by Dan Vining
Jimmy snatched the snowboarder’s cap off the kid’s head. The boat shifted again. Angel fell against the steel wall. Something crashed down behind them.
“Let’s get out of here,” Angel said.
The tuna boat was fully afloat though still heeled over onto its side when they came back out onto the deck into the stinking air.
“Maybe they already took him on board,” Jimmy said.
There were people all around the tuna boat now, wading up to their chests some of them, others trying to make use of the wrecked boats that still flo ated. A pregnant woman, full and round in her rags, sat in a Zodiac as a man waded beside her, hand on the gunwale, hauling the boat tenderly, as if she were Mary on the donkey.
They all moved in the same direction across the wetlands.
“What time is it?” Jimmy said.
“There,” Angel said. “Your guys.”
Across the watery grasslands, the bad-joke Sailors Lon and Vince slogged through, dragging Drew with them.
They were in water up to their knees and easy to catch.
Jimmy pulled Drew away from Vince, the shorter one, and knocked down Lon, the tall one.
Drew wore a peacoat and watch cap now. Jimmy yanked at the lapel of Drew’s coat.
“They put this on you?”
“We didn’t do nothing,” Vince said.
“He did it,” Lon said.
“They said if I was with them I could go home,” Drew said.
Jimmy dragged him away.
“They lied,” he said.
Lon came back after him. Jimmy grabbed him by the back of the neck and shoved him facedown into the tide and held him there until his legs stopped kicking.
Angel pulled Jimmy’s hand away.
Lon surfaced, sucking in air again.
Vince half thought of coming after Angel. Angel hit him in the face for it, three quick blows, dropping him backwards into the water beside Lon.
“So this is where—” Drew began. It was like he was stoned.
“No,” Jimmy said.
“Come on,” Angel said.
And so Jimmy and Angel and Drew fell in with the others, moving like an arrow, all of them, in the landscape of refuse and nature, men and women, the moon reflected a hundred times in scattered shards of water. A wider, higher view would show their destination five-miles distant across the wetlands and then across the sculpted landscaping and empty parking lots of the Long Beach harbor.
There, lit like a cathedral, The Queen Mary.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Angel looked at the sky as they moved up the gangway. There was a little breeze. It was cool in that off-the-water way. A few clouds were crossing the moon.
Tonight it almost was blue.
“Beautiful night,” Angel said. He looked at Jimmy. “And it’ll be a good day tomorrow, whatever comes.”
Jimmy nodded, but didn’t look like a believer.
Not everything in the Sailor world had a name but this was called The Hour. It came—it was not an hour but a moment, a click of the clock—when the blue moon was at its zenith.
It would come tonight at forty-seven minutes after three.
The Hour had a certain formality to it, a ceremonial air, nothing handed down from on high but a man-designed affair which had become this over time. Or so the older Sailors said. They could have been lying or simply had it wrong. Theirs was not a holy order. A few Sailors were on the decks, leaning over the railing as people will do, smoking, watching the others. Some strolled the promenade deck, arm in arm. Others were just arriving. Everyone knew not to come too early so they all tended to appear at once, when the hour changed, when the last hour came.
The long iron gangway that during the day carried tourists onto the haunted black and white ship now carried the wetlands people, the people from The Pipe, the moody Sailors from downtown, regular citizens, the powerful from on high and the weakest of the weak.
All but the Walkers, who no longer knew to come, to hope.
As they stepped onto the gangway, some removed their peacoats and watch caps, threw them in a pile as if they’d never need them again. Underneath, some wore period clothes, clothes from their specific time, polyester from the seventies, denim from the sixties, a few ancient Sailors in wool suits who at least looked like they belonged on the Queen Mary. Some, like the people from the wetlands, walked in in that stunned, doomed way, but others were treating it like a holiday. Inside there would even be Sailors in festive costume as if putting on some other guise would better prepare them for what was to come.
At the end of the gangway, an officer greeted them, or at least a man in an offic er’s uniform. He nodded to each man or woman as they stepped aboard and checked his watch from time to time, a large gold pocket watch.
The pregnant woman from The Pipe stepped forward on the arm of her man. A gentleman in a cutaway tuxedo, vest, and striped trousers, certainly the oldest among them all, tipped his hat and gave a little bow. The woman blushed at the attention. The night had already become unreal and otherworldly, even for them.
The welcoming officer stopped the pregnant woman.
She wasn’t a Sailor.
The man with her protested but without much conviction because he knew the rules. She waited where she was and her “husband” went aboard without her, looking back once. She picked up his watch cap where he had dropped it.
More cars were pulling into the parking lot. Some were big, expensive. The custom was to leave the keys in the ignitions, the doors unlocked. Whoever was left when it was over could take what they wanted.
A security car arrived. An excited guard jumped out almost before the car stopped rolling. He pushed his way into the middle of the Sailors, wide-eyed at the improbability of it all.
“Who are you? What is this?”
What did he expect to hear? A prom?
A hand touched the excited guard’s shoulder.
It was Connor. In uniform.
“It’s a private party,” the cop said.
The security guard started to protest.
“It’s all right,” Connor said calmly. “We’re here.”
The guard went away.
Jimmy and Angel were about to board when Jimmy saw Jean.
She was at the mouth of the gangway. Waiting, watching.
Jimmy went down the ramp to her, against the stream of Sailors boarding.
“You have to go,” he said.
“What is this?”
The clouds passed off the moon. The light brightened.
“I can’t explain it,” Jimmy said. “And you can’t see it.”
He started away.
“Is my father here?” Jean said.
He stopped. He was ten steps past her. He looked at her.
“I talked to him,” she said. “Tonight.”
“What did he tell you?”
Jimmy didn’t want to know, but it was the next thing to say.
“That he didn’t kill my mother.” She waited a moment. “And what this is.”
He felt as if she was suddenly across the widest ocean.
“Go back to the beach house,” he said.
“I’m coming aboard.”
“No.”
Angel stepped up. “It’s time,” he said.
“You can’t be here,” Jimmy said to Jean.
“Tell her,” he said to Angel and walked away from her.
“Go home,” Angel said. “He doesn’t want you hurt.”
Angel went after Jimmy.
She followed after them.
“I’m coming aboard,” she said. She caught up. “I’m coming aboard,” she said again.
The officer on deck put out a hand to stop Jean.
“You know she can’t come aboard,” he said.
Jimmy shoved him back out of the way. Let her see it.
The three of them entered the grand ballroom, a tall Deco space with funereal elegance. There were multiple levels where once there had been cocktail tables or r
oulette wheels. An enormous crystal chandelier hung over their heads.
The room was filled with Sailors. They stood in clusters, among friends, waiting. Scott the bartender was there, Krisha, the woman doctor who treated Drew, one of Angel’s bodybuilder friends, Connor.
And Perversito.
And Boney M.
And Lon and Vince.
The old man in the tuxedo played an out-of-tune grand piano, the bad notes giving the scene the feel of a cheap dance hall somewhere or a wake.
The room was ablaze in blue light.
Jimmy held Jean’s arm. She pulled away from him and set off on her own to find her father.
Jimmy just watched her go.
“Three minutes,” Angel said.
There was an ornate clock. Very English. It ticked loudly enough to be heard over the voices and the music.
“Just stay with us,” Jimmy said to Drew as they moved back through the crowd. “Just do what we do and watch.” He remembered the first blue moon, when he was a kid and went from knowing everything to knowing nothing.
Drew did as he was told, fell in behind Jimmy and Angel as they moved through the clusters of Sailors. The room was almost howling now in anticipation, pulsing like a blue cloud somehow captured in a room, like a storm in a box. The tuxedo man played louder and louder to be heard over the growing din, lifting his curled fingers in great dramatic gestures with each chord.
“Does this just keep getting weirder and weirder?” Drew said as they moved through it.
Jimmy looked at him. “It’s beautiful.”
Jimmy kept going.
Angel put an arm around the boy. “It’s a little weird,” he said.
Jimmy saw Jean with her father, talking, close. So there he was, just like the picture from the Press Telegram, the narrow black tie, the white shirt, the gray suit. The half smile.
Before he thought about what he was doing, Jimmy charged up to them and threw Jack Kantke against the wall. Jimmy’s anger wasn’t at Kantke and Kantke’s anger wasn’t at him but neither man cared in the moment, they both just wanted to tear something apart.
Kantke threw a punch. Jimmy avoided it and shoved him back into a glass cabinet, shattering it. Kantke recovered and came after him and Jimmy knocked him down onto the bed of broken glass.
Jimmy ripped the leg off of a table. He stood over Kantke. He raised the club.
The ticking grew louder and louder as the piano fought it.
Angel seized Jimmy’s arm. Jean screamed.
Peacoats arrived and pulled Jimmy away from Kantke.
Red Steadman was behind them, dressed as an admiral. With him were Boney M and Little Evil, but it was Steadman himself who seized Jimmy by the neck, lifted him off his feet.
“Not here! ” he yelled into Jimmy’s face.
But then the ornate clock chimed.
The ship’s bells began to sound.
Steadman released Jimmy.
Kantke got to his feet.
Jean stepped back.
The men and women on the floor lifted their hands.
Angel took Drew’s hand in his and lifted it.
“What?” Drew said.
The piano player stood, lifted his hands.
Was it praise or surrender?
Jimmy looked at Jean. She was terrified.
He closed his eyes and raised his hands.
Steadman raised his hands.
The ship’s bells ceased.
There was stunning silence, the silence at the end of the world.
Someone started crying.
The blue pulsed so brightly it hurt the eyes.
And then, as one, as if there was no time in the world, as if there was no Now, only Always, all in the room spoke a line, as one . . .
“Come The Flood, we will say goodbye to flesh and blood . . .”
Jimmy’s voice could be heard.
Angel’s voice, loud and prayerful.
Steadman, rough, impatient, chafing at obedience.
Drew, repeating the line a half beat late.
The room hummed with expectation.
There was a long, hollow moment . . .
THE LAST MINUTE OF ETERNITY
And then a man collapsed where he stood.
And then another.
And then the man who had brought the pregnant woman, falling dead away.
All in, twenty or more of them.
Drew watched them fall.
And then there were no more. “Whoa,” he said.
Jimmy opened his eyes.
It was over.
He scanned the room. There was Angel, still on his feet, tears in his eyes. Scott. Krisha. Connor.
Steadman.
Behind him, Jean knelt over her father’s body. He was gone.
Jimmy went to her, leaned over and put a hand on her back. She looked up at him.
She shook her head. Sometimes what you have to do is walk away. She got up. He didn’t try to stop her as she pushed through the others, left them all behind.
The piano man began again, a tune that started out sad, and those who remained began to tend to the bodies around them, crumpled forms in the clothes they last wore living.
TWENTY-EIGHT
As first light came, a fishing boat with no name rode the swells of the gray water off Long Beach, well out from the shipping lanes. Jimmy and Angel and Drew were at the rails, steadying themselves as the boat climbed and fell. The engines idled and the captain tried to keep it headed into the wind but the ride was rough.
Steadman was forward, directing several peacoats bearing the first of the bodies, strapped with weights, wrapped for sea burial in unbleached cloth. As the bearers carried a body by, every man on deck reached out a hand to touch it. Drew did as the others did. He was back in his blue cap. Then the body was lowered over the side, sucked down feetfirst with hardly a sound.
As the peacoats went forward for the next, Angel and Drew went with them to help. There was a truce now, for this.
Steadman came to Jimmy.
“You know you won’t stop me,” he said. “Even with everything you know, you still don’t understand, do you?”
Jimmy didn’t answer him.
“We’ll win,” Steadman said. “We will win.”
“You probably already have,” Jimmy said.
Angel and Drew and the peacoats came back with another wrapped body. Jimmy reached out to touch it.
Steadman blessed it, too, but left his eyes on the breathing man before him.
TWENTY-NINE
Jimmy was on the rooftop patio of Jean’s apartment. It was clear with one of those once- or twice- or three-times-a-year views, all the way to Catalina. The traffic below on Sunset was heavy but the sound was reassuring, people in motion, full of purpose, everything shiny and bright and clean.
Jean came out with a bottle of water. Jimmy cracked the seal and took a drink.
“Do you believe in heaven?” she said.
He took another drink.
“No,” he said, “but I believe in a whole bunch of places they’ve never given a name to.”
She smiled and walked to the railing.
“It really is over with your father,” Jimmy said behind her.
She nodded.
She turned to face him.
“When you said that you can’t know everything, I guess this was what you meant.”
He looked at her. “At the time I think just meant . . . generally.”
She wasn’t close to him.
“So you just wait . . . for the next blue moon?”
Their story was over. At least for now. They both knew it.
“Nah, we were just kidding about all that,” he said and tried a smile.
“I’m moving,” she said. “To San Francisco.”
He nodded.
“Maybe, after awhile . . .” She trailed off. He didn’t help her finish the sentence.
“I have something for you,” she said.
She went into the apartment
and came back with something closed in her hand. She stood in front of him. She opened her hand.
It was a glass bottle, perfume in a functional but elegant glass bottle. He took it. It was a beautiful color.
“It’s what your mother wore,” Jean said. “They don’t make it anymore. I had it synthesized. The scent was still on her dress in the case.”
He took her hand.
“Maybe this will help you remember her,” she said.
THIRTY
Jimmy whipped away the cover—like a magician!—On the last car in the garage. It was a snow white 1969 Chrysler 400 convertible with white leather interior, with three-foot fin s and what the lowriders called monster whitewalls, though his mother certainly never called them that.
It was her last car and Jimmy rode with the top down and good music on the radio over to Hollywood and then down to the 10 past Parker Center and Union Station, the sky still full on blue, and holding, in daylight, the diminishing moon.
Some days people are happy. There wasn’t any explaining it but today people were happy. They waved at the sight of the huge white car, big as a boat. Jimmy wore a light green jacket that looked like ’69, like a college man in ’69, and they were happy with him, too.
He waved back.
The traffic broke open, as it always did, just past San Bernardino, the long hill up to the wide-place-in-the-road town called Beaumont. Jimmy stopped for a Coke at a drive-in. He always stopped at the same place. It was usually only twice a month but the high school girl there knew him and the Mexican boys who did the cooking knew the car.
He sat on the red-enameled picnic bench out front. It was over a hundred and yet there was snow on the mountains behind them.
California.
The desert road, Highway 62, curved away from the Interstate just past Palm Springs, four-lane but wide open, the exit curving and canted so perfectly that at high speed it was like banking in a plane. Ahead, a pass through the mountains, into the high desert, through valleys named for Indians and spiked trees, past copper-colored hills and the Marine base.
Teresa Miles sat in the sun in a wooden chair being read to by a nurse who looked up and smiled as Jimmy walked across the grass toward them. The rest home—now they called it Extended Care—was very private and very pretty, three low adobe-style buildings the same color as the desert mountains around them. There was an oasis in the center of it, a few palms around a pond. It was restful. It was constant.