We Are Pirates: A Novel (26 page)

“We demand everything of value on board!” Gwen called instead. Her voice was broadcasting crackly, too. Boarding was going to be a problem.
The Wild Lady
was much taller.

“Turn around,” answered the ship. “There is already an alert for you and the stolen boat.”

“Surrender now!” Gwen ordered. “You are being attacked by pi—”

A dull, heavy blow cut short these words. Amber had driven the boat straight into the Lifeline logo’s face, and both boats toppled back and then forth. Pieces of something—wood—fell into the churning water. The rain slapped at Gwen’s face
.

“Stay back!” cried
The Wild Lady
, although it was not a voice of authority. It was prattling on, also like Gwen’s mother, nothing but orders that nobody cared about. “We have notified the police!”

“Stop broadcasting! Surrender now!”

“You will be arrested within the hour!”

“You will not survive that hour!” Gwen vowed, and the
Corsair
struck them again. She held on to Errol, but the bullhorn skittered out of her hand. She slid after it, closing her fist around its handle just before it could leap overboard. Her fingers hit a new button, the red one, and a ghastly loud noise shouted at
The Wild Lady.
Cody and Manny covered their ears, and when Gwen stood up, she caught a rainy glimpse of Amber inside, grinning heartlessly and turning the wheel again.

“You’re criminals! Stay back!”

“Don’t disparage my crew!” Gwen returned. “I’m giving out ass whoopings and lollipops and I’m fresh out of lollipops!”

Errol gave a mighty cackle. “Where did you hear that?”

Gwen grinned, her hair slack on her head, the sleeves of her sweatshirt heavy on her arms. She felt cleaner than she had in a long time. “From some asshole,” she told him, and they both laughed as she swiveled to face her armed crew. “Light them up!”

The wind rose, but they lit them up, crowding around a lighter in Manny’s hand so the flame might be lit and free, tilting the fuses into the fire. This would be hard in the storm, Gwen knew, but there was always some weather coming up. The rain now was so loud that she had to use the bullhorn to talk to her crew.

“
When you’re ready
!
”

The pirates threw their primitive handmades at the legitimate boat. It looked like lit matches in the gray void, one landing on deck, one right on the name of the boat, one into the sea and one no place. They actually exploded, just as they were supposed to, and there was a shower of sparks on the deck and a brief black scar on the side of the boat, before the storm washed it out. Cody hooted with joy and then quickly stopped and narrowed his eyes into nonchalance, in imitation of heroes in movies too cool to look back and watch the explosions they’ve caused.

“How many of those do we have?” Gwen asked.

Manny shook his head.

Amber rammed the boat again, and for a second everything was full tilt. A wide, wicked crack crept down the deck almost to Gwen’s feet. It was bad to see. The crack was black inside, and Gwen was so surprised at the dark in front of her eyes that she dropped the bullhorn. This time it was gone. The
Corsair
righted itself and there was a low, throaty yell, or a scream, from somebody near her. A mighty spray, from a wave or from
The Wild Lady
rocking, hit everyone on deck. Errol fell and Gwen clung to his fallen arms, trying to drag him up, while the wind rose again, higher, higher, with a crackly voice from above the fray.

“Leave now!” it said. “Save yourselves!” and then it was upon them. It was all water, from the sky and from below, and several things happened in the storm that bore heavily on the future of the
Corsair’s
crew. A monster wave spouted over the crack and slapped down everyone on deck, and
The Wild Lady
leaned sharply away, vanishing quickly into the curtain of rain. The wind had no one in charge of it, roiling the sails and stretching the black flag above them until it seemed the skull would scream. Or maybe that was Gwen, leading the others down the slippery steps. Amber was crying at the wheel.

“What can we do?” she asked.

“Stop crying,” Manny said.

“Stop crying,” said the parrot.

“We need to get out of here,” Cody said, like he was begging.

“There is no
out of here
,” Amber said, wiping at her eyes. “The storm is here. We’re in it.”

“I can navigate us out,” Errol said. “I just have to look at the sun for a second.”

Manny could not help laughing. He pointed a dripping finger at the treasure map Gwen had thumbtacked to the wall, over a calendar of scheduled performances. “Head for that,” he said.

“I can’t
head for that
!” Amber pointed out the porthole. “We’re nowhere! I don’t know where we are! I was just driving toward the ship, and the ship is gone!”

“
Misericordia
!
” Errol cried to the ceiling.

“Let’s not go overboard,” Manny said.

“No,” Gwen said. “Let’s not.”

“Good thinking,” Cody said, and rested his forehead against the wall. Gwen watched his blinking eyes. He wanted to go home, probably.
Oh, my boy, my little boy, we are so happy to see you. Come in for blankets and cookies and leave this rebellious day behind you.
No, they could not navigate away. They could not be numbered with the living nor the dead until this storm was no longer over them. But still there must be some bright something. In the navigating in the books, there was always some heavenly orb, appearing brightest and clearest and nearest for the first time in thousands of years. This would be the story of their lives, as long as they didn’t die in it.

“Stop crying,” the parrot said again.

“We should move,” Manny agreed. “Better to go somewhere slow than nowhere fast.”

Gwen looked out and saw the towers of the Bay Bridge, sharp gray shapes in and out of the gray of the turbulent afternoon. Last time she had driven across it was for Marionettes. About halfway across the bridge was one small exit nobody took. The sign for it had always promised excitement, although nobody ever went there.

Treasure Island.

“Straight for the bridge,” she said to Amber. “We’ll see the island when we get close enough.”

“
If
,” Amber said. “
And
, how?”

“Cody will help,” she said. “He’ll navigate through the window.”

“God help us all,” Manny said.

“Him, too,” Gwen said, “and you secure the supplies. Let’s break as little as possible.”

Manny nodded and moved back to the pile of supplies, which had already toppled in the storm. “And you?”

“I’m going above deck,” Gwen said.

“What? Why?” Amber took a hand off the wheel to hold Gwen’s shoulder, but then the sea veered out the window and she had to yank it back to the wheel.

“I belong there,” Gwen said.

“The
captain
belongs there,” Errol corrected. “I will bring us to this hovel.”

“Yes,” Gwen said. “Come with me. Sing and keep my bravery unquenchable.”

Errol gave her a slow, slow smile. “I know you.”

“Yes.”

“Gwen.”

“Yes.”

“It’s a pleasure, Gwen.”

In the cabin the weather broke. Everyone stepped closer to everyone else. A creak came from the ceiling, but for a moment the ship was settled. Such was the calm that came in the storm, and then Gwen and Errol trooped back up to the deck. The rain was so thick it was everything, and the sky was still colicky and gritting its teeth, but the
Corsair
moved quickly, proudly, toward the bridge. There was no sun, and no other boats as far as the eye could see. But the
Corsair
still ran. It would run on, Gwen vowed, as Errol began to sing. It would run on until they ran aground.

Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum

Drink and the devil had done for something

Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest

Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum

Something something on a dead man’s chest

Yo-ho something something

and this is why history is written by the winners. Those stuck in the storm are too shaken to remember every detail, but
The Wild Lady
turned around well before Alcatraz, an island prison not in use at the time of this narrative, and was back at the pier before the storm trapped passengers on the Bay Bridge, looking idly through rain-spattered windows while the drivers screeched and cursed. Every Lifeline passenger dined out on the story for years to come, recounting it as a narrow escape and a lark both. As with the pirate flag, it was almost a joke.

Gwen, though, never got to tell, at least not all of it, at least not to everyone. She did not recount the sound of the boat scraping against the shallowing water and the cement shore of their destination, Errol’s faltering arm around her, or the useless wooden wheel in her hands, spinning like a prop whenever she let it go. The rain on her face, or if she was crying. With the accounts of the winners so proud and prevalent, bright and showy as fireworks in the sky, the pirate history is a secret one, its treasures buried and only the wreckage left to any wandering guest looking to piece things together. Broken glass in the sea. Bobbing wood in pieces, jostling one another like traffic. All these items, all stolen and all from someplace, appearing in no account but this one, misplaced and forgotten as the items in a shark’s stomach, split open when it’s caught and dragged somewhere safe.

“Treasure Island,” repeated the parrot as the cage broke wide open.

You should not put a bumper sticker on your car, thought Phil Needle in the storm. This had not been the wise way to go. The traffic penned in Phil Needle around the middle of the bridge, where there was just one exit, which nobody took. In the rain the eye might be drawn to its green sign, its white arrow, its promise of escape. Phil Needle wasn’t looking at it. He was looking straight ahead at the bumper of the car in front of him. What if you had to drive in a funeral procession, for instance, with your snappy phrase forced at the eyes of mourners?

His phone rang in the place for beverages. Levine didn’t look up. Belly Jefferson had been another passenger all the bad day.

“Marina?”

“Where are you?”

“Almost home, Marina. No word, I take it.”

“Why didn’t you fly?” she asked, as she had asked all day.

“The airports are probably delayed anyway,” Phil Needle told her once more. “The storm.”

“Our little girl is
out
in the storm, Phil.”

“Okay,” Phil Needle said. “I’m almost there.” It was true. Ahead and below, he could see a cruise ship, almost at the pier. Who would be out in weather like this? He could not see it, but not far was his condo, where Marina was on the phone; he could see the clock tower, which was close. It was late in the day, the metal hands told him. Nobody expects outdoor clocks to work.

“The police have been here already. They looked in her room. They want to know what she was wearing, and her activities. They have an alert at the North Point Station, and we’re supposed to go there when you get here.”

She had told him this already, and again when he’d been speeding through the desert out the windows. “Okay.”

Her sigh clattered out of the phone. “Phil, have you thought of anything?”

A truck slid by the window: Impressive Plumbing. He looked ahead. “No,” he said.

Pause.

“I’ve tried,” he said. “Marina, she’s probably fine. She wants us to be angry. She wants us to be upset.”

Hic-hic
.

“Marina.”

She said it again. “Why didn’t you fly?”

Perhaps it had always been this way, a mistake of some kind. Certainly mistakes had been made. At their wedding, Marina’s father had announced, “You two have done nothing,” and then taken a long sip of champagne before finishing, “but make us proud.” There was a sex act, a particular sex act Marina would not do. It seemed shallow to brood about it, but let’s face it, Phil Needle thought as he switched the phone to his other ear, the list of sex acts you are going to do if you don’t want to be in pain or wearing a costume, despite the boundless horizon promised in dirty books, is quite short. So it was a sizable fraction that she would not do, and she had been painting now for nearly two years and not shown him anything! He had averted his eyes from her bloody tampons in the bathroom garbage, without ever a comment, and still she had never opened her studio door to him to show him what she was making.

“Oh my God, did you hear that?”

“What?”

“Someone’s calling on the other line. Hold on, hold on, oh my God! Hello?”