by John Straley
“She’ll be right then,” Johnny said abruptly, as he took the dory’s bow line from Annabelle’s hand and tied a much longer line to the end. “She was made to trail behind a boat like this. Just give her what she wants when we get under way and make sure to shorten up whenever we slow down. Sound good?” Johnny smiled, and showed the girl where to attach the line to the big boat’s stern. She smiled in full agreement even though she had no idea what the man meant.
“All right. North it is.” And he went into the wheelhouse, put power to the engine, and cranked the wheel back around. Annabelle handed the line to Slip and ran into the warm wheelhouse.
Slip and Ellie walked unsteadily to the stern rail. Ellie leaned into him and asked, “Can you run a boat like this by yourself if you need to?”
Slip didn’t answer. He didn’t even respond with a look. He just let out the line until the dory trailed some sixty feet behind the Pacific Pride, then tied it off to a heavy cleat. He turned around to answer her but she was already inside standing by the oil stove.
It was late by the time George got back to his desk. It was long after dinnertime and he was afraid that he was going to have to stand for an ass chewing from the captain. He read through his messages. To his relief the captain had gone home earlier in the day.
He started logging his evidence into his locked file drawer, and was about to pick up the phone to call home when dispatch rang a call through to the anvil-shaped black phone on his desk.
“Did you go to the party up by the railroad tracks?” It was the voice of the same young man who had called him with the tip early in the morning.
“Yeah, I got there. Thanks for the help. You want me to get your name and address if there is any reward offered?” It was a feeble attempt to get the boy’s name but feebler things had worked in the past.
“Goodness is its own reward,” the voice said. George could hear music in the background. Scratchy jazz on a Victrola, maybe.
“I suppose that’s true,” George said, and tried to make out any other background sounds before the person hung up on him. “Listen, it’s been a few days since I heard from you. Can you tell me what happened to those people in the small boat that pushed off from the hobo jungle?”
“I don’t know nothin’ about that. They went up in smoke I guess.”
George listened to the voice. There was something about it that pestered his memory.
“I do know something though.” He paused. “The papers they got from the woman … the papers she got out of the car before she dumped it …” The voice paused again, maybe for dramatic effect, or maybe to make sure that George was still listening. “They weren’t all there.”
The voice was funny. Nasal or something, and it was like he wasn’t sure what to say next. He might have been reading from a script but he couldn’t read very well.
“How do you know they weren’t all there?” George asked.
“The papers were notes of informant interviews. Ben Avery’s informants. But the most important page was missing.”
The young man’s voice kept bothering George. He pushed too much air through his nose like he had a cold or something.
“Don’t you want to ask me what was missing?” the kid asked petulantly.
“Yes, tell me. What was the missing piece of paper?”
“It was the informant key. You know what that is?”
The record in the background hit a scratch and started to skip: a clarinet trilled up from a backbeat, over and over again.
“Yes, I think so,” George said. “When your agents gather information from informants on the street, they give the informants numbers or code names to protect them. The informant key has the name and profile of the informants themselves.”
“Paid informants.” The voice had a childish kind of emphasis. “Paid,” he said again.
“That’s right,” George said, as if talking to a toddler. “Paid informants.” George listened while someone in the background bumped the record player needle and the song continued. “So you’re saying that David Kept had some Floodwater informant notes?” he asked into the phone, which suddenly seemed much heavier.
“Paid for their services. Just imagine that,” the kid brayed and hung up quickly.
As he was driving up Madison, George was thinking about the day, images just rising up: the blood on the granite rock, the look of Tom Delaney as he turned and walked away, the tracks and drag marks walking into the water, and the good feeling he had when standing in the cool sunlight on the edge of those trees.
Just as he was relaxing into that memory of the beach, it struck him who the anonymous caller had been: it was Fatty’s boy. The one whose mother said he couldn’t walk so well or breathe right through his nose. Fatty’s bathhouse boy. He was making the calls for Fatty so the fat man could stay out of the way of his boss. It also helped explain why the boy took so much pleasure at the notion of an operative paying for someone’s services, for certainly he was not working for free. George was beginning to find a whole new respect for the fat Floodwater operative and the kid with the broken nose.
George parked on his street and sat in his car for a few minutes. It was quiet with just a few pools of light spilling out of the windows fanning across the grass. By craning his neck he could look up and see the stars blinking among the new maple leaves as the wind caused them to make a light rattling sound. He didn’t want to go inside. His wife’s grief seemed to suck the oxygen out of the house. He felt heavier there, weighed down, and his recognition of this made it all that much worse. He wanted to tell her something that would make it easier for her to bear up under the fact that Benny was gone. But he couldn’t. He wished their lives could at least be like sitting on this dark and empty street. It was sad, sure, but there were lights on in the other houses, the dogs were sleeping by the stove, and soon enough it would be morning again. George just wanted to keep loving his son. He didn’t want to feel punished anymore. He wanted to move from daylight to darkness, to daylight again, and with each pulse of daylight the grief would become more rounded, less sharp.
But he couldn’t tell her that. It sounded too much like forgetting. Like pretending it hadn’t happened, and she couldn’t bear that.
A boy ran past rolling a tire down the street. His sister cantered behind laughing and shouting, “Wait … wait …” as he barreled ahead through one pool of light to the next until all that was left was the distant slap of their leather shoes on the bricks. He decided to tell Emily that he loved her. He would tell her they should go on a trip this summer, maybe over the Cascades where they could go square-dancing with her sisters in the Methow Valley and he could fish the cold streams. They could eat and dance and be back with her boisterous brothers and sisters there in the ranch house in that steep-sided valley she had grown up in. She’d like that even if she didn’t admit it to herself. She would be hard pressed to say it wouldn’t be nice. First he would tell her that he loved her, then he would apologize for being late.
He unlocked the front door and put his briefcase down on the table by the entrance. He called her name and walked up the stairs. Her apron was laid out on the bed along with the pants and cotton blouse that she wore while working around the house. She had changed for dinner. He put on a sweater and emptied the change out of his pocket and put his wallet and watch on the dresser. Her jewelry box was open and he closed it gently. She must have really gotten dolled up tonight.
He took off his leather shoes and slipped on a pair of elk-hide moccasins that his brother-in-law had given him three Christmases ago. Then he padded down the stairs.
He said her name again and he pushed against the swinging door that led into the kitchen. His shoulder stopped hard against the swinging door, and when he pressed with his leg he saw that there was something jammed behind the door. He pushed again, and then he looked up and saw there was something wedged between the top of the door and the doorjamb. He took one step back and kicked at the flimsy panel in the center of the door.
With the first kick he smelled the gas pushing out of the room. With the second he could see Emily lying in her best dress on the floor in front of the open oven door.
NINE
The Pacific Pride was warm inside, and Annabelle quickly found a place for Buddy and herself on a shelf near the stovepipe. To be so suddenly warm and safe, to be inside, seemed so strange to her that she didn’t want to look around too carefully for fear that it might all disappear. So she watched Buddy ruffle his feathers and peck at the small bell hanging in his cage. She was glad to be on this big boat.
Her happiness felt like a big cup of hot chocolate.
To get from the back deck, a person had to walk through the galley and then up a couple of steps to the wheelhouse. Ellie and Slip sat on a bench by the chart table, just inside the wheelhouse. They slumped on the seat and tried to arrange themselves comfortably to enjoy the heat. While the warmth felt good to Slip, every slight roll of the boat sent pain shooting through his ribs and up into his head. When the boat rolled across the wake of a larger ship, he groaned and Johnny could see that the battered man was not going to ride well there. He motioned Annabelle to come to the wheel. She stood up on the milk crate Johnny had scooted in front of the wheel and peered out the rippled glass windows at the ocean that was sliding underneath her feet.
He showed her how to look for logs and how to slow the engines down. He showed her how to hold on to the wheel and how to pull the throttle lever, which was the lever with the red cap closest to the starboard side of the boat. “Just head straight down the middle here,” he said. “If another ship comes toward you, let them pass on our left side.”
“Port side,” Annabelle said, more to herself than to Johnny.
“That’s right, port side. Let them pass port to port. If you see a log or anything floating in the water, steer around it. When in doubt, slow the engine down and I’ll come running.”
At first the girl was nearly panic-stricken with the responsibility. She turned and looked at Buddy. She wanted back into the small world she was used to inhabiting.
“What’s your bird’s name, honey?” Johnny asked.
“Buddy,” the girl whispered.
“Well, Buddy’s right here and he’s going to be watching too. I need your help steering for a bit. Just keep your eyes out there ahead.”
Annabelle could hear the bell in Buddy’s cage and she knew he was watching out over the water.
“Do I steer around every single thing in the water, or can we go over the small things?” Annabelle asked after giving it some thought.
Johnny thought about it for a moment and said, “Steer around anything you can’t throw for a dog.” Then he added, “I’m going to show your folks where to put their stuff. I’ll be right back.”
Then he took Ellie and Slip down some steep steps into the forward bunk area that Annabelle seemed to remember was called the forecastle, or fo’c’sle. She remembered the word because of all the apostrophes.
Annabelle slid her glasses up her nose and turned the wheel to port and the vessel gently shouldered to the left, then she brought it back around to the original course. She wondered if this was something like the sensation of flying. The big boat had a loud engine that growled under her feet, and the waves seemed like distant events beneath her. The dory had bucked through the waves, but the Pride seemed to stride along humming to itself. She scanned the water ahead and saw diving ducks pop up from nowhere and then begin to beat their wings on top of the water to fly away as the boat approached. She looked carefully to see their markings but quickly swung her eyes back to scan for logs.
Annabelle scrunched up her nose with a worried expression that always made her glasses slip. She looked north and the sky seemed to be hard and gray. Were they really going to go to Alaska? Wasn’t Alaska too cold for cockatiels? Images of her imagined Alaska swarmed around her head like flies. There were polar bears she knew, very far north anyway, and people lived in houses made of ice. Could you build a fire in them?
All the while she was a conscientious helmsman, not taking her eyes off the course ahead even when Slip poked his head up from below and asked, “What are you doing?”
“He left me in charge,” she said.
“You know what you’re doing?”
“I steer around any sticks I can’t throw for a dog, and if I have any doubt I just slow down and he comes running.”
“Oh.” Slip stretched and closed his eyes. The heat from the galley stove eased into his aching bones and made him drowsy.
“Aren’t you sleepy?” he asked the girl.
“Not now,” she said, and she took off her glasses to clean them with the tail of her shirt. With her glasses off she stared so intently over the bow that it looked as if she could will herself to see.
“I’m beat,” Slip said. He closed his eyes and looked as if he were going to sleep right there with his feet half in and half out of the wheelhouse. “But I should probably check on the dory.”
“Slip?” she asked.
“Yeah?”
“Are we really going to Alaska?” She turned the boat slightly starboard to avoid a raft of kelp up ahead.
“I dunno,” he said, his breath becoming deep and regular.
“Are there jobs up there?”
“Probably.”
“It’s a long way to go in that little boat, isn’t it?” the girl asked, while a black duck popped to the surface. It looked like a scoter but she couldn’t be sure.
“It can’t be that far.”
The girl crinkled up her eyes. “I don’t wanna be smart-alecky, but I think it’s that far. I mean really, really far.” She saw the horizontal edge of a log bobbing in a straight line above the jumble of the waves and she steered well around it.
“I suppose,” Slip said.
Annabelle was about to tell him about a friend of hers whose grandmother had taken a steamship to Juneau and about how long it had taken her running day and night at a lot greater speed than he could row that dory. Then she was going to tell him about how far it was to Alaska, but before she could she saw that he was asleep.
Annabelle kept steering. She wasn’t opposed to going to Alaska. She just wanted to know how far it was.
Johnny shook the sleeping logger awake and showed him to a bunk, then came up into the wheelhouse. He looked down at the tired little girl.
“I made up some bunks. There’s one for you all the way in the very front.” He stepped in front of her and took the wheel. He scanned their position, then reached forward and increased the throttle.
“Buddy likes your boat,” she said as she pointed to the birdcage.
“He’s a smart bird,” Johnny said.
Annabelle smiled and sat up on a short bunk just under Buddy’s shelf.
“Go ahead. Kick your shoes off and lie down. You must be as tired as the rest of them,” Johnny said.
“What if you need me to steer?” Annabelle asked.
“I’ll wake you up. But I’ve got it for a while.”
“Okay.” She lay down and for the first time she felt the fatigue pull on her arms and legs. Soon the same weight was working on her eyelids.
“Captain Johnny?” she said through the warm syrup that was forming in her head.
“Yeah?” he replied.
“They’re not my folks.”
“That’s okay, hon.”
“Johnny, my folks died in a fire.”
“I’m sorry, hon. Try to get some sleep now.”
“You’ll let me steer the boat again?”
“Sure. I’ll let you steer.”
“Okay,” she said. And when she tried to say something more she found that it just wasn’t important.
Johnny steered the boat north. The winds and the tides were fair and he figured they could be in a good anchorage near the Canadian border by nightfall. He would sort out what to do then. He had wanted a crew to help him take the boat up the Inside Passage and now it appeared he was a hospital ship for a rough-looking
bunch. He didn’t really believe the story about the hoboes and the train tracks, but he couldn’t see what business it was of his if they were lying. He had two guns on the boat: a .45-70 rifle he used for shooting deer on the beach and a .22 pistol that he kept in with his fishing gear in case he ever hooked a fish too big to land by himself. He thought about some of the stories he’d heard of skippers who had tangled with the wrong crew: captains who were shot while standing watch, their bodies weighted down and thrown overboard, never to be found. Johnny didn’t put a lot of stock in these stories and this group of castaways didn’t seem to have the strength of kittens, but still, he’d do well to keep the weapons secure and available only to him. He’d stow the rifle in the engine room and the .22 would fit nicely beneath the instrument panel in the wheelhouse.
He looked at the ship’s clock, checked his tide table, then scanned his position in the Sound. He wanted to go through San Juan Channel at close to slack water so he adjusted the throttle and sat back in the pilot’s seat, scanning the way ahead. Behind him the little girl was asleep with her mouth wide open, while above her on the shelf the yellow bird began to trill. He was two days out of port and already the trip was bringing surprises. He reached up and adjusted the throttle upward a second time, but then thinking about the fuel he was burning, he pulled it back again. It would do no good to hurry.
George Hanson had the funeral two days later. The minister who had performed Benny’s funeral came by and offered to help George with the memorial service. Emily’s family from the Methow Valley came late the day of the service, and one of her brothers got so drunk he tried to pick a fight with George and the rest of the family had to pull him off. The three brothers and two sisters came to the service at the Lutheran Church, but they were so hungover and sorrowful that they didn’t linger around for refreshments afterward.
A few policemen attended the funeral. His captain had come and had shaken George’s hand with both of his. He told George how sorry he was and that George should take whatever time he needed before coming back. There was a neighbor lady and her teenage son who came, but George didn’t even know their names. She cried softly, sitting in the back pew, and the son sat stone-faced and uncomfortable in his wool suit. George wished the mother had not made the boy come with her. He’d rather think of the boy playing baseball in the empty lot on the corner than see him sitting inside being subjected to the wilted send-off for a woman who had taken her own life.