Ashes (35 page)

Up, up, a gentle pause. A downward rush like a roller coaster, but no length of steel track safety here. The boat was falling, and Jennifer dropped to the floor, felt Gene do the same; they clutched each other and anything else they could grab hold of, waiting. A heart-stopping moment of freefall, and then a crashing roar and a jolt and more water spraying in the window. It was the roar that did it; Jennifer screamed as loud as she could. She was back in Los Angeles, the building coming down around her, the air stank of smoke and death and what were the chances she’d get out this time? Because you only got lucky like that once.

Hands on her. Not a gloved firefighter’s hands. Bare hands, strong and callused. Gene’s hands. A voice, not calling out to her through a dust cloud, but much closer, Gene’s voice in her ear. “Jennifer! Jen! Are you OK? Look at me.”

She raised her head, saw that she was not in Los Angeles but on the
Tally-ho.
Saw Gene crouching by her, eyes wide with fear and concern and a strange sort of hope. “Are you OK? Answer me. I have to check on the boat but I need to know you’re OK.”

“I’m all right. I am. Just scared.”

“Hang on, I’ll be right back.” He got up, grabbed a flashlight and ran out of the cabin.

“Gene, wait!” She ran after him, realizing only now that all the roll and yaw and pitch and heave had stopped, and the boat was perfectly still. She ran outside, into the storm. The wind was still howled, the rain lashed, and the waves tossed. But they were still, somehow.

Gene was on the right-hand side of the boat, peering down, shining a flashlight down at the bottom of the boat. As she approached he leaned down, almost as if he were seasick, leaned so far down she thought he might fall, and she clutched at his rain slicker. “Gene!”

He popped back up, turned off the flashlight. There was a peculiar expression on his face, a sort of dismayed amusement. At least he didn’t seem afraid. “Holy Hannah,” he said finally.

“What's happening? Why aren’t we moving?”

“Take a look.”

He turned the flashlight on again and aimed the beam below. Jennifer peered down and saw rocks, and shards of wood, some drifting out into the waves. And the sea, churning below but barely touching the hull of the boat. “What’s happened?”

Gene turned off the flashlight. “A chance in a million. Looks like that last wave just sort of picked us up and set us down on that rock, nice as you please. The hull’s shattered but as long as something doesn’t sweep us off, we won’t sink.”

“You sure?”

He nodded. His mouth twisted as if he weren’t sure whether to frown or smile. “We just have to wait it out, and hope another one like that doesn’t come along.”

She wasn’t conscious of reaching for him, or him reaching for her, but next thing she knew they were holding each other tightly. He seemed so steady, and yet she could feel him trembling. She must have been as well, for he said, “You’re shaking like a leaf. Come on, let’s go in. There’s nothing we can do out here.”

The cabin was a mess. Broken glass from the windows littered the floor, the carpet was soaked. Pictures had come down off the walls, lay with frames in splinters and glass in shards. Something must have happened to the generator; the lights were out. Gene sighed, then got down to business. “Sit down, Jen,” he said, and began sweeping the destruction aside. From one of the cupboards he pulled out an oil lamp and matches, wool blankets and a plastic tarp. He laid the tarp down on the wet floor, arranged the blankets over it. Lit the oil lamp, and its gentle glow filled the cabin. “Here,” he said, handing her one of the blankets. “You’re still shaking. Wrap up and get warm, I’ll get us something to eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”  She sat on the floor, wrapping the blanket around herself. It was itchy and smelled musty, but soon she was warm, and that was what mattered.

“You will be. Besides,” he said with a rueful smile. “The generator’s toast. If we don’t eat what’s in the fridge it’ll go bad.”

He set the oil lamp down, began rummaging in cupboards and the refrigerator. Soon there was a fair pile of food. Three cans of Coke, two bottles of ginger ale. Crackers, wedges of Laughing Cow cheese, cans of sardines. A bag of trail mix, another of dried apples. Gene sat down, started to eat. Jennifer still didn't have an appetite, the tension of the storm and the shock of their strange deliverance left her too shaken. What she really wanted was coffee or tea, something warm, but that couldn't be had. She sat, wrapped in her blanket, listening to the storm rage. And began to cry.

“Are you all right?” Gene sat down next to her, put an arm across her shoulders.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I’m just scared. I thought for sure I was going to die. Maybe I wouldn’t mind so much, but it seems like just a little while ago I thought I was going to die down in L.A. I’m really tired of it. I’m tired of feeling like I’m going to die. It makes it that much harder to live.”

She hated saying this to Gene, all this whining about being scared to die when she’d been lucky to live twice over. Yet how could you live, really, when you could still feel the passage of the bullet that you’d dodged? How could you decide what to do on any given day without wondering if it was the right way to spend what could be the last day of your life, or how the person who had caught the bullet would have spent that day?

Gene said, “I know what you mean. And not just this storm either. I told you, didn’t I, that my father was a fisherman. Died when I was ten.”

“Yes, you told me,” she said. “Was it during a storm? Like this?”

He shook his head. “No. It was the end of summer. Warm, that day. Warm for Newfoundland, at least. Dad had good timing when it came to dinner. Always managed to be at the table just before the food was ready. He’d sit down and smile at Mom and me. That smile Matthew has? That’s my Dad’s.”

Gene sighed, rubbed his temples with his fingertips. “One day, he didn’t come home for dinner. Mom and I sat there, just watching the food get cold and watching each other get more scared. Mom said later that she knew before five minutes had gone. Things can go wrong and make you late, but Mom said she knew. Sun was going down when we got the call from the harbormaster. Said they found the boat. The nets were out. He’d fallen overboard somehow, got caught in the nets.”

She drew in a breath. Her mind was conjuring images she didn’t want to see, of a young Gene sitting at a dinner table and waiting, of a man trapped underwater in a prison of fishing net. Jennifer reached out and took Gene’s hand, felt the strength in it, the calluses from years of work. Her own hand felt soft in his. “I’m sorry, Gene,” she said. “So sorry.”

“The
Tally-ho
was his boat, you know. We had to sell it after he died. We didn’t have a lot of money and Mom wasn’t well. She couldn’t work much, so I did. That’s why I have a problem with the reading. I was never much good at it, and then I was working so much. Helping out on people’s boats, learning how to do mechanic stuff. Things like that. Had to let school slide.

“I saved up as much as I could. The man who bought it moved to Vancouver, and after my Mom died I called him up, made him an offer. It wasn’t enough to just buy it, so we did a trade. I did a lot of repair and upkeep on a sailboat he had. It took me two years of that, but I got the
Tally-ho.
And moved up here.”

“That’s brave of you,” she said.

“What is?”

“To do that work. Even after what happened to your Dad.”

He shrugged. “Maybe it’s brave. I don’t know. For a while I enjoyed it. It was a way to kind of hang on to my Dad and those old days. It’s what I know. But I haven’t liked it for years now. Ever since Matthew was born, it used to be that at least once a month I’d be taking the boat out and wonder if I was going to come back that day. And ever since Becca left, I wonder that about once a week.”

Jennifer thought of asking him why he did it, still. Then did not ask. Because she knew how hard it was to start over, even when the break was clean.

“That’s why I wanted to leave Matthew with you tonight,” Gene said. “I was afraid that...I thought that if I didn’t make it back, you could take care of him.”

She sat, openmouthed. Jennifer, the girl no one asked to come and water their plants while they were away on vacation. And Gene was entrusting his child, the only thing in the world he cared about, to her.

Before she could ask, he answered. “Because I know you care about him. I know you’d look out for him.”

She began to protest. Then was done with it. No, it was true, she could and would look after Matthew. If she’d stayed. “You probably wish I hadn't come, then.”

“No,” he said after a moment. “I’m glad you're here.”

“Suzanne would take care of Matthew.”

“It’s not that. I was pissed as all hell, but part of me was glad that I wouldn’t be out here by myself. I mean, I know we all have to go one day, but I don’t want to be all alone like my Dad. Thank you.”

“No,” she said. “Thank you.” They sat in peaceful silence as the storm blew around them.

* * *

I
t was not quite dawn when Jennifer woke. Hard to say what woke her. Perhaps the floor, hard under the inadequate cushioning of blankets. Perhaps her body, which ached from being tossed about. Perhaps Gene, who lay a foot or two away from her, snoring. She climbed to her feet, wincing and wondering just how bruised up she was. At least nothing was broken.

Jennifer stood, listening for the storm, and realized what had woken her. Stillness. No sound of rain, no motion of the sea. A faint whistle of wind. Nothing more.

She made her way onto the deck, looked around her. Jagged rocks poked up out of the water, in the predawn light she could see the white foam as waves broke over them. Beyond the rocks, to the east, the shore of Canada, the Point they had been trying to get around. To the north, the south, the west, a wide expanse of sea, calm now, untroubled. She thought of Pete Puma’s first day at her house, when he ran frantic about the rooms in play for two hours solid, then collapsed in an exhausted heap. That was how the sea was, at rest now.

Jennifer walked to the bow of the ship. A chair was there, bolted to the deck, and she sat down, looked around her. The sky as peaceful as the sea, some feathery clouds on the eastern horizon but otherwise clear. Waiting for the sun, a pure blue that she could not ever recall seeing before, anywhere. If white was the color of heaven, and black that of hell, then what might this blue be?

A gentle breeze caressed her, lifted her hair. Silence save for the white noise of the ocean breakers to the east. Not even the cry of a gull shattered the silence. She breathed deep of the breeze; it was chilly but she did not notice the temperature. Only the taste of it, the clean ocean tang. She listened to the sound of her breathing as the air went into her lungs, filled them, then out again, the air warmed by her body, joining the rest of the breeze. A part of it. Part of everything.

I know that color of blue. It’s the color of life. I’m alive.

The moment the thought was complete, she looked to the east. The blue beginning to change, and for a moment she felt sad, that she had lost that blue forever, would only see it in her dreams. But sadness was lost in wonder as the eastern horizon began to lighten. The feathery clouds kept the sun itself from view but let themselves be painted with her light. Deepest lavender, delicate cotton-candy pink, red and gold edging the clouds like a Christmas ribbon. With every second that passed the palette of the eastern sky grew in beauty, and with every second Jennifer felt sure that it could not become more lovely, was joyful to be proven wrong.

Such beauty. Such life. And I’m a part of it.

She did not know much. She was simply Jennifer Thomson, no more, no less. She did not have Mr. Bradbury’s faith, did not feel that hand over her, ready to catch or comfort. But she knew that no matter whether it was fate, or chance, or God’s will, she was here, and glad to be here.

And grateful.

“Thank you,” she whispered. Tears ran down her face, cooled by the morning breeze, glowing in the dawn’s light. “Thank you for my life.”

No sooner had she said it than the glow began to fade from the sunrise, began dulling to ordinary daylight.
No, stay that way. Just a minute longer. Please stay.

But it wouldn’t stay. Of course it wouldn’t. She had to remember this moment always, for it might never come again.

“Thank you,” she said one more time.

The glory fading out of the sunrise, but the silence was hers. For a few moments, at least, and then she began to hear a buzzing sound. Annoying as hell. Like some great insect, how dare it intrude. No, not a buzz, a choppy sound, that of...

A helicopter. In the distance, heading their way.

“Gene!” She jumped to her feet, ran back to the cabin door. “Gene! Come here!”

“What? Where?” Gene, startled, sat up and his head hit the table. “Ow! Jesus!”

“Oh, sorry. I’m sorry. There’s a helicopter coming.”

In an instant Gene was on the deck beside her, rubbing his head. He stood blinking, wincing as she had earlier. Put his arm around her and grinned. “Well, what do you know, Jen. I think we’re rescued.”

In less than a minute the helicopter was there, circling overhead. “Ahoy!” yelled a voice over the bullhorn. “You two OK down there? Anybody hurt?”

“We’re fine!” Jennifer yelled.

Gene, knowing they probably couldn’t hear over the sound of the rotors, gave a thumbs-up with his right hand and an OK with his left. In a few seconds a rope ladder was lowered down to them, and Jennifer went up first. The ladder was not too steady, and the rush of wind from the helicopter was strong. But she was not afraid. How could she be?

She was going home.

A
number of years ago Sean was on a mission in Afghanistan when the transport hit a mine. He was somehow thrown clear, came to and found everyone else dead, the transport and all supplies in smoking ruins, and himself a hundred miles from nowhere with half a canteen of water, and shrapnel in his right leg. There was nothing else for it, so he pulled out the shrapnel, bandaged the leg as best he could, and set off across the desert, back to the ops base over the border. By the end of the second day the water was gone, his leg wound was infected and sent jolts of pain through him with every step, he would have given anything for an hour’s shelter from the merciless sun. Some time after noon on the third day his legs gave out but he kept going, crawling. Sean remembered being faintly surprised by his own determination, his refusal to yield to the inevitable and lie down. He kept on, scarcely aware of which direction he was heading in, crawled until his limbs gave up and let him fall. He remembered lying there in the desert, how after a while the earth seemed not so harsh and stony, the sun’s heat seemed to be fading. He'd been glad, because maybe he could get some sleep and forget about his thirst and the heat and the pain in his leg and the fever that made him shiver and burn. He had done his best, been defeated by the elements, that was all.