Eve's Men

by Newton Thornburg

  “We’ve got to go to him,” she kept saying. “We can’t leave him alone up there. He can’t deal with it, Charley, I know him. He’s going to dive off the boat and not bother to come up.”

  But Chester would not allow anyone else to go up. Producing the gun Brian had given him before rowing to the Nomad, he had taken charge, telling them all what to do, which essentially was nothing.

  “If anyone’s goin’ up top and talkin’ to the man, it’s gonna be me. We the ones who blew the goddamn boat, and I’m the one with this li’l goddamn peashooter,” as he called the .25 automatic, which appeared perfect for his tiny hand.

  Beaver meanwhile was going at the champagne as if it were water, this on top of another lung-rattling snort of cocaine. Bitterly, he lamented that he had ever been fool enough to get involved with “a fanatic and a psycho,” a word choice that brought Chester to his feet, in fact up onto his toes, with his chest puffed out and his mouth in a snarl as he yanked Beaver off his stool and began to shove him about the salon, berating him every step of the way.

  “Jest who you callin’ psycho, you candy-ass motherfucker? If you done yer job right, we’d of knowed who was in that goddamn boat, and nobody’d be dead now. And Brian wouldn’t be layin’ up there stewin’ like he is—you hear me?”

  He finished by shoving Beaver down into the pilot’s seat and telling him to watch his mouth from then on if he knew what was good for him. With that settled, Chester began to pick at another sore.

  “And jest who the fuck Brian Poole think he is anyway? Too big and important to even talk with a guy? I put my ass on the line fer him today, and this is how he pays me back, huh, like I’m some dumb shitkicker or somethin’, not worth his precious time? Well, lemme tell ya, this shitkicker has jest about had it. And that’s a fack.”

  For consolation, he returned to the television set, again flipping compulsively from one channel to another, as if he had to hear the story many times before he could get it straight in his head, exactly what it was he had done. There was film of the Nomad during some sort of yachting festival in San Francisco: Stekko and his wife and crew looking spiffy in blue and white, accepting an award of some kind, while in the background, under an airbrushed halo of light, was the smiling face of the victim, a dark young man in a servant’s uniform. And there were interviews of the San Juan County sheriff and of a dockhand at the resort who had seen a new white yacht, a forty-footer, lying offshore in the early evening and running without lights later on, after the explosion.

  “She acted kinda peculiar to me,” the dockhand said. “Usually they just come in and tie up, or move on. But not that one.”

  The newsman said that the Coast Guard was already checking boats of that description throughout the San Juans.

  Meanwhile, Chester had found a bottle of tequila in the liquor cabinet and was tipping it up to his lipless mouth with breathtaking regularity. This whole thing wasn’t any fault of his, he said. If Brian hadn’t ruined his baby sister’s life and tricked him into taking a shot at that “fag movie director,” he would have been home on his ranch at that very minute, snug as a bug in a rug. Yet here he was now, wanted by the police and FBI and “Jesus knows who else” for crimes he never would have committed if it hadn’t been for Brian Poole.

  “Goddamn his ass, it’s all his fault,” he mourned. “I only went along cuz I figured he was real people, you know? But he ain’t. He’s jest some damn celeberty, that’s all. Ain’t got no time for common folk, no sir, So the only one I’m lookin out for now is old number one, that’s who. Me, myself, and I.”

  He asked Beaver if it might not be a good idea to go ashore and hole up on the island somewhere, and Beaver told him that he was free to do whatever he wanted. As for himself, things were different now, Beaver said. There was no sense trying to take the boat back into Lake Union. Instead he was going to stop in Everett for fuel and leave the thing right there at the gas pumps and take a cab on down to Seattle.

  “Let the fucking bank go looking for it. It’s theirs now anyway, not mine. And I gotta talk to my lawyer. I was the patsy in all this, you know.”

  “The hell you was,” Chester scoffed. “You’re a growed man. You knowed what you was gittin’ into, same as me.”

  “Well, it hardly matters now,” Beaver said. “Only important thing as far as I can see is to get some sleep.” To that end, he got out some Quaaludes and washed them down with more champagne. He even offered some to Chester, telling him that he would be wise to relax and get some sleep himself. “We can’t do anything till morning,” he said.

  Though the little cowboy grumbled, he took the pills.

  In time, when Chester and Beaver began to nod off, Eve kissed Charley on the cheek and got up.

  “I’m going up there, Charley,” she said. “I have to be with him.”

  Charley nodded agreement. “Sure,” he said, and was about to say more, but she was already on her way, taking a blanket with her. Knowing it was misty outside, he got a yellow slicker out of the closet and followed her, climbing only high enough on the ladder to hand it to her. Then he went back into the cabin, again sitting down on the couch. And over the next hour Charley could almost feel his life draining away, like a man with a leaking bag of gold dust. Though he knew Eve was only doing what was right—what she had to do—he couldn’t control his feelings of loss and dread. The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that the woman he loved had gone to be with the man she loved. And it hurt. It hurt more than he would have believed possible. His split scalp and bruised ribs seemed like pinpricks compared to what he was feeling now.

  During the rest of that night, he checked on them twice, quietly climbing the ladder and peering over the edge of the bridge, just to see if they were all right, he told himself. The first time they were sitting on the floor, at the front corner, barely visible in the cloudcover light. Eve had covered them with the blanket and slicker and was holding Brian like a child as he snuggled down against her breasts. She was talking to him, but so softly Charley could not hear what she was saying.

  The second time, hours later, he found them stretched out on the bridge floor, apparently asleep, only now with Eve lying in Brian’s arms. Charley then had made his way back down the ladder as quietly as he could, feeling oddly weak. He figured he had already lost the life he had in Illinois, such as it was, and now he had lost this new one too, this still-amorphous, but somehow shining, beautiful new life he was to have had with Eve. And it bewildered him. He couldn’t imagine how he could have been so sublimely stupid, so monumentally self-delusional, as to think that such a stunning, marvelous young woman would prefer him, a glorified carpenter, over his dashing if slightly wacko younger brother; and especially now, with Brian all gussied up, virtually transfigured, in the glad rags of romantic tragedy.

  Back in the cabin, Charley grimly surveyed his companions for the night: Beaver drunk and asleep, slumped over the wheel, resting his fringed head on his hands, and Chester snoring in front of the TV, spread-eagled in an armchair, the gun resting on his flat gut. Looking at them, Charley figured that the least he could do was put an end to it all, the whole, long, improbable mess.

  Not even trying to be deft, he picked the gun off Chester’s belly and the little man reacted as he’d been impaled by an electric cattle prod, practically jumping straight up from the chair, his arms flailing. The gun was so small Charley had only palmed it at that point, so that was how he hit him with it, a cold-steel hand slap, knocking him to the floor.

  Across the salon, Beaver looked up to see what had happened. Charley beckoned to him with the gun.

  “Get your duct tape and come over here,” he said.

  Beaver did as he was told. Charley had him tape Chester’s feet together and his hands behind his back. Then he prodded Beaver back to the helm.

  “I want you to radio the Coast Guard and give them our location,” he said. “Then give the mike to me.”

  Beaver had the look of a man wetting himsel
f. “You sure about this, Charley?” he asked.

  Charley smiled. “Damn sure, Chris.”

  Waiting for the Coast Guard to find them, Charley wanted to make sure he stayed awake. Instead of stretching out on the couch, he arranged the cushions at one end so he could just rest there, propped up, able to keep an eye on Chester and Beaver, who himself was now securely duct-taped, even over the mouth, for he had objected vehemently to the whole idea.

  Charley had tried to explain as much as he could to the Coast Guard, but he sensed that it was too complicated for the man on the other end of the line, or airwave, so he’d simplified.

  “There are good guys and bad guys aboard. The bad guys are all incapacitated—out of action—so don’t arrive with guns blazing.”

  “Copy that,” the man had said.

  So Charley waited now, fighting sleep, mourning his loss and cursing his foolishness. The one thing that didn’t bother him much was the situation at home, the certain breakup of his marriage. He’d lain awake more than a few nights these past years wondering just how it was that love died and whose fault it was, his or Donna’s or just the times, the infinity of possibilities open to the successful American. Whatever, at least now there would be no argument. It would be his fault entirely.

  Picking at his wounds, old and new, he eventually dozed off, for how long he had no idea. And when he began to wake, he discovered that a cold, damp body was snuggling against him, burrowing into his arms while trying to pull a blanket around them at the same time.

  “It’s only me, darling,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m sopping. It’s so foggy out there you can barely see your nose.”

  Charley was befuddled. “Eve?” he said.

  She smiled and kissed him. “Yes, Eve. Remember me?”

  “I thought you and—” He stopped there, beginning to suspect now that he had been even a greater fool than he had thought.

  “I did what I could,” she said. “I held him and talked to him, almost like he was my child, you know? And I think he’s going to be all right. He’s sleeping now. And it’s beginning to get light, at least the fog is.”

  “You’re shaking,” he said.

  “I know, I know. I need some dry clothing. Where’s Terry?”

  “Asleep up front.”

  “Did you duct tape her too?”

  Charley smiled. “No, just Curly and Moe there. I’ve radioed the Coast Guard. They should be here soon.”

  “You’ve been busy.”

  “I was lonely.”

  She gave him a look of mock pity. “Poor fellow. Listen, I’m going to see what Terry has, maybe a pair of sweats.”

  As she started to get up, Charley suddenly found himself and pulled her back down, hugging and kissing her as if she had just emerged alive from a cataclysm, something on the order of the Nomad’s last seconds.

  “Jesus, girl!” he said. “Jesus Christ Almighty but I do love you!”

  When she caught her breath, Eve laughed and smiled. “Well, I love you too, Charley. You hadn’t forgotten that, had you?”

  He nodded sheepishly. “Maybe for a minute or two.”

  “Idiot,” she said.

  A half hour later Eve was down in the bow cabin, talking earnestly with Terry, probably repeating the same things Charley had told the girl a short time before, reassuring her, telling her that the Coast Guard would be coming soon and that it would be all right, because he and Eve were going to help her all they could. They would explain to the authorities that she had no part in blowing up the Nomad.

  Charley used the head, gargled some mouthwash, then went out onto the stern deck after first picking his way past Beaver and Chester, still duct-taped, occasionally squirming violently. Unconsciously holding his breath, Charley went part way up the ladder and surveyed the bridge, breathing again only when he saw Brian stretched out on the rear bench seat under the yellow slicker. His face and hair glistened with moisture, and though his eyes were closed, Charley suspected that he was not really asleep, just faking it in order not to have to talk. Whichever, Charley was content to live with the silence. Coming back down the ladder, he looked around him at the cove still slowly coming out of darkness, its surface steaming in the cold air. Tatters of fog drifted over the beach and hung in the trees, and in a high, dead fir a lone bald eagle was perched on a barren limb as if it had been keeping watch over the cove through the night. Even as Charley was squinting up at the bird through the mist, he heard the sound of a diesel engine, far off still, but growing steadily louder.

  Just then Eve came out onto the deck, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt now, holding a blanket around her shoulders. She too quickly checked out the bridge, then came back down.

  “Thank God,” she whispered. “He’s still asleep.”

  “Not for long, though,” Charley said. “Hear that?” At her look of panic, he took her in his arms. “Come on, you knew they were coming. It’s going to be all right.”

  “If you say so.” Shivering even with the blanket wrapped around her, Eve turned in his arms so she too could watch the mouth of the cove, where the sound of the diesel was coming from, clearer now.

  “I don’t like the way it sounds,” she said. “It’s so … brutal.”

  “That’s how a diesel sounds. Remember, we’ve got a couple of them right under us.”

  “Well, I still don’t like them.”

  Just then the boat came out of the mist, about the size of the Seagal, all white except for the broad red stripe of the Coast Guard slashed across its bow. Eve reflexively dug her fingers into Charley’s arm.

  “Oh God!” she cried. “I don’t like this at all.”

  Charley made no response, his attention now locked on the patrol boat as it slowed into the cove and began a circular route that took it between the Seagal and the two smaller cruisers. Her engines cut to an idle and the boat virtually stopped dead in the water. Charley could see an officer in the pilot house studying him and Eve through a pair of binoculars.

  “We should signal to them,” Charley said, raising his arm and waving.

  At that same moment, on the low-slung stern of the boat, a crewman pointed at the Seagal’s bridge. And Charley, turning, saw that Brian was on his feet now, calmly observing the patrol boat.

  “Well, I guess this is it,” Charley said to him.

  Smiling slightly, Brian looked down and nodded. Then, turning away from the Coast Guard boat, he stepped up onto the side of the bridge and dove into the water a dozen feet below. Eve dropped her blanket and hurried across the deck.

  “No, Brian!” she cried. “No! Don’t!”

  Immediately the engines of the Coast Guard boat revved and the craft started forward, heading around the Seagal. Charley followed Eve to the opposite railing as the patrol boat thundered into view again, moving slowly still, its pilot obviously taking care not to run over the swimmer. Two of the crew had gone forward on the bow, one to watch out for their quarry while the other readied a life raft to throw overboard. But Brian swam on, heading for the mouth of the cove, as if he planned on swimming out across the entire Sound.

  The Coast Guard had other ideas, however. Moving in close, they forced him to work against the wash of the boat, which was considerable. At the same time, one of the crewmen eased the doughnutlike raft into the water and slipped down into it, extending a boat hook out to the swimmer in the apparent expectation that he would give up and take hold, let himself be pulled to safety. But Brian didn’t reach for the hook, nor did he seem at all bothered by the boat’s wash or by whatever it was the officer was shouting at him through the bullhorn. He simply went on swimming, and the patrol boat patiently plowed along next to him, until they were both out of the cove and heading into the Sound.

  Eve had wrapped herself in the blanket again and was leaning back against Charley, trembling in the circle of his arms. He could tell by her breathing that she was trying hard not to cry. For himself, he felt angry more than anything else, reflecting that even now, at the very end o
f his tether, his brother had to put on a show, do it his way.

  Finally, though, just as Brian and the Coast Guard boat had begun to fade into the mist, Charley saw him reach up and take hold of the boat hook. Quickly then he was pulled aboard, first into the raft, then into the boat itself.

  Eve shivered violently. “Oh, thank God! Thank God! I was afraid he’d just dive under and disappear!”

  “Me too,” Charley said, though long experience had taught him that Brian loved life—and himself—far too much to choose death over surrender.

  As the patrol boat headed back towards them, Eve turned in Charley’s arms. “Hold me tight,” she said. “And don’t ever let go, okay?”

  “Never?”

  “Never.”

  Charley’s arms tightened around her. “You’ve got it,” he said.

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