A Stolen Season

by Steve Hamilton

  “Stop! Turn around!”

  It didn’t. The boat was still just a dark shape in the water, and from where we were standing we could barely tell how big it was. But one thing was certain. The realization probably hit all three of us at exactly the same time. We were about to witness something truly horrible.

  I didn’t just hear the impact. I felt it in my stomach. It was the long wrenching scrape of the boat’s hull against the wooden pilings, far worse than nails on a blackboard. It all happened within two seconds. Before I could even draw another breath the boat had stopped dead. The engine was still churning at the water.

  “We need to get out there,” Tyler said. He was already moving.

  “Your boat…”

  “It’s on land. I’ll get Phil’s.” He was heading toward his next-door neighbor’s house. “Call 911! Tell them to send an ambulance and to relay to the Coast Guard.”

  Leon pulled a cell phone out of his back pocket and started dialing. As he spoke to the dispatcher, I went down to the dock and looked out at the wreck. It was maybe two hundred yards out. I had no idea how deep the water was. I was wondering if I should dive in, but decided against it. If Tyler could get a boat running, I’d be a lot more helpful riding along with him.

  “I’m calling from Brimley,” I heard Leon say into his phone. “Lakeside Loop, right by where the old bridge went out to the point…No, I have no idea…No, we can’t see anybody. It’s too foggy. Yes, we’re gonna try that…Tyler Barnes is here. He’s Coast Guard Auxiliary.”

  Tyler came running back down the yard, heading to the dock next to his. Leon was right behind him. By the time I got over there, they already had the boat uncovered and untied.

  “Should I go grab the other guys?” Leon said.

  “Don’t worry about them,” Tyler said. “We’ve got to get out there fast.”

  “Get in,” I said. It was a runabout, maybe twenty feet long. “I’ll push off.”

  Leon jumped into the boat. I gave it a good shove and tried to hop in over the bow. I almost made it, had to hold on tight as one leg went into the water. God, it was cold. I pulled myself up and slid in around the windshield.

  “Come on,” Tyler said as he turned the key. The engine clicked but didn’t turn over. “Come on, you son of a bitch.”

  “Where’s your neighbor?” Leon said. “Can he start this thing?”

  “He’s not home,” Tyler said. “Good thing I know where he hangs his keys.”

  He tried to start it again. Click, click, click. Then nothing.

  “Start, you stupid piece of shit. Turn the hell over.”

  “Tyler, those men are probably drowning out there,” I said. “We may have to swim for it.”

  “Hold on,” he said. “Just hold on.”

  He turned the key again and the engine finally roared to life.

  “All right, you pig. Let’s move.”

  As he pushed the throttle forward, the boat jumped like a startled horse and nearly threw us all overboard.

  “Hang on,” he said. “Let’s go see what we can do for these guys. What the hell they were doing out there…God, did you see how fast they were going?”

  “Be careful,” Leon said. “Don’t run into those things yourself.”

  “I know where I’m going. Don’t worry.”

  It only took us a few seconds to get out to the boat. As we got closer we could hear the whine of their engine. The propeller was still spinning hard.

  “We’ve gotta kill that engine,” Tyler said. “That’s the first thing. Here, Leon. Take this.”

  He gave Leon a flashlight. For the first few seconds, the beam did nothing more than reflect in the fog, but as we pulled up to the boat we got our first good look at the damage.

  “Holy shit,” Tyler said. “Look at that thing.”

  It was a wooden boat, one of those antique Chris-Crafts. At least twenty-five feet, with that rich polished look you see on the real showpieces. These were the boats they take down to the big Antique Wooden Boat Show in Hessel every summer. Although if this was really one of them, its show days were over. The hull was completely obliterated, with raw wooden planks sticking out in all directions.

  The thing was probably worth eighty, maybe a hundred thousand dollars before the wreck. Maybe more. Now it was kindling.

  “Do you see anybody yet?” Tyler slowed us down to a crawl.

  “Not yet,” Leon said. In the meager light we could make out a canvas top, but it had collapsed. Now it was like a tarp covering the whole cabin.

  “This might not be good,” Tyler said. The understatement of the year. I could only imagine what the sudden deceleration had done to whoever was inside this thing. The boat had stopped in an instant, but their bodies would have kept going. And even then, when their bones stopped…Their skulls…What was inside would still be moving. At that moment, I wouldn’t have given fifty cents for their chances of staying alive.

  “I’ll pull up close,” Tyler said. “We have to be careful of that engine, though.”

  I could see what he meant. The whole boat seemed to be shuddering, as the propeller kept trying in vain to move the whole thing forward.

  “Let’s get this top off,” Leon said. He was toward the back end of the boat now. I was closer to the front, but the boat was taking on water fast, going down nose first. I had to reach down to grab the canvas. Together we each grabbed on and pulled.

  “What the goddamned fuck!” a voice said from inside the boat. “What happened?”

  Leon and I nodded at each other. We pulled harder on the canvas top. It was heavier than hell, but we were finally able to lift it just enough to see inside.

  There were three men in the boat, all of them looking like they’d been thrown forward from where they had been sitting. The one closest to me was lying facedown on the floor, his head in the rising water.

  “Grab that guy!” Tyler said. “Get his head out of the water!”

  I jumped into the boat and grabbed him. He was big, and the fact that I was standing in a sinking boat now didn’t make things any easier.

  “Let go of me!” he said. “Just leave me alone!”

  He knocked my arms away and went back down. With a great heave he threw up everything in his stomach, all over the place. There were beer bottles floating in the water, boat cushions, a fishing pole. And now a few pints of vomit for good measure, spreading all around the boat like an oil spill.

  “Cut that engine!” Tyler said.

  “I can’t get to the controls,” Leon said. “This guy’s out.” He was trying to work his way around the man at the steering wheel. I could see blood on the man’s forehead.

  “We shouldn’t be moving him,” Tyler said. “But I don’t think we have much choice.”

  “Let me just get this thing turned off,” Leon said. He tried lifting the man with one arm and reaching for the ignition with the other. He took a small step to shift the man’s weight, and that’s when everything went crazy. Leon lost his grip and the man fell back onto the throttle, pushing it forward and just about sending us all into outer space. As I fell backward, I saw Tyler jumping into the boat like some sort of long-haired pirate. I heard the wooden hull giving way as the motor drove us against the pilings, felt the cold shock of the water on my back. The only question was how many of us would go down with the boat, or whether the propeller itself would break free and start slicing into human flesh.

  I tried to pull myself up, but the big man was trying to do the same and fell right in my lap. Leon was wrestling with his own man, trying to get to the controls. The third man was on his knees now, holding his head like a fighter taking a long eight count.

  “Tyler!” I yelled. “Tyler, cut the engine!”

  He climbed over everybody and fell forward, stretching out toward the front of the boat. He reached for the ignition key.

  The engine kept churning at the water. The noise was louder than anything else in the world.

  Then finally it stopped.
/>   In the sudden silence, I could hear every man breathing. The big man groaned, like he’d be throwing up again any second.

  “Is everybody all right?” I said.

  “This guy’s out,” Leon said, his fingers on the driver’s neck. “But he’s alive.”

  “These other guys…,” Tyler said. He sat up slowly, holding his shoulder. “I can’t believe they’re not out, too. Maybe the boat wasn’t going as fast as it looked.”

  “Or maybe we’re a lot tougher than you think,” the man on his knees said. He pulled himself up and sat down slowly on the front bench. “Who are you, anyway? What the hell is going on?”

  “Come on,” Tyler said. “We’ll get you to shore.”

  “Did you hit us?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Did you hit us with your boat? Is that what happened?”

  If I could have reached him, I would have smacked him right in the face. “You hit some old bridge pilings. Now shut up and get in the other boat.”

  But when I looked out, I saw Tyler’s boat drifting away from us. It had to be fifty feet away by now.

  “I got it,” he said. In one smooth motion he was back over the side of the boat, swimming with his head out of the freezing water. Hippie, musician, whatever he was—he was handling everything like a pro. If I had any doubts about him being in the Coast Guard Auxiliary, they were long gone.

  “You guys hit us,” the man said again. In the dim light I could see he was in his midthirties, maybe. He was wearing a leather bomber jacket. His hair was slicked back on his head, making him look like a drowned rat. The water was up to his waist now, the whole boat going under an inch at a time. “Goddamn, that’s cold.”

  “Cap, what are we going to do?” It was the big man. He was apparently done puking.

  “They ruined the boat, man. Look at this thing.”

  “We ruined the boat,” the big man said. “Didn’t you see those things in the water? We ran right into them.”

  The man named Cap kept holding onto his head like he had the world’s worst hangover. “I can’t even see straight. God, that hurts.”

  “What about Harry?”

  “What about him?”

  “Oh my God, look at him.”

  “Holy shit,” Cap said. “Harry!”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Harry!”

  Both men tried to climb over to the unconscious man. Leon was holding his head up out of the water.

  “Be careful!” he said. “I’m trying to keep him still.”

  “Harry! God damn it! Are you alive?”

  “He’s alive,” Leon said. “Stop moving the boat until we can get him off.”

  “We are so fucked,” the big man said. “Our lives are over. Do you realize that?”

  “Just shut up,” Cap said. “Okay, Brucie? Will you just shut up?”

  “Who are you talking to?”

  “Maybe you should both shut up,” I said. “How about that? Just keep quiet until we can get us all back to shore.”

  The big man looked at me. His face was twelve inches from mine. Brucie, the other man called him. What a name for a man the size of a Coke machine. He was about to say something, but the explosion cut him short.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “The fireworks,” Leon said. “They’re starting again.”

  There was another explosion, and a faint red glow in the air high above us. Sitting in the ruined wooden boat, it was like we were suddenly transported back to the wrong end of a nineteenth-century sea battle.

  “Oh, my head,” Cap said. “God, that noise is killing me.”

  The next few explosions brought a brilliant white light, then another red light, then blue. The fog itself was turning into a very loud ambient light show. It would have been beautiful if we weren’t cold and wet, and right below the target zone. One low shot and we’d catch it right in our laps.

  “Here’s our ride,” Leon said, as Tyler pulled alongside us. We helped the two conscious men into the other boat, and then Leon and I took a few long minutes to carefully lift the third man and pass him over the gunwales. He was deadweight, and we were up to our waists in water now. His head was still bleeding.

  “We need to get this man to the hospital,” Tyler said when we were all aboard. “Did they say they were sending an ambulance, Leon?”

  “Yes, they did.”

  “Okay, good. I’m sure it’ll only take them two or three days to get out here.” He spun the boat around and headed for shore. He was completely soaked from his little late-night swim. He was shivering so hard he could barely grip the steering wheel.

  “You guys didn’t call the police, did you?” It was Brucie. In the dim light of the boat, I could see he was about the same age as Cap, with his hair shaved close to his scalp. He had a little gut going, but otherwise he looked as strong as an ape. Aside from the vomit all over his coat, he looked like he could step right out onto a football field.

  “The Coast Guard will come around the Point to recover the boat,” Tyler said. “And the ambulance will take your friend. Hell, they’ll want to take all of you, just to be safe. I don’t know if the police will come. Does it matter?”

  Brucie looked over at Cap. “No,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Leon’s bandmates were waiting for us on the dock. We must have been some sight. We got everybody off the boat and wrapped up in towels. The unconscious man we laid out on the dock. In the dim light from the house, I could see that he was a lot younger than the other two men. He looked like he had just graduated from high school. Tyler covered him with a thick woolen blanket and pressed a clean white cloth against his head. I could see some superficial wounds to his scalp, but God knows what could have happened to him internally. The men all wanted to stay outside with him. So we all stood there on the dock while the fireworks kept exploding in the fog.

  “Cap,” Brucie said, “what if he doesn’t make it?”

  “He’ll make it,” Cap said. “Just stop talking.”

  “What if he’s still alive but he’s like…you know, brain dead. What’s going to happen to us then?”

  “If you don’t shut up,” Cap said, gritting his teeth, “I’m going to make you brain dead right here on the dock. Okay?”

  Brucie kept his mouth shut after that. The time crawled by, until finally the ambulance showed up in Tyler’s driveway. I went around and led the men down to the water. A Michigan state trooper showed up a minute later. He wrote a few things down while the EMS guys got the men into the ambulance. Cap and Brucie weren’t too sure about going with them. They wanted to drive separately, even though their car must have been a half mile away, at the casino. I was starting to wonder if the trooper would have to break out his nightstick, but the men finally relented and got in the ambulance. My last sight of them was both crammed onto a single bench, squinting in the bright light, while their friend lay on the stretcher in front of them. If there was any gratitude to us for saving their lives…well, maybe they’d be sending a nice card the next day.

  The trooper stayed a few more minutes. It was the driver himself who had been hurt, so there didn’t seem to be a serious crime involved, outside of being criminally stupid enough to drive an expensive wooden boat into an old bridge piling. If they found enough alcohol in the driver’s system, they’d have something to ring him up on. But beyond that the whole thing would probably go to the DA and not much else would happen.

  “Those pilings,” the trooper said. “On a night like this? Those guys must not be from around here.”

  “I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often,” Tyler said.

  “You got that right. Hey, you don’t have any coffee, do you? It feels like November out here.”

  I never saw the big orange Coast Guard boat show up. I was finally on my way home by then. Around Whitefish Bay, up the lonely dark road to Paradise. The sign in my headlights. WELCOME TO PARADISE, WE’RE GLAD YOU MADE IT! The one blinking light in the cent
er of town.

  Then the Glasgow Inn on the right side. It was still open, but I didn’t stop. I was still wet enough to be uncomfortable, and besides, I didn’t feel like hearing it from Jackie just then. Why I wasn’t there all night, what I was doing instead. He’d love the story I’d have to tell him, but it would have to wait until tomorrow.

  Come to think of it, some of the evening was almost comical. The way the one guy had asked us if we had hit them. Like we’d actually be out there trying to ram any boats that came by. The big guy throwing up all over the place.

  And Leon and the Leopards. That made the whole thing worthwhile, right there. I’d have that over him forever.

  I turned onto my access road. There was an almost theatrical mist hanging in the air, like something out of a Frankenstein movie. I passed Vinnie’s house. It looked empty. He must have been at the casino still, not yet aware of what had happened out on the bay. I thought he’d probably get a kick out of the whole story, too.

  That’s what I thought. And would go on thinking until the next morning.

  Then after that…Hell, if I had known…

  It seems like an impossible question now, but what were we supposed to do that night, let all three men drown?

  I came to my cabin. It was the first of six, all built by my father back in the sixties and seventies. This first one was the one I helped him build myself, back when I was eighteen years old and thought I knew everything, which explains the imperfect fitting of the logs and the cold drafts that come whistling through the walls on a windy night.

  When I was out of my truck, I had to wait a few moments while my eyes adjusted to the total darkness. Pine trees, birch trees, an old logging road. A small shed out back and my snowplow sitting up on cinderblocks. And my cabin. That’s all there was.

  Nobody there waiting up for me.

  I checked the answering machine as soon as I got inside. A green glowing zero on the display. She still hadn’t called.

  I didn’t want to think about, didn’t want to wonder where she was at that moment, or what she was doing. It was becoming a routine for me, all the things I tried to keep out of my mind. I was getting pretty good at it.

  Until I finally lay down in my bed, and turned out the lights. Then they were all there, the doubts and the worries and the mortal fear, having their way with me until I finally fell asleep.