B000FC1MHI EBOK (4 page)

Noah hadn’t had a clue what the real disaster would be. He had always seen the island as safe and low-key and familiar. Yes, death came. They had been through it with his mom three years before, but not with this kind of violence, not with this kind of… stupidity, this kind of
preventability.

Bursting with anger, he opened the door, and a forty-pound creature raced past him and out into the small yard. “Lucas,” he said with a mixture of dismay and guilt, anger draining instantly away. He had forgotten about the dog, shut in all day. Like the bass he had intended to cook for Hutch, he had planned to be back for Lucas, too. Leaving the front door ajar so that the dog could return, he went inside.

The emptiness was overwhelming. He put his hands on his hips and hung his head. After a moment, he raised it and pushed a hand through his hair. What to do? he asked himself. Was Hutch dead or alive? He just didn’t know. No one knew anything for sure. How could they know without proof? He felt the need to talk to someone, but whom could he call? Most everyone who meant anything to Hutch was here on the island.

Ian ought to be told. Noah went to the phone. He lifted the receiver, punched out the number, but hung up before the call could go through. Ian was his son, seventeen years old and difficult. Noah had trouble communicating with him in the best of times. He didn’t know what to say now.

Still in the dark, he went down the hall to the bathroom, stripped off clothes that had dried stiff with salt, and turned on the shower. One hand high on the wall and the other limp by his side, he let the water course over his head, though he barely felt its heat or its pulse on his skin. He scrubbed every inch of himself to erase the smell of fish, a habit that was unnecessary today, since he hadn’t been fishing. He was going through the usual motions—come home, shower, put on dry clothes, fix something to eat.

He got on the dry clothes, still without lights, but wasn’t up for eating, and knew enough not to even try to sleep. Lying in the dark, with his mind having nowhere to go but back on the water, he found himself staring down at the sneaker of a one-year-old child. No, he couldn’t do that. But he had two hours to live through, before he went back out in the boat, back to the search. Not knowing what else to do, he did the one thing he did best.

Grabbing an anorak from the coat tree, he went out the door. Lucas was beside him—a surprising comfort—before he reached the end of the walk and raced on ahead, while Noah strode back down the hill to the small shack by the water’s edge where he kept his traps. He had already set several hundred, mostly in the warmer water of the shallows, because this was June, and the shallows were where lobsters would hide before molting. Come July, once the molt was done, they would move to the shelter of deeper water to let their new shells harden. The traps he set now would head in that direction.

Most were ready to go, stacked in eights from floor to ceiling. Over the winter, he had repaired those in need of attention, but there were a few last casualties, victims of marauding seals, hidden rocks, or plain old wear and tear. His wire mesh traps were more hardy than the old wooden ones, but they weren’t invincible.

He set to repairing them now, working by the light of an old oil lamp, because there was no electricity in the shed. He didn’t mind the smell of the oil, or that of fish or ocean air. Or that of fresh paint, drying on buoys that hung in bunches from the rafters. Or that of old gloves that had handled their share of fish bait. These scents were part of his history, part of who he was.

He worked on the wire with his pliers, twisting one piece around another to close a gap, reattach the netting inside, or repair a door. He replaced hog rings and attached trap tags. When he finished with one trap, he went on to the next, then the next. By the time he was done, he had a tall stack of traps ready to go, as well as a sore back. But the two hours were nearly up. He could see it in the whisper of light that came through the window, could feel it in bones that screamed to him,
Get on out there now, man, right now!

He blew out the oil lamp, left the shed, and, with Lucas still full of energy, running every which way ahead, he set off for the harbor. Lights were on up the hillside; Noah could pick the homes where they had probably been on all night. Those people would be down on the dock soon, resuming the vigil while they waited for word. Until then, the gulls had free access, swooping through the predawn light to perch on pilings, deck rails, and wheelhouse roofs, sitting statue-still, then setting off with a cry.

He reached the Grill. Inside its door, his thermos was filled with hot coffee and waiting in its usual spot alongside those of the other lobster-men. This time, though, the owner of the Grill was waiting too.

Rick Greene was a man with a large body, a large mind, and a large heart. He had single-handedly turned the Harbor Grill into a destination eatery; come summer, day-trippers planned expeditions to the island around lunches of mussel salad, lobster chowder, or curried cod, all fresher than they would find anywhere else.

Now he pressed a bag into Noah’s hand. “You gotta have food.”

Noah stared at the bag. He wasn’t surprised by the gesture, but he was by his own need for it. For a man who prided himself on being self-sufficient and independent, he was touched. The heaviness he felt inside was eased, if only briefly, by the sense of another person sharing the weight.

“Did you sleep any?” Rick asked.

“Nah,” Noah said and raised bleak eyes to search the harbor. “Anyone else here yet?”

“The
Trapper John
left ten minutes ago, and they aren’t heading out to haul traps.”

Noah was relieved. The more boats joined the search, the better the odds.

“Maybe you shouldn’t go out alone,” Rick said.

Noah smiled sadly. “Lucas’ll have to do, since I don’t seem to have my sternman.” That would’ve been Hutch.

Pain crossed Rick’s face. “What can I do?”

Noah looked out at the sea. The waves were tipped with the same shade of lilac as his mom’s beloved shrubs, a new day rising, though with a sense of dread. “Not a helluva lot,” he said, feeling the kind of despair he hadn’t yet allowed himself to feel, but exhaustion did that— poked holes where holes wouldn’t normally be. “I’ll go out looking again. Could be we missed something. Could be we misjudged the area. Could be there’s a whole crew of them hanging on to a piece of the hull.”

“Let me know,” Rick said kindly. “You need anything, radio it in.”

Noah tucked the bag under his arm, hooked his fingers around the thermos lid, and set off down the dock. The planks underfoot were damp as usual, but the harbor chop wasn’t bad. The
Leila Sue
rocked gently in her slip, flanked by lobster boats of different sizes and states of repair. Each had a buoy pegged to the wheelhouse roof. Noah’s was bright blue with two orange stripes. These were his colors, registered with the state, marked on his lobstering license, and repeated on every one of the hundreds of buoys he attached to his traps. Blue-orangeorange—originally his father’s colors, for the past ten years his own.

Lowering himself to the deck of the
Leila Sue
seconds before Lucas leaped aboard, he stowed the food in the wheelhouse, then got the engine going. He didn’t look at the yellow oilskins that hung from hooks, one for Hutch and one for him. His jeans and sweatshirt would do today. And his Patriots hat. He reached for that and pulled it on. He and Hutch shared their love for the team, and, killer though that had been at times, the wait was worth it. That first Super Bowl season had been something. And the Snow Bowl against the Raiders two weeks before the big game?
That
had been something! It had been a good day. Driving down to the game that day, he and Hutch hadn’t argued a bit, a rare and memorable thing.

Noah untied his lines fore and aft, then gave the
Leila Sue
enough gas to back her out of the slip and turn her. Throttling up, he headed out, but he saw little of the harbor boats, the buoy field, or, passing the lighthouse, the rocks that the gulls made white, now shaded the palest pink with the dawn light. Nor did he see the lime-grape-lime buoys that were out farther, in waters traditionally fished by Big Sawyer lobstermen, because he couldn’t begin to think of the gear war that loomed. The
Leila Sue
might have been in forward, but his thoughts remained in reverse.

No, he and Hutch hadn’t argued going to Foxborough that day in the snow, but they sure had bickered yesterday. Hutch had criticized Noah’s driving, his choice of a tuna sandwich in the cafeteria, his inability to answer the questions that—Noah countered—Hutch should have asked the doctor himself. They had bickered about how to negotiate traffic leaving the hospital, about waiting in the toll line rather than producing exact change, about radio stations, about refilling the gas tank of the borrowed truck. By the time they had returned the truck and were boarding the
Amelia Celeste,
Noah had had it. When Hutch grumbled that
he
didn’t want to sit after he had been doing nothing but sitting all day long and that
he
would stand in the bow during the ride to the island, Noah had balked.

“Sit,” he’d ordered his father in no uncertain terms. “I need air.” He had held up a hand in warning and reinforced it with a warning look.
Stay there!
it said
. Don’t argue! Gimme a friggin’ break!
He’d remained where he was long enough to make sure Hutch understood, then marched up to the bow. And so he lived through the crash.

Guided now by the GPS, he pointed the
Leila Sue
toward the spot that had been the focus of the search the night before. Other boats would be searching, as would the Coast Guard. With a little help… a little luck… a miracle…

Lucas settled in against his leg, nearly sitting on his foot, looking up, and Noah allowed himself a moment’s distraction. He had rescued the dog from euthanization three years before, and hadn’t once regretted it. Lucas was a retriever, and a handsome guy at that. His coat was red, with white markings on his nose, his bib, and the tips of his feet. He had a feathered tail that wagged constantly. And freckles. And gentle eyes. And undying love. How could he not save a dog like that, even if it had meant arguments with his father ever since?

No place for that dog on this boat,
Hutch had argued.
Dog like that has to run. Why’d you think no one else wanted him? Dog like that’ll exhaust you. You watch. You’ll see.

What Noah had seen was that Lucas could run himself ragged around the island, but was good as gold on the boat. Not that Hutch ever admitted that.

Noah stroked the dog’s head and scratched his ears, but his father’s voice filled his mind. Straightening, he held the boat steady at twenty knots and kept his eyes peeled. As soon as his radar picked up the bleeps of other boats near the site, though, he turned off. He couldn’t go there. Just couldn’t. The best he could do was circle the perimeter and wait for word on the radio. He didn’t remind himself that the search had gone on for seven hours the night before, that the nature of the debris picked up then did not bode well, or that even before turning in for the night, the Coast Guard had begun talking about recovery rather than rescue. He didn’t remind himself of any of those things because they only made him feel heartsick and empty—empty and helpless—helpless and angry— angry and confused. And there he stayed at the end of the list, with anger and confusion foremost in his thoughts.

He was a lobsterman. Lobstermen knew that they couldn’t control the wind or the waves any more than they could control where lobsters chose to crawl on the ocean floor or what bait they decided to take. But there were certain givens, and Noah loved those. He loved the freshness of the morning air, loved heading out with a boat full of bait and a belly full of breakfast. He loved pulling up a trap that held a breeder loaded with eggs, loved notching her tail and setting her gently back in the sea. He loved knowing that she would drop many thousands of lobster larvae and that in six or seven years he would pull up some of those very same lobsters, now big enough for keeping. He loved knowing that he had some control, however small, over the preservation of the species.

He had no control over people like Artie Jones, though. He had no
understanding
of people like Artie Jones, and his anger grew as he approached the site of the crash. Artie Jones was a hotshot. Infinitely worse than rogue lobstermen planting lime-grape-lime buoys where they shouldn’t be, Artie bombed around in
The Beast,
polluting the air with its roar, adding its wake to the rock of the sea. That said, he wasn’t suicidal. He might be an irresponsible, arrogant cad, but he wasn’t a maniac.

So why in the
hell
had he done what he’d done?

The one person who might have given them a clue wasn’t saying a word about what had happened—not to the fishermen who had pulled her from the sea, nor to the other searchers, the police chief, the doctor, or, with the rising sun now, the families gathering again on the dock, waiting for word. She wasn’t talking to friends or to her boss, and certainly not to her mother or grandmother. She wasn’t talking, period. For all intents and purposes, the accident had stolen her voice and rendered her mute.