Before the Wind

by Jim Lynch

  And surfing is way harder than it looks.

  I know what you’re thinking: that the fugitive discovers paradise and then is on the run again. That maybe it’s not the place that’s the problem. That maybe I’m not meant to stay anywhere very long. Or simply that there’s something wrong with me? Naaaah. You can throw that shit out.

  Think it’s time to cross the Big One.

  Stubbornly, BMJ

  RUBY’S EXIT

  My earliest memory is of Ruby coming home from the hospital. I’ve been told I couldn’t possibly recall anything when I was twenty-two months old. Yet there are no images of her looking like a fleshy owl swaddled in Mother’s arms other than the ones filed in my frontal cortex. And Mother admits it might have been the exact same day that I jumped from incoherent babbling to Queen’s English. So I’m sticking to my story, though my point is that when Ruby left for Africa right out of high school, I hadn’t lived without her since my brain started recording life.

  Mother and I hardly spoke the entire ride to the airport as Ruby chattered about Africa and family and fate. “You need to move out of the house,” she casually informed me.

  “I see,” I replied. “I’ve gotta head out into the ocean or go to Africa in order to live for real.”

  “You could move down the street.” She yawned. “You just need to be helping people who don’t take you for granted. No offense, Momma.”

  “I can’t be you, Rube,” I told her.

  “Thank God,” she said. “All I’m saying is humans were never meant to stay in the nest this long.”

  Still, Mother said nothing.

  “My sister the anthropologist,” I muttered. Then they both endured my whiny rant about wanting to go to college but not when the Bobos needed me at the boathouse.

  “You’re a prince, Josh,” Ruby said when I’d finished. “But quit waiting for your life to start.”

  “More lectures from my little sister,” I said, forcing a yawn.

  After she passed through security with a smile and a parade wave, Mother and I stood dazed in the concourse, as if we’d put our hearts on a plane to Senegal.

  “Your sister is an angel.”

  “Right.”

  “No, she might actually be one.”

  “Says the woman who doesn’t believe in angels.”

  “She was four when your granny passed, right?”

  I did the math. “Okay.”

  “Well, remember afterwards how she spent all her time with Grumps, loving him up?”

  “Let’s go, Mom.”

  “During that same stretch,” she continued, shrugging my hand off her arm, “she walked up to this old man at Green Lake and said, ‘You just lost somebody, didn’t you?’ He looked so astonished. ‘You know what you need to do now?’ Ruby told him. ‘You need to go get more love.’ ”

  “Lucky guess,” I said. “Most old people have lost somebody recently.”

  “But she did it three times that I saw, Josh. She sensed whenever somebody was mourning. Her advice was always the same: ‘Go get more love.’ Like there was some magical filling station nearby.” Mother started weeping. “How extraordinary is that?” She cleared her throat. “And you know how she used to run around with a towel on her back like she had wings?”

  “Like every other kid in the neighborhood.” I put my arm around her ribs and realized how skinny she’d become. “Let’s get outta here.”

  She waited till we were halfway home to admit she’d hit a wall with the million-dollar-fluid-dynamics puzzler but that she was a finalist for an associate professorship at Arizona U. That news stung, though I didn’t comment. “Don’t tell anybody,” she added. “Nothing will probably come of it.”

  Soon e-mails—void of all apostrophes, though with marginally improved spelling—poured in from Senegal and then Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana and Togo.

  Ruby started as a kitchen worker, but there was a shortage of nurses, so she helped out.

  Cant call me a nurse, but Im in the room. And Im anticipating what everybody needs. Im told Im good at this. You wouldnt believe the before-and-afters with patients here. Im the greeter many days when they first come onto the ship and I get to look into their eyes. Sometimes they only have one. And just about every day I see people who are given sight! Think about it! They go from being blind or barely able to see to desent vision in 24 hours! Its just basic caturack surgery. They think were gods! Most people Im working with are Christians, the best kind. But science is saving these people. Go Mom! Got a little veggie garden on the tiny patio outside my room. Things practicly grow over night here. Love you all, including you, Bernard, wherever you are. You too Pops. Im in love with life again now that I finally realize just how short and fluky it all is. Please send tomato seeds!—Rubester.

  I kept rereading that part about my younger sister informing us how short life is.

  Next e-mail:

  Thanks for the seeds, Josh! I found more just after I wrote—oops!—and lots of people are hitting me up for fresh erbs already. I didnt want to charge but people pay me anyway. Got off shift yesterday and seven coworkers had lined up at my door waiting for erbs or a masage! Word is out on that too. Can you believe it? I just do what I used to do to Grumps and people usually just go to sleep then wake up feeling better. You know Ive got a feel for these things Josh the way I had for the tiller. So Im torn. I want to help everybody, but more than ever I desperately want to be normal. A couple from London is trying to get me to grow pot for them. No thank you.

  Next e-mail:

  Got a boyfriend! An electrician named Phillipe. Yes, thats how its spelled. I double checked. Sounds French I know but he was born in Haiti and his family lives in Canada. BC! Whoop Whoop! And no hes not a mistake or a loser. God how I hate those words. I called home once last week. When Dad answered he sounded excited for ten seconds then handed the phone to Momma. She didnt sound like herself.

  That night, Mother broke the news over dinner. “I’m teaching at the University of Arizona in the fall.”

  Father assumed she was joking. “Could you imagine me there?” he asked Grumps. “What the hell would I do where there’s no water?”

  “Who said anything about you?” she asked, retreating to her office.

  I took that moment to announce that I was leaving, too, but sooner.

  Father laughed aggressively. “Where would you go?”

  “South” was all I could muster before mumbling about starting my own boat-repair business. “I want to see more of the world,” I said meekly.

  Mother was back in the room now, nodding behind him, silently rooting me on.

  “Stick around long enough to finish our September orders,” he said, “then we’ll discuss your world tour. We need you into the fall. If you want a break after that, we’ll work something out.”

  “I don’t, I don’t think so,” I stammered. “I need a break right now.”

  “Listen,” Father shouted once he finally realized I was serious. “If you want to work somewhere else, let us find you a place to land. But in October or November, not now.”

  When he saw me packing an hour later, he informed me, from behind the sports page, that I was his most disappointing child. “And there’s plenty of competition for that prize!”

  Mother stormed into the room before I could respond. “That’s what you tell your only child who still somehow manages to look up to you?”

  She and Grumps said more in my defense, though I can’t recall any of the words flying while I blindly gathered clothes, books and tools. It wasn’t until I was mired in freeway traffic that I realized Father probably knew I would’ve chickened out if his insults hadn’t pushed me out the door.

  Once again I considered college—Mother promised she’d find the money somewhere—but it felt too late. And I didn’t want to borrow anything from anybody. The entirety of my escape plan was to head south and find work. I made it sixty miles, moseyed into Olympia’s only boatyard, had a brief chat with Jack and got
hired. Then I drove back up, asked Grumps for the Joho 32 he never used but refused to sell no matter how much Father griped about the moorage bills. Powering out through the locks, I turned left.

  Most all boaters exiting Seattle turn right and go north to the San Juans and Desolation Sound, to the American and Canadian islands strewn like rocky jewels across the sunniest swath of the inland sea. That’s where the billionaires and movie stars go, with seaplanes dipping in and out of coves so the fattest cats don’t have to waste time motoring or driving that far. Turn left out of Seattle and you sail south into blue-collar water and often straight into hostile swirling current.

  The Tacoma Narrows turns into a raucous river four times a day. The current runs in both directions, but very little of Seattle’s money, swagger or ambition squeezes through this tightening throat into the southern waters, where the boats and houses get smaller and older, the bays shallower, the beaches sandier. At the quiet dead end of this melon-green sea lies a boatyard and five marinas.

  Shortly after dusk, I coasted into the shabbiest one, then bought myself a slip the next morning and began my new life amid the dead and dying boats of Sunrise Marina.

  DEMOLITION DAY

  Boats are sold, traded or auctioned. They’re stolen, given away or inherited, sunken, crushed or seized by Nazis.

  Einstein’s friends knew what object he desired above all others. So for his fiftieth birthday they conspired to buy him a twenty-three-foot wooden sailboat that was built just for him. Hearing of his disdain for engines, the designer raised the cockpit enough to hide a two-cylinder inboard. He kept the mast short so the sails would be small enough for the genius to handle by himself on a lake very near to his summer home outside Berlin. Stoutly built, the boat had a plumb bow, shallow draft and nearly eight feet of beam. Its maple-and-mahogany cabin came outfitted with dishes and silverware, ready to entertain guests. Dazzled by her mammalian curves, Einstein named her Tümmler (porpoise). He was in love.

  His wife, Elsa, wrote to his little sister that

  Our ship is magnificent; Albert…enjoys this sailing happiness very intensively. The [boat] is a gift from very rich friends (15,000 marks!). I write this pretentious remark for you to get an inkling [of] what [a] proud ship your brother is sailing.

  In another letter, Einstein’s son-in-law described him clutching Tümmler’s tiller while explaining his latest big ideas.

  He sails the boat with the skill and fearlessness of a child….The joy with this hobby can be seen in his face, it echoes in his words and in his happy smile.

  Four years later, while he was visiting the United States, the Nazis took over Germany. Opting to stay in America, the Jewish scientist tried to make arrangements to transport Tümmler to the Netherlands. Hearing of his plan, the Gestapo seized his boat in June 1933 and put it up for sale with the caveat that it would not be sold to “public enemies.”

  Heartbroken, Einstein didn’t attempt to find a grand replacement for Tümmler in the States. By then he understood the temporal nature of boats. So he found himself a simple stubby fifteen-foot catboat he would day-sail in New Jersey and New York for the final decades of his life. He named her Tinef—Yiddish for “rubbish”—as if to prove he’d learned his lesson about glorifying even the objects of his passion.

  A boat’s decline can happen so fast. You feel the barnacles slowing her down and notice that she lists to port no matter how much you redistribute weight below. Then you step back into your life and forget about her for a few months, and everything ages at warp speed. The varnish has begun to peel, the gaskets to leak, the gel coat to blister, the motor mounts to corrode, the mildew to spread—the evidence of your neglect rising like an unsightly rash above the waterline. Yet giving up on her feels like giving up on yourself.

  For many boats, Sunrise Marina was hospice. Once every four months or so, it was Demolition Day. I tried not to watch because otherwise I’d want to save them all. Part of it was the marina ethic. We looked out for one another’s boats. The other part was my knack or curse for seeing elegant bones beneath the decay. But once the unpaid bills piled up, these unloved orphans would be put up for auction. Yet nobody wanted most of them, not even for free. So before the dock lines snapped and the boats sank to the clam beds, they were towed to the neighboring timber yard, where a tug shoved them ashore and fed them to a crablike bulldozer that grabbed them by the bows, as if settling grudges, and crunched them like beer cans.

  The first sailboat to get destroyed on this bright Sunday morning was a Columbia 26 that for months had been leaning against the dock, half full of water. After the sickening sounds of buckling plastic and snapping wood, Diva’s mangled corpse was dropped like a mob hit into a dump truck.

  I couldn’t resist watching the destruction but was distracted by the mysterious new postcard in my pocket. This one—featuring a seemingly embarrassed Indonesian woman in a yellow bikini—had the most cryptic message yet: 515-SS. That was all. The handwriting was obviously Bernard’s, but it took me until right then to settle on its meaning: May 15 at Shilshole Marina. Was I supposed to pass this along to Yoshito, too? My heart thumped, my vision blurred.

  Next up was a faded red Coronado 27—obscured by a garish orange fungus—that apparently belonged to the lanky woman pacing along the shore beside the dump truck, flapping her arms like an agitated penguin.

  “That boat was always good to me,” she said when I walked up. “Had her out in a gale a few years ago. She did just fine, even when we bounced off Blakely Rock. I have no complaints. None. She never did wrong by me.” Her words caught in her throat. “Wes and I used to sail her together. In fact, he taught me. Then he started drinking like a walrus and—well, we both did. He ran off to Reno, and I took Lucille up to Lopez to dry out on the hook. Ever been to Spencer Spit? Best month of my pathetic life. But then, see, my aunt Ruth got sick and there wasn’t anybody else. So that’s where I’ve been, in beautiful downtown Yuma. When the SSI ran out, how was I gonna pay moor…” She tailed off.

  “So you came up just for this?” I surmised. “To see her one more time?”

  “Thought I could convince Neil I’m not a complete—” She started to sob, then steadied herself long enough to say “fuckup.”

  I left her and strolled over to Neil, who was chatting with the dozer man. “I’ll take this one,” I said.

  He scowled at me. “C’mon, Josh, you know the drill. If you wanted her you should’ve bid.”

  “I don’t want her, but that woman sure does.” We watched her pacing, talking to herself.

  “You’re kidding, right? I gave her nine free months. Nine. She’s a rummy.”

  “So?”

  He poked at his gums with a toothpick. “I’d have to charge you full moorage if you’re planning on fixing her up.”

  “I know,” I said. “Will you?”

  “What?”

  “Pardon the execution?”

  He glanced at the woman again. “You’re a softy, Josh. Where ya gonna put her?”

  “Not sure yet.”

  “They won’t let you anchor in the—”

  “Pardon granted?”

  He nodded and spat.

  “Thank you, governor.”

  Unsure exactly what had just happened, the woman followed me to my boat as hers was towed slowly back to the marina. “Here’s an anchor,” I said, and handed it to her. “And you can borrow that dinghy there if you need it and the engine, too. Just a two-horse, but it starts on the first pull as long as you choke it halfway till it warms up. I’d anchor near Gull Harbor for just shy of a month. Then I’d do the same in Butler Cove and keep rotating and stalling like that for free moorage till November. If you can’t get up here to move her, call me and I will.”

  She looked at the anchor and then up at me, as if I’d just given her life itself.

  “Cara,” she said, sticking out her free hand.

  “Josh,” I replied, taking it. Her fingers were cold.

  Our boats stick with us.
We never completely relinquish ownership. After the war, more than a dozen years since he’d last seen his beloved Tümmler, Einstein made one last effort to locate the sailboat of his life. What he discovered was that she’d sold for a tenth of her worth and then had simply vanished.

  Cara and I were still chatting about boats and life when a tall Asian man in a charcoal suit began long-striding toward us on the A Dock. Perhaps fearing he was a bill collector, she stopped talking midsentence, curtsied and departed with my anchor.

  “Do not message Yoshito again,” the man said softly but clearly and without preamble upon arriving at my pier. “And give Minke this.”

  A disposable black cell phone materialized in his surprisingly large palm. Then he slid it into mine as if simply greeting me. “Have him call the number taped to the back when he’s ready,” he continued in the same robotic unaccented tone. “Do not look at it now. Put the phone in your pocket. Do not use it for any other call, and dispose of it immediately afterwards.”

  Then the only man I ever saw on a dock in a tailored suit with a midnight-blue silk pocket square stepped closer to me, smelling of garlic and some citrusy aftershave. He looked down into my eyes, perhaps for comprehension or a glimmer of intelligence.

  “Got it,” I said, tempted to share that the likely date of Bernard’s arrival was exactly sixteen days from now but not willing to gamble that I could get the words out without warbling. He finally blinked, but it wasn’t until he turned and strode away that I resumed breathing.

  JUPITER’S MOONS

  Unable to reach my father by phone, I borrowed a car and drove up to Seattle only to find him surrounded by pizza boxes and boat drawings, alone and asleep, whimpering in the recliner.