Hamilton, Donald - Novel 01 (21 page)

     
Branch rose and, bending over her as she
spread out the chart, put his finger on the long blue tongue of a shoal
reaching out towards the star-marked lighthouse off Signal Point at the mouth
of the
Stigman
River
.

     
"You measured across this," he
said.

     
"Yes," she said, "There is
five feet of water. The boat is only two feet deep."

     
"You forget the tide," Branch
said.
"The tide and the wind.
With
the wind in the north...
I'll take you across if you want me
to...."

     
He looked at her and knew that she knew.
Like an animal, she could sense it. But it did not matter, unless he allowed it
to take shape in her mind. She was too practical to give up for a premonition.
Until she could put a name to it she would let them go on to what was waiting
for them out there, confident that the three of them could beat it, and him. And
perhaps she would be right.

     
He watched her roll up the chart again and
slip
a knotted string about it. She could very well be
right, he reflected, and the girl could easily have been right to go her own
way. It was quite possible that they were right. Two medals for sitting behind
a desk, he thought irrelevantly, wonderful.

FROM
THE DOCK, the creek in the darkness had a calm, barely ruffled look that was
belied by the sound of the wind in the hillside above them. The boat lay almost
still between a large creosoted post and the corner of the dock. It was quite a
large boat and when Branch leaned his weight on the stern line, Paul
Laflin
slacking away the bowline, it did not move at all
for a noticeable period of time; then yielded slowly, and Branch sat down on
the corner of the dock, let himself down to the brief stern deck as it came
within reach, and turned to push at the barnacled pilings of the dock, the boat
still moving by the momentum he had given it. The stern swung reluctantly past
the pilings and the boat slid alongside the dock.

     
"Check her," Branch said.

     
Paul
Laflin
took
an awkward turn around the cleat and the motion stopped as the line drew taut.
Branch looked up at them on the dock above him.

     
"Did anybody take a look at the
tanks?"

     
"Parks said they would be full,"
Madame
Faubel
said.

     
"I can't run a boat on what Parks
said."

     
"They are full," Paul
Laflin
said. "We checked them this morning."

     
The woman glanced at him. "Oh, is
that where you
... ?"

     
"Someone," Mr. Hahn said
smoothly, "someone has to think of these things, Madame."

     
The woman did not look at him, and after a
moment she sat down on the edge of the dock, drawing the fur coat about her,
and glanced at Branch, who moved, balancing, along the narrow side deck, to
stand below her. She gave him her hands and let herself slide, teetered a
moment on the cockpit
coaming
, and stepped hastily
down to the long seat at the side of the cockpit, reaching back to explore the
damage worked by the rough splintered wood of the dock on the back of the coat.

     
Mr. Hahn let himself clumsily down beside
her, the boat rocking minutely under the repeated additions of weight, and
chafing uneasily at the ancient pilings. Heavy old bitch, Branch thought,
taking stock in the darkness, anyway she won't fall apart on us. He located the
wheel on the after side of the short cabin house; the throttle control and the
gearshift lever both within reach of it. No compass, he thought, I could use a
compass.

     
"Did you see a compass aboard?"
he asked the big man standing on the dock above him.

     
"What do you need a compass
for?" Paul
Laflin
demanded. "We are not
going out of sight of land, are we?"

     
Branch shrugged and walked forward along
the gunwale and along the narrow strip of deck outboard of the cabin trunk,
steadying
himself
by the handrail in the top of the
cabin, to the small forward deck, to throw off the bowline and pass it up to
the larger man.

     
"There are flashlights in the
cabin," Paul
Laflin
said.
"On
the right-hand berth."

     
"Check," said Branch, and turned
to examine the running lights. "Do these gadgets work, or haven't you
tried them?"

     
Paul
Laflin
gestured at the cockpit. "There are switches by the wheel. But we will not
be using them.
Except perhaps the red one, to signal
with."

     
"All right," Branch said.
"It happens to be illegal to run without lights, but suit yourself."

     
"Get the flashlights," Paul
Laflin
said impatiently. "Get the motor started."

     
"Keep your shirt on," Branch
said. He went aft over the cabin and dropped into the cockpit.

     
"I have the key," Mr. Hahn said,
rising from the engine box.

     
"Well, break out the flashlights,
will you?" Branch said, "While I take a look at this mill."

     
Mr. Hahn removed the padlock with a
flourish. "Get them yourself," he said. "You are merely running
this boat for us, Lieutenant. You are in no sense in command."

     
Madame
Faubel
stirred impatiently. "Oh, get them for him, Georges," she urged.
"Let him get the motor started."

     
"He must not think that he can give
orders, Madame."

     
Branch pushed back the sliding hatch in
the cabin top, opened the doors, and stepped over the high sill. The cabin was
not more than shoulder height on him as he stood in the hatchway, the floor
only a little lower than the floor of the cockpit. It was not more than eight
feet long. He ducked and made his way forward into the darkness that was only
intensified by the dim gray ovals of the port-lights. The cabin had the usual
dank workboat odor of bilge-water and kerosene and tar, and an incongruous
sweetish smell. He hesitated, placed the irrelevant odor, and grimaced in the
darkness. God, they're funny, he thought, funny like a crutch.
Flashlights.

     
The boat rocked minutely as Paul
Laflin's
weight dropped to the cabin top almost above his
bent head. He forced himself to reach to the right in the blackness under the
port lights, and felt the ridged roughness of heavy canvas and, abruptly, the
coldness of bare human skin, and jerked his hand away, thinking, Christ, have
they killed her? Then she moved.

     
"Fancy meeting you here," he
said.

     
She did not answer, but the canvas rattled
again in the darkness. Two yellow lights came on, illuminating the cabin, and,
in the doorway, Paul
Laflin
and the chinless man were
laughing loudly. The girl on the bunk moved again in a tentative effort to kick
away the tarpaulin with which she had covered herself against the cold.

     
"
Where's
the
rest of your clothes?" Branch asked her, leaning over her to pull away the
canvas, since she seemed to want it removed.

     
She jerked her head in a movement that was
half a shudder towards the men in the doorway. She was trying to sit up, and
Branch helped her, and saw that her wrists and ankles were bound with strong
fishing line. Sitting up, she was almost naked, her
slip
falling, torn, down
her arms. Her face was streaked with dirt and with
remnants of lipstick, and her body and the white slip were equally grimy with
the dirt of the canvas. Her narrow, half-naked body arched with effort as she
strained at the cords that bound her wrists; she sobbed a little and sank back
to endure the resulting pain, her face drawn in the yellow light, drained,
empty, and a little crazy.

     
Paul
Laflin
held
out a knife. "Cut her loose. Cut her loose and return the knife."

     
She forced her wrists past her hip to be
cut free. There was blood on them, and, pulling her arms free of the remnants
of the slip, she rubbed them savagely while Branch kneeled to release her
ankles, she unaware or uncaring that the rags of the slip had gathered about
her hips like a loose soiled loincloth.

     
Paul
Laflin
took
the knife from Branch and dropped in return a bundle of smudged yellow wool
that opened to emit a pair of shoes, a pair of hose, a crumpled yellow shirt,
and a girdle. Branch felt the girl start to reach for the clothes and control
herself
.

     
"Tell her to get dressed," the
large young man said to Branch. "Get dressed, Madame Duval, and clean up
this cabin. Perhaps we will give you some food when you have cleaned up the
cabin, Madame Duval."

     
"The other one can come out now and
start the motor," Mr. Hahn suggested.

     
The girl sat hugging her naked breasts,
trembling a little with cold as she stared fixedly across the cramped space of
the cabin. Branch touched her knee as he rose and felt the skin rough with
cold, and saw her glance shift minutely to touch him. Her lips moved stiffly.

     
"Get out. Oh, get out!" she
whispered.

     
He felt a little as if he wanted to cry.
He hesitated, crouching under the beams in the faint sweet odor of face powder
from the compact broken on the floor.

     
Jeannette Duval looked at him fully.
"You don't have to walk all over my clothes, darling," she said
clearly. Her eyes hated him for being there, and for seeing that she had
failed.
He turned away, suddenly almost happy in the
knowledge that she was not hurt.
She was only cold, bruised, tired,
dirty, naked, and hopping mad. Fundamentally she was undamaged.

     
They stepped back to let him out. He
closed the doors behind him and pulled shut the hatch.

     
"Now can I take a look at this
percolator?" he demanded.

     
Paul
Laflin
said, "What do you want to look at it for? If it doesn't start you can
look at it."

     
Behind them the woman's voice said calmly,
but with a note of urgency, "It is
half past eleven
.

     
Branch looked at her sitting at the side
of the cockpit abreast of the engine box. He could see her lips a little
compressed and disapproving in the darkness, her disapproval dissociating her
from what had happened to the girl: absolving her from guilt.

     
"I suggest,"
she
said primly, "that if there are no more jokes ..."

     
Paul
Laflin
said, "Start the motor, Lieutenant."

     
Everything was new and yet familiar as he
stepped behind the wheel, tested the wheel, tested the gear lever, and set the
sliding throttle control slightly open. Under the low arched cabin top in front
of him as he stood there, in the yellow light whose overflow spilled through
the port lights, the girl, he knew, was again, like a large ruffled cat,
licking herself clean; and presently she would emerge, a little more smudged, a
little more rumpled, another step removed from the tall girl in the neat
striped wool suit who had sat down beside him on the train. But she no longer
mattered, nor did it matter that on the seat abreast of the engine the woman
very probably had her hand on the small pistol in the pocket of the ruined fur
coat she had appropriated. Nor did the two men matter any longer.

     
"Give me a light here," Branch
said, and Mr. Hahn came around him to sit down on the seat and shine a
flashlight at the bulkhead.

     
"Stand by the stern line,"
Branch said. He heard the larger man make his way aft through the long cockpit.
"Don't cast off till I tell you," he said without turning his head.

     
Start, you little bastard, he thought, and
he closed the ignition switch and pressed the button below it. Gears began to
grind heavily in the engine box behind him and he wanted to pound with his fist
on the wheel:
Startstartstartstartstart
. Start, you
sonofabitch
·
The
engine coughed
once, backfired, and ran. He throttled down a little and stood, listening to
it, feeling the boat tremble under him, as he measured the dock with his eyes,
and the solitary pile set out from it ahead of them, and the space of water
between the stern of the boat and the shore.

     
"Douse that light," he said to
Mr. Hahn, and over his shoulder, repeating, "Don't cast off that line till
I tell you.

     
"Aye, aye, sir." said Paul
Laflin's
voice ironically.

     
Well, he said to himself, can you get her
out of here without taking the piling with you, call you?
and
he eased the gears into reverse and touched the throttle. A subdued wash of
water swirled forward along the sides of the boat. Turning, he watched the dock
begin to move past backwards, at first almost imperceptibly, then faster; then
the line came taut with a jerk and an audible creaking of strained rope fibers,
and he turned forward and opened the throttle to half speed, hearing the engine
begin to pound laboriously in reverse against the unyielding resistance of the
rope. Flecks of white foam spun past in the dark water. Mr. Hahn stirred and
asked a question.

     
"Pipe down," Branch told him
without looking at him, watching the bow of the boat began to swing outwards,
away from the dock, the stern held by the rope. When she pointed well clear of
the solitary mooring post, he cut the throttle.

     
"All right," he said softly over
his shoulder, "all right. Throw it off." There was always the first
moment in a new boat that was larger than, or of a different type from,
anything you had handled before, when you did not quite know if you would be
able to pull it off, particularly with people looking.