The Last Run (46 page)

The four of them sat at the table and ate and then Steve Torpey came out and had coffee and eggs and more coffee. Fred Kalt and Lee Honnold ate fairly quietly. Ted LeFeuvre watched them as he drank his juice.

He had heard them talking in their bunks, after lights-out. The lights had gone out and then Kalt had said something about how they had let the skipper fall. Honnold had wondered why they had not seen the guy dangling from the basket. I don’t know, Kalt had said. I don’t know how we missed that. But we sure missed him all right, Honnold had said, we should have seen him. We should have. There was no excuse for that. No, Kalt had agreed. We should have gotten four, not three survivors. How could we have missed him?

“By the way, you guys,” Ted LeFeuvre said, looking at Kalt and then at Honnold as they ate their breakfast, “I don’t want to hear any more talk like I did before, at lights-out.”

“Sir?”

“You know what I’m talking about,” Ted LeFeuvre said. “All that business about that guy falling. That’s no way to talk. I don’t want to hear anyone talking that way.”

Kalt and Honnold looked down at their plates.

“That was no way to talk,” the captain said. “Remember, three men are going home to their families because of you guys. That’s three happy families. Three. So I don’t want to hear any more about who we lost. No more about that. Is that understood?”

They nodded and kept on eating.

When they finished breakfast, Ted LeFeuvre paid the bill and they walked outside to look over the aircraft. A fresh H-60 crew had just deplaned from the C-130. They were doing the maintenance checks on another Jayhawk, the 6041. The 6041, they learned, had flown in from Kodiak during that hour or two that they had lain down to rest. The new crew was going out to the Fairweather Grounds to look for the skipper and the other missing fisherman. They looked sharp and eager. There was a certain quickness to their step that seemed foreign to Ted LeFeuvre. All he wanted was to get home and sleep. It was a bad thing not getting any sleep. Made you nervy. He was actually looking forward to seeing his bed. That was something. That was different.

For several hours Kalt and Honnold inspected the 6011. The hoist cable was shot. The winch would need an overhaul. There were scratch marks and gouges on the helicopter’s belly and side. Ted LeFeuvre noticed the same gouges on Honnold’s helmet, too, but he did not say anything. The Night Sun was bent. The engine had been overtorqued. They ran some tests on the transmission. It seemed all right, although the auxiliary power unit had broken. It took Honnold most of the morning to repair it and power up the aircraft. They didn’t get airborne until almost two that afternoon.

Normally they would have saved some time and fuel and flown a straight line south across the gulf to Sitka. This time they hugged the coast. Nobody said anything during the flight. After an hour, Mount Edgecumbe was below them. Its base looked washed and black and there were clouds swathing its flat, white top. A fog was coming over the mountains from the sea. Beyond lay the channel and more mountains and the town, fuzzy in the gray rain.

As soon as they touched down all of the enlisted personnel at the air station, the mechanics and machinists and shopkeepers and electronics techs, the ones who had worked all night, came walking out on the tarmac. It was drizzling and they all stood outside in the rain and waited for them to step down from the helicopter. Ted LeFeuvre nodded to them and smiled. He felt very, very tired. There was no exhilaration in entering the hangar. He wondered what a hot shower would feel like. He wanted to get home. Then he and Torpey were walking down a hall and through the open door of the operations center. David Durham was at the desk. He hadn’t gone home yet. Ted LeFeuvre looked at the clock. It was nearly half-past three.

Durham smiled when he saw them. His eyes were red-rimmed and he needed a shave.

“Welcome back, intrepid aviators,” he said.

“Hello, Dave.”

“You manage any sleep, sir?”

“Not much.”

“You’ll sleep good tonight.”

“That would be different.”

Durham explained how his crew had flown straight to the nearestshore, and then turned south and leapfrogged from one potential ditching site after another. They were never sure if they were going to make Sitka until they actually made the inside of the sound. When they landed at the air station, there was no more than twenty minutes of fuel in the 6029’s tanks. The fuel warning light had been flashing.

Ted LeFeuvre left the situation report and the rest of the official paperwork to one of the watch hands. He signed what he had to and dated what he had to and then walked down to the locker room. He pulled off his flight suit and sat on a bench and looked at the lockers.

Bill Adickes walked in and said hello. He had not been home yet either. He said that he and Dan Molthen had gone out on a
second
sortie, with a different flight mechanic and rescue swimmer, to look for the fallen skipper and the lost, fifth fisherman. He said they had not stayed on scene long. Each time they tried to approach the water they had gotten a bad case of the shakes. Finally, they could not make their arms and hands move the flight controls so that they could go down close to the sea. So they pulled up and flew back to the air station.

“You see anybody in the water?”

“No, Captain,” Adickes said. “We didn’t.”

“You’re not going to believe who we pulled out of that mess,” Ted LeFeuvre said.

“Who?”

“Bob Doyle.”

“No.”

“Yeah.”

Adickes sat down on the bench. A clouded look washed over his face. Before his look had merely been one of exhaustion; now it was confused. His lips pursed.

“I just don’t believe that.”

“Believe it.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me.”

“No. I’m not. It was Doyle.”

Adickes stood there and shook his head. He was trying to work through it in his mind.

“Did he-”

“He held those fishermen together.”

Adickes nodded.

“If we hadn’t sent him packing,” Ted LeFeuvre said, “well… who knows?”

“Weird,” Adickes said, “just too weird.” “Isn’t it?” said Ted LeFeuvre.

When he walked in the house he did not turn on the light but put his duffel bag down on the floor and went to the den and looked at the pellet stove. It had gone out again. He went to the garage and dug out some pellets and returned to the den and restarted the stove.

In the dark, with the grandfather clock ticking and the paintings hanging on the walls exactly as he had left them and the glow of the streetlamps lighting the edges of the curtained windows, Ted LeFeuvre blew on his hands and waited. He thought about eating something. A sandwich, maybe. No. He was tired. Too tired even to do that. He stood there for a while and then went up the stairs to his bedroom.

He left the door open and turned on the lamp. The bed was still big and empty. Standing beside it, he undressed and put on his pajamas. Outside the heavy treaded tires of a Jeep or van rolling on the wet pavement went by and turned the corner. He lay down on the bed and pulled the covers over himself. The covers were cold. His nose was cold. That would change. The pellet stove was quite efficient. He reached over and turned off the lamp. Perhaps now he would be able to sleep.

He woke just before eight o’clock the next morning without need of an alarm. The house sat still and quiet. Outside it was raining. There was a heavy mist over the mountain. He remembered it was Sunday. He was supposed to do the reading at the morning church service. He looked at the clock. He had plenty of time to get ready.

He stood up and noticed the house was warm.

He went downstairs, checked the pellet stove, got more pellets from the garage, then went back upstairs and showered, brushed his teeth and hair and began shaving. He glanced in the mirror, put a small dab of cream on each cheekbone, then his chin and throat, and started scraping it off. He did not feel at all tired. Fourteen hours he had slept. Marvelous.

He raised his chin up, pulled it from side to side and went on scraping.

When was the last time he had slept that long? He could not remember. It must have been a while back. He ducked his face down to the sink, rinsed with cold water and toweled it. He looked at his face again carefully now in the glass. It sure looked like his face. That was his face all right. No different. After what he had just been through, it should be different, though, right? But no, nothing was different. Same old face. Same old Ted. He was back. Nothing had really changed, had it? He was still Theodore Cameron LeFeuvre of Whittier, California, age forty-six, with all of his faculties and flaws, all of his convictions and imperfections. Right? Right. And now it was Sunday and he was going to church and everything that had happened in the previous forty-eight hours, though undeniably real and certainly documented, seemed somehow like a story someone else had told.

He slipped on his beige sport coat, the one he always wore to church, a white, long-sleeved shirt, slacks, brown shoes, black, leather belt and striped tie and went downstairs. He locked the front door and stood on the porch.

The planter was empty.

Of course it is, he thought. It’s winter. You don’t put pansies outside in the winter. There is the greenhouse out back, though. Maybe he could plant something in the greenhouse. You haven’t used the greenhouse yet. You could use it. Even in the winter.

With a lighter step, he walked over to the Cherokee, slid the key in the door lock. He climbed in, put the key in the ignition and looked in the rearview mirror.

Nothing was irrevocable. Nothing was forever. That was a significant thing. Only God was forever. The other business was not so tragic. None of it was important. Now that was a thought. That was a fine thought.

Still, it would be nice to have somebody to share this whole horrible thing with.

He turned the engine over and backed out of the driveway.

At the Trinity Baptist Church on Halibut Point Road, the congregation was seated and silent. They had just finished the hymn, and were waiting.

A slight, not-so-tall man with a gaunt, drawn face stood at the podium. He adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses and opened a book.

“If you would turn with me to Romans, chapter eleven,” he said intothe microphone, “I’ll be reading verses thirty-three through twelve-two. I’ll be reading from the New International Version.”

The man paused.

“That’s Romans, chapter eleven, verse thirty-three.”

And he began to read:

The reader took a breath, and continued:

The man closed the book. There was not a murmur in the church.

He sighed.

“May God add the blessing to the reading of His word.”

And then Ted LeFeuvre walked over to his seat in the front row and got down on his knees and bowed his head. Those around him could only sit and wonder why, at that moment in the service, he was making such a display of reverence.

T
he next morning, Bob Doyle, Mike DeCapua and Gig Mork caught the first flight from Juneau to Sitka. DeCapua was antsy to get back. He did not sleep well in hotels, any place on land for that matter, and he had some accounts to settle up. Little John had advanced him a bag of weed for the fishing trip. The dope was going to cost him a hundred and twenty-five bucks, and he had not even smoked half of it. It had gone down with everything else on the ship.

“What are you going to do now?” Bob Doyle asked him.

“Try to get back on with the
Min
E,” DeCapua said. “Maybe Phil will cut me a break.”

“Think he will?”

“If I grovel enough, I guess,” DeCapua said. “Skippers like it when you grovel.”

Bob Doyle nodded.

“Besides, you were the one who pissed him off with that stupid fucking note.”

“I guess.”

Gig Mork’s mother met them at the airport. In the arrivals hall Bob Doyle looked around. He had wondered whether Tamara Westcott, the skipper’s fiancée, might come out. He had thought of several things to say to her. He was going to tell her how sorry he was, other things. But she did not come. Maybe it’s just as well, he thought. No need to make a scene in public.

The car was in the lot. They climbed in and headed out along the connector road, past the runway and the Eagle’s Nest, and drove over the bridge. There was the gray of the channel, a small chop in the sound. It seemed like a very long ride. Nobody said anything as they rode.

“Let’s get a beer at the P-Bar,” Mork said. “Let’s put our checks to work.”

“Not today,” Bob Doyle said.

“Come on,” Mork said. “A Bud Light would do you some good.”

“You go on ahead, Gig.”

“Sure?”

“No,” Bob Doyle said.

The car stopped out front of the Pioneer Bar and they got out. They closed the doors.

“Well, that’s it,” Mork said.

“See you around?”

“Sure.”

They shook hands and Bob Doyle looked across the street and saw DeCapua, already on his way down the ramp of the ANB Harbor. He never had been one for send-offs. Bob Doyle stood on the street watching DeCapua until he was out of sight, and then he turned and started up the street.

The wind felt sharply cold and the clouds were pulling apart in the sky. He stopped and watched a brown paper bag roll and tumble and then get lifted into the air. Then he went on, feeling the wind lift his own hair, seeing it move the blades of grass in front of the Pioneer Home. He had lost his cap. He would get another. He saw someone he thought he knew, a mother, yelling at her child on the street corner. They’re just having a bad day, he thought. They’ll work things out. It did not matter. Nothing mattered. He kept on walking.