The Last Run

by Todd Lewan

  “You could say.”

  “Well,” Bob Doyle said, “what was it?”

  “She’s gonna have a baby.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s what the man says.”

  “Wow,” Bob Doyle said. “That is great. Jesus. When’s the baby due?”

  “I don’t know. Sometime this year.”

  “I’ll bet she’s happy.”

  “Well,” Mork said, “she’s had a time of it. See, the doctor first told her that she had lost a baby. And she did. Only it turns out she was gonna have twins. Just didn’t know it.”

  He puffed on his cigarette.

  “No shit,” Bob Doyle said. “Talk about second chances. How did Mark take the news?”

  “He’s one happy son of a bitch. I can tell you that.”

  “Well,” Bob Doyle said, “that’s some news.”

  Right after they passed the fifty-fathom curve the seas stacked, and by four that afternoon curlers were pounding the stern and washing over the decks. The wind howled like a gut-shot gray wolf and the boat was keeling almost forty degrees on the bigger swells.

  Once Bob Doyle finished stowing the gear he staggered dopily to his room. He did not have his sea legs yet. His thigh muscles fluttered and his ankles were sore. He wondered if he ever would get his sea legs. He eased himself down on his bunk. The porthole looked like the door of a washing machine. He thought he would time the waves. He had counted to eight when the door swung open and he saw Mike DeCapua, holding a five-gallon bucket with water in it.

  “I gotta take a crap.”

  “Lovely.”

  DeCapua pulled down his sweatpants, yanked off his rubber boots, sat down on the bucket and thumbed to a page of a paperback he had dog-eared.

  “Mike?”

  DeCapua looked up.

  “Can you put your socks on or something?”

  “Why?”

  “Your feet stink. I mean, they really, really stink. They’re fucking horrible. You ever think about scrubbing them with lye or something?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Your shit’s gotta smell better.”

  “Fuck off.”

  Bob Doyle closed his eyes. It felt as though his bunk was shoving him back and forth. After a minute he opened his eyes and said, “How long is this gonna be?”

  From behind his book, DeCapua said, “I don’t know. Could be days. You got any cigarettes on you?”

  “No way.”

  DeCapua lowered the book. “Okay,” he said, “but I always crap faster with a smoke.”

  Bob Doyle threw a pack of Luckies at him. DeCapua picked the pack up, drew out a cigarette, lit it and went on reading.

  Later they were up in the wheelhouse. The sky looked silvery now in the afterlight and was letting go in black streaks across the gray horizon.

  Mark Morley said, “We’ve been taking a lot of waves on our stern, haven’t we?” He paused. “How are the bilges?”

  “We’ve been pumping them every hour or so.”

  Morley frowned.

  “These damned seas aren’t getting any better,” he said. “We still got another forty miles or so.” Bob Doyle noticed the dark pouches under his eyes twitch.

  Mork said, “So what do we do?”

  “Turn around,” Morley said. His voice was toneless, flat as a piece of slate. “It ain’t worth pounding through this shit. Not for a couple of lines.”

  DeCapua smiled a faint, economical smile.

  “It’s too bad,” Morley said, “but I don’t see any way around it. Shit.”

  He sighed.

  “Giggy,” he said, “turn her around.”

  “All right.”

  “I guess we’ll go back to Graves,” Morley said.

  “Skipper,” DeCapua said, “why do we have to go to Graves? I mean, there ain’t nothing there. It don’t make sense to sit in a bay for two days.”

  “What’s your idea?”

  “I say we go to Elfin Cove. It’s another fifty miles, but it’s a neat little town. And they got parts and fuel there. And fresh water, too.” He paused, then added, “And, there’s always a chance we can scarf some beer or hair pie.”

  “I could use some of that,” Mork said.

  Morley thought it over.

  “Giggy,” he said, “set a course to Elfin Cove.”

  DeCapua clapped.

  “Say, there, Giggy,” he said, “you been to Elfin Cove plenty of times. What kind of shit they got going this time of year?”

  “You guys go talk somewhere else,” Morley said. “Better yet, get some sleep. And don’t forget. I want those bilges checked every hour.”

  Bob Doyle and DeCapua went below. They did not find Hanlon in the galley.

  “Finally some reason in a world of insanity,” DeCapua said. “Hey, where the hell’s old Davie boy?”

  “In his rack.”

  “Just wait till he hears the good news.”

  NINETEEN

  They limped into Elfin Cove in the dark and drifted to a stop alongside a fuel dock. The air hung cold and still, and in the channel the water lay flat and black. All around rose mountains, steep, muscular mountains, their tops jagged with spruce and dusted with snow. There was a path of wood planks that began at the far end of the dock and twisted up a slope to the top of a ridge. Behind the ridge was the soft, yellow glow of town lights, and they could see ropes of smoke twisting high above the trees. Nothing stirred otherwise. It had snowed and everything had a stiff, frosted look.

  Bob Doyle stood on the foredeck and took in the mountains. Spruce look so lifeless with snow on them, he thought. Like upside-down icicles. Or glazed pipe cleaners. Sure snowed a lot. He swung his legs over the gunwale and dropped down on the dock. His legs wobbled a bit. The motion of the big seas was still in them.

  Mark Morley came out on the foredeck.

  “Quiet,” he said.

  “Too quiet.”

  Morley nodded. “Okay, let’s get the anchor down and tie ourselves up.”

  They tied off the lines to the bow and stern, and David Hanlon wedged a few buoys between the hull and the pier. Gig Mork dumped two anchors. The anchors went in with a small splash and sent ripples across the channel. Morley came up the fo’c’sle where he had gone to stow the rope and tarps.

  “Looks good,” he said. “All right. Why don’t you fellas take the night off? Only don’t go getting in any trouble. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Mike DeCapua came out on deck. He had just woken up. His face looked like a mass of gray putty with black stubble on the lower part of it.

  “Elfin Cove?”

  “Yup.”

  “You going into town?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Hold on a second, will you? I gotta get something.” He went back inside and came out a few minutes later with a bag under his arm.

  “What’s that?”

  “My doobie.”

  They walked along the slippery, planked path and came to a framed cabin with a wood sign: COHO’S BAR AND GRILL. Another sign hung on the front door.

  NO RAINGEAR NO MUDDY BOOTS PLEASE

  There were square tables and chairs with shiny tops and a bar along the wall with gleaming liquor bottles and a stainless-steel grill in the far corner. Very tidy. But there was no one inside.

  “Time’s it?”

  “Almost eight.”

  DeCapua snorted. “Who pays to drink, anyway?”

  Elfin Cove was a nice-looking little town. Wood-and-stone cabins with chimneys clung to the hillsides, and there was a cove with a quay and little boats in the slips and nets hanging from racks. A few cruisers had their cabin lights on. They glowed like candlelit pumpkins.

  “Gonna call your kids?”

  “Right now,” Bob Doyle said.

  They walked along a boardwalk, past a post office and what looked like a little school and stopped on a ramp in front of a blue phone box.

  “It’s the only public phone in town. Everyone uses it. Y
ou can make your call from here,” DeCapua said. He pointed to a garage that had a white light around the door edges. “That’s The Shop. I’ll be in there. Come on in when you’re done and have a smoke.”

  “Okay.”

  Bob Doyle lifted the receiver. The number he dialed rang four times.

  “Yeah?”

  “Is Laurie there?”

  “No.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Out.”

  You bastard, Bob Doyle thought. You insolent bastard. “If the kids are around,” he said, “I’d like to talk with them.”

  There was a grunt, some muffled sounds and then shoes tapping on a floor. Then he heard the voice that sent a jolt through him.

  “Daddy!”

  “Hello, sweetheart.”

  “What are you doing, Daddy?”

  “You know what I’m doing, silly. I’m fishing.”

  “Oh, sure.” There was a pause. “Daddy, tell me a Barbie story.”

  Whenever he was away, Katie expected him to call in every day with the latest episode of Barbie’s Alaska adventure. On their way to Elfin Cove he had thought up a new one: Barbie Fishes the High Seas.

  When he finished, she giggled. “That was good. Tell me another one.”

  “No, honey, that’s all for tonight. Is your brother there, sweetie?” He heard more muffled sounds, some yelling, and then crying, and then his son’s voice.

  “Dad?”

  “Brennie, did you hit your sister?”

  “No.”

  “Try to be nice to her.”

  “How are you, Dad?”

  “I had a great day fishing. We caught lots of stuff.” He paused. “What’s going on in school?”

  “Not much.”

  He was not very good at chitchat so he told his son about the trip. He told him how big the yellow eye were, how big the waves had been, told him names of different rockfish, skipped over the size of the catch. Had he seen any whales? Not yet. How about sharks? None of those either. Would he bring back some shark teeth? With any luck, yes. When was he coming home?

  “As soon as we fill our holds.”

  “And then?”

  “Then I’ll fly down to Sitka.”

  “What if you can’t?”

  “Then you and your sister will have to fly up to Juneau to see me.”

  “Cool!”

  “Brennie,” Bob Doyle said. “I gotta go now.”

  “Will you call tomorrow?”

  “Sure. How about eight o’clock?” He knew the children usually were in bed by nine.

  “I love you, Dad. Hurry home.”

  Bob Doyle hung up. The sound of his kids’ voices used to fill his insides, at least for a little while. Not anymore. Now that he knew he had no home to return to, it only made him feel hollow and lonely.

  TWENTY

  It was cold in the night and Bob Doyle slept heavily. Once he woke and, moving his shoulder against the hard bunk, realized he was back on the boat. He pushed his legs out as far as they would go in the sleeping bag, and stretching, the calve muscles hard as stones, the lower back muscles stiff and sharply aching and smelling the old herring and seawater in the crackling hair of his beard, he felt the pleasant nip of dry, cold air on his nose and the draining, splendid emptiness of fatigue.

  It would be nice to do a hot tub in Tenakee Springs right now, he thought. But I had many chances to soak my body before starting this job and I am really fishing now. There will be plenty of chances to go tubbing when we return the boat. And I haven’t missed the drinking yet. That’s good.

  He pulled the edge of the sleeping bag up to his nose, and lying in the dark, the warmth coming back to his split, blistered lips, he tried to let himself slip down steeply into sleep.

  Now in his mind he saw the two-story house on Davis Street with its gutters piled with snow and the yellow lamplight coming through the front bay window. It was early for such a snowfall in Vermont and it had caught the Bellows Falls Fire Department by surprise and the trucks hadn’t been out to clear the streets. Everything was so white and clean-linen looking. It was still falling, lazily, the flakes dropping diagonally through the bare branches of the oak and melting on his cheeks and forehead. He was standing out in the front yard, just beyond the reach of the porch light. He couldn’t quite see his mother’s face. Her arms were crossed.

  Where have you been?

  In the canal.

  The canal?

  He only nodded.

  And that?

  He held a tiny cat, pressing it tight against him. The cat was soaked. Its black hair clung to its bony back.

  Do I get an answer?

  It was in the canal.

  In the canal?

  Yes.

  And you went in after it?

  Yes.

  Oh, God. Don’t tell me you went into the canal near the power dam. You did, didn’t you? Oh, God. Oh, oh, oh.

  She put her hands to her face and turned and went inside. He stroked the wet cat. After a few minutes his mother returned with a big white towel. The sternness was gone from her voice.

  Come here, Bobby.

  He did not look up as she wiped the cat with the towel.

  Weren’t there any grown-ups that could have jumped into the canal?

  Yeah.

  Go upstairs. I’ve started a bath. Get out of those wet clothes and get in that tub.

  He hesitated. His mother looked at the cat. It was a sickly looking little thing. Not a fluffy, fat cat.

  All right. She sighed. The cat, too.

  At first light he woke again and after breakfast walked into town to fetch drinking water. They spent most of the morning hauling buckets of water from the community hall to the boat. Once the freshwater chest had been topped off, Gig Mork spread the oldest, rattiest gear they had out on the dock and told them to pull up a bucket and get to work repairing it.

  Mark Morley had gone off to pick up some extra engine parts and to buy some new tools. He had flown into a rage that morning while fixing the stove. He could not figure out why the burners would not ignite. After dismantling and reassembling the thing several times, he stood up and began hurling tools into the channel. He threw wrenches and adjustable sockets and screwdrivers and clamps and pliers and he had grabbed the stove itself and was hauling it out on deck to toss it overboard, too, when Mork ran over and stopped him.

  By the time the skipper had gone into town the sky had turned to a dull, uniform gray so that the sky hung soft and heavy, cutting off the tops of the mountains. Soon a light snow was falling. The flakes dropped in swirls, not diagonally like hail but softly, like rose petals, and the crew sat on the dock, untangling and splicing line and watching them come, circling, from above.

  “Why doesn’t it snow out at sea?” Bob Doyle asked.

  “It does,” Mike DeCapua said, “only there’s too much humidity near the water. By the time the shit gets down low, it’s already turning to rain.”

  “Too bad it doesn’t snow out there like this. It’s pretty.”

  David Hanlon stood up, climbed onto the boat and went back to the bait shed. “He never talks much, does he?” Bob Doyle said to Mork, who was chopping a snarl off the line.

  “No.”

  “He’s got a funny walk, too. I just noticed it.”

  “His back is fucked. That’s why he don’t winch or gaff. He’s strong as shit but he’s got that back.”

  “How did he do it?”

  “Says he came in from a trip once, in Ketchikan, and it was dark and he climbed up the ladder and didn’t see the hole in the pier. In went the leg, all the way up to his balls. He never got over it.”

  “Nasty.”

  “Takes all kinds of pills, gets all kinds of treatment, but you know doctors. Take your money, never make you right.”

  “Man.”

  “Hand me one of those hooks.”

  A troller was moving up the channel. The men on it were sweeping the snow off the railings. They waved at them.
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  “Bob,” Mork said, “don’t make your splices so fat. They can’t be that big. Try to keep them smaller than the diameter of the line.”

  “Sorry.”

  “And that section there is fucked. We can’t use it and we ain’t going to make it right. Here. Use this and cut it off.”

  They kept working as the flakes circled and drifted down around them. They smoked and told stories to pass the time and at one point Mork asked Bob Doyle if he had ever been to Pelican and Doyle told him he had passed by it a few times but had never stopped there. Mork said it was as good a town as any you could find in southeastern Alaska, that when you lived there you felt a part of one, big family. Nobody was ever in such a hurry not to stop and say hello and everybody who was part of the family got a nickname at one time or another. Bob Doyle asked him how they got a nickname like Gig out of a first name like William.

  “First word that come out of my mouth,” Mork said. “Gig. My parents just started calling me it.”

  Pelican, he said, got its name from a packer boat. That was a century earlier. His grandfather was one of Pelican’s first settlers. His name was Nels Hjlmer, and he was a Norwegian who came to America on a merchant’s ship at fifteen. The army officials could not pronounce his last name, so he gave them the name of his family’s farm in Norway, Mork. Later, he took a Tlingit woman for his wife, had seven kids and built a big farmhouse for them. He never finished the inside. Too much fishing, too much drinking. After old Nels split with his wife, she and the older kids went to work at the packinghouse, sliming and freezing fish. Twelve-hour days. For a summer’s work, the kids got paid twelve dollars and a pair of boots.

  In those days, he said, the fishing was good everywhere. The seiners jammed the docks and the fishermen packed the cathouses. There was a big float house moored just off the pier that featured lots of kittens. After selling their catch the deckhands always rowed straight for it. One fisherman, the story went, fell hard for one of the kittens. One night he returned from a trip and found her servicing another client. No, he did not do anything stupid or make a mess; he untied the float house from the pier, towed it into the gulf and let it go. Just let it go. The float house drifted for two days.

  Finally, some of the other fishermen starting feeling bad for the kittens—and lonesome —so they sailed out, hooked up the float house and towed it back to Pelican.