by Boyle, Gerry
“Your honor,” the prosecutor said, “Mister Fuller was released just yesterday to attend his grandmother’s funeral. A brawl broke out.”
“I fail to see how Mister Fuller can be held responsible for that,” the defense lawyer said. “He was in shackles, deputies on both sides of him. It isn’t his fault—”
If his family is hopelessly dysfunctional, the judge thought.
“The original sentence was—” she said.
“Five years in jail, all but six months suspended,” the prosecutor said.
“He’s done almost four months,” the judge said.
The prosecutor waved a pen. “And we feel that if you get a furlough for a family emergency and it turns into a brawl that takes a half-dozen officers to break up, then that’s not a reason to send you home early.”
“Are you worried about the defendant’s safety, counselor?” the judge said.
“No, your honor. Mister Fuller is more than able to take care of himself. His record, your honor—assault, criminal mischief, criminal threatening, threatening with a firearm, theft, negotiating a worthless instrument—”
“Those cases have been adjudicated, your honor,” the defense lawyer said. “We’re here to talk about this case.”
“But your honor, this case is just the latest in—“
“He paid for those. We’re here to—“
“Okay. Just stop it,” the judge said. “Both of you.”
She looked at Fuller, sitting at the table, hands folded in front of him like a schoolboy eager to clap the erasers.
“Mister Fuller,” the judge said.
He stood, put his hands behind him.
“Your honor,” he said. “Ma’am.”
“Why should I not keep you in for the full duration of your sentence?”
“Well, your honor,” Fuller said. “I can see why you might not think I deserve any sort of special consideration. But I have been in counseling in the correctional center, and I’ve been talking with the minister, Reverend Bill? I mean, your honor, I know that record doesn’t look too good, but I kind of got off on the wrong foot. My father was abusive, then my stepfather. As the counselor explained to me, I’ve been conditioned to lash out when confronted by adversity.”
“You weren’t lashing out at this memorial service?”
“Your honor, I walked into the middle of something I wasn’t aware of. I been away, your honor. If I’d known there was this trouble brewing, I promise you I would not have asked to attend that service.”
“Who died?”
“Gramma Daley,” Fuller said. “She was a dear, dear old lady. Gramma Dailey was very good to me, at a time when I really needed someone solid in my life. The only thing I’m glad of is she didn’t live to see that disgraceful exhibition.”
“Which you weren’t part of?”
“Except for ducking, your honor.”
There were chuckles from the audience and the judge pounded her gavel. She looked down at the documents strewn on the blotter in front of her. Sighed.
“Some people might say you’re a lost cause, Mister Fuller,” she said.
“My client knows that, your honor,” the rumpled lawyer said. “But he’s very much committed to his counseling. It’s like he’s seeing himself for the first time, without the haze of alcohol and—”
“Okay,” the judge said. “But you screw up, Mr. Fuller, you’re coming back to serve the whole five years, you understand?”
Fuller nodded, looked somber.
“He does, your honor,” the lawyer said.
The prosecutor leaned forward on her hands. “With all due respect, your honor, I don’t think—”
“That’s it,” the judge said. “The petition for release is granted. Process him asap and send him home.”
“Thank you, your honor,” Fuller said, smiling gently. “I won’t disappoint you.”
The judge was gathering up the papers, stuffing them back in Joel Full-er’s folder. He was led away from the defense table, back to the row of inmates. He sat back in his chair.
The inmate next to him muttered, “What a crock of shit.” He snorted, smothered a laugh. The bailiff looked over.
Fuller put his hand over his mouth and whispered, barely moving his lips. “You make one more fucking sound and I’ll find where you live. While you and your lame-ass family is sleeping, I will burn your goddamn house down.”
The inmate went silent. Fuller looked over at the judge and smiled.
“I swear to God,” he said, like a ventriloquist, his smile firmly in place.
CHAPTER 8
Brandon sat in a folding chair on the after deck, watching the Portland skyline emerge, red lights blinking atop the bank towers, lights glittering on the harbor.
The ferry to Nova Scotia was back, the terminal floodlights illuminating the cars lined up for loading. An oil barge slid out of the harbor, pushed by a rumbling tugboat. Cabin lights bobbed on boats at their moorings, like torches carried by some unruly mob. When the breeze shifted, cool and damp from the northeast, Brandon heard voices from the boats across the water. From the main section of the marina, a big cruiser owned by a guy who worked in Portland at Merrill-Lynch, he heard music. Bob Marley.
A half-hour gone by, he tried again.
Brandon clicked the flashlight on. The book fell open to a chapter titled, “Estimating Time of Death.” Brandon flipped the pages, the flashlight beam illuminating photographs of dead bodies, images from nightmares: A skull with long black hair, the body in a bathtub. A hand clutching a gun. A woman recovered from a lake, her arms outstretched, saying “Save me,” but rigor mortis had set in.
Brandon closed the book. Looked out at the boatyard and listened. There was a clink, a chain rattle. The gate opening out by the road. He looked at his watch. Nine forty-five.
He tensed. Waited. Peered into the deepening darkness, then heard footsteps. A noise like someone had stumbled, then a pale figure coming out of the shadows and gliding down the ramp to the dock like a ghost.
Brandon eased out of the chair, opened the door to the companionway, the path to the cabinet with the gun.
Waited. The figure kept coming, across the yard, down the ramp, moving his way on the float.
“Hey,” Mia said, emerging from the darkness.
“Hey yourself,” Brandon said.
“I was driving around. Procrastinating. Anything but reading about seizure of evidence.” She was on the steps now, and said, “Do I have to ask permission to come aboard?”
“I’ll get my captain’s hat,” Brandon said.
Mia climbed over the rail, stood in front of him awkwardly, slim and blonde, small but with that electric presence, a twitching of energy. She saw the book on the chair.
“Making me feel guilty.”
Brandon shrugged, smiled. “Just getting to it, really. Hey, take the chair.”
“You only have one?”
Brandon looked around the cockpit. “Yeah, I guess.”
“So you don’t entertain regularly?”
She said it not as a judgment, but as a question. It was the first thing he’d noticed about her. She always had another question.
“Not exactly Donald Trump’s yacht,” he said. “But it’s home.”
“Cool. But where do you go in the winter?”
“Right here. You wrap the whole thing up, plastic on this wooden frame.”
“Like a cocoon,” Mia said.
They both stood. Mia looked around. Brandon looked at her, then away.
“Kind of retro, huh?”
“Yeah, well, it’s old. Early sixties. They built pretty boats back then. Want a beer?”
Mia grinned, her eyes pale, shining even in the darkness.
“Sure.”
Brandon went down into the cabin, came back with two bottles of Geary’s ale. Mia had moved to the side of the boat, was peering around the cabin toward the bow. He opened the beers with the opener on his Leatherman, handed her one.
T
hey touched bottles.
Sipped.
“Does it have a name?”
“She’s called Bay Witch.”
“It’s a girl boat?”
“They all are. Tradition.”
“Is it Bay Witch like Bay Watch? Pamela Anderson and all that?”
“No, the person who named it—” He paused, then recovered, smiled. “—she just thought it was a good name, I guess.”
“So it was a woman who named it?”
“Yeah.”
Another pause, this one longer, and Mia noted it, filed it away.
“If you want to know, it’s a Chris-Craft Cavalier, thirty-five foot. Chevy powered, single screw, a small V-8. If you care about that stuff.”
“Kind of like a floating camper,” Mia said. “We had one when I was really little. My dad towed it all over the country with this big Suburban. All the places he said we had to see. He had a list. Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon.”
“I’d like to see that,” Brandon said. “Read a book about the first guy to go through on a boat. Powell.”
“It’s amazing,” Mia said. “Makes you feel really, really small. Kind of like the ocean.”
She drank again and Brandon watched, thought she was almost beautiful in the dusky light. Short blonde hair glinting, that glitter in her eyes. Silver earrings that swung like the things hypnotists waved in front of you.
He looked away and Mia walked over to the helm and touched the wheel. Jiggled it back and forth and looked toward the stern, to see if something might move.
“You’re from around here, right?” she said.
“Two miles, by boat.”
She touched the throttle, the wheel again.
“So did you bring your boat here and then get the job?”
“The boat was here. It was in the family.”
“Really. Was it your grandfather’s or something?”
“Or something,” Brandon said. “Now it’s mine.”
“That’s so neat.”
“If you worked on it you might not think so. It’s old and it’s wood—a lot of maintenance.”
“Like what?”
Always questions.
“Topsides, needs varnishing, painting, polishing. Last year, me and Sam, he’s the old guy who owns the marina. He’s in Florida, had a stroke, but he knows boats. We hauled it and redid the bottom. Actually, I did it, he told me what to do. Replaced some planks, painted it, did some refastening.”
“Huh.”
She had turned back toward him. She took a couple of steps and bent to look down the hatchway to the cabin. “That’s where you sleep?”
“Right.”
“Can I see?”
Brandon hesitated, the cabin his private world.
“You can say no,” Mia said.
“It’s fine, let me turn on the light.”
He led the way and she followed. She stumbled on the way down the steps, put her hand on his back. The touch electric.
Brandon turned the lamp on by the vee berth, and stood in the center of the cabin, his head nearly touching the ceiling Mia surveyed the berth the built-in shelves filled with books, an acoustic guitar in a beat-up case, the lid open.
“You play?”
“Some. Not very well.”
She ran her hand over the neat writing desk that folded down from the paneling, eyed the plaid curtains over the windows.
“Oh, those are so cute,” she said. “Did your mom make them for you or something?”
Brandon tried not to darken, saw her eyes catch something. She was always watching.
“No. I made them myself.”
“You’re kidding me. You sew?”
“You learn to do a lot of things yourself on a boat like this. Otherwise you go broke paying people.”
She turned. Opened and closed the cabinets. Ran her hands over the gleaming galley counter, the spices and condiments in their rack.
“No TV?”
“No.”
“Internet?”
“Wireless, from two boats down.”
“Really.”
Mia’s eyes kept sweeping the cabin, her mouth frozen in a half-smile. She noted the beat-up laptop. An old iPod.
She picked it up.
“May I?”
Brandon shrugged.
“My brother says looking at somebody’s iPod is like going through their desk. I just think it’s interesting seeing what people listen to.”
She spun the wheel.
“Huh. Old rap. Public Enemy? Rage Against the Machine? Angry music, Brandon. I thought you’d be more mellow.”
Brandon smiled. Mia put the iPod down on the little table.
“God, you’re neat. Can you come over to my apartment?”
“You have to be neat on a boat, it’s such a small space.”
“What do you cook?”
“Stew. Curry. Pasta.”
“Really. And all these books? What are they? All history?”
“A lot of ’em. ”
“No novels?”
“I like things that have really happened. Things that are real.”
“Not my made-up stories, huh?” She picked up a book, flipped the pages. It was a history of Portland.
“You know the city burned twice?” Brandon said. “The British shelled it during the Revolution. Then Americans burned it again during the Civil War. Fourth of July. Party got out of hand.”
“Huh,” Mia said. “So you sit down here and read. It’s so cozy. The little refrigerator, the stove. Do you go out on voyages?”
It was an odd way of putting it, and Brandon smiled.
“Once in a while,” he said.
She turned her back to him, and Brandon let his eyes run over her, head to toe, quickly, a stolen glance.
“My ex-boyfriend, he was into boats, too,” she said. “He teaches sailing back home, crews on big sailboats. They race on the Great Lakes and stuff. And we have a ski boat on the lake at home. Do you water ski?”
Brandon shook his head, felt his mood sour, a black cloud, made it pass. Mia started for the hatchway, said, “Can I walk up on the top part?”
He would have said yes, but when he caught up she was already up on the sidedeck, easing along, one hand on the rail. Brandon followed. On the foredeck, she looked down through the cracked hatch, light spilling up, illuminating her face. She turned away, looked out at the Portland skyline, the lights of the harbor, the sheen on the water glistening like a black mirage.
“Beautiful. You have friends around here, Brandon?”
“I did. Two went away to school. One’s in prison. Oxycontin.”
“Huh,” Mia said. “That’s not very many.”
“I don’t like to need people too much,” Brandon said, looking at the water.
“Why?”
“You don’t really want to know.”
She smiled.
“Sure, I do.”
“If you don’t need people, you can’t be disappointed by them.”
“You’ve been disappointed?”
Brandon shrugged. “No big deal. People just make a lot of promises they can’t keep. Say things and then they don’t deliver. Not a problem, unless you believe them in the first place.”
They stood a couple of feet apart, the boat moving almost imperceptibly under their weight. Lights glided by in the darkness and the subject changed.
“It’s like the boat’s breathing,” Mia said. She sipped her beer, stepped to the rail, and looked over. Came back.
“Your parents, what do they think of you living on a boat?” she said.
“They don’t,” Brandon said.
“They don’t care?” Mia said.
Brandon hesitated. Drank more beer and lowered the bottle, looked out at the glittering lights of the skyline.
“No,” he said. “I never had a father. My mom, she died.”
Mia frowned, put her hand on top of his.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
No,�
�� he said. “It’s a logical question.”
Brandon looked at her, the tenderness in her eyes. Mia turned and moved to the bow, standing in the darkness now, just out of reach of the soft yellow light streaming up through the hatch. The cool May night was falling, the smell of salt and sea rising from the low-tide mud.
“So,” Mia said, facing him, suddenly awkward. “You’re all alone here?”
“Yeah.”
“Nobody else? I mean, you’re not seeing someone?”
She grinned. “Sorry if I’m direct. It just saves a lot of time, you know?”
Brandon smiled, shook his head. “Not for quite a while. She found somebody a little more, I don’t know, normal.”
“I think you’re way better than normal.”
“Likewise.” Brandon grinned. “I’m just kind of a loner, I guess.”
“Me, too. When you’re alone is the only time you can really think about things. It’s what bugged me about school. All these people, all the time. Where’d you go to high school?”
He took a deep breath.
“I didn’t.”
“What do you mean? You didn’t finish?”
“Never went. Home schooled. Sort of.”
“Really.”
Brandon paused, part of him not wanting to tell it, part of him wanting very much for her to know.
“Okay, this is the way it went. “Nessa, that’s my grandmother, she was gonna raise me just right. After my mom died. Not let me fall in with the wrong crowd. Except for one thing.”
He sipped the beer, deliberately. Two beers a day, his way of showing it couldn’t conquer him the way it did Nessa.
“She drank most of the day, was passed out after lunch. So I pretty much was on my own. You have to do these reports for the state, saying what you’ve learned. I even did those myself. Made up most of it.”
“Huh,” Mia said, fascinated, trying not to let it show.
“Weird. I know. I can see that now. For two whole years I didn’t read anything except World War II books. One year I studied polar expeditions. You know, the guys up there dragging sledges over the ice? Ask me about Perry and Shackleton. Go ahead. I did the Amazon explorers, too. Blue Nile and all that.”
He shook his head, gave a half laugh. Mia touched his hand. He smiled.
“As long as there were books, Nessa figured I was learning something.”
“So what were your days like? I mean, your routine?”
