The Wooden Nickel

  “Wheel ain’t turning,” he says.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Means we got to get ourselves a fucking tow.”

  She lights two cigarettes between her lips and hands him one with a string of blood on the filter end. “I shouldn’t give you nothing,” she says in a small voice. “Never again.”

  “You better start saving up for a four-sixteen fucking Ruger when we get in. They don’t come cheap.”

  “Lucky, there’s nobody out here. Even the whale-watchers ain’t around. This radio don’t reach back to Orphan Point. How you planning to get us towed?”

  “Get on channel sixteen and call the fucking Coast Guard. They’ll hear us, they got a hilltop antenna. That’s what we pay our taxes for, ain’t it?”

  “We’ll have to get rid of them lobsters in the live well.”

  “Coast Guard’s all from Kansas, they wouldn’t know a lobster if it was clamped onto their nuts. Only thing they care about is drugs.”

  She bends into the companionway to set the radio on channel 16, then turns back around before she even touches the dial. “Lucky, the floor’s wet down there.”

  He looks down the hatch past the engine box into the cuddy. The piss bucket’s floating over the cabin sole.

  “Must of took some when the rail went under.”

  He cuts in the power takeoff for the bilge pump and revs her up to 1800 rpm. Down under the platform the pump sucks hose air for a few seconds, then takes hold and a steady stream of water pours over the starboard rail.

  Ronette’s already down in the cuddy and calls up, “Jesus, Lucky, the water ain’t going down.”

  He cranks the engine to 2000. “She’ll go down.”

  “It ain’t, Lucky. It’s rising.”

  “Shit. Must of cracked a seam when the tail hit.” He cranks the engine to 2400, high as the Olds wants to go. Meanwhile, Ronette’s back on the radio poking the channel 16 key and handing him the mike. He squeezes the switch and says, “You on there, Coast Guard?”

  He waits about thirty seconds, then yells in there loud enough so he’ll reach them, radio or not. “Breaker, Coast Guard, you on this one?”

  A girl’s voice answers, she sounds about sixteen, Kansas accent, the idea of water seems brand-new to her. VESSEL CALLING COAST GUARD, THIS IS COAST GUARD NORUMBEGA GROUP.

  He pokes the mike button. “You got anybody there that knows anything?”

  VESSEL CALLING COAST GUARD, she repeats, THIS IS COAST GUARD NORUMBEGA GROUP.

  Down in the cabin Ronette says, “It’s wicked deep, Lucky, and it ain’t going down.”

  “Come up and talk to this Coast Guard girl, I’m going to find that fucking hole.”

  He can’t see any leaks down there but it’s three inches deep over the cabin floor, the foam mattress is washing around among the loose floorboards like a water bed. The tunnel-of-love pillow has floated into the overturned yellow piss bucket, which bangs into the empty life jacket box every time they roll. It’s good the engine’s mounted high or she’d drown out. He opens the shaft cover behind the engine box where the bilge pump is cranking but it’s too dark to see.

  He calls up over the whine of the bilge pump: “Give me a flash-light, Ronette.” He aims the beam back past the pump and the frozen shaft, and there’s a garboard plank stove in with the sea spouting through the hull like a fire hose. Already the water’s mostway up the shaft. Another six inches and the block will start going under, the bilge pump will shut down and then they’re fucked. He reaches back into the empty life jacket locker, that’s where she keeps the nylon quilt, turns back and drags it with him while he crawls under the cockpit floor. The power takeoff and bronze bilge pump are scraping his left side, the pump bearings are screaming like they’re going to explode right in his ear. He gives the grease cup a half turn and she quiets down. He pulls himself over the shaft to the plank where the seawater’s blasting in like an open hydrant. The hole is under a fuel tank so he can’t get right up to it, but he shuts his eyes against the stream and pulls the wet heavy comforter past his face. He reaches forward to feel for the busted plank, then presses the fabric in a long line against the flood, trying to find the center of the opening. He’s jammed in a crawl space a foot and a half high with a foot of water in it. Every time he breathes he’s got to raise his mouth over the oily surface then put his face in again. His heart pounds like a pile driver, stops for a cigarette break, then starts up again. He feels for the long rectangular crack and rolls the quilt tight as he can make it, braces his feet against the bulkhead and jams her in there with all his strength. The nylon fabric grabs and catches in the opening and for a minute it seems like the sea is stopped, then he hears the water coming in at the aft end where the comforter’s not tight enough in the slot. He backs up towards the cabin to get Ronette’s sweatshirt and stuff it in the gap, then, just as he’s feeling the fresh air with his feet, the quilt pops out from between the planks and shoots back against the bilge pump in the flood. He can’t go back in there, the wet unfolded comforter fills the crawl space and the water’s too fucking deep to breathe. Thank Christ that Olds is still high enough to keep turning the pump around.

  He wipes the oil off his face and lies there for a moment with his ear right up against the engine box like old Dr. Burnside when he put his stethoscope down and laid his ear on your chest and had you breathe. Even with his boat filling up with water, for the time being he relaxes and listens to her hum just like she was on the test bench in the shop: camshaft balanced like a tightrope walker, power takeoff turning, valves like tap dancers, nice GM engine in the finest kind of tune, just a little gurgling now as the seawater reaches the shaft oil seal. Fucking Harley Webster, he did come through, she’s running 2400 rpm in neutral with the bilge pump sucking like a blind French whore. But it’s still coming in. He shifts his ear to the pump shaft spinning off the PTO, something’s not right, a rubbery slamming sound like an impeller blade loose. The V-8’s trying her hardest, you can hear it, but the busted impeller’s putting her behind.

  He pulls away from the engine box so he can hear Ronette working the Coast Guard. She yells into the mike, “This is a nine one one. We got a cabin full of water, when can you get here?”

  PLEASE GIVE US THE LOCATION OF YOUR VESSEL.

  “It’s out here in the god damn fog.”

  Lucky yells up, “Read it off the loran.”

  “OK. Four four three one point two seven. Six seven four nine point zero three.”

  ROGER THOSE, MA’AM. CAN YOU GIVE US A DESCRIPTION OF YOUR VESSEL?

  “It’s half-sunk.”

  ROGER THAT, MA’AM. I NEED THE LENGTH AND COLOR. WHAT IS THE LENGTH OF YOUR VESSEL, AND THE HULL COLOR?

  “Thirty-six-foot lobster boat. Wood. White hull, blue cabin, red bottom. Red, white, and blue, lady, the country wouldn’t want to lose a boat like that.”

  ROGER THAT, MA’AM. MOW MANY PERSONS ABOARD?

  “Two.”

  ROGER THAT, MA’AM. I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE ALL PERSONS ABOARD PUT ON THEIR PERSONAL FLOTATION DEVICES AT THIS TIME.

  “I don’t think we got any,” Ronette says.

  There’s a long pause on the radio. Meanwhile, the water’s reached the engine box, the mattress is drifting from side to side with the sea roll, and there’s a long brown used Magnum rubber from the old days, head up and tail down, swimming after the mattress like an eel.

  Then the voice comes back. WE’RE GETTING A BOAT UNDER WAY TO THAT POSITION. PLEASE LOCATE AND PREPARE THE EMERGENCY FLOTATION DEVICES, SURVIVAL SUITS, OR INFLATABLE LIFE RAFT.

  “We ain’t got none of those,” she yells. “We had a life ring but it come off in the blow.”

  He’s over his ankles in ice-cold seawater, standing between the engine and Ronette. His boots are full, it feels like they’re screwed down to the cabin floor. Under the engine cover the block hisses when the water hits it. A cloud of steam bloats out around the exhaust pipe and the back cylinder misses. He grabs the throttle cable and
pulls it harder but it’s no good, crippled bilge pump’s already maxed out. He lifts the cover off the engine box and gets a faceful of choking steam. The 307’s running with its oil pan underwater but it’s slowing down fast, and as it slows the pump slows. In a few minutes the water’s over the carburetor float level and the carb puts out a wheezing little screech like a scared animal as it sucks water and one by one the cylinders die out. He’s amazed how quick this happens, he’s never watched a motor drown.

  Up in the wheelhouse the Coast Guard lady sounds like she’s painting her nails while she talks. ROGER THAT, MA’AM. AT THIS POINT I WOULD REQUEST YOU TO LOOK AROUND YOUR VESSEL FOR ANYTHING THAT MIGHT SUPPORT A PERSON IN THE WATER.

  “When are you coming to get us?” Ronette screams.

  AUXILIARY SEVEN SEVEN ZERO ONE IS GETTING UNDER WAY, MA’AM. ESTIMATED TIME TO YOUR LOCATION IS TWO HOURS FIFTEEN MINUTES.

  “We’re going to be dead by then. Can’t you get a helicopter?”

  OUR NEAREST HELICOPTER IS ON CAPE COD.

  Then a thick yellow spark arcs back of the engine box and the radio hisses out. “Batteries gone,” he says. “No more radio.”

  “Least we got the word out.”

  “We ain’t going to be here in two hours.”

  “You heard her, we got to find something to hang on to.”

  “We can try floating the bait barrels.”

  “They ain’t got tops to them, Lucky.”

  He’s up in the wheelhouse with both boots off emptying them over the rail. Ronette’s clinging to the steering wheel like it’s a car and she can drive them home. The cuddy’s full of water halfway over the engine box and the big coils of heavyweight pot warp are loose and sloshing around. Engine must be up to the cylinder heads, power gone, radio dead, loran screen black as night. The fishfinder found the seabed it had been calling to all its life. Oil-slicked water spreads over the cockpit floor, as the stern slants downward it’s coming up through the scuppers that are supposed to drain it out. “Going to flood the live well, them lobsters’ll swim right over the top.”

  Ronette shrieks, “Oh Jesus, the cigarettes!” She reaches down behind the gun rack where she keeps hers and looks into the box to see if they’re wet. She takes two out and lights them both with a Bic lighter in the lee of the wheelhouse window. The boat’s drifting free now, not attached to anything.

  “Might as well have a smoke,” he says, “ain’t going to make no difference now.”

  His watch says two-fifteen. The Coast Guard lady said her last roger at one fifty-five. That leaves most of two hours and the boat’s not going to float for half that time.

  “Hope them assholes hurry up,” she says.

  No use telling someone what they don’t need to know. “This was a glass boat,” he says, “she’d be on the bottom by now. Engine’s trying to pull her down, wood buoys her up, same as the fucking gun.”

  “And look what happened to that.”

  He reaches for the pint of Wild Turkey squeezed in with his stash of Marlboros behind the radar mount. The water on the platform’s coming over his trawler boots as he pours Ronette’s whiskey into a coffee cup and drinks his own right out of the pint. The lowset bronze steering wheel of the Wooden Nickel is touching the surface with its bottom spoke. The live well’s flooded over and the first lobster has already found its way over the top, it’s taking an underwater stroll across the cockpit floor.

  “The lobsters,” she says. “They’re all coming out.”

  “They all got pardoned and they’re going home. But it ain’t going to do them any good, they’ll starve with them fucking claws pegged.”

  “Can’t we take their bands off, Lucky? They ain’t going to survive like that.”

  “No chance. It’s four feet deep back there.”

  They can’t keep their footing on the flooded platform. They take the pint and the cigarettes and hoist themselves around the wheel-house to sit on the cabin trunk and watch the rest of the mammoth lobsters paddle over the side of their cage and down to the flooded cockpit floor. Few more minutes, they’ll be floating right over the washboard and down to the bottom, handcuffed. The free ones will find them in the thirty-fathom darkness and have a meal.

  It’s getting to be a decent afternoon, nice and quiet without the engine or the seawater pump or the fishfinder’s squirrelly chirps. The big swells of the morning are flattening out from the northerly breeze. A few points off the starboard bow he spots one of his DayGlo buoys. “Cocksucker missed one,” he says. Then the buoy disappears as the breeze lightens and the ocean fog bank creeps back over his offshore ledge.

  Ronette takes another sip off the Wild Turkey and snaps up her orange oilskins. Her mouth is swollen up from the blow and numb with cold, so her words slur like she’s drunk. “Lucky, what the hell time is it? They ever going to come?”

  They both look down at his digital watch but it’s filled with water and the numbers all read eight. “Must be an hour to go.”

  “How are they going to find us in this fog? Ain’t nothing left of us to show on the radar screen.”

  She’s right, but he won’t say it. Way they’re sinking, they’re going to be invisible. “If you’d of kept away from the fucking gun, we’d be towing that bastard home by now. We’d be listening to Waymore, having a smoke.”

  “It was your fault, Lucky, we should of stayed away from the god damn thing, it’s a curse. We’d be steaming into Whistle Creek with all them jumbos, get paid, pick up the car at Moto’s, have a nice beer at home.”

  “Watch some wrestling.”

  “Ain’t going to be no more wrestling, Lucky. Look, we hardly stick up over the water, even if they could find us they’d never see us.”

  “They ain’t going to find us,” he says. “Wind’s pushed us way off that fix you gave them.”

  The fog’s thickening up too, you can see only three or four boat lengths over the long colorless swells. They’re sitting on the cabin trunk just a foot above the surface. Behind the wheelhouse, the long cockpit’s already submerged. A stray swell heaves right over the foredeck and breaks across their legs. She grabs his arm with one hand, holds the Marlboros high above the spray. “Lucky, I’m freezing. Any way we can get that blue comforter below?”

  “I tried to stuff the hole with it.”

  She shivers and draws closer. All she has on is the oilskin jacket over her purple sweater. “I ain’t worried about myself, I seen enough. But I’m scared for the little guy. He ain’t been anywhere. How’re we supposed to say good-bye if we ain’t even met him yet?” He takes a small swig of the Wild Turkey and passes it over. The bottle’s light, it’s getting near the end. Next time he’ll bring a fifth instead of a pint. She looks at the label while she’s rubbing her swollen lip. “Causes birth defects. Causes fucking defects in you too, Mr. Lucky Lunt.” She takes the bottle and tosses it over the cabin side.

  Lucky lunges for it even though it’s open and it’s already being invaded by undrinkable sea-water. He’d have to go overboard to get his hands on it, then it’s gone. He raises his arm again, but this time she’s ready, she twists out from under him and stands over the green icy water like she’s going to jump. She stands in front of shotguns, she grabs hot rifle barrels with her bare hands, she probably fucking would. “Another thing,” she says, still balanced there on the low edge of the slanting cabin top. “We ain’t going to get through this, cause nobody’s going to find us in this christly fog, but if we do, there ain’t going to be no more hitting. Just one fucking touch and I’ll leave you faster than I left Clyde Hannaford. Cause you ain’t even got a hot tub. Besides that, you ever raise your hand against this kid, I’ll kill you before I leave. I seen what you did to Kyle, and it ain’t going to happen in my house. You understand?”

  Suddenly the boat lurches even more to starboard, but she doesn’t move. She’s standing on the roof’s edge, beyond the handrail, her feet wide apart, her legs angled back against the slant like she’s in a wind tunnel. “Get the fu
ck back up here,” he yells.

  She doesn’t move and she doesn’t look back. “How are you going to make me come up there? You going to hit me?”

  “I ain’t going to hit you, for Christ sake. I ain’t going in after you neither, so move off the fucking edge.” He’s standing behind her with his water-filled boots braced on the handrail, waiting. On the next swell, she turns and falls against his chest so he has to grab her and hold on. Her face is cold as seawater and she’s shaking all over like a hooked fish. He walks her over to the other side of the cabin top to level the boat off, but now the prow’s gone under and there’s water over the cabin trunk. They can’t sit on the handrail anymore, even the high one’s immersed. Water breaking over their boots now with every swell, they have to stand on the cabin top and lean across the windshield to hold on to the wheelhouse roof. Beneath them through the wet glass he can see the spoked wheel’s completely submerged and the companionway flooded to the dashboard, just the blank radar screen sticking above the surface. He can’t see the compass, he has no fucking idea where they’re pointing. Everything aft is deep below the surface, the davit’s going under to starboard and the engine box cover is floating back up through the hatchway. The cabin’s full of water, but there must be an air bubble trapped against the forward bulkhead keeping them afloat. Both bait barrels went over the rail when the stern dropped and they’re drifting into the fog bank twenty yards astern. “Should of grabbed them bastards,” he says.

  As the wind rises again, they drift to leeward, still trailing the snapped green and yellow lines, and the whitecaps start breaking right across the trunk. The only space left’s on top of the wheelhouse, hanging on to the radar mount. Ronette climbs first. She’s trying to pull herself up the steep windshield by grabbing on the life ring mounts but she can’t get a purchase on the slick blue paint or the wet glass. He puts a hand on her cold little oilskinned ass and pushes her up and over so she’s sitting right up there hanging on to the radome with the bullet holes in it, but his heart is knocking like a one-lung diesel and he can’t climb up himself. He rears a leg back and kicks the auto glass of the center windshield panel, right where the bullet went through, but he can’t get his foot in there. He kicks again and again till he’s wedged his boot tip in a round hole in the center of the windshield and can boost himself up and over on the cabin top, blowing and wheezing like a walrus. It’s listing way over, they both have to hang on the Raytheon radome, only place you can grip the slippery fucker is by the bullet holes. Beneath them, down in the tilting wheelhouse, the box of cassette tapes floats free from its place behind the radar screen and the albums drift off over the starboard rail. Say good-bye to Vince’s scrubbed face, Waylon’s eight-string, Tanya’s white cowgirl outfit, big Garth in his ten-gallon hat, glint of Reba’s dyed red hair.