The Last Run (16 page)

The tarps flapped and whipped and the boat was leaning heavily now, and Bob Doyle was thinking that any minute he would have to make a dash for his survival suit when suddenly he heard a deep gurgling sound and then a grunt, and then a whoop, and finally the sound of pistons firing.

The skipper woke them a little before eleven. The strong southwest wind that had come up before dawn had weakened to less than a gale. The boat was rocking less now and a big surf was piling on the beach.

Breakfast was pancakes, browned, with an egg on top, four strips of bacon, buttered toast, bagels with peanut butter, coffee and milk and a big cup of chilled grapefruit juice. Everyone ate heartily. They were hungry and the wind gave them even more appetite.

“Who wants more coffee?” Morley asked. He had just finished serving the last of the bacon and toast.

“Right here,” Bob Doyle said.

Morley refilled his mug.

“I want to check the fuel lines again,” he said. “And then after that I want to try and see if we can pick up that gear we left out on the grounds. Can’t leave them out there too long. Sand fleas will eat everything we caught.”

No one said anything.

“By the way, I called the owner, told him where we were and let him know how we’re doing.”

“When was this?” DeCapua asked.

“This morning,” Morley said, “while you were sleeping.”

After breakfast Morley ran another check of the fuel lines and filters and took apart the main generator. He found a few loose, wet parts. While he did this the others worked on mending gear. Sometimes Mork went below to give Morley a hand. Bob Doyle chopped bait loose from the ice. Hanlon spliced line. DeCapua worked on some hooks and showed them how to roll cigarettes one-handed, and he whistled to a few songs on the stereo and even told a few jokes.

Sleep had smoothed over the tension and bad feelings from the previous night. Mork and DeCapua acted as though nothing had happened. Hanlon was reserved, his expression a bit taut and sallow at times, but he cheered up finally. Mork was good at telling sea stories. So was DeCapua. He was witty. It was almost as though they were a bunch of guys on a vacation from their wives the way they got on so well together.

T
hey pulled anchor just after two that afternoon. Circling gulls watched them coil the dripping rope. The sky hung like bunting over the mountains and there was a mist in the pines behind the beach. The marine radio was still reporting fifteen-foot seas out in the gulf. The storm was moving slowly north and east, the forecaster said, and there was a warning to boats to watch for gales. They laughed when they heard that.

The tide was going out, and Bob Doyle stood near the railing and looked down at the water, as gray as the sky, and listened to the bow part the chop. As soon as they slid out of the bay he heard the deeper hum of the engine, felt the bow lifting and the wind coming sharper and colder and, squinting into the wet wind, saw the horizon dark and not ugly. He blew on his hands and went to the galley for a coffee.

They dogged down the hatches, stowed main line, topped off the gas-powered bilge pump and the main engine and lashed the fuel and water jugs to the whaleback. Bob Doyle was pulling out the scupper plates when he heard a loud hoot and laughter coming from the wheelhouse.

A few minutes later Gig Mork entered the bait shed. Bob Doyle, hanging coils of line, said to him, “What’s all the noise about?”

Mork lit a cigarette.

“Ah, just the skipper,” he said. He inhaled comfortably and let the smoke slip from his lips. “He got a call from his girlfriend.”

“Good news?”

“You could say.”

“Well,” Bob Doyle said, “what was it?”

“She’s gonna have a baby.”

“Really?”

“That’s what the man says.”

“Wow,” Bob Doyle said. “That is great. Jesus. When’s the baby due?”

“I don’t know. Sometime this year.”

“I’ll bet she’s happy.”

“Well,” Mork said, “she’s had a time of it. See, the doctor first told her that she had lost a baby. And she did. Only it turns out she was gonna have
twins.
Just didn’t know it.”

He puffed on his cigarette.

“No shit,” Bob Doyle said. “Talk about second chances. How did Mark take the news?”

“He’s one happy son of a bitch. I can tell you that.”

“Well,” Bob Doyle said, “that’s some news.”

Right after they passed the fifty-fathom curve the seas stacked, and by four that afternoon curlers were pounding the stern and washing over the decks. The wind howled like a gut-shot gray wolf and the boat was keeling almost forty degrees on the bigger swells.

Once Bob Doyle finished stowing the gear he staggered dopily to his room. He did not have his sea legs yet. His thigh muscles fluttered and his ankles were sore. He wondered if he ever would get his sea legs. He eased himself down on his bunk. The porthole looked like the door of a washing machine. He thought he would time the waves. He had counted to eight when the door swung open and he saw Mike DeCapua, holding a five-gallon bucket with water in it.

“I gotta take a crap.”

“Lovely.”

DeCapua pulled down his sweatpants, yanked off his rubber boots, sat down on the bucket and thumbed to a page of a paperback he had dog-eared.

“Mike?”

DeCapua looked up.

“Can you put your socks on or something?”

“Why?”

“Your feet stink. I mean, they really, really stink. They’re fucking horrible. You ever think about scrubbing them with lye or something?”

“Shut up.”

“Your shit’s gotta smell better.”

“Fuck off.”

Bob Doyle closed his eyes. It felt as though his bunk was shoving him back and forth. After a minute he opened his eyes and said, “How long is this gonna be?”

From behind his book, DeCapua said, “I don’t know. Could be days. You got any cigarettes on you?”

“No way.”

DeCapua lowered the book. “Okay,” he said, “but I always crap faster with a smoke.”

Bob Doyle threw a pack of Luckies at him. DeCapua picked the pack up, drew out a cigarette, lit it and went on reading.

Later they were up in the wheelhouse. The sky looked silvery now in the afterlight and was letting go in black streaks across the gray horizon.

Mark Morley said, “We’ve been taking a lot of waves on our stern, haven’t we?” He paused. “How are the bilges?”

“We’ve been pumping them every hour or so.”

Morley frowned.

“These damned seas aren’t getting any better,” he said. “We still got another forty miles or so.” Bob Doyle noticed the dark pouches under his eyes twitch.

Mork said, “So what do we do?”

“Turn around,” Morley said. His voice was toneless, flat as a piece of slate. “It ain’t worth pounding through this shit. Not for a couple of lines.”

DeCapua smiled a faint, economical smile.

“It’s too bad,” Morley said, “but I don’t see any way around it. Shit.”

He sighed.

“Giggy,” he said, “turn her around.”

“All right.”

“I guess we’ll go back to Graves,” Morley said.

“Skipper,” DeCapua said, “why do we have to go to Graves? I mean, there ain’t nothing there. It don’t make sense to sit in a bay for two days.”

“What’s your idea?”

“I say we go to Elfin Cove. It’s another fifty miles, but it’s a neat little town. And they got parts and fuel there. And fresh water, too.” He paused, then added, “And, there’s always a chance we can scarf some beer or hair pie.”

“I could use some of that,” Mork said.

Morley thought it over.

“Giggy,” he said, “set a course to Elfin Cove.”

DeCapua clapped.

“Say, there, Giggy,” he said, “you been to Elfin Cove plenty of times. What kind of shit they got going this time of year?”

“You guys go talk somewhere else,” Morley said. “Better yet, get some sleep. And don’t forget. I want those bilges checked every hour.”

Bob Doyle and DeCapua went below. They did not find Hanlon in the galley.

“Finally some reason in a world of insanity,” DeCapua said. “Hey, where the hell’s old Davie boy?”

“In his rack.”

“Just wait till he hears the good news.”

T
hey limped into Elfin Cove in the dark and drifted to a stop alongside a fuel dock. The air hung cold and still, and in the channel the water lay flat and black. All around rose mountains, steep, muscular mountains, their tops jagged with spruce and dusted with snow. There was a path of wood planks that began at the far end of the dock and twisted up a slope to the top of a ridge. Behind the ridge was the soft, yellow glow of town lights, and they could see ropes of smoke twisting high above the trees. Nothing stirred otherwise. It had snowed and everything had a stiff, frosted look.

Bob Doyle stood on the foredeck and took in the mountains. Spruce look so lifeless with snow on them, he thought. Like upside-down icicles. Or glazed pipe cleaners. Sure snowed a lot. He swung his legs over the gunwale and dropped down on the dock. His legs wobbled a bit. The motion of the big seas was still in them.

Mark Morley came out on the foredeck.

“Quiet,” he said.

“Too quiet.”

Morley nodded. “Okay, let’s get the anchor down and tie ourselves up.”

They tied off the lines to the bow and stern, and David Hanlon wedged a few buoys between the hull and the pier. Gig Mork dumped two anchors. The anchors went in with a small splash and sent ripples across the channel. Morley came up the fo’c’sle where he had gone to stow the rope and tarps.

“Looks good,” he said. “All right. Why don’t you fellas take the night off? Only don’t go getting in any trouble. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Mike DeCapua came out on deck. He had just woken up. His face looked like a mass of gray putty with black stubble on the lower part of it.

“Elfin Cove?”

“Yup.”

“You going into town?”

“I guess so.”

“Hold on a second, will you? I gotta get something.” He went back inside and came out a few minutes later with a bag under his arm.

“What’s that?”

“My doobie.”

They walked along the slippery, planked path and came to a framed cabin with a wood sign: COHO’S BAR AND GRILL. Another sign hung on the front door.

NO RAINGEAR NO MUDDY BOOTS PLEASE

There were square tables and chairs with shiny tops and a bar along the wall with gleaming liquor bottles and a stainless-steel grill in the far corner. Very tidy. But there was no one inside.

“Time’s it?”

“Almost eight.”

DeCapua snorted. “Who pays to drink, anyway?”

Elfin Cove was a nice-looking little town. Wood-and-stone cabins with chimneys clung to the hillsides, and there was a cove with a quay and little boats in the slips and nets hanging from racks. A few cruisers had their cabin lights on. They glowed like candlelit pumpkins.

“Gonna call your kids?”

“Right now,” Bob Doyle said.

They walked along a boardwalk, past a post office and what looked like a little school and stopped on a ramp in front of a blue phone box.

“It’s the only public phone in town. Everyone uses it. You can make your call from here,” DeCapua said. He pointed to a garage that had a white light around the door edges. “That’s The Shop. I’ll be in there. Come on in when you’re done and have a smoke.”

“Okay.”

Bob Doyle lifted the receiver. The number he dialed rang four times.

“Yeah?”

“Is Laurie there?”

“No.”

“Where is she?”

“Out.”

You bastard, Bob Doyle thought. You insolent bastard. “If the kids are around,” he said, “I’d like to talk with them.”

There was a grunt, some muffled sounds and then shoes tapping on a floor. Then he heard the voice that sent a jolt through him.

“Daddy!”

“Hello, sweetheart.”

“What are you
doing,
Daddy?”

“You know what I’m doing, silly. I’m fishing.”

“Oh, sure.” There was a pause. “Daddy, tell me a Barbie story.”

Whenever he was away, Katie expected him to call in every day with the latest episode of Barbie’s Alaska adventure. On their way to Elfin Cove he had thought up a new one: Barbie Fishes the High Seas.

When he finished, she giggled. “That was
good.
Tell me another one.”

“No, honey, that’s all for tonight. Is your brother there, sweetie?” He heard more muffled sounds, some yelling, and then crying, and then his son’s voice.

“Dad?”

“Brennie, did you hit your sister?”

“No.”

“Try to be nice to her.”

“How are you, Dad?”

“I had a great day fishing. We caught lots of stuff.” He paused. “What’s going on in school?”

“Not much.”

He was not very good at chitchat so he told his son about the trip. He told him how big the yellow eye were, how big the waves had been, told him names of different rockfish, skipped over the size of the catch. Had he seen any whales? Not yet. How about sharks? None of those either. Would he bring back some shark teeth? With any luck, yes. When was he coming home?

“As soon as we fill our holds.”

“And then?”

“Then I’ll fly down to Sitka.”

“What if you can’t?”

“Then you and your sister will have to fly up to Juneau to see me.”

“Cool!”

“Brennie,” Bob Doyle said. “I gotta go now.”

“Will you call tomorrow?”

“Sure. How about eight o’clock?” He knew the children usually were in bed by nine.

“I love you, Dad. Hurry home.”

Bob Doyle hung up. The sound of his kids’ voices used to fill his insides, at least for a little while. Not anymore. Now that he knew he had no home to return to, it only made him feel hollow and lonely.

It was cold in the night and Bob Doyle slept heavily. Once he woke and, moving his shoulder against the hard bunk, realized he was back on the boat. He pushed his legs out as far as they would go in the sleeping bag, and stretching, the calve muscles hard as stones, the lower back muscles stiff and sharply aching and smelling the old herring and seawater in the crackling hair of his beard, he felt the pleasant nip of dry, cold air on his nose and the draining, splendid emptiness of fatigue.