The Lobster Kings (36 page)

Her grip felt like a lobster claw bearing down, and I thought I could feel bones grinding together underneath my skin. I tried to scream, but with the scrum of blood and vomit and drool that half filled my mouth, I ended up coughing and gagging.

“Where is he? Do you see him?” she yelled, and then let go of my wrist to take hold of the rail. “Tucker!” she shouted. “Tucker! We’re here, Tucker! Tucker!” Another wave caught us, and she banged into the rail.

Next to Rena, Stephanie slipped and fell to the deck, the spotlight torn out of her hand, its beam of light spinning around on the deck. A wave broke over the edge of the opposite rail and sent a thin wash of water across the deck, sweeping the spotlight back toward Stephanie. I chucked the life preserver out into the water. It was an act of faith to do it, but it was all I could do. If Tucker hadn’t been knocked out or hadn’t already swallowed too much water, and if he was swimming, I could only hope that he’d come across one of the floats. Even if he found one, unless we could get him on board, it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t last long, float or no float, with the cold of the water. I felt Stephanie’s hand on my leg, and then she popped to her feet beside me, the spotlight in her hand again.

“Tucker!” Rena bellowed. “Tucker!” The name was a plea.

I threw another life jacket as Kenny came back with the four orange squares in his hands.

“That’s it,” he said.

I spit on the deck, clearing out my mouth, and then wiped the back of my sleeve against my lips. “What about the—”

“No,” he said, cutting me off. “We’ve only got the one buoy on board. I’m going to tie it to a line. Figured it could be a sort of throw line if we … when we find him. Not like a buoy is going to hold much weight anyway.”

I threw another life jacket in the water and then glanced at Kenny as I picked the last one up off the deck. That left me with those four orange square floating cushions, and then all we would have was a rope tied to a lobster buoy and the impossible hope of finding Tucker in the water. In a storm like this it would be a miracle, but with a dead motor, no lights other than what the lightning and the handheld spotlight offered, I thought Kenny might as well save his energy instead of getting a throw line ready.

And then there
was
a miracle: as I pulled my arm back to throw the last of the life jackets, Stephanie’s light caught something in the water.

“There,” I yelled. I grabbed her arm and pointed. “Out there. Maybe twenty, thirty metres. Farther.” Stephanie swung the light back, but she was looking too close to the boat. “Farther,” I said again.

The light moved across the water in gulping jerks, a combination of the waves rocking the boat and Stephanie being frantic.

“Farther,” I yelled. “Farther. Twenty, thirty metres.”

“I don’t know the fucking metric system,” Stephanie screamed, and despite the situation, it was actually kind of funny, and I found myself smiling when I said, “Yards, twenty, thirty yards. Same thing. Eighty or ninety feet.”

Next to me, Rena grasped the rail hard enough that it had to hurt. Her knuckles bulged, and she leaned out as if that effort could make the boat move on its own. I held the life jacket at the ready and watched the dot of light travel across the surface of the ocean.

“There!” I screamed, at the same time that Rena yelled Tucker’s name.

Even with the rain gusting curtains across the waves, it was clearly Tucker bobbing out on the water. He’d never been a strong swimmer, but he was trying to get to us. His arms were moving jerkily, and he already seemed like he was farther away than he’d been a few seconds earlier, when I’d first seen him. As the light hit him, he waved frantically at us, and the pause backed him away from the boat another metre or two. His head ducked below the water once, and then again. I threw the life jacket as far as I could, but it caught the wind and fluttered out barely a body length off the boat. I reached for one of the cushions, but Kenny was already there, plucking it out of my hands.

“I’ve got it,” I said, but Kenny pushed me to the side.

“Your arm,” he said.

“My wrist,” I said, knowing that it didn’t matter and that he was right. Even if my wrist were fine, he’d be able to get more distance than I could hope for.

He turned his body sideways and then spun the cushion. It cut through the air and carried maybe ten metres before hitting the water. “Fuck,” he said, but he was already picking up another cushion. He tucked it against his body and then threw it like a Frisbee, but it had barely cleared the rail when the wind caught it under the edge and flipped it up and away from us. The boat shook and lurched, and Stephanie tried to keep Tucker in the light, but the beam stuttered on and off him. He went under the water again, leaving a dark spot on the water, but then he came to the surface, gasping. I thought that maybe he’d gotten closer to the boat, but he still seemed impossibly far. The sky seared with simultaneous lightning and thunder again. The light hurt my eyes, and there was a metallic popping sound. I could smell a funny scent wafting over us. Burning ozone, I realized. That’s how close the lightning strike had been. I thought one of the antennas had taken the hit this time. Kenny threw the third cushion, and this one spun flat and true, caught a gust of wind, and landed half a boat length from Tucker, but he didn’t seem to see it. I picked up the last of the cushions and handed it to Kenny. He took it, and
without a hesitation tried again, but it sputtered in the wind and fell badly short.

Tucker was still swimming, but he was barely keeping his head above the waves. I couldn’t see how he’d make it to us. Even if he was getting closer, it was a glacial pace. The waves or the cold would get to him soon enough. I glanced at Rena. She was still clutching the railing, still screaming Tucker’s name. Her hood had blown back, and her hair was soaked from the rain, water streaming down her face.

“Fuck,” I said, and then again for emphasis, louder, I said, “Fuck it,” and started stripping off Kenny’s jacket.

“What are you doing?” The thunder and the rain and Rena’s screaming Tucker’s name were all loud enough that Kenny had to yell.

“Cleat a line off. I’ll tie it to my waist. I’m going in.” I winced and swore as the coat snagged on my hurt wrist.

Kenny grabbed the collar of my jacket—his jacket—and started wrestling it back on. “Don’t be stupid,” he said. “You can’t even get your coat off. You’re going to be useless in the water. I’ll go.”

While he shrugged off his jacket, kicked off his boots and slickers, I got a line ready for him. I was more or less working one-handed, but I had it ready by the time he stood there in his slacks and button-down shirt. He hadn’t taken off his tie, but with the water soaking him, beading in his hair and in the beard that he’d started trying to grow, he looked a bit like a wild man. He knotted the rope and slipped it tight around his waist. All in all, it had taken us less than a minute, and Tucker was still out there in the water, sporadically framed by Stephanie’s light, not swimming, but not sinking, either.

“Wish me luck,” Kenny said.

“You come back. You hear me?”

“You got it, Captain.” He gave a slight smile, and then, staggering with the roll of the boat, clambered up onto the rail and dove into the water.

I looked up from where Kenny had gone in and saw the
spotlight jerking on the water. The waves were foaming, and Stephanie struggled to keep the light still, but as it circled and moved, I realized that I couldn’t see Tucker anymore. Kenny was a strong swimmer. He was moving quickly, swimming hard and carried by the ocean, the line playing out behind him, but there wasn’t a destination for him to swim to anymore: Tucker was gone

“Tucker!” Rena screamed his name again as I reached out to grab her arm.

“He’s under,” I said. “We’re too late.”

Stephanie was still sweeping the water with the spotlight, but Tucker wasn’t there. “I can’t find him,” Stephanie screamed. She sounded like she was crying. “He was there and now he’s gone.”

“Keep looking,” Rena yelled.

“No,” I said. I said it quietly, but Rena heard me and spun on me. She slapped me hard across the face. I was still feeling the smash of my head from when the wave washed me out minutes before, and Rena’s slap made me want to throw up again. Still, I repeated myself. “No.” And then I said it a third time, louder. “No. You can stop looking, Stephanie.”

“What do you mean, no?” Rena said. She held her hand up and back, like she was thinking of slapping me again. “We need to keep looking for him. We’ll find him.”

I turned from the water, turned from watching Kenny make distance from the
Kings’ Ransom
, turned from the white line of the spotlight shining on nothing, to look at my sister. “No.” I shook my head. The motion made me dizzy, and I had to close my eyes briefly. “He’s gone. You know it, too.”

“But—”

She didn’t finish whatever she was going to say. She just leaned against me, dropping her head on my shoulder and putting her arms around me. Even though she was bigger than me and she was the one embracing me, I was holding her up.

I pulled back and put my hand on her cheek. “Daddy. We’ve got to worry about Daddy,” I said, standing up straight. “I wouldn’t
be saying it if I wasn’t totally sure. Tucker’s drowned, and as much as I want to just collapse on the deck now and let everything go, what we need to do right now is to see about getting the engine started again.”

“We’ve got to keep looking,” she said.

“He’s gone under, honey. I’m sorry. And there isn’t anything we can do. We can’t even call it in.” I pointed up to the roof; the antenna was gone and half of the rig was missing, but at least there were no more flames. “The motor is old as shit, but I can probably get it running again. I wish it was different, but it isn’t. We can’t do anything for Tucker, but we can still get Daddy to a hospital.”

I looked back out at Kenny, and he was treading water, out where I thought Tucker had last been. The leash was tight on Kenny’s waist, the waves lifting and dropping him. He was struggling to keep his own head above water, but he was still looking around for Tucker. Stephanie tried to keep the light moving in circles around Kenny, even though there was no point: there was nothing to see but water, water, water. Just for a moment I thought I saw something, but it wasn’t Tucker. It was a silken curve of darkness, but it disappeared so quickly that I couldn’t tell if it was water, a seal, or my imagination. It was a moment that Brumfitt would have painted if he were there:
Man Overboard
. The boat, Kenny in the water, Stephanie with the spotlight, Rena and I on the deck, and something slick and dark moving through the water, a menace or a blessing. I stared at Rena, and finally she nodded. And maybe that nod took everything out of her, because she slumped to the deck and began to sob.

I wanted to slump over and cry, too, but instead I turned and marched to the cabin.

Carly was fussing with Daddy’s blankets. His eyes were closed.

He still looked pale and fragile.

“Tucker’s gone,” I said to Carly.

She didn’t look surprised.

“I know,” she said. “Daddy told me.”

“What?”

“He opened his eyes a minute or two ago and said, ‘Tucker’s gone. The ocean has him now.’ Just like that. And then he closed his eyes back up.” She blinked hard, twice, and then looked down at Daddy. “Is Daddy going to die, too?”

I crouched down beside him. My knees were already stiff from the beating of the waves, and when I touched my left hand down to the deck to balance myself I let out a sharp grunt and fell over. I’d forgotten about my wrist and felt a fresh surge of pain. The burn almost felt good, taking away from the throbbing in my face, my lips, my forehead. I struggled onto my knees and then brushed my good hand against Daddy’s cheek. It was cold and rough, the stubble rubbing against my skin. “No,” I said, sounding more certain than I felt. “No,” I said again, half to convince myself, and I stood up. “When Daddy dies, it isn’t going to be like this,” I said, and my voice surprised me in its strength. “I’m going to get the motor working and we’re going to get him to a hospital, and we’re going to get him fixed up just fine.”

I looked back to make sure that Rena and Stephanie were hauling Kenny in, and then I leaned against the captain’s chair and looked at the console. I could feel my wet jeans pressing against the backs of my legs where they touched the chair, and I realized I was shivering. It felt weird to be so cold and wet when my wrist was on fire. Once Kenny was here, I’d get the motor open and see what we could do. I was sure that anything with a circuit board was fried from the lightning: even if the antenna wasn’t gone from the roof of the cabin, the insides of the radio were probably melted. I’d be writing a hefty cheque at the boatyard sooner or later. The real question was the motor. I knew enough to do basic maintenance—I could turn a lug nut like anybody else, tighten belts, gap a spark plug on Daddy’s truck—but the question was how bad the damage was. I was suddenly thankful that when I’d been having problems with the engine two years ago I’d chosen to get it completely overhauled and rebuilt, rather than upgrading to something sexy. The new motors that the boys liked to run were so dependent on electronics that you needed
an advanced degree just to turn them over. They were like new cars, where you needed a computer hookup to figure out that a piston was misfiring. That’s why Daddy still drove the same old truck; it was old enough that he could still fix it himself, which was a nice advantage out on the island. Same went, I hoped, for the
Kings’ Ransom
.

I glanced down at Daddy, hoping to see him sitting up, ready to help me with the engine. He’d be able to get it started, I knew, but he was still lying there in the blanket, looking like he was sleeping. Carly couldn’t help. No point in asking her. I closed my eyes, trying to steady myself. I couldn’t figure out if I wanted to throw up or just pass out, and I had to work at keeping my breathing down. When I opened my eyes, I kicked at the console. I kicked it hard enough that it hurt my toe, and it was nothing more than frustration that made me do it, but it was a tiny miracle.