Vanishing Act

by Thomas Perry

  It was cold on the water. Within a few minutes she was convinced that the northwest wind was proceeding unimpeded from some glacier in the center of Canada across the empty lakes to the sweat-soaked clothes of Jane Whitefield. She folded her arms, hugged the shotgun in them, and kept her eyes on the shore.

  She waited until the lights of Olcott were almost invisible and she hadn’t been able to detect the shapes of the low buildings for some time. Then she set the throttle on the outboard motor, pulled out the choke, and gave a pull on the starter. The motor coughed twice, then burbled and putted. She tapped the choke in, shifted to get the propeller turning, and headed out slowly.

  She listened to the motor for ten minutes at slow speed as she moved them away from the shore. It was firing evenly and it was reasonably quiet, but there was no telling what sort of gas had been in the Oldsmobile or what it would do to the motor in the long run. She ran out a few miles from shore, then slowed down again and let the motor idle. "Give me your gun," she said.

  "What?"

  She said it louder, over the sound of the motor. "Your gun."

  He pulled his pistol out of his shirt, and she took it by the handgrips and tossed it into the dark, deep water. Then she held her shotgun out with both hands and released it at water level beside the boat. "They won’t do us any good now," she said.

  10

  The light aluminum boat slapped along at a good speed, the motor churning a white rooster tail on the black water and the hull pushing diagonal waves to the sides. The wind dried Jane’s hair and then blew it out behind. She watched Felker settle into a comfortable position with his head resting on his forearm.

  Jane kept the bow pointed west, trying not to get close enough to the shore to be noticed. That was the way the canoes used to travel this lake. If it had worked for them, it would work tonight. Whatever else had changed, the lake hadn’t. The Seneca had made their canoes from the bark of a red elm or a bitternut hickory, stripped from the tree in one piece, stretched over a frame of white ash, and sewn at the bow and stem. Some of them had been forty feet long, much bigger and easier to see than this boat. All she had to worry about was keeping out far enough so that if any noise reached the shore, it was disembodied.

  The incessant, unchanging drone of the motor pushing the boat through the dark made her eyes heavy. They were heading back toward the mouth of the Niagara now. Neahga. The land along the lake had changed, but from out here at night no eye could see it. The lake was the same. Jane could as easily have been wearing the gaka-ah, gise-ha, and ahdeadawesa: the skirt, leggings, and long shirt that her grandmother’s grandmother wore. They made a lot more sense for this kind of trip than a wet sweatshirt and jeans. Her clothes would have been embroidered in porcupine quills with patterns of flowers and trees, but even she would not have been able to see the colors in this darkness. She would have the gaaotages, a necklace woven of fragrant marsh grass, for perfume. Why was she thinking of perfume? It was probably the smell of the gasoline. The darkness and the persistent sound of the motor were making her drowsy, and there was something about being on the water out of sight of land. What was out of sight began to lose its reality after an hour or two.

  It was easy to imagine why people would believe— no, not believe, exactly, just express the mystery of it this way—that the world was begun when Sky-Woman fell and was caught by the sea birds and placed on the shell of a gigantic turtle. Out here, where the dark sky and the dark water met with nothing in between and her mind was too tired to censor any thought that came into it, the turtle seemed no more unlikely than the Big Bang. He would be lying out here just under the surface, motionless and huge and prehistoric, like a sunken island. And for a second or two, it was possible to imagine the feeling of being the first woman, falling. Slowly, maybe because the noise of the sea birds had reached it under the water, the turtle would rise from the dark depths, at first the curved top of the shell emerging a little, the water streaming off the green moss growing on it, and then more and more of it, until—

  There was a loud clunk, then a horrible scraping along the keel of the boat, and then the motor screamed as the propeller was pushed up out of the water and the intake sucked air, and then it stalled. Jane was thrown forward off the seat to the hull, and her mind shrieked, trying to break its fall. She had to fight the first, shocking feeling that somehow she had conjured the immense turtle, that because she had been thinking of it, the turtle had come. The part of her mind that worked all the time had known from the first instant that it wasn’t an imaginary creature. It was a log or a rock or something.

  Felker was crammed between the bow and the first seat with his feet in the air when she saw him. He said, "What happened?"

  She snapped, "We hit something. Are we leaking up there?"

  He pulled himself up and put his hands to the hull. "No. I don’t think so."

  "Thank you," she muttered.

  "You’re welcome." But she hadn’t meant him to hear it. They were about five miles out. This was April and the water was like—

  "—Ice!" he said. He was leaning over the gunwale and touching something beside the boat. "It’s a big piece of ice. I can’t believe it. You hit a damned ice-berg, like the Titanic."

  Jane laughed out loud, letting the tension go out of her.

  "What did you think it was?" he asked.

  "You wouldn’t believe it." She laughed harder, and in a moment she heard him laugh too. "You sure we don’t have any leaks?"

  "Wait," he said. She held her breath. She could hear him running his fingers along the riveted seams near the bow. "I’m sure," he said.

  She slumped in her seat. "What a relief. At least we don’t have to worry about dying."

  "Dying? Can’t you swim?"

  "Yes," she said, "but I don’t know if I can do five miles in forty-degree water dragging a full-grown man in my teeth like a Labrador retriever."

  "Hey," he protested. "I just ran ten miles through mud puddles and rowed a boat halfway across a lake. What do you have to do to impress girls around here?"

  "We like it when men help us get our boats off ice cakes," she said. "Take an oar."

  They each pulled an oar out of its oarlock, stood up, and stuck an oar into the frosty surface of the ice floe. When Jane said, "Heave," the other end of it rose above the surface six feet ahead of the bow, and the boat slipped backward a couple of feet. After two more tries, the boat slid free and glided a little.

  Jane said, "I apologize," and sat down.

  "I should think so," said Felker.

  "I mean, I should have remembered about the ice when we saw there weren’t any boats moored at docks."

  "There weren’t any docks."

  "Right. People put them in each spring after the ice goes down."

  "You mean melts?"

  "Not exactly. Lake Ontario is too deep to freeze much, but Lake Erie isn’t, and some of the other lakes go far enough north so that they freeze too. There’s a boom at the mouth of the Niagara to keep the ice from flowing down the river and wrecking the machinery at the power project. They open it every spring to let the last of it go."

  He shrugged. "I can see how people around here might want to circle that date on the calendar."

  "It’s a different day every year." She tipped the outboard motor back down into the water. "Let’s hope we haven’t sheared a pin. If we have, maybe we’ll drift up to Montreal in a few weeks."

  "A pin?"

  "For a guy your size, you really aren’t the outdoorsy type, are you?"

  "I grew up in the city. When we want fish, we buy fish. What kind of pin?"

  "A shear pin. If the prop hits something, there’s a little pin that breaks, so even though the propeller is stopped, the drive shaft can keep turning."

  "Why in the hell would anybody put a fiendish thing like that in a motor?"

  "Just cross your fingers," she said. She set the controls, gave a pull on the lanyard, and the motor started. She listened for a second, and it sou
nded strange. She shifted to engage the propeller and nothing happened. She leaned over the stem and looked into the water, said something Felker couldn’t hear, and turned off the motor.

  Felker said, "Pin?"

  Jane shrugged. "That’s how they act when that’s what’s wrong. It doesn’t mean there aren’t other things, too."

  Felker carefully made his way toward the stern. "Any chance it can be fixed by two rabbits?"

  Jane smiled. "We forgot to steal the toolbox. People carry extra pins."

  He thought for a second. "Describe the pin."

  "It’s a little peg of metal ... soft metal, I guess. About an inch long and an eighth of an inch thick."

  "How is it held in place?" He sounded different now, and she wasn’t sure whether it made her uncomfortable or if she was grateful for it. She supposed it was his serious, patient cop voice.

  "It just sits in a little slot."

  "Where?"

  "Down next to the prop."

  "Do we have anything to lose if we try to fix it?"

  She shrugged. "Beats rowing, and there’s no reason not to try," she said. "The pin will be in two pieces, but we might be able to use something else."

  He unscrewed the clamps and lifted the motor into the boat. Jane touched the propeller. It didn’t seem to be bent. It must have dug into the ice long enough to shear the pin before it had come loose.

  He said, "I feel something sticking out—wire?"

  "The cotter key," said Jane. She could tell without being able to see that he was pinching the two legs inward. Then he took out his knife and put the point into the loop and extracted it.

  "I wish we had some light," he muttered.

  "Those four men wish we did, too. By now they’re looking in our direction."

  "I guess so. What’s next?"

  "Feel that part that’s shaped like a big bullet?"

  "Got it."

  "Depending on the model, it either comes off in your hand or you have to turn it."

  She heard him fiddling with it, and then he said, "It’s off."

  "Now feel for washers—almost paper-thin."

  "Just one," he said. "Big one."

  "Now it’s my turn." She carefully lifted the propellor off and felt for the shear pin. "Here it is," she said. "Only now it’s them."

  He held out his hand and she placed the pieces in his palm. He pushed them together, felt them, then touched the slot in the motor. "How about a nail?" he asked.

  "Great," she answered. "Got one?"

  "No. I saw about ten of them in that garage."

  "He pounded them in with the hammer from the toolbox."

  "How about a piece of wood? We could cut one off an oar."

  "Too soft. Go for too hard. At this point I don’t care what happens to a stolen motor."

  Felker said, "Do you have a piece of jewelry or something?"

  "No," she answered. "I don’t wear jewelry when I work unless it’s a disguise." Then she said, "My belt."

  "What about it?"

  "The little piece of the buckle that goes through the holes is about the right size." She pulled off the belt and handed it to him. He felt it, held it up to the slot in the motor, then set the belt on the seat beside him and went to work prying it off the bar with his knife.

  "Here it is," he said.

  She placed it in the slot on the motor, sliced a little leather off the belt to pack it tight, and whistled with pleasure.

  "What was that?" he said anxiously. "Did you hear it?"

  "I was whistling. It fits. Or it feels like it fits."

  "You know, I never heard a woman whistle before."

  "You’ve lived a sheltered life." She started carefully replacing the parts on the motor. "Where’s the washer?"

  "Here. You mean you could all whistle all this time and you just didn’t do it?"

  "Yes, and do arithmetic and pee outdoors and smoke cigars." She reached for the next part, but found his hand was already on it in the dark. They touched hands for an instant, and she pulled hers away to let him put the bullet-shaped piece on. "I hope you still have the cotter pin."

  "Yeah," he said. "It’s a little bent up, but I can straighten it enough." She could hear him fiddling with it on the motor. "I think it’s done."

  "Let me feel it," she said, and then realized she was warning him to get his hand out of the way so they wouldn’t touch again in the dark: the rules. "It feels as though everything is where it should be," she said. "If it only lasts a mile or two, we’re still ahead."

  He stood to lift the motor onto the transom again, then went to his knees beside her to tighten one side while she turned the other clamp. Then he made his way forward again.

  Jane felt for the fuel hose, connected it, and said, "Keep your eyes open for ice. If you see anything, don’t be shy. Sing out."

  "You’re assuming this will work."

  "The lady in the store where I bought that belt said it was timeless and perfect for all occasions." She gave the motor a pull.

  He said something else, but his words were drowned out by the sound of the motor coughing. It gave its familiar sputter, then hummed with a louder, even sound. She was glad she hadn’t heard him. There was something about their relationship that was getting too fluid. His good-natured words were like ambassadors sent out to penetrate her defenses. It was making her uncomfortable. He was changing things, moving the line back, closer and closer to her.

  What he hadn’t said was bothering her, too. He had been a cop. He must have thought of the shotgun right away. There were two parts on a shotgun—the pin that held the trigger assembly into the receiver, and the pin that locked the magazine plug—that would have been better than the belt buckle. Cops saw shotguns every day of their lives, rode with them upright in a rack in their patrol cars. You had to pop the pin out even to clean and oil the trigger mechanism. He would have been perfectly justified in saying, "Too bad you dropped the shotgun into two hundred feet of water."

  Had he kept himself from saying it because he thought she wouldn’t have known what he was talking about, or because he had known she would have thought of it already—how she had stupidly gotten rid of it when it was full of little pieces of metal in just about any shape you wanted? The answer was that he knew she would have thought of it and that she would feel guilty enough already and that she would be grateful to him for never mentioning it. Jane didn’t feel like being grateful. She didn’t want to have to give him credit for being considerate or calm or cheerful or for having big, strong hands that could bend a cotter key or for anything else. Everything he did was calculated to slip through her defenses, to decrease the distance that made her feel comfortable. But maybe it wasn’t calculated, and her defenses just weren’t what they ought to be.

  She kept her ears tuned to the sound of the motor. It seemed to be all right. The minutes went by, and every one of them was a reprieve from rowing, and added to their chance of hopping out of reach of the men who had been chasing them.

  Felker got up on the seat on his knees and pointed. He half-turned his face to her, so she twisted the handgrip on the throttle and slowed down to hear him. "Big one ahead," he called. "Go to the left a little."

  She changed course a few degrees and kept the motor’s revolutions low enough to let her hear the next sighting. She was being unfair to him, she knew. This had to be the worst week of his life, with the high probability that the next one wouldn’t be as good. She wasn’t used to making men like him disappear. Most victims weren’t even men. They were women and children. For the children, the whole world seemed to be a dream, first the bad kind, and then the kind where they were compelled by her voice to keep moving, going through unfamiliar landscapes for no reason they could explain. The women stopped bristling at another woman’s authority only when they were sure she was about to go away again. Most of the men had been thrown off balance by surprise and fear before she met them. They just wanted to know how to get out fast. That was his problem: He hadn’t been t
hrown off balance. He hadn’t just run; he had sat down and thought it through and decided to come to her, without relinquishing control.

  She started to feel the proximity of the Niagara River long before she came close enough to make out lights along the shore. There was something different in the air, and in the water. Suddenly, the motor’s pitch skipped up to a whine again and the boat glided to a stop. She cut the throttle and said, "Broken again. This time we’d better row to shore."

  "Okay," said Felker.

  "I’ll help," she said. "We’d better get in quick." She tipped up the motor, moved forward to sit beside him, and took an oar.

  "Why?" he said as they took their first stroke shoulder to shoulder.

  "Why what?"

  "Why quick?"

  "The river is an international boundary. Over there is Canada. They’re not especially hard-nosed about it, but both sides probably have somebody watching. If you saw a man and a woman rowing a fourteen-foot boat in off Lake Ontario on a cold night with the motor out of the water, what would you do?"

  He looked up to his right above the water. "Is that them up there? It looks like a fort."

  "It is," she said. "Fort Niagara. It’s old. Ignore it."

  They rowed hard. He provided most of the forward movement, and Jane concentrated on keeping the boat straight against his size and strength. Felker had a good eye for strategic places. This was the narrowest part of the river. The name for it was O-ne-ah, the Neck, and at one time it had been one of the prizes of the earth, the strangle point in the North American fur trade. The portage around the Falls, the Carrying Place of Niagara, was the one big obstacle in the route from the center of the continent to the sea. The French, the British, the Americans, and all of the Indian tribes allied with each of them had fought for control of that fort from the 1680s to the 1780s. Now it was empty, a museum. It was one of the quiet places where all the old human blood had made the grass grow green.