Seize the Storm Page 6

  “I could ask her anyway,” he suggested.

  Martin gave a nod, his weatherproof gear creaking like plastic armor.

  “What should I do?” called Leonard into the gale. “Athena, tell me how to act with everything in shreds, all the air and all the water, and my life with it.”

  It had seemed like a wry joke at first, but now it was all too serious. His uncle was a little unhinged after all, Martin saw. Maybe Leonard was hoping a karate chop of water would knock him off the yacht and Claudette and Susannah could thrive on the proceeds of his life insurance policy.

  His uncle cocked his head, and he looked like a man listening to a faint, nearly indistinct signal.

  “Ship of mine,” he cried now, “beautiful vessel—what should I do?”

  He held his head at another angle, and for an instant Martin had the uncanny sense that Leonard was listening to a communication meant only for his ears. Martin also had the impression that Leonard was not inviting simple advice about his own safety.

  Maybe Leonard felt dread, too.

  And he needed to know what would happen.

  At that moment an enormous wave, laced with foam and simmering, heaved against the prow, and Leonard was nearly washed away. Martin seized his uncle, gripped him by the arm, his own glove squeaking against Leonard’s nylon sleeve. He got a firm hold and pulled his uncle to his feet.

  “Be careful,” gasped Leonard, “of my back.”

  As they tried to make their way to the stern, the two of them had to stop more than once and hang on to the main cabin rail. When they had almost returned to relative safety, another unexpected swell struck even harder.

  The yacht gave a heave, and without warning Leonard slipped, tried to find a handhold, and failed. He cried out for help. Martin grabbed him again, just in time. Leonard careened off the edge of the vessel, and Martin barely kept a grip on his uncle’s hand.

  Leonard hung suspended in the wind, kept from the water only by Martin’s grasp, yellow glove to yellow glove. But Leonard’s glove was too big, the wrong fit, and he was slowly but inexorably slipping free.

  MARTIN HELD ON TO LEONARD’S ARM, to find, to his horror, that his uncle’s body was suspended in midair, crashing heavily into the side of the vessel as the heavy seas increased. Leonard was calling out, something wordless and tormented.

  Martin pulled hard, hauling Leonard back onto the yacht and handling him desperately, at last hurling him onto the deck beside the helm.

  The rain began in earnest as Leonard lay there, even in his anguish trying to make some sort of quip. This precipitation was heavy, straight-down water. The downpour was warm as rain went, and yet it was so heavy that Martin shivered inside his waterproof jacket. One of his boots, with its top exposed beyond the skirt of his yellow jacket, was full of water in an instant.

  The vessel was heaving. The helm was only a few strides away, but Martin could not see it.

  “I’m hurt,” said Leonard, as though this did not happen to be obvious.

  Claudette hurried from the cabin, staggering with the motion of the vessel, and knelt beside him.

  “Martin saved my life!” said Leonard.

  Claudette touched only the rain-lanced air over his body, afraid to cause him more pain.

  “How did this happen?” she asked.

  “A bunch of fishing net,” laughed Leonard, although his laugh sounded more like a wheeze. “A wad of filament about the size of Oakland.”

  Susannah was at Martin’s side, gazing down at her father.

  She sighed, shaking her head.

  “Not only is Dad hurt,” she said, forgetting or deliberately choosing not to call him Leonard, “the galley just exploded.”

  * * *

  Axel remained at the helm as Martin and Susannah carried Leonard into the cabin he shared with his wife.

  Leonard was a stout man, but not very tall, and yet he felt much heavier than Martin would have thought possible. “I’m OK, perfectly all right,” Leonard sang out. “No, don’t stop, keep going.”

  They stretched him out in the bunk, surrounded by his books, histories of ancient Greece and paperbacks about sailing, book jackets featuring racing yachts and sunset-gilded sails.

  “I just need to rest for a little while,” said Leonard.

  “What medication do we have?” asked Susannah.

  “We have a terrific first aid kit,” said Leonard. “From the maritime supply in Alameda, and Claudette got Dr. Tang across the street to write us some prescriptions.”

  “Morphine,” said Claudette.

  “Too strong,” said Leonard. “I don’t want to be plowed under.”

  “Be plowed under, Leonard,” said Susannah, with more than a trace of kindness. “You need it.”

  “No, a captain has to be sharp,” said Leonard. “You’ll be sailing in circles without me.”

  “We have some codeine,” said Claudette.

  “Hey, codeine,” said Leonard. “Always works for me.”

  “I’ll sit here with you,” said Claudette, giving him several white pills, which he chewed up like they were mints. “You’ll be all right.”

  Martin knew that Claudette was lying, too. They were confronted with a serious injury, and Martin did not know what they could do. And he was touched by the loving concern in Claudette’s voice.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” said Leonard. “Don’t stand there looking so stricken. Good work, Martin. I am the luckiest skipper in the world.”

  SUSANNAH LEFT HER PARENTS’ CABIN, but Martin lingered, sure that a lurch of the vessel would toss Leonard from his bunk.

  Susannah called to him, her voice nearly obscured by the sound of the storm.

  The galley door was open. The roar of rain was all around, seeming, even from below the hull, a three-dimensional rush of noise.

  The galley was a mess.

  “It’s my fault,” said Martin.

  “Martin, Dad would have drowned if not for you.”

  “I should have been more careful.”

  “Martin, look at me,” she insisted. “You are not to blame. You saved his life.”

  He knelt and picked up a package of Birds Eye frozen peas, Perfectly steams in the bag!

  “You don’t have to help me with all this, Martin,” said Susannah. “I can manage.”

  “So it didn’t literally explode,” he said.

  She gave a wry smile. “An explosion would have been better.”

  She knelt with him on the galley floor. Containers of condensed milk and packaged soups were scattered all over the tiny kitchen, tossed to and fro by the storm. Pots were kept in place on the shelves by railings, but food seemed to have a life of its own.

  “Did you hear about that fight Leonard tried to break up,” she asked, “out by Pier 39?”

  Martin thought it was strange, calling your parents by their first names. But it was dynamic, too, implying an equality between parents and child.

  “He tried to keep the peace, from what I heard.”

  “He got into a fight with two drunk guys, and anyone could have told him to mind his own business.”

  “Was he hurt?

  “Sprained his back, of course. I hate to see Leonard suffer, Martin.” Her voice was thick with feeling for a moment. “But usually, I have to point out that it’s his own fault.”

  “That’s kind of amazing, though,” said Martin. “My uncle trying to stop a fight.”

  “Being foolish is amazing?” asked Susannah.

  He laughed, the patented Martin quiet laugh—soundless, really.

  Frozen steaks had escaped from the freezer, and the sight of a pink, hairless body part skittering into the saloon made Martin feel that never again would he eat chicken, particularly chicken that had been frozen. He knelt to fetch the rock-hard chicken part and it slithered farther, until he caught it with both hands.

  He handed Susannah the frozen chicken haunch, but the gesture was ignoble, somehow. The craft launched upward, higher than Martin could imagin
e, like a freight lift pushed to the highest floor of a very tall building. Then, after a pause, they fell all the way down.

  Susannah opened a stainless-steel door and stuck the frozen chicken part into the interior. She levered the latch, like the chrome handle in a detective show morgue. She shut the door hard.

  For a long time they did not talk, their work a secret language between them. He knelt to pick up a bag of pearl rice, eye to eye with her as she wiped thawed beef juice off the galley floor with a Teflon-coated sponge. He helped, with one of those blue heavy textured rags that are famous for soaking up liquid, cubic liters of liquid, a world of fluid soaking into the cloth, even some of the rain and seawater from outside.

  She put a hand out for Martin. Her fingers were clammy from picking up so many pieces of frozen food.

  “We’re going to have to run the ship,” she said. “Probably until we get to Honolulu. Mom’s not as tough as she looks.”

  MARTIN WAS ON DECK WHEN, with a suddenness that shocked him, the storm was nearly over.

  He felt relieved and renewed. But in another part of his mind he felt dazed, the way he had not felt during the actual fury of the weather. He had been more afraid than he had let himself realize.

  Sunlight broke through the clouds, and even though the seas continued to claw upward, pocked with angry foam, the wind was losing its power. Lightning flared, far off, and thunder crumpled, but the disturbance was moving on.

  A greenish, beautiful light came off the ocean, day reflecting from the surface of the foam-laced water. The deck was radiant with afternoon, and the rigging sparkled with drops of water. The sea grew much calmer, and Martin thought he could see a pair of wings, a frigate bird, gliding along over the peaks of the whitecaps.

  Martin took off his life jacket and suspended the garment on the hook reserved for it near the helm. There was a rule about life jackets—you had to wear them on deck at all times—but the rule was often ignored. There was a freedom about this new calm.

  “The old man is resting, I take it,” said Axel.

  Old man. Martin had never heard this phrase from Axel before. Was Axel being affectionate and respectful, Martin wondered, or was he being quietly mocking?

  “My uncle’s a tough guy,” said Martin.

  Axel was the sort of person to sense a power vacuum on board and move in. This did not offend Martin, but he saw the possible danger of an unbridled Axel.

  Claudette and Susannah came out on deck.

  Claudette said, “He’s asleep.”

  “We’ll be good,” said Axel, one hand on the helm, like this was at last his own personal moment.

  “I know we will, Axel,” said Claudette. “We’ll be fine.” She said this with an air of challenge, keeping Axel in his place.

  “I mean that I have a lot of experience,” said Axel.

  “And I am sure that all your experience will prove very helpful, Axel.”

  To Martin her response sounded like a riposte, her words meaning just the opposite of what she said. Axel understood this. He gave a nod and a little shrug, his feelings hurt, but maybe not sure why.

  She continued, “And I know you’ll prove to be a model crewman—in every way.”

  Axel considered this. He cut his eyes over at Susannah and back at Claudette.

  “Of course, Mrs. Burgess,” said Axel.

  Susannah stayed apart from the rest. Martin’s glance kept going back to her figure as she stood gazing out across the water, and he wondered what she was doing, what temper she had fallen into.

  * * *

  Susannah was listening.

  But she was not listening to the conversation.

  She heard a sound, but she was not able to determine what it was.

  One of many difficulties inherent in being on a yacht, in Susannah’s experience, was that if you lifted a hand to hang on to the stays, as the ropes supporting the masts were called, the mast swayed and the ship shifted, so you felt everything was connected to everything else.

  But as she leaned out over the side of the vessel, hanging on with one hand, she had to ask herself what she was doing. Why was she clinging with one hand and leaning out over the water so that Martin and her mother both called out, concerned for her safety?

  She gave no thought to herself because she did indeed hear something.

  A living thing was out there on the sea.

  SUSANNAH TOLD AXEL to shut off the engines.

  “Please,” Susannah was asking, and Axel gave an affable, reluctant nod of surrender.

  Axel slowed the yacht and gradually eased it to a standstill. The engines gave a further choking clatter that finally subsided, and a whiff of exhaust peppered the wind.

  The quiet was thrilling in itself, thought Martin, and as quickly as his ears took in the near silence, they also registered the many other newly apparent sounds, the sweet rush of water, lifting the powerless yacht northward, shouldering the keel, like the backs of giant, immensely powerful men. The wind whistled through the stays, and the tight-woven lines made cutting sounds, like rods of iron whipped through the air.

  The fuel and water tanks made an abysmal, nearly sub-auditory whisper, valves opening and shutting somewhere under their feet. The ting, ting of something on the foremast was almost pretty—the satellite dish, dangling by a wire, apparently broken.

  His own breath made a sound, and his heartbeat.

  “Can you hear it?” Susannah asked.

  “A seal,” said Axel at last.

  “Or a sea lion,” said Claudette.

  Martin heard it, just as everyone else did. A sound like barking, frantic barking, off the starboard bow. Martin joined Susannah leaning over the side, but the sound was hard to catch. The wind swept through the rigging, and even a gentle, wearying wind was enough to mute the sound and keep it distant.

  “It’s a dog,” said Susannah.

  “Not a dog,” said Axel.

  “That’s what it is,” said Susannah.

  “Can’t be,” said Axel.

  Martin was a little embarrassed for his cousin. The reasons why the sound of barking could not be emanating from a dog were obvious. Axel had to be right, and being right, he was not shy about making his point. He gave a lift of his chin, glad to be free of controversy.

  About this, Axel’s expression said, there could be no doubt.

  And yet, it did sound like a dog, the sound a dog raises when he is scared, or worse. This was not the neighborly, sentry-alert sound dogs make at the approach of wandering pedestrians, but something more frightened and more insistent.

  Martin said, “Yes, it sounds like a dog to me, too.”

  Axel nearly smiled at this, his usual have-it-your-way dismissal. “If it’s a dog,” he said, “the animal is in big trouble.”

  “It’s getting closer,” said Susannah.

  Claudette had the binoculars to her eyes by then, searching the waves.

  And then she gasped. “I can see him!”

  They could all see the creature very soon, as Axel fired up the diesels and they churned forward in the direction of the struggling animal.

  The seas rose up around the swimming beast, and the animal paddled frantically down the face of the ascending wave, only to vanish from sight as another wave mounted upward, blocking its path.

  The approach of this failing, struggling creature galvanized the wonderstruck crew. Claudette took the helm and Axel went forward, leaned over the prow of the ship, and clapped his hands, calling out, “Come on!”

  Susannah lifted a call, too, a shrill, off-key soprano, “Over here, here we are,” and if there was any doubt that the dog had seen them and was making a great effort to reach them, that doubt ended when the dog vanished, lost to the surface of the sea, only to reappear again, looking drenched and forlorn. But closer, much closer, barking eagerly.

  The dog was evidently a large, strong creature, able to swim upslope and plunge down the undulating seas for what must have been a very long distance. The animal fought
his way, breasting the crests of the smaller waves and lunging through the spray from the whitecaps that broke around him. But there was no hint of a far-off craft that the creature might have originated from, not even an overturned hull.

  And the dog was growing weak. He wasn’t going to reach them, not at his current, faltering pace.

  Martin knew from recent events that what happened in life was not a matter of a pleasing outcome, virtue and courage rewarded. Sometimes the deserving foundered, physically, mentally. Things went wrong.

  Later Martin would wonder at his own motivation. He had no desire to drown, and no conscious desire to be extraordinarily heroic. One instant he was calling out encouragement with the rest of his fellow crew members, and the next he was shrugging a life jacket over his shoulders, fastening the garment.

  Then he was over the side.

  JEREMY CONTINUED TO PILOT the aircraft.

  Having swung far to the east to avoid the late morning storm, the de Havilland now had to loop all the way back.

  The radar screen showing the location of Witch Grass somewhere ahead of them was like a stew with all the solid ingredients to one side, cloud and storm far to the right, empty abyss everywhere else. Empty, except for the throbbing blister of light, the vessel’s location.

  Jeremy did not bother talking into the radio, trying to contact Kyle. He had given up on his friend, with a sharp sadness. Jeremy had eaten more protein bars and drunk a half liter of Fiji water. His mood had altered entirely from the assured hunter of a few hours before, and he was no longer the apprehensive pilot, either.

  He had flown the plane for an hour, keeping the aircraft steady and the airspeed at right about maximum. Jeremy felt good about that.

  Shako was coiled in the rear passenger seat, quiet behind his sunglasses, enduring. He was full of thoughts. He was past envying Jeremy for being able to pilot the plane, and he was weary of fantasies. Although his current favorite daydream was one in which he impressed Elwood, maybe shooting a robber trying to beat Elwood over the head at the Hilton hotel parking lot near Lihue, where the big man sometimes went to drink and pick up women.