North of Boston (6 page)

Cavalieri's secretary regards me with sympathy. “Go home. Leave the form. No one reads them anyway.”

I sigh. Why are the reasonable people never the ones in charge? I place the clipboard on her desk, the wad of paper on top of it.

“He had a son, a very special kid. Maybe a genius, I don't know. His mom's an alcoholic. Now his dad's dead. What happens to a kid like that?”

“They survive somehow. Children are resilient.”

I think about it carefully. “No, they're not. They're easily damaged and don't always recover.”

She nods slightly, averts her eyes. Hardly anyone can think about that.

I walk out of her office toward the main entrance. I feel like kicking the fake potted plant in the empty vestibule, but I don't. That's the kind of acting out behavior I got in trouble for at the Gaston School. Detention, weekend house restriction, and so on. A teacher once told me that Fuck You was just a familiar place I ran to when I felt threatened, like a bed that a frightened little girl hides beneath. I said I understood that. Everyone wants safe harbor; hardly anyone gets it. But there's a big difference between the floor under a bed and Fuck You, I remember telling her. They're really not at all alike. The floor under a bed is dim and dusty. Fuck You is a hot, sharp place.

—

The sun is setting without much fanfare behind low clouds. I drive south, then east to the seaport district. Past the post office warehouse, a retail fish market, a trucking company, and a boat repair. To my left Boston Harbor is slick with oil. There are four or five large vessels in some kind of sluggish motion on its surface. Not one of them is silver or gray. Now I recall that the ship that hit the
Molly Jones
looked black at first, but it could have been dark blue. The silver could have been fog. Memories of the collision emerge in sketchy pieces and dissolve a minute later. The more I think about it, the less certain of anything I am.

A
t six in the morning I'm at the YMCA for the first time since the accident. I stand on the edge of the pool and gaze apprehensively into the turquoise water. Knowing it's only five feet deep doesn't quell my fear. The other lanes are filled with before-work swimmers. I recognize most of them. We regulars don't talk to each other much, but we know who we are. A man in a Speedo comes out of the locker room, looks around, and takes a seat on the bench. He'll be first in line for the next lane that opens up. If I just keep standing here, he'll be rightfully impatient. I've either got to dive now or surrender the lane, and if I do that, the fear will chalk up a victory, and it will be twice as hard for me to come back.

So I dive. The first few laps are like reliving a nightmare (actually, I
am
reliving a nightmare), but then, slowly, it gets easier. My stroke comes back; my body starts to feel supple and strong. Rhythmic breathing soothes me, and the water gradually begins to feel like my natural element, like a perfect whole-body caress. Tears of gratitude seep out of my eyes. I'm OK. My old self is still here—the good, open, graceful me. For an hour I swim up and down my lane with increasing zeal. I love to swim. If I couldn't do this one thing, I don't know who I'd be.

I feel so good that when I get home I call in sick to work. Since I took the afternoon off yesterday, it seems only reasonable that I'd be sick today. In any case, since I'm the heir apparent, no one's going to question it. I get comfortable in sweat pants, make a big pot of coffee and a three-egg omelet, and flip on my computer. The hell with Cavalieri and his coy secrets. It can't be
that
hard to find three freighters.

I surf the net, entering terms as they occur to me: Boston Harbor, shipping lanes, collisions at sea, etc. I note cargo capacities and how to fill out a bill of lading. I discover the correct procedure for unloading a container vessel, the exact role of the customs officer, how a million tons of steel the size of a city block is supposed to navigate a complicated system of locks. I find out that 242 container ships, 32 auto vessels, 481 bulk cargo vessels, and 113 cruise vessels docked in Boston Harbor in 2012. At one point color pictures of rusted booty from the wreckage of an eighteenth-century Spanish galleon bob before my eyes. At another I come face to face with a coelacanth.

In other words, I find nothing to lead me to the ship that sank the
Molly Jones
, and become mentally numb in the process. I keep clicking, though. I figure I'm just looking in the wrong places, but I wouldn't know the right place if it froze on my computer screen. I read randomly, learn randomly, exit randomly. Go everywhere and nowhere. For several hours I do compulsive, soul-deadening battle with the Information Age.

I lose.

All right. Enough. I detach from my computer, clean the kitchen, put some laundry in. I gaze out my front window without really seeing the blue sky and tree-lined street. I need a human being, an insider. That's when I remember Johnny. At the funeral, he gave me his number and told me not to be shy if I needed anything. I'm not sure what he meant by that, but right now I feel like using the one contact in the fishing world I have. I call and leave a voice message on his cell. He calls back half an hour later, tells me to come to his house in Dorchester at four o'clock.

Back in the bad old days, whenever there was a full moon, Johnny and I would sit out on the jetty in Scituate where his parents had a summer house. We'd be bathed in yellow moonlight, swigging from a bottle of Jack Daniel's, and making up half-true things to tell each other. The tide would roll in, black waves crawling ever higher up the rocks, until frothy seawater crowded in on us. Finally we'd decide to head back to the beach, not knowing if a portion or all of the jetty was already submerged. We'd pick our way across slippery boulders as the waves smashed into them, shooting up jets of cold spray. We didn't talk much so as not to give away our fear. We could have been stranded, or any large wave could have knocked one of us off, but that was why we did it. The adrenaline rush of cozying up to danger. The closer we got to shore, the cockier we'd get and the faster we'd go. By the time we splashed into the shallow water, we'd be running, falling, dragging each other by the arms out of the low churning surf. Soaked to the bone, salt in our nostrils, we'd fall on the upper reaches of the beach, where the soft, sheltering dunes began, and pass the bottle until it was done.

We'd peel off our wet clothes and make love. We used to copulate with abandon, Johnny and me. Then fall back exhausted, two sand-encrusted amphibians under a distant moon. Some people are risk averse; others need risk to feel alive. Attraction to the edge was a mystery Johnny and I didn't have to explain to each other. So, yes, there was a certain bond. Destructive maybe, especially with the booze thrown in. But a bond is a bond. And when you're young and haven't yet learned to live in your own solitude, even a destructive bond can seem better than none.

—

He lives in a split-level ranch behind the district courthouse on a street where the trees, being recently planted, are only about eight feet high and the thickness of your wrist. I park next to a dented mailbox adorned with flower decals. As I approach the front door, I hear a brotherly dispute in progress. The jeers of the powerful, the heart-rending wail of the vanquished. Through an open window I can even hear Oyster Man talking at his sons with patient reasonableness, like a suburban Kofi Annan intent on bringing about détente and having just about the same amount of luck. It is said that world peace starts at home. If that's the case, we're all in serious trouble. I'm almost expecting a chair to come crashing through the window. One of the little darlings opens the door before I push the bell—he must have seen me coming. He snaps his nearly hairless eyelids at me and bellows “MAAAA!” down the hallway like an outraged goat.

Johnny's wife shuffles to the door. She is a tired, root-showing blonde in a stained cotton shirt that reveals that she is braless. I am surprised to feel that irrational jolt you get when you meet an ex-lover's lover. Like they shouldn't exist. But there she is—a woman whose lips have kissed John Oster's and whose womb has borne him four sons. Perhaps she senses something about me, because she doesn't seem to like me much.

Johnny appears behind her in a hallway crammed with gym bags, skateboards, and baseball bats. He ushers me to a door at the back of the house, his sons peering and scattering like rascally terriers, and we are released from the after-school, predinner pandemonium into a quiet garage with one half dedicated to what appears to be his reigning passion: birdhouses. An unfinished birdhouse is sitting on a worktable, and the rafters are hung with finished birdhouses big and small. One that looks like a Congregational church, one modeled on the Taj Mahal. Houses for single birds, houses for extended avian families. Lovingly crafted in different woods—pine, cherry, teak—some of them painted fancifully, some not.

Birdhouses? I never would have guessed. It's strangely moving to see how Johnny's fantastical, obsessive streak is being so harmlessly channeled now that he's a responsible citizen and family man.

“What's on your mind?” Perched on a high stool in front of his workbench, he looks me over, but doesn't allow his gaze to linger.

“I talked to Captain Cavalieri at the Coast Guard.”

“Fucking asshole.”

“Right. He said there were three freighters in the area of the
Molly Jones
on September 7,
but there's no evidence to link them to the collision. He wouldn't give me their names.”

Johnny smiles at me with a residue of affection and judgment. “So you want to find them yourself.”

“Of course. Cavalieri's given up. He bumped the case to the National Travel Safety Board. It sounds like a lot of bureaucracy. He says it could take a year.”

“Don't know what to tell you other than you gotta be patient. Not so easy for you, as I recall.”

“Nor you.”

“That's where you're wrong.” He gestures toward his crammed shelves. “These birdhouses. They're teaching me patience. I've learned to bide my time.”

I sit on a bench, lean back against a painted cement wall. There are curled wood shavings everywhere, giving off a sweet, saucy smell. “People must have talked about the collision. Fishermen, whoever. You must have heard something.”

“All anyone talked about was you. Woman throws herself from sinking boat, swims around in Atlantic Ocean for longer than humanly possible. That news made the rounds of the barrooms, for sure. Another sea story like
The
Perfect Storm
to entertain America. We're waiting for the book and movie to come out.”

“Ned was the real hero.” I have a compulsion to keep repeating this to whoever will listen. I can't get over the fact that Ned, who saved my life, is being turned into a footnote, while I, who did nothing, am becoming the stuff of legend.

Johnny's thick blunt fingers have begun assembling a tiny birdhouse chimney for a tiny birdhouse roof. He keeps his face turned slightly away from me, to pay attention to what he's doing but also, I suspect, to give us space. “Damn fingers don't always behave. It's frustrating. Part of my own body, but I swear they got a mind of their own.”

“Come on. Be straight with me, Johnny. If anyone in this town knows something, it's you.”

He gives a flattered chuckle, tries without success to get the chimney to stand up. “I'm way ahead of you, darlin'. Ned was my buddy, remember? You think I'd let him die that way without looking into it? I did my own investigation. Talked to anyone who might know something, and a dozen more guys just in case. Even went over to discuss the situation with that asshole Cavalieri, and let him treat me like shit, as I knew he would. The Coast Guard hates fishermen, in case you didn't know. What do you think I came up with after all that? Huh?” He turns to me. His face is a sheet of white paper on which nothing is written. “Damn thing was a hit-and-run. That's all. Just a bad, sad freak accident, with the perp disappearing as fast as he can. We can search all we want, but we ain't gonna find him. Sorry. That's the maritime world for you, sweetheart. Lots of thin air to vanish into. That's why every fuckup in the world is drawn to it.”

There's pressure on my chest, like someone's standing on it.

He shoots me a crooked smile. “I know you don't want to hear that. But hit-and-run is the answer we both gotta live with right now. My advice is, let the feds waste all the time on it they want.” He turns back to his workbench, picks up a tiny whittling knife. “And by the way, you're not going to be doing yourself any favors if you start asking around.”

“So they're out there, whoever did it—”

“Well, sure. They gotta be out there somewhere, right?”

“How does somebody get away with a thing like that?”

“Easy. If they've got paint chips on their hull, they repaint right away. The VMS signal only gives a position once an hour, so as long as they're roughly where they're supposed to be when the signal goes off, they're safe. And the VMS malfunctions a lot, conveniently. I hate to clue you in, but it happens. No one wants to get in trouble. Bad publicity for the company, insurance claims. The captain out of a job. He'll cover it up if it's at all possible and think of it as a good day's work.”

“What about the crew?”

“Same thing. Why should they give a shit? It only blackballs them if they say anything. Most of them will be glad to take a bribe if it's offered, and the rest don't friggin' care. Don't forget. The majority of these ships are foreign. You know the laws we have here?”

“In America?”

“No, I mean
on land
.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, those laws don't apply on the ocean. It's a whole different world out there. Like the Wild West before there were sheriffs.” He pauses, looks over at me with concern. “You all right?”

“I guess.” I'm thinking of Noah. His trusting eyes, the whalebone in his pocket. How can I tell him the bad guys got away?

“What about that guy you were talking to? The one at the pub,” Johnny says. He flicks his meaty thumb across the edge of the whittling knife to test its sharpness.

“Oh, him. I don't know him. He just appeared.”

“Remember his name?”

“Larry, I think. Last name begins with a W.”

“What did he want?”

“He asked some questions about the collision. Wanted to know if I could identify the ship and why Ned quit Ocean Catch.”

“You tell him anything?”

“I said Ned got sick of corporate trawlers and wanted his own little business. That's what he told me.”

“He tell you anything else?”

“I don't know. Like what?”

“Like why he got sick of Ocean Catch.”