The Whiskey Sea

by Ann Howard Creel

  They balanced their traps and themselves in the stern and waited for Rudy to give the signal to throw. Just before he did so, he caught Frieda’s eye and his look said it all.

  This has to work.

  “Now!” Rudy shouted, and they heaved the booby traps into the wake behind them.

  They held their breaths, waiting. Moments stretched out like the longest of sleepless hours. Rudy lifted the binoculars to his face.

  “Might have done the trick,” he said, a little nervous smile playing on his lips.

  They waited. And waited. And finally began to hope.

  Dutch looked over his shoulder and eased up a bit on the throttle. “Looks like we missed our date with the devil. So long, you motherfuckers!”

  Then the light shined on them again. As before, their ploy had only temporarily slowed the dark boat, which had probably made a sharp turn to avoid a hit but was now back on course. She kept coming, slowly gaining on them, and no one said anything after that. Behind them, she was a powerful black shark tracking her prey methodically, determinedly, purposely.

  Each time the dark boat flashed the spotlight on the Pauline, it seemed that the light was sharper and brighter. Frieda thought through their options, as she knew Dutch and Rudy were also doing. The Pauline was too big to hide in an inlet and probably needed as much draft or more than the dark boat did, so going shallow and hoping the other boat would run aground first was not a good option.

  Charles stepped up beside Dutch. “Can’t we radio for help?”

  Over the sound of whining engines, Rudy shouted, “Station’s out, remember?”

  Dutch finally answered in an amazingly calm voice, “Wouldn’t’ve made a damn bit of difference anyways. It would take too long, and no one’s going to come out and risk getting kilt, too.”

  Dutch was wired for this kind of thing, and Frieda made herself try to believe the salty sea captain in him would get them out of this.

  When Dutch told Rudy to go below and fetch the Colt pistol he kept on board, Frieda wondered what the point was, though she didn’t say that to Dutch. The other boat had machine guns; what good would a pistol do? Were they going to end up in a hopeless gunfight to the death?

  They held course, the boat running hard across black water swells, her bow held high out of the sea, slicing through the troughs and spewing silvery panes of water on both sides. They flew past the occasional pleasure boat anchored for the night, and Charles said, “Can’t we ask them for help?”

  Dutch laughed and leaned forward at the helm as if he could push the boat faster by the sheer power of his resolve. He looked like a man who could tear through a tugboat line with his bare hands. “What are they supposed to do? These guys are probably Mafia, and we’d just end up getting some poor guy and his family shot dead.”

  Charles went pallid.

  A few staggeringly quiet moments later, Dutch barked, “Frieda, check the fuel.”

  She did as ordered and reported back. “One tank’s empty. I switched over to the second tank on the way in, but it’s still over half-full.” She had also ascertained that the engines were still running hot but not hissing or steaming. Doing what they were supposed to do.

  “Good,” Dutch said, and she knew what he was thinking: maybe the other boat would run out of fuel first. It would be the only way to evade them now.

  They flew past the distant red and green lights of channel buoys, the running lights of legitimate boats, and the blinking lights that lined the shore. Safety so close and yet so very far away. Their situation couldn’t have been direr. Where was the guard now?

  Frieda suppressed weak cries that were building in her throat and fought against the swell of tears blurring her vision. Rudy came and put his arm around her, while they continued sliding over the bleak ocean, and overhead the constellations continued to eternally rotate. Now the sea was rolling more, too. Still hours before dawn. And they would run out of fuel before that. Sickness was beginning to congeal in her stomach and crawl up Frieda’s throat. She managed to keep a clot of something sour from spurting out of her mouth.

  Rudy began to whisper prayers, while Charles sat huddled against the sea spray and wrapped his arms around himself.

  He sprung up and approached Dutch again. “Why don’t we get in close, jump over, and swim to shore?”

  Dutch glanced over his shoulder and then turned back to face the sea ahead.

  “I’m not leaving my boat. Besides, you think you’d make it? It’s a lot longer swim than you think, Princeton. What with riptides, jellies, and breakers, I’d guess your chances ain’t good. But if you want to go, go.”

  Charles seemed to be considering Dutch’s words. He looked at Frieda, and she shook her head.

  “Besides, they see you in the water, they might just go find you and shoot you for the fun of it,” Dutch said, his eyes fixed on the water ahead. “We’re better off in the boat. At least we got a fighting chance.”

  “What chance?”

  “Maybe she’ll run empty before we do.”

  Charles shouted, “She probably came out just a while ago. We’ve been out for hours. She could be close to full.”

  “Well, what do you suggest, Princeton? Got any better ideas, then fire away!”

  “Why not beach the boat and make a run for it on shore?”

  “It’s the middle of the goddamn night. Who’s gonna help you? And they probably got shore men, too, on the lookout for us. They want this boat bad.”

  “What if we just give it to them and then pledge not to go to the law?”

  Dutch laughed bitterly. “They don’t have to take pledges. They make sure no one goes to the law by killing everyone.”

  Charles was soaked; either with seawater or sweat, Frieda didn’t know.

  And the dark boat kept coming, slowly but surely gaining on them. Charles finally sat down, hands clenched together, and hung his head low.

  Dutch looked over at him. “Probably don’t need to hide your head. They could probably hit us with a Thompson by now, but they don’t want to sink this baby, so they’re not shooting, not yet.”

  Rudy said, “Waiting until they can be sure of accuracy.”

  Dutch nodded.

  An hour or more passed, or maybe it was less. Farther down the Jersey shore, lights were becoming sparse. Behind them the dark boat kept hunting, drawing closer.

  There was nothing to say. Each person lost in his or her thoughts, there was nothing to do but keep on and hope, pray . . . for a miracle.

  Haunted thoughts enter the mind when loss of life is imminent. Frieda thought of the afterlife and hoped it existed. If so, maybe she would see her mother and Silver again. And Whitey, too. But thoughts of her life haunted her more brutally. All the things done wrong, all the anger and bitterness she’d held inside for so long, things she’d said to people, her fights with Silver, disappointing him—how she’d maybe driven Bea away from her, too. Her shabby treatment of Hicks, her fury at Hawkeye. If only she could have one more day to make amends with the living before passing on. In one day she could apologize and go to her grave with perhaps less regret. She clamped her eyes shut. Just one more day . . .

  Dutch shouted something about the fuel, and Frieda instantly jarred back to the present. She went below and checked the sight glasses on the fuel tanks, knowing what she would find. She came up, clutching the handrails to the companionway. “Second tank’s almost empty.”

  Dutch shouted, “Then do something, goddammit. Use the naphtha.”

  They had five-gallon tanks of naphtha on board.

  Frieda yelled, “Engines are too hot.”

  “Do it!” Dutch fired. “We’re sitting ducks if we don’t. It’s our only chance!”

  She glanced from Rudy’s frightened face to Charles’s desperate one and back to Dutch’s doggedly determined one. Rudy’s redheaded children flashed in her mind. The boat thumped over a swell, and sickness spurted into the back of Frieda’s throat and burned her tongue. Her balance failed, and sh
e smacked face-first into the transom. Pain erupted high up her nose, and her teeth went numb.

  She heard Dutch yell, “Do it now!”

  She tasted blood streaming from her nostrils. Retching, she reached for the transom and heaved over the stern of the boat. Her guts emptied, and then a ferocious knowing cracked inside her brain. Rudy. Horror-struck, she whipped around.

  Rudy was hanging on to the port-side gunwale with one hand and holding the naphtha can in the other, pouring naphtha into the fuel fill.

  “No!” she screamed.

  Soundlessly Rudy’s silhouette lit up with flames, then the white-hot explosion knocked her down to the deck, forced choking black smoke into her lungs, sprayed flaming splinters on her body and hair, and a split second later the sea began to rush in.

  So fast.

  Immersed now in a black, cold silence.

  Sinking, drowning.

  Flashes of memories: skimming over the water into darkness, salt on her lips, big boats lingering on the horizon, crates of liquor luring them out, rolls of bills in her hands, lawmen on the take, and funerals. Desire and kisses. New York City on the arm of a man. A nice dress. Racing over the ocean. Whiskey bottles. Fear and exultation.

  Just let it all go . . .

  But the pulse of blood coursing through her veins and arteries walloped in her head, and her heart was still beating fiercely and would not surrender easily. She couldn’t see her floating hair or the bubbles that escaped from her mouth, or the way her body drifted downward. But even as the water took her lower, she was heavy, her regret immense, and it was that very thing that saved her: the weight of her, the weight of her life. She had so much to make right.

  A red light glowed above her, and a sudden burst of determination sparked her limbs to life. She aimed for the darkness beside the light. She frog-legged upward again and again, until with long strokes of her arms and legs she broke the surface, gulping life-giving oxygen. It all came back. Rudy. While hateful spits of sea and embers nailed her face, she thrashed about and swept her eyes around the waters surrounding her. Not far away the burning remnants of the boat. The water dancing with wild flames lighting the swells with burning oil and naphtha. She swam crab-like through the fiery debris field. Dutch, Charles, Rudy. Rudy, who had been closest to the tank.

  She found him facedown in the sea, grabbed him by what remained of his shredded, burnt clothing, and turned him over. He looked and felt lifeless. “Rudy! Rudy!” she yelled.

  The skin hung off his face in lacy strings, but she thought he might be breathing. She put an arm under his shoulders so that his face stayed above water, and she treaded water with her other arm and her legs. Putting her cheek over Rudy’s mouth and nose, she felt the movement of air. He was alive.

  Dutch appeared, treading silently in the dark waters around her. He whispered urgently, “Keep quiet, damn you. Let’s get him away from the flames so they can’t see us. If we’re lucky, they’ll think we’re dead.”

  One on either side of Rudy, they towed him farther out into blacker water. But where was Charles? Where was he?

  Dutch said, “At least the fuckers didn’t get my Pauline.”

  They held still, keeping Rudy afloat, as the go-through boat made a sweep around the debris, missing them by mere yards in the water, the heads of the crew all turned in the other direction, toward the burning wreckage. Their three dim heads in the midst of dark seas had not been spotted.

  As Frieda stared after the other boat, a faint splashing sound floated into her ears. Charles. Her heart thwacking against her ribs, she lifted her head to find him. There he was; she caught the arc of his arms as he swam toward the shore, an inky shadow plowing through the heft of the ocean, the spray from his desperate flight rising ghostlike into the blackness. The roar of a distant engine told them that the hunters were leaving. The hijackers had lost what they had wanted most: the boat. And so the four of them at least had a fighting chance to make it to shore and get Rudy to a hospital. But somehow Frieda already knew that Charles, taking his flawed humanity with him, would not come back to help.

  Indeed, where was love now?

  Time held its breath as she and Dutch slowly battled the sea, keeping Rudy afloat, towing him between them, stopping when they had to in order to float and rest a minute, then treading and swimming again. Over and over again: tow, float, tread, swim. Tow, float, rest, swim.

  As they battled currents and swells and began to shiver with cold in this black sea for what felt like many hours but was probably only one or two, fatigue set in. Swells slapped her in the face, and she had to spit out seawater and fight the currents, all the while not letting Rudy out of her grasp. She kept checking; he wasn’t speaking, but his mouth once fluttered open, and he was still breathing. Still alive. Frieda’s feet cramped, and there were long trembling moments when she thought she could not go on. But Dutch breathlessly whispered encouragement, and she ignored the pain. He would not give up until they all went down together. Frieda realized she would rather die, too, than leave Rudy out here. The three of them would make it or none of them would.

  Slowly they made progress. The few lights they could see when they peered over swells were getting brighter, and they rammed on until Frieda heard the hiss of waves making contact with shore.

  Dutch said, “Breakers coming.”

  Then white foam and rushing bubbles all around, a sucking undertow, and yet they held on, rode in on top of a big crasher, and finally crawled and dug up the sand like men lost at sea for months, gasping for air, heaving, coughing, spitting, and pulling Rudy to safety.

  Dutch had been the faithful captain after all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The newspapers reported that an organized crime boat had chased a rumrunning boat until the latter’s crew attempted to fuel their boat with naphtha, causing an explosion and destroying the rum boat. All four crew members had survived—three with only minor burns and injuries, but one seriously burned and blinded for life. The pursuing boat had never been found.

  Every day Frieda visited Rudy at the hospital in Long Branch, where he’d been transferred after receiving emergency care at Fort Hancock’s army hospital. He was receiving burn treatment, and each morning she took the trolley and then the bus to Long Branch. She went through the motions of living, but she was like a pale version of herself. She had never felt so flimsy and worthless.

  Two weeks after the accident, as she stepped off the trolley back from her trip, she looked up into a satin-blue sky. The sun was warm, birds flitted in the trees and skimmed the shallows, and yet it was joyless. The earth had continued to rotate on its axis, oblivious to the agony on its surface. She knew she would live through it only because she’d lived through her mother’s death and Silver’s death. And somehow survived. But each day her body felt heavier yet less substantial, like stone turning to dust. This event was the most wretched, piled on top of all the other things in her life she’d done wrong, and her only escape was found in short spells of restless slumber, only to awaken and be struck with remembrance.

  Rudy was blind, and it was her fault.

  Rudy, the sweetest of them all, with his wife who’d given up everything to be with him, and his children. Those three redheaded cherubs.

  Her feet made contact with the ground; amazing she could still move. She hadn’t been able to eat, and she drank only when the primal urge to survive drove her to the faucet. She walked because when she sat still, the bony fingers of self-loathing and remorse curled in and crushed her. Mostly she walked with no destination in mind and dreamed of walking backward, wishing that she could turn back time. On that particular day, however, she found herself walking up the low rise that overlooked Silver’s and her mother’s graves, as if propelled by some otherworldly phantom.

  She staggered and stopped. A man was there, standing before her mother’s grave. She instantly recognized the shape of him, the stoop of his shoulders, and his dull shade of gray hair.

  Hawkeye. The man sh
e’d always hated. It looked as though he whispered something, genuflected, and then backed away.

  It seemed hardly possible that still more sadness could rush into her shattered soul. She had thought herself already too damaged to feel anything more, but as she watched, memories flooded her. She had cursed him, belittled him, and directed the full force of her anger at him. And she remembered how this man had once angrily told her how he hoped she would one day love someone she couldn’t have.

  Hawkeye’s wish had come true. She had not seen Charles since the explosion. His summer house stood empty, with no sign he’d ever lived there. She knew he had made it, both by the fresh tracks she and Dutch had seen that night in the sand, and because the newspapers had reported that all four crew members had survived. But no information had come from Charles. He had simply vanished. Obviously he couldn’t face what he had been a part of. And what he had done to her, to Dutch, and to Rudy. He had left them in the water; he left them altogether.

  But no anger existed inside her now; agony took up too much space, leaving no room for anything else. And Hawkeye . . . her mother had seen something in him. She had let him sit at their table. Was he the only one she had allowed to do that? Then a new realization: Hawkeye had no flowers with him. A small new hope unfurled; maybe someone else had felt something for her mother. The mystery would endure.

  If only she could endure along with it.

  She watched as Hawkeye slowly strode away in the opposite direction, down the incline, and back toward town.

  No, no anger left now.

  She found Hicks working on the Wren in port, readying to go out over the shoals for his second time that day. As she walked the pier, apparitions of long-dead sailors rose and hovered over the water, then quickly dissipated, as if swallowed whole by the traitorous sea. The waters seemed malevolent now, filled with skeletons of boats and creatures, the surface a layer of silvery deception over a black pit.

  Slowly walking up to Hicks, she found that her mouth would not work. She didn’t even know why she was here, why she was seeking him out. She’d talked to no one except Rudy and his family since her last night on the boat . . . and no one could help her now.