No Good Brother

by Tyler Keevil

  ‘Take her on inside,’ I said.

  It would only work if she was inside. It would do no good to pilot around in a stolen boat with the white horse of the apocalypse standing at the prow like some figurehead.

  She was less reluctant to enter the galley, I suppose partly because she was somewhat accustomed to going into a stall or confined space. She did have to lower her head to make it through the door, but once inside was able to stand: her ears just brushed the roof.

  I sidled in behind them. The galley table was on the left as you entered, the sink and stove and cupboards on the right. Jake was backed right up against the far wall, near the passageway that led to the bunks. The horse dominated the entirety of the space. If the Lady had been a modern boat – one of the aluminium new-builds that Albert detested so much – we wouldn’t have been able to fit Shenzao inside. But those old wooden seiners are longer and wider, the deckhouses more spacious. Still: it was absolutely absurd, standing in there with that horse. Like something out of a nursery rhyme. Two men and a horse. On a boat.

  ‘Where can I tie her up?’ he asked.

  ‘You could use the table.’

  The galley table stood on a single steel stanchion, about as thick as a tetherball pole. The stanchion slotted into a base bolted to the floor, and was held in place by a lynch-pin. He guided the horse over that way, so that she was positioned across the width of the boat, her tail hanging right over the sink where I’d been washing dishes the other night. Jake ducked under the table to loop the reins around the base of the stanchion.

  Shenzao accepted this, and her eyes had a glassy Sedaline glaze, but she didn’t exactly look docile. Her tail swished back and forth, brushing across the taps and counter, and her chest puffed in and out, in and out, with alarming rapidity.

  ‘How do you think she’ll handle it?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know, man. Sedaline only goes so far.’

  ‘The engine makes a hell of a noise when it fires up.’

  ‘You think I should use the Xylazine?’

  ‘What will it do?’

  ‘It’ll knock her six ways from Sunday. It’s intravenous.’

  ‘We don’t got time to mess around.’

  ‘It’s in my bag.’

  He unzipped the main compartment, and withdrew a case about the size of a hardback book, made from black plastic. It contained two vials of clear liquid – the Xylazine – and a hypodermic needle, which looked about four times the size of a normal needle: that is, a needle you might use on humans. He loaded it up and readied it and looked at the horse.

  I asked, ‘You done this before?’

  ‘I’ve seen it done.’

  ‘Famous last words.’

  ‘Distract her, will you?’

  I went around to the front of the horse. I stood with my head near hers and talked to her, feeling like a cheat or a conman. Over her shoulder I could see Jake approaching with the needle. He lined that up with her haunch and sank it in there. She stiffened and I braced myself for a buck or a kick but neither of those things happened. Maybe she’d been injected before. She exhaled loudly, into my face, and I could feel the damp warmth of her breath.

  ‘That it?’ I said.

  ‘Takes about ten minutes to kick in.’

  He put the needle in the case, and the case in the bag. I was still standing by the horse’s head, holding the reins. Her dopey, sad eyes seemed to be looking at me accusingly. Of all the things we did, it was our treatment of that animal for which we were most guilty.

  We agreed that we needed to move the van. Otherwise what we’d done would be fairly obvious. So we unloaded all our gear: the suitcase, the duffel bag, the backpack, Jake’s guitar, a few odd items such as his frying pan, and any other bits of equipment that could have identified or implicated us – like those giant bolt-cutters. I began to carry all that down the wharf to the boat while Jake went to park the van.

  It took me three trips, or about fifteen minutes. When I was done I went to wait with the horse. She had stretched out on the floor of the galley, with her hindquarters folded under her and to the side, and her forelegs extended in front of her. Her eyes were closed and her head hung bowed towards the floor, in the pose of a knight chess piece. I didn’t go inside. I just skulked in the doorway, feeling ineptly apologetic. It had to be closing in on five, by then. Clouds glazed the paling sky, like layers of varnish on an oil painting. The waves rolling through the breakwater sloshed against the side of the Lady, steady and resonant, drum-like. It evoked a sense of familiarity: morning in the boatyard.

  Jake appeared, jogging across the lot, having to high-step it because of his heeled boots. He continued along the wharf, the raggedy knot of his bandana flouncing along behind him like a ponytail, and descended the gangway to the docks. At the boat he reached for the gunnel and vaulted it with a scissor-kick, landing a little breathless from his jaunt.

  He peered into the galley, and said, ‘Damn man – she’s cosy as a cat in there.’

  ‘Knock on wood.’

  He looked around, surveying the boat, as if he couldn’t quite believe it. He’d never set foot on the Lady, or any fishing boat as far as I knew. He clapped me on the shoulder.

  ‘You may have just saved my life.’

  ‘We’re not there yet.’

  ‘We’re not in jail yet, either.’

  ‘Where’d you leave the van?’

  He gestured vaguely. ‘Half a dozen blocks away. I didn’t want to hoof it too far.’

  ‘There’s enough hoofing going on as it is.’

  At that bit of inanity we both laughed – a little maniacally – and once the fit passed Jake shouldered me and asked, ‘What next, Captain?’

  I had to think about that. I wasn’t accustomed to calling the shots, either on the boat or in our relationship. ‘Keep an eye on her while I fire up the engine,’ I said. ‘This thing roars like a sonofabitch.’

  ‘Aye-aye, Captain.’

  He went into the galley and I clambered up the ladder to the wheelhouse, the rungs cold and dew-slick beneath my palms. At the top I opened the door and flicked on the light. The wheelhouse was about six by twelve feet: just big enough to house the wheel, captain’s chair, controls, a small electric fan heater, and the navigation equipment and radio.

  I stood at the helm and gripped the wheel (a classic ship’s wheel, with eight spokes radiating out from the axle) and, after feeling the momentousness of it, slotted the key into the ignition. The keychain had a little rubber float on it, in the shape of a duck. Albert loved ducks. I turned the key to the ‘on’ position. The controls illuminated. I didn’t switch on the navigation system, since it was of no use piloting out of the boatyard. We always did that by sight. I adjusted the throttle, sliding it to neutral, and thumbed the start-up button.

  The sound of a boat engine, particularly in an old classic like the Western Lady, is nothing at all like a car or van. It might be comparable to a sixteen-wheeler, but even that is fairly lightweight in comparison to the din of a twin-diesel 3,600-horsepower marine engine firing up. It erupted like a damn volcano, and in the morning stillness the din sounded loud and incriminating. The exhaust coughed and spewed black smoke before settling into a steadier rumble.

  Over the noise, I couldn’t hear anything from below. I leaned out the door of the wheelhouse, but from my perch didn’t have a view of the galley beneath. I was about to climb on down when Jake poked his head out. He was massaging his shoulder.

  ‘Damn,’ he said, ‘that startled her.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘She tossed me, and kicked a cupboard.’

  ‘Any damage?’

  ‘The cupboard lost a door.’

  ‘Which cupboard?’

  ‘One of the cupboards by the sink.’

  ‘Son of a bitch.’

  ‘She’s settled now.’

  He limped out onto deck. It felt odd looking down on him. I’d been up there so often, and driven the boat a fair bit (we had to take
turns, when a fisheries window opened, since it sometimes ran for seventy-two hours solid) but Jake looked almost as out of place on it as the horse.

  ‘Do me a favour,’ I said. ‘Hop down onto the dock and untie them lines, will you?’

  He saluted and leapt overboard. It took him a while to loosen the half-hitches but he got there eventually. I told him to toss the lines on deck, which he did. When the bowline was undone, the boat started drifting away from the dock.

  ‘Get aboard,’ I called down.

  A three-foot gap had opened between him and the boat. He hadn’t taken that into account. He shrieked – childishly – and leapt for the gunnel, catching himself and landing awkwardly with his belly astride it. He kicked and wriggled and managed to pull himself over, falling onto the deck with a clownish elegance. Then he popped up, as if all that was perfectly natural: the normal way you might launch a boat.

  ‘Anything else?’ he asked.

  ‘Pull in those bumpers.’

  Half a dozen fenders dangled off the port side, to protect the hull. As he made his way down the deck, hauling each one in, I fired the stern thrusters to push us further from the dock, and then took hold of the throttle and eased it forward. The tone of the engine altered as the gears shifted and the propellers spun faster. Behind us a billow of whitewash bubbled up in our wake.

  Jake had the last buoy in by now.

  ‘Go on and stand look-out!’ I hollered at him, pointing to the bow.

  ‘What am I looking for?’

  ‘Deadheads. Logs. Anything.’

  It wasn’t really necessary, but it gave him something to do.

  The docks were laid out in an ‘L’ shape and I steered us around the bend, then along the north arm – past a dozen other boats, nestled snug and quiet in their berths – before we reached the gap in the breakwater that led to Burrard Inlet.

  I saw the shadow of a tanker out there, and a few earlybird trawlers, but no real boat traffic. As we passed through the gap the two sides of the breakwater seemed to pull back, parting before us like curtains, revealing the backdrop of the North Shore, where the snow-capped mountains glowed in the winter dawn. And so much water. I’d seen that view before, of course. But it felt different to be in charge, with nobody to turn to and no Albert watching over me, guiding and chastising.

  Jake looked back and held out his arms, as if he was trying to gather it all in one big hug – the whole of the inlet. And then we were through, with the water rolling under us and the sky arched above us, and I pushed the throttle up a gear and for a time we left all that had transpired behind.

  Chapter Eighteen

  There are a few things I should probably make clear. Despite the accusations and charges that were later brought against me, I never actually intended to steal the Western Lady. As has no doubt become evident, our decision to put the horse on the boat wasn’t particularly well-planned, or thought-through. If we had thought it through we likely wouldn’t have done it. Another way of putting it, I guess, is to say that even though I don’t quite know what we were thinking, or doing, I know what we weren’t doing: we weren’t stealing the boat. I would not have done that to Albert and Evelyn and Tracy.

  My plans were vague, but I knew that they would be at their cabin in Squamish for a week. I also knew that Albert, who kept his own counsel, most likely hadn’t told anybody else at the boatyard about his plans. There wasn’t much chance the dock workers would notice the boat was gone, or report it if they did; they would assume he’d taken it to drydock, or up the river to New West, which he sometimes did.

  The last thing they would expect was that it was being used to smuggle a horse.

  I didn’t know the exact length of the ocean journey to Olympia – I’d never been that far south – but I’d been to the San Juan Islands, and estimated that we could make the return journey in a couple of days, including any requisite stops. I’d be able to get the boat back by Monday or Tuesday – several days before Albert and Evelyn and Tracy were due to come back from the cabin. That was the plan, anyway (albeit not a very good one). Just because other circumstances prevented this doesn’t mean it wasn’t my intent.

  The Lady had a maximum speed of eleven knots. That morning there was no headwind to speak of, and the inlet was tranquil as a pond. It only ever got that still at dawn, before boat traffic and morning winds whipped it up. We made good time. We skimmed across the darkly glossy water, heading west with the North Shore mountains on our right and the downtown skyline on the left. I wasn’t thinking about what lay ahead: the crossing of international waters, the fact that we’d have to stop to declare ourselves and pick up supplies (without letting the horse be seen), how and where we would dock and unload her in Washington. I was aware of all that, but those obstacles seemed distant and removed and somehow abstract. I suppose I was simply too bone-weary and bleary-eyed to care much, and also relieved not to be stuck on shore, or already in jail. I could feel the reverberations of the engine through my arms on the wheel and my feet on the floor, and for a time that was all that mattered.

  Within half an hour we’d passed Portside Park, the Seabus terminal, and Canada Place: a massive conference centre on the waterfront, constructed to resemble a series of sails, which always features prominently in postcards of Vancouver. A mile beyond that lay Coal Harbour, a high-end marina in the centre of downtown, where bigwigs and celebrities moor their yachts and powerboats. From up in the wheelhouse I could see the white shapes of the vessels, nestled side-by-side in their slips like bloated geese.

  From the bow, Jake shouted up at me. I couldn’t hear him over the roar of the engine, and cupped my hand to my ear to signify this. Then I motioned for him to join me – his role as spotter being even less necessary than it had been in leaving the boatyard. When he came into the wheelhouse he brought the cold with him. The thermometer above the bridge console read five above but out there in the inlet the wind-chill had a fair bit of bite.

  He said, ‘Had a missed call from the Delaneys.’

  ‘What are you going to tell them?’

  ‘Not the truth – that’s for sure.’ He stared towards the city with a bitterly intense expression, as if he could see the Delaneys from our position. ‘What a plan. Bunch of goddamn amateurs.’

  ‘Our stop at the gas station probably didn’t help.’

  ‘We don’t know that.’ He patted down his pockets until he found the right one – in his jacket – and fished out the cellphone. ‘As far as everybody’s concerned, we did our bit. It was their side that let the whole thing down. That’s what I’ll tell them, too.’

  ‘Be diplomatic about it.’

  ‘That depends on them.’

  He snapped the phone open and held it up, checking for signal. Apparently he found some, because he began thumbing in the number. I suppose I should have expected what was about to happen, Jake being Jake.

  He said, ‘Mark? The deal’s still on.’ A pause. ‘Yeah, yeah – it is. What? Well, put him on. That’s right. I want to talk to Patrick. I want to talk to big-slick Delaney himself.’

  A beat, then I heard a different voice on the other end – Patrick.

  Jake said, ‘Here’s the deal. My brother and I are still going to get your horse down there, and you’re still going to pay us.’ Delaney tried to say something, and Jake cut him off: ‘Forget about your man at the border. I don’t care that he wet the bed. I got a better way to go about this. Never mind. As far as you’re concerned, we’re air-lifting her over, okay?’

  Delaney said something else. He didn’t sound happy.

  ‘Yeah, yeah – I am calling the shots,’ Jake said. He was pointing at the floor in front of him, adopting an outraged and overly indignant tone, which was very familiar to me, but which must have taken Delaney off-guard. ‘Because you clearly showed you are incapable of that. So from here on in it is our show. No, no – you listen. I am not doing this for the money. I’m doing this as a favour, since your boys helped me out inside. But I didn’t sign on fo
r some two-bit penny-ante operation. I thought you were professionals. Clearly you’re not, but luckily we are. So just leave it to us. All you have to do is pay up and shut up.’

  I was so appalled by this speech that I actually dropped the throttle into neutral. I could hear Delaney shouting back. It was odd, hearing somebody scream through a phone. His voice sounded tinny and whiny and ineffectual. Jake let him go on for a bit, and then he said: ‘Buddy – I don’t care how many people you’ve had killed. All I know is you dropped the ball and we’re picking up your fumble and carrying it over the line. You want to kill me for that, wicked. You’re sweet.’

  Then Delaney said something else, and Jake’s face shifted, alarmingly expressionless. He said, ‘You touch my brother or any member of my family and I’ll kill you with my bare hands. That’s what I do to people who fuck with my family.’ The tone of his voice had completely changed: he sounded very calm and certain. ‘I’ll see you in Olympia, at your ranch, with your horse. Bring my money and then we’ll be done.’

  Then Jake snapped the phone shut and opened the door to the wheelhouse and lobbed the phone way the hell out there. It landed with a little splunk about twenty yards off the port side. And Jake – he took a deep breath, as if savouring the scent of the sea and spray, all that open-water goodness. ‘Well,’ he said cheerfully, ‘that went better than I expected.’

  I put the throttle back into gear.

  Shortly after Jake made that phone call (which was no doubt a contributing factor to how messy and murderous things became later on) we passed beneath the Lions Gate Bridge. They had built the bridge at the inlet’s narrowest point, where Stanley Park stretches out towards the North Shore, and on the other side it opened up, with West Vancouver on the right and English Bay to the left. Each year the mansions of West Van seem to creep higher and higher up the North Shore mountains, matched on the opposite shore by the condos and apartment towers that also get taller and taller, gleaming like big stacks of silver. Jake said that it was funny how our gambit, this big payout we were chasing, was still chump change compared to the money that saturated the city. It was a lame attempt to divert my attention.