Ghost Sea: A Novel (Dugger/Nello Series) (14 page)

Even underwater I hung on to the wheel.

W
HEN MY HEAD
came above water, the ketch lay on her side. Circling. The waters around her empty. The tug floated behind us peacefully in the current, smokeless, its engine silent. Sayami was crumpled in the bow, the Dutchman outside, staring aft. Only when the tug turned did I see why he stared.

His aft deck was swept clean, the house gone, and through the shattered plankings of her deck, the great log towered, pointing at the sun. A fountain of water gushed around its base.

The Dutchman picked up a broken oar, then laughed. I had never seen him laugh before. He waved to me with his pipe. The whirlpool churned, sloped, and the stern of the tug went under. Sayami slid—a red blotch on his white shirt blooming like a rose—slid off the steep deck, and the whirlpool sucked him down. The walls of the whirlpool fell ever steeper, and the tug now sledded sluggishly down its side, then, with a last flash of its teeth toward the sky, vanished in the gurgling darkness of the chasm.

“Nello!” I yelled. “Nellooh!”

T
he keel finally outweighed the current, and with unhurried deliberation the ketch began to right, the sails rising from the sea, shedding long cascades of water. I bellowed Nello’s name so loud my lungs hurt. But he was nowhere. Charlie was gone, there was only Hay hanging upside down with his legs trapped in the halyards. We righted some more. A wave broke over us.

I stood in the flooded cockpit. “Nello,” I said so softly I barely heard myself. The jib rattled madly in the wind. Its sheet had slipped the cleat and pulled through the blocks, and now it rattled irretrievably overboard with both its sheets trailing in the seething water. The waters tossed us, sometimes sideways, sometimes in an arc, pitching, never still, rushing at Devil’s Hole.

I steered numbly, and the ketch barely responded. We were edging toward the shore. I had to tack, but I had no will, had never felt so tired in my life. Or so alone. Nello was gone; and she was lost with him. Where could I look for her now? Which of a hundred islands; a thousand nooks? I felt like lying down, just wanted to sleep. And I wanted to be on land, as far as I could be from the murderous, bloody sea.

That’s when I heard the shout.

It wasn’t a word—more like a gurgle. At first I thought I dreamt it. Fine, I thought, fine, and didn’t even look. Then I heard it again, and climbed onto the cabin, but all around the water boiled empty. Only a plank from the tug; a teapot. Empty. Then the shout. Very near.

I went to the port gunwale. Nothing. To starboard. The same. Then the shout, so clear; directly from the bow. I wrapped an arm around the bowsprit, and looked down. We plunged and I went under, and when the bow rose, hanging from the bobstay, the rest of him below, white with fatigue, pale without air, Nello.

He gasped, “A rope!”

I grabbed a boat hook, snagged the flailing jib sheet, and the next time he came up, I lowered it to him. Then I hooked his belt. I had him. He was tying the rope underwater when it flew out of his hand as if it had a big fish on its end. I pulled him up until his foot found the bobstay. He was exhausted, but hung on. “Let me rest,” he gasped.

I held him.

“Charlie?” he groaned.

“I’ll pull you up,” I said.

“Let me rest.”

“Sayami,” Nello said.

“Gone,” I said.

“On the rope,” he said. “I just tied him.”

I looked back. At the end of the jib sheet, Sayami bobbed, shot sideways, went under, bobbed again.

“Charlie.” Hay called out.

“Shut up!” I shouted. I put down the hook and was pulling Nello on deck, when Hay called louder, “Charlie!”

We looked up. Halfway up the mast with every limb around the spreader, hanging like a baby monkey, was Charlie with his head back, staring at the sky.

“Charlie.” Nello smiled. “You silly little fucker.”

Nello steered while I shimmied up the mast, gripping the halyard, and slung an arm around Charlie’s waist.

“Grab my shoulders.”

He let go of the spreader but hung on with his legs.

“For chrissake, let go!”

He swung against me; I started to ease us down when Charlie whispered, “Cappy. Canoe.”

O
N THE NORTHERN
rim of the bay, where a cluster of rocks and islets formed a refuge, a dark canoe eased itself along. It turned here, twisted there, picking its way through the jagged maze. In its stern, a bulky figure pulled long, powerful strokes; in the bow, a much smaller one paddled a steady rhythm.

“Nello!”

Nello had a foot holding the wheel while he leaned over the portside, trying to haul in the jib sheet and Sayami.

He looked up, saw me waving madly, and looked over that way but could not have seen beyond the overfalls and waves.

The ketch rolled; Charlie and I drew great arcs in the sky. I let us down. Charlie collapsed in a heap at the base. “Hug it,” I said, and wrapped his arms around the mast.

“They’re here,” I wheezed.

“Who?”

“The canoe. In those rocks.”

“Give me a hand,” he said, tugging at Sayami.

“Fuck him. He’s dead. Let’s get the canoe!”

“He’s alive. I tied him. For chrissake, give me a hand!”

“The hell with him!”

“We need the sheet!”

“Cut him loose!”

“Cappy!”

“We’re wasting time.” And I yanked out my knife and started slashing at the rope. He grabbed my arm.

“He’s
nothing
to you, is he? We’re all
nothing
! Stick figures. Draw us in, rub us out. Just so you get
her
!”

“Cut him loose!” Hay roared, still hanging in the rigging.

“Be selfish, Cappy! He’ll tell us who sent him. Might help us survive!
Porca putana della troia
!”

The unattended wheel spun; a whirlpool had us, we were sailing fast away from the canoe. Nello grabbed the wheel to keep us from gybing.

“She’s right there! Tack and we’ll have her!”

Nello looked at me as if I were crazy. “Tack and we’ll die!”

“You want me to lose her?”

“Can’t get her if you’re dead!”

“Across the bay. Ten minutes!”

“Cappy!” he roared. “In ten minutes all hell breaks loose here!”

“We’ll go in those islands; it’s calm in there.”

“For a canoe! We have an eight foot keel! He skims. We die!”

“Cut him loose!” Hay roared, half out of his mind. “Kill him!”

That settled it. I grabbed the jib sheet and pulled. Sayami came and banged against the hull. We hauled him up. He coughed and spewed and bled. Hay struggled in the rigging; Nello cut him down. We were half a mile from Devil’s Hole.

I climbed down into the cabin—awash with pots, cans, bottles—and got the rifle. Nello went to get Charlie from the mast. I spun the wheel and pointed to head off the canoe.

We buried the bow, came up, and surged across a funnel that flung us violently toward the rocks. The smooth green ribbon of the overfall was gone; there were only gaping whirlpools up ahead.

Nello charged furiously at me.

“You’re being suckered!” he yelled. “He wants you in those rocks!”

The canoe popped up out of the foam; vanished, came again. I braced against the wheel, raised the rifle, took aim at the big shape in the stern, and waited for a moment of less motion.

“Go on, Cappy. He’s just a goddamn Injun. Kill him! Shoot!”

His eyes blazed with rage.

“What’s the matter? Can’t shoot ‘em? You can drown ‘em alright; you’re a master at that! But no balls to shoot ‘em?”

I leveled the rifle at his chest.

“That’s it!” he roared. “Shoot me too. Then kill Hay! Kill Charlie! Blast away! Make sieves of us all!…. Just to get your hands on a woman who might not even want you! What if she walks away? She’s done it before!”

I squeezed the trigger. The rifle roared. Nello quivered. I had shot well past him into the sea. He shut up, but too late; Hay had heard it all. Sat wide-eyed, crumpled up, then he raised his pistol and aimed at me.

“I can’t shoot the Kwak,” I said calmly to Nello. “Because if I do, she’ll drown in the next whirlpool.”

“That’s right, Cap. He knows that. You don’t see him ducking, do you? He’s in the open. Inviting all fools.”

Hay tried to aim past him. I should have shot him then. Nello walked calmly over to him and knocked the gun out of his hand as if shooing away a fly. Hay reached for it but Nello grabbed him by the hair and yanked back his head. “You touch it and I’ll kill you.”

D
EAD AHEAD, A
wall of water rose. It was too late to tack. “Hold on!” Nello roared, covering Charlie with his body and clinging to the rail. We went into it. For a long time. We surfaced in a sea of foam.

We were so close now I could see the whole canoe, pointing straight at us. Then the big one in the back gave a long, strong pull; the slight one in the bow joined in, and they turned the canoe back among the rocks, back into the bay.

I stood with the water trickling from the barrel of the gun. With the decks still under foam, we lunged toward the rocks. I turned the wheel and we hauled the sheets, heading toward the cliff of fog that hung in Devil’s Hole.

T
HE PASS NARROWED
; the current was a breaking wave atop a raging river. The air was gone, replaced by streams of brine.

The canoe vanished in the vapors. Nello stepped into the cockpit.

“Fewer rocks along the south shore,” he said.

I didn’t care. She was back there, going the other way.

“He has nowhere to go, Cappy. This is his only way home.”

T
HE WAVES RAGED
along both shores, folded, turned, and crashed against each other. We hurled ahead and I steered, without conviction, for the thickest part of the fog. Nello pulled Sayami’s rope tight and cleated it to the mizzen, told Hay to lash himself to the shrouds, then sat against the mainmast, facing aft, and pulled Charlie close to him. He whipped the tail of the main halyard around them both twice—pulled it so tight Charlie gasped for breath—cinched it on a cleat and, just to be sure, wrapped both his arms around him. I put down the rifle and wrapped the mizzen halyard around my waist. The fog was so thick the shores were gone, the masthead blurred, and Nello and Charlie were smudges. The only things I was sure of were my hands on the wheel.

We fell. We rose. We yawed. We twisted and fell again, hurtling always violently ahead, into the deafening white roar, all that was left of the world. I hung on. Hands and the wheel. The water fell away like a bluff below us—we plunged into Devil’s Hole.

And in all that noise came faintly,
“Oi vita, oi vita mia.”

I
LAY ON ONE PLANK
and pushed the other ahead. Fog above, mud below. When it got dark they started shelling. They always waited until dark with the shelling so the explosions would shine brighter, the creases of fear on the faces dig deeper, the torn bodies in the trenches look so much starker, the bared teeth and terrified eyes even whiter.

I lay in the creek bed on one plank and pushed the other ahead through the mud, then crawled onto it and pulled the other from behind. I had nailed tin cans on the tips to help the planks glide, to keep them from digging in. Some had tied a plank to each foot and strode along as if the mud were really snow. But then a shell would explode near them and the ball of hot air topple them, and they would fall sideways and sink and vanish headfirst into the mud with their feet securely tied above. They never made it out.

I rested. It was midnight. Shells burst, lighting the fog orange, yellow, pink. There were screams behind me and screams up ahead, then frightened encouragement, then more screams. Then, through all that barbaric noise, I heard a delicate sound, like a sigh from a life I could no longer recall. It stopped: I crawled ahead. One plank, next plank. It rose again. In that unremitting hell where all humanity had been abandoned, a voice that didn’t scream, or weep, or plead, a gentle voice, singing.
“Oi vita, oi vita mia, oi core ‘e chistu core, se’ stato prim’ammore: o primo e ll’ultimo sarai per me.”
I stopped.

He sang softly to himself. He was very near and with every breath coming nearer. Then we collided plank to plank. We lay there face-to-face, in the mud, in the light of artillery shell, him going east, me west. He held a pistol in his hand an inch from my forehead. “You can shoot me if you want,” I said in broken Italian, “but you still sing way off-key.”

He laughed. Softly at first, then, when I laughed too, he laughed so hard he gasped, laughed until he shook, laughed until he cried. The shelling stopped. The fog went dark.

“You German?” he whispered.

“No. You?”

We laughed again.

“What are you?” he said.

“Drunk,” I said.

“Me too,” he said.

We snorted.

“Are you on reconnaissance?” I said.

“No. You?”

“No.”

Shells burst very near and all around us. The mud almost buried us.

“They don’t like us laughing,” he said.

“It’s your singing.”

Darkness and silence.

“Where are you going?” he whispered.

“Home,” I said.

“Me too,” he said.

He had shrapnel in both legs, bleeding badly; hurting. He wouldn’t get far. I tore off my sleeves and bound him. We agreed it would be best if I were to bring him in. To his side. Him capturing a deserter or a spy, and me risking my life bringing in their own wounded hero. Looked good all around. Might get us both home.

The only thing that had kept him alive, kept him going these past two years, was her. Thoughts of her and a worn picture. She was with him day and night in the mud. When the war was over he took me to his new country where his half-brother lived, where
she
lived, to meet her. San Francisco.

I quickly got a job skippering a fishing schooner. One Sunday I took the three of them for a sail. It was warm and hazy. The fog waited out there just past the narrows. We were well out in the open sea when the afternoon breeze kicked up and the fog blew in. We ate and drank and laughed. There was nowhere to look but at each other. We drank some more. It didn’t take me long to notice. He saw it too: glances, smiles, looks that lingered. A surreptitious touch. We drank more but he drank the most. Nobody noticed when he lowered himself into the skiff we towed, cast off the painter, and slipped away into the fog. We yelled. I rang the bell. The fog was so thick it sounded dull. I rang it until it nearly drove me deaf. We only found him because he had taken a bottle, finished it, and started singing,
“Primo e l’ultimo sarai per me.”

I hauled him aboard, his face awash with tears. He went and sat alone on a coil of rope in the bow. The wind was picking up; the spray washed over him.

The brother and she stood very close. She held him or he held her, I can’t remember. I told them to go. I didn’t threaten; just told them to get in the skiff. They went. I cast them off and sailed into the fog. We were only a few miles from shore. They had good oars. But they were never heard from again.