Absence of Grace (27 page)

Wrangell,
Alaska

Clen was finishing up her breakfast duties when John Jeffers came downstairs. “Terry just called. It’s probably just a minor glitch of some sort. Nothing to worry about, but the
Ever Joyful
didn’t come in as scheduled last night. More than likely, Gerrum decided to anchor somewhere, but Terry’s been trying to raise him on the radio, and there’s no answer. Weather’s been good except for the fog this morning, so they should be fine. No reason to think they aren’t okay.” John’s worried expression contradicted his meandering reassurances, sending a cold swoop of dread through Clen.

“We’ll need to check it out, though. Marian’s calling. Probably a bunch will show up to search. You up to making coffee and sandwiches for anyone who wants them?”

“Of course.”

John left after filling a thermos with the last of the coffee and taking two sandwiches Clen quickly assembled. She refilled both coffeepots. Marian finished calling and came downstairs to help prepare more sandwiches from pork roast and meat loaf leftovers and the lunch meat one of the men thought to pick up.

One after another, the men came in, picked up two or three sandwiches, and filled their thermoses with coffee. They touched their caps with fingertips and uttered soft, deep, “Thank you, ma’ams,” on their way out.

Clen nodded in reply, her throat too dry for speech.

“Good luck and Godspeed,” Marian said.

As soon as the provisioning was finished, Clen went to her room and stared out at the inner harbor. The enveloping mist turned the masts and antennas of the remaining boats to light pencil marks against the glass. Not knowing what was happening was unbearable.

She grabbed a jacket and walked over to the marina. As usual, Kody accompanied her. A group was gathered around the harbormaster’s office. The volume on the marine radio was turned up so everyone could hear the searchers reporting their positions with quick, terse words interspersed with the crackle and hiss of static.

“North of Wrangell Island, fog is thick as a fricking blizzard.”

From the muttered conversation of the people around her, Clen learned that fog throughout the area had grounded search aircraft. Fog also made the water search more difficult. Boats had to circle coves that in clear weather could be checked with a quick glance, and searchers had to take care not to run into rocks or each other.

She found a place to sit on an upturned crate, near enough to hear but far enough from the others to discourage anyone from striking up a conversation. Kody settled at her side and she rested a hand on his head, grateful today, more than ever, for the old dog’s presence.

Time dragged, with no sign of the missing boat. Clen’s body ached from being clenched like a fist, but every time she managed to relax, after a minute or two, her muscles tensed again. She gnawed on a knuckle until the sudden metallic taste of blood startled her into stopping.

She reminded herself of what Thomasina once said about worry. That it was nothing more than a misuse of the imagination. But would Thomasina be able to quell her worries if she were sitting where Clen was?

Thomasina would pray of course, but in Clen’s view, it wasn’t honorable, after she’d ignored God for so many years, to turn to Him only when she needed something. She and God may have begun a rapprochement of sorts but they were not yet on speaking terms.

Instead of praying she tried to empty her mind, but her thoughts kept spinning out of control, bringing her images of Gerrum—maneuvering the
Joyful
into her berth, watching a moose, talking calmly about the dangers he faced. Those images alternated with ones of his body drifting amidst broken planking, his hair swaying like black sea grass in the current.

Hours passed, and the frustration in the voices of the searchers and the worry on the faces of those waiting for news chipped steadily away at her. The mist caught in her hair and condensed into droplets that slid down her cheeks, pseudo tears in place of the ones she refused to shed. She hugged her knees, rocking, trying to ease the tightness in her chest and stomach. Kody whined softly. His tongue swiped at her cheek, and she leaned her forehead against his wet ruff.

Late in the day, boats came in to gas up and the men ate in quick shifts before using the rest of the daylight to continue searching. Clen stood at the stove in the lodge’s kitchen, her back to the room, scrambling eggs with onions and cheese while Marian made more sandwiches.

While they ate, the men talked.

“Damn, if it ain’t as thick as I ever seen it.”

“Couldn’t see an effing oil tanker in this soup. Damn good thing I hear real fine.”

“I was back side of Deer Island. Come round the corner real slow and easy. Almost bashed old Hank coming the other way. Scared me shitless.”

“Sure wouldn’t want to get lost with no tourists. Gerrum’s likely got his hands full.”

“Odd that radio of his ain’t working. Terry said it’s new. I don’t like it. Maybe we need to be looking for green planks on the shore.”

“Hell, you think he got hit?”

“Or got caught in a rip. Sure ain’t good we ain’t hearing nothin’.”

By the time the men shuffled out, Clen was so nauseated she barely made it to her room where she hung over the toilet, heaving without effect. She hadn’t yet eaten breakfast when John gave her the news, and she’d been unable to eat since.

She washed her face and walked into the bedroom. Gerrum’s book lay where she’d left it after reading it. She picked it up, turned it over, and looked at the man pictured there. A man whose quiet eyes asked questions she didn’t want to answer. A man with a quick mind and a slow, thoughtful tongue. A gentle man. It would matter to her if he wasn’t found.

She put the book down and returned to her silent vigil on the dock. Most of the people who’d waited during the long day had gone home. As she sat in the steadily increasing gloom, random memories flicked through her mind until one snagged and caught—the day Thomasina asked her, “What do you want people to say about you at your funeral?”

“Hey, she moved!”

With a quick gesture, Thomasina had waved away the impudent comment and sat waiting for Clen to come up with a serious answer.

“I guess I’d want someone to say I made a difference.”

“Hitler made a difference.”

That was the difficulty with Thomasina. Unconsidered answers didn’t satisfy her.

“Well, obviously not that kind of difference. I...want to leave the world a better place.”

“Better in what way?”

“When I figure it out, you’ll be the first one I’ll tell.”

Thomasina continued to assess her with a grave expression. “Every action we take or fail to take changes the world, Clen.”

And didn’t she now accept that truth. She also knew more about death than she did the day Thomasina asked her that question. It was no longer something to joke about and it could happen to someone she loved.

She closed her eyes, willing the memory away, but it refused to go.

“Do you realize you never speak of your family?” Mary John had said as she and Clen took one of their strolls in Resurrection’s garden.

“I’ve told you all about Paul.”

“But not the rest of your family.”

“Well, there’s Mom and Dad, Jason and Joshua. And me, of course. Mom and Dad live in Colorado Springs and Jason lives in Denver. Oh, and he got married. So I have a sister-in-law. Nancy’s her name.”

“And Joshua?”

She hadn’t meant to mention Josh but his name and Jason’s were so linked in her memory she sometimes forgot to separate them. “He’s...he died. A long time ago.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

No. She didn’t, even though that was what these meetings with Mary John were supposed to be about—the events that led to her abandonment of her Atlanta life. Not just her husband’s infidelity. That discovery was only the tipping point.

Mary John walked her over to one of the garden benches, and they sat side by side in silence while Clen ordered her thoughts and got her voice to work. “When I was eighteen and Joshua and Jason were ten, Josh got sick. Leukemia. At first we were hopeful he’d get better, but by the end of my sophomore year in college we knew he wouldn’t.” She realized she was rubbing her hands together in a desperate washing movement. In order to stop, she sat on them.

“I spent most of the summer reading to him. Sometimes I’d look up to see the pain in his eyes. When it got bad, he whimpered softly and repetitively, like a newborn kitten. It was unbearable, but none of us had any choice but to bear it.”

Memory tightened in a band around her chest, shutting off her breath, and a high-pitched ringing filled her ears. Black spots danced and expanded in her vision and the bench melted away from under her. Such a relief to slide into the dark.

“Okay, Clen, deep breath. Now another one.”

She was lying on the ground and Mary John was kneeling next to her, rubbing one of her hands. A pale sky arched above and a leaf crackled under her cheek.

“Don’t try to get up yet.”

No, much better to lie here, eyes closed. What must it be like under the earth? Dark, of course. She relaxed against the ground, breathing when Mary John commanded it. After a time, the nun helped her back onto the bench and sat next to her. And without Mary John’s hand holding hers, it would be a simple matter to float off into the pale sky.

“Watching someone die of a terrible disease.” Mary John’s words tugged her firmly back. “Seeing their pain, not being able to stop it—it’s the most difficult thing we ever bear.”

As Mary John spoke, the images returned like smoke condensing back into ash—the dim room with its too-large hospital bed. A plaid blanket covering a small boy, pale and bruised, all bones and translucent skin—like a baby bird before it got any feathers. The cover on the bed perfectly smooth, as if when their mother tucked Josh in, he was already dead.

Clen pulled in a breath that coated her lungs with ice. So cold. How could that be with the trees blazing? “I was with him when he died.”

Mary John was silent. She was praying, of course. Prayer didn’t do any good but it might be comforting to believe it did. Too bad Clen couldn’t manage it. Mary John’s arm came around her and brought with it warmth. What was that saying? Warm as houses? Or was it safe as houses? Not that either made any sense.

The past. As ephemeral as the glimmer from a star, light years from Earth. Starlight thousands of years old, and if she walked outside into the Wrangell night and looked up, it would fall on her and, in less than a heartbeat, be extinguished.

The fog continued into the second day, and waiting on the dock became unbearable. Instead, Clen walked. Where didn’t matter. In the fog, everything was obscured—buildings, trees, water, people. Sounds were muffled, distant. No birds sang, no voices called.