Long Voyage Back

by Luke Rhinehart

  shall we say, ride frailer vessels?'

  Jeanne glanced over at Lisa.

  `Daddy means he can be a makeout artist,' she explained to her mother. Jeanne laughed for the first time that day.

  `Thank you, sweetheart,' she said.

  `Mommy?' said Skippy.

  `Yes, dear?'

  Ìf there's going to be a war I think we should eat all the cookies now.'

  And this time they all laughed.

  But when Bob left to return to the Pentagon twenty minutes later Jeanne wasn't laughing. He called her over to him and took her in his arms and said simply, 'I love you.' It was years since he had used those words, their separations being marked by parting comments such as 'Where did you leave the keys to the Rabbitt?' or 'I hope you left the refrigerator well-stocked.' But that evening, just when she felt herself most alienated from him and their lives together, he said 'I love you.'

  She looked across at him, her large dark eyes widening in both surprise and attention. '

  All right,' was all she could say.

  `Go down to Point Lookout tonight,' he went on. 'Get on the boat. Forget the mess the world's in.'

  Again at first she could only stare at him. 'You come too,'

  she said impulsively, feeling fear flooding through her. Ì've got my job,' he said.

  `Leave it,' she countered desperately.

  He smiled softly, a tinge of sadness in it. 'I like my job,' he replied. And she felt the wall rise between them again. As he started to turn, though, she grasped his arm and held it. `You're a good man,' she said.

  `Really?' he said, with that same half-sad smile.

  They looked at each other and for the first time she saw

  that he was afraid too. Then she saw the emotion click off

  and the computer come back on. He frowned.

  `Did you remember to get some frozen dinners into the freezer?' he asked.

  `Yes,' she answered.

  `Good,' he said, pecked her cheek, and was gone.

  With Vagabond becalmed, Neil finally got Jim to put the seven horsepower outboard on the inflatable dinghy to tow the trimaran into the docks of Tangier Island. Earlier, even after the wind had fallen to mere puffs in the late afternoon, they'd been able to ride the incoming tide northwards towards Crisfield. But as the sun set and the tide was about to turn against them they were still almost fifteen miles short. Being only a mile off the little village of Tangier and needing to let Frank know what had happened to them, he had Vagabond towed in with the dinghy.

  He moored her at the end of the fuelling dock, which was closed for the night. With her three white hulls gleaming under the glow of the dock lights, the strange fifty-foot trimaran lay among the old fishing boats and conventional stinkpots like a futuristic fighter plane among World War II relics. But towing her in was a joke; like pulling a space satellite with a tricycle.

  While Jim secured and adjusted the spring lines and fenders Neil went into his aft cabin to change his clothes for going ashore. He was tired now, the dull fatigue of trying for six hours to nurse a sailing vessel towards her goal in winds that sometimes wouldn't ruffle a feather on a flea. He poured himself a shot of brandy from the bottle he kept in his cabin and switched on the short wave radio. After he had pulled off his blue jean cut-offs, he stood naked for a moment trying to tune into the BBC frequency. He finally located it and, after pulling on a pair of trousers, sat back on his bunk with the brandy and listened. The cultured English announcer reported .with the usual stylized indifference that a fleet of

  thirty private boats had left England for Ireland or the Azores, that international flights out of the country were booked solid, with near hysteria at Heathrow. The exodus because of the war scare was stirring up a national outcry and debate. One MP labelled those fleeing as 'no better than rats fleeing a sinking ship', an analogy that made Neil smile sardonically: 'sinking ship' was a devastating allusion to Great Britain on the eve of a possible nuclear war.

  When the BBC announcer began to discuss more parochial local events, Neil turned the set off.

  He was tired and he was depressed, a combination he knew from experience often went together. He felt a restless need for a woman, a feeling he knew was often associated with low-level anxiety. It was the world scene, of course, but also the fact that in a few hours Frank would be joining them and Neil would lose his freedom. He always resented it at first when an owner rejoined a boat that he'd been living aboard as captain and king. The owner inevitably liked to run the ship differently, and he hated to relinquish the control which was his when he was sailing with just crew. Frank was just about the only owner he'd sailed with who consistently shared Neil's exhilaration at the gruelling joys of ocean passages. Frank genuinely loved sailing, loved being out on the water, and wasn't aboard simply to impress clients or make a few women, but Neil was still a little depressed at his coming.

  Jim interrupted his gloom by shouting down the hatchway that he was going to change and spruce up. Neil stood and searched for a clean sportshirt. Jim might be a sailor like his father, but this trip north had been too easy a passage to be a true test. In the last four hours of their crawling with the tide, Jim had given up on the sailing and spent the time with his guitar and cassette player. Well, that was cool. He himself had read half a novel. Glancing at his watch he saw that it was nine-ten. He quickly switched on the short wave radio again and tried

  tuning it to a radio ham operator he'd discovered on the trip north who broadcast sometimes at nine. After the news from the BBC, listening to a farmer from East Tennessee might be a welcome relief. Soon he had located the farmer's gruff voice, speaking as usual in a casual folksy monologue as if he were chatting with neighbours around a hot wood stove in mid-winter:

  `. . . not everyone so happy. Mel Hutchins says the rain we got last night was too much for his spring rye and not enough for his tomatoes. 'Course, Mel wouldn't be satisfied unless God rearranged the whole upper atmosphere every day to re-route the right weather patterns over each one of Mel's seventy acres. Last time I known Mel to praise the weather was when the remains of a hurricane struck here one October after he'd harvested everything, but Jack Pillitson had half his crops still in the ground. Mel and Jack don't get along too well and Mel said the hurricane rains showed good timing. Ìt's getting towards sign-off time. I sure hope the Russians stop their messing around over there in Arabia. Izzy Klein says people thinking there may be a war cleaned out half his A & P this morning - and that was before he opened. Just joking, friends. He did say it appeared that everyone in town seemed to be expecting guests this weekend and had to stock up on triple the normal amount of food. Well, for me, if I thought there was going to be a war you wouldn't catch me buying canned baked beans, and you wouldn't catch me sitting in a fallout shelter next to anyone who'd just stocked up on 'em. That's sure enough not the way I want to go. But I don't expect to die for awhile yet so I'll be talking to you again on Sunday. This is Charlie Wittner signing off.'

  When the radio became silent, Neil smiled and stood up. At least there was one man who was showing no panic.

  Up on deck, under the star-studded sky, Jim was waiting for him, dressed like Neil in jeans, sportshirt and boatshoes. Jim hadn't shaved since they'd left Fort Lauderdale, and his

  slight beard, longish hair - salt-and sun-streaked - and bronzed skin tone gave him precisely the salty air he probably was trying to achieve. He looked as pleasantly excited as he had when they'd entered the Chesapeake sixteen hours earlier. The only bar in Tangier was a fishermen's hangout rather than a tourist place, so there were no fishing nets on the walls or stuffed fish, but instead dart boards, electronic games, pool tables and a television set. There were half a dozen men sitting at the bar and two old men playing chess at a table. Neil led Jim to a booth next to the bar where through their window they could see Vagabond's masts and cabin top above the docks and pilings.

  `Where you fellas in from?' a large bearded man with a pot belly asked them f
rom his seat at the bar.

  'Fort Lauderdale, Florida,' Jim answered proudly. 'We made it in five and a half days.'

  `That's pretty good,' the bearded man replied promptly. `That must be one helluva powerful dinghy engine.'

  While Jim looked startled and uncertain, Neil and the men along the bar all burst out laughing. Jim, realizing they'd seen Vagabond's entrance, soon joined in. Ònce or twice we cheated and used sails,' Neil said, and remembered he had to phone to get a message to Frank. `Don't blame you,' said the man.

  Neil stood up and went to the bar to order two beers and then went on to the payphone. The wife of the marina owner answered and Neil explained to her the situation and told her to tell Frank to take the ferry to Tangier. When he returned to his table he was glad the television set wasn't on to remind Jim of the outside world.

  `Well, mate,' he said to Jim after he'd taken a long swallow of beer. 'I'd say we'd made a damn good passage, even if we did fall a little short.'

  `Vagabond's a great boat, isn't she?' Jim said.

  `She even tows well,' Neil replied with a smile.

  Ì like crewing for you,' Jim went on. 'It's a lot better when there are only two of us. With Dad and his friends I feel like a passenger. I never get to do anything. But being alone at the helm, especially at night, or when she's surfing down a big swell ...' He stopped, smiling, flushed with the pleasure of the memory. 'Anyway, I really enjoyed your putting me to work.'

  Ì wish all my crew would say that,' Neil commented, smiling.

  `Blast 'em, I say. Hit 'em first,' came a voice from the bar. `You tell 'em, Charlie,' another voice countered. 'And don't forget to duck.'

  `Hey, my friend,' Neil said to the large man at the end of the bar, hoping to change the subject. 'Are there any women on this island?'

  Òh, yes, there's women all right.'

  `You keep them locked up?'

  `Don't have to,' the bearded man replied. 'We keep 'em so

  tired from screwin' they ain't got no energy to go out.' Laughter tumbled along the length of the bar.

  `Must be all the oysters you fellas eat,' Neil commented. Èat oysters?' the bearded man exclaimed, grinning. 'Shit,

  we Bay men can't afford to eat oysters. Too expensive.' A few men laughed.

  `Still,' said Neil, 'it's too bad you don't have a few women in especially good shape to greet tired sailors returning after a long stint at sea.'

  `We got two or three ladies like that,' a little man next to the bearded man said. 'But they always get themselves laid by tourists in speedboats from the eastern shore, men who tell

  'em they're all pooped from motoring 'cross the bay.'

  The quick burst of laughter at this remark made Neil think it was an allusion to some women they all knew. He finished his beer and went to the bar to order two more. As he was standing there, a pudgy woman came in and complained to the bartender that 'The TV don't work.'

  Could he fix it? After handing Neil two bottles of beer and his change the bartender followed her through a doorway into what were probably living quarters.

  `See what we mean?' the little man at the bar said, turning to grin at Neil. '01' Jake's going back there now to give her a quick one. That TV business is all a front.'

  But Jake returned almost immediately with a frown on his face. He went to the television set raised up behind the bar and turned it on. Neil and the others along the bar were all watching him. The screen remained dark for a few seconds, but the voice of the face that emerged on the screen began intoning immediately in a tense, hurried voice:

  . I repeat, this is not a test, this is not a test. The Emergency Broadcasting System announces a national war alert. All precautionary measures should be taken immediately to prepare for the possibility of an enemy attack. This is not a test. Civil Defence workers are to report immediately to their assigned posts. Police, Fire and Emergency Medical personnel on standby for national war alert should also report to their assigned posts. I repeat, this is not a test, this is not a test. The Emergency Broadcasting System announces a national war alert. All precautionary . .

  It was only when he became aware that the announcer was going to say nothing new that Neil became conscious of himself standing next to his table, still holding his beer bottle, his mouth open in stunned bewilderment. As the bartender lowered the volume and began switching channels and Neil could see that all the operating channels had the same announcer, he became aware of the total silence in the room. Finally someone at the bar spoke:

  Òh, good Jesus,' a tired voice said. Now, wha t the fuck are the silly bastards trying to prove?'

  Then the television picture disappeared, the lights in the bar went out, and the whole room was in total blackness.

  Frank flung his lanky body back and forth across the end of the ferry dock at Crisfield with an impatience unusual even for him. Everything was running late. Traffic had been so bad going out to La Guardia that afternoon that the twenty-five minute drive had taken over an hour, and he'd arrived ten minutes after his plane had supposedly left. But La Guardia was a madhouse and his plane had been delayed forty minutes so he'd made it. Then it was delayed another half-hour on the runway awaiting takeoff, the long line of taxiing planes reminding him of sailors outside a Bangkok whorehouse. So he'd arrived in Salisbury almost an hour late, taken an agonizing thirty minutes to rent a car and finally made it to Crisfield after nine o'clock in the evening. And no Vagabond. When he'd inquired at the marina it had taken Frank so long to find someone with a message from Neil that he figured he'd missed the last ferry to Tangier Island. The damn woman said only that Neil was becalmed at Tangier and to take the ferry. But there was now a light breeze blowing; would Neil try to sail on to Crisfield?

  Then it turned out he hadn't missed the last ferry because the last ferry hadn't even returned from Tangier. So he was pacing back and forth across the dock, a half-dozen locals sitting on the waiting benches staring at him as if he were a performing acrobat. He didn't care. He had the new propeller shaft; he had his fishing gear and swimsuits and scuba equipment; and he was impatient to be out on the bay. The smell of the salt water and of dead fish had even eased his annoyance at first, such a stab of joy did it give him after nothing but the smells of Manhattan for three months, and the insane hysteria of the streets and airports of civilization.

  Finally the lights of the tiny ferry appeared in the distance. Frank placed himself at the edge of the dock, leaning, -as if he were a magnet capable of drawing the stupid thing in faster. The local fishermen and their families simply sat there smoking and joking and generally behaving with a calm that drove Frank crazy - until he'd been aboard Vagabond for a few days and began to re-create it for himself. The ferry was a big launch with a long deckhouse roof and six or seven benches that would probably seat forty people during the height of the tourist season. There were only four people coming off the island.

  Some of the locals came up as the boat approached the dock and took the two mooring lines. A skinny little man was at the wheel and a young kid put out the fenders. When the launch was secured, the little man came out of the wheelhouse, puffing on a pipe. After Frank had walked back to where he had set his dufflebags and then transferred himself and his stuff on to the ferry, the captain helped a woman he apparently knew to climb on board.

  `You folks heah about the woah?' he asked her and the two men with her.

  'What war is that, Cap?' one of the men boarding asked in return. Ì don't know as whether they've-named it yet,' he answered, a quizzical frown on his round face. 'But it's another one of our woahs.'

  `What do you mean?' the woman asked nervously, seating herself next to Frank on a middle bench.

  `My radio says theahs going to be a woah. With the Russians.'

  Òh, that,' said Frank, feeling the tension that the captain's vague statements had created beginning to lessen.

  "When'd you hear this?' another man asked.

  `Five minutes ago, I'd guess,' the captain said. 'Made it
seem pretty important. National emergency or something. Like an air raid wahning.'

  Àir raid warning for where?' Frank asked irritably. `Well, I guess for just about the whole country,' the little man replied.

  `What are you going to do about it, Cap?' the first man asked.

  `Not much I can do till I finish this last ferry trip,' he said, motioning to the young kid to free the mooring lines.

  `Has anyone been killed yet?' the woman asked.

  `Not that they mentioned,' the captain replied as he went through to the wheelhouse. He turned back to them halfway to the wheel. 'They just kep' saying emergency,' he concluded.

  The forty-five foot ferry swung out of the dock area and began its hour and a half trip through the darkness to Tangier. Frank leaned back on the bench, hugging his right knee for balance, and sensed the anxiety rising within him. It was one thing to have a war scare but quite another to declare some sort of national emergency so that people began telling their neighbours there was a war.

  He stared unseeingly off to his right and began to consider the effect an escalation of the panic might have on his business fortunes when something caught his attention. There was a strange increasing glow across the bay like the lights of a huge city being slowly turned on. It didn't seem to him to be a fire; the light was too diffuse, too much just a glow. Unless it were a long way off.

  `What's that?' the woman next to him asked the man on her other side. Along with the seven or eight other passengers Frank watched in fascination as the light, like the slowly rising head of a deadly cobra, gradually rose with increasing intensity. He felt a stab of horror and stood up.

  `Looks like a fire,' someone said.

  Frank pushed past the knees of the two people next to him and strode forward to the wheelhouse.

  `What's our heading?' he asked the little captain in the dimly lit wheelhouse.

  `Heading?' the little man asked, squinting up at him.

  Frank looked at the compass binnacle lit with a soft reddish light. Their course was southwest. The glow then was to the northwest, perhaps a little north of northwest. He tried to visualize the map of the Chesapeake which he'd been studying the day before, then looked back at the spreading and intensifying glow.