We Are Pirates: A Novel (35 page)

“Hi, I’m Phil Needle, award-winning radio producer and head and founder of a company moving towards excellence, and I have something to say.”

Errol spat into the water, his chin quivering. “I had suspicion of spying,” he said, “indeed to goodness I did.”

“When Incredible Cleaners asked me to produce a commercial for them, I could have offered them all the bells and whistles that you hear in local business ads a million times a day.”

The air filled with bells and whistles, and Errol stood up in the small boat. “I knew it,” he said, and pointed at Gwen with a grim finger, bloodied from picking at his wound or perhaps some new injury she had missed. “I knew I should beware the impatience and injustice of youth!”

“But I’m here to tell you that Incredible Cleaners doesn’t need any bells and whistles, no catchy jingles, no clever slogans and no statements of purpose from the Incredible owner. So the only sound I’m putting on this ad is my own testimonial. I’m putting myself, Phil Needle of Phil Needle Productions, on the line for this one. Because I’m not just a radio producer for Incredible Cleaners. I’m a customer. And why am I a customer? Because Incredible Cleaners is absolutely incredible. Thank you very much.”

Errol was trying to pace up and down the boat, but the boat wasn’t big enough for pacing. It rolled dangerously with each stride. Gwen hardly noticed. She was still staring at the radio and listening to her father’s cross-pollinating ad. Nobody had ever reminded her of the very simple fact of recording and duplication, and so she saw her father in a booth, not worried sick at all, just reciting lines into a microphone and thinking about his stupid job, his glamorous radio world in New York, regretting his mistake—

“
Gwen
.”

—and glad to be rid of her.

“
Gwen.
”

“What?”

“Do something,” Amber said quietly. For Errol had stopped mid-stride and had slid his saw out of his coat. Gwen could have sworn it had been left with all the trash on the island, but there it was, still bloodied from the swordfight and swinging in Errol’s hands like a pendulum.

“Errol,” she said.

The radio identified itself as KXKX, cool jazz for the cool city. Errol sneered and flicked the radio overboard with his blade. As it hit the water, Gwen had the fleeting and wrong suspicion that the entire ocean, all its fish and rare treasures, would be electrocuted. But instead all was silence.

“
Captain
,” she tried.

“
No
!
” Errol screamed. “There will be
no talk
until I get my satisfaction! This is betrayal! Infidelity! What is the word!” He slashed in the air again, and Gwen felt her cheeks burn. They must have been red. Errol took another step. “My resolution is immovable,” he said immovably. “Stealing is wrong. If caught, you should be punished. He stole from me, that man’s voice. He stole my house after they killed my Vera, those murderers. They slaughtered her and I vowed revenge on all his kind. And you, you Jewish cunts, in cahoots you are!
Errol
, eh?
Captain
, eh? I am deaf to your pleas and blind to your suffering!”

“
Grandpa
!
” Gwen cried, and felt tears on her face.

It was true. Errol Needle’s first symptoms had been racist remarks, broadcast under his breath at family lunches and then plainly out loud at larger gatherings, until Phil Needle, his surviving son, told him he was no longer welcome at cocktail parties or barbecues, and hired a lawyer recommended by Leonard Steed to gain control over his father’s finances. It would not be accurate to call this theft, and neither would it be false. It is the course of the world. Before long the son had the father moved to the Jean Bonnet Living Center and sold his house out from under him and used the money to buy a home he could not afford. By then Errol’s symptoms were worsening. He was enraged by his son, and his son’s wife, the staff at his new home, his clothes, anyone on the phone, the color orange, television, certain music, his doctors, dogs, fancy food, Judaism, pants, hairdos, spit, children, long sleeves, and everything else except a handful of old sea stories on his bookshelf. His fantasy that he had once been in the Navy, instilled by endless rereadings of
Captain Blood
and the others, was so fervent and unclouded that Phil Needle believed he was learning something about his reticent father. He had fallen, and after the Fall everything had been taken away. Errol railed against this injustice, against all injustices, but only Gwen, forced to serve as her grandfather’s companion as punishment, listened to his increasingly far-flung claims. Phil Needle just sent orchids, phoned occasionally and impulsively, and waited to be phoned himself someday, knowing, as Gwen knew now, that dead men tell no tales. Errol growled at her again and swung the saw. Amber dropped the other plank onto the floor of the rocking boat, and Gwen saw something equally fierce in her friend’s eyes.

“Errol, stop it.”

“Take me prisoner, eh?” he said. “My person. The only thing left to steal. Trick me aboard and bury me at sea in an unmarked grave.”

It was true, Gwen thought, keeping her eyes on the blade. He would not survive this. We don’t survive anything. It all, looking at the calm and endless water, just keeps going. He raised his hand to her again and something clicked this time.

“
Stop
!
”

It was the gun. Amber was holding it on Errol with two shaky hands, and her eyes were shaky too, moving from Errol to the saw to the water to Gwen, her friend, with a very small smile.

“Amber.”

“No,” she said. “He cut you. Look at yourself.”

The water was too cloudy to see her reflection, so Gwen put a hand to her stinging cheek. It was not tears on her face. He had raised his hand to her and carved a small wound.

“I’ll trim you both of your lives,” Errol growled. “My resolution is immovable. You stole from me. I’ll trim you both.”

“Gwen, think what he did. To Cody, I mean. We can’t do that here. The boat’s too little and we’re all in it.”

“You stole from me.”

“Errol, put the saw down or I’ll fire this weapon.”

“My resolution is immovable.”

“I will shatter your heart, I will
do it
!
”

“I have a problem with my memory,” Errol said.

Gwen took a gentle step toward him and he slashed at her again. He missed, but she found herself fallen in the boat anyway, her eyes blinking at the plank, which Amber was kicking with her foot. It lurched halfway past the rim like a seesaw, a makeshift runway for any plane set to depart.

“Off the boat,” Amber said.

“I know you,” Errol said. Gwen sat up and saw he was looking at her.

“Walk off the boat, Errol,” Amber said.

“I know you. Tell this wench to drop her threat. I know you.”

“Yes,” Gwen said, “Gwen.”

But that was all she said.

“
Off the boat
!
”

“
I
,” Errol said, just as fiercely, “
have a problem with my memory
!
”

“
Walk the plank
!
”

“It
bothers
me,” Errol cried. It
was
tears on his face. He swung the blade. Amber pointed the gun straight up and pulled the trigger. There was nothing. She opened her eyes and moved the gun back down to look at it. Errol saw this opportunity, maybe. It may have been that he started to pounce when the gun fired straight down into the lifeboat. It split, so fast, and vanished as the recoil from the gun blew Amber into the air, surprisingly high, surprisingly far, and then down into the water, off somewhere. They were all in the water. The instant wreckage of the lifeboat closed around Gwen and Errol like a flower, rubber and plastic everywhere her limbs struggled. It was so cold. There is no one who has not been to sea who can imagine the sheer freeze of the unexpected water, and Gwen lived shivering in it for a minute, like a girl in a coffin, before she came alive and found the sputtering surface. She breathed and reached out both hands and found Errol’s shoulder.

“I’m cold,” he panted. “I’m cold!”

“Hang on to me,” she said, but in her hands he was so heavy. A burden. Errol shook his head.

“I don’t want to be,” he said, “out of the water. I don’t want to be on the boat anymore. I want to get off for a while.”

“Grandpa—” Gwen said, and took another cold breath.

“Let them steal it,” he croaked, and let go and disappeared down. Gwen’s hands closed around nothing and then just the bandage, soaked and trailing upward, like a tattered white flag.

They were very, very close to shore, close enough that they would have been tracked had it not been for the fog. The bulk of the lifeboat washed up some hours later, right where Marina met Old Mason, but Gwen was a little further down the beach when she was spotted, standing up and heaving with breath on the sand. There were many men on the shore who saw her emerge, like an apparition on the half shell, walking their dogs mostly, with coffee in hand from a nearby cart. She was recognized almost instantly from the television, a powerful medium at the time. They did not need to see the picture in Gwen’s pocket. It was so good of her, now soaked and sorry-looking. Gwen was sorry about it. She was sorry for everything. Sorry teachers and coaches. Sorry friends and enemies. Sorry for those who died and for those who mourned them, sorry for anyone who lost their home or their wife or their husband or their children. Sorry for anyone upset or inconvenienced, sorry for any victim of theft or murder or jealousy. For unrequited lovers she was sorry. For anybody who ever got a cut on the arm, sorry you got a cut on the arm. For the wealthy on boats, for the schmucks stuck in traffic, for the famous and the infamous, sorry you treacherous, wounded bastards, I am so sorry.

“We’ve got ’em,” somebody said. They took her down. Amber’s limp form was lifted away from her, and there were so many hands on her arms and she was helped forward and reattached to the land of the free. More men came. It was a commotion, down by the water, that might attract anyone who had stepped outside. It was a human interest story. She collapsed for a moment, and her head almost hit the sand. A few grains whirled up and stuck to her heaving face. All the despair in the world, cold and final, was thrust upon her. Later it was reported that she was kissing the ground. In
gratitude.
The things they got wrong, she thought, sitting in bed in the middle of the day. The rain had stopped like they’d made it up, and the sun glared in each square of the window like a finished round of tic-tac-toe, a game, played at this time in history, in which opponents filled in squares one by one, everything marked with an X or a zero. Most times nobody won. Gwen was not an outlaw. She lived with her parents in this condominium, and no part of it was Gwen’s. She was up in her room for the entire barbecue, even when the sun set and all the people strolled inside. When I saw Phil Needle last, he was standing at the sliding door with everyone who wanted to be where the action was. The moon was large and far over the busy bridge, and then the fireworks, with all the bells and whistles, sprouted in the sky like sudden dandelions of light, challenges to the darkness that wilted away in seconds, all traces disappearing and leaving all the stars in their place.

Phil Needle had a call from Leonard Steed that afternoon.

“Who am I talking to?”

“Phil Needle.”

“Good, good, good. Listen, Needle, how is your emergency?”

“Good.”

“What?”

“Over,” Phil Needle said, and covered his eyes. The fake tree fluttered.

“Good. Listen, I’ve managed to hold off the buccaneers.”

“What?”

“That’s what I like about me. I’m fast on my feet.”

“What?”

“Of course, it’s if and only if you have a pitch.”

“What?”

“The perfect pitch, Needle, an American outlaw story.”

“What?”

“Stop saying
what
. Be fast on your feet too. Do you have that, Phil Needle? Do you have that for me? A human interest story? The big story that people might actually tune in to?”

And it is evidence
, reads the last page of a book discarded from Errol’s shelves,
that notwithstanding these follies wasted the population of the world, squandered its treasures and infected us with new vices and diseases, they tamed the ferocity of man’s spirit and established a base for permanent prosperity.

“Needle?”

Phil Needle thought of his daughter.

It was strange how ungrounded things could become and not overturn. Dead men tell no tales, so Errol Needle was scapegoated for everything. Phil Needle finally learned of his father’s disappearance from Peggy, who dithered for nearly a day, terrified of lawsuits, and then phoned Phil Needle crying, mistakenly calling him by the name of his deceased brother, David. Finally the story was put straight. Obviously it had all been Errol’s idea, though it was also obvious it was beyond his reach. He had kidnapped his granddaughter and some of her friends when they had sneaked off, the three of them with two free tickets, to see hip-hop at the Fillmore, and he had murdered two people while holding these youngsters prisoner. The
San Francisco Chronicle
never put two and two together about the fierce letters they’d been getting for the past month, and Errol’s death was labeled, ambiguously or maybe tactfully, the result of natural causes. Rain vanished the fingerprints. Phil Needle was recognized several times in the weeks to come, not as an award-winning radio producer, although Incredible Cleaners ran the ad through September, but as the father. A new Haitian tea place opened on Octavia. The parrot died in a tree and the contact lens was vacuumed up from the carpet, and the rest is history. Nobody wanted to know more. Except me. As independence boomed across the sky, I went upstairs uninvited. No, this was their room. No, this was a bathroom. And then I knocked.