by Paul Malmont
She tumbled back under the force of its weight and landed heavily on her back. The impact knocked the wind out of her and she began to struggle, desperate to get the creature off her so she could catch her breath. She clawed at its face with her fingernails and it pushed away from her in pain. The texture of its face reminded her of the yellow wax beans she had prepared as a little girl. Gasping, she pulled herself to her feet. Looking around quickly, she could see that Ron and Otis were on the ground. She couldn’t see Lester but she could hear the sound of his fight by the bunker door. The creature which had attacked her jumped in front of her, enraged. On its face were bloody stripes left by her fingernails. She saw a blur at the bunker wall, yet another man. Her small party was now outnumbered.
Her attacker sprang at her with a howl at the same instant that a sharp crack rang through the night, echoing off the rocks. The creature seemed to suddenly curl in midair, its trajectory changing. As it flopped heavily to the ground, Norma stared dumbly at it. Blood spurted with each beat of a weakening heart from a hole which had cratered open in the side of the beast’s head. The shocking sound of three more successive blasts made her tear her gaze away from the twitching corpse, and she looked up to see Otis and Ron pushing dead creatures off them.
“Lester!” She ran to the bunker and nearly tumbled down the stairs trying to help him. He was leaning against one of the concrete walls trying to catch his breath. The biggest creature, by far, had attacked him. His shirt was ripped open and his chest was scraped and bloodied beneath it. He threw an arm around her and she kissed his face. The creature who had attacked him lay in a heap at his feet. Chunks of its brains were leaving bloody tracks as they dripped down the heavy door.
“Thank God you got to the gun!” she said.
“No,” he said. “He did.”
She looked up to the top of the wall, to the fifth creature she had seen out of the corner of her eye rushing to join the fracas. He stood on the rim of the wall, the smoking pistol hanging with easy familiarity in his right hand. The wind swept his long duster around him while the moon behind him bathed him in its silvery glow. The man pushed his battered ten-gallon hat back on his head, revealing a handsome young face ringed by long, loose blond hair. He seemed as untouched by any old military chemicals as the island trees themselves were untouched by the color green.
“Ain’t those boys full of some fiendish shit?” No doubt, he was a Texan in drawl and swagger. “I sure am glad y’all decided to show up.” He twirled the pistol back and forth expertly on his finger the way she’d seen only expert rodeo shooters back in La Plata do. “I’m even gladder y’all decided to bring a pistol along. Even if it is kind of small.”
“You’re glad!” she exclaimed.
“You folks mind if I ask if y’all got any grub?” His grin was bright and charming. “There ain’t nuthin’ to eat out here ’cept fish. An’ I hate fish.”
Episode Thirty-Six
“THANK YOU, ma’am,” the cowboy said as she handed him another opened tin of William Underwood’s deviled ham. He had already scooped the meat out of four other cans and he proceeded to do the same to this one.
Otis and Ron were on deck piloting the yacht back into the sound as the sun came up. The strong wind continued to hold steady. Lester sat across from the man. Norma guessed him to be about the same age as the boys on deck, somewhere in his twenties.
“You’re a long way from home, aren’t you, friend?” Lester asked.
“Not as far as I been,” he replied. “Once I gave up prizefightin’ and caught a ship out of New Orleans, I been to Rio de Janeiro, Capetown, Fiji, Marrakesh, Singapore, Borneo, Egypt, Zanzibar, Panama. Not bad for a cowhand from North Dakota. An’ it’s a damn sight better ’n being punched in the face.”
He tore a hunk of bread from the loaf and chewed it greedily. She poured them all some fresh coffee. Then she took the pot on deck and freshened Ron and Otis’s cups as well.
“We’re making good time,” Otis said to her from behind the wheel. His left eye was swollen shut from the attack. The skin on the back of Ron’s knuckles was scraped off where he had tried to hit one creature. “We should be back around midnight.” Otis winked at her reassuringly. Even after having taken a beating, he still had it in him to flirt with her.
She rewarded his efforts with a tired smile. “That’s good,” she said. “Either of you want some more Bayer?” The day was breaking in scarlet streaks across the sky.
They both nodded and she handed them the bottle. Ron chewed his dry. “The stranger giving up anything useful yet? Like a name?”
“Lew,” she said, then paused at the stairs. “Actually what he calls himself is ‘Lew No-Less-No-More,’ so we’re just calling him Lew.”
“I don’t trust him,” Otis said, crossly.
“He saved our lives. Those things would have killed us.”
“I’d almost put mine down,” Otis said with a shrug.
“You’re just jealous that he got to rescue us and Mrs. Dent,” Ron said, gleeful.
“Can’t you work on the engine again?” Otis asked, giving the throttle his undivided attention.
Below, she took her seat next to Lester. The cowboy nodded at her and continued his story. The pace of his eating had slowed to dabbing at the juices at the bottom of the tin with his finger. “Ever been to Formosa?”
“No.”
“It’s a Chinese island out there in the Pacific. Nothin’ but fish markets and skeeters. We put in there about three months ago. Had to run the Japanese blockade to do it, so it was really some tough going. Docked in Keelung harbor and unloaded some cargo. Guns. Weapons. That whole side of the world’s at war but you wouldn’t know it back here so much, I ’spect.
“Then, after a few days of doing what sailors do in port, we took on some passengers. Chinese men. About two dozen or so of the meanest cusses you ever saw. Bastards each and every one of ’em. Stayed belowdecks the whole trip back, smokin’ butts, playin’ cards, fightin’, cookin’ up food that smelled like manure, and prayin’ to this big ugly statue of a god which they brung with ’em. Wasn’t the first time we smuggled human souls from one place to another. I ain’t proud of that, but it’s true.
“There was one American came aboard with ’em. Army fella. He’s the one what seemed to have the arrangement with the captain. He didn’t stay below with them others. He took quarters with the captain and the mate. Spoke fluent Chinese. He put off in Honolulu with one of the Chinese. Big fella. Seemed to be the boss of all the others. I drove ’em to the airport where they had a plane, and some other men, waiting to take them stateside. Seems like they were in more of a hurry than what our boat could provide for. One of the things that went with ’em was that unholy statue. I was glad for that.
“We headed on through the canal after that, and most days, even though it was infernal hot, you wouldn’t even know there were men down below. They got real quiet once them others left. Just did their business real quiet. To be honest, I near forgot about ’em. We all did.”
He drank some coffee and continued, “A few nights ago we sighted the Montauk lighthouse and come around the point at dawn on the tide. Late in the day we put in at Crap Island. Then he takes us straightaway up the path to the storeroom. Now as you saw from the looks of the place, there ain’t been nobody set foot there in a generation. But Cap’n had the key to that door from that army guy. I got it now, along with all the other keys to the ship. Cap’n throws open the door. ‘That’s our cargo, lads,’ he says. ‘Let’s get it aboard.’
“That bunker was full of fifty-gallon metal drums. Those eggs were older than dirt. Rusty old tins full of some liquid. There were about three hundred of ’em, all told. And that’s what we did all night was haul them drums down the hill to the hold.
“I was ashore with half a dozen of my shipmates when we heard the shootin’ start. Quick as a stuck bull those Chinese had taken over the ship. They killed the men that were aboard. They had all the guns. They opened fire
on us and drove us up the hill and there was nothing we could do. We watched them steal our boat. Our home. It’s a strange feeling to be marooned on a deserted island within sight of New York City. Only, as it turns out, the island wasn’t really deserted after all.
“All the time we were loadin’ the drums I kept feeling we were being watched. Soon after the ship was away, a man appeared on the beach. We hailed him from the bluff and asked where he was from. ‘Providence,’ was all he shouted back. We ran down the beach to him thinkin’ that he must be a fisherman and must have a boat. But when we got closer to him we could tell that he wasn’t exactly all right. And then his three friends came out of the scrub and ambushed us. We headed back up the hill to the bunker but I was the only one what made it all the way.”
He idly set one of the empty tins spinning on edge. “I couldn’t very well leave my buddies out there, even though they were dead. They wouldn’t have left me behind. So I started sneakin’ out and draggin’ ’em one by one back to the bunker.”
“Wasn’t that dangerous?” Norma asked.
“Otherwise I would have been bored to death. Once you knew they were out there it was easy to keep away from them. I tried a time or two to sneak up on ’em and kill a couple but that didn’t happen either. I couldn’t kill them and they couldn’t kill me and we left each other alone for a day or so. It was just the surprise of ’em that got my cap’n and mates killed. Schooly Pete. Crooks. Sammy the Smoker. Hey Tony. Q. And Irving. Good men. I wish I could have done more for ’em. I ain’t never spoke a bad word about a man because o’ his race but if I ever get my hands on any one of those Chinese sons of bitches there’ll be hell to pay.”
His hands were rough and coarse from years of hard labor and sport. He drummed his fingers on the table. “I missed you all comin’ along ’cause I was on the far side thinkin’ about whether or not I was desperate enough to paddle a log across to Connecticut.”
“Glad you didn’t have to find out,” Lester said.
“Oh, I coulda done it. I just wouldn’t a been happy about it.” He yawned. “Y’all don’t mind if I stretch out for a few moments and get some shut-eye, do you? I haven’t slept good in days.”
Lester and Norma left him in their cabin and went up on deck, where they told the story to Ron and Otis. The rest of the trip was uneventful as they nursed their bruises. Their new passenger slumbered blissfully through the day into the night. Ron examined some of Lester’s electronic inventions and the two of them discussed engineering plans. Otis tried to speak to Norma several times but she wasn’t feeling very communicative. By the coming of night they had cleared Hell Gate and were once again on the East River.
Norma was seated on a lazarette and Lester had the wheel as they sailed between Manhattan and the southern shoals of Blackwell’s Island near the abandoned smallpox asylum known as the Renwick Ruin. “I haven’t felt wind this cold since Wyoming,” he said. He hardly ever spoke about his boyhood. But she knew about Wyoming. She took his hand. She knew what he meant: he hadn’t felt a cold wind like that since he was a boy standing on the plains looking for his mother and father to return home from their nearest neighbor, who lived over a dozen miles away. The closest town was twenty miles away. His parents were on horseback and the journey could take hours. His little horse had died a few weeks before. In the deep grip of a plains winter his father would not let him ride behind either of his parents. Two horses meant two riders. And so he had to stay behind and wait. He had no brothers or sisters. He was eight years old and alone on the plains.
Lester had been six when his father had taken it into his head to become a farmer. The three members of the Dent family had driven a horse-drawn covered wagon from Missouri to their home in Wyoming. His recollections of his father were of a presence that always seemed to be disappointed in him. His father seemed disappointed that Lester couldn’t do more to help, disappointed that Lester’s mother insisted on schooling him instead of letting him help out more in the fields, disappointed that the little boy was afraid at night, disappointed that the boy disappeared to play alone for hours at a time.
The thick white snow surrounded the little Dent farmhouse. Night had fallen. Lester’s parents had not returned. In two years he had become accustomed to being alone, having adventures all his own under the vast blue sky. In two years he had played with children his own age exactly four times on visits to town. But this night was different. Now the wind howled around the house and his parents were not home. He fed himself and lighted all the lamps even though he knew his father would disapprove of wasting the oil. He built a fire too. A big one. Again, he knew his father would raise Cain over the wasted wood. But he was bound to upset his father somehow or another and the fire kept him company.
He could read, of course; there were plenty of books. His mother made certain of that. But he didn’t feel like reading. He felt like playing with a friend. He was lonely. He was always so lonely. So he decided to make up a friend, and this one wouldn’t disappear when they were done playing. He took a pencil stub from his tin and the notepad he used to practice his cursive in, and he began to write. It was a story about a man named Jayse who sailed a ship around the world with his many friends, including his best friend, a gorilla named Mr. Harry C. Lees. At the end of the story they rescued a beautiful woman from a monster in a faraway jungle. He called it “The Voyage of the Gossamer Goose!” It was his first story and it took him all night and part of the next day to finish it. As he wrote the last sentence, he heard his mother calling to him. He saw his father’s face cloud as he entered the house. But the boy stood tall and held his father’s glare until the old man had broken it off, sensing a new courage in his son. Young Lester felt braver than ever before, for he knew he now had friends who would never leave him alone again on a vast and abandoned wintry plain.
Four years after he had written “The Voyage of the Gossamer Goose!”—a period in which he had played with other children exactly ten times—his father had given up on the ranch and dragged them back to La Plata. Only Lester had managed to harvest anything from that hard land. Tucked into a case that had once carried farm tools, which now lay broken and scattered across the plains, were several dozen lined tablets filled with Lester’s best friends—Jayse, Mr. Harry C. Lees, and many, many others.
Norma stood and slipped her arms around him, snuggling up to him. “I don’t ever want you to be that cold again,” she said.
The other men came up on deck. Otis was trying to pry the origins of Ron’s given name, Lafayette, out of him. The cowboy stretched, and the kinks cracking out of his body were audible. He stopped when he saw the skyline and whistled. “That is just about the most beautiful sight I ever did see,” he said breathlessly.
“Yeah,” Ron said. “It does look good from far away or high above. It’s only when you get down in it that it turns ugly.”
“Looks mighty fine to me.”
“Can you imagine trying to explain New York to a Borneo wild man or an Australian Aborigine or a man from a thousand years ago? Where would you start to describe a skyscraper? Or the lights? Or the millions of people?”
“I’ll be damned!” This burst from Otis, who was the only person onboard not gazing at Manhattan. He had turned his attention to the piers of Brooklyn. It took them a moment to realize that he wasn’t involved in Ron’s history. “That’s the ship that nearly ran us down!”
The ship was berthed at an otherwise deserted Brooklyn pier. Her stern was facing them. Her heavy prow had shattered the ice choking the slip as she had docked. They could see the deck crane swinging over the dock and crew activity onboard. They were close enough to see a few men walking along the pier.
“That’s her,” Lew cried. Norma saw a white fury overcome him. “That’s the Star of Baltimore. That’s my ship!” He gripped the backstay.
“Toss me my binoculars,” Lester said to Norma. He looked through the glasses while Otis took the wheel. “Keep your heading.” The Albatross shuddered as a thick
slab of ice careened off her side. Lester rubbed the frost off the glasses and took another look. “Well, I’ll be superamalgamated. They’re all Chinese all right, just as Lew said.”
On the wooden pier Norma could see a cloth-covered military supply truck. Men were unloading heavy boxes from it onto a pallet on the pier, while other men motioned for the deck crane’s big lifting chain to be lowered. Other men scurried up and down the thin gangplank.
“Sons of bitches!” Lew snapped, and before they realized his intentions he had flung himself over the railing into the small tender.
“What are you doing?” Otis shouted.
“What’s it look like? I’m gettin’ my boat back.”
“You’re gonna get yourself killed.”
“Ya think I’m a fool? I know what I’m doin’!” He jangled his captain’s keys at them defiantly. “I’m gonna hog-tie the engine so she can’t go nowhere ’fore I call the Coast Guard. I know that ship better’n anybody. They’ll never know I’m there.”
“You can’t do something like that by yourself,” Norma told him.
“Mrs. Dent’s right,” Lester said. “I’ll go with you.” His face was set with the familiar Dent determination. “If I don’t he’s just going try something stupid like running across the ice,” he said to her, grimly.
“You’re protecting him now?” she asked.
“I’m gonna try. He’s got adventure luck worse than even you.”
“Lester, for God’s sake, stay here. Stay with me. Or let me come. What about our deal?”
He gave her a rueful half-smile. It was the look of broken promises. “You can make it up to me. I know you’ll think of something.”