William F. Buckley Jr. (5 page)

Rachel passed around a box of cookies. Danny ate two, Lila and Rachel none. Rachel turned to the stove and, after one or
two foiled attempts, brought some water to a boil and poured instant coffee and sugar into it. She handed a cup to her son, another to her husband, now showing signs of life. Clement took the cup, stared down at it, shook his head and peered up at the cockpit.

“Everything all right? I had one hell of a headache, Danny, took a five-minute snooze. This coffee and a shot of vodka will fix me up.”

Danny lost patience. “Yeah,” he called back. “All you need is more booze, Dad.” Danny froze, struck by what he had said. He had never before used such language addressing his father. He expected instant furious retaliation.

But Clement retreated to the chart table seat. Danny realized that he was wholly in charge. It was as if he had been anointed.

Two hours went by. Danny’s eyes strained in search of lights. The wind had eased. If there had been another hand on board, Danny would have hoisted the mainsail back up. What he needed to know was: Where were they? How far from shore? How far from the Katama channel? East of it, or west? He shouted down to his father, “Dad, can’t you get
something
on the direction finder?” Clement’s face materialized at the usual spot. His father looked vague, but said something to the effect that he would try.

Danny could hear the static coming in from the RDF and his sea-saturated frame tensed in anxiety. Might his father come up with
some
idea of where they were? At that moment he saw the light dead ahead, and at the same moment
Listless
struck the reef.

The boat pitched over, angled now into the wind. Danny started the motor and shoved the gear into reverse, pressing the accelerator lever all the way down. There was a huge whirr as the propeller blades sucked water in toward the hull. But there was no motion. Rachel shouted out, “There’s water coming in!”

Danny left the wheel, turned off the engine, and leaned his head into the cabin. “Dad! Try the Coast Guard. We’ve got a brand-new radio.
Get the Coast Guard!
”

Clement reached aft for the radio receiver, peered into the fuse box and clicked the toggle that turned the radio on. He
pressed down on the transmission key and called out, “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Calling the Coast Guard, any station! Come in come in come in.”

But only static came in.

“Have you got the right channel, Dad?” Danny was below, tracing the flow of water. He felt the boat tilt and rushed up to the cockpit. Lila squeezed past her father, who was once again calling out the emergency into the microphone. Lila climbed up into the cockpit and grabbed Danny’s arm. “Danny, are we going to sink?”

“I don’t know,” Danny said, struggling to make his voice calm. “But we can’t sink very far, Lila. We’re on the rocks now, and over there is a shore light. It can’t be more than fifty yards away, maybe less. What
is
the matter with the Coast Guard?”

“Maybe he doesn’t have the right channel—”

Rachel O’Hara’s voice interrupted them. “The leak seems to be slowing. I saw where it was coming in, in the head. I stuffed a towel into it.”

“Good work, Mom.”

The wind suddenly abated. A few moments later it was totally calm. The only sound was that of Clement O’Hara shouting Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! to the Coast Guard. As suddenly as the wind had stopped, the skies now cleared, and the half-moon shone through. Danny could make out the houses on shore. The light he had first seen was a streetlight. He looked at his watch and called his mother to come to him.

“Mom,” he said, struggling to speak evenly. “I’m gonna … swim … the beach there, right there … a coupla minutes is all, no danger … I’ll take a life preserver … I’ll head for the house there, and use their phone and call the Coast Guard. Leak’s okay, right?… Well, we got tide, you know, Mom, the tide … If it’s coming in, that means a bigger hole as the water lifts the hull. Got to do something … Be back in no time.”

Danny turned his face away, ripped off his foul-weather jacket, drew down his soggy trousers, yanked off his sports shirt and grabbed a life preserver from the port lazaret. He thrust his arms
through it and shouted to Lila to tie the knot while he held the light on the laces. In seconds he was in the water.

They watched him anxiously and almost immediately spotted his problem. The tide. “Oh my God.” Rachel grabbed Lila’s arm as they tracked Danny’s flashlight slipping downstream parallel along the beach. But gradually the light got closer to the shore, and soon they could see the light bounding toward one of the beach houses. Then it disappeared.

“He must be inside,” Rachel said tensely. Mother and daughter were hugging each other but their eyes didn’t move from the beach house. After a few minutes they saw the bobbing light again. Danny was running in the opposite direction from where he had drifted. They followed the light to about a hundred yards east of
Listless.
Danny had stopped. Apparently he entered the water, because now the light was moving toward them. When the light was twenty yards or so off they heard him shouting. At first they couldn’t make out the words.

“
The boarding ladder! Put out the boarding ladder!
Quick!… in the cockpit … under the seat!”

Rachel tore back and yanked open the cover. Lila flashed a light into the locker and Rachel pulled out the aluminum ladder with its rail hooks. She fought to free it from entangling lines and in a half minute had it hanging over the boat’s rail.

Danny began to climb the ladder but after the first step he paused, gasping for air.

“Come on, Danny!” his sister called.

He hung on to the rail, his knees wedged on to the bottom rung of the ladder. He didn’t move. “Danny, Danny, come up!” Lila cried.

Suddenly she understood. “Mom, Mom! He’s tired! Quick, help, help!” She climbed over the cockpit coaming and grabbed one of Danny’s arms. His mother was there tugging on the other arm. Together they pulled, and his foot caught the ledge of the ladder. He bent over the lifeline, got into the cockpit, and lay face down. His mother dove below and came back with a towel and a blanket. She buried her son in them. Finally Danny whispered, “The Coast Guard’s coming.”

•  •  •  •

Two days later, Danny strolled from the tennis court in the brilliant sun into the shaded clubhouse. He went into the office, past the corridor with all the photographs of all the famous yachts, going back a half century. He approached the club’s secretary. He asked, Could he please use her typewriter during the lunch break? “I just want to type out something, you know, a form.” Miss Tarbell offered to do it for him, extending her hand for the document. Danny moved his own hand quickly behind him.

“No, thanks a lot, Miss Tarbell, but the rules are you’re supposed to type it yourself, and it’s good practice—I use a typewriter at school.”

She smiled at him. “Sure, Danny. In ten minutes I’ll be going out to lunch. Go ahead and use it. They’re all the same, typewriters.”

In ten minutes Danny was alone in the office. First he slid an envelope into the carriage of the old Royal. Turning the platen knob, he put it in place. He typed out his mother’s name and address.

He pulled out the envelope and slipped in the sheet of paper he unfolded from the envelope. Then he pressed down on the Cap Lock key and with his right index finger punched out:

He frowned at his work. Should he do another draft? Correcting the typographical errors? He had brought only the single sheet of paper. He opened Miss Tarbell’s drawer. But the paper there was all stationery of the yacht club. The other stack of paper was flimsy, suitable for carbons.

He could, using Miss Tarbell’s scissors, cut the sheet in half, throw away the top half and type it over on the bottom half.

What the heck. Let it go as it is.

He reflected on how to sign his message. Perhaps “
ONE WHO KNOWS
.” But that, he thought on reconsideration, would be too much. Too … melodramatic, like the last act of
Othello
.

D
ANNY’S BRAND-NEW CAR was a sporty Plymouth convertible and he was anxious to show it off, and this was the perfect opportunity. Henry had never invited Danny to meet his mother and sister but suddenly, after two years, the invitation came. Danny would drive Henry in his new car to his mother’s house in Lakeville, Connecticut, and they would both spend the weekend. Early Saturday afternoon after morning classes and a quick lunch at the college dining hall, they walked one block to the garage at Church Street.

Soon after pulling out of New Haven, Danny began his light-hearted interrogation.

“Is your mother—an austere type?”

“I guess the answer is, Yes. Uh-huh. She can laugh, all right,
though laughing is not her specialty. She dresses very plainly, reads a lot, doesn’t talk much, but listens. She doesn’t do the usual things, smoke, drink—”

“Well, she had to do one of the usual things or there would be no Henry, Henry.”

Henry laughed. “Yes, Danny, though I suppose when some people do it, it’s
unusual.
” When at age thirteen or whatever he tripped over news of the antecedent biological requirements for fresh life, Henry had found it difficult to believe that such a requirement applied also to his own mother. He had closed his eyes to consider it, then quickly reopened them. He would rather not, on second thought, visualize it. On the other hand …

“Take a look at the wedding picture. It isn’t exhibited, but I’ll try to remember to pull it out of the desk. Mother was quite beautiful.”

“How could it be otherwise, you handsome blond devil. I don’t know about your father, but there must have been a pretty good gene pool there: you, six feet, blond, well built, nice features, blue eyes—”

“Danny. Cut it out.”

“Did you know your father?”

“I have a vague memory of him …”

But suddenly Danny had braked the car to a halt. It was mid-October in New England, there was a nip in the air, and the maples were fierily exuberant. Danny had spotted a stand selling fresh cider. He was gone only a minute or two and came back not with one gallon of cider but with six. He never underbought, underate, or underdrank, though there was no toll on his figure, or his wallet, though it never seemed to overflow.

“Why six gallons?”

“Make nice house presents.… By the way, I hope your ma will serve wine or beer. Will she?”

“As a matter of fact, she won’t. That’s a good point. We’ll have to stop at a liquor store.”

“Will she mind?”

“She’d mind if Caroline had anything.”

“Caroline’s seventeen?”

“Eighteen.”

“Smart?”

“She’s very smart. She’s … Well, you’ll see. She’s”—Henry looked over at Danny at the wheel—“how should I put it? She’s—as you would put it, Danny, like me: perfect.”

Danny smiled. “Does she know about me?”

“Know what? She knows you are a junior at Yale, that we’ve been roommates for two years, that you play soccer and tennis, that you … served in Italy with me.” Henry’s voice was suddenly grave. He continued, “Knows that you are studying economics and history, and that your grandfather was President of the United States.”

“Is she a New Dealer?”

Henry thought, and replied gravely. “Danny! I
told
you Caroline is smart. Of course not.”

Danny enjoyed it all. Grandson of the architect of the New Deal, he more or less accepted it as, at his age, one would accept the Old Testament. Occasionally he acknowledged the existence of fringe dissenters. Henry was one. He went on. “Actually, she doesn’t talk about politics, though when we went to Italy she sent a letter to President Roosevelt, told him if I didn’t get back okay, she would kill him.”

“
Kill
him?”

“Yes. She was thirteen, something like that. The Secret Service stopped by, talked with Mum, showed her the letter. She gave Caroline a severe spanking.”

“How do you know it was severe? You weren’t there.”

“Caroline wrote me to the APO number. I thought I showed you the letter.”

“Well, you didn’t. I don’t think I’d have spanked her if she had threatened Grandfather. Hmm. Maybe yes. That depends. I can think of some of my cousins, and maybe even some of my uncles, who Grandfather wouldn’t have minded a bit if they had, you know, given their lives for their country.” Danny made himself sound like a minister delivering a eulogy.

“Cut it out, Danny.”

“It’s an American sentimentality, the devoted-to-the-death parents
bit. My own father was a shit, you must know that. I must have told you?”

“What about his successors?”

“Oh, Henry. Nice, that. ‘His successors.’ Well yes, there have been three successors. Along the way, I had three stepfathers. Number Two, married to Mom right after Dad, she met on the train. I can remember exactly when it was. The sixth of July, 1941. Mom suddenly announced that she was taking me and Lila to Palm Beach ‘to spend a week or so’—that’s how she put it, ‘a week or so’—with her cousins. They have a huge place at Palm Beach, the Weatherills. Well, to compress that story, she never did go back to Newport—
we
never went back to Newport.
And
, she married a man she met on the club car, a thirty-five-year-old widower whose wife—get this—was killed in the war. She was a passenger on a liner corralled to do duty in the Dunkirk situation. The ship was ordered to pick up stranded British soldiers, which it did, only a German U-boat sank it before it got to safety. Anyway, they struck up a conversation, he was on his way to Palm Beach to visit his mother, and about six months later he was—Number Two.”

“Nice guy?”

“I thought so, but two years later, a couple of years after Pearl Harbor, Mom filed for divorce. She wrote me at school. All she’d say was that it didn’t, quotes, work.”

“He was?”

“He was,” Danny ticked off the fingers of his right hand: “Lloyd Rosenthal. Jewish. Loaded. I don’t know how much loot old Mom took away, but put it this way: she’s never been exactly broke.”