Don't Explain: An Artie Deemer Mystery (20 page)

“I need to get a man aboard his boat to take a line.”

“A man?” He couldn’t be proposing that we go out there and get him near the Disappointments in the dark on a night like this? Nah. “You mean me?” My voice cracked a little. My toe throbbed. I tried vainly to dampen the throbbing with the instep of my other foot.

“Look, you don’t have to. I just thought—”

“…I don’t have any experience.”

“It’s not too hard,” he said.

“I’m going, too,” said Crystal.

“Excuse me,” I said to Hawley and turned to Crystal. “Jesus, I’d love to have you along. But please stay here with Jellyroll. Can you picture him out there in that? I can’t leave him alone under the circumstances. I’d never forgive myself—” He knew we were talking about him, deciding something. He listened, cocking his head from side to side.

“Okay,” she said, but her grave look accelerated my dread. And the caring I saw in her eyes made me even less enthusiastic about the trip. What the hell was Hawley’s old man to me? I’d never even met the geezer. Saw him through binoculars—that’s not exactly intimacy. And besides, these old salts weren’t supposed to get caught out in storms like a lubber from away.

And what about Hawley himself, for that matter? Hawley was no friend of mine. He was a mere acquaintance. I would probably go out there on a night like this for kith and/ or kin, but to die for
some old coot I didn’t know in a place I might never return to, that was sheer stupidity. You’d have to be a chump, you’d have to be suffering from some delusion of indestructibility to go out there and
take lines
, whatever the hell that meant, anyway. Jesus. I’d just tell him, “Look, pal, I’m no seaman, I don’t know from lines, I rent boats. Besides that, I’m in love, and I just don’t want to drown my hapless ass right at this stage of my life—”

It wasn’t as bad as I had feared—until we rounded the point. Until then, I had been inclined to consider the proud maritime heritage of these rockbound coasts, generations of stalwart sailors, stout lads, who met the sea in all its fury. Now I—from away—would join that band of brothers to rescue one of our own in peril on the deep. That was the kind of ignorant twaddle that crossed my mind—before we rounded the point.

Once around, thought became impossible. Thought had no place out here. This sea was prethought. This was the primordial sea. Nothing had evolved from it as yet, no terrestrial life at all, certainly no thinkers.

The boat went over on her side when the wind hit us on the outside of the point. I couldn’t even see the Dogs. The wind blew insanely out of utter darkness, no difference between air and water. And the fog was thicker than when we went to sleep. I thought wind blew fog away.

Heavy things crashed and clattered on the floor below. Hawley’s boat was thirty-eight feet long, heavy and powerful, but it got blown down like a rubber duckie in a typhoon. I held on to some handles, but I felt the freezing seawater wash around my thighs…Is this how it happens? The boat goes over, fills, and sinks like a Brunswick Gold Crown pool table.

It’s easy to drown, anyone can do it admirably well the first time out. I remembered seeing a nature program about the deep ocean. Most of the dead things that drift down to the bottom of the abyssal darkness are consumed by the hagfish. The hagfish is a hideous beast, eel-like, colorless, so primitive it has evolved no
jaws, just a gaping mouth ringed with sharp teeth. They suck that ring of teeth into the dead flesh of the dog owners who drop in, and they spin to dislodge the soft tissue, which they then suck on down their gullets.

At least I’d be dead by then. Probably of hypothermia. I remembered reading somewhere that death by hypothermia was painless, even peaceful. You don’t feel cold anymore, you just drift off to everlasting sleep. There was that on the plus side. At least it didn’t hurt as the hagfish drilled out your flesh.

I glanced at Hawley. He was doing things. Wedged securely in place, he was turning the steering wheel this way and that, adjusting the throttle, taking measures. He wasn’t giving up. In fact, he didn’t look all that shook.

The boat came up, shouldered aside a lot of water, and moved forward as if nothing had happened to it. We were climbing the fronts of big waves and crashing over their backs with an explosion of spray, the only white in the world, and it glowed eerily. I looked back. The land was gone. There was no light except for the green glow on the face of Hawley’s compass.

How the hell did he know where he was going? Maybe he didn’t. I had had my suspicions about the guy’s sanity from day one, skulking around in the ruins. Maybe this was his idea of a kick, one of those live-and-die-on-the-edge sort of doper psycho assholes. Yet he certainly looked like he knew what he was doing. He looked like he’d been doing this out here since infancy. But how could
anyone
know where they were going? There’s better visibility in the small intestine… Maybe it wasn’t a matter of seeing. Maybe some other sense got employed.

I listened to myself every now and then to make sure I wasn’t whimpering. My toe throbbed resolutely inside my borrowed rubber boots, a size and a half too big. Hawley still hadn’t explained what exactly I was supposed to do once we got to the Disappointments. I visualized those savage rock pinnacles
sticking up from the hagfish floor of an icy ocean somewhere out there in the darkness. I had seen no sign of Hope Island.

Hawley was pointing down the companionway with stabbing gestures. “Harness!” I thought he said.

Harness? I looked below, found the harness. It was made of stout green webbing and heavy rings, like a parachute harness with a long tether attached. Either that, or some kind of bondage device. I went quickly back up into the wind with it. Hawley didn’t say anything, but, steering with one hand, he pulled off my life jacket, put me into the harness, cinched it up around my chest, and put my life jacket back on.

“This line right here—” Fat, dirty rope lay coiled at our feet. “You take this line aboard the old man’s boat—I’ll put you right into position—You step right up on his bow—He’s got these big bitts—You just drop this loop over them bitts—It’ll hold—I guarantee it.”

I was afraid of that. I was going to
change
boats. I began to experience some queasiness…I looked out into the dead black night and thought of Crystal. A dumb fuck but true, he drowned like a rat thinking of you.

“Listen, I’ll put you right up alongside—You ain’t gonna jump, you’re gonna step. If you can’t step, then we just go around again. It’ll be my fault. Don’t be no brave hero.”

“Don’t worry about that.”

He clapped me on the shoulder and went back to his steering into the blackness.

Maybe I felt a little better now that I had the harness and the life jacket. If I went in the drink, Hawley could reel me in, and if I didn’t get crushed like a grape between the two boats, I might survive the immersion.

A light! “I just saw a light!” I shouted.

Hawley wasn’t surprised. He nodded. He spoke into the radio, listened for a while, said something, then he hung up. “Let’s take a practice turn. Stand over there where you’ll board from and I’ll
show you how it’ll be.” He pointed to the side of the boat, where the wheelhouse began, basically beside the steering wheel.

Suddenly the old man’s boat rose up on a big one and loomed over us—then it vanished. One didn’t normally see boats from below when they were in the water. I tried to take deep breaths. While I still had some air to breathe…Miserable hagfish sensing dinner—

Steering in a circle, Hawley had to turn sideways to the wind and seas again, and they knocked us over. Water came aboard, but I was used to that. Hawley pointed—

I spun.

There it was! The bow of the old man’s boat! Brightly lighted by an enormous spotlight shining from the stubby mast. Hell, it looked cheery and welcoming, like the first fires in the ancient caves of winter. We almost touched, but if we had, contact would have been nothing worse than a gentle bump. I could have stepped aboard a half a dozen times before we came separate again. I began to feel some hope. We went around again.

“What’s that noise?” I shouted.

“Breakers.”

“Breakers!”

“The Disappointments get right up in a blow,” he drawled.

I could see them now. Explosions of merciless white water over terrible black rocks. I couldn’t exactly see, but I could feel them crash. No boat in the world could survive that, no
ship
ever built—

I was sweating like a rubber enthusiast in my foul weather gear. My arms ached from holding on…It was coming around again, I could see the lights aboard the old man’s boat rocking crazily.

“One more thing—” said Hawley.

“
What!
”

“Cut the old man’s anchor line. He’s sayin’ now maybe he didn’t cut it away, after all. I’ll come back for the gear later. Out here’s where I urchin.”

For cutting, I had this capable serrated knife that Hawley had duct-taped in its sheath to my safety harness job. Armed, I was ready to go into harm’s way. I positioned myself, stiffly waiting for the old man’s bow to loom, testing my footing on the deck, locating my handholds. My toe had stopped throbbing, the body’s way, perhaps, of focusing attention in the face of serious mortal threat away from a stubbed toe. I was ready to go. I was in position, poised to take the big step.

“Uh, Artie, don’t forget to take the towline.” He pointed to the loop lying at our feet.

“…Right,” I mumbled and picked up the purpose of our trip this night.

I stepped across the carnivorous chasm between the boats. It was easy. He put me into perfect position.

I sat on the flat deck at the bow as it went way up, then way down, but I was safe. Well, not safe, but not dead yet either. The wooden deck flexed beneath me as I dropped to my knees and scuttled toward the bitt. This must be the bitt—fat black pipes welded in the shape of a squatty cross. I dropped the loop over it. I waved at Hawley, who was still very close, leaning outboard, watching.

He waved back. Embracing the bitts, I drew my knife. I couldn’t see too well through my salty glasses, so it took me a while to cut the right line. The severed end of the anchor line snapped over the side and vanished. I waved again, and I saw Hawley reach for his throttle. He brought the line taut gently, gradually. Then the strain came on it, and it stretched as Hawley accelerated. We were under control.

I slid on my ass four feet aft and leaned back against the windshield. The boat was roofed over from there almost to the stern, just like Hawley’s. To get into the cockpit I would have to walk a narrow side deck holding on to the roof, with my butt hanging four feet above the waves, before I could actually come aboard. I wasn’t quite ready for that trip, but that wasn’t the whole reason
I lingered. I wanted to take a minute on that plunging bow to savor my success and my adrenaline. However, I began to get sick. It came on suddenly. I needed shelter. I stood up and made the trip aft, hand over hand, three-point contact at all times, slowly, without going overboard—

The old man was at the wheel—

I swung inboard and stood holding on silently for a while. My vision was blurred. I licked instead of wiped my salty glasses, an old trick I learned on the Murmansk Run, and replaced them—

Arno Self was ashen-faced, his head lolled. He looked about a hundred years old. “Evenin’,” he said, nonetheless.

“Evenin’,” I found myself saying. “I’m Artie Deemer.”

“You’re the one who found the bones.”

“Ah—”

“Thank you for coming. I couldn’t’ve took no line. I’m grateful.”

“I just stepped aboard.”

“I broke my arm deployin’ my anchor. Never would’ve done that before…Before World War One. Fuck.”

He was leaning over the wooden dashboard where the wheel was mounted, resting his arm on a flat place. I hadn’t noticed it before. Six inches up from his thick wrist, the arm bone took a ninety-degree hard right. The middle two fingers on that hand twitched like a deranged castanet player’s. “Maybe you could take the wheel.”

I took it. Isolated in the blackness was the bouncing light on Hawley’s stern. Violent lurching and jerking, rising and dropping had become commonplace.

Arno Self bowed his head and shivered as a wave of pain overcame him, then he looked up at me and said, “Them is old Kempshall’s bones you found. I killed Compton Kempshall.” He nodded once as if to lock it in. That was that. The wind and sea raged behind his head as I looked into his face. Kelso was right. Things and people are different out here.

“Why did you do it?”

“Because he was evil.”

“Did you take the bones away?”

“Huh?”

I repeated my question.

But he didn’t answer. His eyes rolled back, and he wavered. I let go of the wheel and grabbed the front of his slicker. He cried out, I guess because his sagging body put weight on his right-angled arm. His one-note moan tore through me like a hook and ladder siren speeding up Broadway as he cradled his grotesque arm from its resting place on the dashboard and moved aft with it. Legs wide, he took little mincing steps as if on ice. He sagged down on the deck and leaned his back against the engine box.

I began to shiver when I saw that he was shivering, or maybe I’d been shivering all along.

“Yep. I strangled the bastard. With a piece of old pot warp. Strangled him ’til his eyes bugged out.”

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