I waited two hours before I lashed the wheel and tiptoed below to check on him. He was sprawled face down on the vee bunk in the fore cabin, snoring loudly. I opened the forward sail locker and got the suitcase and cosmetic case and carried them topside. Before I dumped them over the side I made another scan for running lights in the vicinity. Nothing but black, starlit sea.
Belowdecks again I opened the aft locker and dragged the bundle out and propped it against the bulkhead. I put the extra padlocks in my pocket, looped the lengths of anchor chain around my wrists and arms. It was awkward getting the bundle over my shoulder, a strain on my back and legs carrying it up the companionway. Topside, sweating in the cool night air, I lowered the bundle against the starboard rail and held it there while I wrapped the lengths of anchor chain around it, top and bottom, and snugged them tightly in place with the extra padlocks. My grasp slipped a little as I lifted the bundle up onto the rail; before I could set myself, one of the damn chain links scraped a furrow into the smooth mahogany. The bundle made a splash that seemed very loud in the night's stillness. The weight of the chains took it into the depths almost immediately.
I went below again. Bone was still out, still snoring; he hadn't moved.
Now the wall was complete.
I got the flashlight from the cockpit and checked the mark in the starboard rail. It wasn't deep, noticeable only when you were up close and looking. If Bone spotted it, he'd know it hadn't been there when he turned in. I'd think up a story to explain it if he questioned me.
I put the flash away and sat against the deckhouse wall to rest and and watch the night. I couldn't seem to enjoy the starstruck vastness, couldn't find any of the peace I'd hoped for. The burned-out emptiness remained. I shouldn't have expected it to fill up again so soon. After all that I'd been through, the healing was bound to take a little time.
Bone didn't come up at three to take his watch, so I went down to call him. He was still asleep, but thrashing restlessly now. I shook him awake, told him the time. It took him a few seconds to shake off the grogginess. His mouth worked as if it were dry and foul-tasting; the way he heeled his temples told me he had a headache.
I said lightly, "Too much rum last night, Bone?"
He didn't answer. He stood, pulled a T-shirt over his head, and headed up the companionway.
I slept well enough, but only for about four hours. At seven I got up, turned the flame on under the coffee pot, sluiced off under a cool shower before I dressed. The coffee was ready by then. I poured two mugs full, added sugar to one, and carried them topside.
As soon as I saw the position of the sun, I knew that we were heading in the opposite direction from the course I'd set the day before. Bone was standing at the helm, stiff-backed, staring straight ahead. He didn't answer when I said good morning. I extended one of the mugs; he shook his head without looking at me, so I set it down on the chart table.
"You changed our course," I said. "How come?"
"Heading back, Cap'n."
"Back to St. Thomas? Why?"
"Heading back, Cap'n."
"What's the matter? Are you sick?"
"Yeah, mon. A little sick."
I laid a hand on his arm, the way you do. He shrugged it off as if it were an annoying blowfly.
"What the hell, Bone?"
His gaze rounded on me, and there was a look in his eyes I'd never seen before. As if something had cought fire in their depths. As if he were looking at somebody he'd never seen before. He said nothing, just stared at me.
He knows, I thought.
He knows!
Moment of panic. Involuntary reflex because of it. A sudden roll as we plowed through a wave trough. All three of those things caused the mug to slip out of my hand. It tilted in Bone's direction as it fell, splattering him with hot coffee on the way down. More coffee splashed his pantlegs when the mug shattered on the deck.
I don't know, maybe he thought I did it on purpose. Or maybe something just broke loose inside him. Whatever the reason, his reaction was snake-sudden.
He spun toward me and grabbed two handfuls of my shirt. I said something, I don't remember what, and clawed at his wrists. He had a grip like an iron fllike. He crowded in close and swung me around and slammed my back up hard against the mizzenmast. Pain tore a yell out of me; I folight him but I couldn't pull free. He had me pinned tight against the spar.
At some point in the brief struggle one of us must have kicked down on a leeward spoke, causing the wheel to spin counterclockwise. Windrunner's bow fell off to port. Wind hammered into the lee side of the mains'l with a crack like a big Umb breaking off a tree. The main boom swung inward as the yawl jibed. Bone and I both saw it an instant before it swept across the cockpit. He was the one in harm's way, his body shielding mine, and there wasn't enough time for him to twist aside. The boom smacked him on the shoulder with enough force to send him staggering into the starboard rail, and the rail catapulted him overboard.
The end of the boom missed me by no more than two inches. I heard the sound of him hitting the water and instinct sent me lurching back to the helm. I spun the wheel hard to bring her up into the wind, then ran forward and ripped the life preserver off the starboard shrouds and flung it back into the wake.
Bone had surfaced a dozen feet from where it landed. He bobbed there for a few seconds, not making any move toward the doughnut. I thought he might be hurt or too dazed to see it and I yelled above the wind, "Bone! In front of you!"
No answer. But then I saw him start to swim in a strong crawl toward the preserver and I knew he was all right. I scanned the sea around him. No dorsal fins, just white-flecked blue water.
I ran aft to the wheel, steadied Windrunner up into the wind until she was right in stays. Then I hurried forward again, dropped the main and staysail, came back aft. Bone had reached the ring, was resting there with one arm looped through it, looking in my direction. I waved at him. He didn't wave back.
I went below to start the auxiliary engine. At the wheel again, I circled the yawl under power until I could see Bone and the doughnut bobbing to windward. I idled down a hundred feet from him, eased the yawl upwind until I was close enough for him to reach up with one hand and catch hold of a rail stanchion. He tossed the preserver on deck, hung there two-handed until the roll was right, and then heaved himself aboard.
He wouldn't take any help from me. Wouldn't look at me until he'd hoisted himself to his feet, streaming water, and then it was only a brief glance followed by a short, sharp nod. There was an angry-looking welt on his shoulder where the boom had clipped him.
"That was close," I said. "Too close."
He didn't say anything.
"You shouldn't have grabbed me like that," I said. "The coffee . . . it was an accident. The jibe, too. One of us must've kicked the wheel. . ."
Silently he tugged at his wet clothes.
"Bone, listen to me—"
"Don't say it, mon. Ain't nothing I want to hear."
He made eye contact for three or four seconds and then moved past me and went belowdecks. But that look stayed with me, left me feeling chilled and empty. The burn in his eyes had been extinguished; there was nothing in them for me any more, no feeling at all. Cold, blank, like the unseeing eyes of a dead man—
What? Did I think of what?
Not rescuing him? Leaving him out there to drown?
My God, no! Not for a second. The thought never entered my head. I could no more have killed Bone than I could have chopped off my right arm, to save my ass or for any other reason. He was my mentor, my friend—my only friend. I loved him like a brother.
What do you think I am, some kind of monster?
All the rest of that day Bone stood on deck with his back to me, working when necessary, the rest of the time just smoking his pipe and staring out over the water. Wouldn't talk to me. Wouldn't make any more eye contact. There was no way to guess what he was thinking; his face was like a stone mask.
How did he know about Annali
se? The question kept nagging at me. It couldn't be from any mistake in my calculations. A combination of little things, probably. My telling him she'd left me. The empty ice chest. His abnormally long sleep and the hangover effects of the Valium mixed with rum. The new padlocks on the sail lockers and the fresh scrape in the starboard rail. Bone noticed every detail on a boat. He may have been sensitive to anything abnormal on one, too, in the same way he was sensitive to atmospheric conditions. He was an intelligent man; give him enough components and he could fit them together into the correct equation.
What would he do about his suspicions? Turn me in? I didn't think so. Didn't want to believe he would. His code of noninvolvement was why he hadn't confronted me; it would also keep him from going to the law. Our friendship weighed in my favor, too. And the fact that I'd saved his life had to count for something.
Still, you can't be absolutely certain how anyone will react to a given situation. You can't even be certain how you yourself will react. He could never condone the taking of a human life, no matter what the reason. He couldn't even sanction the killing of sharks. If his moral code was stronger than all the factors in my favor, there wasn't anything I could do about it. You could talk until you were blue in the face to a man like Bone, and the only voice he'd be listening to was his own.
Time would tell. All I could do was to keep as silent as he was and sweat it out.
Nothing happened after we returned to St. Thomas. Bone had his gear packed and ready before we entered the Sub Base harbor, and he walked away without a word as soon as we docked.
Two long days passed. No one came around asking about Annalise. By the end of the second day I began to relax again. I'd been right, I thought, to do nothing, keep my distance. Bone had had plenty of time to think things over; if he was going to the law, he'd have done it by then.
That night I had a bad nightmare. Awake, I didn't think about the Annalise crime; my conscience bothered me not at all. But asleep, my subconscious dredged it up. I awoke suddenly, or thought I did, and Annalise was sitting naked on the foot of the bunk, dripping wet, her body draped in seaweed and rusted chains, her hair hanging in sodden strings, part of her face eaten away by sea creatures. I screamed once and really woke up, shaking and pouring sweat. For a time afterward I worried that I'd have the nightmare again, but I never did. Just that once, as if it were a purge.
On the third day, I debated the advisability of a visit to JoEllen Hall. She hadn't contacted me when Annalise disappeared the first time, so it wasn't likely she'd be concerned enough to do it this time. But if Annalise had confided in anyone about me or her new lover or her future plans, it was JoEllen. Safer for me if I knew what she might have said.
I drove over to Red Hook and hunted up the woman at her rundown beach cottage. I asked first whether Annalise was there, then whether JoEllen had heard from her in the past several days. No, she said, why was I asking? "I might as well tell you," I said. "We had an argument over her drinking, among other things, and she packed her suitcase and walked out. Took some money with her that I had stashed away. That was three days ago, so she must have left the island."
"Well, I don't know where she went and I wouldn't tell you if I did. The shitty way you treated her, I don't blame her for leaving."
"The shitty way / treated her? Is that what she told you?"
"She never should've come back, that's what she told me. She practically crawled to you, but you never let her forget the mistake she made two years ago. Always giving her orders, forcing her to live like a dog on that damn boat of yours. Poor kid was miserable."
"That's all Ues, JoEllen."
"So you say, when she's not here to defend herself."
"Did she tell you she was planning to leave me again?"
"Not the first time and not this time. Why should she? Her business where she goes and what she does, not mine. And not yours anymore."
"You're right about that," I said. "Tell me something, will you? The answer doesn't make any difference now, but I'd like to know. Was she having an affair the past month or so?"
JoEllen had never cared for me, and Annalise's lies had cemented her dislike. Her smile had an edge of malicious satisfaction. "Damn right she was. With the same man as before—Royce Verriker. She said he was the best fuck she'd ever had."
That night, I went to talk to Bone. I had a story all worked out, a way to convince him that Annalise was still alive, an explanation for the padlocked sail lockers and the chain scrape and even for his drug hangover. But I don't remember what it was, because I didn't get to use it.
His slip at the marina was empty. He and Conch Out were gone.
He'd left the previous morning, I found out. Hadn't told anybody where he was bound. One of his periodic solo cruises, prompted by his suspicions of me—a long one, maybe. He'd be back in a week or two, three at the outside. He always came back eventually.
But not this time.
I never saw Bone again.
THE VIRGIN ISLANDS
1984-2005
THERE ISN'T MUCH MORE to tell.
Oh, sure, I know—twenty-one years is a long time, a lifetime. But they were mostly uneventful years. Only a handful of high spots—and low spots—worth mentioning.
I got away with the Annalise crime. It was as perfect as the Amthor crime and the Cotler crime. Perfect.
That is what's important.
Life goes on.
How many times have you heard that, and all its variations? Life is for the living. Take each day as it comes. Live for the moment and don't look back. It's the state of mind people slip into when they've suffered irreparable losses. A refuge for the grief-stricken, the depressed, the unhappy, the emotionally wasted. And the unrefiliably empty.
My refuge, after a while.
I should have been content again. Annalise and the threat of exposure were gone for good. I was safe. The tight, structured little world I'd established for myself on St. Thomas was secure. I could continue to indulge my simple tastes for the rest of my life. I could be at peace.
Only I wasn't. The barrenness remained, like a seared landscape on which nothing that had been there before could be rebuilt and nothing new would grow. The reason for it, most of the reason anyway, was a deep sense of loss and privation that I couldn't shake. It had nothing to do with Annalise. It was Bone, of course, the wrenching away of his friendship, his companionship, his knowledge, his wisdom. And it was something else I'd lost that I cherished as much as Bone.
Windrunner, and all the yawl meant to me.
I don't mean physical loss; I continued to live on her, to take her out now and then. Psychic loss. Spiritual, maybe. The symbiotic connection of boat and man to the sea had been severed somehow and I could not seem to splice it back together. It was as if I'd tainted both Windrunner and my love of sailing beyond repair or redemption, as I'd tainted my relationship with Bone, by using them as instruments in Annalise's destruction.
Over and over I berated myself for not devising a different equation that didn't involve either Bone or the yawl, for rushing ahead with a deficient plan. I could have designed a better one, if I'd invested more time. Instead I'd opted for the quick and easy answer, and for that miscalculation I paid a damn high price.
Nothing was ever the same for me again.
The magic of singlehanding was gone. I still derived some pleasure from the wind, the sea, the night sky, the fast-running tacks and the dead-calm afternoons, but it was never again as intense or as lasting. Even the magic of Laidlaw Cay was gone—something else I lost. The first time I went back there, the terns and frigate birds had abandoned their nesting ground; without them the cay was just another barren sandspit. The second and last time, I discovered that heavy storm seas had diminished it to less than half its original size and all that remained were the reefs and a slender hump of sand strewn with sea wreckage. A dead place.
After a few months, I was sailing infrequently. Not working on Windrunner as much, either; the day-to-day task
s required to maintain upkeep on a yawl her size seemed to have grown tedious. Snorkeling also seemed to require too much effort, so I gave it up. Gave up driving around the island, too, except for shopping trips and an occasional visit to Marsten Marine. The closest I had to a friend now was Dick Marsten, but he was a workaholic and had a family and I saw him only for short periods at the boatyard.
I took up walking. Long walks in the morning and sometimes in the evening, along the winding streets of Frenchtown and the edge of Crown Bay, once all the way down Veterans Drive to Emancipation Garden and back. It was good exercise, it passed the time, and I learned to occupy my mind by concentrating on details of the surroundings.
The Crimes of Jordan Wise Page 21