The Last Run

by Todd Lewan

  “Hurry.”

  “I got it,” he muttered.

  Just then he heard above him a heavy breath like a hiss, then a rushing thunder —then there was the shock, as if a gaff had come down on his skull, and the unbelievable heaviness and Bob Doyle knew the wave had him. He tried to breathe but his breath did not come and he felt himself going flat and everything around him darkly cold and heavy and he had a thought that he would never move again. He gave up fighting the weight and let himself go, knowing that he was going overboard and feeling as though he was inside nothing at all, but instead of sliding away and floating he felt his cheek pressing hard on a rubber pad and he realized that he lay sprawled on the foredeck. He tried to move his legs and they moved a little, and then he felt something grabbing him by the armpits and lifting him.

  It was Hanlon.

  “Move!”

  His legs felt watery. He tried to plant them firmly but they only bent and wobbled as Hanlon lugged him along the companionway. The next thing he knew he was sitting inside the bait shed, up to his butt in frigid water, his back against coils of line. He gasped for air.

  “Breathe,” Hanlon said.

  He nodded.

  “Breathe.”

  They opened the door a crack. The waves were coming every fifteen seconds. They burst white and flew in glittering fragments. Water was swirling and backing up around the scuppers.

  They counted to three and dashed over to the hatch. It was open. They scuttled down the stairs. Steam and diesel exhaust stung their eyes. They heard the chug-chug-chug-chug of the engine, the jangling of tools and the panicky clatter of cans and tubes and chests. It was hot. Then Bob Doyle heard the sloshing. He put the beam of the flashlight between a gap in the floor planks.

  Water was gathering below the engine.

  Hanlon pulled open his slicker and collapsed on the bench behind the galley table.

  “Take it easy,” Bob Doyle told him. “I’ll go tell Gig.”

  Gig Mork was at the helm, with the same stance and grip on the wheel that he had used to carry the steel anchors. His knuckles were white. The muscles in his jaw twitched.

  “How is it down there?”

  “All right, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “We pumped out the bilges.”

  Sleet, hail and rain were coming in thick, steely braids, and curlers were pummeling the hull to port. Hills of water sneaked up on them from behind and arched and landed with such force that it felt as though a giant spike were being driven into the aft deck. When they could see such a wave breaking it seemed as though the La Conte was exploding.

  “It’s like a monsoon,” Bob Doyle said.

  “I been in worse storms in smaller boats,” Mork said. “It’ll be better once we get in closer to shore. We just got to keep jogging.”

  “How fast you jogging her?”

  “Two knots.”

  “Where’s Mark?”

  “Asleep. How’s Dave doing?”

  “Not good.”

  They steamed up a steep, snarling swell. At the top the La Conte hesitated, then tipped forward into a void and plunged down its back side, down, down, down, bumping and slewing wildly as she went. It was as if they were strapped to a mare that was racing downhill into an unknown territory —a wasteland of dark, barren hills with no horizon in sight.

  At the galley table David Hanlon sat with his head in his folded arms.

  “How’s the stomach?” Bob Doyle asked him. Hanlon didn’t move. “There’s Dramamine if you want it.”

  “No,” Hanlon said. “That doesn’t work for me.”

  A wave hit the bow. Bob Doyle took a step back, as though an invisible hand had shoved him.

  “I don’t want to be here,” Hanlon said. “I wish I never came out.” He lifted his head. His skin was white as an oyster. “It doesn’t make any sense being out here in this.”

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  “I can’t help it. I’ve had a bad feeling all along about this. God, I wish I wasn’t here.”

  “We’re heading in now.”

  There was a noise like a gas tank exploding and the walls and floor shook again. The galley went a long way over and came slowly back. Hanlon peered at Bob Doyle, his eyes as empty as holes in a mask.

  “I’m sorry I ever came out.” He let out a thin, whisper of a sigh. “I shouldn’t have come out.”

  “You’ve seen weather like this.”

  “Not like this.”

  “You’re just tired. We’re all tired.”

  “Never again. I’ll never do this again.”

  “Well,” Bob Doyle started to say, and all he could think of to add was, “That’s good.”

  He reached up and opened a cabinet door. The cabinet was a mess inside. He rummaged around and found a can.

  “Feel like some coffee?”

  “No.”

  There was a filter in the drawer. Bob Doyle tossed out the old grinds and placed a filter into the coffeemaker. The galley tilted far over and dishes and pots rattled in the cupboards. A book slid off the shelf above the porthole.

  “Sure you don’t want some?” he asked Hanlon.

  “No.”

  He spooned out fresh grounds and had picked the glass carafe up with his right hand when he heard a thudding burst and felt a great shudder and saw the door over him. He was lying on his back, covered in tins, plates, cups and loaves of bread. Before he could open his mouth he heard a loud yawn of wood and felt the boat tilting back and he tumbled end over end until his head hit something. He sat up. Plastic cups were floating around him. His head hurt. The carafe was still in his hand.

  He got to his feet, dopily, and began picking up what had flown out of the drawers and cabinets. Then he returned the books to the shelves. The coffeemaker had not been damaged. Grounds lay scattered everywhere. Hanlon was curled up in the booth behind the table, his fingers clutching the tabletop.

  “Look,” Bob Doyle said to him, “in twenty minutes you can go wake Mike and get some sleep.”

  Hanlon just stared at him.

  “Hey, maybe you ought to go now,” Bob Doyle told him. “Why don’t you do that? Go get some sleep.”

  Just then the floor leaped up. The coffeemaker flipped off the counter. As Bob Doyle lunged for it the carafe slipped from his fingers and smashed on the floor into many pieces.

  He began picking out the glass shards from the sloshing water. Hanlon mumbled something and put his head in his arms.

  By six o’clock the seas were twice as high as the ship. They rose up in huge dark walls now, their faces near vertical, thin, white lines across their brows. From the wheelhouse they almost could be mistaken for moonlit clouds.

  “Light one of those cigarettes for me, will you?” Gig Mork asked.

  Bob Doyle was sitting beside him on the floor of the pilothouse.

  “Sure.”

  The boat was no longer clearing the tops of the swells; she was punching through the crests and launching out their far sides. Most of the afternoon the wind had been blowing largely in one direction, northeast, but now gusts were coming from all sides, in blasts, as if big shells were bursting around the ship.

  “Dave’s gone to bed,” Bob Doyle said. “He wasn’t doing too good so I sent him down to wake up Mike.”

  Mork nodded.

  “As soon as butt-head is ready the two of you better go down and check on the bilges.”

  “Sure.”

  “Remember, nobody goes out alone.”

  “I know.”

  The lights dimmed, then quit. The computer screen went blank. Yellow, emergency lights flickered on.

  “Shit,” Mork said. “The fucking laptop’s out.” He turned to Bob Doyle. “We’re not getting any juice. Go down below and find out what’s doing it.”

  In the galley, Mike DeCapua was pulling on his raingear.

  “C’mon,” Bob Doyle said.

  “What’s up?”

  “The computer just went out. G
ig thinks it’s the generator.”

  “Glorious.”

  They timed the waves battering the hull, broke from behind the door and, heads bent and legs plunging, dashed to the stern. They knelt down beside the hatch and DeCapua yanked it open. Bob Doyle took one step down the ladder, and froze.

  “Oh, God.”

  “What?”

  “Jesus.”

  “Get out of the way.”

  The bottom step of the ladder was underwater, along with the generator and both bilge pumps. Water was rolling back and forth across the engine room and lapping at the motor.

  “Mama mia,” DeCapua murmured.

  “Get the skipper,” Bob Doyle said, his voice cracking, “and tell him to activate the EPIRB.”

  The engine was still chugging, but water was halfway up its side.

  What do you do? Bob Doyle was thinking to himself. What is there to do? Nothing. That’s what. Don’t do anything. Just wait for the others. They’ll know what to do. But it’s hell doing nothing. Jesus, it’s hell. Let me think. There’s got to be another pump. But what good would that do? We had three going and that wasn’t enough to stop it. Where is it coming in? I can’t see anything. Shit. All right, relax. Calm yourself down or you’re going to start looking like him, up there.

  He looked up the stairs. David Hanlon was staring back down at him. The whites of his eyes had devoured the irises. Stop it, Bob Doyle thought. Stop looking at me like that.

  He listened to the glug-glug-glug-glug of the motor and watched the steam hissing from the block.

  God, I could use a drink. Just one little drink. No, a big drink. A double. A double would do it. Well, you can forget that. Do something. Why don’t you do something instead of wondering what the hell’s going to happen?

  Just then he heard boots on the stairs. Gig Mork came down and waded past him and the dead generator pump and over to the engine. He squinted at the temperature gauge. The needle on the dial was dropping.

  “Goddammit.”

  Mark Morley stuck his head in the hatch.

  “Holy Christ.”

  “The pump is gone,” Mork called to him. “Forget the pump.”

  “What do we do?”

  They started a bucket brigade; one man in the engine room, another on the stairs, a third at the hatch on deck. Mork started on the bottom. “Give me that bucket! Hurry up! No time to fuck around now! Where the hell is Hanlon?”

  Bob Doyle, who had just taken a full bucket of water from DeCapua and emptied it over the railing, said, “He’s up here.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Barfing his guts up.”

  Morley came running along the side of the boat. He threw himself down on the rolling deck. He’d been on the radio, putting out a Mayday.

  “Any luck?”

  “Who knows?” Morley answered. “I couldn’t hear anybody.” He lowered his voice. “I did set off the EPIRB, though.”

  “Which one?”

  They had, Bob Doyle remembered, two Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons: one was a 406-megahertz model, the other a 121.5. The 121.5 sat in a holster in the wheelhouse. It was attached to a fifty-foot line. The 406 was a handheld beacon. If he remembered right, each EPIRB had a manual switch and a saltwater trigger, but the 406 emitted a stronger, more precise satellite signal. If anything is going to work in this, he thought, it will be the 406.

  “The 121.”

  “What did you do with the 406?”

  “Right here.” Morley pulled it out of his rain jacket. It was the size and shape of a bowling pin.

  “How long you think it’ll take the Coast Guard to get here with a pump?”

  So he thinks he can still save this thing? Bob Doyle thought. A pump. Oh sure. A C-130 might do a flyby, but the way this boat is rocking in these seas there is no way anyone’s lowering a pump. Just getting a plane out here is asking a lot.

  “It’ll take them an hour.”

  “That long?”

  “At least.”

  The boat was broadside to the waves now and taking wave punches up and down her portside. She was filling fast with water; each time she keeled and the water rolled in her belly she lost more of her center of gravity.

  “Bob!” Mork called out. “Switch places with me.”

  “Coming down.”

  He bailed and bailed until he could feel his joints crack. The engine went right on thrumming. It was a powerful engine and hammered in perfect time. This boat isn’t quitting easy, Bob Doyle thought. She is pretending none of this is happening. I wonder if it’s correct to think of an engine as a she. Why not? She beats almost like a woman’s heart. Feel the rhythm of her. I wish to Christ we could figure out where this water is coming in. It’s cold as a son of a bitch.

  He took an empty bucket from DeCapua and was dipping it again when he heard a sickening, gurgling gag.

  He wheeled around and gazed at the engine.

  “Holy Mary.”

  “Fuck me,” DeCapua said.

  They could only stand there, the two of them. The boat’s heartbeat had stopped. The engine was dead. All they heard now was the maddening, high-pitched moan of wind in the rigging outside. To Bob Doyle it was as hollow a sound as a guttering candle being snuffed out.

  By the time Bob Doyle retrieved his survival suit from his bunk and ran back to the bait shed, the others were already dressing up.

  He yanked open the pouch and pulled off his boots. He didn’t want the boots weighing him down in the water. He shoved his legs in the trouser legs, stood up, put his arms in the sleeves and zipped up the chest. Then he looked around.

  “Where’s Mark?”

  “We thought he was with you,” Gig Mork said. He was double-checking Mike DeCapua’s zipper and lining, looking for holes or defects in the suit.

  “He wasn’t with me,” Bob Doyle said.

  David Hanlon was struggling to pull his zipper up. It was sticking just below the neck.

  “Let me help you with that,” Bob Doyle said.

  “Do your own first,” Hanlon said.

  “Quiet. Let me help you.”

  “It’s too tight,” Hanlon said. “I can’t get this zipper all the way up.”

  A wave slammed the stern and they collapsed like toothpicks. From his knees Bob Doyle saw the bait-shed door swing open. It was Morley. He was already wearing his survival suit. He had the 406 EPIRB strapped to his arm.

  “Listen up!”

  He told them they were going to bail again. They were also going to try one last time to figure out how water was getting in. If need be, they would dry out the generator pump. Mike DeCapua shook his head.

  “What’s your problem?” Mork asked him.

  “That pump’s gone,” DeCapua said. “It ain’t going to start.”

  “Maybe it will.”

  “It ain’t working unless we take it apart and let it dry.”

  “Shut up, Mike!”

  “Cut it out!” Morley snapped. “We ain’t got time for that. Now let’s get down to the engine room.” He turned to Hanlon, who was still wrestling with his zipper, and handed him the 406 EPIRB.

  “You hang on to this,” Morley told him. “Hit the switch, right here, if anything goes wrong. But don’t let go of it.”

  DeCapua just rolled his eyes.

  The engine-room floor was under four feet of water but the lights were still on. Mork and Morley went back and forth along the bulkheads, feeling around for a hole, a loose plank, while Bob Doyle and the others bailed furiously.

  In his survival suit, Bob Doyle was finding it difficult to keep his footing; the neoprene suits were buoyant and the water was rising fast. The more he bailed the more he felt the cold creeping up his chest. He handed a bucket to DeCapua and looked at the narrowing space between the water and the ceiling and was very afraid. Please, God, he thought. Get me out of here. He knew, however, that he would frighten the others if he said anything, so he kept his mouth shut and went on bailing.

  Morley was
ranting and swearing and pawing along the bulkheads. Mork took a deep breath and ducked under the water to check the floor for leaks. But he couldn’t stay under long. The suit pulled him up.

  “Find anything?”

  “No.”

  “We gotta find it!”

  “Mark,” Mork said.

  “We got to find where it’s coming in.” “Mark?”

  Morley turned around. Mork gave him a hard, long look. Morley sighed and lowered his head. “All right,” he said.

  They regrouped on the foredeck in the lee of the pilothouse. The ship was lurching, listing so hard to starboard that at times the mast dipped into the waves. Through the drenching darkness Bob Doyle saw the waves rise darkly and break green and white in the rigging and each time the tumbling, boiling flood of whitewater cleared the deck, he noticed that several deck planks were missing. They crouched in three-point stances.

  “Dave,” DeCapua shouted. “Where’s that fucking line?” Hanlon held up a roll of three-quarter-inch rope he’d grabbed from the bait shed.

  “Give me that.”

  Bob Doyle leaned close to Morley and said, “Trigger that other EPIRB.”

  “Think so?”

  “Do it now.”

  “Hey!” Morley shouted to Hanlon. “You got that EPIRB? Give it to me.”

  Morley took the 406 from Hanlon and held it up. Bob Doyle felt for the switch and pulled it. As soon as he released his hand, a powerful white flash blinded them.

  “That’s a helluva strobe!” Bob Doyle shouted at him. “Now they’ll know nobody’s out here kidding around.”

  A wave, this one straight up and down, rose high over the bow and hit the deck with such force that an anchor jumped out of one of the rollers. In the swirl of the water it flopped about like a speared halibut.

  Just then a pallet ripped loose from the netting on the deck and came cartwheeling at them.

  “Giggy!”

  Before Mork could move the pallet clobbered him and he collapsed on his stomach. DeCapua crawled over to him. Mork was groaning and grabbing his head.

  “You okay?”

  “No, I ain’t!”

  DeCapua helped him sit up. Then he crawled back over and wrapped the rope around Hanlon’s waist. He made a loop at the belt and tied a cat’s-paw backed by a half-inch knot.