by Jim Lynch
I hadn’t raised my voice, but coming from me I might as well have swung a sword.
To his credit, he didn’t erupt. He dropped his fork, stared into the middle distance above the TV, rubbed his nose a few times and resumed eating. Twenty minutes later, not even he could ignore Ruby’s announcement that Bernard was on the tube.
I was so nonpolitical back in late 1999 that the WTO fiasco baffled me. What sort of protest could inspire people to throw rocks at Niketown and block intersections with inflatable whales? On this broadcast, downtown looked like footage from some foreign uprising. And the story line swung swiftly from dismay over the protesters’ vandalism to anger over police striking back at citizens. The outrage tripled once a television crew got gassed. Now every channel was questioning the cops’ behavior. And that’s when a camera shifted to a strapping young masked man shouting and gesticulating on the roof of a city patrol car.
“Bernard,” Ruby whispered. Then louder, “That’s Bernard!”
Mother popped out of her office, and we all crowded the twenty-four-inch Zenith for a closer look.
“No, no,” Father mumbled. “Can’t be.”
But then, as if to prove him wrong, this Zorro-like protester, cape and all, started clogging on top of that Crown Vic, hands on hips, kicking his feet in a rowdy rendition of the Icelandic folk dance Grumps had taught us.
“Sweet Jesus,” Father said.
“C’mon, Bernard,” Grumps pleaded. “Get down.”
“He’s too skinny,” Mother said in such a remote monotone it was hard to tell whether she meant too thin to be her son or that she wished he’d eat more.
“What’s he thinking?” Father asked, then louder, “What’s he thinking?”
After a brief silence, Ruby answered: “People who make a peaceful revolution impossible will make a violent revolution inevitable.”
The Bobos gaped as my sister raised a Black Power fist before clearing unfinished plates of meat loaf.
Since Ruby’s sailing rebellion, Mother had rarely cooked, as if her daughter veering off course had freed her from her ordained roles, too. Not that it was the end of parenting, but that she had her time now, too, to make her own observations, to be Darwin in the Galapagos or Hubble peering at the cosmos. Let the Bobos learn how to cook.
They tried for a few weeks before letting me take over. My repertoire was limited to burgers, tacos, fish sticks and meat loaf. Predictably, my father buried everything in ketchup, and Grumps, still trying not to overstay his welcome, loved it all exactly as it was served. Midway through my apprenticeship, Ruby announced she was a vegan.
“At Sixth and Union today,” a big-haired TV lady said, “the First Amendment was suspended.”
As they cut to commercials, we all asked questions at once, except for Mother, who grabbed a warm hat and stepped outside.
Others also must’ve recognized Bernard and his televised jig, because within an hour two police officers came knocking.
“Mr. Johannssen?”
“That’s right.”
“Mind if we come in?”
“Of course I mind,” Father said. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“We’d like to speak to Bernard Johannssen.”
“Well, congratulations. So would we, but we don’t know where he’s at. Hasn’t lived here for months.”
“We’d sure like to talk to him, sir. Where exactly might we find him?”
“I just answered that question. You got any others?”
“Sir, your son is suspected of potential criminal activities in connection to the protests going—”
“We have a television.”
“Well, sir—”
“Last we heard, he was working on Rainier, rescuing those climbers who get stuck and expect taxpayers to save their fannies.”
They kept peeking past the Bobos at me.
“That’s Josh, Bernard’s little brother.” My father snickered at the notion of his middle child clogging on a cop car.
“Somebody upstairs?” the cop asked after hearing footsteps above while his sidekick looked wildly for a staircase.
“This is the upstairs,” Father said. “My wife’s on the roof.”
Sidekick unsnapped his gun holster at the sound of more movement above.
“I see,” the cop said. “And what exactly is she doing up there?”
“Telescope,” I interjected, before Dad could insult them again. “She’s an astronomer.”
The two cops exchanged glances. “I’m sorry, but we’re gonna have to take a look. You understand, Mr. Johannssen?”
“Of course! Having the police investigate my wife’s stargazing while there’s rioting going on downtown makes perfect sense.”
One cop held the ladder while the other ascended with a flashlight. What he found was a middle-aged woman in a Russian fur hat and a faded yellow bathrobe, sitting on a folding chair and staring through a large telescope.
I’d built her a level platform on the flat tarred section. In exchange, she’d taught me about constellations, planets and supernovas—or exploding stars, as I preferred to call them. She’d learned how to measure the brightness and location of stars so we’d notice if anything changed. I went along with her but couldn’t fathom how we could spot anything that telescopes ten times as powerful somehow missed. Still, I jotted the numbers she called out, as if sharing in her quest to monitor our galaxy.
“Venus,” she said to the cop, pointing at what looked like easily the brightest star in the sky. “It’s as close as it gets. Wanna see?”
Subsequent articles would paint Bernard as one of the masterminds of the riots and a member of something called the Ruckus Society. We had no idea what was true, though there was no stopping his police-car clogging from playing over and over in our minds.
THE GETAWAY SAILBOAT
A month later, on a Wednesday afternoon three days before the new millennium, I was watching my grandfather light a cigar and crack his first Rainier of the day, his 3:45 p.m. ritual, up fifteen minutes from the prior year and a full hour from the year before that. If I could have just one short video of Grumps, I might choose this moment for the focus and appreciation that came over him when he puffed a new cigar to life, rocking it between thumb and forefinger, as if gauging its symmetricality, then dipping his nose closer to the smoke before straightening, rubbing his hip in a circular motion, dragging his thumb under his shirt to scratch his spine and finally exhaling very slowly before handing out stale bread to the geese.
No one had a bigger soft spot for Canada geese. He preferred these boisterous turkey-sized, black-and-white beasts to swans or eagles, pelicans or flamingos, and their nasal honk and jumbo turds didn’t annoy him at all. Not surprisingly, his expanding goose family returned to our boathouse every spring, then eventually quit traveling altogether and stayed year-round—his affection and generosity single-handedly transforming them from migrants to residents. He’d named at least eight and recognized them all on sight, or so he claimed; the loquacious matriarch he called Dora, after his mother. But Parks and Rec had recently declared their poop a health menace and began gassing the geese en masse in mobile vans, inciting Grumps to speak publicly for the first time in his life.
“I’ve lived all my years in this fine city, and most people who know me would consider me a reasonable man,” he told the Parks board. “And I certainly didn’t come here with the intent to liken you to Nazis. But after hearing your rationale for systematically killing thousands of innocent and glorious birds, I can’t think of a more accurate way to describe you people.”
After he smoked and drank and shoveled shit off the dock, Grumps sat and scrawled in his big red journal. I’d always assumed it was design ideas or contract logistics until I found his pages open to what looked like the beginning of a screenplay he’d entitled Against the Wind. His cast of characters? Otto Helm, Max Ebb, Slack Tide and Swirling Eddy. While Grumps scribbled ideas, I continued glassing the hull of an experimental race boat, a Falcon 35,
that Father had designed for some fast-talking orthodontist.
Traditional Joho construction involved eight layers of mat and roving through most of the hull. On this one, though, we were using just four layers. And instead of three-quarter-inch plywood for bulkheads and coring, we went with half-inch. Father swore builders—at least those who wanted to stay in business!—were going even lighter to build competitive boats. Grumps cursed the drawings and refused to let Father call the design a Joho, first quietly, later forcefully, before apologizing to everybody for losing his temper, though holding his line.
The other boat we were building, an original thirty-one-footer, was the latest testament to Grumps’s ongoing insistence on grace and durability. Step aboard and you immediately sensed integrity and elegance even if you didn’t notice all the bronze, the Burmese teak, the curved cockpit trim and the laminated beams below.
We were behind on deliveries, but even after Bernard’s exit the Bobos wouldn’t hire more than part-time help, though we routinely needed at least two more glassers and another woodworker. My father responded by exhorting us to work harder, especially himself. Today he was really grinding, and I’d seen him only during his mini-breaks, when his sweat-blistered forehead would briefly rise above the bulkhead. I was listening to Grumps shovel poop and discuss world events with Dora when Bernard slipped inside the back door.
“Hey, Josh,” he said, like it was just the two of us. “Got a minute?”
I followed him outside without telling anybody, not wanting him to think I let the Bobos know my whereabouts at all times.
Smirking beneath a wool ski hat, he stuck out his fist and offered me a stick of Trident.
“I need you to survey a boat for me,” he said. “Just docked near Gasworks Park. I’ve only got an hour. Think you could swing that?”
This all felt normal somehow. Checking out a boat on a one-hour deadline? Fantastic! I was flattered, giddy and blushing.
We talked nonstop to the dock, him trying to catch up on the Ruby saga, me trying to find out where he’d been and whether he was still a fugitive or had plea-bargained the two malicious-mischief charges for damaging a police car and a Starbucks window.
“They’ve dropped hundreds of charges,” I said. “Everybody’s getting off.” I told him how the cops had come to the house and climbed up on the roof, though I was too jacked to register his responses. When he boasted of living on the streets in Eugene for a week, I finally realized the odor following us down the street was his.
Walking up to the boat, I didn’t need to see the shadows of the recently removed vinyl letters to know her name. Bravado was an old Cal 36 owned by an officious local racer whom Grumps used to point to as an exception to his rule that all Republicans were powerboaters.
“So you stole it.”
He laughed. “It’s just a thing, Josh. You heard Ruby. Sailboats are bloodless things.”
“But this thing isn’t yours.”
“I don’t believe in personal property.”
“That’s convenient. So you stole it.”
“I received it,” he said. “Somebody else liberated it. Or, if you prefer: it was donated to me,” he said, chortling at his word choice.
“Who makes a getaway on a sailboat?” I asked him. “Ever see Bruce Willis or Schwarzenegger or Stallone leap on a sailboat and escape danger at two-point-three knots?”
He rocked at his hips and grinned at me. “I forgot how funny you get when you’re pissed.”
“Why’re you running? Those stupid charges aren’t that big a deal.”
“Up to ten years in jail and twenty grand in fines sounds pretty big to me. And there might be more. I’ve participated in a few other actions, Josh.”
“Actions?”
“I’m leaving on this boat. You helping or not?”
“So now I have to go to jail, too?”
“Can we skip the melodrama? All I’m asking is for you to look this over and tell me how well it’s equipped for the outside.”
“Outside what?”
“The ocean, Josh! What’re you missing here?”
“It’s a race boat!”
“Used to be. Now it’s basically a pretty fast cruiser. And that’s what I want to do—cruise fast. So what’s she need? You know this stuff so much better than me. The boat’s open. Look around. Tell me what’s missing.”
“Autopilot?” I asked, stepping aboard.
“Affirmative.”
“Backup autopilot?”
“Negative.”
“Radar?”
He grinned. “I’ve got an air horn.”
“How ’bout anchors?”
“One thirty-pounder.”
“You need at least two, and one should be forty or bigger. How about a bunk to strap yourself into?”
“Got climbing harnesses and ropes.”
Scrambling through the boat, I tried to focus, but my vision pulsed while Bernard kept glancing out the window, watching the dock behind us, cracking his knuckles, one by one.
“You’ll need three reefs in the main,” I said, “instead of two—if you’ve even got that. And you need a jackline along the cabin top to tie into when you go forward. If you clip into the lifelines, you’ll just beat against the hull before you drown. Pick up a solar panel or two, when you can, and rig the reeflines so you can handle them from the cockpit. Might need a backing plate and a block right here to do that.”
“Man, you worry.”
“What’re you really doing?” I asked, suddenly so frustrated I was afraid I’d cry. “I mean, is there a plan?”
“I’m gonna be a citizen of the sea.” His smile was almost sad. “I’m headed out, Josh.”
“Have you noticed that it’s late December?” My voice squeaked. “You checked the storm patterns?”
He reached for my shoulder, but I wouldn’t let him touch me. “Like I said,” he whispered, “you worry too much.”
“What about food? Or are you just planning on catching seabirds with your bare hands?”
“Got enough cans of bad chili to last a few weeks. You’ve always known I’d be going, Josh. Don’t act so fucking astonished.”
Then I just said it: “What makes you think you can leave us?” I couldn’t have sounded any whinier.
“What makes you think you have to stay?” he asked, so calmly that this sounded like the easiest question ever.
The ensuing Johannssen brothers standoff dragged on for a few seconds before I finally understood. “You don’t really want me to check this boat out,” I said, wincing at my gullibility. “You want money.”
He glanced up the dock again, then directly at me. “Actually, I want both.”
After jogging to the bank, I emptied most of my account, loped back to the boat and handed him a fat roll of fifties totaling $1,350. Then I helped him power through the locks so I could hear his diesel, like a doc listening to an old heart, but mostly to spend another hour with my brother.
The lake water gushed out the front gate as we gradually lowered to salty Puget Sound with just two other boats along for the descent and a few thrilled tourists pointing at us, as if we were exotic chimpanzees trained to operate boats.
I made a list of all the spare engine parts he needed. He smiled, glanced at the scrap of paper and tossed it below.
When I told him Father was still ignoring Ruby, his eyes flashed, but he didn’t say anything.
“Why were you on top of the police car in the first place?” I demanded, feeling like I’d paid for some semblance of an answer by now.
“That’s a longer conversation, Brother. And you can tell Dad he’s an ass.”
“Tell him yourself,” I said as it began to rain.
“And look out for Ruby,” he added. “She needs you. Mom and Grumps do, too.”
“Thanks for telling me to do what I’m already doing.”
“I’ll write as soon as I get somewhere that feels safe,” he continued. “For now, though, this has gotta be our secret.”
I laughed. Another damn secret, this one coming a day after Ruby confided she’d be leaving once she graduated and never coming back. Two days before that, Mother had told me she’d applied for professorships in Arizona and Texas as well as the UDub. But don’t tell anybody.
He dropped me off at the Shilshole gas dock without tying off. “Josh,” he shouted, peeling away beneath the now-deafening rain, “you’re my hero!”
“Yeah right,” I mumbled to myself, the rain seeping down my forehead as he puttered away without a visible flicker of regret or fear in the slowest getaway vehicle imaginable.
Foolish as this appeared, I would’ve left with him if he’d invited me.
I wouldn’t see Bernard for five years. Far more would happen than he’d ever share, but that’s to be expected. As a psychologist friend once told me, a sailboat’s just a mechanism for a journey.
Perhaps. But from my mother’s vantage, a sailboat is a mechanism for transferring the motion of wind into the motion of water. The wind pushes the boat, the boat pushes the water.
THE INTERNATIONAL SIGN OF FORNICATION
Most people have never sailed. So when you take them out, they wear clumsy shoes and start calling you Ahab or Bligh. Or if they’re particularly nervous, they’ll quote Whitman—O Captain! my Captain!—and shout Bon voyage! or talk like pirates, as if this were the freshest improv: Arrrggh! Keelhaul the wench! They’ll offer to help, but what they really want to know is where to sit and what to hold on to and when you’ll get them a drink.
If timing and elements cooperate, it all begins gently with hoisting the sails and killing the engine. If they’re not too spooked they might even start to notice how different the world sounds and looks out here at this strolling pace, as if we’d popped out of the atmosphere and were gazing down at our blue planet. This is when they just might suspend the everyday humdrum. You see it in their glances at shore, where time has stopped and this breeze is having no impact whatsoever. For some, bells start ringing. Why don’t we get out on the water more often? Or they start vowing, openly or secretly, to take lessons, the pledge softening with the return to land. But they have right now. And as twilight approaches, the rising warmth of the sunbaked ground creates thermals that need somewhere to go. Voilà! A side rail eases toward the drink and our speed doubles. So I ask them to steer and watch them feel the wind transfer from the sails to the rudder to the throbbing tiller in their grip. Their eyes widen as if I’d handed them a snake, and we rush toward shore as the depth sounder drops—twenty feet, sixteen, thirteen, then eleven. We better tack soon, I say, but you’re the skipper, so it’s your call. They look wildly about, then shout, Hard alee!