We Are Pirates: A Novel (25 page)

Everyone said the name of the river, and Errol looked sadly at the sky. The captain was thinking. He thought awhile.

“Should we vote?” Amber said finally.

“A show of hands?” Gwen said, but at this Cody got panicky. Even Manny said “
No.
”

Amber knelt down to Gwen, her eyes shiny. “Your plan,” she said. “We’ll do that.”

“It’s all mapped out,” Gwen said. “In my head anyway.”

“Mine too,” Amber nodded gently. “And . . .”

“And?”

“
And
,” she said, “you have blood on you.”

Gwen looked down at her hands, which she had thought were sweaty. It had not been meant metaphorically. The bucket was half-full of water, and she dipped her hands in it. The blood fled into it. She did not know what the bucket was for (the cast of
Pirates!
used it to chill beer, and the map was a tipsy fantasy of Roger Cuff’s college buddy, scribbled out over manhattans while the women got bored), but she would use it to wash up and get clean. In a minute she would pour it overboard into the sea and then it would be gone without a trace. The blood had escaped someone’s body and now it would escape further, into unmapped territory. Her hands would be clean. Her hands
were
clean, now, at this point in history. She dumped the bucket and the blood vanished.

Hadn’t it?

Wasn’t it gone forever?

Chapter 10

And here is another little incident. Whenever Gwen heard announcements on the radio, she always thought it was actually happening, not in her room where she was listening, of course, but someplace. She knew that Tortuga had made “You Ain’t Hittin
’
” some months ago and that it was a recording of Tortuga, and not Tortuga himself, shouting while she showered in the condo she’d never see again. But when a politician made his dull case, a satisfied customer rehashed her shopping trip, a smooth voice offered a rare bargain, she could not help but picture the speaker in a booth with a microphone. Nobody had ever reminded her of the very simple fact of recording and duplication. Possibly this was because of old, dumb pictures of her father, on the less popular walls of the condo, smiling promotionally with his hair goofier and more numerous. So when Amber turned on the tiny transistor radio, hanging by a plastic strap from the ceiling of the bridge, and an advertisement began for Lifeline Cruises, and a Lifeline Cruise ship was spotted off the starboard side maybe a half-mile away, Gwen had the thought that the fervent tones of the woman-owned business were being broadcast from the boat itself.

History is written by the winners, and although Lifeline Cruises seemed like a bunch of losers, even at a distance, they would in fact win the day. Within weeks, Lifeline would be purchased by a much larger entity, and the people who had the idea would end up very wealthy, which was how winning was gauged during this era of American history.

The idea was women on boats. Lifeline Cruises pitched itself to women seeking adventure, whether a daylong adventure in the waters of the San Francisco Bay or a twelve-day adventure from San Francisco to Alaska and back. Passengers did not have to be survivors of breast cancer or domestic abuse, nor was any of the profit of Lifeline Cruises given to such causes, but the language of its radio ads, slippery and clear, managed to convey that this might be so. “Empowerment” was one of the words. Its daylong cruise boat was named
The Wild Lady
, from a poem by Emily Dickinson that Lifeline Cruises had made up. Tote bags sold on board broadcast the words of the ad—

The wild lady may seem—

adrift to those who cannot dream—

but within her uncharted wand’ring eyes—

a heart beats healthy, strong and wise!

—and below this were the words “Emily Dickinson.”

They had also changed the name of the boat, which was bad luck, and sure enough this boat was now being preyed upon, by individuals with a different idea. The idea, Gwen’s idea, was the just and righteous indignation of all her crew against the sordid and vicious disposition of the world. Cody passed around another tray of coffee and peered doubtfully out the porthole.

“Too big,” he said, amateurishly.

“Nothing’s too big for us,” Amber said. “The sailor inhabits a world huge, boundless, and I can’t remember.”

“International,” Gwen said.

“Don’t delay,” the radio pitched.

Cody put the tray down to scratch his ear, but his worried eyes stayed at the porthole. “Some weather’s coming up, right?”

“There’s always some weather coming up,” Manny said, and reached around Gwen to turn the radio off. It swung silent. “Don’t listen to that. Listen to your heart.”

“My heart’s had like ten cups of coffee,” Cody said.

Manny laughed and put the binoculars down. “I could make us some tea,” he said. “The real catmint.”

“No,” Gwen said firmly. “Tea and rest when we get to the island. First we take
The Wild Lady.
”

“Very big,” Cody said.

“Very big,” said the parrot in the corner.

“We can take them,” Amber said. “In
Sea Eagle
they cut off a lifeline to the Spanish whatever
.
”

“
Sea Hawk
,” Gwen said tiredly. “Armada. You really need to read more carefully, wench.”

“I’m trying to learn. I know fifteen men on a dead man’s chest.”

“Everybody knows that,” Cody said. “It’s a song, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.”

Manny snapped his fingers. “Take the wheel,” he said to Gwen and walked quickly across the cabin, where the crates of liquors were stacked. “Alcohol’s flammable. That’s how they did it in Port-au-Prince.”

“Where’s that?” Cody asked.

“
Haiti
,” Gwen said. He didn’t know anything, this idiot rascal. “How does this work, Manny?”

“Like a car.”

“I’m fourteen.”

Manny chuckled. “I keep forgetting that. They’ll probably try you as an adult, you know. That’s what they do for crimes like this.”

“But she’s not an
adult
,” Amber said, helping Gwen with one of the levers. “She’s a
wench
.”

“
You’re
a wench,” Gwen said.

“You’re lucky they won’t try you as a black adult,” Manny said. “Then you’d never get free.”

“Oh, they’ll have me swing for it,” Gwen said.

“That’s probably a fact,” Manny agreed. “When they find them dead, it’ll be a piece of news.”

“But you sunk the boat,” Cody said. “You sunk it, right?”

Nobody answered. Manny had chopped holes in
Outside the Box
but they couldn’t stick around to watch it sink, if it were sinking, if it had sunk. With the stealthy windows belowdecks, they could not move forward and look back at their crimes simultaneously.

“They won’t catch any of us,” Amber said. “We’re from an age where all gentlemen are known by their swords.”

“And wenches,” Gwen said. She took out her knife and pointed it out the porthole. “Straight for it,” she said, and spun the wheel to follow her own order.

Cody frowned. “Isn’t the captain the captain?”

“Stop questioning us. You’re bugging me.”

“I’m just
saying.
”

“Take him up some coffee,” Gwen ordered, “and see if you can get him to come downstairs.”

Cody hurried to obey. Errol was the only one on deck in the rain, standing at his wheel and tossing orders into the air. “Please, sir,” Gwen heard Cody say, and she wondered if Errol would remember him.

“Are you okay?” Amber said quietly to Gwen. She leaned in like they were alone.

“Fine,” Gwen said, but then, “can I ask you—”

“Yes,” Amber said.

“What were you thinking? I mean when we had to finish her, after Cody, with the cleaver. What was inside your—”

“The awful howl of vengeance,” Amber said.

“Not from a book,” Gwen said. “Tell me really.”

Amber turned and Gwen saw her beautiful, beautiful friend. “The awful howl,” she said, “of vengeance.”

The wind howled, too. Errol came soaking wet down the stairs, with Cody afterwards, looking nervous. “We lost our coffee,” he said.

“The wind has risen,” Errol said.

“The wind has risen,” said the parrot.

The captain held out a battered document. The treasure map, ragged with rain. “I can’t fold it,” he said. “I was looking at it to steer our course, but I can’t fold it up anymore.”

“It’s okay,” Gwen said, and took it from him. She flattened it out as best she could while Errol stood there frowning.

“I used to be able to.”

“It’s okay, Errol.”

Errol looked at her. “I know you.”

“Yes, Gwen.”

“My grommet.”

“Yes.”

“If I could fold the map,” he said, “we could get there quicker.”

“It’s okay.”

“I have some trouble,” Errol said, “with my memory. There was an uproar on deck.”

“The wind,” Cody said to Gwen. “I told you about it.”

Errol said nothing, just leaned against the wall, his eyes gray and wet as everything else.

“Errol,” she said hesitantly, “
Captain
,
look out yonder window.”

Errol pressed his face to the porthole. “A bridge,” he said.

“Before that a boat,” Amber said. “It’s called
The Wild Lady
, something from a poem.”

“We’re going to crimp them,” Gwen said. “One more caper before we rest and regain our strength on the island.”

“It’s a large craft,” Amber said, “but we can take them.”

“I never thought I’d live to see the day. Two successful ventures in one afternoon.”

“So you remember the first one?” Gwen said.

“Of course I remember,” Errol said. He tapped his finger on the porthole. “They remember too, or they wouldn’t be sailing away from us. They’ve heard such formidable things about us, they’ll fight like a demon to get away.”

They were getting close. Manny came forward holding two bottles of gin. “How much time do we have?” he asked.

“A few minutes maybe,” Amber said. “What are those?”

“Gin’s the highest proof,” he said.

“That doesn’t explain it to me,” Amber said. “What are we doing?”

“Something new,” Manny said, although this wasn’t true. In the late nineteenth century, some histories have it, a man named Cod Wilcox, improbably, also stole a boat and engaged in piracy in the San Francisco Bay. It is possible that his real name was altered by those who caught and imprisoned him, for the purpose of mockery, much like the Finns’ theft of the name of the Russian foreign minister in 1939, derisive slang for primitive handmade explosives used by rascals and rogues rather than bona fide soldiers. His name, so they said, was Molotov.

“
Cool
,” Cody said.

“
Cool
,” said the parrot.

Amber glared out the porthole. “Their days are fucking numbered.”

“All our days are numbered,” said Manny. “We just don’t know what the number is.”

“Can I do them?” Cody asked. “I want to do them. I didn’t get to do enough last time.”

“You did too much,” Gwen said sternly. “We all had to clean up your mess.”

“Murder is catching,” Manny said. “I remember that too.”

They were quite close now, close enough to see Lifeline Cruises’ logo on the side of the ship, a woman’s profile drawn in one wavy line of aquamarine. The face loomed large. She looked calm and smug, not unlike Gwen’s mother. Gwen adjusted the wheel so the tip of the
Corsair
might ram the woman in her willowy nose. She could picture the radio announcer inside, the microphone chipping her tooth as the cabin rolled. Her stomach shivered a bit, and Cody clambered up on deck with two of the Molotov cocktails in his hands, followed by Manny lugging his. The wind whipped above. The awful howl of vengeance. Gwen was ready to shout it.

“Bullhorn,” she said. They’d found one, and Amber slipped it into her hands. “Take the wheel,” Gwen said to her, and then she went up the stairs into the coming storm. The rain was everyplace around her, as if she were being attacked by angry, harmless fish. Manny and Cody looked uncertain, trying to clutch railings and each other and their weaponry all at once. “Not yet!” she called to them. “Not yet!” and she raised the bullhorn to her lips.

“
Ahoy
!
”

There was a crackle, audible even over the wind, and then a voice called out, “You’re too close! Turn around!”

It sounded just like the woman on the stupid radio. Errol came up the stairs behind her and put his hand around her waist. “Tell them what you are,” he said to her.