Ghost Sea: A Novel (Dugger/Nello Series)

by Ferenc Máté

  Nello squeezed the squeezebox. He looked at the night, then looked back at her, then began, almost in a whisper, “Era la festa di San Gennaro, ll’anno appresso cante e suone…bancarelle e prucessione…chi se po dimentica?”

  His voice slowly strengthened, and I got enough breath back to begin to blow the tune. Charlie sat up. “C’era la banda di Pignataro, centinaia di bancarelle.” She took back her shirt from Hay, covered up her breasts with her arms across them, tossed her hair off her face, and began to sway. “Dove sta Zaza? Oh Madonna mia. Come fa Zaza, sensa sua zia?” With her gaze at first on Nello, then away in some distance, she danced—no longer the stiff gestures of a child trying to please grown-ups, but the movements of a woman capturing a man.

  I TOOK THE first anchor watch.

  Hay snored in his cabin and I shut his door to drown him to a drone. The galley stove blazed; the cabin was steamy, and I turned down the wicks, snuffed the lamps, and climbed out into the mist. As I slid shut the main hatch, I glanced down through the skylight into the aft cabin, and saw them in the soft flicker of a lamp, Charlie, her white flesh aglow, and Nello touching her with incomparable carefulness and wonder, as if discovering a new universe, one star at a time.

  I bundled up in the cockpit and stared at the wall of fog, beyond which I could envision nothing.

  18

  THE NORTH

  When a shaman dreams that the soul of a deceased person is hungry, he requests the survivors to burn food and clothing for them. The souls or spirits of the dead can use only objects that have been burnt.

  —FRANZ BOAS

  At dawn the fog changed from black to gray. The island was still obscured but a breeze stirred and the fog now thickened into banks, now thinned into tatters, revealed a point here, a bluff there, or a clump of cedars drooping over the sea.

  There was a peace about this place that we were reluctant to disturb. We moved about quietly. I hauled up the main, Hay folded the still-wet clothes and the awning, and Nello began taking in anchor rode, while keeping a protective eye on Charlie, who helped in the cockpit then went down into the galley, softly humming, “Oi vita, oi vita mia.” The space on the boat seemed much greater now—all of us remained a bit more distant, walked by Charlie with more care, addressed her more politely.

  We sailed out the anchor, took the island to starboard, and edged along the shore out of fog bank into brilliant patches of light, then back into the gloom again.

  Still tied to the mizzenmast, Sayami had come to. He huddled in the cockpit while Nello washed his wounds with warm salt water, hissing and twitching until Nello lost his temper and shook him.

  “Maybe the water’s too hot,” Hay suggested.

  Nello stirred it so it would cool. When he began wrapping the new bandage, Hay again advised. “Not too tight. You’ll cut off the circulation.”

  “Here,” Nello snapped, throwing down the bandage. “You shot him; you fix him!”

  Hay took over timidly.

  “What the hell you shoot him for, anyway?”

  “He was going to shoot Captain Dugger.”

  “Going to, going to! The road to hell is paved with good intentions. He lowered his rifle.”

  “I was sure he’d shoot.”

  “Yeah!” Nello snapped at Sayami. “What the hell was that all about?”

  Sayami looked insulted. “I was doing my job. I was told the captain was wanted for murder. A thousand-dollar reward.”

  I was caught by total surprise. “A thousand dollars? For me?”

  “Paid by the state of California, for you alive. If you wound up dead he’d pay it to me himself.”

  “Hopkins?”

  “Who’s Hopkins?”

  “So why didn’t you shoot?” Nello snapped.

  “Why have it on my conscience? The Dutchman was going to sink you anyway. Besides, I saw his face.”

  “I bet you saw my face; you aimed right between my eyes.”

  Sayami formed a sad smile. “That’s just it,” he said. “I can’t shoot people once I see their faces. Especially fools in love. He told me about you and her. He knew all about it.”

  No one moved. No one spoke. Hay stared frozen. Nello leaned on the bridge deck in confusion. The fog opened and sunlight turned the mist around us golden.

  “Who?” Nello asked.

  “What?”

  “You said, he knew, he told me. Who is he?”

  Sayami looked quizzically at him. “He, the husband. Her husband. Hay. Mr. Hay. He would have paid me the reward. He. Who do you think?”

  Nello spun and grabbed Hay by the collar. “You son of a bitch! You offered him a thousand bucks to kill Cappy?”

  “No. Honestly. I…”

  “He just said! Didn’t you hear?”

  “What do you want from him?” Sayami burst in. “He doesn’t know anything.”

  Nello, without letting go of Hay, yanked out his knife and held it at Sayami’s throat. “I’m not in the mood for this!” he hissed. “Who’s bull-fucking who here?”

  “He’s crazy!” Hay yelled. “I never said a word of it!”

  “It’s true,” Sayami said. “It wasn’t him! It was the husband. Hay!”

  Nello held the knife, trying to figure out who to sink it into. Then he lowered it. But he held on to Hay, maybe just to have something to hold on to. Sayami picked up the bandage and went on wrapping his own arm. “I let go a thousand dollars out of some sentimental crap,” he said bitterly. “And another five hundred for him,” he said, pointing at Hay. “Mr. Hay said he’d give me five hundred to kill that wimpy son of a bitch because he was after her too. I guess he doesn’t like competition, our Mr. Hay.”

  Nello scooped some cold dew off the deck and rubbed it on his face. “What did you say?” he said.

  “When?” Sayami asked, annoyed.

  “You said Hay promised you five hundred to kill him. But he is Hay.”

  “He maybe your Hay, but he ain’t my Hay.”

  “You sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” Sayami said. “I know Hay and I know him. He works for Hay. Olson. A professor, studies Indians. Gets paid to go collect things.” Then he laughed, “Like his wife.”

  “This true?” Nello said. “You Olson? Work for Hay?”

  “Yes.”

  “And love his wife on the side.”

  “I’m not alone in that.”

  “No,” Nello said. “It seems to be the national pastime.” He went below, and I heard him clang the bottle on his teeth as he took a slug of rum.

  “Why didn’t Hay come for her himself?” I said.

  “Safer this way.” Sayami shrugged, then vinced in pain. “His fortune is from insurance. He loves insurance. He wanted to insure that he stayed alive.”

  WE WERE SO close to shore that even in the cold fog I could smell the cedars. We had to tack. The current ran strong against us now and although the wind had stiffened, we barely clawed along. Nello checked the jib, then came back to the cockpit, tidied up the sheets, and, holding a coil of rope in his hand, said mostly to himself, “I’ll be damned if I close my eyes tonight; never know who the hell I might wake up to be.”

  He adjusted the main with meticulous precision. “Cappy, I know you’re glad Hay isn’t here. But if he’s not here, then where exactly is he?”

  I FELT MYSELF shivering, and not just from the cold. I could not conjure up the world beyond the fog, and now our world aboard was slipping into chaos. I closed my eyes to try to see her, but now that Hay wasn’t Hay, she seemed just as vague as the faint shapes in the mist.

  Sayami finished his bandage and now tried to tie it off. Nello had to help him.

  “So I lost a thousand bucks on you and five hundred on him. I figure somebody owes me something for my human kindness. Something besides bullet holes.”

  We ignored him.

  “Now I know Hay gave him five hundred spending money,” he went on, pointing at Olson. “I think this is as good a time to spend it as any. What do y
ou think, Mr. Olson? If I can earn five hundred by killing you, I think it’s only fair I get that much to let you live.”

  “Shut up!” Nello hissed, and wrenched his bandage. “Or I’ll let you bleed to death.”

  The wind hardened. The fog rent. We were beating nicely now because inlets opened both to port and starboard, causing the current to slow. I looked around for the canoe. Olson looked too. But there was nothing dark and flat at the edges of the fog.

  Charlie, her face flushed from the heat of the stove, poked her head out the hatch. When she saw Nello she broke into a smile. “Everybody hungry?” she said.

  BY LATE MORNING the current slacked and we pulled long tacks between mountainous shores. The fog lifted but only to the masthead, leaving us with the sensation of sailing under a burden. Sayami slept. Olson went to take up his old post by the mast, then he seemed to remember something—perhaps that he was no longer Hay—and with his head down came aft and went below. I pitied him; he had lost a lot all in one blow, even his name. In a way he scared me more than Sayami; not only was he smart and a good shot, but he had nothing left to lose.

  I was sitting in the cockpit filling the logbook with banalities—the only thing that really mattered were the engine hours to keep track of the gas—when I noticed Nello’s hands grip the spokes hard. His eyes were tight.

  “Besides the hangover, what’s eating you?” I said.

  “Nothing. Life’s ducky.”

  “Come on. We’re out of the pass alive; there’s no one after us; you have the sweetest woman down there who’d walk on coals for you—”

  “Exactly!” he snapped. “I always knew God had it in for me, but not this much.”

  “Don’t kid me. You’re in love.”

  “For chrissake, Cappy! Her age.”

  “You were made for each other.”

  “Except she was made twenty years too late. Look at my face! Looks like they fought the war on it, then went home and left the trenches.”

  “Come on, she worships you. And you care for her. Hell, you even cared for her before she was a she.”

  “That’s just it,” he said. “I don’t want her to waste her life nursing an old man.” He looked away.

  “You poor bugger,” I said. “You really got it bad. It’s all right to have it bad, just so you don’t float off and leave reality behind, ‘cause then up it pops in front of you, in the form of a barely submerged rock that rips open the hull and sends us to the bottom. All because you didn’t see the kelp bed that signaled a rock as plain as day.”

  “I see it, thanks.” And he nodded past the port bow, where the floating fronds of kelp glistened more random than the ripples.

  The wind cleared the fog, and after a few more tacks the sun beat down out of a pure blue sky and blazed blinding on the sea. The rail went under and stayed. She was struggling too hard—we had to reef. I kept the helm while Nello worked at the mast, easing the main halyard, hauling down the sail, cleating the downhaul, hauling the halyard with the sail now slatting, the lines snaking; then he tied in the reef lines one by one, cursing, pounding flat the sail, clawing. “Slack off, Cappy, I’m no fuckin’ Hercules!” It took a long time. But now she kept her rail up and sliced well through the seas.

  He came back to the cockpit, coiled the mainsheet, then slammed it on the bridgedeck. “The strait’s blowing like a whore,” he burst out.

  “Let her blow.”

  “You kidding? It’s blowing twenty knots in here, that means a gale out there! And it’s so narrow you have to tack once a mile, and every time you tack you lose everything you gained. It’ll take us a week to beat fifty miles.”

  I felt sorry for him; he had it bad; maybe worse than I. His movements were as hesitant as if he were doing everything for the first time.

  “For chrissake,” I said kindly. “Jump in. When was the last time life gave you something to jump into?”

  He didn’t answer. Fussed with the sheets.

  “Anyway,” I said, “it’ll eat you alive if you don’t.”

  At the end of our inlet, below the island’s mountains, we could see the strait, dense with marching waves. The gale blew their tops into a dense layer of mist.

  JUST OFF OUR bow, a glistening geyser shot toward the sun. When the wind blew it apart, a dark fin rose, carved an arc, and slid under again. Then others came, five or six at once, and more geysers. “Good omen. Killer whales.” Nello grinned and pulled the tin bucket from the lazarette, leaned over the side, and carefully, so that the rush of water didn’t snatch it from his hand, he skimmed the top off a wave. He brought it back to Sayami and shook him awake. “Hey. I’m trying to save your life.” Sayami came drowsily to. Nello lifted the pail. “Put some in your mouth and spit it toward the whales. Move. The closer they are, the stronger the spell.”

  They were close, alright, but had spread somewhat, allowing the ketch in among them.

  Sayami sat up grimacing in pain, cupped his tied hands, then spat like a fountain over the side.

  “Yell, ‘da’gibixla’ ye’golemex, n’noalakwe!’” Nello shouted.

  “Great,” I said. “Get him good and healthy so he can kill us.”

  “The sooner he heals, the less we have to nurse him.”

  “If you had let him drown, we wouldn’t have to nurse him at all.”

  He watched the whales, watched them surface, arc, hang in the air looking at us with their great eyes, unperturbed, indifferent. Somehow I felt safer with them close. As soon as I felt safer, I sensed her again, nearby. I called Nello back, asked him where he thought they’d be.

  “Depends,” he said. “On how tired he is. How much she helps. He’s so close to home now maybe he’ll rush right through. Only thirty miles before he turns in.”

  “You just said fifty.”

  “Fifty for us, thirty for him. There’s a canoe pass at high tide up a bay. We go another twenty.”

  The whales, as if dancing, leapt into the air.

  THE STRAIT BLEW a gale right in our teeth, blew the words we uttered right back down our throats. The waves were dense, high, steep. The ketch bucked violently, endlessly, rose gallantly over one, but the next was right behind, and she slammed into its face as if into a wall. The ship’s bell clanged fiercely and the spray felt like hail. Nello steered. I stood stubbornly by the winches; I’d be damned if I let some cranky strait keep me from going north. Charlie sang, and Olson turned a color I had never seen before. We beat through green water for two hours and ended up three boat-lengths farther north.

  “I was wrong!” Nello shouted in a lull. “It’ll take us a year!”

  We pounded on.

  “Over there!” he hollered, and pointed at a wedge of an island ending in a sandspit that sheltered a shoaling bay. At its marshy end, a float house listed in the mud.

  It was late afternoon. “Fine,” I mumbled. “We could use a rest.”

  We shot into the lee of the island, edged as close to the spit and the island as we dared, and dropped anchor. Even without the jib, the wind still blew the bow down and we dug in. It took two of us to wrestle in the main and lash it to the boom.

  When Charlie lit the stove, the smoke blasted aft and swept down over the stern.

  At sunset, the wind eased some and the water around us became calmer. Nello wanted to take Charlie for a row, show her the island and the tidal pools, but I guessed it was mostly to get her away from us. We launched the skiff and it danced at the end of the painter. Shreds of red clouds swept at speed overhead; the foam in the strait and the chop around the ketch turned red, and over the spit and the tip of the island a pink spray flew like horizontal rain. The black fins glided back and forth along the shore.

  “Could that be a burial island?” Olson asked as Nello lowered the oars into the skiff.

  “Could be,” Nello said. “There was a summer village in the bay before the plague.”

  Olson hesitated then got up the courage. “Would you mind very much dropping me off there to have a look? It
would be a great favor.”

  Nello must have felt sorry for him, because he said, “Sure,” and while he helped Charlie down, Olson went and rummaged in his cabin. When he came up he was loaded like a pack mule. “Cameras, notebooks,” he said sheepishly. They went.

  With the three of them plus the gear, the skiff rode low—Olson in the stern with his gear in his lap, Nello at the oars, and Charlie huddling low in the bow. When a swell swung in from the strait and raised and rocked them, Nello yelled, “Duck down. Duck down!” and Charlie looked around, confused, having no idea what the hell “Duck down” could be.

  They landed in the crook formed by the island and the spit, Charlie jumping out first to lighten the bow and pulling the skiff closer in. Nello held the skiff while Olson clambered out, leaving much of his stuff behind. Then they pulled the skiff up on the sand. The tide was rising; the spit shortening. Nello and Charlie clambered among the rocks at the end of the spit. Olson had vanished; must have gone up island. I pulled out the binoculars and looked out into the strait where the foam blew, looked up and down both shores for the canoe, looked slowly, rock by rock, tree by tree, and only when I heard the shouts did I spin around.

  The two figures on the spit had separated, the small one standing still, the other running hard toward the island. I raised the binoculars—could hardly see in the dusk—but I saw Olson in the skiff, rowing with all his might, away from the spit, straight toward the bay. Nello leapt in the water and thrashed after him but Olson did well with long, hard pulls—he was already more than a hundred feet from shore. I cursed and yelled. Sayami awoke with a start. Nello was swimming hard after the skiff but with each pull of the oars the distance between them widened. He stopped. Treaded water. The fins of the killer whales arced in the fading light. He turned and looked at Charlie alone on the shrinking spit—then began to swim back. Swam. Stopped. He waved toward the ketch. It was a while before the wind brought his broken shout. He swam, then stopped again and waved. The shout—it could have been anything—but sounded like, “Kill him!” My first thought was, How? I could try raising the anchor and hoisting the sail, but alone? Olson would have by then skimmed over the bar, out of our reach, in the shoal bay. The tide rushed in. The spit vanished. Charlie stood in the sea.