The Whiskey Sea

by Ann Howard Creel

  Dutch located the rum boat he lately preferred, the steamer Dolphin, and had to wait his turn while other small boats were loading. On the large vessel the men were too busy to exchange money. Instead every available crew member was occupied with handing down cases to all the smaller craft and also keeping a lookout for trouble. But that payment plan took a lot of faith in the shore boats’ captains, because any of them could later claim to have been hijacked or caught by the guard and then never come back to pay.

  The boats in front of Dutch pushed off, and he was able to pull in alongside the Dolphin and begin shouting his order while Rudy threw over the fenders and lines. Dutch ordered both Rudy and Charles to help load quickly, as the bigger boat had men on watch and visibility remained excellent, the storm still hovering a few miles farther out at sea.

  Frieda stayed below to keep the engines running and ready to take off on a moment’s notice. The boat sank lower into the water as the cases were loaded, and she figured they were about half-full when she heard the officer on watch aboard the Dolphin shout, “Cutter coming from the northeast!”

  Frieda scrambled up out of the engine room and took a look. There was a dark bloom of smoke on the horizon and the easily recognizable white hull of one of the coast guard’s seventy-five-foot cutters coming their way. American boats with liquor on board could be seized by US authorities anywhere in the world; no limit of jurisdiction protected them.

  “Get out of here!” shouted the lead man from the Dolphin. As they all knew, the contact boats’ best option was to get a head start and outrun the guard.

  The smaller boats cast off, but Dutch and some of the other captains who ran bigger, swifter boats decided to stick around and wait to see what developed. Confidence was catching.

  Dutch said, “Fuck that cutter. He only makes fourteen knots, and I can go faster than that even when heavy.” He ordered Rudy to stop loading and keep watch on the cutter’s progress while he and Charles continued to pull cases on board.

  “Frieda, down below deck,” he shouted at her.

  There was never any doubt who was in charge on the Pauline. Dutch went about packing the boat just as coolly as before. Before she went down, Frieda glanced at Charles, whose brow had broken out in a sweat, though his face gleamed with excitement. He was probably happy the cutter was in the area—he’d have better stories to tell—and for a moment Dutch’s questions to her from earlier, the ones she’d never answered, rang in her ears.

  Rudy took up binoculars in the bow, the tiniest of trembling in his hands, and she ducked down under as ordered and waited for the moment Dutch would tell them to flee. When the cutter was within about four miles of the steamer, however, the guardsmen must have changed their minds. The cutter turned around and went back the way she had come. Inexplicably changing plans. Maybe they had received a distress call, and by policy their first duty was rescue at sea, or maybe they’d spied so many bigger, faster boats they’d figured it was pointless to give chase.

  No one knew for certain, but the lead man on board the steamer said, “Well, you fellers, that there is a right kind gentleman, leaving us to conduct our business in peace.”

  Dutch turned in the cutter’s direction and shouted into the wind, “Bon voyage, you fuckers!”

  As soon as the cutter disappeared into the haze of the horizon, all the smaller boats reappeared as if pulled out of a magician’s hat, and they waited their turn in line. Dutch finished loading and ordered them to push off and begin the journey home. With the engines running like the well-oiled machines they were, Frieda came up on deck for fresh air and to help look out for other boats. Charles sat by himself at the stern, and her first thought was to sit next to him as she usually did. Instead, Dutch’s insistent questions haunted her, and she didn’t want to add fuel to the fire by appearing to cling too closely to Charles. Dutch’s questions only reminded her of her own.

  You don’t think that boy is going to take you away from all this, do you?

  She’d never wanted to escape from all this, and she still didn’t. But she did want Charles as she’d never wanted anything before. And he wanted her, at least for now. What about when the summer was over, though? She watched him as he cupped his hands around a cigarette, struggling to light it in the wind. Finally he got the thing lit and sat back on his elbows smoking casually, as if this were all he’d ever wanted. He turned his face up to the sky and closed his eyes. The elegance of him was so intriguing, so compelling.

  For an hour or so there was no further sign of the cutter. Frieda silenced her inner fears, settled in next to Charles for the remainder of the ride, and watched his body fully relax as the sea moved underneath them. It was that way for her, too; they were kindred spirits when it came to the sea. Over these depths she could almost forget everything and simply drink in the windswept afternoon that was quickly turning to evening. They bounced and thudded into a glorious setting sun.

  But when the bay was in sight—it was about seven o’clock—this time it was Rudy who shouted, “Cutter!”

  The amount of smoke from her funnel meant she was coming on at full speed. Inshore from the Pauline and most of the other boats, she was obviously planning on cutting off the entrance to the bay where all of them needed to pass, setting herself up to intercept the chosen boat, and so the race began. Dutch hollered that they had nothing to worry about. They were in one of the fastest boats in these waters. The slowest boats veered off to nearby beaches, where they could slide into shoals too shallow for the cutter and dump their loads someplace where they could return.

  The crew of the Pauline watched several of the smaller craft evade capture that way. But the cutter got on the tail of a twenty-five-footer so loaded down with cargo that barely nine inches of freeboard was showing on her hull. They signaled for her to heave to and she obeyed. There were guns in the bow and stern of the cutter, which the coast guard crew were now authorized to use if a boat didn’t respond to signals. The newly sanctioned use of force had made any guard boat feel more menacing.

  The guardsmen were boarding the doomed vessel as Dutch swept the Pauline past them in utter defiance. Foolish, Frieda thought. They had never been so close to a cutter, close enough for the guardsmen on board to remember their faces. What was Dutch thinking? A trigger-happy guardsman could have taken one or all of them out. The guard wasn’t authorized to fire if unprovoked, but the sense of lawlessness and recklessness about this business was expanding. The guard could claim they’d been shot upon first, and if something like that happened, who would believe a runner?

  Even Charles seemed momentarily flummoxed. This life was overcoming Dutch, a man for whom she used to hold a great deal of respect for his cautiousness and attention to detail, but now openly brusque and impulsive, flaunting his success in front of the big white cutter with her gleaming brass fittings. As they made the sweep, the cutter was near enough that Frieda could see she had a crew of about forty or fifty men, all in spotless uniforms, the officers draped with gold braids. Strangely, she admired what they did. They were honestly going about the business of enforcing a law. However unpopular, it was a law, and they were charged with an impossible task.

  The storm finally thundered in with lashing rain and wind that churned the bay into a froth. It was a miserable trip for the rest of the way. Charles turned up his collar and pulled a cap down well over his eyes, while Frieda went back below deck. Now the chop was rocking the boat from side to side, and the wind came with a howl. She found herself uncharacteristically nauseated, slithering eels in her stomach. Normally she had great sea legs and a cast-iron stomach. The boat pitched and surged against a rising swell, but Dutch never blinked an eye. Frieda held close to the engines for warmth.

  Maybe it was best to go out with a captain who was fearless after all.

  They got the load dropped, then eased the boat back into her slip just as the storm clouds curdled away. They had time for a late dinner. Frieda also had time to go home, clean up, and dress in one of the frocks
that Bea had left with her, this one a cream-colored, crepe-y dress with a V-neck and a dropped waistline marked by a wide black band. She ran into town to the dress shop to buy stockings—in Rose Morn or Teatime shade, as Bea always preferred—sniffed the colognes on display, then made her purchases and ran outside to rush home and finish getting ready. As she rounded the corner onto her street, she stopped short.

  Hicks was sitting on the porch with Silver, but once he caught sight of Frieda he lifted himself slowly from his chair. Even from a distance she caught the look in his eyes. He’d never seen her dressed for a date, dressed up for a man. He had to have heard about Charles and her, but his look was that of disbelief, disappointment, and perhaps pain. An old pain from long ago, never forgotten, always swirling deep in his eyes. Seeing her dressed to go out had probably made it all too real for Hicks. She lifted her hand in greeting and started walking again, but Hicks took the porch steps down, turned away from her, and started walking slowly in the opposite direction.

  “Hicks!” she called out. There was too much pain in this world; she wanted to cause no more of it. But what was she to say to him? Still, she wanted to see his face up close and try in some way to make him understand.

  He turned halfway around but kept moving farther from her. “Didn’t recognize you,” he shouted behind him, “with all the new scraps.”

  “Wait,” she called, but she couldn’t very well run in those shoes, and Hicks kept striding away.

  “Hicks!” she called out again.

  But he continued to walk away.

  A strange urge rose in her throat to shout something else, but she stopped. What did she want to say to him? Another urge made her want to run after him, hold him, feel his warmth, comfort him, and let him comfort her; she had to turn away to suppress it. What was this feeling? What, what?

  She joined Charles for the short drive to the Cedar Grove Hotel for dinner in the Water Witch section of town. She’d never been to the resort to enjoy its simple elegance and soft lighting, fine linen tablecloths, real silverware, and crystal wine and water goblets. While waiters hovered nearby to cater to their every need, Charles educated her about the proper use of cutlery while simultaneously smirking at the absurdity of such rules.

  He seemed elated by the events of the night. They had foiled a coast guard cutter so close that they could’ve spit on it. “That was something, wasn’t it?”

  Frieda touched the napkin to her lips the way the other women in this restaurant were doing. “Rudy says the guard is getting better.”

  “Didn’t look too outstanding today.”

  “They’ve put more boats into service, like that cutter.”

  “Lots of laid-up old destroyers from the navy, reconditioned for the guard.”

  “Still, there are more boats and more men—five thousand, I heard.”

  He sighed. “We have a good captain and a good boat.”

  “It was foolish to taunt them.”

  “Yeah,” he said, and smiled, although a faint shadow crossed his face. “That might not have been such a good idea. But it was exciting, wasn’t it?”

  She managed to return his smile, but the sight of the cutter in the area and Rudy’s warnings gave her an uneasy feeling. Maybe she would get out after this summer. Maybe she would go somewhere with Charles, or better yet he would stay here so she could stay with Silver. Or maybe he would walk away from all of it, including her, as Dutch had insinuated.

  The next night Dutch said he needed a few days off.

  So Charles took Frieda out again. They went to the outdoor summer theater at Highland Beach on Sandy Hook, as by then the evening air was fresh and cool, and the scum seemed washed from everything they were doing. There they could watch a motion picture outdoors and get dinner in the Bamboo Room. She loved being seen with him, especially out among the tourists, who didn’t know her. They looked like any other couple out for a summer’s evening. They looked right together; they fit.

  Charles scanned the crowd, drew her near, and whispered, “Interesting lot here.”

  At first, all Frieda saw were the typical tourists, with a few locals mixed in. And then she saw some shifty-eyed, well-dressed gangster types. What were they doing here?

  “See the man over there with the blond?”

  Frieda followed his gaze.

  “They both wear wedding rings, only they aren’t married to each other.”

  Frieda’s eyebrows rose. “How do you know?”

  “I can read people. Look at the way he defers to her. He listens to her, breathes her in. Men don’t treat their wives that way.”

  “In your world,” Frieda shot back. “I happen to know several men who treat their wives well.”

  “Name one.”

  It was an easy answer. “Rudy.”

  “Ah, well, I wouldn’t know about that. I’d have to see them together.”

  He locked on to another couple. “Those two, definitely married. Look how stiff they are. Probably arguing.”

  Frieda wished he’d focus more on her. But she said, “Probably need to roll around in the hay more often.”

  “Ha!” Charles laughed. “No doubt.”

  He picked out the newlyweds, some other cheaters, and predicted the breakup of another couple that very evening. He pointed out a man who needed money and another one who had too much. Then spinsters and widows.

  Frieda said, “Maybe you can kidnap a few and take them home for further study.”

  Laughing aloud, Charles hugged her. “Jealous of my attentions, are you?”

  Warmth flushed her face. “How sure you are of yourself.”

  He pulled her closer. “You couldn’t be more wrong about that.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  That night he took her to his summer house, a colonial-style home in the hills, which, although it was one of the smaller ones on the street, still seemed like a mansion to Frieda. What did he do with all the space and furnishings? His bed was unmade, and he turned on only one small lamp. And yet she could see that the house was decorated in a nautical theme with the colors of the sea—greens, blues, and grays. It had a soft, comfortable lightness. The floor was solid under her feet and didn’t creak, and the windows were spotless. The bathroom and kitchen held every modern convenience, and the smell of the house was of freshly laundered cotton mixed with the scents of the ocean wafting through the windows, which offered a sweeping view beyond.

  He made sweet love to Frieda on top of fine linens while he left the French doors open to the veranda and sea breezes hummed over them. Afterward, she tried to sleep but found her mind jumbled. Frieda turned the subject of Charles over and over in her mind. She worried about the most insane possibilities and dreamed of equally impossible ones. Terror seized her when she thought about the end of summer and the start of the fall semester at Harvard taking Charles away, and she was sure this love affair couldn’t last. Nothing in her life had ever promised a happy ending. She wasn’t even sure that she deserved a happy ending. And yet hope was like a strong drink, soaking her brain with happy thoughts and possibilities.

  Charles, not sleeping either and wearing only his underwear, took cigarettes and a gold lighter out to the veranda facing the bay and lit up a smoke, offering her one, which she declined. He stretched out in a wicker chair and seemed pensive, quiet.

  Wrapped in his luxurious robe, Frieda followed him and found the veranda filled with flowerpots and vines climbing trellises at both ends. She sat beside him. After gazing over the water for what felt like a long time, she asked him, “What will you do after this?”

  He took a long, slow drag on the cigarette. “I try not to think about it.”

  “It’s already the end of June. The Fourth of July is coming. I always feel that after Independence Day passes, summer goes by so fast. July passes quickly, and after that August and the beginning of fall.”

  He smiled wryly. “That’s generally the way it goes, Frieda. July, August, September . . .”

  “Of course
—”

  “That’s precisely why I try not to think about it.” He stood. “Maybe I don’t understand what I’m doing. Must I? Must you? Must everyone?”

  Frieda wondered at his irritation. “I guess not. I guess there are many inexplicable things. But if we believe in something, maybe it helps.” She wanted to say if we believe in someone . . .

  “You’re beginning to sound sentimental now. Don’t get soft on me,” he said with a delicious smile that stung. Suddenly she was so cold, as if winter had just blown in.

  She kept her face still. He had no clue.

  “Give me a back rub, will you?” he said.

  Frieda positioned herself behind his chair and began to knead and massage his lovely, smooth, tanned skin. His muscles relaxed as she worked them, but his sudden dismissive statement had stiffened her every bone. Don’t get soft on me. How was she to interpret that?

  He sighed. “This life out in the elements suits me. Doing things, physical things. Being out of doors, breathing hard, the sun on my face, and the wind in my hair.”

  She told herself that what he’d said before didn’t amount to anything; he was just joking with her, being himself. Talking, talking, talking. She gave his back a playful tap. “You’re beginning to sound poetic.”

  “Ha! Me, a poet? I doubt it.”

  She returned to his beautiful back. “Have you seen the way people look after years of hard labor out in the sun and wind?”

  He chuffed out a laugh. “There you go again. Drawing a line in the sand between us. But you’re right. Don’t trust anyone or anything.”

  “I never said anything like that!”

  “You don’t have to. We’re more alike than you know. We don’t completely fit where we’re supposed to, and we can’t escape it, either.”