by John Straley
A man, a woman, and a child.
George burst onto the Admiral Rodman’s bridge. “Captain, you must pick up the people in that dory.”
“Have they signaled an emergency?” the man standing beside the helmsman said calmly without turning his attention from the bow of the ship.
“They are suspects in a murder investigation.” George’s voice was not quite as calm.
“In this seaway and in these conditions, it would be reckless to try to maneuver the ship to take them aboard.”
“Captain, I must insist. I am a police detective.” He reached into his pocket for his badge and identification.
“Save yourself the trouble, detective,” the captain said, turning to him. “You are nothing more than a passenger on my ship—in Canadian waters I might add—and outside of an emergency rescue I will not even consider slowing our progress toward Campbell River and the narrows up ahead.”
“Captain …” George could feel the absolute certainty of the Captain’s position. He stopped in mid sentence, saw a pair of binoculars on the chart table, picked them up, and walked back on deck.
“You can wait for them in Campbell River if you like,” the captain’s voice reached out to him through the swinging door. “And bring back those binoculars.” George heard the captain’s words in the screaming wind.
George walked quickly toward the stern, buffeting between the rails and the bulkhead walls. He zigzagged as fast as he could to the stern deck and scanned the sea.
The little boat was a toy in the ocean. The churning wake of the steamship crossed the direction of the waves and sent a violent spout up some ten feet into the wind. The dory’s bow jumped straight up into the air and then was gone into the trough of the next wave. George stood on his toes, desperate to get another look. Then the dory slid up the front side of the next wave and he glassed it with the binoculars. He saw a blonde woman in the stern gesturing to someone in the bow. There was a man pulling on the oars, and just as the dory was about to pitch up and under the next swell, George saw the figure of a little girl with braids in her hair poke from under a canvas tarp in the bow.
“Goddamnit,” George said under his breath, just as the first officer came to retrieve the captain’s binoculars.
In the dory, Slip was still too drunk to recognize the seriousness of the situation they were in, but he was beginning to sober up.
The dory plunged and bucked like a carnival ride. At the top of a wave the wind rumbled down the seas and wrapped its arms around them, and then they’d plunge into a sizzling trough and the wind would lose its grip. When Slip opened his eyes, the world was spinning both inside and outside of his head.
“Wait just a goddamn minute,” Slip said and turned as if he were going to climb out of the dory.
“You damn fool.” Ellie lurched over the seats and grabbed onto his leg. “Just sit down and stay low,” she yelled, though the wind sucked up her words.
“Where in the hell are we?” Slip yelled back to Ellie.
“Just head with the wind. Get us to land,” Ellie screamed.
The dory had been a remarkably dry boat up till then. Now every third wave was breaking over the bow and there was enough water in the bottom to start floating the boxes off the floor. The wind drove through their clothes and the fifty-degree water ran down their necks spreading a gnawing cold like the pain of toothache. At first the cold water felt like sobriety but after a few strokes with the oars Slip thought he might be dying.
“Shit,” he said, and he started bailing.
“Let me ask you, Ellie,” Slip yelled. “Have you ever converted anybody to the cause?” He stared at her as he splashed water out of the boat.
“Don’t start in on me now.”
“Come on, admit it, you’ve never converted anyone.”
“Don’t start with me, I’m telling you.”
Ellie hefted a bucketful and this time got about half of the water outside of the dory as another wave sloshed over the side.
“I’ve brought lots of workers into the Party. Don’t start in on that stuff with me.”
“Ellie broke the miners association over in Butte. They had to call in federal troops,” Annabelle chirped, her head peaking out from under the tarp.
“Thank you,” Ellie said. “You see?” She nodded to the girl.
“She must have used a better line of bullshit in Butte than I’ve ever heard from her. That’s all I’ve got to say.”
Annabelle jumped out from the tarp and started sluicing water out with her hands. The large steamship was passing them on their right. Annabelle wished they could row over to the ship and be taken aboard. She wished it with such an urgency and passion that she almost imagined it was happening; the ship was coming to a stop and the crew were lowering rope ladders for her to climb onboard. She could almost feel the dry bedding in a narrow ship’s bunk. Then she opened her eyes to the gray-green prairie of water undulating around her and knew nothing good was going to happen.
“Ellie, stop bailing and help row,” Slip said. “I’m just thinking that this ship is going to throw one heck of a wake.”
A gust of wind sucked up the last of his words but she understood. She threw down the bucket and struggled to get into position.
Both of them pulled and with the increased speed the boat lifted its bow. Annabelle took up the bucket. She was able to get three half buckets of water out of the boat in the time it would have taken Ellie to throw one. Buddy peeped and screeched from under the tarp.
“Hush, Buddy,” the girl said. “We’ll be okay.” Hers was the only reassuring voice in the ocean.
The bow wake of the Admiral Rodman grew like a mountain range rolling into view. The other waves now looked like foothills. The ridge of the wake peaked up in front of them, gray-green and icy, with what looked to be snowcapped peaks.
“Pull now,” Ellie said easily. She kept looking to her right as the wake bore down on them. “Just keep pulling.”
Slip felt a shadow fall across the boat as the wake thrust up behind them. Ellie turned the dory and the waves crashed on their backs. Then they sank down for a moment before being pushed up the face of the wake.
“Pull now, Ellie.”
The crest cascaded down around them. White water churned its way into the boat. Annabelle ducked back under the tarp, the wake passed under them, and the two drunks gave out a cheer.
The bow wake was the smaller of the two that the Admiral Rodman was churning. The ship had smoothed some of the seas. Ellie grabbed the stern oar and steered the dory back toward the stern of the big boat, thinking the way would be easier. Then she looked over and saw the first of the stern wakes, which was nearly twice as high as the last.
The wake was shredding through the seas like an underwater explosion. Slip and Ellie had stopped rowing and were twisted around, staring at the stern of the ship. The soaked blonde looked once again to her right and was the first to see what was coming.
“One more.”
And they pulled, but the boat was wallowing in the seas and they barely had time to regain their momentum when the wake hit them, filling the little boat with water.
Half-filled jugs floated up off the bottom of the boat. There were six precious inches of freeboard keeping the sea out and the dory afloat. All three of them splashed at the water, spooning it out with their hands at first, and then Slip went to work with the bucket, but the next waves hit and the dory lost momentum. The sea poured in over the sides.
Ellie waved her oar up in the air and screamed at the stern of the passing ship. “Hey! Hey! Here!”
The dory began to sink below the surface now. The bow was tugging into the sea as if a long thread of gravity were pulling the dory down. A cask bumped over the side and floated away.
Ellie turned around and began waving in the other direction. “Hey! Hey! Here! Here!”
Slip, now no more sober in his life, threw buckets of seawater until his shoulders ached. Annabelle scooped water with a corner of
the tarp but with little effect for now they were wallowing just below the surface of the waves.
“Can we swim to the islands?” Slip asked.
“Maybe if we all clung together and used the wind to help. You are a good swimmer, right?”
“Not really,” Slip yelled back.
“Once we push off, you hold onto my neck. Annabelle, you stay close,” Ellie said, her voice cracking as a wave washed over her head. The little dory still had some buoyancy and they held on to their seats with their feet. Annabelle was holding the cage above her head and the yellow bird sat on top of it yawping and whistling as if to scold the weather. Slip turned and looked at his toolbox sitting like a stone under the water beneath the middle seat. He reached for the strap and pulled it up out of the water.
“Hell, you can’t swim with that,” Ellie yelled over the rumble of the waves.
“I’m not going to try.” Slip opened the top and took out the tobacco tin. He was about to put it in his shirt pocket, but he gave it to the girl.
“You hold on to this. It’s important and you’re a better swimmer than me.” The shivering girl took the tin and stuffed it down the front of her shirt. Then Slip lifted her up and he leaned forward as if he were about to pour himself into the sea.
“There! There!” Ellie was waving the oar above her head. To the south she could see a hull pushing through the seas a quarter mile off. “Hold on to our stuff!” she yelled.
The three of them gathered as much of the floating gear in their arms as they could manage. Ellie took turns waving the oar in the air and paddling the stern around to face the seas. The hull of the approaching boat rose and fell on the water but kept coming in a straight line toward them. Another water keg floated away and the food kit and tent floated up under the seats. Slip grabbed them before they could float away.
The black boat pulled close to the dory and then swung abeam to the seas. Johnny Desmond walked out onto the deck of the Pacific Pride with a tight grip on the rigging.
“I’ve been looking all over for you. Do you have Annabelle?” Johnny called out.
“Yes! Yes! She’s here!” Ellie shouted, and pointed to the girl in the bow. Annabelle stood up on the bow seat and waved, perhaps a bit defiantly, to Johnny.
He clutched his chest and sank down into himself in thanks. “Let’s get you all onboard,” he yelled.
FOURTEEN
“I don’t care what you say. I’m getting off this goddamn ship.” Raymond Cobb was standing on the back deck of the Admiral Rodman, which sat at the dock in Campbell River. His skin was pale and his face was noticeably thinner after several days of vomiting and dehydration.
“Let’s at least get off and take a look around,” pleaded McCauley Conner, who looked to be in much the same condition.
“All right, let’s grab our gear,” Pierce said. “I could use a solid meal at least.”
“All I want is solid ground,” Cobb said, and he pushed past his mates and headed to the gangway.
The dock was crowded with men. There were white men in their stiff canvas work clothes calling out to one another, while Haida and Kwakiutl men, their skin as dark as kelp, sat quietly around the edges of the pier. The Natives sat on top of their bundles, and said nothing to the white men who pushed past them carrying their bedrolls under their arms. Men signaled the cranes to come toward the ship while teamsters jostled their paired workhorses in front of their wagons. George pushed past the rest of the passengers to get down the dock.
George had found the office of the Provincial Police Department, but there was no one there. He had only a few hours to ask for help finding the dory. He asked a kid on the dock where the cheapest place to buy a drink might be.
George walked at a good clip down to the commercial harbor, then turned uphill toward a street off the waterfront where a small red building had a sign advertising beer and sandwiches. There were no windows on the front and the door sat cocked out of its frame on broken hinges. The policeman had to jerk the door to get it open. The warm smell of mildewed sawdust, sweat, and spilt beer rolled out of the place like a cloudburst. George walked into the bar and squinted around in the gloom. The low ceiling sagged in the middle of the room and only a few bare lightbulbs hung on cords near the back. A strangely elegant chandelier hung above the ornate bar, where a stout man with a handlebar mustache stood wiping out the inside of a beer mug.
“What’s your pleasure?” the barman asked.
George’s eyes worked to adjust to the light. Three men sat in the corner hunched over their glasses. “If you have a cold beer I’ll buy one from you.”
As the barman pulled on the spigot and filled the mug, George told him that he was a policeman from Seattle and he was looking for some people in a small boat. A man, a woman, and a child. They were probably pretty bedraggled, and the girl had a yellow bird.
The barman smiled and stepped back as if George were pulling his leg. He started cleaning another mug. Then George offered to pay for the information, and the barman stopped cleaning and stuck his hand out to introduce himself.
“Tom … Tom Stanton. I’m your man, officer.”
The three men hunched in the corner picked up their bags, left money on the table, and walked quietly to the door.
The storm had blown up the Inside Passage and the sky was a blue dome over Campbell River. A light wind carried the smell of cold salt water and wood sap up from the sawmill’s holding pond. The three men turned the corner of the muddy street and the steamship dock came into full view. The Admiral Rodman sat against the backdrop of the wooded islands like a stately hotel.
“I ain’t getting back on that fucking ship,” Ray said.
“That was a Seattle cop back there,” Pierce hissed.
“So? That don’t settle my stomach none.”
“Would it settle it if he recognized you and started asking about what the hell you’re doing up here?” Conner was breathing hard as he pushed toward the crewmen’s gangway.
“How the hell’s he going to recognize me?” Cobb stopped in his tracks.
“You’re the one told us that a Seattle cop was snooping around. He came out and talked to your wife. Isn’t that right?”
“So?”
“Listen, Ray, don’t you think your wife might have given him a picture of you or something?”
“She ain’t got no pictures of me.”
“Great, Ray,” Pierce said. “You stay here and explain it to him.”
“We ain’t done nothing wrong,” Ray blurted out, a steady whine building into his voice.
“Not yet. But we’re planning to kidnap someone and obstruct an official investigation.”
“He don’t know that.”
Pierce stopped and turned to Conner. “I agree. Just let him stay. I’m sick of his bellyaching anyway. I didn’t want him coming along. He forced his way on this trip. Let him stay here and make friends with the Seattle police.” Then he turned to Ray. “I’ll see you around, buster. Write when you get out. We’re taking the whiskey with us.” Pierce took the bottle that Ray had bought at the package goods store and walked toward the ship.
McCauley Conner shrugged his shoulders, picked up his bags, and hurried to follow his friend.
The two of them grew smaller against the backdrop of the ship. Hundreds of gulls were paddling in the calm water around the ship, and when the steamship’s whistle blew they rose into the air, filling the space between the men with their lonely cries.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Ray Cobb finally said. He grabbed his bag and started running toward the gangplank.
The Pacific Pride was traveling past Campbell River on its way to catch slack tide at Seymour Narrows. The narrows moved a great area of tidal current through its gap. Johnny was anxious to be past it before the flood could bring some sixteen knots of current along with the spring tides. There were also the notorious rocks that lay barely submerged under the low tide mark: they caused whirling pools along the surface. The Pride was just able to m
ake the low slack. The Admiral Rodman, because of a loading delay in Campbell River, had to wait eight hours at the dock for the next chance to go through the narrows. When the steamship passed the boat again, it would be in the middle of the night.
Johnny stood at the wheel and continued wiping the glass port in front of him. There was wet gear, clothing, tarps, and a tent strewn all over the interior of the boat. Moisture was rising off the gear and becoming trapped on the inside of the boat’s ports.
“Darn it,” Johnny said. “I should rig up a fan.” He opened the side port next to his elbow to let the moisture out.
They had said very little once they all got safely onboard. Johnny hugged Annabelle and touched her hair, and tears streamed down his face. He said he couldn’t have lived with himself if she had drowned.
He would have been hard-pressed to explain what he had done. He didn’t want to steal the girl. He had seen the dory back by Dodd Narrows, but he didn’t want to give her back. The current was fair, the boat was running well, and he assumed she was sleeping soundly. He would wait for the dory on the other side of the narrows, or maybe not. He didn’t know what was best but it just didn’t feel right to bring the rough-looking blonde back on the boat. By the time he realized Annabelle was gone, the current had turned against him and there was no way to go back until the tide changed. He had spent the next day fitfully searching the waters on both sides of Dodd Narrows, but he had missed the dory when it had pulled into Mary’s cove and the ruined compound of the Brother Twelve.
The blubbering skipper crouched in front of her, and Annabelle patted the top of his cap. “It just wasn’t right, Captain. I’m supposed to be with Ellie.”
“I know,” he said.
Even with her hard feelings about Johnnie trying to steal her, Annabelle was happy to be back onboard the Pacific Pride, and she showed it. She put Buddy’s cage on the shelf above the skipper’s half bunk. The defiant bird sat atop the cage, still refusing to enter. Ellie, on the other hand, remained frosty toward the skipper, and this, in a strange way, gave her the run of the boat. She pointed and ordered where to hang all the wet gear, and the hangdog skipper did nothing to resist.