by Landon Beach
The plane glided to a stop on the moonlit surface of the water. Wilson shut down the engine and Morris moved aft to open the cargo door. Water lapped against the seaplane’s pontoons, and a stiff summer breeze blew into the plane. Wilson joined him and together they positioned the two bags on the back bench. Once this was done, Morris jumped down onto one of the pontoons. Wilson passed him a pair of binoculars.
Morris scanned the horizon. “We radio them, right?”
“We maintain radio silence, Jimmy.”
Morris dropped the binoculars around his neck. “Oh, right,” he said.
Wilson could see that Morris was nervous. Couldn’t blame him, though. Wilson had been scared out of his crow his first time. “Don’t be asking any questions when they show up. Just pass the bags to the boat crew very carefully,” said Wilson. “Then we get right back in the plane and head home.”
“Do we ever find out what’s in the bags?” The binoculars were up again as Morris scanned for the boat.
“Don’t you listen?” Wilson said. “It’s all part of the deal. The bags take off from Vancouver by truck, travel through Winnipeg, and end up at our seaplane dock in Lake of the Woods where we load the bags and lake hop until we touch down here in Lake Superior. We deliver the bags, don’t say no fuckin’ word to nobody, and then head back and wait until we’re needed again.”
“Okay, okay, pally. Lighten up,” Morris said. “Where do the bags go after we transfer them?”
“No clue,” said Wilson, “and I don’t wanna know.”
“What happened to your last co-pilot?”
The motor of a powerboat in the distance could be heard. Wilson looked at his watch: 1:25 a.m. “It’s them. Get ready.”
Morris scanned left and saw nothing. Holding on to the wing with one hand, he leaned out over the water. Farther to the right he thought he could see the outline of a boat approaching them with no running lights on. “I think I’ve got ‘em.”
“Remember, not a word,” said Wilson.
“Aye, aye, sir,” Morris saluted with a shaky grin.
Wilson didn’t hear him as he ducked back in the plane. He moved to the cockpit and retrieved a revolver from under his seat. If they thought of pulling anything tonight, he’d be ready. No way would he be taken as easily as Wilford had been. Dumb. So dumb. Why did Wilford have to look in the bags? Why did he have to ask the men on the boat about the contents? Stupid. Captain J. W. Wilson had been sober for three years, but when they took Wilford away that night, he’d broken at the first waypoint home. The metallic scraping sound of the lid being unscrewed. The aroma from the first whiff as he put his nose over the bottle. The watering of his mouth. The sweat on his neck. The feel of the smooth bottle in his weathered hands. The slow deep breaths and the thump of his heart as he raised the bottle to his mouth. And, finally, the first warm spirits hitting the back of his throat as he sucked on the bottle and gulped. Liberation. Heaven. The dulling of pain.
The memory of Wilford’s screams lanced through his mind, and he had to shake his head to snap out of it. He slid the gun in between his belt and trousers and then untucked his shirt to cover it.
The boat approached, and two men in dark t-shirts and blue jeans—one he’d dubbed “Tall” and the other “Gun”—walked to the stern of the cabin cruiser. Tall picked up a line as the third man—the helmsman—backed down the boat and then cut the engine. Tall threw the line to Morris. His hands were sweaty, and he almost dropped it but got a grip and secured it to the pontoon. Tall and Gun pulled on the line until the starboard gunwale was a foot or two away from the pontoon and then tied the line off to a pair of cleats.
Wilson tapped Morris’s shoulder, and Morris looked back and then took the bag Wilson was holding out. He transferred it to Gun, and Gun passed it to the helmsman who stowed it below.
When Morris passed the second bag over the gunwale, Tall spoke to him.
“Come aboard. We’ve got something to show you,” Tall said.
Morris snapped his head around to Wilson and looked at him as if asking: what do I do?
Wilson just nodded.
The helmsman took the second bag below as Tall and Gun helped Morris board. Wilson began to slide his hand under his shirt but stopped when the helmsman reappeared. Tall uncleated the line and threw it to Wilson.
“We’ll be back in ten minutes,” said the helmsman.
Wilson gave a thumbs up sign and began coiling the line. Fifty-fifty chance he’d never see Morris again.
The helmsman turned on the engine and drove the boat away. Three minutes later, he shut off the engine and Tall went below and returned with a weight belt, mask, and dive light. “Strip down to your skivvies, Jimmy,” Tall ordered.
“What the—”
Gun cut Morris off. “Are you supposed to be talking?”
Morris shook his head and began removing his clothes.
Tall motioned to the water off the stern. “We need a little help tonight. There’s some...some thing down there that we need to make sure is staying put.” Tall bent down over the transom and dipped his hand in Lake Superior. “Water’s not too bad tonight, but I advise that you make it quick.”
Morris was in his underwear now, ghost white legs and sunken chest with small patches of hair exposed to the night air. He shivered as Tall passed him the equipment.
“It’s about fifteen feet straight down, toothpick. We’ll wait for you up here,” Tall said.
Morris sat on the deck and swung his feet over the stern. The water rose up past his ankles. His rear began to feel cold as the water on the deck soaked his underwear. He turned on his light and jumped in.
The shock of the cold water made him shake, and he almost dropped the light. The weight belt did its job: he continued to sink. Once he made it to the bottom he would look for this thing and then get the hell out of there. Yes, he was freezing, but this should be easy.
It came out of the dark as his feet hit the lake floor and he swung his light around. A human body with no arms, one eyeball missing, and small bites taken out of its face and legs. The legs. The legs were anchored to the lake bottom by heavy duty rope and two cinder blocks. Morris went to scream, but then he saw a silver chain around the neck. He reached for it. At the end of the loop was a flattened rectangle of silver. Holding the rectangle in his hand, he aimed the light down and read the inscription: “Fast” Eddie Wilford. Now he screamed, sending a stream of bubbles up.
The sound of the motor starting above made Morris drop the chain, release the weight belt, and he kicked upward.
His head broke the surface of the water, and he looked up into the eyes of Tall, peering down at him over the transom. “Don’t ever look in the bags or talk about your job,” Tall said. Morris nodded. Then, Tall turned around, and the boat sped away.
Fifteen minutes later, the seaplane was taxiing toward Morris.
✽✽✽
Wilson steered the plane through the snowy gap in the clouds, and he could finally see below. “Water, Jimmy.”
Morris rejoined him in the cockpit and strapped back in. The plane continued to angle down, and the storm began to let up. Morris looked at the water. “I told you we had to be over water, J. W. Now, we just gotta find a place to let her down near shore.”
✽✽✽
7:10 p.m.
Enormous waves crashed over the “Pride of the American Flag” Edmund Fitzgerald’s deck. Loaded with 26,116 long tons of taconite pellets from Burlington Northern Railroad Dock at Superior, Wisconsin, the 729-foot ore carrier pitched and heaved in the churning water, trying to find a magic line through the eighteen-foot seas. Water crested over the port side, spread across the deck and over the hatch covers, and then slid over the starboard side back into the lake. At the dock in Wisconsin, deckhands had secured the 21 hatch covers—each hatch needing 68 clamps manually fastened. Thankfully they hadn’t broken this routine or they might have sunk hours ago.
Captain Earnest McSorley stood in the pilothouse clinging to a
radar console that was bolted to the deck—and inoperable. The bow rose as the Fitz climbed a wave. McSorley lunged for the radio console and held tight as the ship dipped and screamed into the trough. Fresh vomit from the quartermaster slid on the deck toward McSorley’s feet and then slid back as the bow began to rise again. The veteran captain grabbed the radio’s microphone. In 44 years he had never been in conditions like this, and for the first time he felt fear—not for himself, but for the twenty-eight other men onboard that were his responsibility.
His ship had been traveling with the Arthur M. Anderson, a freighter also carrying taconite pellets, since yesterday. The Anderson was presently aiding the Fitz in navigation; McSorley had radioed Anderson’s captain, Jessie B. Cooper, two hours earlier to explain that Fitz had a bad list, had lost both radars, and was taking heavy seas over the deck. Additionally, the Fitzgerald carried no fathometer or depth gauge. To measure the depth of the water, the Fitz still used a hand lead. A crew member would stand at the bow and drop a line with a weight attached to the end overboard. When the weight hit the bottom, the crew member would report the depth. Sending a man out to do that now would be sending the man to his grave.
“Fitzgerald to Anderson, over,” McSorley said into the microphone.
Another wave: McSorley lost his grip on the radio console and the sixty-two-year-old fell to the deck and slid away, arms grasping for anything to hold on to.
“This is Anderson, over,” a weathered voice answered over the speaker.
McSorley’s right hand found a fire extinguisher bolted to a bulkhead, and he held on as the next wave began to lift the Fitzgerald. When the ship began to level out, McSorley pulled his way back to the radio console.
He keyed the microphone. “Read you loud and clear, Cap. How is our heading and position?”
“Caribou Island and Six Fathom Shoal are well behind us. There’s a line of ships nine miles ahead that will pass you to the west,” the first mate on the Anderson answered. “How is Fitzgerald handling?”
McSorley looked out the pilothouse windows at the snow falling down and limiting visibility to no further than just beyond the bow: they were blind. He looked up at the anemometer. 65 knot winds. He was about to speak into the microphone when waves crashed over the pilothouse sending a wall of water over the deck. The seas had increased to twenty-five feet. One cargo hold hatch had failed...maybe more. We may not make it. My crew is sick, beaten up, and this witch of a November gale is wearing down the old girl. He keyed the mic. “We are holding our own.”
✽✽✽
“Look at that sonofabitch twist and turn,” Morris said. He was looking out the seaplane’s window at a huge cargo ship being tossed by the gigantic slate colored seas below.
J. W. Wilson swiveled his head and took a quick peek out Morris’s window. “I’m glad we’re up here, Jimmy,” said Wilson. He tried the radio switch. Dead.
“Please don’t try and land us down there,” said Morris. “Those waves would bend this plane into a pretzel.”
“I don’t plan on it,” said Wilson. Then, he motioned down to the ship. “She must be headed for the safety of a harbor or bay. We might be close to land.” Wilson steered the plane to the right.
“Hey! I can’t see her anymore,” Morris said.
“I’m going to try and parallel her course,” said Wilson, “it’s our best chance of surviving this thing with our radio and nav equipment fried.” Wilson began to steady up on a course. Then, he looked out his window. “Okay, Jimmy. You can sneak a peek of her—oh my God!”
Morris almost joined Wilson in the captain’s seat as both men looked below.
The giant ship had nearly folded into a ‘V’. A few mangled lifeboats floated away in the huge seas as the water lifted the ship—flattening it out for a moment—and then snapped it in two.
“She’s goin’ down!” Morris shouted in terror.
First the fore, then the aft section slid below into the deep. For a few seconds nothing remained on the surface. Then, the Great Lake seemed to burp, and a few pieces of flotsam came up, including what looked like an inflatable life raft.
“Gone,” Wilson said.
Morris sat back in his seat and, for some reason, began to cry. Wilson circled the spot where the ship had been. He saw no one in the water. “Gone.”
Wilson pulled out his flask and took a healthy pull. Morris was sniffling and looking out the window at the snow. The winds had shifted. There was nothing they could do about the ship. How many had gone down with her? Wilson screwed the cap back on the flask, leveled the plane out, and steadied onto the course that the ship had been steering.
✽✽✽
Wilson’s hands began to feel cold. He looked down at the heater. The familiar hum from the vents had disappeared. All he heard now was the steady sound of the propellers, engine, and Morris’s snoring. Shit. What else is going to break? The cold moved to his neck. He shivered and slapped both of his cheeks. How much time had passed? A half-hour? An hour? Fifteen minutes? The blank stare syndrome reserved for monotonous spaces of time had taken hold of him. Wilson could see himself loafing around the mall, high, listening to Milt Jackson or in his senior year algebra class hearing the bell ring, the teacher starting to talk about something he had no interest in, staring at the wall—zoning now—noises dissipating, a white blur, other thoughts that refused to become clear, and...the bell announcing the end of class. Another forty-five minutes lost to the ages. Same deal for driving on a long boring interstate: jolting upright in one’s seat—where in the fuck am I?
Wilson pulled on a pair of gloves and woke Morris.
“Heater’s gone, Jimmy boy,” said Wilson, “better put on your jacket.”
Morris squinted and then rubbed his eyes. “Where are we?”
The snow was gone and the plane seemed to be descending.
“See that?” Wilson pointed out the window.
On the horizon was land.
Morris sat up. “Yee haw, bubba! We’re gonna make it out of this mess after all.”
“Just in time,” Wilson said. “If the heater’s gone, I don’t wanna find out what’s next.”
“I’m gonna get me a paper tomorrow and see about that ship we saw go down. We’ll be celebrities being the only ones who know how she sank.”
Wilson pulled on Morris’s collar and brought the co-pilot’s face to within six inches of his own. He stared into Morris’s eyes. “We’re not talking to anyone,” he ordered. “Have you forgotten what we’re carrying back there?”
Morris broke eye contact and looked toward the back bench. Then, at Wilson.
“Uh huh,” Wilson said. “We’ve gotta figure a way to get that delivered before we say a word about the ship.” He released Morris’s collar. “Understood?”
Morris sat back. “Yeah.”
Wilson began to focus on flying again. Suddenly, the plane dropped. “What the—”
“Look!” Morris said.
The right propeller began to slow down...then, it stopped. For a moment, both men just stared at the motionless blades. They both shot their eyes to the left propeller and watched it slow down, sputter, and then stop...
Scrambling in the cockpit: Morris in the backseat reaching for the bags, Captain J. W. Wilson fighting with the controls.
The plane diving toward the water.
Screaming...
...Impact.
Explosion in the fuselage—one man burning. More screaming. One man trying to exit the plane, but pinned.
Water flooding the cockpit and fuselage.
Fire on the water.
The wreckage sank below the surface, putting out the fire, leaving only the moon’s reflection on the black water.
PART I
Preparations
1
LAKE HURON OFFSHORE HAMPSTEAD, MICHIGAN, JUNE 1995
The bow flattened the waves and the wake gurgled as the thirty-six-foot sailboat came about.
“Trist, get ready to tighten her up,” Robi
n Norris shouted over the wind to his son as the boom swung overhead and snapped to a halt.
Tristian Norris pulled on the mainsheet, and the sail became pregnant with air. Levity heeled to starboard, and the smooth wooden hull began to slice through Lake Huron.
Robin looked up at the tattletales on the mainsail; both were streaming taut, parallel to the boom. “Cleat her,” he said and sat down behind the wheel. Trist did and sat back down on the starboard cockpit bench.
“She looks seaworthy to me,” Trist said.
It was the final trial run—an overnighter—before they left for their summer sail, the summer sail that Robin had promised Trist since they had purchased the boat three years ago. The previous day had been filled with practicing procedures they would carry out in emergency situations: man overboard, collision, fire, abandon ship, loss of equipment, foul weather, and any medical situations that arose. When they had bought the rotting, abused, and broken boat from marina owner Ralph Shelby for practically nothing—Shelby said it would never float again and just wanted to get it off his hands—Robin had set the bar at not only getting the yacht to sail again but to circumnavigate Lake Superior the summer before Tristian’s senior year in high school.
Last night, they had anchored, tested the new grill Robin had mounted on the aft rail, and slept under the stars. There were always problems with a boat, but it appeared that there was nothing to stop them now from attempting the voyage.
“A few days to load supplies, get this beast on a trailer, and take her up,” Robin said. “Tomorrow’s your last day at the hardware store, right?”
“What’s mom going to do with us gone all summer?”
Robin watched as Trist’s black hair blew across his forehead. His hair was smooth and longer like his mother’s and behind Trist’s Ray-Ban sunglasses were the same brown eyes as hers too. Trist’s skin was a blend of Robin’s Caucasian and Levana’s Chippewa heritage—closer to Levana’s in the summer, Robin’s in the winter. Why was he noticing these things at this moment? He knew. Since the diagnosis, he had been in a hyper-sensitive state of observation. Familiar things: the amount of air in the tires on the car, exactly how much toilet paper was left on the roll in each bathroom, how many beers were on the top shelf of the refrigerator, the bottom shelf. Weird things: a detailed inspection of how much dirt was on his socks before putting them in the hamper, how much dust was on top of the fridge, how many napkins were in the holder on the kitchen counter. Even sentimental items: what earrings Levana had on (he’d never taken time to notice before), the family photographs in the hallway, and now his son’s skin color, which he’d known from the moment Trist had come out of the womb and Robin had picked the doctor up, thrown him over his shoulder, and—he still didn’t know why—spanked the doctor’s bottom in celebration.