Minus Tide

by Dennis Yates

  He’d stayed in a motel next to the highway while he met with Duane and the sheriff to work over the details. Invariably they would go to the local bar afterwards and drink and later Mikhail would wake up in his cheerless room thinking that Duane was still going to get them all into big trouble some day.

  The next night after the bars closed, Duane had no clue he was being followed home. He was too drunk and shouldn’t have been driving, Mikhail thought. It was a bad sign. When he’d driven past Duane’s house he’d seen Sarah in the window. Their eyes had briefly faced and a frame of time seemed as if had been to jarred loose from its river of continuity, her image suspended in a flash of white light that seared itself permanently into his mind and did not weaken with time.

  Earlier the following evening he’d walked to the house, while Duane and the sheriff had only begun to work through another round of drinks at the local bar. Mikhail had stood quietly under the trees and watched the woman and her young daughter sitting in front of the blue glow of a television. Her face was much like Ann’s now, reminding him of rare bloodlines and pale flowers up in the alpine slopes of mountains. Yes, he guessed that he was that kind of man when it came to women. He’d watched as they got up to refill glasses and microwave popcorn, let their cat in and out the back door. It wasn’t until they glanced out the window that he began to see their fear, how its weight seemed to pull down whatever happiness they’d allowed themselves to feel. Was it me? Did they sense they were being watched?

  His answer came soon after the bars had closed and the girl had been tucked into bed, when Duane had come roaring up to the front of the house, stereo kicking out an ugly bass that shook window panes. Mikhail had watched him stumble from his car, unzip his pants and piss in the flowerbox. Not long after he’d gone inside, all the lights had come on. Shouting followed, and he’d heard sharp thudding sounds like someone punching drywall with their fist. When he’d heard the woman cry out, he’d wanted to go inside and save her.

  And you did save her, Cyclops thought. He took another bite of the elk’s heart and chewed slowly, gazed at the wet highway before him, a spooled out reel of film.

  After all their arrangements had been made, Mikhail had checked out of his motel and said goodbye to the sheriff. For the next few nights he parked his car in front of Duane’s house and kept watch while bad thoughts charred in his mind. One night before Duane had come home from drinking, Mikhail was surprised to see Sarah emerge from the house carrying a suitcase, a dark bruise smudged across her cheekbone. He followed her from a distance down to the Greyhound bus stop, couldn’t tell if she’d seen him park beneath some trees, and shut the lights.

  He’d wanted to talk to her but was afraid he’d only frighten her more. Where is your little girl, he remembered thinking. And then everything that happened next was a blur, Duane’s tires billowing smoke after making a sudden U-turn in the middle of the highway and speeding back toward Sarah who tripped and fell as she tried to get away. Duane wasn’t drunk tonight but wired on something stronger and he’d jumped out of his car and run after the woman whose only place to go was an empty phone booth. When she slammed the door shut in his face he’d started to punch webs into the glass while she tried to find change in her purse with shaking hands.

  “You goddamn bitch!” His eyes were dark and pitted and drew the night like iron filaments being pulled toward a magnet. And then Duane was no longer thinking about his current emotional pain, but trying to wrap his mind around why his testicles suddenly felt as if they’d just been crudely wired to an electrical outlet.

  After he collapsed to the ground screaming, he’d tried his best to roll over and get a look at his attacker. Mikhail saw it coming and applied the stun gun to the back of Duane’s neck, not caring if he’d gone too far. Duane had writhed some more and pissed himself before his limbs went limp and he lay quietly on the ground with cigarette butts clinging to his face. Mikhail had watched him breathe while he decided what to do next. One idea had been burning a hole through him in the past few days.

  When he turned his head toward the phone booth, Sarah was standing frozen behind the cracked glass, her face washed in tears. He looked into her eyes and didn’t see what he’d expected. The animal who had beat her was now lying helpless in front of her, and clutched in Mikhail’s hand glittered the knife his mother had once given him as a young man.

  “Don’t you want me to kill him?”

  “Go away!” she’d screamed.

  She had no reason to trust Mikhail. She didn’t even know him, had only seen him riding around with the sheriff and glimpsed him once when he’d driven by the house. When she’d asked Duane who the man was, he’d just stared ahead and pretended he hadn’t heard her.

  Yet he learned that she’d left her child with her sister. That she planned to start a new life in Southern California and would send for her daughter as soon as she could. It wasn’t a very good plan but it was all she had. She feared Duane would kill her if he saw her again. She told him all that she knew about the smuggling operation and who was involved, but she hadn’t figured out how Mikhail fit in, had no idea how much higher up the food chain he was than the sheriff or her husband. She brought up the subject a couple of times and each time he warned her it was a bad idea.

  He’d insisted on driving her as far as she wanted, to be sure that Duane didn’t try to follow. Sarah cried off and on until they reached the redwoods. In a small town strip mall she bought new clothes and some hair coloring. When they checked into motels he slept in a chair next to door where he could be ready for trouble. One night they’d stayed up later than usual talking, and before he’d turned off the lights she’d asked him if he would hold her…

  Chapter 35

  On nights that she couldn’t distract herself by reading, Ann would spend hours listening to the street sounds coming from outside. James thought it was strange when she’d told him about it-of how she’d imagine plotlines based each passersby, see them come to life like films projected in her mind. Sometimes she heard people singing and that always made her think of home, of being down near the docks on a clear dawn where the older fishermen still knew songs from their grandfathers. And then there were nights she wished she could erase from memory-popping gunfire, screaming derelicts and the footfalls of demons scratching the sidewalk as they passed below her apartment window.

  Two nights before James had come home bleeding and they’d returned to Traitor, Ann had left work early with a migraine. She’d turned out almost all of the lights to see if she could coax it into backing off. Her neighbors across the hall were having a party and so far their noise hadn’t bothered her. It was the street outside that caused tension the most, but somehow she’d managed to fall asleep despite the random shrieks of police cars and ambulances, people carrying on conversations that she couldn’t hear clearly enough to understand, yet loud enough that her mind would conjure its own interpretations. In the middle of the night she’d awakened to the sound of someone at the door. She’d reached out and turned on the bedside lamp, fully expecting James to moan at her and roll over, except that his side of the bed was empty.

  When James didn’t open the door right away, she worried that maybe he’d left his key again in his bellman’s uniform. The hotel was a twenty minute walk away and he probably was in no mood to wade back through the army of crazies that roamed the streets at this hour. Blurry from ineffective migraine pills, Ann got out of bed and half-sleep walked to the door and automatically reached for the chain to unlatch it before her eyes were drawn down toward the doorknob turning back and forth, the tumblers of the old brass mechanism inside grinding like knives being sharpened.

  It took her a moment to find her breath again, to direct it through her trembling mouth. She’d asked who it was but got no answer, and when she’d squinted through the peephole, there was a man she didn’t know standing in the yellowed hallway. She didn’t think she’d seen him before, but she was never sure. She did know it wasn’t James because the man
had a much more imposing frame, with massive shoulders that stretched to both ends of the fisheye. The doorknob stopped.

  “I hear you.”

  Ann had held her breath. He’d looked directly at her and she’d seen a cool malevolence she’d never encountered before. Later she would remember the misshapen contours of his face, as if it were a melted mass of cooled steel. When she didn’t say anything, he’d put his ear up against the door and puffed on a cigarette.

  “I know you’re there.”

  She’d edged back from the door and squeezed the fire in her temples with both palms, willing herself not to cry, feeling the sting start at the corners of her eyes. Cigarette smoke curled up from under the door and invaded her room. Who was he? What did he want?

  Her mind flashed on a shoebox were she’d hidden the.38. She hadn’t told James that she’d brought it-he would have thought she was nuts. How would you know who you’re really shooting at-he’d asked her once when she’d taken him outside to target practice at her grandfather’s house-when you don’t remember faces like the rest of us? He was still trying to understand how her system worked, and at the time she wasn’t even sure either until she’d met the specialist in Portland. Later she’d tried to explain her condition to him, of how she’d trained her mind to pick out details most people would miss and how her memory organized them.

  The doorknob began to move more frantically. She’d heard a deep grunt, and then the door shuddered as the man threw his weight into it until the wood made cracking sounds.

  She was about to get the.38 before the outside hall was suddenly filled with music and drunken laughter. The neighbor’s party was breaking up. She’d looked through the door again and saw that the man was gone. When James got back, she’d told him about what had happened and watched the blood drain from his face. He’d paced the apartment, asking her dozens of questions that she was unable to answer.

  When she asked him if he knew who had been at the door he’d switched gears, had told her the guy was probably a drunk from across the hall who thought it would be fun to mess around, that it was only her imagination must have made it seem more than that. She was in no shape to argue. She’d gone back to bed and cried while James sat by the window drinking from a bottle of stolen hotel wine until dawn.

  I should have realized how much you and Duane were alike. How selfish you were, how easily you could put me in danger and not seem to care.

  And here I am. Alive I guess, only because the throbbing in my leg tells me so. If I was dead I wouldn’t be feeling any pain. Right?

  Wrapped in a moth-eaten wool blanket, she spread her hands next to a fire and let the warmth travel up through her fingers and into her core. Except for her bra and panties, her clothes and boots had been set out to dry. She wondered who’d removed them, who’d left a nearly full bottle of mineral water next to her head. She could remember a man’s voice and nothing more.

  Other than sporadic flashes of phosphorous in distant waves, the beach was dark. There were no other fires, no vacationers roasting marshmallows. She looked for the glow of town far over the ridge of dunes and saw nothing but a few stars pinned above the contours of Cougar Mountain.

  She had no idea what day it was. Judging by the position of the moon, she guessed the night wasn’t more than a few hours old. What was she going to do? James was probably halfway to Portland by now. She no longer cared. He could keep the money so long as he never came back again.

  The first thing you need to do is go home and check in on Aunt Kate. She must be worried sick.

  She gathered her clothes from the logs and dressed. They were almost dry and felt better than the scratchy blanket that smelled faintly of motor oil. Before she pulled on her jeans, she took a moment to examine her leg. The bandage she’d put on earlier had fallen off and the wound was an angry red at the edges and not even close to scabbing over. She had nothing to protect it with and sliding her jeans over it was torture.

  When she stood up to walk her leg screamed and buckled, causing her sit on a log and rest. A few moments later she gathered enough strength to get up again. She forced herself to move past the pain, one wincing step at a time.

  This is pathetic. There’s no way you’re going to be able to run if you need to.

  She scanned the ground for a piece of driftwood. She picked up various shapes and sizes and tested them in her hand until she found one that felt good. She found a branch leaden with seawater, about the size and shape of a femur bone. She swung it down on a bulb-head of kelp and saw it split open.

  As she made her way north she tried to imagine the pain in her leg was an old wasp sting. She’d received plenty of them from her wanderings in the forest during late summer. But it didn’t work. This hurt far worse, like a rusty nail scratch that had gotten infected.

  Maybe you should go back the way you came? It’s not as far as this is going to be. If James’ boat is still there you could take it up the bay and get back to your car.

  She stopped when she saw the body.

  At first she thought it might be a log or a large tangle of kelp. But as she got closer she saw that it was the body of a man. She started to back away.

  What if it’s James?

  She raised her driftwood club and stepped closer, saw flashes of pale flesh where moonlight broke through the clouds. He was lying on his back, arms and legs splayed open in the shape of an X. His face was turned toward her. When she tapped his chest with the end of her stick, pink sand fleas shot out of his open mouth like a shower of ground glass. Ann’s stomach heaved and she turned away.

  It was one of the Russians. Not the one she’d shot at, but the other one. She waited for the nausea to pass before forcing herself to take another look. She’d seen her share of drowning victims-the swollen, bright blue bodies being packed into ambulances. Perhaps the only thing he had in common with them was that his clothes were soaking wet, because when she was close enough to see his neck she knew something was wrong.

  Someone had slit it open. Down to the bone.

  Chapter 36

  Chad had spent the night in his car and his back was sore. He’d been hungry when he awoke, and immediately in need of coffee. Pine needles had glued themselves to his windshield and he’d had to get out and wipe them off. He’d stood for a moment and savored the brine-stripped air, the blue smell of rainwater working its way down the mountain. High, milky clouds dominated the sky. It was at least an intermission from last night’s storm. Hard to tell what’s coming next, he thought.

  He was surprised to find Gill’s Cafe open and a full parking lot, even more so by the barbeques sending out smoke signals. He’d sworn that he could smell the cooking meat coming from the highway, drifting off passing cars and trucks.

  Chad thought he’d come upon 4th of July in winter. Gill was giving away food to anyone who came by. He’d stuffed himself on cheeseburgers and beans simmered over a smoky fire. He was impressed by the Traitor’s community spirit. Since he was a boy he’d heard how their ways were blamed for seducing folks down darker paths, whatever that was supposed to mean. He’d never seen evidence of this himself, had always laughed it off as the dirty side of healthy town rivalries.

  As far as Chad was concerned he was from both towns. His mother was from Traitor and his father had grown up in Buoy and it was said by many that his father had come and stolen her away from Traitor like a jewelry thief in the night. She was that beautiful. Many Traitor fisherman Chad’s father’s age still held a grudge.

  A presumptuous old man who claimed to know Chad kept offering him beers and asking him about folks in Buoy and what kinds of trouble they were into now. And just when he’d started to feel hot in the face from the glances of others and the sense that he was going to be the butt of some elaborate joke, a highway repairman announced that the town was still effectively cut off from both sides. Chad and anyone else who’d come down from Buoy or further north might even be stranded for at least another day-unless the next storm being tracked to arri
ve in a few hours slowed down the road crews even more.

  He couldn’t find Ann anywhere. He’d driven by her aunt’s house at least a dozen times hoping that he’d see her car. After breakfast he decided he’d better check on things and ended up spending time with her aunt. Kate was in a mild state of shock when she’d met him at the door. She’d spent the day checking to see if the phone worked, hadn’t heard or seen anyone and had no idea about the damage the storm had caused.

  Chad had stayed several hours and tried to help calm her down. He made sure she had enough firewood and anything else she could think of before he left. He’d promised her that he’d keep looking for Ann. If he saw any law enforcement he’d let them know about her disappearance.

  After leaving Kate, he’d gone back to the restaurant and had eaten a little and talked. There’d been a setback on the bridge work and fresh landslides on 101. He wondered if his brothers had even noticed he was gone yet. He was concerned about getting an update on how his father was doing.

  He’d driven south of Traitor and spotted Ann’s car parked at the old boat ramp. He drove up close and let the headlights bathe it while he looked it over. There were no signs that anything bad had happened, just the fact that Ann was not around. It didn’t make any sense to him. Why would she have gone out in a boat now, when the river was swollen with driftwood and dangerous currents? Did she get into somebody else’s car? It didn’t seem like something she’d do. Unless someone forced her.

  His nerves were shot with worry. It had been a long day and he wasn’t looking forward to spending another night in his car. He smoked half a joint and lay back in the seat, thought through the list of possibilities. Although he couldn’t prove anything, he kept circling back to the idea that she was still around somewhere not far away.