Whose Waves These Are

by Amanda Dykes

  They’re going to beat this storm to get back to a force even stronger: Bob. It’s rough going in the wind, but it’s nothing the three of them haven’t seen—especially her father, in all his time at sea. They make good time to Isle au Haut but are forced to slow down as they pass Mount Desert Island, where the waves are getting restless. Once they pass Roque Bluffs and are on the home stretch she’ll breathe easier.

  Jeremiah is at the helm, her father’s brow furrowing as he watches the radar, arms crossed. He doesn’t like something he sees. He steps out on deck, and Annie follows, searching the sky. White clouds shield them from the harsh sun, a welcome cover.

  “Not too bad,” she says, waiting for her father’s “Not too bad at that, Annie-girl,” just as they’d said a thousand times when she was growing up.

  But he only stares at the sky, raising a hand to his hair and combing fingers through.

  “Anvil,” he says at last, and points to two flat-topped clouds in the distance that are trailing points behind them like the shape he’s named.

  She searches her memory for what that means. “Thunder?”

  He turns in answer, heading straight back for the radar screen, checking between it and the charts on the stool beside him.

  The clouds morph from white to gray before them, as if someone has drawn a shade over the sun beyond. They gather, growing.

  Annie glances in the direction of shore. But as the gunmetal gray rolls in, she can hardly see her own hand in front of her face, let alone any sign of land.

  The darkness is so unnatural. They are hours from evening, but night will come. Dark upon dark. And then the trouble will multiply.

  Her father throws them each a life jacket, his face grave. They follow his lead in donning them, and time is swallowed up in the white-capped churning as the boat lifts, drops, over and over again. The air temperature plummeting suddenly, Annie’s skin pricks in goose bumps.

  And then the sky lets loose. Sheets of torrential rain coming at them, the wind driving it like nails. As if the water from above and ahead isn’t enough, that wind plows into the waves, pushing them toward the Glad Tidings, insatiable.

  Jeremiah steps from the wheel momentarily to pull her inside the cabin, his movement swift and protective.

  “Squall,” he says, his voice low and slow—the imposed calm of someone practiced in the art of staying level-headed in crisis.

  Annie’s stomach presses against her lungs as the water lifts the boat up and up, then drops them—jarring them to what she’s sure must be the bottom of the ocean.

  It is not.

  It is only the valley between waves. And it’s gone the moment the next wave picks up where the other left off. Tossing the boat like a plaything as a wall of black water slams over the rails, wraps itself around Annie’s ankles and threatens to take her down.

  “Turn into the waves,” her father is saying to Jeremiah. “That’s it. Now more. Forty-five degrees. Slow it down or we’ll—” the boat slams bow first into the next wave—“broach.”

  Jeremiah cringes, taking the throttle down to near-idle. Just enough force to keep up with the waves and keep some sliver of control. William stands back, his steady presence constantly assessing the storm and the boat, but letting the younger man stand in his newfound footing.

  They hit a choppy rhythm, and Annie begins to relax. She joins her father in examining the charts, comparing them to the GPS and radar. They’ll need the charts for dead reckoning, she knows, if their equipment should fail. If the squall brings lightning.

  Please, God, don’t let that happen. . . .

  Her dad says something, his voice that of a naval officer, but eyes those of a father.

  “Signal-Ann,” he repeats.

  And just like that she’s eight again, the thrill of being her father’s signalman, taking over to man the devices. She presses her eyes shut, remembers those blue-sky days of perfection. Before the sea was this raging leviathan.

  “Give me the rundown?” He pulls out the old question.

  Eyes open, task before her, she fastens her heart to the job and finds courage in it. “Aye aye, sir.”

  A nod, and instead of standing with hands behind his back, elbows protruding in triangles at his sides as he used to, he’s bent over something on the deck, hands working a rope, securing something as he gives the next order.

  “Direction.”

  She looks to the compass, tries to average its bobbing antics.

  “Northeast.” Which is all wrong, for where they need to be. They’ll need to correct west—and hope they see land somehow before it slams into them first.

  “Location.”

  A glance at the GPS. “Forty-four north, sixty-seven west.” Getting closer to Machias, Cutler . . . and Ansel. Yet too far out. So many things could keep them from shore. They need to stay glued to the radar so they don’t get pummeled by rocks, an island, a log, another boat—anything that the waves could toss at them.

  Jeremiah marks it on the chart.

  Her dad continues. “Speed.”

  “Near idle.”

  “Good. Wind?”

  As if to answer for her, a gust blows from the west, a wall of water coming over and at them with relentless force.

  “Dad!” Water slaps down over him, right into the house window, and she flails to cover her face with her arm as the window blows straight out from the force.

  The boat lists hard, righting itself afterward and reeling over another swell. She’s on the deck, scrambling to help her dad up. He yanks hard on the rope and stumbles back to the wheelhouse with her. His strength is worn but fierce.

  Jeremiah is steadfast at the wheel, throwing a concerned look toward William, then Annie.

  She can almost hear the mental checklist in his EMT brain, looking over the two of them for signs of trauma.

  “You okay?” Jeremiah takes one look at William and scrapes out a plastic bin from the corner, tossing him something from within. A heavy jacket. A hat. He’s worried about the wet and cold.

  “Thanks.” Dad dons them both, and Annie sees the way his chin trembles before he stops it. “I’m fine.”

  Jeremiah’s gaze fixes on Annie, intense.

  “Me too,” she says. Jeremiah’s gaze is unmoving, as if he doesn’t believe her. He sees too much.

  Heaving for breath, her father surveys the damage of the lost window.

  He repeats his earlier question, “Wind?” And Annie laughs, humor somehow wending its way into the situation.

  “Bad,” she says, pointing to the window. She checks the wind speed indicator. “We’re at sixty knots.” That just pushed them on up the storm scale, blowing straight past Gale, Strong Gale, and Storm.

  It was officially a Violent Storm. The category just before Hurricane.

  “Waves?”

  There’s no device for measuring wave height. Her practiced child’s eye would have placed her guess based on how high the peaks and swells seemed compared to her six-foot father. And she’d never given an answer over five feet. She pulls the Beaufort Scale printout from where it’s tacked up in the house. Sixty knot winds . . . thirty-seven to fifty-two foot waves.

  “Forty feet,” she says, knowing she’s being optimistic with that guess.

  Her father’s face is grave. “Listen,” he says, shouting to be heard, “we’re in pretty deep. Do you have survival suits?”

  Jeremiah points to a hatch out on deck, near the bow. “Two,” he says. “In there.”

  “And you have an EPIRB?”

  Jeremiah’s face goes white. If her father, the seasoned sailor, is asking about inflatable survival suits, which are basically a wearable lifeboat, and the device that’s a last resort call for help . . .

  Annie’s insides turn to cold, hard metal.

  Jeremiah slides his hand beneath the bridge and slaps the wall, where the neon-yellow device is strapped on.

  “There?” William affirms, making sure Annie sees it, too. “If things turn bad, whoever can ac
tivate that first, does.” He hangs his head, then looks them each in the eye. First Jeremiah, then Annie. “I’ve seen worse. And we can weather this together.” His forehead creases deep. “This would normally be the time for us to anchor and ride it out if we had a choice. But . . .”

  He leaves the rest unsaid, waiting for them to give their assent. The unspoken concern: Bob.

  This moment has been decades in the making. With his health still teetering, and him up and checking himself out of the hospital . . .

  She looks to her father and sees unspoken yearning flashing over his otherwise still-as-stone face.

  “Let’s get back to him,” she says.

  Jeremiah nods, wincing against the strain the steering and wave-navigating is putting on him. He looks at them for a fleeting second before fixing his eyes back out through the water-pummeled windshield. “I’m in.”

  It is this that drives them on, the three of them a tangle of activity as Jeremiah and William take shifts steering and securing things outside with Annie amid walls of water sloshing over deck. Exhaustion burns in every muscle of Annie’s. Was it only the night before that she’d swum in this very ocean? She shivers at the thought.

  Somewhere between the dark of storm and the dark of coming night, the rain pulls back on its horizontal attack, falling vertical.

  The moaning wind quiets its lament. A fragile stillness seems on the brink of arrival—and the three of them look at one another. Hoping. Praying.

  It’s an eerie quiet. The haze about them heavy. They’re cloaked in an other-world, out here alone. Waves still rolling larger than life but have rounded into a sleepier dance.

  It lasts long enough that Annie begins to breathe again, feels her heart steady.

  Please, God. She prays beyond words, not knowing how to ask for home in this darkness. It seems too much. So much more than just a safe harbor. The bridging of three generations. The healing of unthinkable loss. She doesn’t have words for that. Only . . . please.

  Then rolls the thunder.

  And near on top of it . . . lightning.

  thirty-nine

  Wind beats against the old house, creaking its bones with no regard for its age. Or Bob’s. Or his family’s.

  Every muscle protesting, he rises from Annie’s window seat, bent over his walker. He turns it to face the storm outside and can hardly see. With gray sea spraying and the sloshing of ocean over land, like it’s Genesis in reverse, water comes to reclaim its territory and swallow the land right up.

  All he can think is They’re out there. Or worse. Bess had come running earlier, hollering about calling Annie, not being able to reach her, then calling her folks’ house, and her mother saying they were on their way.

  A sea like this knows no friends.

  “No.” He speaks it into this empty house, defying the shaking in a voice aged a thousand years these past days. He raises his voice. “No! They are out there.” They have to be. Everything in him—his breath, his gut, his very soul—coils around a prayer all too familiar.

  “Bring him home, Lord.” Only this time, it is not Roy he’s praying for. Roy is safe. He knows that. But William . . . oh, the boy is not ready for that. There is much hurt to be undone. “Bring her home, too. And the other him.” Annie. Jeremiah. The two of them together, if they know what’s good for them.

  His gaze falls through the far window. Out to the boathouse, where a blue tarp flaps in the dark like a banshee. Jeremiah’s been patching the roof—continuing the job Bob botched. He thinks of that crumbled, burnt-out corner of the boathouse. He’d never had the heart to fix it. Doing so felt like betraying William, confirming the boy’s worst fears—that it was all a horrible mistake. But Bob’s time left in this life is short now. He knows it. And some desperate part of him thought maybe if he patched up that corner of impossible . . . it might show William that all was covered over, long forgiven.

  But he had failed even in that—fallen off a gull-blasted ladder and landed in a dark abyss.

  Muscles beginning to shake from the monumental effort it takes just to stand, to pray, he sinks back down, drapes arms over the walker, and hangs his head. He’s back in the night with William, flames around them. The boy’s face streaked with soot and torment.

  “Bring him home,” he prays again, but can only see flames, the inferno that drove William away.

  The fire that will bring him home.

  Roy’s voice is in his head, echoes from so long ago, but that seem closer than ever now. “Tell him I love him.”

  How, in this?

  Echoes of Roy on his deathbed. “Don’t get stuck in the dark. . . .”

  And for the first time since Bob stood on that island, broken and lost and crazy enough to build, he feels that same unmistakable chiseling of his heart. Again a single word—but this time it burns.

  Light.

  It is time for that old tower to shine.

  He goes to the phone on the table and wishes, for the first time, that he hadn’t cut the cord. Pulling out the drawer below the phone, he grips the old Maglite, cold metal handle greeting him like an old friend, its black paint over the etched handle rubbed away long ago.

  He flicks it on and steps outside.

  Somewhere in the dark, howling wind gives way to the thrum of an engine. Things are getting foggy . . . and not just outside. Bob is sweating, shivering, fire and ice. He braces himself inside the alcove of the entryway.

  Two figures stagger up the path, heads bowed against the wind and rain.

  The yelling is garbled in the weather. But Arthur’s voice keeps on, until the words pierce through. “Get inside, you old fool! You got a death wish?” He holds up a white pharmacy bag. “All this medication’ll do you no good if you get carried off in this storm.” Ed’s just behind him, cane helping him navigate the wet paths.

  Bob has something a whole lot more pressing than a wish, and it’s got nothing to do with death. Pulling an old yellow slicker tightly around himself, he pushes through the haze gathering around his brain and plants his walker down in front of the steps, blocking their path.

  “We gotta get to the island,” he says. The wind stills, as if to say “Oh?”

  There’s fury on Arthur’s face and pity on Ed’s.

  Ed responds first. “Now, there’s no call for that. You know they can get here on their own. All those fancy gadgets they’ve got on the boats these days. You going out there won’t do anything but put another person at risk.”

  Arthur’s response is not so gentle. “You have any idea what you put this town through, up and nearly crossing over the way you did? If you think we’re taking you out in this . . .” He’s speaking angry words, but there’s a fear in his voice, and it’s not about the storm.

  Bob puts out his hand to stop them, to remind them who’s out there. Spills his plan, every crazy detail of it.

  “It’s for Roy,” he says at last.

  Arthur clamps his mouth shut. He’s not happy, but Bob feels his memory flip out there to sea, watching the waves take Roy.

  The wind is gone. Maybe not for long, and maybe not far out to sea, but he prays it’s enough to get them over to the lighthouse.

  “I’m goin’,” Bob says. “Come or stay as you like. I can’t ask you to go out there in this.”

  Ed speaks slowly, as if he’s been gathering up wisdom. “You have got to stay put,” he argues. “The chances are . . . well, you know I don’t ascribe to the word impossible, but this is as close as it gets. And you goin’ out there just ain’t right.”

  Bob nods. “Impossible’s where the miracles happen, Ed. If I stay put . . . I might have more chance at life, but what sort of livin’ is that, when I was made to do this?”

  Arthur’s jaw works. He blows past Bob and into the house. Stairs creak, and something’s tumbling around up there. His descent sounds like he’s battling a metal giant to get back down.

  Out of breath, he steps back out on the porch. In his hands . . . is Eva’s wheelchair.

/>   It’s just metal and fabric and screws. It shouldn’t have the power to undo Bob like it does. But as Arthur opens it up and plants it in front of him, something inside Bob breaks. It is empty. She should be here.

  And something inside him soars. This is what she, too, would want.

  “You want on that island”—Arthur huffs—“this is the only way you’re getting there.”

  Through a sheen of tears, Bob sits in the chair he pushed down to the dock so many times . . . but instead of spinning his beloved in a slow dance there, the dance takes on new clumsy life as the three men get their blind, near-crippled, stubborn selves onto the boat.

  Arthur lets out a dry laugh. “Look at us,” he says, his voice graveled with age. “The storm picked the wrong old codgers to tangle with.”

  He radios the harbormaster, who is waiting on any word from Jeremiah. “We’re going to the lighthouse,” he says.

  “What lighthouse?” Margie Lillian’s no-nonsense voice comes through. “Don’t you boys dare go out in this—”

  Arthur turns his back to Bob, as if that’ll keep him from hearing.

  “Ya know.” Silence. “The lighthouse.” Still nothing. “The growin’s.”

  “Don’t go near that island in this!” Margie barks. “If you think—” Bob reaches over and shuts off the handheld.

  And prays the calm holds.

  “Get down!” Jeremiah shouts. Another blinding flash splits the sky, thunder shaking Annie’s very bones. Jeremiah lifts his hands from the metal wheel and grabs a wooden dowel to steer with, crouching. Making himself low to avoid a strike as the highest point. This boat, out here alone, is one giant bull’s-eye for the lightning.

  “Get below deck!” Jeremiah waves Annie and William toward the stairs, to the place Jeremiah never lets anyone go. His sanctuary.

  William is pulling fallen books and debris out of the way, hauling open the door. He goes down, continuing to clear the path, and Annie knows she should follow. But something keeps her. She cannot move, cannot take herself farther away from the man at the helm.