Innocent Murderer

by Suzanne F. Kingsmill

  I was sitting amid all of the diesel fumes, fervently wishing I was on dry land. It was so tantalizingly close, yet so far away. We’d had to trudge through two hundred yards of low tide muck to even get to the Zodiacs — which wouldn’t have surprised me had I known that Iqaluit has some of the largest tidal variations in the world. The muck may not have been firm land, or even dry land, but at least it hadn’t bounced and weaved and ducked and dipped.

  “Oh c’mon, Cordi,” Martha screamed into the wind.

  “There’s nothing to it. We’ll be there in less than fifteen minutes.”

  Fifteen long, lurching, wiggly minutes in a boat with eight lolloping passengers and one driver, all perched on the pontoon shaped sides. And we were going to land on a bigger boat that was equally rolling and pitching. I certainly hadn’t thought I would get seasick or I never would have taken this trip. I groaned and wished there was something else to take my mind off my stomach as Martha crashed into me on the next wave.

  And that’s when it happened. Terry, who was now wearing a yellow Eddie Bauer Gore-Tex rain suit and sit–ting near the bow, suddenly lurched up and staggered towards the stern of the boat where I was sitting, her eyes boring into the space between me and the orange clad driver like a razor sharp drill. I heard the driver cursing. With one hand on the engine he used his other hand to madly wave Terry down while yelling words into the wind that she couldn’t hear.

  When the next wave hit, Terry seemed to leap straight at us in a slow motion blur. When the boat bucked side–ways on a wave she raised her arms in a futile effort to save herself, and instead of crashing into me she was thrown onto the driver. The two of them fell heavily against the bulwark, the driver’s head crashing against it with a sick–ening thud that I could hear above the wind.

  The Zodiac began to dance and slew sideways to the waves and a sickening accordion motion gripped the boat as an icy wave broke over the starboard side. The cold of the water felt like a burn, searing my face. I saw, as if in slow motion, the now bare handle of the engine jerking spasmodically, the heaving rubber and slat wood floorboards, the wildly slewing boat broach–ing the waves — I leaned over and grabbed the throttle with both hands, more to calm my roiling stomach than for any altruistic reasons. The thing felt alive, like a horse straining at the reins, full of power and poten–tial, but unable to choose a direction in which to go.

  I shoved it as far away from me as I could, feeling as though I was pushing the whole weight of Frobisher Bay before me. Agonizingly slowly, the boat began to turn back into the waves, to more ordered motion. I felt the handle bucking my commands, wanting to be free, jerking and straining for chaos. My back and shoulder muscles were taut with the effort of keeping the boat on the proper course.

  I glanced over at the driver, hoping for rescue, but he lay sprawled on the bottom of the boat, his head and shoulders draped over the round pontoon of the port side, his face unnervingly slack and grey, or what I could see of it through his heavy beard. The closest passenger to him was trying to stop the alarming flow of blood from a deep cut on his forehead and the other passengers were gripping the handrails of the boat, white knuckled, as another wave hit us and broke over the bow.

  I noticed Terry had somehow crawled her way back up to the bow to sit beside Arthur, the white haired man, and was clutching her stomach. The driver was still out cold. I was on my own. How the hell was I supposed to land the Zodiac?

  “Can you drive this thing?” The voice was high and shrill in the wind, almost weightless, and the disbelief that cascaded from the words was not a confidence booster. I glanced in the direction of the voice and saw Terry, her makeup smeared by the salt water and her attempts to keep it out of her eyes.

  She grabbed Arthur’s arm, yelling “Jesus, Arthur. Are you fuckin’ going to let her try to drive this thing? She’ll kill us all.”

  That was a funny thing for her to say, since she was the one who had just knocked out the only person on the boat who actually knew how to drive it! Still, I saw the passengers who had heard her words glance nervously at me as Arthur said something to her that no one could hear. She looked back at me and yelled, “You’d better know what you’re doing lady.”

  I was already wondering the same thing when Mar–tha, who looked completely unruffled by the series of events, screamed at the whole boat. “Course she can drive this thing. She’s been doing it for years. Trust me. She’s the best and she’s one of crew.”

  Neither of which was quite accurate. Martha con–veniently forgot to mention that my years of experience were with much smaller Zodiacs in much smaller and warmer seas, but what the heck, a boat is a boat. And technically I was one of the crew.

  I watched carefully as the Zodiac ahead of us nosed up to the side of the ship at a small metal platform and threw a rope to a crew member crouched on the wave drenched dock. I could make out metal stairs snaking up at a forty-five degree angle from the water to the deck of the ship. Passengers were drunkenly weaving their way up the stairs.

  Suddenly it was our turn. I kept the Zodiac pointed into the waves as we headed for the ship, aware that seven pairs of eyes anxiously watched my every move. Only Martha seemed unconcerned. What was it about her that made her so oblivious to potential danger?

  We were heading straight into the wind, parallel to the ship, which was lying at anchor. I kept the throt–tle at full bore until we were twenty yards away and then eased back as we shot toward the dock. At the last moment I throttled way back, and the lack of power and the strength of the wind allowed the boat to float toward the dock — theoretically. Instead, we rammed the dock from the crest of a wave and my passengers tumbled around like bingo balls. Terry crashed against Arthur, her head ramming his hard camera case. Arthur scowled as another man picked her up, just as a deckhand grabbed the bow rope of the bucking boat and secured it to the heaving metal dock.

  The boat, finally secured, was now tied to the energy of the ship, which was straining at its anchor and riding the waves differently from the little Zodiac hugging its side. The male passengers struggled to get the helmsman into the arms of the crewmen and to safety. He was start–ing to come to and was moaning as he was carried up the gangway. One by one the passengers slid their bottoms down the side of the pontoons to the two crewmen — their bright orange slickers like beacons of safety — who held out their hands to grip each passenger by the arm and swing them to safety between waves.

  When it was Terry’s turn she turned and smiled.

  “You’re one lucky, lady.”

  I had the unpleasant feeling that she could see into the quiet depths of my own mind where my fears roiled and laboured, and that she had known the extent of my inexperience just by watching me. But what else could I do? No one else could drive the thing. The coldness in her voice went red hot as she took the arm of a deck man and yelled, “Luke, you old bastard. How are the ladies?”

  I watched the man’s face break into a huge scowl and he almost threw her out of the boat as he grunted, “Welcome back, Terry,” in a voice that said just the oppo–site. Welcome back? She’d been here before? I looked at Martha, whose turn was next, but she obviously hadn’t heard the exchange.

  Martha tried to swing her leg over but the design of the Zodiac and the design of her round body didn’t mesh. She sat there, stranded, one leg going one way and the other leg going another, just as a wave hit and bounced her painfully on the spot. Duncan reached over and grabbed her trailing leg, hauling it over. Suddenly I was alone in the boat.

  As I started to move toward the starboard side to get out, one of the crewmen looked at me, a puzzled look on his face, and then glanced behind him at another crewmember on deck. I saw some communication pass between them, but before he could turn back the other guy threw the stern line at me and pointed aft where I saw the other Zodiac being hoisted into the air, its driver standing amid decks with a bosun’s chair hugging his rear. I’d seen this done many times before, but I’d never actually done it myself and
was attempting to clamber out when one of the crewmen waved me off. I couldn’t understand what he was trying to say, but I didn’t have to. The loose bowline in his hands told all and I watched, fascinated, as he threw the line into the bottom of the boat. They obviously thought I was one of the new crew arriving with the tourists. I looked quickly at the engine, glad to see it was still going, and suddenly I was free of the ship, alone in the boat, and not sure what I was sup–posed to do other than get out of the way of the Zodiac coming behind me.

  I swung out, heading into the wind, watching as the Zodiac ahead of me was winched on board. It danced high above my head and my stomach, already churning itself into a sickening mess, lurched at the thought of going up there, so high, so far to fall, so cold a death, but at least it would be quick, thirty to sixty seconds before rescue was useless. As I moved down the ship to where the Zodiac ahead of me was already airborne I worried about controlling both my stomach and the Zodiac at the same time.

  I kept the Zodiac into the wind, the waves marching at me, slinging their crests into my eyes and blinding me, the icy water sluicing down my face and finding its way past my raingear to my skin. I was very cold; my hands almost blue and stiff like talons as they gripped the throt–tle. I looked up the side of the ship, which looked like a gigantic box perched on a hull, and saw Martha’s neon pink rain suit. She was waving down at me as if I was arriving in the calm of dusk for a cup of tea. Beside her I could see Duncan gripping the rails of the ship, as if by brute force he could lower it down to rescue me. Terry was there too and she looked as scared as I felt. This had not been the plan when we had talked and I guess she felt responsible for the predicament I found myself in.

  I looked back at the crane, its guts hidden from me by the height of the ship. It was stationed on a rear deck and its arm was now swinging back over the ship where it had just deposited the last Zodiac, back out over the water to get me. Slowly the rope with the hook and bosun’s chair attached was played out and I watched as it flayed in the wind like a wild thing. What it could do to my head I decided not to imagine. Where was the hook supposed to go? I looked down at the floorboard and saw a triangular series of ropes with a large, strong, con–fidence-boosting ring on it. The hook would go there first and then I would secure myself into the boson’s chair, in case the hook didn’t hold. I wouldn’t have much time to let go of the engine and secure the hook before the boat would be taken away by the wind and the waves.

  I made my first approach but when I let go of the engine to grab at the hook, rusty and lethal looking, it swung out of my reach and by the time it swung back the boat had drifted too far away. The next time I aimed the boat twenty feet in front of the hook, grateful that the ship’s leeward side sheltered me somewhat from the waves and the wind. I made a grab for the hook with one hand while hauling up the ring with the other and stag–gered as a wave nearly threw me off balance. My hands were so cold they had no feeling and seemed like clumsy hunks of meat, but I got the hook through the ring and waited for the rope to lift and hold firm. Then I lurched back to turn off the engine. I could feel the Zodiac groan–ing under me as the rope began to lift her and I struggled back to get into the bosun’s chair.

  It occurred to me that this was probably the limit of the captain’s ability to hoist up the Zodiacs and that any weather more severe would be out of the question. They didn’t want to lose any tourists after all, and I wondered who would bear the brunt for what was happening to me.

  I tried to keep my mind off the fact that I was slowly ris–ing in the air but I kept seeing myself that first horrifying time, years ago, standing frozen on the side of a moun–tain pass unable to go up or down as I stared hypnotized at the wide expanse of mountain dropping away beneath me on both sides. It had happened so fast. One moment perfectly comfortable, the next a raging agoraphobic par–alyzed by fear; and it had never gone away. Now I was swinging wildly in the air, attached to a ship that was rolling and pitching like a drunk in search of the can.

  The Zodiac swayed in the wind, the crane bucked with the ship, and I slowly rose. The crane began turn–ing me into the ship before it should have and I could see the rust spots on the ship’s side and the water crawling down to find the sea again. Suddenly, sickeningly, the Zodiac lurched violently and the floorboards supporting my weight gave way to air. I was swinging on the bosun’s chair, the Zodiac tilted upwards and swinging beneath me, its stern pointing straight down at the sea. I swung into the side of the ship. The force of impact took my breath away and I felt the Zodiac bouncing off the ship below me. I swung out again, away from the ship, and felt myself rapidly rising. I guessed that the crane opera–tor was trying to get me high enough fast enough so that I wouldn’t bash into the side of the ship again, or I fer–vently hoped so. I looked down, which was a mistake: the churning water mirrored my stomach. I thought I could hear people yelling and suddenly the water below me vanished and was replaced by a wildly moving deck strewn with ropes, Zodiacs, and several crewmembers struggling to control the rogue Zodiac and the spinning contraption that I had become.

  I felt strong hands grabbing at me and voices asking me if I was okay. I wasn’t, of course. My stomach, too long denied, surrendered at last.

  Chapter Four

  I woke with a start. Bad idea. My stomach lurched and I groaned. I could hear a deep rumbling in the bow of the ship, somewhere near me, in fact. It awoke some long ago memory and I knew it was the anchor chain rumbling through its tunnel, winching round its drum, coming home to lodge its anchor at the bow of the ship, snuggled in against the hull, held there by the chain, held there by the winch, held there by the brake. The ship was waking up, the almost imperceptible sound of its engine coming alive, revving up as the ship’s crew took her out to sea.

  I looked at the clock on the table beside my bed: 4:30 p.m. I’d only been asleep an hour. Light streamed in from the porthole and I caught some flashes of sun through the swirling fog. A good sign, I hoped. Maybe the sun would chase the wind away and with it the waves. I’d been on board less than two hours and it felt like two weeks. How was I going to get through nine days of lectures if I felt like this every time the waves acted up? I was grateful that the motion of the ship had calmed down, but it felt like I was riding a sleeping mon–ster, breathing gently. I felt like tiptoeing to keep it asleep and prayed it didn’t have nightmares.

  I’d been given a cabin of my own, I guess because I was a lecturer, or female, or both. But it was a really nice cabin so they must have run out of crews’ quarters for me. They couldn’t bunk me in with any of male lectur–ers, and from what Terry had said I’d deduced that I was the only female member of the expedition crew, on this trip anyway. Except, of course, for her. I wondered where she was sleeping. The cabin was well laid out with every conceivable space being put to good use. It was actually two rooms: a tiny outer cabin leading to an even smaller bedroom. There were two beds in the bedroom along two walls, with built-in drawer space under both. The porthole was in a prime location over my bed, and you could open it and stick your head out. I gingerly got to my knees and looked out. I could see land, grim, stark, barren, colour–less, and, by the motion of the ship, I figured the portside; where I found myself, had to be the worst place to be.

  There was a loud knock on my door and before I could answer it flew open to reveal Martha, dressed in full expedition regalia, including the khaki pants with fif–teen pockets, the Tilley hat and down vest, the regulation binocs and the fifteen pounds worth of camera and video equipment hanging off every corner of her body, and an apple in her mouth. But it was what she was carrying in her arms that was alarming. It looked like the entire con–tents of a pharmacy and a bookstore combined.

  “Cordi. Jesus girl, you look awful.” She dumped the contents of her arms onto the table under my porthole and then plopped down on the end of my bed, jerking me against the motion of the waves and causing a small revolt in my stomach.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”


  “All you have to do is get your sea legs. Nothing to it.

  You’ll be right as rain tomorrow, but I’ve got lots of anti stuff to get you through the worst.”

  I was hoping the worst had already happened.

  She got up and rummaged through her vials of pills throwing me Gravol caplets, time release, multiple strength tablets, suppositories, and drink crystals. She hauled out various coloured wristbands and stood guard while I chose a pair and put them on, their little plastic cups digging deep into my wrists like tight socks.

  “That’s the way it’s supposed to be,” said Martha as I protested and began to take them off.

  “Leave ’em on, Cordi, leave ’em on. You won’t notice them in five minutes, I guarantee it.”

  “Yeah, right. That’s because my hands will be numb.”

  She fished out a bunch of sugary looking globs. “If you want to go natural instead of all these pills and stuff, here’s the best sugared ginger in the world.” She threw me her little package. I sniffed at it suspiciously and the smell made me gag.

  “Guess it won’t be natural,” said Martha as she scooped up most of the mess and stashed it in one of the drawers under my bed. “The best medicine for you right now is to get moving, take your mind off your stomach. Come on up to the bridge. I’ve been told the captain wants to see you.”

  Five minutes later we were weaving down the hall–way of my deck, four, and hauling ourselves up the nar–row staircase to the bridge. We made way for a woman coming down the stairs, who turned out to be in the writing course. Martha introduced her to me as LuEllen. She was one of those masculine types, short-cropped hair, no jewellery, and wearing baggy clothing that completely hid her figure. She was wearing a baseball cap thrust low over her forehead and a jacket with a hunched up scarf so that I could not see her face. But I was more interested in what she had in her arms, or rather arm — the sleeve of her right arm hung empty and useless. In the arm that was there nestled a little, white, long-, curly-haired dog, about the size of a cat. She could have hidden it in her clothing and I wouldn’t have been the wiser, unless it yapped.