by David Masiel
“What’d he come at you with?”
“Accessory to everything.”
“I don’t want to know anything about this,” said Beth. “What do you know about this?”
“Only what he told me. That the ship’s owners have filed a loss claim.”
“What’d he want from you?”
“Two things. A position report and a destination. I radioed to him before Freetown. I told him we’d be there.”
“Fuck. Fuck.” Snow couldn’t stop saying fuck. He must have said it ten times, under his breath, out loud, inside his head. He didn’t know the difference anymore anyway, words aloud didn’t do any goddamned good. Fuck. It was the only word that made sense anymore. As in I am fucked. You are fucked. We are fucked. The declension of a fundamental reality.
“Time was I’d have tossed your ass over.” He just looked at the kid with profound disappointment, tears straining at his eyeballs. What was the point of it—the point of anything now. “The thing is, it don’t surprise me. I knew it all along. I knew it from PC on. So you can jump ship here. Just know I trusted you. Protecting you two was always on my mind. Both of you.”
“Harold,” Beth said, making a half step toward him before stopping.
“There was nothing I could do,” said Maciel.
“Oh crap. Look inside your head, scrape out all them church cobwebs and mush talk and be at least in your head honest with yourself. You coulda come to me.”
“He said you killed someone. He showed me the photographs. Some girl in Da Nang. It was pretty fucking grisly.”
Snow shook his head in long swings of his neck. “No, no. No. That ain’t true. That’s bullshit pinning that rap on me.”
“Well, then it’s your turn to be intellectually honest.”
“Intellectual! Don’t give me no fucking intellectual. All mind puzzles and rules and regulations and garbage. It’s all wishful goddamned thinking—living in clouds, man, see the ground!”
He felt his head go light, and before he registered anything else he was lying on his bunk with the two looking down at him. Like watching a movie that got spliced together and left something out.
“What happened?” Snow said.
“You passed out.”
“I don’t pass out.”
“You just did,” said Maciel. “Let me get you some water.”
And while the kid went into the head, Snow reached for Beth’s hand. “I don’t think I can take you leaving me,” he said.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to, Harold.”
“So just go then,” he said. “Just go ahead and go.”
She stood up then, and the two towered over him, all lithe and young. He heard his knees crackle as he pulled himself to a standing position, one hand to the bunk. “I gotta write a letter,” he said, and stumbled across the room to the desk, where he fell into the chair. The kid came over and held out a cup of water.
“You want some help, Harold?”
“I don’t want your help, no sir.”
The two went out and left him. He heard the heavy metal door swing open, the whoosh of air from a draft somewhere down the passageway, and then it thumped closed and he was alone in there. He had no clue what he might write, or to whom. He only knew he had to do something, but all he could think was black and vast, and all he could feel was the diamonds there at his gut, biting at him.
By the time they were in the pilot zone for Lagos, Snow hadn’t seen the kids anywhere for over two hours and figured them for down in Beth’s room getting their things together. He tried to think of some way either to keep them aboard or else go ashore with them. He ought to do the right thing and help them get ashore. Help them get away from him and Bracelin both, let them live a life together like young people needed, quit his messing with their lives.
Walking stiff from the diamond bulge, Snow hiked topside to the bridge, where he stood the helm for Paynor, steering north by west toward the entrance to Lagos harbor, where a pilot boat approached. Paynor made radio contact. “You can come along our starboard quarter, we’ll have a ladder for you there,” Paynor said into the mike.
“Excellent, Elisabeth,” said the pilot in a heavy Brit accent. He was white, Snow was sure of that. There were a few of them roaming around still in Lagos, old-timer holdovers. “Elisabeth, I’m one hundred meters off and yet to see the ladder you’re referring to. Over.”
“Just tell him it’ll be there by the time he comes alongside,” Snow said toward Paynor.
“She’ll be there by the time you come alongside,” repeated Paynor.
“All right, then, see you on the bridge in five,” said the pilot.
As the pilot boat twin-screwed to a stop, turning a circle a hundred feet off their starboard side, Snow knew it didn’t matter what the kids were going to do, he had to try to go with them. The thought of following them like some stray dog was enough to sicken him, but he couldn’t imagine himself doing anything else.
The skies to the north in the Bight of Benin had what local boatmen called the Smokes, more of the dust sky you got from Harmattans, obscuring the land to where you couldn’t even tell there was a continent there. To the south, Snow saw squall lines, the seas from these periodic storms causing a swell that heaved the vessel as she approached the sea buoy.
He went below to tell Maciel and Beth they’d be free to go ashore after they’d helped with off-loading the monomers. Give her half the diamonds, he thought, leave her with that anyway.
Down to the third deck and into the passageway toward the room, he stepped inside to find it empty and well kept as always. He rolled his shoulders and shivered. He went into the head and found a clean white towel, soaked it through with cold water, then rolled it up and wrapped it around his neck, stuffing it down into his shirt to secure it, feeling the cool moisture seep into his neck and head. It did nothing to ease the pain, but the coolness distracted him. He knelt and dug into his drawer and came up with the undeveloped film box marked ELISABETH 1980. He pocketed it, reached into his pants and unclasped the money belt full of rocks, and stuffed it into a knapsack along with some underwear, socks, and a change of clothes. Then he slung the pack onto his back and went out to greet the pilot boat.
Stepping down the outboard ladder, he watched the kid come along the side deck toward Bracelin and moved to intercept, pulling him into the galley door off the weather deck.
“Listen, Harold, you okay?”
“I’ve felt better. But I been thinking. I know you probably need me around like you need a poke in the eye with a marlin spike, but I decided I’m gonna be jumping ship here too. Bracelin and me—we got things that go back deep, and I got no plan to stick around until he’s figured out he don’t need me anymore. So you just got to play it cool for now. Help me with the Jake’s ladder for this pilot. We can’t get into harbor without him.”
“Why don’t we just take a skiff in?”
“’Cause we got cargoes to off-load. This is the last shot for the cargoes. We got stiffed in the W.A., flat out. Bracelin needs these cargoes sold. Besides all that, I got rocks on my back. Lone skiff off a tanker not cleared for entry is gonna bring the Nigerian CG sure as shit.”
“What’s the matter, Harold?”
“Ah, for crap’s sake, don’t ask me that. You ain’t got time for the answer. Honest truth, I just want Bethy to be safe.”
“She thinks you’re working an angle.”
“Maybe I have been. I don’t know.”
His headache rose to a dull throbbing, and pain spread from his lower gut until it ran up and down his spine.
“It’s okay, Harold—okay.” The kid put a hand to his shoulder and looked at him like he was some old man who couldn’t make it to the toilet.
Snow shook him off and moved down the side deck and watched the pilot boat swing south of the ship as Paynor powered back to dead slow and the boat came alongside. While Maciel and Beth manned the ladder, Snow’s brain tried to figure just how to word this new plan to Braceli
n, what on earth he could do to convince the mate of the need for all three to get ashore here alone. Every possibility rang hollow, save the truth that he couldn’t live without her. His body felt crumbly, like old dry cake.
He guessed the kids were in love or something. He guessed they’d go to London together, or New York, or San Francisco and Richmond together, live in the old man’s house, become parents and grandparents and die sixty years from now, older than he. They stood at the top of the ladder and watched the starched Brit pilot heave himself over the bulwark. Snow moved to usher him up. When they got to the second deck, Snow nodded topside. “We’re kinda short of crew, so I got some tankerman work to do. You’ll find the chief mate up there. He’s got the con.”
“And where might be the captain?” said the pilot.
“Sorry, I meant the captain. He’s topside. Name of Charles Bracelin.”
The pilot frowned, then rubbed his nose, looked up the side of the house, and said, “Actually, I believe I know this ship.”
“That right?”
“Yes. This is one of those T-2s that Petrochem converted to the chemical trades back in the late sixties. They cut off the upper deck of the midship square and turned it into a pumpman’s house.”
“Lotta outfits did that,” Snow said. “Hell, I sailed a T-2 in WWII—I know these boats.”
“Then you know what I’m talking about. Others cut out the midship square altogether, but these were converted.”
Snow watched the pilot’s motor racing. He wasn’t entirely certain how to respond.
The pilot looked around. He spoke the King’s English. A real upper cruster, though how he had ended up in Lagos was beyond Snow. “These were all retrofit jobs.” He cast his eyes about like a man with suspicions he was looking to confirm.
“This is the only one still floating, I’d say,” Snow said.
“Petrochem runs a few others as well. I can tell because of that flare in the flying bridge, that contour. Some foreman had an attack of the cutsies, they say. Amusing, actually.” He pointed up at the rounded underside to the windows. Minuscule, Snow thought, but come to think of it, he’d never seen it on any other tanker either.
Snow turned to the guy. He had the look of someone who thought he was better than a mere boatswain. Snow knew that look, and it made his own stubbornness flare. “I know those ships,” he said. “And this ain’t one.”
The pilot looked around, frowning, glanced at Snow an instant, then back down to where the Jacob’s ladder dangled off the side. “How many crew you have aboard this vessel?”
“We got the usual complement,” Snow replied.
“I thought you said you were short?”
“Well, we’re short with the usual complement.”
“Then where might they be?”
“Oh, they’re out and about.” Snow nodded to where Beth and Maciel had moved forward to prepare mooring lines. Something in the pilot’s demeanor told Snow they’d been made, had been all along, maybe. The pilot’s eyes darted toward the ship’s bridge and then down to his own boat, and he said, “So sorry, seem to have forgotten my log book.”
“What’s that there?” Snow said, tapping at the bag he had under his arm.
“Papers and such, but I left the log on the console of the pilot boat,” he said. “Won’t take but a minute.”
The pilot moved back down the stairs, stepping quickly, his soft-soled shoes noiseless even on the metal stairs and deck leading down.
Snow muttered under his breath and moved for the railing, still thinking maybe the guy really had left his log book. But when he looked over the side and saw down to the pilot boat, the wheelhouse glass held the broad band of reflected black that was the ship’s hull, rising up at distorted angles to reveal the ship’s house on top. Tiny in the wide-angle image, a robotic pinhead peering down. There in a blank spot in the boat glass, as if staring out of the reflected porthole itself, Snow saw that face. He couldn’t even say he was surprised, since he figured what had gone down in Monro, could imagine the guy caught in the same chaos they were. How he banked on Lagos could have been deduction, or monitored radio traffic, or getting more info from the kid along the way. Slaney was his name, or he guessed so, anyway. He could just imagine how the Nigerians would have dealt with him. Have to get the ear of a sympathetic man of the crown, that pilot aboard to get their evidence so they could walk her into waiting authorities. He knew then how it would all transpire, though there were alternate realities to be sure. He could still affect things.
While the pilot scampered down the internal stairway, Snow moved to the port-side railing and motioned down a deck to Bracelin, shaking his head emphatically and pointing the opposite way. Bracelin dropped everything, and disappeared into the ship’s house. By the time Snow got back to the seaward side of the ship, he saw the pilot boat down below, and he was glad that Elisabeth had a skeletal crew. It wouldn’t do anybody’s health any good to see Bracelin intercept the pilot, ushering him inside before he’d have to force the issue, so that nobody on the pilot boat could see. Snow saw, though. He watched the door until finally Bracelin came out a few minutes later to climb down the Jacob’s ladder into the pilot boat. The Aussie must have seen him coming. He stepped from the wheelhouse in all his short wide bulk, and Snow thought him formidable, except Bracelin was on him so fast, reversing him into a choke hold and jerking his neck, which even with all its muscles gave way and the man’s head flopped sideways, his body limp. The boat operator had no clue what was about to tumble onto him. Bracelin pulled open the aft door to the wheelhouse and disappeared inside. Any sounds of protest were swallowed by the din of the ship’s main engines.
When Bracelin finished with his business there, he went belowdecks, opened the pilot boat’s sea valve, and released the lines before he climbed topside ahead of the inflow of water, stepping to the Jacob’s ladder just ahead of her scuttling.
Still making eight knots toward Lagos, Elisabeth ran nearly parallel to the coast when Snow went topside and ordered Paynor to steer as inconspicuously as he could to the south-southeast, to come to full ahead, the bells ringing below in the engine room. Snow knew none of them would be going ashore now, and he hated Lagos enough to feel okay about that, except for the minor fact that he had no idea where they’d go now.
He stood there wearing his knapsack loaded full, feeling like a tourist who’d just missed his bus. He felt a fog press onto him from above. He scanned the horizon and wondered how long it would be before the pilot master caught on that his boat was missing. He rubbed his face. Jesus, he thought. Jesus. The Smokes left nothing ashore but a muddy sky, and he was glad for that. As they turned south the squall line closed down.
Down below, Bracelin gave the bad news to Maciel and Beth, and Snow watched from the bridge wing as Beth motioned to shore and then pulled her arms in and crossed them, looked down, and went to work tightening down the canvas covers over the raft davits.
Smoke billowed from the stacks, and the massive main engines rumbled up from underneath as the vessel changed headings toward the south, out of the Bight of Benin into the Gulf of Guinea and beyond that for the vast open ocean of the south Atlantic. Night was already falling, and the sky glowed a deep purple toward the east, falling toward black, even as the remnants of sun clung to life in the west. The winds started then, rising at a clip you couldn’t imagine except from a line squall. They’d be into the storm soon, and beyond it soon after. A squall wouldn’t last long, and it would be good cover, he thought. Cover to keep the Nigerians from hauling ass after them until the ship was good and gone toward Ilha do Príncipe.
Snow stood inside the bridge scanning aft with binoculars, still with his backpack on, as it had been since the pilot came aboard. His heart migrated upward as he watched, waiting for the end to come down on him, wondering if he could have handled things any other way.
“They’ll call first,” said Bracelin.
“Probably,” Snow replied.
The ship had
been steaming south for just under an hour, the seas lifting and heaving the ship, when the call from the pilot dispatch office came, wondering what had happened with the ship coming into port and where the pilot boat was. “Ah, yeah, no pilot came aboard here. Over,” said Bracelin.
“Our records show that you called and requested a pilot,” said the dispatcher.
“Yeah, roger that,” said Bracelin. “I’m afraid we had a miscommunication with our second mate. He called.”
Snow turned forward from his binocular vigil aft, noting Bracelin and feeling the pilot incident settling into him now. He felt some great force out there, all around wherever he looked, pressing toward him. He kept seeing that line of hunting buddies in the Elks Club—you’ve crossed a line here, Snow, you’ve crossed a line. Maybe he’d go to hell. Maybe he was in hell. Come to West Africa like the ancients, to find the real limit of your life.
“The pilot reported he was going aboard,” said the dispatcher. “That was at 1635 hours. Over.”
“Negative,” said Bracelin. “He came alongside. He was about to come aboard, but we explained the miscommunication and the pilot boat peeled off. We ordered no escort tug. Over.”
“Roger, that confirms what Victoria Towing has told us. Problem is we have not seen the pilot boat since. Over.”
“Nor have we,” said Bracelin. “Over.”
“Very well. Update as information warrants, Elisabeth. Lagos Pilots, over and out.”
Snow felt little relief. He wished he could catch his breath. “So what do you think?” he said.
“Plan B,” said Bracelin. “We try to sell in South or East Africa, and we run the ship aground in Bangladesh.”
“You think she’ll make it?” Snow asked.
“Maybe not.”
“I know a scrapyard near Dar,” said Snow. “We could sell monomers in South Africa and head to Dar. Avoid crossing the Indian that way. Get what we can for the ship.”
“That might work. But we’ll need to pick up crew in Luanda or Cape Town—half dozen warm bodies at least.”