since she’d had to answer to anyone, to justify her actions or her lack of them.
“All right,” Cushing said. “Let’s take it down a notch here.”
“Prisoners,” Pollard said. “I don’t think I can live like that.”
“Elizabeth?”
“Yes, Aunt Else?”
“How long are you going to keep us here as prisoners?”
“Aunt Else…”
“Don’t deny it,” Aunt Else said, shaking a finger at her recalcitrant niece. “You’ve kept me here under lock and key for far too long. I think I’m within my rights to ask how long you intend to keep this up. Well? What have you got to say for yourself?”
Elizabeth had nothing to say for herself. She just stood there, under attack by her own aunt, looking suddenly older, heavier, ungainly like maybe she just didn’t have the strength to hold herself up anymore. She looked at Cushing, because he was the only one she felt a connection with. Then, blushing, she cleared plates and cups onto a platter and took them into the galley.
“Where’d she go?” George said.
“Oh, silly girl,” Aunt Else said. “Probably off to pout. You’ll find her sleeping in the cabbage with one purple wing.”
George tittered under his breath. “What?”
“ Don’t encourage this,” Cushing told him.
He stalked off after Elizabeth, leaving George with the perpetually-brooding Chesbro, the unconscious Gosling, the very-confused Pollard, and… yes, Aunt Else of course, who was maybe a little of all of those things and a few others, too.
“I think what we need here is a man in charge,” Aunt Else said, stroking her chin thoughtfully. “Yes, yes, yes. A man in charge. I don’t think my niece is up to it.”
“Looks like she’s done okay so far,” George said.
Aunt Else was looking over at Gosling like she was having the conversation with him. She threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, listen to that, will you? Men. They only want one thing and they’ll say just about anything to get it!”
George was laughing now. “Did I miss something here?”
“Maybe she’s right,” Pollard said.
“About me wanting one thing?”
“No, about somebody else being in charge. Maybe Elizabeth needs a break. Maybe she’s been here way too long. Maybe she can’t see the forest through the trees. Maybe you should take over.”
“Me?”
“Why not you?”
“Cushing’s in charge.”
But Pollard shook his head. “No, he’s not. Ever since the First. .. well, ever since Mister Gosling has been sick, you’ve been in charge. Cushing’s like an advisor or something. He’s smart, but he doesn’t like making decisions. You should be in charge.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Aunt Else said. “He’s only a boy, Captain. A lying little boy and you can’t trust lying little boys. He’ll say anything to get his way. He’s always been like that. Manipulative.”
George felt overwhelmed. He was having trouble keeping up. “That’s a hell of a way to talk about your son.”
“Captain,” she said. “I’ll ask you not to interfere in family matters.”
“I’m just saying that maybe you’re the guy to be in charge is all,” Pollard said. “That’s all I’m saying.”
George held his tongue. He didn’t want to be in charge. It was the last thing in the world he really wanted… yet, if Elizabeth was going to maroon them all here without a single hope of deliverance, then maybe they did need different leadership. But then again, she knew this place. She knew what they were up against… and what really did he know?
“I prefer a democracy,” was all he would say.
“Just an idea,” Pollard said.
“I’ve never cared much for politics,” Aunt Else told them. “I lost interest after McKinley was assassinated. I think Roosevelt was an idiot. A lot of us thought Roosevelt was an idiot. But he was smart, wasn’t he? Crafty, wasn’t he? He knew the common man believed as he did and he used that power, that popular appeal. My father lost money during the coal strike.”
Cushing came back in. “What are you people talking about?”
“Politics,” George told him. “Did you favor Roosevelt, sir?”
“Bully,” was all Cushing would say on that matter.
12
Saks had it all figured out.
Maybe they thought he was really stupid, but he saw what was going on. He knew what Fabrini and Menhaus were up to. Same way he’d known what Fabrini and Cook had been up to. Jesus, you try to help these guys and first chance they got, they started scheming behind your back. Now that was gratitude. And it was just too bad, just too damn bad when you thought about it, because Saks had been starting to think that maybe Fabrini wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe he could mold the guy, make him into a real man, but that wasn’t going to happen.
Minute you trusted a guy like Fabrini, you were finished. First time you turned your back on him he’d slit your throat.
All right then, all right, he thought as he laid there on the captain’s bunk. You guys want to play it this way, you want to play games with me? I’ll show you a couple fucking games you never even heard o
f. This is where you sonsofbitches learn what it’s all about.
Saks calmed himself.
No, he wasn’t going to kill them. At least not Menhaus or Crycek, but Fabrini was a different matter. That little prick had to be made an example of. He was the same rotten apple that had gotten Cook thinking funny and now he was turning Menhaus.
Saks didn’t know how he was going to do it, but it was going to be spectacular. Those who saw Fabrini’s end would never forget it. Not in this lifetime.
Rubbing the sores along his arms and chest, Saks began to plot.
13
One minute there was life and the next there was death.
You could guard against it and fight it at every turn with drugs and disinfectants and healing bandages, but you only beat it back into the shadows. And it was there, in that damp and sullen darkness, that death grew like a tumor, reached out and clutched, squeezed, became something huge and hungry and inevitable. Breathing toxins and fevers. Its cold fingers were iron once they had taken hold and no man could hope to pry them loose. You could try, but death only grabbed that much harder, recognizing its own and determined to take what belonged to it. And it would not stop until life had been uncorked and spilled to the floor and there was only darkness, a whispering darkness that pulled you down and down…
When Gosling died they wrapped him up in a waterproof tarp from the raft and had Chesbro quote some scripture over him. It was the best they could do. Elizabeth managed to keep her Aunt Else out of the entire affair and that was a good thing. Because George was taking it hard, was feeling Gosling’s death like his insides were filled with tacks and ground glass. Whichever way he turned, he hurt and hurt badly. And had Aunt Else laid into him about his negligence as captain of the ship, he would have shared some of that pain with her, he knew. Said things to her that would have waxed her lips shut forever.
They performed the threadbare service out on the deck by lantern light. It was a grim and disturbing affair, those lanterns flickering and shadows jumping and that fog pressing in like corpse-gas.