The Boat Runner

by Devin Murphy

  In the bilge I pushed away the feeling I had become Herbert Yarborough, sentenced to the dark, by convincing myself I was close to fulfilling a promise to my mother and uncle. I was close to escaping. I had to be. I had to believe that.

  After the sunset, Fabien came back to the boat. When he cast off, he called for me to come up. He went into the holds and pulled out two oars and leaned them on the stairs heading up to the deck.

  “I hope you don’t get me killed, but if I die, I’d just as soon have my pocket full of cash.”

  I pulled out the Luger and placed it on my right thigh so Fabien knew I had it. Uncle Martin would have done the same, I thought. Then I gave him the money.

  “We will be fine,” I said, knowing all the dangerous submarines flittering along and under the surface of the water.

  The boat worked its way east of the island, out of sight of the sentries and their giant searchlights set up to detect RAF raids, then turned north and headed for England. The chop was several feet but the boat handled it well. The inflatable rescue raft was blown up on the back deck with two oars inside. My papers, maps, cash, gun, clothing, and the English airman’s jumpsuit were in my pack. I pressed the jumpsuit out with my hands, then changed into it. It fit, but the sleeves and legs ran below the knobby bones of my ankles and wrists. I put the English airman’s papers in my pocket. I stepped into Herbert Yarborough’s skin.

  Back in the wheelhouse, Fabien looked at me and whistled. “You are one impressive young man.” He pointed the bow to a small cropping of lights off in the distance. “That’s where we’re headed. There’s a small town east where I’ll drop you, but I have no idea what it’s like now. I haven’t been there since the war started.”

  “Okay,” I said, and turned away from Fabien. I ate the last of my dark bread to have energy for fighting the currents and got into the raft. There was nothing else for me to do. I put on a life jacket and looped a small length of mooring line between my backpack and belt. A small canvas dry bag from Fabien’s holds was filled with all my German soldier’s identifications. I planned to cut it loose from my pack at sea so no one in Britain would find them.

  When I was ready, Fabien undid the line, cast it into the boat, and waved.

  “Good luck,” he said.

  Set loose in the ocean, the rubber floor of the raft was the back of a giant serpent—a huge, pulsating muscle. It was hard to steady myself while feeling separated from the swells by such a thin strip of material. Drifting from Fabien’s boat, I remembered a line from a poem in my father’s study years before. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t remember who had written it. They might have been anonymous, taking on new shapes and forms like me.

  And now I am on the wide, wide sea, alone.

  The shadow of land was a few kilometers away, and as soon as my oars touched the water, I fought my way toward shore, riding up the side and down the slope of each swell. My back ached fighting the current from sweeping me away, and in my battle I became aware that nothing, not one future moment, was promised to me. A skin of sweat coated my body by the time I heard the surf breaking on the rocks. The white wash and spray of water blasted up and off the shore. The oar blades slapped the water, and the handles rubbed the calluses on my palms raw.

  As I splashed through the night, a giant spotlight snapped to life from a bluff and swept over the water so the light engulfed me. It bounced off my body, and I raised an oar over my head and started waving it back and forth, back and forth, then put my hands over my head and started waving them.

  The tide pulled me out a bit farther, so I took the oar and started fighting my way back. The light still swallowed me. I slipped the dagger from my boot and cut loose the packet of German papers and dropped them over the side of the raft, away from the spotlight. Then I used my prized Blut und Ehre dagger to cut open a sewn-in pocket inside the backpack to loosen my Knight’s Cross. With the medal in one hand and the dagger in the other, I plunged both hands into the sea and opened my palms. Both fluttered down like golden flashes of fish.

  Closer to shore, where the raft was going to smash into the rocks, I jumped. An icy blackness swallowed me. I reached for anything solid, finding only mouthfuls of water, until I wasn’t sure if I was under or above the bitter surface. I felt myself being lifted higher into the blackness on the shoulder of a wave. Rollers slammed me down as I struggled to the surface. Mouthfuls of salt water went down my throat, and my soaked clothes weighed me down into the swirling, black cold. Waxy arms of seaweed wrapped around my feet until the incoming tide freed me and pushed me toward land. I was flotsam—free—sure I was about to die.

  Then the waves lifted me up and over the rocks and pushed me in with the breakers. I rolled through the muck by clutching the beach and dragging my body forward. My arms and two stripes of muscles running down each side of my spine were raw and burning from rowing and straining to keep myself from slipping below the surface of the swells. When I crawled out of the surf onto the sand, the spotlight was still sweeping over the water looking for me. With the last of my energy I stood up, grabbed my bag, and ran to a cluster of boulders along the bluff and hid.

  Several minutes later there were small flashlight beams walking down the far hillside and combing the beach and the large spotlight went out. I heard British soldiers calling to one another to look for the raft among the rocks. They stayed a long time looking into the water but eventually went back up the hill toward the source of the spotlight. I sat between the rocks in the dark and felt to see if the knobs of cash in the pack were still safe. After waiting a shivering hour, I changed out of the RAF uniform and into civilian clothes between the rocks. I left the RAF uniform and paperwork on the ground like I’d shed another layer of skin, the last remnant of Herbert Yarborough, and crawled in the opposite direction of the soldiers, toward the distant town rising over the bluff.

  24

  In town, several soldiers drank coffee and smoked cigarettes outside a café. They were straight-backed, lock-kneed, clean-shaven men in khaki uniforms with long-sleeved leather jackets and tin helmets. They had unbuttoned their jackets to be able to fold their arms tighter around their chests to stay warm.

  The town had been bombed, and several of the old buildings now stood in concave rubble mounds sliding into the streets. There was an open merchant’s store in the town center that I went inside and told the man behind the counter I needed new clothes. Inside there was an empty wine barrel full of walking sticks and carved canes. Ivory and bone handles with rosewood or ebony shafts. Some had faces for handles. Bearded Romans. Bespectacled royalty. Hooded Bedouins. I could imagine my face as Edwin drew it, carved into such a stick, then a hand palming it and covering the world in darkness.

  With the pounds Uncle Martin had given me, I paid for a pair of gray flannel trousers, a tweed overcoat, leather boots, and a shirt. Then I went to the train station where cars and military jeeps lined the road. I hired one of the drivers to drive me west to Southampton, where Uncle Martin had written there was a good port to find a ship out of Europe. I had made it, but I still didn’t feel safe. The whole time walking through town, buying clothes, and even in the car driving away, I expected a hand to grab my shoulder and pull me back.

  The car ride took two hours, during which I laid out my paperwork in the backseat. All I had left was my own Dutch ID. Jacob Koopman, of Delfzijl, Holland. The picture and the writing seemed like they belonged to a stranger.

  As we drove, RAF bombers crossed the Channel.

  In Southampton, the driver dropped me at the port. Europe was across the Channel, which was full of military vessels and submarines. Whatever boat left this port would do so at great risk, but I didn’t know of any other options. I wandered the docks, eyeing the sides of the docked freighters and cargo boats. If there were crewmen at the gangway, they told me the same thing. Their boats weren’t going anywhere, or that they didn’t have enough crew to make their next trip.

  “Do you know Felix Courtier?” I asked one of
the gangway watchmen.

  “No.”

  “Javier Méndez?” I had the letter from my uncle in my pocket, and by midafternoon I’d asked after each name. “Petrous Valspar? Michael McCollum?” No one in the harbor knew these men.

  After I had inquired at almost every ship, a man with a black mustache and a slumped, heel-scraping gait walked up to me on the dock. He wore a grease-stained coverall with the sleeves rolled up, exposing the dark hair that covered his gorilla arms. The knuckles of both his hands were capped in gnarled scabs.

  “You the one asking for folks?” he asked in a Irish accent.

  “I am.”

  “Mind if I ask what it is you’re interested in doing?”

  “Find a friend of a friend.”

  “Looking for work, are ya?” he shifted back on his heels, and his massive chest ballooned out.

  “Looking for a ship overseas. I’d work for it if I could.”

  “Is that so? Tell me, who are these people you’re looking for again?”

  I listed the names Uncle Martin had given me.

  “No. No. Don’t know any of those fellas, but I may be able to help you out. I know a boat bound for New York as soon as it can crew up. It’s outside of town at the old dock if you’re interested. Go ask around there this evening.”

  Later that afternoon, I started walking out to the pier. More planes flew overhead crossing the Channel. I pictured the distant town those planes would sight and bomb, and then imagined the continent on fire. The raising orange glow I’d seen over Rotterdam and Delfzijl.

  I walked to the old port where the man had told me I might find a ship. At the dock was a small lean-to covering a large corkboard that had messages in many different languages stuck to it. There were pictures with directions of where the person who left the note went, who they were looking for, what had happened to them. A whole board of hundreds of layered notes, letters, and pictures; it was a monument to the lost. A last hope for the living. The board made me feel sick, as I knew it would be miraculous if anyone found a note left by someone they knew.

  To Neil Von Poppell,

  We are going to my cousin’s in Halifax. Please send word of your safety. We waited for you as long as we could. May God Keep You. May we meet again for the Cherries.

  Lucas.

  * * *

  To Margaret Margareta,

  I have the kids, my love. Our hearts are full of your dreams and they keep us well. Rest if you have left this world, and rest well. If you have not, look for us. I will drop our name loudly everywhere on this earth that we go so people will remember, and you can follow the trail of my voice, follow the love it sings out to you.

  Vincent Margareta.

  * * *

  To Bobolus Yakaveti,

  Your Brother will put us up in his apartment in New York. His address is 1567 Franklin St, Apartment 12 B, Queens, NEW YORK. We will look for work to send money.

  Your father, Sol.

  There were pages upon pages of Dutch names too, and addresses for where they could be reached, stories from people who didn’t know where they would be as they had no money and nowhere to go. Many picked an arbitrary date to meet back at that very spot. That seemed to be a trend in the notes. These notes contained a fierce hope, as much for the writer as the written-to, that they would meet, and with any providence, they could have some control over the date, the place, the if, and the when.

  Many of the dates on the letters had passed, some of the more deeply buried by over two years.

  I had to stop reading, it was all too much, such glaring loss. When I turned away, I saw a dirty, old freighter ship docked at the end of the wooden pier. The Royal Crest, a small cargo ship flagged out of Liverpool. It was docked to this borderline-defunct pier with no lights on it and a dilapidated dock house. The ship looked empty except for someone standing watch on the gangway. When I got closer, I saw it was the fat Irish sailor.

  “Still looking for a ship, are you then?” the man said.

  “Is this your ship?”

  “It’s the captain’s,” he said.

  “Do you really need crew?” I asked.

  “That’s right. You’ll need to talk to the captain, though.”

  “Is he here?”

  The man walked up the gangway to a radio by the open hatch and called for the captain. The old boat’s blue trim was in need of paint and covered in rust bubbles.

  Several minutes later, the captain, an older Portuguese man, came down the gangway. He had tanned skin and a horseshoe of wispy gray hair over his ears. His lidded green eyes were pinched close together. A cigarette-stained, yellow mustache curved around his mouth and pointed at his loose, jowly cheeks.

  “The kid says he’s looking to crew up,” the watchman said.

  “He does, huh? And who is the kid?” the captain asked.

  “My name is Jacob Koopman.”

  “And where is Jacob Koopman from?”

  “I’m from Delfzijl, in Holland.”

  “In the northeast on the left bank of the Ems, across from Germany? Yes? What’d you do there?”

  “Germans have been there for a few years now. They made me work in a local factory, and I worked on a fishing boat with my uncle.”

  “So you worked for the Germans?”

  “Sir, they gave my family food rations, which I needed for my mother. When she died a few months ago, I ran away. I’m trying to get as far from them as possible.”

  “Well, we should put a gun in your hand and send you back to get them out of your town.”

  “One small gun won’t get that job done,” I said.

  The captain pinned his eyes on mine. “You’re right. Now tell me about the fishing boat.”

  “A large trawler. I navigated it, helped fix the engines, and did all the docking. I knew every nail and board of that boat.”

  “It was your uncle’s boat?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Martin Van Deerjack.”

  “Martin Van Deerjack, huh. And what did this Martin Van Deerjack teach you about cargo ships?”

  “I’ve never been on one.”

  “So why would you be any use to me?”

  I’d thought of that answer. “I’m guessing everyone else knows how dangerous leaving this port would be, which is why you can’t get a crew and why you’re still here. I can crew for you, navigate once we’re out of port and underway, and do whatever you need.”

  “Your uncle taught you all that?”

  I thought of Lieutenant-Major Erich Oldif and the dents in his head. His clipboard. All that training I’d had at the naval camp. “Yes,” I said.

  The captain stepped close enough to smell me. “Do you know the story of the frog and the scorpion?” The mustachioed man standing on the gangway bit back a grin when the captain said this.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You do? Well, Mr. Jacob Koopman from Delfzijl. You know what I feel like at moments like these?” the captain asked. “I feel like the frog.”

  “I just want to work my way out of here, that’s all,” I said.

  “Good, because the scorpion goes down too for causing trouble. Isn’t that right, Peter?”

  The guard’s mustache rose up like a hair curtain, revealing a crooked grin. “That’s right, sir.”

  “Let’s see your papers?” the captain said, and I handed over my own identification for the first time in months.

  “Well, Mr. Koopman, I could use you,” the captain said. “But seeing how you already tipped your hand as to wanting to get out of here, and will probably jump ship in the first port you like, I won’t pay you for your work. I’ll see you across the Atlantic, and I won’t have you tossed overboard if you do what’s asked. Can you live with that?”

  “I can.”

  “Then I’m Captain Fernandes, and this is Peter, my first mate. We have eight other crewmen, and you make our ninth. Peter will show you the ship. We’ll leave first thing tomorrow morn
ing. I suspect you’ll be staying aboard until then?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Good. Welcome to the crew.”

  We agreed upon the work I’d do—standing watches, doing engine rounds, and galley duty—and like that, I was to go back to sea. The watery depths were becoming for me the most familiar and terrifying expanse of the earth.

  Later that night, Captain Fernandes walked down the dock with a crowd of people. I was on the back deck watching and counted over sixty figures marching behind him. The captain pointed to the corkboard and the people all stuck something to it. Each carried packs on their backs and in their arms as they moved up the gangway. Captain Fernandes led them to the holds where they spread out on the deck.

  “You will all stay belowdecks until we’re underway. I’ll let you know when you can wander about the ship.” When Captain Fernandes turned to leave the holds, he saw me standing there. “I didn’t say how much galley work there’d be, now did I?” He smiled at me. “There will be more pots to scrub than maybe you thought.”

  Before we launched from the pier, I met the rest of the crew on the bridge.

  “We’re taking the northerly route, south of Iceland, rounding southern Greenland, and down to St. John’s, working our way to Halifax, Boston, and New York,” Captain Fernandes said. Then he had me and another one of the crew hoist a white flag with a red cross on it and fly it high so any periscopes could see it. “Give that one a little kiss for me first,” he said as he tossed it to me.

  The bow of the tramp ship cut through the early morning fog and the white mist brushed over the decks. Behind us stood the last of Europe, dimly lit by the halation of the shore. The smoke and light above the land looked like a giant, six-fingered hand, waving good-bye.

  I remembered a story my father told me years ago, when we were on the Lighthouse Lady on the way to camp. My uncle was at the helm. My father told me how Poseidon sent Thump-Drag inland with the oar over his shoulder to build a church in his honor. I had grown up believing all those stories as gospel truths. That one especially, emphasizing Thump-Drag’s clear knowledge of his purpose. Now, I knew better. Now I could see Thump-Drag tired of his walk, throwing away the oar, and going about his own directionless life. That made sense to me. That was a story I could believe.