The Whiskey Sea (8 page)

For a few long moments it was as if she’d left her body and was hovering somewhere above the water looking down on this pandemonium, peering down on a play acted out by newly redeemed people. If that were true, then who or what was the redeemer? She found she didn’t care. She loved all of these people now as she had never loved people before. What was happening to her? She was shocked to find that she wanted to belong here, she wanted to be a part of it. She had joined their fray, their slinky and illustrious private club, and she breathed deeply in elation. She rubbed her upper arms to make sure it wasn’t a dream, that she was really experiencing that unbelievable sight and huge tide of emotion.

She made herself go below deck to check that the engine stayed dry, but she wanted to know everything that was happening above. She could hear Dutch order three hundred Johnnie Walker Black, two hundred of Dewar’s, and a hundred of Booth’s High & Dry, then others she couldn’t remember. She had no idea what kind of liquor Dutch was ordering, and it hit her how sheltered a life she had led so far. Silver had kept her and Bea away from anything like this.

All was well with the engine, so she peered up from below to watch the action. Dutch paid by pitching his money—a roll of large-denomination bills held by a rubber band. The men on board were so busy with loading and keeping the boats coming and going that they didn’t even count it. Even in this shady business there was a code of ethics. Dutch told her that other boats didn’t even require payment in advance; instead, they let the contact boat captains pay the next time they came out.

Before they began loading, the crew of the
Eva Marie
threw down a mattress for the crew of the
Wonder
to place on the deck against breakage. Crew on board the big rum boat tossed the bags over without taking the time to aim carefully. It took another hour for Rudy and Dutch to load 750 cases—burlap sacks holding six straw-wrapped bottles each—from the deck into the holds.

“My first time out,” Dutch said to Frieda, who was now helping load the cases into the boat, proving to Dutch that she could indeed do more than just engine work, “I smashed fifteen cases.”

Even with the mattress a few cases ended up broken, but the boat slowly filled, and the
Wonder
began to settle lower and lower into the sea, until they were only about a foot above the water. Rudy told her the most popular liquor types were scotch whiskey, French brandy, and Cuban or other West Indian rums, but buyers on shore had a taste for everything. Scotch had a particularly swanky allure.

Throughout the loading process, Frieda kept checking the engine compartment, which was supposed to be watertight. Throughout the loading process, Frieda kept checking the engine compartment, which was supposed to be watertight. She had covered it with a canvas tarp just in case and listened and smelled for any signs of overheating or any unusual noises. The swells amounted only to low rollers that night, and the two boats rubbed against each other just occasionally, the fenders groaning under the pressure and the wooden sides of the old
Eva Marie
creaking.

Everything was going smoothly. She was doing her job. Although she had only just begun, the idea that this could ever be taken from her was unfathomable. If it was possible to fall in love with a job, she had done it at first sight. Here she was out on the water doing work that was a perfect fit for her strengths and desires. Could such happiness come out of the unexpected? Or was unexpected happiness the best happiness of all?

Dutch chatted with the crew on the other boat as he caught and stacked the cases fore and aft, but Rudy remained mostly silent as he, too, worked. Frieda kept her head down, not wanting to call attention to herself. At one point she caught one of the rum boat’s crew peering at her, and she quickly turned her face away, put up her collar, and tugged down her woolen cap.

When all the business was completed, Dutch swung the rudder around, and the heavily laden boat struck out in the fog for shore. Loaded down, they couldn’t go as fast as before, but the fog also wasn’t as thick anymore. Almost two hours later, just offshore they left the murky gloom as suddenly as they had entered it. The change was like a heavy curtain being lifted. The lights of the city looked like diamonds tossed against a palette of black velvet, and the Sandy Hook Light and then the Twin Lights called them home. Now that he could see, Dutch pushed the boat faster, and as they cut through swells, the sea spray blew into Frieda’s face, waking her again and again to this new reality. Her mind and body felt so free. She was reborn, filled with freshness and the possibilities of the future. Her life would never be the same. Frieda began to breathe normally. She hadn’t realized that something had been caught in her chest until she let it go, and then she found she could take in full breaths and release them all the way to the bottom of her lungs. Her head cleared; her heart filled with exhilaration. They had done it, and she had been an essential part of it. She finally fit somewhere, and until that night she hadn’t known she had wanted such a sense of belonging.

“Picket boat in pursuit, sir,” Rudy said calmly.

Exhilaration changed to panic in one held breath. She turned and saw the coast guard picket boat running dark in their wake.
No! It couldn’t be.
The guard boat shot tracers that lit the sky like fireworks over the river on the Fourth of July. If there was any doubt they’d been spotted, it no longer remained. She clenched the edge of the bench seat and held on for her life. Here she was, her first time out, and she was going to get caught, maybe go to jail. She imagined the confines of a cell, the look on Silver’s face, Bea’s disappointment. Her body became flimsy and weightless; she could have slipped over the side of the boat and let the sea suck her under.

Dutch sped up, but the boat rode too low in the water, and if they went any faster they risked being swamped. The boat thumped heavily over the swells as they drew closer to shore. Still, Frieda hoped, the
Wonder
might run faster than the older, typically slower guard boats. She wasn’t the praying type, but she looked up at the stars and closed her eyes.
Please, no. I’ve only just started. Give me a chance. Don’t take it away just when everything is finally at my fingertips.

Only a trace of worry on his face, Dutch remained surprisingly calm. “Don’t put up a fuss if we get caught,” he said to Frieda. “Go along with it. Worst thing that can happen is you get a fine and a year’s probation. They could take my boat, but there’s ways to get her back.”

Trying to swallow, Frieda found her throat had gone dry. How could he remain so unfazed? Rudy seemed amazingly calm, too. Maybe because they had been through this before and were better prepared for it. She had no money to pay off a fine. Rudy and Dutch had already had the chance to put money away for something like this. She began to feel sick, her heart thumping as her throat constricted. She managed to force out, “Do we have to dump the liquor?”

“Not yet. I’m not sure what she’s up to,” he said, meaning the coast guard boat.

The guard boat was gaining on them. Dutch stood solemnly at the wheel, stealing occasional glances over his right shoulder to check on their pursuer’s progress. Frieda’s knees were turning boggy. She thought she might fall, even though she’d always been as steady as the ballast in a boat. “They have to identify themselves, and they can’t shoot at us,” he said over the sound of the boat thwacking down in the troughs between waves. Dutch was taking the same way in as he’d come out, and now he eased past the same buoys, beacons, and anchored boats he’d carefully maneuvered around before. He shouted to Rudy, “Take a look-see.”

Rudy took the binoculars. The guard boat was allowed to traverse the waters blacked out until it was time to identify herself. A small hand lamp normally used in the pilothouse to take a quick glance at a chart was shined upward at the coast guard ensign on the picket boat’s halyards. Next it was shined onto the face of the skipper, who smiled in a manner that Frieda didn’t know how to interpret.

Rudy laughed. “It’s Parker.”

Frieda had no idea what that meant, and with the guard boat within earshot now, she didn’t want to ask for fear of saying something wrong. Though Dutch and Rudy’s tension had subsided, her panic would stay for a while. Dutch throttled down and let the boat come to a drift. After a little skirting about the
Wonder
, the skipper of the guard picket boat pulled alongside, came aboard, and gazed around. “Boys, where have you been?” He shook Dutch’s hand, and Frieda got a look at his face. Even in the darkness she could see his high-bridged nose and its hooked tip, like that of a falcon, and she wondered if he had always had that air of arrogance about him, or if it was something he had acquired along with his commission. “And what have you for me tonight?”

Dutch told the skipper to take his pick. What else could he say? As the guardsman started passing cases back to the other men on the picket boat, he said, “I heard there’s some French perfume out there on some of the boats tonight. Didn’t happen to get any, did you?”

Dutch shook his head, remaining pleasant, and said, “What’s the matter? Don’t like the smell of your own armpits?”

The skipper laughed, and his men then knew it was alright to laugh, too.

“I was thinking about the wife. Wouldn’t hurt her to learn some French ways in the fucking department.”

Everyone laughed except for Frieda.

The skipper strolled toward her. “What do we have here?” he asked.

She stood up. She had no idea what to say.

Dutch answered for her. “My engineer skedaddled on me. This here’s my new engineer. Name’s Frieda.”

“Well, I’ll be . . .” the skipper said, and reached out to touch Frieda’s hat. He removed it from her head as she stood in the rocking boat without flinching. Her hair fell in a long mess of tangled waves past her shoulders. The skipper said in a more soothing voice, “You should’ve warned me, Dutch, on account I wouldn’t have been so crass.”

“Don’t worry about me.” Frieda finally spoke, but her voice did not come out as firmly or as strongly as she had wanted it to. “I’ve heard it all,” she said, even though that wasn’t exactly true. She’d never been treated completely like one of the boys before. Even the hard men who’d been her mechanical work customers had minced their words around women, including her, most of the time.

“You’re the engineer?” he asked.

“I can do anything with an engine. I could take it apart and put it back together again blindfolded.”

He stared at her briefly, as if she were some new breed of bird that he had yet to catch in his talons, then continued about his business, while all around them other boats went in toward the shore with their hauls.

After the guardsmen had taken about 150 cases, they sped off, and Frieda sincerely hoped she had seen the last of Parker and his sorry lot.

The rest of the return journey was uneventful. The engines were purring, so she scampered up to the bow to sit with Rudy, whose job was to keep watch for obstacles and other boats at all times. The
Wonder
put in at Highland Beach, where transport cars from the city were waiting, and Frieda helped unload the cases while Dutch sold the booze. It was better to be moving about in the cold than sitting and suffering. Her body warmth was oozing away, but by the time the liquor had been unloaded and sold and they had tied back up at the dockside, a new warmth entered her body, and she found herself enlivened with unexpected energy. She had been awake all day and most of the night, too, and yet she had just awakened to a new life.

Dutch said good-bye and left, but not without giving Frieda her night’s pay and a wink that let her know she had passed the second test he’d given her. She had performed well; she had done it.

“You’re smiling,” Rudy said as he looped the excess mooring lines on the dock.

She hadn’t realized she had been smiling. Stuffing the money into her pockets, she blew a stream of frosted white breath into the coldest air of the night so far. Memories of the night’s events came in vibrant flashes, and she knew she would never forget them. Now, she, too, had a part to play in all the tumultuous change around her. “I guess because we made it, and it was . . . except for a moment or two . . . it went well, don’t you think?”

Rudy stood up. “Yeah, it went well.” He grabbed his things and started to walk down the dock. Then he stopped and turned around. “Are you coming?”

She hurried to catch up.

“Listen to me,” Rudy said as they walked. “Next time it might not be one of the guard boats on the take. Next time it could be real trouble, or worse, it could be a go-through man.”

“What’s that?”

“A go-through man. A hijacker. A pirate. Criminals, I mean real criminals, not like us dabbling in it for a while. They’ll kill every one of us to get the money we have on board going out, or the booze we have on board coming in.”

Frieda walked close by his side. “Can’t anything be done?”

He laughed at the obvious irony of it. “What are we going to do? Call the law?”

Frieda looked ahead as they reached the place to go separate ways.

“Tonight we were lucky,” said Rudy. Under the dock lights she could see that his eyes were shadowed behind his glasses, and his face was cheerless. Rudy had a quick mind and a sense of righteousness about him despite his business. He was making money—but maybe not without incurring costs of other sorts. She had the sense that no one really knew what they had drifted into.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Didn’t Dutch?”

“Not the way you just did. He probably assumes I know all about rumrunning, including all of the risks.”

Rudy sighed. “Dutch doesn’t like to think about the risks, much less talk about them. But I want you to know it’s not all fun and games. It could be dangerous.”

“If it’s dangerous, then why are you doing it?” Frieda asked him.

He looked at her as if he wanted her to understand. What do most people do when a better life, usually beyond their reach, is suddenly sitting at their doorstep, or in their case, sitting right out at sea? Even Rudy had worn a thick new sweater tonight, and he drove a newer Model T to the docks.