Before the Wind

by Jim Lynch

  “You’ve got a move?” Noah said. “That must be a doozy.”

  “Thirty-One was smart but freaked me out when we got ready for sleep,” I admitted. “She inserted these thick mouth guards, top and bottom, then locked them together, almost like a muzzle.”

  “This is a story about love,” Noah began in his Morgan Freeman voice-over. “Like most love stories, it begins with an act of utter foolishness.”

  Lorraine laughed, and we all turned, surprised to see her slightly downwind, smoking in her nuke suit. She’d been in the yard since sunup, as usual, and hadn’t taken a break in days, at least not with us. Our theory? She was making too much loot to stop. Painting two to three bottoms a day now, she collected far more than the yard charged—nobody knew how much—because after three boats in the spring series sailed to glory on her obscenely smooth bottoms, she could set her own rates.

  “Went out the other night,” she said, “and I was laughing so hard with my friend that this dude asked if we were lesbians. I mean not, Are you dykes? But, Hey, you two together? The same question, basically.”

  The small hairs in our ears vibrated. So she isn’t? She gave us a slow smile and then walked off.

  “Anybody ever have the balls to ask her out?” Austin asked.

  “Just Noah,” Big Alex said. “Our hero.”

  “She asked me out,” Noah corrected. “And just once. It must’ve been on a dare, or maybe she lost a bet with somebody.”

  The others nodded.

  “But no Marcys, Josh?” Mick asked, our eyes returning to the launch below. “Nobody like her online, huh?”

  “The Marcys of the world don’t need to go looking for somebody,” I explained. “Soon as a Rex dumps them, another chump swoops right in. And she swoons, of course, because the odds are he’ll seem like a prince compared to Rex.”

  When the boat finally eased into the water, Marcy raised her arms victoriously, and we cheered on cue. Then Rex tried to start the outboard. One pull, two pulls. Three, four. “Did he choke the fucker?” Noah wondered. By six, Rex was grumbling. Marcy said something we couldn’t hear, then reached around him and yanked the choke out.

  The engine belched to life on the next pull, and we applauded again. Rex brooded, but Marcy blew us a kiss off her fingertips, and we groaned as one as they puttered off on their hundred-mile slog to the Pacific.

  Later that afternoon, I coaxed Noah into helping me start removing the Joho’s keel. I had no more time for self-pity or mixed emotions. The fancy new elliptical rudder had arrived in Bubble Wrap. And Father had called to announce the new keel was on a truck barreling up I-5 from San Diego. “Full speed ahead!” Before hanging up, he told me he’d be down to inspect once everything was attached. “And by then, maybe you’ll quit pouting and start enjoying this.”

  We were trying to loosen the large keel nuts with monkey wrenches when Noah asked, “You’ve seen my father’s billboard, right?”

  “No,” I lied. “Sure haven’t.”

  “Oh, c’mon!” He pointed at the sign, almost two blocks away yet easy to read. THE END IS NEAR.

  “That’s his?”

  “Of course it’s his! And I can’t handle it.”

  “He’s probably put them up all over the country, right?”

  “So what?” Noah’s head jerked backwards twice, his chin popping with each imaginary blow.

  “So it’s probably not personal,” I said.

  “It couldn’t be any more personal. Why else would he pay to put one up right outside his son’s boatyard? ‘Heed my warning, my sinning son’ is what it says. ‘You will be left behind!’ ”

  “You’re probably—”

  “Josh, you don’t understand him at all.”

  Only one of the nuts budged voluntarily. We lubricated the others, then climbed out of the cabin and further braced the hull with more stands.

  Ten minutes later, as if there’d been no gap, Noah said, “You know the strange thing about my father?”

  “Probably not.”

  “He wasn’t all that bad of a dad.”

  I nodded.

  “Know what I mean?”

  “Maybe.”

  “He’s always been crazy to one degree or another, but never mean.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Until now. But you know, he’s buried two wives and hasn’t been right since Mom passed. And it’s not like I’ve been helping him see things clearly. I don’t even call him on his birthday. Why? Because he embarrasses me. Well, tough shit! Know what I’m saying? Am I still a child? Shouldn’t I be embarrassment-proof by now?”

  “I’m not.”

  “But this billboard’s downright hostile, Josh.”

  “Nobody knows he’s your dad,” I lied, “or that there’s one preacher behind all this.”

  “Wait,” he said. “You think I’m just embarrassed?”

  I packed tools away and stalled, groping for something neutral to say.

  “It’s not just shame,” Noah said. “A tiny part of me is afraid this time he might be right.”

  “Bullshit.” I was tired of playing Switzerland. “What twisted part of you could possibly think that in two months we’ll stand around and watch the believers ascend?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get that, but he’s my father.” He thumped his chest with his palm. “And somebody’s gonna get it right someday.”

  When his head started twitching and bobbing again, I escaped into the noisy refuge of power tools, sanding along the top of the keel to expose the seam.

  “Mind if I ask a few questions before I measure?” somebody called out.

  I turned and saw a woman with a clipboard leaning against a Subaru. After a long beat, I slowly realized she was the sailmaker, then remembered her message that she’d make it to the yard before closing. Dark and boyish, with a black ponytail shooting out the back of her North Sails hat, she was suddenly strolling around the Joho while Noah banged shims into the keel seam.

  “Fire away,” I said, switching the sander off and following her.

  “Why put carbon-fiber sails on such an old boat?”

  “To make her go faster.”

  She hesitated, reading my face. “Right, but if you want a faster boat—to race, presumably—why not go with something lighter with more sail area and get more for your buck?”

  “Well, it’s a family boat.”

  Noah kept banging shims.

  “As in a family cruiser, or as in nostalgia?”

  “As in my family built it.”

  She looked at the boat, then back at me. “They being?”

  “My father and grandpa.”

  “What’s your name again?”

  “Josh.”

  “Last name?”

  “Johannssen.”

  She winced. “Ah, the Bobos. And this is a”—she glanced at her sheet—“a Joho 39. It’s been a crazy week.” She shook her head and looked at me anew. “So Marcelle’s your mother.”

  “You must be a genealogist,” I said, then my phone started buzzing.

  “I read her article on the physics of sailing. Do you need to get that?”

  I shook my head. It was Number 31—yet another woman who just wanted to be friends. I wanted somebody to adore. “That article flew over most people’s heads.”

  “Including mine,” she replied. “But it was exciting to watch somebody even try to break sailing down into math.”

  “Or confusing and boring.”

  She grinned. “Well, it sure made me want to know more about your mom.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Any woman who sets out to tell thousands of know-it-all sailors what’s really going on—that’s what I’d call bravery.” She tipped her hat back and pulled a strand of black hair out of her left eye. “You got a ladder to get me on deck?”

  Minutes later, flooding with fresh doubts about the sanity of this entire project, I watched her effortlessly hoist herself up the mast as Jack waddled up.

  “Big Alex still aro
und?” he asked.

  Noah dropped the mini-sledge to his hip. “Wasn’t he working on the Valiant?”

  “I’ll get him.” I grabbed Mick first, then we both climbed aboard the forty-footer and found Alex stuck and swearing in the engine compartment, his cell phone inches beyond his reach on the fiberglass below.

  “Why aren’t you yelling for help?” I asked.

  “Tried to fucking call you and dropped the damn thing,” he said between breaths. “Excuse my language.”

  “You want to be pushed or pulled?” I asked.

  “Pulled.”

  Once we got him free and outside, the boys crowded around.

  “Does Jack know?” Alex asked me.

  “Pull yourself together,” I said. “You look like your dog got run over. Jack can’t fire you for being fat as long as you’re skinnier than he is.”

  Alex started to laugh-blubber, and I stepped back too late to dodge his bear hug. “Easy boy,” I said as he crushed my ribs. “You’ve been stuck twice in the past two weeks. That’s only once a week.”

  He released me and bunched his lips, caught again between a laugh and a sob, then hugged Mick even though he hated the kid. Everybody else fell in line. Even Lorraine strolled over and surrendered.

  By the time I was back at the Joho, the moon was rising, and Noah and the sailmaker, whose name I’d already forgotten, were gone. With all the shims stabbed into her gut, the boat looked more like an excessively harpooned whale than something my family was getting ready to race.

  But what if it actually worked? What if this mad scheme produced some profound reward I didn’t even realize was possible? Standing beside her, I imagined the power of new sails and an aggressive keel and rudder with the entire clan aboard, with Father in command and Ruby steering, Bernard on the bow, Mother conjuring helpful observations at exactly the right moment and Grumps informing all of us, as if for the first time, that sailboats are alive!

  Hours later, I had the boatyard to myself, and all these ailing vessels felt like my very own patients. Sundown and hands cramping, I cleaned up and then went to the lockers and stuffed an acetylene torch and its heavy twin tanks into my backpack. Then I pedaled awkwardly up Fourth to Plum.

  THE END IS NEAR.

  It seemed so innocuous at first. The end of what? The day? The spring? The legislative session? Yet the billboard grew more ominous and outrageous the longer I stared. Stashing my bike in the alders, I crouched and waited beneath a streetlight that hummed overhead like a massive bug zapper. Once the traffic thinned, I dialed up enough acetylene to light the torch, then kneeled and held the flame half an inch from one of three hollow steel posts. After a minute that felt like ten, the heat finally severed it. Then I cut the next one slightly faster. I was waiting out the intermittent traffic when a man shuffled up with a handwritten cardboard sign that read HUNGRY VET GOD BLESS GO SEAHAWKS! He asked if I had a dollar or a cigarette.

  Einstein used to mooch cigarettes, Mother told me, and, in a bind—after his doctor ordered him to quit smoking—he’d peel butts off the sidewalk and fire them up in his pipe. This bum had frizzy hair but wouldn’t remind anybody of Einstein.

  “No,” I said, “but I’ll buy you a pack if you help me out here.”

  He gazed up at the billboard. “You taking it down for the city?”

  “Nah, I’m a fed. Will you push those posts backwards while I cut this last leg?”

  He laid his sign down. “You’re a fed?”

  “As much as you’re a hungry vet who loves God and the Seahawks.” His teeth, I now saw, were perfect.

  Two cars passed, then everything was quiet until a brief jangle of falling metal ended with a soft thud from the moist earth. Wrapping the torch in a rag, I tucked it into my pack with the tanks and handed the man a five.

  “Hold on here, boss,” he said, “this won’t cover no pack of Camels.”

  “Downgrade,” I suggested, then pedaled off faster than I’d ridden in years, wondering why I felt so good before realizing all this reminded me of Bernard.

  THE LAND OF EVERYTHING GOES

  The very first letter from my fugitive brother arrived in March 2000, festooned with Mexican stamps. The colorful envelope was addressed to Capt. Joshua Slocum Johannssen (and his family of mystics, carpenters, physicists and tyrants). It’s embarrassing how much it meant to me that Bernard picked me as the headliner three months after he’d stranded me on the Shilshole gas dock.

  Dear Family of Redundant Consonants,

  I am still quite alive and have discovered a ridiculously sublime (yes, that’s the right word) new home down south. Don’t be fooled by that Puerto Vallarta postmark. Even the clumsiest outlaw knows better than to send anything from where he’s actually hiding. But yes, I am way down south, near the Sea of Cortez, we’ll say. That’s right, Grumps. Steinbeck country! So how was my sail down the coast, you ask. Well, I saw bigger waves than I care to witness again anytime soon, but this boat is, like you said, Josh, sturdy and fast, especially upwind. I admit I worried about dying when it really started blowing until I saw an albatross playing in the gusts and waves. It wasn’t afraid. So why should I be? But that didn’t help much once it got dark. I was finally able to sleep under sail after teaching myself to double reef the main and put up a small jib no matter how calm it was. I’ve already had to free climb the mast twice. Actually only HAD to climb it once. The second time I was just practicing in big swells, figuring it’d pay off later.

  Came across a garbage patch fifty miles off northern Cal that took me two days to sail around. Mostly a tangle of trash bags with strangled birds everywhere, and probably the single grossest thing I’ve ever seen. But now I’m down here, and running from the law has somehow delivered me to some version of heaven. Who knew that huge parts of the Pacific are a soothing turquoise and so warm you don’t want to get out? No wonder you old people never took us anywhere! Otherwise we’d have realized you were holding us hostage in that chilly snothole! I’ve gone from oppressive low clouds to relentless sunshine, from blackberry bogs to coconut trees. From the Land of Stupid Rules and Obnoxious Laws to the Land of Everything Goes! No building codes or insurance companies down here. No seat belt or helmet laws. You should see them beach these fishing boats at half throttle right up alongside hordes of locals and gringos wading in the shallows. No clouds. No lawyers. No worries! Everything’s negotiable. Pay what you can. Maybe it’d all feel different if I’d arrived here on American Airlines after a few six-dollar Budweisers. As is, I feel like Leif What a Guy Eriksson discovering America. Such sweet people compared to those pretentious hyper-capitalists you call neighbors and customers. Mexicans smile and say Hola! and Buenos dias! They’re looking for a pleasant day, a kind word, ten or twenty pesos and an afternoon nap or maybe a game of dominoes, and then the worst marching band you’ve ever heard comes blaring up the street off key—usually just a kid on drums with his dad and uncle on trumpet and trombone all dressed like thrift-store Michael Jacksons. When these so-called mariachi bands ambush you at outdoor restaurants, you have to either pay them to play or pay more for them to go away.

  These people are so refreshingly not into perfection. Or winning. I’m not sure what you’d do down here, Mighty Patriarch, because there’s nobody to beat. And Josh, you’d find plenty to fix, though disrepair seems to be encouraged. But Rube, there’d be plenty of losers for you to rescue. And Momma, you’d go nuts over just about everything. It’s all so different! The birds, the bugs, the plants, the water. The sky. Oh my god, the sky! I woke up on deck one night to so many stars it felt like a bowl of bright lights had been lowered onto my skull. And I saw two blue-footed boobies the first day I anchored here. Two! And the butterflies! Monarchs, sure, but so many others. And these crazy birds, frigates I think they’re called, circle above like gears or clockworks. And this moon! It’s such a bright bulb women are shy to undress beneath it. (Or so I’m told.) And the sunsets! No offense, but you all barely know what one is really like. From here you
can see the curve of the earth. The chachalacas—good name for a rock band, huh?—gather in trees in the town square and go insane every twilight. They chirp it up completely out of tune, screeching like the Bobo truck when you old men are too cheap to buy new brake pads. The ruckus goes on for about an hour before the sun completely sets. Yet it all feels just right. Like maybe instead of watching television or going to church we should all be gathering to celebrate, at least witness, the rise and fall of the warm orb—or, as Momma would no doubt correct me, the daily rotation of our planet. All I know is that when you see the sun sink into the water every night it makes you a whole lot more aware that we’re basically just this enormous water molecule hurtling through space, which is a bit humbling even for me.

  Next up? Tequila! And hopefully learning how to speak Spanish well enough to make some money and get laid. My apologies for my candor, Mother.

  Legally still yours,

  BMJ

  The next letter—for me alone—came almost a month later and was far more concise.

  Fucking Mexico. You’d think they’d figure out water and sewer by now.

  Then he went on to recount his battles with Montezuma’s revenge and his near fight with a narcoleptic bus driver who kept dozing off and the subsequent unrelated ass kicking he received from several Mexicans.

  Can you guess why? That’s right. I picked too pretty a girl. There’s a parable in there somewhere, isn’t there? And she wasn’t even all that appealing after she figured out I wasn’t rich. So her brothers or cousins jumped me. I bopped two of them, but the third was one of those low-center-of-gravity types. My ribs have felt better and my left ear’s torn and swollen, but not to worry, my action-hero good looks remain intact.

  What’s more, I’ve come to realize I’m still too close to home. Too many pale Northwest tourists down here. If people ask, I say I’m Canadian or Australian. Told one couple I’m Icelandic. How do you like that? But it’s just a matter of time till I’ll have to shove off. Besides, my imperial guilt’s starting to pile up with talk of a Starbucks moving in. And despite its Eden-like qualities, there is no peace here. If it’s not the roosters (everybody has at least a dozen) or the mariachis, there’s the night pulse of disco—ince-ince-ince-ince—and the salesmen driving through the neighborhood in trucks with loudspeakers urging everybody to buy a pig or a new mattress.